HARLEM — Historical figures like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall can throw down with famed aviator Bessie Coleman in a new arcade-style fighting game being developed by a Detroit mechanic.
The game, Hastings Paradise Harlem Renaissance, follows a fictional character named Eleanor who stumbles upon a time-travel portal and discovers that an evil mastermind is trying to stop the Harlem Renaissance from happening.
During her adventures, Eleanor and her friend Shun meet Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Dandridge and Josephine Baker, said the game’s creator Gregory Moore.
“My wife and I came up with the idea for a superhero named Eleanor from Detroit in 1937 who hops through time,” said Gerald Moore, 36.
“I ended up writing a book about it. So after I finished the book I figured what if I made her fight all these people from all these different decades?”
Moore, who also paints and writes children’s books, started working on the beta version of the video game in January 2014 in his spare time. He is trying to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter to develop different game stages, create new characters, buy royalty-free music, make copies of the game and create original art.
If the fundraising campaign is successful, he will make a role-playing game version, he said.
The game, which does contain fighting but doesn’t have any blood and gore, is meant to be educational for children, Moore said.
“As they play the game they are going to meet different figures and have a little battle,” he said. “It will give the gamer a little information as to who this guy is, who this girl is.”
In order to write the book and develop the video game, Moore researched each historical figure. Even though he has never been to Harlem, he thought it was important to set the game in a time and place with a rich history, he said.
Each character in the game has unique fighting techniques and a special move. Famed aviator Bessie Coleman, for instance, can jump higher than any other character in the game and can hit opponents with air combos. Some characters were more difficult to figure out than others, Moore said.
“My wife helped me make Thurgood Marshall because I was like, ‘what kind of moves would a judge have?’” he said.
“My wife said, ‘Well he has the long arm of the law and his special move is he throws the book at you.’”
