Arcade shoot-’em-up dev Cave pitches crowdfunding for Steam, PS4 ports

By Danny Cowan Published October 2, 2015

Cave, a Japanese developer of arcade-style shoot-’em-ups, proposed a crowdfunding structure for upcoming console and PC ports of its legacy titles this week, potentially leaving the company’s future in the hands of its fans.

Several of Cave’s arcade-ported shooters arrived on the Xbox 360 during the previous console generation, including Deathsmiles, Guwange, and Akai Katana. The company also saw success on iOS devices with ports of games like Espgaluda II and DoDonPachi Resurrection.

Recommended Videos

Cave recently announced that its first-ever Steam game, a port of its 2004 shoot-’em-up Mushihimesama (Bug Princess), will launch this winter. The port will feature updated graphics, multiple gameplay modes, online leaderboards, and a “version 1.5” add-on that remixes existing game elements for a more difficult campaign.

Cave estimates that future Steam ports will cost between $300,000 and $500,000 per project, and conversions for the PlayStation 4 could cost upward of $1 million. If supporters in a proposed crowdfunding campaign pledge $3 million or more, Cave could feasibly produce an all-new shooter exclusively for consoles and PCs.

Though it has its roots in Japanese arcades, Cave enjoyed a niche market on the Xbox 360 throughout the console’s lifespan. Many of Cave’s previously issued retail releases were region-free, allowing its fans to import and play games like Mushihimesama Futari and Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets on all Xbox 360 consoles, regardless of region encoding. The majority of disc-based Xbox 360 games are locked to specific regions, and cannot be played outside of their intended territories.

Cave also entered the digital marketplace on the Xbox 360, to limited success. The company released a localized port of its acclaimed shooter Guwange via Xbox Live Arcade in 2010, and later launched an untranslated Games on Demand version of Deathsmiles II. The company shifted its focus back to retail releases soon after, however, apparently abandoning its plans for digital expansion.

Mushihimesama will be priced at $20 when it hits Steam this winter.

Former Contributor

Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…

Topics

Gaming

You can now play Zelda and Mario Kart on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, no emulator needed

An open-source project brings Switch games like Zelda, Mario, and Metroid to Apple devices without an emulator, but getting everything running takes some work.

Nintendo Switch 2 Running Mario Kart

Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.

Why does this run so well on Apple devices?

Gaming

Modern Warfare 4 brings Call of Duty back to its glory days. I hope the streak lives.

Infinity Ward’s latest campaign goes back to Call of Duty’s roots and recaptures what made me a fan more than a decade ago.

Call of Duty MW4 menu screen

The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.

After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.

Gaming

Epic is throwing $50,000 for vibe-code games. What could possibly go wrong?

Epic is rewarding vibe-coded games with real money

Epic MegaJam 2026

Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.

Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”