If you're old farts like us, you'll fondly remember playing beach hacky sack on a Sega Master System, and how gutted you were when the Amstrad CPC version of Last Ninja 2 arrived, only to be decked out in unattractive Speccy monochrome? If you remember those days with tingles in your arms, then you'll have goosebumps the size of bobblehats when you hear that System 3 is bringing back a variety of Epyx oldies for PSP, DS and Wii.
Revealed in a Gamespot interview, System 3's head honcho Mark Cale said that his company had bagged entire rights to the Epyx name and its library of games. The immediate results of this will see puzzling platformer Impossible Mission (based on the early TV show) being rejigged for the PSP, DS and Wii early next year, summery sports compilation California Games appearing on the same consoles around May 2007, and the Last Ninja trilogy making a silent attack on handhelds in April 2007.
Purists will be pleased that Cale is promising to focus on recapturing the titles' original gameplay, rather than going all next-gen on us. In fact, they won't even be in 3D. Not that that suggests cheap emulations - far from it. In the Gamespot interview, he said: "You gotta keep the gameplay mechanics the same or else it ceases to be the original game and you're only using the game brand to sell games...What we're doing is incorporating the original gameplay and mechanics and bringing the gameplay up to date."
And for anyone wondering why the Wii is set for a big slice of Epyx retro, while the PS3 and Xbox 360 go without, well, Cale said it was all down to the fact that the Wii controller was far better suited to the gameplay than its rivals. Which is fair 'nuff.
With unlockables from other Epyx Games touted (such as Winter Games events in California Games) and certain visuals inspired by their forefathers all being touted, we're rather excited by this news. Look at our arms - bobblehat-sized lumps everywhere.
claifornia games was my favourite master system game. nobody could beat me!
i especially like the speach samples before some of the events. "go thrasher!" "hang 10" from a voice that sounds like its been smoking for 3000 years. that better be included!
bmx was fun. you'd get all the way to the end, be going too fast, fall off, land on your head.
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