No, Kotaku, GameRepublic was not making a Tom and Jerry Game

I haven't been spending my holidays doing much kotaku reading, but when a friend send me this post, I really wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Michael McWhertor at Kotaku read this long, slightly crazy interview with GameRepublic head Yoshiki Okamoto and came up with the following nugget o'news, which was apparently hidden so carefully that 1Up, the site that conducted and posted the interview, didn't even realize it was noteworthy:

Folklore Dev Was Working on Tom and Jerry for Brash

The evidence? Deep in the middle of the interview (conducted before Brash went under) comes this exchange:

1UP: You're working on a movie-based game for Brash Entertainment. Even if you can't say what license that is right now, how is the project coming? How hard is it to work on a movie license? You haven't done that kind of project before, have you?

YO: Actually, we're working on a Tom and Jerry movie/game tie-in [laughs]. Yeah, when Brash is ready, we'll both announce the game together. But technically, this isn't my first movie licensed project.

Hopefully I don't need to explain to Cut Scene readers the many contextual hints that make it obvious Okamoto wasn't being serious. Even beyond this exchange, though, it was a totally tongue-in-cheek interview during which Okamoto gave 1UP Editor James Mielke marital advice, complained about how women don't dig him, and said, "I used to have a girlfriend that I was riding too. But I went out to the parking lot to get her the other day and she wasn't there anymore."

And of course there's just common sense. Brash picked up a few crappy licenses in its day, but Tom and Jerry? Which, by the way, is not a movie. And then assign it to a fairly well regarded developer like GameRepublic? That should strike most knowledgeable readers as a bit suspicious. And probably merit more reporting. Like a Google search.

Which would have turned up that I have previously reported the movie license GameRepublic was actually developing for Brash was "Clash of the Titans." Many other sites have since picked that up (like this IGN listing), so I'm not just assuming everyone has to read this blog.

So, ummm, yea. There's nothing wrong with quickly linking to all the interesting videogame news on the 'Net. That's what sites like Kotaku do best. But sometimes a little more diligence may be in order.

[This post slightly edited by me a few hours after posting when I realized it was a bit too snippy]