Article: Let's make a video game! Los Angeles has become a hotbed for the creation of video games, as large firms like Electronic Arts and locally based THQ and Activision tap the creative environment.(Entertainment)

A two-headed god that runs into walls. A lovesick ram chasing after a sheep. A skeleton adorned in a Hawaiian shin.

These are among the characters that had to be created for the video game "Tak and the Power of Juju," being released later this month by THQ Inc.

For the Calabasas-based company, this is hardly fun and games.

Scores of programmers, animators, screenwriters and musicians spent over two years--including plenty of 20-hour days--transforming "Tak" from concept to gaming reality. That included hours of work for such seemingly small touches as the amount of time a character stayed in the air while jumping over a tree root.

"It ...

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