Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal)
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Sweet Tooth | |
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Needles Kane in Twisted Metal: Head On |
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Game series | Twisted Metal |
First game | Twisted Metal (1995) |
Voiced by | J.S. Gilbert (Twisted Metal: Black) |
Sweet Tooth, real name Needles Kane is a fictional character from the Twisted Metal video game series.[1] Sweet Tooth is designed around the premise of a killer clown that drives a combat ice cream truck, and his face has been featured on the cover of every Twisted Metal game to date, making him the series mascot.[2] While being in every title of the series he has not always been immediately available, requiring to be unlocked in some. He is the only character to drive more than one vehicle in any of the games, being the driver of Head-On's Dark Tooth, Tower Tooth, and as of Twisted Metal Lost, Gold Tooth.
Sweet Tooth has the most ties to any group of characters in the whole series: his father Charlie Kane (driver of Yellow Jacket in the first game)[3] and Marcus Kane (split personality,[4] Roadkill's driver). In Black, he has an unnamed brother that only appeared in Twisted Metal Black, who himself drove that game's Yellow Jacket vehicle.[5] He is also directly responsible for the creation of that game's Axel, whose wife he killed,[6] and Cage, who wishes to be a greater killer than Sweet Tooth.[7]
The character has gone through several redesigns differing from game to game, similar to fellow character Calypso, and his personality has grown progressively darker along the way. Despite the changes some factors remained uniform, notably the perpetual flame on his head introduced in the second game. Starting with Twisted Metal Black, his design became a large, somewhat overweight bare chested clown with a flaming mask locked into a permanent maniacal smile. Head On expanded on this idea, changing the mask to face paint and the smile to his own.[8]
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[edit] Design and History
Sweet Tooth's original look featured him as a green haired, slim simple circus clown who had escaped from a mental institution.[9] The design was expanded upon in the second game in response to changes to the truck's design, notably due to the clown head adorning the truck now featuring a personality of its own.[10] The result gave Sweet Tooth the flaming head design seen on the character since. 989 Studios which handled the next two games put more emphasis on the clown design, redesigning his attire to that of a ringmaster in Twisted Metal 4; neither design was held in high regard by the developers, with David Jaffe stating his dislike of 3's look.[11] As of Black and beyond, the design was modified heavily, giving him increased bulk and other features that would be called his "classic look" by Incog Inc.'s design team.[2]
The ice cream truck was actually designed well before the driver himself, and Black's incarnation took six months and many concept sketches to finalize. Labeled early on "DEMONIC ICE CREAM TRUCK", attention to details such as the head adorning the vehicle and the contents of the back of the truck were focused on during development.[12] Boss variants of the truck have also appeared regularly in the game's series starting with Dark Tooth in the second game (which was a re-textured version of the original Sweet Tooth vehicle). While the designs for the vehicles have progressed steadily, care has been emphasized to keep them rooted to the simple ice cream truck structure yet unique, something that has become harder and harder for the team as the games go on.[13]
[edit] Marcus Kane
Another design element is the fact he is actually split-personality of fellow driver Marcus Kane, a fact only Sweet Tooth and Calypso are aware of. Marcus was initially introduced in Twisted Metal 2, as a 32-year old bearded homeless man from Alabama living in his car that disbelieved the world around him, breaking the fourth wall in the process.[14] In Twisted Metal: Head-On, nightmares of past tournaments continue to plague him, though these nightmares are in fact his/Sweet Tooth's own memories, hidden from him by Calypso.[4] In the game, Calypso implies that Marcus is responsible for the events of Twisted Metal, and calls him solely Needles.[15] After learning the truth, he surrenders to his other personality, the result of his rational mind merging with Needles's insanity spawns the second Dark Tooth and subsequently Tower Tooth.[8]
Marcus Kane appears in Twisted Metal Black, secretly driving Minion[16] and wearing the skin from a decapitated bull as a mask, which apparently steemed from a discarded design for Mr. Grimm.[17] In this game he speaks heavily in code to not be discovered, telling the player the world in the game is how Sweet Tooth actually sees reality, and that he misses the old, "colorful world". This concept has been reused in Twisted Metal: Lost story for Manslaughter, placing the Black world as a sort of parallel universe to a "more colorful world",[18] supposedly referring to the main game's universe.
[edit] Twisted Metal: Black
In Twisted Metal: Black Sweet Tooth suffered a big make-over design-wise, giving him a more maniacal homicidal appearance. His personality also changed to a more dark-toned one, different from his insane clown killer personality of past games. His background was expanded upon, stating he was a wanted mass murderer that survived the electric chair, to later end at the Blackfield Asylum. It's revealed that the flames on his head were product of a curse imposed by Black character Preacher, the driver of Brimstone, before execution. He was cursed with the burden of the fires of Hell upon his head, which burns him endlessly and causes him pain.[19] He wants nothing more than for it to be gone, and that's what Calypso offers him as a prize. However, in his ending Calypso reveals that, in order to break the curse, he'd have to renounce to his obsession for murdering innocents, to which Sweet Tooth responds by killing Calypso. Sweet Tooth has in the game an unnamed younger brother who drives Yellow Jacket alongside a dead zombified Charlie Kane. However, due to the surreal setting of Black and his apparent disconnection from the mainstream games, the game's plot is considered an alternative storyline. In Twisted Metal: Lost, it is said in the bio of Yellow Jacket that his brother and Charlie were attempting to kill Needles, then themselves, to "end the bloodline of generations of murderers and psychopaths."
[edit] Other appearances
Sweet Tooth returns as a car in the child-themed spin-off game Twisted Metal: Small Brawl, based on RC cars instead of real ones. In this game, Sweet Tooth is the youngest and most mischievous kid in the contest, and enters looking for some ice cream.[20] His ending shows that Calypso offers him an ice cream from his familiar Ice Cream truck, but Sweet Tooth instead steals the truck to terrorize Calypso.
Sweet Tooth is also an unlockable character in War of the Monsters (2003) for the Playstation 2, a game in which Incognito used the TMB engine to make a movie monster fighting game. One of the characters, Agamo, has Sweet Tooth as the fourth skin. To unlock it, one must beat the story mode of Twisted Metal: Black with Sweet Tooth and have the save on the memory card. Sweet Tooth is represented by a tall mech with the signature flaming clown head, and often breaks out in his usual laughter throughout the game.
[edit] References
- ^ "Two classic characters, one class brawl: Optimus Prime (Transformers: The Game) vs Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal Series)," GamePro 235 (April 2008): 24.
- ^ a b "As you can see from the photograph taken during filing of the Twisted Metal 1 end movies, Sweet Tooth was at the start simply a circus clown. He did not even have his trademarked flaming hair. But by Twisted Metal: Black, the classic look of Sweet Tooth had emerged. From chicken scratch sketches to full blown CG character models, no expense was spared in bringing this mascot character to his current incarnation." Factoid 10 in Sweet Tour, Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition
- ^ Yellow Jacket ending cinematic from Twisted Metal
- ^ a b Marcus Kane bio, Twisted Metal: Head On
- ^ Yellow Jacket storyline cinematics from Twisted Metal Black
- ^ Axel ending cinematic, Twisted Metal: Black
- ^ Cage bio, Twisted Metal:Lost
- ^ a b Dark Tooth ending cinematic from Twisted Metal: Head On
- ^ Sweet Tooth's Twisted Metal: Urban Assault storyline
- ^ "The Darkside vs. Sweet Tooth image marks the first time an artist gave the ice cream truck head a living personality, seeing the clown with such an evil personality inspired the team to flesh out the driver of the truck itself, applying the vibe of the head on the truck to the driver inside." Factoid 4 in Sweet Tour, Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition
- ^ Twisted Metal documentary bonus video, Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition
- ^ "The ice cream truck for Twisted Metal: Black took six months to design, with over three hundred concept sketches done before the team locked on the final version. In the following images you can see the attention to detail that went into everything from choosing the right clown head to figuring out what was inside the back of the truck itself. You can also see the original art of the ice cream truck labeled DEMONIC ICE CREAM TRUCK that was designed well before the character of Sweet Tooth was even conceived." Factoid 25 in Sweet Tour, Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition
- ^ "With each title it gets harder and harder to design a Sweet Tooth boss that is unique and special enough to be a boss character while still retaining the core elements of the very simple ice cream truck design." Factoid 7 in Sweet Tour, Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition
- ^ "I know the truth you freak! You sit back in your living room with your little video game console and play, play, play! But I know what's happening, I can see you! They think I'm crazy but you'll find out I'm the only one who's sane!", Marcus Kane bio, Twisted Metal 2
- ^ Roadkill ending, Twisted Metal: Head On
- ^ "In the real world my name is Marcus Kane". Minion last coded message, Twisted Metal: Black
- ^ "One version of Grimm showed him as a man wearing the head of a slaughtered bull on his head." Factoid 24 in Sweet Tour, Twisted Metal Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition
- ^ Black bio, Twisted Metal Lost
- ^ Sweet Tooth storyline cinematics, Twisted Metal: Black
- ^ Sweet Tooth bio, Twisted Metal: Small Brawl
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