Feature: 'Schadenfreudian Slips: Waiting For Hasselhoff'

In the final Gamasutra feature before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a very special version of the 'Schadenfreude Slips' column chronicles audio engineer Alex Voll mit Aalen's Beckettian odyssey, waiting for David Hasselhoff to arrive and craft voiceover for the firm's award-winning Cthulhu Karts series. In the introduction, Voll mit Aalen explains the background to getting the star of Baywatch and Baywatch Nights hired to perform the voiceover for the Black Forest firm's latest hit title: "From the beginning, Schadenfreude Interactive wanted to get someone famous to do the introductory voiceover for Cthulhu Karts. Our attempt at getting Claudia Schiffer failed, but it turned out that our intern Crispin Frosch's cousin was married to a man who sold a Mercedes to David Hasselhoff's wife's aunt (and he gave him a very good deal -- no charge for floormats). When we heard Mr. Hasselhoff would be in nearby Frankfurt for an appearance, we jumped at the chance to have him record a few lines. Crispin was somehow able to get Mr. Hasselhoff's agent to agree. How he was able to explain what Cthulhu were, and why they were racing karts, I do not know (I will tell you, though --Cthulhu are a race of hideous godlike trans-dimensional monsters created by author H.P. Lovecraft. They are racing karts because, well, karting games were popular at the time)." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject for more insight, including the extreme difficulty of sharing a studio with a German death metal band named Moribund Impetus (no registration required, please feel free to link to this article from external websites).