Capcom’s been on the outs with its fans lately. Resident Evil 6, a blockbuster built by a team of 600 to try and cater to every type of video game player in existence, failed to meet the publisher’s sales expectations by a few million copies. In turn, it promised that next time it would return to the game’s horror roots. Capcom also canceled two fan favorite Mega Man games, the LittleBigPlanet-style Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3 for Nintendo 3DS, relegating its former mascot to a measly iOS social game for his 25th anniversary.
Based on the cheers at its panel at PAX East on Friday, Capcom’s latest announcement almost fully makes amends: Capcom has hired 2D game masters WayForward to make its first new DuckTales game in twenty years.
DuckTales Remastered, one of two new games Capcom brought to PAX, resurrects the long dormant video game franchise based on the Disney cartoon of the same name. The original Capcom DuckTales game was released in 1989, and is fondly remembered by fans as one of the very best games on the NES console. The team making the game at WayForward has a history of making lush, two-dimensional modern entries in classic NES series, most notably Contra 4 for Nintendo DS and A Boy and His Blob for Nintendo Wii. It’s also made some spectacular original 2D games, including its first collaboration with Capcom, Shantae.
Rather than a brand new game, WayForward’s DuckTales will use the original game’s level layouts as a base to then expand into a larger game. Unlike the classic, Remastered will have voiced characters with some actors returning from the old cartoon.
As of now it doesn’t appear that any of the original staff that created DuckTales will collaborate with WayForward on the game. Former Capcom president Keiji Inafune created the art for the game, but resigned from Capcom in 2010. Producer Tokuro Fujiwara is currently at Platinum Games, where he designed MadWorld. Designer Yoshinori Takenaka was most recently at the now defunct Game Republic, where he worked on games like the PSP RPG Brave Story. Most significantly, composer Hioshige Tonomura, whose themes for DuckTales stages like The Moon have become legendary in the video game world, hasn’t worked with Capcom since 1990.
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