Digital Trends

Can you smell what Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is cooking? Hint: It reeks of teen angst, stale testosterone, and, of course, freshly-minted greenbacks.

 

Having already climbed to the top of the pop culture world as a former WWE champion and actor (The Scorpion King, Be Cool), he's finally making his first marquee interactive debut. Curiously, the Hawaiian-born, half-Samoan star will lend both his voice and likeness to the role of Alex Decker, secret agent extraordinaire, in Midway's Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run for PlayStation 2 and Xbox this September.

 
Inspired by the 1983 arcade classic, the game sees Johnson, as Decker, hop behind the wheel of futuristic, missile- and oil slick-equipped auto the Interceptor, which also transforms into a motorcycle and speedboat. No word yet on whether or not the Peter Gunn theme song will once again be featured. But we do know this: For the first time ever in the franchise's history, while squaring off against evil organization NOSTRA, players are granted the option of exiting the car and literally kicking butt.

 

Can the same guy who made Walking Tall actually worth watching, The Rundown surprisingly enjoyable and pro wrestling semi-cool this side of pubescence work his signature magic on such a unique property? Let's hope so: If the experiment fails, audiences will be forced to relive it all over again in 2007, when a Spy Hunter movie, again starring Johnson, hits theaters nationwide.

 

We dropped a line to the man with the world's most recognizable raised eyebrow (a.k.a. he who also dared to star in the ill-fated Doom motion picture), about the venture. Here, Johnson shares his passion for gaming and interest in developing mediums, not to mention clarifies who's the bigger chump: Him or fellow muscle-bound, multimillion dollar paycheck-packing videogame junkie Vin Diesel.

 

 

A: What can I say? I love videogames, especially sports games. I'm totally into Madden, NBA Live – I always have them set up in my trailer. I’m the king of Madden in general.  And I’m the absolute, unequivocal king of Madden 06. Sure, I play it by myself. But I am the king.

 

A: Let me tell you something right now. I would knock his butt into next week, and then I’d whip his butt for leaving.

 

 

A: Big time butt whooping. I knew that the developers over at Midway with Spy Hunter were going to create a game that’s going to not only compete with, but also kick butt on screen, visually, from the graphics to the storyline, like everything’s really on point. And then I thought from my end, my responsibility was to bring a mode of action that you had never seen before. So, of course, I had an array of weapons that I used which is cool, and a lot of characters in videogames have that. But then I thought how can I creatively maim and bring death upon someone with my own two hands?

 

So what I did was I had my stunt double, who I think you know is my cousin, that I have with me in all my movies. We went through an array of moves and tried to create just really cool ways where people would experience the big "wow" moment when you actually played it. So, I took a lot of the wrestling moves that I used to do, from the rock bottom to like the jackknife. In the game I do a jackknife, but instead of bringing the opponent down by twisting and turning him on his back, I’d bring him straight down like if I was doing a Death Valley driver. And directly on his head…

Q: Yikes – sounds like you had a lot of fun interpreting for yourself what sorts of melee attacks players should have at their disposal.

 

A: Yeah, it’s the greatest.  I took a lot of those moves that you would find from Japanese wrestlers and instead of protecting the guy, like I would do in wrestling, I would just literally bring them down on their head and try and break their neck and do anything possible. I mean, it’s just awesome. So I was able to do that and I had to go out and buy my stunt double a lot of meals after that.

 

 

A: My favorite is the spandex suit! They threw me in this spandex suit for hours. All the ladies were watching and they realized why they call me the Rock and there were three dudes who were standing by too, so I don’t know what deal was. But it was cool.