I'll be the first to admit that I'm not familiar with Nigoro's action-adventure Metroidvania La-Mulana or the MSX games (like Maze of Galious) to which it pays homage. (In brief, you have to guide a whip-wielding archaeologist through an expansive tomb). I am, however, familiar with Nicalis, the publisher that specializes in HD remakes of popular indie games. They're bringing La-Mulana to WiiWare (eventually), just like they did with Cave Story and Nifflas' Night Game—La-Mulana is in good company, at the very least.
In any case, developer Nigoro is hard at work giving the game a head-to-toe touch-up while maintaining the game's original, throwback aesthetic style (as you can see by the batch of new screenshots in the gallery). From what I gather, everything in La-Mulana was designed to be a reference to the MSX—a tricky legacy to maintain as they bring the game to a mainstream audience, to be sure, and a source of contention for some fans.
Despite some technical limitations (they're trying to figure out the best way to capture the game in motion on actual Wiiware, for example), Nigoro seem to be putting plenty of thought into the project: if you can piece the blog together (Nigoro are from Japan), you'll find really interesting discussions about how to maintain the original's difficulty while making it more accessible, or what to do with all the references to a computer very few owners are familiar with. If you're interested in indie development or game design, it's worth taking some time to poke around the La-Mulana blog.
Or, if you'd rather be visually stimulated, be sure to check out the screenshots in the gallery below. Since this is my first look at the game, I find the graphics pretty charming, even if they are being touched up for the console crowd.
[Via TIGSource]
Contest:
2:00 AM on 10.22.2009
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Why? WiiWare's getting a bunch of good games this fall, so you think they should just ignore them to talk about yet another "Tower Defense" on XBLA this week? These three games from Nicalis deserve all the coverage they can get.
Uh, what?
I agree just because I play with my 360 loads more than my Wii. I also scoped out the english blog and it was pretty interesting. He's changing the difficulty for Americans who explained to him at TGS 09 that the motive of the game was to kill the player. Interesting analysis. I almost got upset and then I realized that if it leads to better feeling of exploration like Cave Story then it could be a good idea.
The removal of the Roms is concerning however with 70 of them removed and replaced with gold or other content.
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