Gaming
The Intrepid Izzy Kickstarter Wants to Resurrect the SEGA Dreamcast
I’ve seen some weird Kickstarter projects over the years: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic-esque figures of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’s horses (and Cthulhu), a Slender Man plush, and Cards Against Humanity. But, I never would have expected a Kickstarter campaign for a video game designed for a discontinued console. Apparently making video games for dead consoles is more popular than I thought.
Intrepid Izzy is a Kickstarter campaign by Senile Team, a development studio that loves to make Dreamcast games. The game stars the titular Izzy, a “plucky girl who likes traveling, dressing up and destroying the forces of evil,” and combines puzzle-platforming, beat-’em-up combat and adventure/exploration. The main gameplay mechanic is supplementing Izzy’s skills (which include a Shoryuken and Hadouken) with special costumes and their related abilities, including a vampire costume that lets Izzy transform into a flying bat and a ninja costume that grants her a wall jump. The Kickstarter campaign promises at least five unique costumes, and while Intrepid Izzy is not the first video game to include an ability-based costume mechanic, the game still looks decent and worth playing when it is released.
What helps set Intrepid Izzy apart from similar retro-inspired Kickstarter campaigns is several of its reward tiers give gamers a physical version of the game playable on the SEGA Dreamcast. Even though the Dreamcast was an extremely powerful console (many claimed it was ahead of its time), it was discontinued back in 2001 and marked SEGA’s farewell to the console market. However, the Dreamcast featured numerous well-received games that have had a lasting impact on gamers and the game industry, including Jet Set Radio, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, and Phantasy Star Online. It’s no wonder many gamers hold the Dreamcast in such high regard and want to play new games on that console; it did not deserve its fate. And Senile Team is not the only development studio to create a Kickstarter campaign for a new Dreamcast game. Intrepid Izzy is only the latest in an ever-growing list of games designed to support the once-great console.
The Intrepid Izzy Kickstarter campaign only started yesterday, but it has already amassed over $8,000 for a $41, 057 goal. The pledge tiers range from $1.19 (receive kickstarter campaign updates) to $2,372 (physical Dreamcast copy, digital PC copy, digital PlayStation 4 copy, your name in the game’s credits, your name in the game’s splash sequence, physical CD soundtrack, digital soundtrack, four physical Izzy statues, an NPC in your likeness, an in-game statue or portrait in your likeness, physical art book, digital art book, digital manual, kickstarter campaign updates, and free shipping). Oddly enough, even though campaign offers the PS4 version as reward, the PS4 version is listed as a stretch goal.
Depending on the success of Intrepid Izzy (and other Kickstarted Dreamcast games), modern gamers might see the merit of owning a Dreamcast.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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