As a bunch of little guys trying to do big things, Muttpop is always rooting for the little guys! The Behemoth, in my mind, is to videogames what Muttpop is to toys. They're a group of talented individuals determined to make games their way and used their own money to make them.

Their first game, Alien Hominid, was a great riff of the classic Contra/Metal Slug formula. The game was fun but BRUTAL (reminded me of my old NES games). I kept on playing to experience the wonderful boss battles and universe.

I liked Alien Hominid so much that I contacted Behemoth way back in early 2005 to see if they'd be interested in doing a game based on Tequila and the Luchadores5. Keep in mind, this was BEFORE we even had Tequila sculpted. At this point, Muttpop was in it's formative stages. All I had was Gobi's turnaround for Tequila and about 20 of Bill's pencilled pages of Luchadores 5.

I sent Behemoth co-owners Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp an e-mail suggesting a Luchadores5 multiplayer beat-em-up videogame with boss battles against Dr. Destruction and his Formidables, the Tiki Warriors, and Gojira. Dan Paladin responded with a very kind e-mail saying he LOVED the Luchadores5/Tequila universe and would look into the possibility of collaboration with his business partners.

Dan got back to us and said they wouldn't be able to work with us since his business partners wanted to own the intellectual property of anything they worked on... something that would (obviously) be impossible with our characters. My heart was a little broken. I fell in love with the possibility of such a collaboration. But I completely understood their reasons.

Since then they have been working on the wonderful Castle Crashers. It's a 4-player beat-em-up side scroller that feels a bit like Sega's Golden Axe. The scope and inventiveness of the Castle Crashers universe is even greater than Alien Hominid. Every creature and environment revealed thus far has been stunning!

I look forward to getting my hands on this game. But there will always be a part of me that will be a little sad that we could not find a way to collaborate on a Luchadores5 game. Maybe, some day...

Castle Crashers is expected to debut on X-Box Live and the Playstation Network sometime this year. In the meantime you might want to check out their recently unveiled Developer's Blog.