Music Rhythm Playing Trombone Champ (opens in new tab) became the main character on Twitter yesterday, but in a good way. After I posted a video of me playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, dozens of people were elated, excited, and in some cases moved to tears (because of what a terrible game I played (opens in new tab)).
But Trombone Champ isn’t just a fast, fun, and wacky music game. There is much more to it than just trying to participate in The William Tell Overture, Hava Nagila and a trap mix of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik. There’s a dramatic Dark Souls-esque cutscene introduction, lots of secrets and mysteries and unlockable trombones, a turd-based card creation system, a summonable demon, hefty doses of trombone knowledge, lots of info on how many hot dogs legendary trombonists can eat in one sitting, and more. baboons than you would expect in a music game. (I’d expect zero baboons in a music game. I’d be way off.)
To ask? Yes. I have a lot. Fortunately, Trombone Champ creator Dan Vecchito of developer Holy Wow Studios agreed to answer a few, starting with the game’s origins.
Vecchito, who says he does 95% of the work on the game while his wife, Jackie, helps out with artwork and assets, tells me he thinks the spark came to him after building an arcade cabinet for a previous Holy Wow game. The typing party of Icarus Proudbottom.
“I suddenly had the idea for an arcade cabinet with a huge rubber (it had to be floppy rubber) trombone controller, with the player desperately trying to make a bunch of squiggly note lines come their way,” says Vechitto.
He later realized that moving a mouse back and forth could mimic the act of sliding a trombone in and out, negating the need for a true trombone-style controller. After putting together a prototype of Trombone Champ, he decided to make it a full game. “I thought it would only take a few months to make, but oops! It ended up taking about 4 years,” he says.
Despite having no personal trombone experience (Vecchitto does play saxophone and clarinet), the game has been embraced by real trombone players, although after posting the announcement trailer in 2020, a few were quick to point out that the characters weren’t holding the trombone properly. (That’s now resolved.)
“I honestly expected that real trombonists would hate the game, because it’s not even remotely realistic. But the reception from them has been extremely positive!” says Vecchito. “I’m not sure if being a trombonist makes you any better” [at Trombone Champ]but it definitely makes you more excited when you see a trombone in a video game.”
A copper-colored future
“I had a pretty solid idea for a song called ‘trombone traphouse’, although I never got around to recording it because I can’t rap”
Dan Vecchito, Holy Wow Studios
While Trombone Champ is a fully released game, Vecchito plans to expand it further with improvements, language localizations (it’s currently only available in English), and leaderboards so players can compare their skills with those of their friends. He also hopes in the future to include a way for players to import their own songs, like Beat Saber does, although at the moment he’s not sure how it will work. “It’s definitely in the cards once we find out!” he says.
More songs are also on the way to expand Trombone Champ’s current 20-song roster. “I really want to add a rap song,” Vecchito says. “I had a pretty solid idea for a song called ‘trombone traphouse’, although I never got around to recording it because I can’t rap and didn’t know who would want to rap for a trombone song.”
Other upcoming songs will feature additional anthems. The game currently features The Star Spangled Banner, Stars and Stripes Forever, God Save the King, and O Canada, but as more localizations are added, there are plans to include the anthems from more countries. Other possibilities for future songs include Happy Birthday, The Mexican Hat Dance (Jarabe Tapatío) and – brace yourself – Flight of the Bumblebee. Better start building your wrist and finger muscles for that.
I also asked Vecchito for his top three pure wish list songs, if licensing fees and other legal concerns were completely off the table.
“I’m kind of an obsessive music geek and would love to record songs from the artists I’m obsessed with,” he said. “Todd Rundgren’s Zen Archer, Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Le Femme Chinoise, and maybe something from Deerhoof, or Aai Shanibar from Rupa’s Disco Jazz.”
Vecchito said he also hopes to continue working with musician and producer Max Tundra, who created a song called “Long Tail Limbo” for Trombone Champ. “If anyone reads this, buy his three great LPs immediately. We’re talking about a man who got a 9+ Pitchfork score (opens in new tab)…and somehow he’s on the Trombone Champ soundtrack. Unbelievable.”
Baboons, explained
Eagle-eyed trombone horns may have noticed that the game contains a few (dozen) references to baboons, such as the mention of legendary baboons in the game’s intro, several collectible and editable baboon cards, a shadowy room accessible from the main menu with a mysterious engraved baboon tablet, a “baboon amount” setting, and an entire song about baboons called “Baboons!” (An example of the text: “Baboooooons. Baboooooons. Ba. Ba-boons. Ba… ba-boons.”)
Surprisingly, Trombone Champ’s baboon fix came about with a feature that didn’t even make it into the finished game. While in early development, Vecchito planned for each song to have three levels of difficulty. Although that idea was eventually scrapped, it still had a big impact, baboon-wise.
“I wanted to call the easy difficulty ‘baby’ and the hardest difficulty ‘bonkers’. But I struggled with what I should call the medium difficulty,” says Vecchito. “It had to be a word that started with ‘B.’ At one point I thought, what if the default difficulty was called “baboon”, so the difficulties were “baby”, “baboon” and “bonkers?”
“From that moment on I became obsessed with inserting ‘baboon’ into the game as much as possible. When I finally decided to make the storyline a strange parody of Dark Souls, I realized that it would be perfect for ‘primordial baboons’. to have.”
I also asked Vecchito a question that I always end interviews with because I’m a terrible interviewer: What question did I not ask that you wish you had asked, and what’s your answer? Fortunately, he was prepared for such an event.
“Goku or Vegeta?” says Vecchito. “I would definitely say Goku, but Jackie would say Vegeta. I should also specify Goku in Japanese language, because Japanese Goku is totally different from English Goku. English Goku is kind of boring and sounds like a geek; while Japanese Goku sounds like a goblin and is MUCH dumber; the translations always delete jokes making Goku seem extremely stupid.
“If we have to compare the English Goku with the English Vegeta?… Vegeta probably wins, because he has so much more energy and magnetism. Although, even there, I would say I prefer Japanese Vegeta, which is much more sounds intelligent and cunning, while the English Vegeta sounds like any standard cartoon villain.”
Finally, how many hot dogs can the makers of Trombone Champ eat in one sitting?
Jackie: “Three.”
Then: “More than nine thousand.”
I’m glad we clarified that. You can find Trombone Champ on Steam here (opens in new tab).
0 Comments