After multiple studios around the world worked in unison to create Peter Jackson's King Kong videogame a few years back, Ubisoft's Montreal Studio has been taking assets and story elements from the new TMNT CGI motion picture from Imagi Animation Studios and turning them into a new video game experience for Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 2, GameCube, PSP, Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance.

"We received an early version of the film script alongside a preview trailer mock-up," said Nick Harper, Creative Director, TMNT, Ubisoft Montreal. "This enabled us to understand that the movie is about the strength of the TMNT family and also to start thinking about gameplay mechanics such as acrobatics and working as a team."

Harper said that all the cinematic sequences in the game and new characters, exclusive to the game, were created in collaboration with Imagi and Mirage. They validated the look and ensured Ubisoft respected the TMNT universe, and they also helped the game makers in creating the dialogue for the characters.

"We were continuously in communication with Mirage CEO Gary Richardson and original Turtle co-creator Peter Laird," said Harper. "We regularly sent them versions of the game to ensure they were happy with our progress. The feedback we received really helped us focus the vision of Peter about the Turtles and, fortunately, they really enjoyed playing the game."

Ubisoft also sent an Xbox 360 dev kit to the film's director, Kevin Munroe, who got his CGI start in videogames working with game makers like Shiny Entertainment and Midway Games. Munroe met with Harper and the team early on, but then became swamped in the 28-month process of creating the movie.

"Four members of the development team, including myself, went to Hong Kong this summer to look at the color usage and the animation usage to really get a good idea for how the Turtles look, move and feel to the audience," said Harper. "There was this wall of concept art where we saw imagery for every possible corner of New York and the sewers and we had all of that to work from."

The team also saw a rough cut of the movie last March, which helped ensure the game looks and feels like the new take on the classic comic book.

"Because we are making a game based off a movie, the process is slightly different to how we usually make games – only because the inspiration is already provided to us," said Harper. "We received the script and read through to understand the messages of the movie. That was our first starting point for creating the game. From there we try to create a system that controls the game and, when playing it, makes the player start to understand the message of the game (which is the same of the movie)."

Harper said afterwards, the team analyzed each scene of the movie and extracted the essence of that scene – the characters, but most importantly, what the scene was trying to say. He said because the player of a game is usually in control of one or a group of characters it's difficult to manage multiple plot threads at once and so the team's job was to take the essence of a scene and create the same feeling but with the player characters.

"So, for example, if in the scene Casey and April are talking about their past and reminiscing about how good things were, the scene may be telling the viewer that it's important to remember our past and use those experiences to build a stronger future," said Harper. "In the game, therefore, we could create a flashback scene where the Turtles worked extremely well together. To do this we would make the player fight many weak enemies, so the player feels powerful and in control. Then we would come back to the present and make the player fight fewer stronger enemies. Individually the player wouldn't be able to defeat these stronger enemies but working together as a team they would, so the message is achieved."

Harper said the game is really an extension of the movie experience. Not everything that is in the movie is in the game; but the team chose very carefully what should go into the game in order to make the game play fluid and intuitive. He said the atmosphere in both the movie and the game are darker than fans have seen in previous TMNT games and TV series.

"The story deals with issues such as broken families and sibling rivalry," said Harper. "Plus there's this whole section of the game exposing a new character that's very dark, dealing with anger issues, rejection and the need for acceptance (but I'm not allowed to say any more, sorry)."

This being the first next generation TMNT, at least on Xbox 360, Harper said the new consoles can create on-the-fly graphics of a quality much closer to those you see on the big screen. As a result, it's easier for game artists to more closely replicate the movie look and the characters.

"The games industry is still very much in its infancy in terms of other content – storytelling and so on – an analogy is that right now we're in the era of Charlie Chaplin and the Keystone Cops," said Harper. "While visually, movies and games share a similar medium, in my opinion, if the games industry is to evolve in the right way we need to understand the art of interactivity. Right now we can look to Hollywood to learn how to create narrative and use visual stimuli to emote the player, but we're the pioneers of how an interactive experience will work."