Danger 5 Creator Launches 'Pro Jank Footy,' an Absurd Retro Arcade Tribute to Australian Rules Football

Even the filmmaker behind a 1960s-style cult Australian television show featuring giant robots and resurrected dinosaurs is well aware of how absurd Australian rules football can be. David Ashby, the creator of Danger 5 and writer of the 2007 short-film parody Italian Spiderman, believes that explaining the sport to an outsider is an exercise in absurdity.

"If you describe the code to somebody who's unfamiliar with it, it sounds like you're making it up on the spot," Ashby says. "There's two teams, 18 players a side, chasing a footy, like two classrooms on a cricket oval, trying to do whatever they can to get the ball and kick it between sticks."

Ashby has shifted his focus from filmmaking to game development with Pro Jank Footy, an Aussie rules-inspired arcade video game where increasingly ridiculous rules are introduced as the game progresses. Developed by Powerbomb Games, the title leans heavily into South Australian culture, featuring local suburban teams like the Salisbury Park Snags, Port Noarlunga Chips, and the Ceduna Doonas.

"The comedy of the game lies in making fun or embracing, rather, Australian culture and sports culture," Ashby says. "I think with our game we're really showcasing our exoticness, but also our weirdness, which we take for granted here in Australia."

Laughter and Football as a Bridge

To bring the game to life, Broden Kelly from the comedy group Aunty Donna recorded thousands of lines of commentary. Kelly, who previously co-hosted a football podcast with journalist Marnie Vinall, found that the project seamlessly merged his passions for comedy and footy, despite not being a traditional gamer.

"I started doing a football podcast that was a bit silly and a bit cheeky and a bit dorky, called The Footy with Broden Kelly. I had these two worlds — one is comedy and one is footy — that built alongside each other," Kelly explains. "David Ashby got in touch and he said, 'I want to make a video game that is old-school NBA Jam but about Aussie rules', and I thought, 'That sounds like a lot of fun.'"

Kelly jokes about the gap between that initial conversation and the final product: "Nothing happened for 12 months and now I'm the superstar of a footy video game."

The voice recording process, conducted in the Adelaide Hills before a comedy show, turned out to be an grueling task that prompted some unexpected improvisation.

"I would hate to overdo it, but recording the voices for this game was the worst day of my life because it was four to five straight hours of saying it genuinely like two, three thousand lines, three times," Kelly says. "So John gets the ball. John gets the ball. John gets the ball."

He adds, "One of the improvs that went a little viral was me saying, 'These are all just pixels and one day we will all die'. And that really just came from me feeling like I would never stop recording this video game."

Ultimately, Kelly believes football and comedy share a unique ability to break down barriers and connect people.

"I can talk to 60-year-old blokes who I have nothing in common with and if they say I go for the Dees, we can chat for hours, and I just think that's so special," he says. "What I love about comedy is it's completely disarming. As soon as you make someone laugh, you feel like you know them deeply."

He notes that players will find plenty of humor in the final product: "There are jokes that David and his team have written that are relentlessly layered throughout this game that are very, very funny."

Bringing Tactility Back to Gaming

To give the game a physical presence, Powerbomb Games commissioned Melbourne-based game designer Louis Roots to build two custom arcade cabinets. These physical machines are set up for free play in two Melbourne venues: the Great Northern Hotel in Carlton North and the Victoria Hotel in Brunswick.

"I aim to bring a bit of joy into people's lives, bring some tactility to digital play. That's what I try to make," Roots says. "Why is it that we can only access [games] with a keyboard, with the same things that we use for eight hours a day doing our office work?"

Roots finds the hands-on process deeply rewarding: "Also, it's … so satisfying to build this stuff, it's hard to overstate."

The cabinet design features textures reminiscent of old-school pubs and Aussie rules pitches, using materials that mimic the experience of being at a live match.

"I wanted the visual landscape to [feature] a lot of different textures that mirrored what it was like to be at a footy ground," Roots says. "I love having something that people will walk over just because they want to touch it."

In addition, the cabinets pay homage to the classic experience of listening to radio commentary at a live game.

"My dad was a big Subi supporter in the WAFL and we'd sit up the back watching the game and you'd be hearing the commentary on some old bloke's AM radio," Roots recalls. "I had this idea — what if it broadcast a radio signal with the commentary so people could hear it from across the pub?"

Thanks to an embedded FM transmitter in each machine, pub patrons can tune in to hear Kelly's commentary while watching others play.

While Ashby is currently working on an upcoming comedy series for Netflix, he remains highly enthusiastic about game development.

"Now that I've climbed the mountain and I know what it's like. It's fun," Ashby says. "This morning, I checked on PlayStation and the game is on the store. That's sick, dude. My 10-year-old self would be very happy with that."

Pro Jank Footy officially launches on August 13.