A special limited-time event across several Wargaming titles called Metal Fest will be headlined by the iconic band Megadeth. The collaboration spans multiple games in the World of Tanks and World of Warships series and was done with a significant amount of contributions from the band themselves, including frontman Dave Mustaine. Metal Fest is slated to begin this week, and will showcase the legacy of the group in a myriad of different ways.
Wargaming titles are no stranger to unique celebrity collaborations - World of Tanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger team up each holiday season, for example - but Megadeth's involvement has added some distinctly special features. Some highlights include extensive voiceover from the band and in-game content like new Mega Tanks and a Rattlehead Battle Cruiser inspired by the covers for three albums by the band: Peace Sells…but Who's Buying?, The Sick, the Dying…and the Dead!, and Rust in Peace. Megadeth mascot Vic Rattlehead will also speak for the very first time as part of the collaboration.
Screen Rant sat down with Megadeth's Dave Mustaine to discuss how the Wargaming collaboration began, his own personal history with video games, and what he thinks fans will like most about Metal Fest.
Screen Rant: Well, first, I would love to know a little bit about how this collaboration first came about for you guys and Wargaming.
Dave Mustaine: I wish I really knew how the chain of events took place, but I was approached through management. They had said that they had spoken to somebody - and like I said, chicken or the egg, I don't know which came first - but as soon as it got to me, it didn't matter, because the cool factor was there and I wanted to do this. Some of these games, they're super successful games, but they're for people who have no life; sitting around and building igloos and stuff like that, that's not my idea of fun.
I like to have interactions with other people and to get some kind of benefit from it. Like with my whole martial arts thing, if there were no ranking system in there, I don't know how many people would really do it. Because a lot of it is the respect that you get from having something on your body that shows other people,"I don't have to open my mouth, but I'm better than you." And it's only in martial arts, it's not like you get a belt for being in home ec, like, "I make better cookies than you, Deven, I've got a black apron." [Laughs]
Honestly, they should do that. That would be great. You said this game had a cool factor for you. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Dave Mustaine: Well, I think first off the history of the game. It's one of those games that has survived through all the different phases of games coming and going. The infrastructure is something that I was really surprised to see how many people were involved in and how finely tuned the mechanism of the Wargaming business was. I knew them from their spokesman Arnold Schwarzenegger; I'd seen that and thought it was a great ad.
We had our own association with Arnold from The Last Action Hero movie, and I I thought, "S***, if it's good enough for Arnold it's good enough for us." And the graphics have been great, it's really mind blowing. I like the fact they made me look a little younger and a little bit more dashing. So far everything's great and I'm really looking forward to immersing myself in the game and playing it with my friends.
I know that the band recorded some special in-game voiceover for World of Tanks Modern Armor and World of Warships. I'm curious what the recording process was like for you guys - did you get to improv anything at all, or was it pretty much already written out?
Dave Mustaine: It was a script basically, and they were assigned to the different commands that the game has. So it wasn't like we had a lot of leeway to play with the script because it was intertwined with the commands in the game and coding. I was joking around the other day about Arnold saying, "I'll be back," and his line in the movie was, "I will be back," and he couldn't say it. He often shares in his motivational speeches saying, "Because of my accent, it's the most famous line in the movie industry." Fortunately for me, I was able to do all the scripts very easily and put a little bit of some emphasis on it.
I don't know how easy it was for Kiko [Loureiro] having a really thick Brazilian accent. He and Dirk [Verbeuren] both brought along an international flair to things which kind of made the game a little bit more satiating for people, because it's not like four Americans in a tank. It's a universal band for the people; it's these four guys from around the world that got together that make music, and now they're in a tank and they're wreaking destruction on the bad guys.
In of your personal history with video games, I know you once said in an interview that the Punisher game was your favorite game for a while. I'm curious if you've kept up with gaming in more recent years, and if you have any favorite titles.
Dave Mustaine: That interview's got to be really, really old, because I was playing that game like 30 years ago when I was just first dating my wife. I had promised that once I beat the game that I would put the console down; I beat the game and I still kept playing, but it wasn't really the way that it was for me with Punisher because I loved the comic. So I got into the game not so much for the game, I got into it for the comic.
Once I did start gaming, I found that there were other types of games that I enjoyed like where you're snowboarding or you're driving. I like stuff like that a little bit more than the group stuff online where you're shooting and trying not to be shot. Has to do a lot probably with me being an adrenaline junkie and all my skydiving and crazy stuff that I used to do.
Did you ever have a penchant for old arcade games? I'm curious how you first gaming in the first place.
Dave Mustaine: What time period? Because as a kid I was brought up in pinball games, and then it slowly moved into the arcade - Atari, Tron, Pong, Pac-Man. I couldn't get down with Miss Pac-Man because I just thought that there were more games that were more geared towards being a red-blooded boy. That was an attempt to be fair with equality, having games for girls just like you'll see some guitar companies will make guitars for girls, which - that right there in itself, I don't think that's a cool thing. I think that the guitar should be the same for the ladies as it is for the men, and the same thing with games.
So I think that it's cool that there's not really any kind of, "You have to be this kind of a person to play any of the Wargaming stuff." To me, it seems fun for everybody. A lot of it I'm relearning; in the very beginning there weren't all these different platforms if you wanted to do games, you had one simple console.
You've recorded songs and such for games before, but this collaboration seems like it's a lot more involved. How did being a part of this feel different from other video game projects you've been a part of?
Dave Mustaine: Probably just because we were trying to get involved. It's been a great opportunity for us to do this, because everybody involved in this has been really helpful getting us to not be like the celebrities that sponsor a particular device and then they are seen holding another one, people that say they sponsor Samsung and then send stuff from their iPhones and stuff like that.
For me, I like learning stuff as I go along and making sure that I really learn it. So it's been really cool to have people showing me stuff about this, because I can't wait for the game to rip open and for me to start being able to play it. Enough is enough already - I want to play.
What do you think fans are going to enjoy most about this crossover?
Dave Mustaine: I'm not sure. I think there's obviously way more gamers than there are Megadeth fans around the world. And I think for the gamers that are Megadeth fans, this is going to be welcome for them. But for Mega fans that aren't gamers, this is going to be cool. It's not going to be a massive influx that's going to alter the gaming industry, but I think it is cool to introduce to your friends. We really look at our fans as being people we like being around, so introducing them to things like this or any of the personal stuff we do, like I was mentioning earlier skydiving or any of that stuff, I like doing that and sharing that with my friends.
Is there something that you're most excited about in particular, or that you're most proud of?
Dave Mustaine: Probably most excited about is that I got this email a couple of days ago - and it's an internal thing so I can't really get too much into it - but it said, "Here's some of the assets that are involved with the game for you guys to look at." And I looked at it and I thought, "Man, this is amazing." It's not like we have a song on Guitar Hero, it's not like we've got a song that we did for Duke Nukem; this is our song, it's in the game and it's us and our mascot. So this is really amazing, and when we morphed into the two different games that was even more exciting.
I think this is going to open a lot of doors for people in the metal community to get more placement in games. And same thing for us, it's gonna give us a great opportunity for us to get some more games to be part of. I want to go back to your question before, you talked about picking the songs. We picked a lot of the songs that were popular amongst all the people involved from the Wargaming and Megadeth camps, some that they liked the most. And then we also included songs off the new album, because that's the campaign we're on right now. Some of those songs are very war-centric, so they have that attitude - bang, shoot 'em up, kick your a** kind of music
And previously Megadeth Invasion was released to tie in with Dystopia. I'm curious if working on this has inspired you to return to the idea of another Megadeth game in any capacity?
Dave Mustaine: You're the second person that mentioned that Megadeth Invasion thing today and I just don't know what you're talking about, it's just slipped my mind right now. Are you talking about a game that's an existence that we did call Megadeth Invasion?
It was a sort of like a Space Invaders-type mini arcade game and it tied in with the album Dystopia.
Dave Mustaine: Oh, right, now I get it. I thought you were talking about - we had a game idea a while back and we were in talks with some people. And due diligence, it reveals things; when people see you, they usually put their best foot forward and they don't show you what an a**hole they're capable of being, but sometimes that stuff reveals itself. We were talking to some really, really, really great people, but there were a couple of people involved that were instrumental to that we just couldn't get into business with because of our care and protection of the franchise and the fans and the purity of the music.
We didn't want to do something that was half-a**ed, we wanted to make sure when we do our own game that it's going to be just brutal, one of those games like Doom or Call of Duty that people just absolutely go crazy over.
I would love to hear more about the ideas behind a Megadeth game that you guys were in discussion about.
Dave Mustaine: I don't know how much of it we actually spoke about, so I don't know if it's been made public. I do know that I would prefer that we were able to drop it on people once it happened; I'd rather stick to the stuff that I have legitimately done so I can talk about my accomplishments instead of my aspirations. Because we all have dreams, of course, but the thing with the game is it just was not the right time, and with me I've just been really apprehensive about doing anything until it's the right time when we did.
It sounds like with this project, though, it really was the right time for you guys to collaborate with Wargaming.
Dave Mustaine: Yes.
And it also sounds like it's become very personal to you as a project.
Dave Mustaine: You know, I wouldn't have said that until just now when you brought that up. I did not think I was going to get personal with it, but I'm very happy about it, and whenever we do our talks and stuff it's really enjoyable for me because it's always something new and exciting that we're doing. I'm not an artist that sits around and waits on every single email that comes through, but with this whole project whenever an email comes in it excites me because there's always something new: "Here's a new graphic, here's a new thing. Okay, here's what the boat looks like with the different colors. We're going to have you Vic on the front of the boat holding the green gem from Rest in Peace." It's just great.
Source: World of Waships Official Channel/YouTube
Metal Fest will begin today, August 28, in World of Warships on PC and World of Warships: Legends on PlayStation and Xbox devices, followed by World of Tanks: Modern Armor on PlayStation and Xbox consoles and World of Tanks: Blitz on mobile devices on August 29.
