Designing the Joystick Johnny Interface

This annotated slideshow outlines the progress of
Joystick Johnny from prototype to final product.

Joystick Johnny takes place in an 80's style video arcade filled with miniature parodies of classic games. While minigame-games have been done before (e.g. Lazy Jones, WarioWare), I didn't want to follow a pre-existing formula.

My main design goal:

Turn the arcade setting into a game, mainly by giving the player a meaningful choice around which minigames to play.

The main challenge was in integrating minigames with very different gameplay mechanics, in a way that is faithful to the spirit of the classic arcade.

As you will see, while some elements survived from the earliest versions, a lot of dead ends were explored before reaching a final design.

The following pages are organized so you can flip back and forth to compare each version. The main slides are actual size so you can see all of the imperfections.

Enjoy!

Joe Lesko
Flea Circus Games