After wonder boy and Streets of Rage, the French studio Dotemu is tackling another video game license with the Thursday release of Windjammers 2, sequel to the cult arcade and Neo Geo frisbee game. And they will soon offer a revival of Pharaoh, a spin-off from Metal Slug, and especially a new beat em all based on the Ninja Turtles, and more precisely on the animated series of the 1980s. Suffice to say that it has become their specialty.
“In fact, it’s been in the DNA of the company since its creation in 2007, with a lot of emulations, ports, services for other publishers,” comments current CEO Cyrille Imbert. What I did when I arrived in 2014 was to amplify and diversify the phenomenon, our know-how, with stronger and more creative ambitions. But we stay on the same niche. Namely to resurrect games and franchises loved by fans.
Not a simple remaster but a real remake
From this point of view, Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, in 2017, is an important step for Dotemu, with not a simple remaster but a real remake, a new game. that it was successful, that it still has an aura, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t always be modern, or why it shouldn’t become so. It was also an opportunity for us to have an executive producer role in collaboration with a passionate studio. And not a random studio. It’s even the opposite, we ask what license they like, makes them dream, even they come to see us with an idea in mind.
The choice to resurrect Wonderboy, and not another saga, happened in a natural, circumstantial way. “Omar Cornut and Benjamin Fiquet of the Lizardcube studio are fans of Sega in general, and of wonder boy in particular, says the CEO of Dotemu. Omar had already retro-engineered the whole game is a project he had had for more than ten years. Same thing for Pharaoh: A New Era. The studio Triskell Interactive originally came for the sequel to their game Lethis: Path of Progress, but why not also work on the city builder of their dreams? Pharaoh, a 1999 classic.”
“If you are really a fan of a license, you know what to do”
For Windjammers, it’s simple, any 1990s gamer is a fan of this fun and crazy Neo Geo fribsee game. “We often played it on an arcade terminal at the office, it’s a benchmark for retrogaming, original and accessible, explains Cyrille Imbert. We had to find the rights holders, and above all I was thinking about going further than the remaster, to offer something else to the fans. This is how the idea of a remaster came along with a sequel. There was just longer than expected between the two. Announced on the heels of the first remastered game in 2018, Windjammers 2 comes out more than two years late.
Developed in-house by Dotemu, this suite had to, as Streets of Rage 4 before her, reconciling homage and modernity, and bringing together several generations of players. A hell of a challenge? Common sense for Cyrille Imbert: “If you are really a fan of a license, you know what to do and what not to do. You chat with other fans, and you see that some key ideas emerge. That we must not distort what they like, and improve what they like less. Risks are taken, but in a measured way. Do not betray the community of fans and the original creators. However, there are so many works that are redone, rebooted, where you tell yourself that they have understood nothing. Like the last Star Wars. »
Respect and fantasy
Dotemu’s philosophy is made of respect for fantasy. “What is the fantasy of the fans? Its origin and how to achieve it, details the president of the studio. Windjammers is a minimalist but perfect game. They managed in a few months to obtain an impressive gameplay and game design. It remains a pong with a frisbee, so you would have thought it was simple. But no, it was hell, because they aimed very well. This miracle has already had to be repeated. Then the fantasy is: new characters, a story, a lore, an online mode crossplatform, mini-games, new techniques that enrich the old ones…”
Dotemu has nothing left to prove, and could be knocking on bigger doors, bigger franchises. Yes, but… “Some franchise holders see the success of our remakes and sequels, but they say to themselves that if we have succeeded, they can do it too, without us, comments Cyrille Imbert. It is the risk of the trade. For these unattainable licenses, offering a spiritual sequel, or creating your own brand, could be a possibility, and a new step in the process. success story by Dotemu.