Windjammers 2: How fans at Dotemu got their chance to make a sequel

This was always the plan, Dotemu’s Cyrille Imbert said. The French studio, known for its restorations and remasterings of several 1990s hits, spent the past decade earning a reputation for carefully and respectfully handling other companies’ properties. Now, Dotemu’s developers are getting the dream assignments they wanted all along: make all-new sequels for things they loved as kids themselves.

This is the culmination of this process. Windjammers 2, Dotemu’s wholly original sequel to the 1990 Pong-meets-beach-volleyball classic, which launched last week for Google Stadia, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. (It’s also available on Xbox Game Pass.) Imbert’s studio remastered the original in 2017 for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch after hunting down the rights owner — Paon DP, which bought Windjammers and other Data East franchises out of that company’s liquidation.

“I went to Japan with a pitch, but with the idea of doing both,” Imbert said. “First, a remaster, to relaunch the hype around the game, make it known again. Then, we reach that goal. […]It would make sense to launch a sequel. We have never seen one since the original. [Windjammers], and there are so many things that can be improved, and worked on, that weren’t present.”

The same two-stage, long game approach to getting their hands on others’ IP has paid off in three other highly visible projects Dotemu has developed and/or published. The approval for 2020’s highly successful Street of Rage 4.This was a result of the 2017 remake Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon’s TrapSega Master System 1989 Game: Metal SlugTechniques, coming sometime this year, is an all-original follow-up to four re-releases of SNK’s Metal Slug series on modern platforms between 2012 and 2013.

Dotemu

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s RevengeTribute Games has developed a new game called ‘Tribute Games’ that will be available on the Nintendo Switch and Windows PC this year. Nickelodeon knocked after Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s TrapBoth Sega and Dotemu were successful. Shredder’s Revenge is an all-new side-scrolling brawler, timelessly picking up where Konami’s beat-’em-ups left off almost 20 years ago.

Windjammers 2.It seems that it is a labor of love. Dotemu could easily have developed its own brand, however. It probably would have been easier than tracking down not only the rights holders, but also consulting with the original developers, and even roping in the first game’s composers to update the chiptune soundtrack with real instruments.

Imbert denied a Windjammers knock-off for a simple reason: “It wouldn’t be Windjammers,” he said. “We were so attached to the original game. There was this … this … this Not required of working on that license, in particular, because everything was so cool about it.”

It is logical. Windjammers’ gameplay concept is solid but simple, leaving it to a Jock Jams 1990s aesthetic — hand-drawn, comic book visuals with pastel colors and halftone screening — to make the game memorable. Again, Dotemu could have copied these themes, but there’s no way the work would have had as much creative conviction as a fully licensed sequel, Imbert reasoned.

“Doing something that will look and feel exactly the same, but will not be Windjammers, would feel [like] kind of a treason, you know, for the people who worked on the game back in the day,” Imbert said.

Windjammers 2. continues its predecessor’s subtle blending of fighting game tactics applied to a sport, with new shot types and stage effects to update and differentiate the gameplay. The game now allows players to use lob shots, curve shots and other powerful moves to trick their opponents, as well as run across the court. You can even leap in the air and make your opponent do a spike-shot. This will force them to react quickly and then make bad decisions.

“When you look at the true players of the original Windjammers now, they have mastered the game so well that it’s almost paper, rock, scissors,” Imbert said. “They know exactly what they’re going to do, and it’s more about endurance. But if you add more and more depth, give them more strategies and strategic choices, it’s like reshuffling the cards for everyone. You know, the pro players, but also the completely new incoming players, who want to practice more and explore those new rules to create completely new tactics and strategies.”

Dotemu even went searching for — and found — Seiichi Hamada, a still-performing bassist who worked on the original game’s soundtrack almost 30 years ago. Together, they collaborated on the original soundtrack with Harumi Fujita and Hamada. Windjammers 2., whose synthesizer and slapping bass do as much to communicate the game’s Neo Geo bonafides as the visuals.

“We don’t need to ask ourselves too many questions,” Imbert said. “The core aspect of every game that We’ve been bringing back is the same, because that’s what weYou want to be there. We don’t want to see something that completely changes it, either.”