Orange goo is crucial for Wayne’s world

Shooting games usually feature Caucasian or AfricanAmerican heroes, but a newly released game in the genre features an Asian as the main character― Korean actor Lee Byung-hun.
“Lost Planet: Extreme Condition” goes on sale today in Korea and is designed for the Xbox 360 console. The game, developed by Japan’s Capcom, took three years of development and ate up a budget of 20 billion won ($21 million). The game has already been released in Japan and England and it came to the U.S. and Australia last week.
The science fiction story is about a group of humans who scour the icy tundra of the planet E.D.N. III and battle against the local indigenous creatures, called Akrid.
The main character, Wayne, is modeled after Mr. Lee. As in most game scenarios, Wayne only has a fragment of his memories at the beginning of the game, some of which includes images of his father being killed by a horrible monster, a huge slug-like Akrid.
Fortunately, Wayne was saved by some “snow pirates” and he travels with them to avenge his father. However, revenge isn’t the only reason Wayne has to kill every single Akrid in sight ― the creatures survive on orange thermal energy, and Wayne and his mates have to collect this goo in order to keep their health meters topped up. Failure to do so is fatal.
In an interview, Mr. Lee said that he was satisfied with his character portrayal in the game. “It was an honor to have the main character modeled after me,” he said. “I visited Capcom’s headquarters in Japan and they took shots of my various facial expressions with a 3D camera.”
Mr. Lee has become famous in the Asia-Pacific region due to his appearances in popular television dramas such as “All In” and movies such as “JSA” and “Bittersweet Life”.
Game industry insiders said that a Hollywood film studio plans to make the game into a movie, if it sells more than 2 million copies worldwide. If that does happen, Mr. Lee said he would like to be the star of the film.
Mr. Lee said that he doesn’t have much time to play games because of his busy acting schedule, but when he does, he enjoys a variety of games, not focusing on any particular genre. He said that he played the beta version of “Lost Planet” and was impressed by the realistic high-resolution graphics and the scale of the game.
“Lost Planet” can only be purchased by users aged 12 and above; its retail price in Korea is 45,000 won.

by By Wohn Dong-hee Staff Writer