Greetings, puny Earthlings!

We’re catching up from E3 this week. Part of that is just taking care of all our equipment and catching up on emails, but the fun part is checking out the new press coverage and following up with all the great fans we got to meet face to face. We all had a wonderful time this year – busy of course, with so many titles, but it was also our first chance to show a lot of what we’ve been working on. (Not everything we’ve been working on, of course, but we’ll talk about that a little later.) We had a total of nine titles on display this year, and while we loved introducing so many fans to our bigger ones like Trails of Cold Steel and Estival Versus, it was also great to see players warm up to the charms of Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space.

We picked up EDF2 together with its PS4 cousin, Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. Both games have the same basic premise, about human military forces fighting against invading aliens and monsters, but while 4.1 has the sleek, modern feel of big-budget Hollywood, 2 hearkens back to the old B-movie days, when movies like Gamera, War of the Colossal Beast, and Them! ruled the Saturday matinee.

As a twenty-year fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and particularly of its old sci-fi movies like The Creeping Terror and Prince of Space, I jumped at the chance to edit a game that captured that same tone; earnest to the point of cheesiness, but still giddy and fun if you let yourself get into it. To bring that vibe across, we wanted to come up with an appropriate title, something that gave the audience just the right kind of wink.

The original official title of the game was Earth Defense Force 2 Portable V2, so to give it a little more kick, we held an office brainstorming session. This quickly descended into all-out chaos, but eventually we cleared away enough of the debris that we can now bring you this, our list of rejected titles for Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space. In no particular order…

*****

Earth Defense Force 2: Too Big to Fail

Earth Defense Force 2: The Harder They Fall

Earth Defense Force 2: Planet in Peril

Earth Defense Force 2: War of the Humungasaurus

Earth Defense Force 2: They Came From Beyond

Earth Defense Force 2: The Forcening

Earth Defense Force 2: Force Multiplied

Earth Defense Force 2: Unlimited Force Options

Earth Defense Force 2: Shadow of the Colossal Invaders from Outer Space

Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet X

Earth Defense Force 2: Kaiju Chaos

Earth Defense Force 2: In Soviet Russia, Bugs Squash You

Earth Defense Force 2: Revenge of the Space Giants

Earth Defense Force 2: Are You &*#$ing Kidding Me

Earth Defense Force 2: Giants in the Playground

Earth Defense Force 2: Size Matters Not

Earth Defense Force 2: Blast the Aliens

Earth Defense Force 2: Big Ben Boom

Earth Defense Force 2: The Ant Bride

Earth Defense Force 2: Revenge of the Gi-Ants

Earth Defense Force 2: Badass Rumble

Earth Defense Force 2: Defense on Titan

Earth Defense Force 2: London Bridge is Falling Down

Earth Defense Force 2: Thames for the Memories (Note from Nick: “‘cause it’s in LONDON, right?”)

Earth Defense Force 2: Attack of Killer Bugs from Outer Space

Earth Defense Force 2: The Giant Ant Invasion

Earth Defense Force 2: Fire in the Skies

Earth Defense Force 2: Reign of the Insectoids

Earth Defense Force 2: The Last, Best Hope

Earth Defense Force 2: Let Freedom Ring

Earth Defense Force 2: This Time It’s Global

Earth Defense Force 2: Big Aliens…Bigger Guns

Earth Defense Force 2: Mobile Command

Earth Defense Force 2: Nothing Personal

Earth Defense Force 2: Concealed Carry

Earth Defense Force 2: In the 21st Century

Earth Defense Force 2: This Time, It’s Earth-sonal

Earth Defense Force 2: Extinction Event

Earth Defense Force 2: Bug Repellant

Earth Defense Force 2: Doomsday Revenge

Earth Defense Force 2: Alien Scum Eradication

Earth Defense Force 2: They Came Back

Earth Defense Force 2: Alien Raid Revisited

Earth Defense Force 2: It’s Raining Bugs

Earth Defense Force 2: You Eff OH!

Earth Defense Force 2: Bug Report

Earth Defense Force 2: Planet of the Earth

Earth Defense Force 2: Kaiju Rumble

Earth Defense Force 2: Things Explode

Earth Defense Force 2: Kill Everything

Earth Defense Force 2: Bugs Bugs Everywhere

Earth Defense Force 2: London Extermination

Earth Defense Force 2: Attack of the Killer Kaiju

Earth Defense Force 2: Bomb-ass Bugs

Earth Defense Force 2: Radical Extraterrestrial Eradication

Earth Defense Force 2: Sick Space Skirmishes (The note from Kelly on this one says, “This name is my jam, it’s so fly”)

Earth Defense Force 2: Defending the Earth…by Force

*****

Our thanks to Brittany for coming up with “Invaders from Planet Space” and bringing the madness to an end.

We’re looking to bring both EDF games out in the fall, and we’ll have plenty more to say about them along the way. Until then, then, remember: Your ray guns will have no effect on me!

- Ryan