When I first wrote about boomer shooters last year on Steam Deck and also on Switch, aside from New Blood and Nightdive, the most common name was Andrew Hulshult who has done some amazing music over the years. He recently was involved with the DOOM + DOOM II re-release that included his IDKFA soundtrack with new music for DOOM II, and having wanted to interview him for a while now, I finally had a chance to chat with him on call for a few hours to discuss game soundtracks, composition, bands he likes, guitar strings, pickups, cold brew coffee, his first film soundtrack, games he’s playing, and a lot more. This interview was done on video call and then it was transcribed and edited for brevity. Just like my interview with Dave Oshry from New Blood, this one was more casual than usual, and this is likely the longest interview on TouchArcade so strap in and grab a cold brew.

TouchArcade (TA): So for those unaware, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Andrew Hulshult (AH): Yeah, my name’s Andrew Hulshult. I’m a composer and sound designer for mainly video games, but I’m starting to move over into film as well. I like to just write music by myself sometimes when it’s not for a game or film. But that’s primarily what I do. I work in the game and film industry doing sound design, soundtracks, and sometimes voice acting.

TA: How did you end up working on the canceled Duke Nukem project and also Rise of the Triad 2013?

AH: Duke Nukem 3D Reloaded was actually just kind of like, I think that was 2010. That’s, I’m reaching back here a little bit. So I think Frederik at the time, Frederik Schreiber, the guy who runs 3D Realms now, or I think he still does, basically he was remaking maps in the middle of Unreal Engine 3 of like some of the original Duke 3D maps and posting them on Gearbox forums, which I think one of them that got a lot of hits was like all of the 3D renders of like Hollywood Holocaust, which is like E1M1 for Duke 3D. That caught my attention as well. I was like, wow, that looks really neat. You know, like I reached out on the forums, I was like, hey, do you need any music? Maybe this would be fun. Like, I really liked Duke 3D back in the day. And he said, yeah, sure. You know, like if you want to remake some of the stuff and hand it off to me.

So I just did some of that. I just had gear laying around and I wanted to kind of learn how to do this anyway. So I just dove in head first and started kind of remaking some of the old Duke 3D tracks. That kind of spawned into, you know, not a lot, not a lot was done in Duke 3D Reloaded. It was just like, you know, like some odds and ends stuff. Somehow that turned into Apogee, Terry Nagy, head hunting us and saying, hey, I have an IP that I’d really like you to work on called Rise of the Triad if you guys want to give it a try. And he had an investor with him at the time who was interested named Dave Oshry And this was a very long time ago. And it’s crazy. Like all those people now are like, you know, on the, we were all on the forefront of like the retro FPS revival stuff.

But basically after Duke 3D Reloaded, yeah, Apogee came, said, hey, we’re interested. And Fred said yes on our side. And we started making Rise of the Triad 2013.

TA: It was funny you mentioned Dave Oshry because when I finally got an interview with him, I think it was easier for me to meet Iron Maiden than get that interview, but after getting that done, I had New Blood covered. I recently also interviewed Nightdive about The Thing, but I needed to complete the trifecta for boomer shooters: Andrew Hulshult. Now that’s finally happening.

We both laugh.

TA: I remember in a prior interview you did, you mentioned how when you were doing the 3D realm stuff, you weren’t aware of how much you were in demand in the industry. So when that door closed, suddenly you had like a, like thousands of opportunities and stuff like that. But, and obviously you’ve gone on to do some of like some huge titles since then. Obviously Doom Eternal DLC is the one which a lot of people think about you. For me, it’s like other titles like Nightmare Reaper and Dusk and stuff like that. I want to know how you’ve changed as a musician and as a professional from back then to now.

AH: Oh, that’s a great question. Man, starting off in the industry with, you know, doing the whole stuff with Interceptor, like where we were, what we were just talking about, it was a completely fresh experience as a musician. So you don’t know what you’re getting into. And then a lot of times you’re like, I don’t even know what I should be getting paid, you know, like you have an idea, but you’re not, you don’t know. And so like wading through those waters is interesting and also dangerous territory. But the stuff that I have learned has been all from, you know, tripping on agreements as you go forward. You sign an agreement, you go for it, you make the money, and on the back end you’re either like, this didn’t really work out, or you’re like, hey, this worked out, we need to make sure that we do this again, you know.

It’s learning the entire time. Because this is the thing that I feel like musicians get hung up on a lot, which is, you know, they just, they want to make really, really awesome, beautiful art for games. And like, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You should, that should be the core principle that you do. But you have to make sure that you get paid so that you can continue to do it. Because otherwise you burn yourself out and you don’t want to work in the industry anymore. And that, to go back to what you were talking about with, I didn’t know how much, like how in demand I was. I was right at that point. I was about to walk away from everything right after the whole stuff with 3D Realms. I was done with games. I was like, you know what, like there’s not a lot of avenues here and I’m just getting more bitter as time goes on. And the last handful of things I’ve worked on have just bombed so why am I putting all this effort into this?

I should try and do something else. And I didn’t realize until I stepped out from 3D Realms how many people wanted to hire me. And like, it’s one of those weird things where like, I’m sure you can probably relate. When you have a job, like a day job, if you’ve ever just held like a simple, simple day job, you can get sucked into that entire cycle of that job and nothing else matters around.

So an example of this would be, I worked for a music retailer for about 15 years, okay. I was doing well for them. They wanted to give me my own stores. I was working on management. And the cycle that comes with that where you get so wrapped up in the business of that makes you lose focus of lots of other things in life. And that’s kind of what happened to me while I was working with 3D Realms. That’s nothing bad about them. It’s just when you’re working for a company rather than working for yourself, it turns into that.

From the start to now has been like just a crazy learning process. You do have to walk on landmines. You do have to get blown up a couple of times until you figure out what works and what doesn’t. Stepping out from 3D Realms after they said, hey, we don’t have the cash to pay you. It’s like, oh, okay, I guess I’ll go figure this out now. And then all of a sudden, DUSK, you know, like that’s literally the next thing that and AMID EVIL were the very next things that I worked on. It was crazy.

TA: Obviously you get a lot of questions about game music, but what is like, since you brought up this whole thing about how you’ve changed, what is the biggest misconception that people both in the industry and like the players have about video games music right now?

AH: The biggest misconception. Oh, that anybody can do it and it’s a small part. laughs It’s like, you can’t just throw anything in there. Like, man, it’s I’d say that from a public like standpoint of I don’t play games that much and I’m casual kind of thing, some of my friends and some of my family are like, you have the easiest job. I’m like, you have no f***ing idea. You know, walk in my shoes for a day and let’s talk again. Yeah, it’s really difficult because you, you really have to trick yourself into getting into whatever atmosphere or whatever world someone else has painted already. Right. Like they’ve already built everything out. This is their vision. You have to step into it and you have to step into it with respect to their design philosophies. And you also have to have the confidence to say, well, this is what I think we should do and why we should do it. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of social confidence that’s needed to do a gig like this.

It’s complex in a lot of different ways. The art side of it is hard enough, like pulling shit out of thin air, is difficult already, but then, um, explaining to people why you want to go this direction and sometimes even arguing to get that direction can be a hassle in and of itself.

So yeah, I’d say the biggest misconception is that it’s easy and that it’s not easy. I swear to God, so many times my friends are like, ah, you’ve got the easiest job. I’m like, no, man, I live, I, I threw a hundred pound boxes from 6 AM to 4 PM. And sometimes I miss that.

Whiskey and coffee fueled half of the @RiseoftheTriad OST. Most songs were composed between 9pm and 3am.

The more you know

— Andrew Hulshult (@AndrewHulshult) September 30, 2015

TA: So I also want to talk a lot about your gear, but before that, I think we should discuss some of the game specific things. So let’s start with ROTT 2013. I’ve just sent you a tweet right now, which I wanted to reference. This is quite an old one (linked above). Well, I actually didn’t know much about this soundtrack until recently. I had heard about it and I had heard that a lot of my friends bought that release. They said that it wasn’t that great. I played the original on DOS but not the 2013 version, so I didn’t really hear it all in-game until the Ludicrous Edition and when folks made a big deal about it having Andrew Hulshult’s music. I decided I wanted to properly try it then. I wanted to talk about your thought process between like, you know, redoing those tracks and coming up with your own flare on them, because anyone who, at least any fan of yours, if they listen to that, they know it’s your music. It’s not like, oh, this is just like him doing a cover of someone else. It still feels like it’s you.

AH: The first and foremost thing was to make sure you respect your elders. I wanted to make sure that whatever I did obviously served the fanbase and by proxy served everything that Lee Jackson had written. Lee Jackson and Bobby Prince, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the de facto composers for FPS. The originators. You’re already stepping into something well established back in the day. People are very familiar with this. If you f*** it up, you are toast. That was my first professional gig. Stepping into that kind of pressure.

Just really what it came to, it was all really natural. I heard these songs and I saw the game and what they’re making and I’m like it is kinda jank, but it is fun. It is ridiculous. ROTT is so ridiculous. I was like man, I was talking to Dave and Fred about it. What if we did like rock and metal stuff predominantly? That’s the kind of music I listen to all the time. They said let’s try it. Even Terry was like you should do it.

Really they just kinda gave me free reign to give it a try on some of these things. The first one I did as a demo to work on it was “Goin Down the Fast Way” and I remember I handed that to Terry. Terry is awesome and he has been great to me for my entire career. Never had a bad piece of advice from him. He is the CCO for Apogee by the way. I remember handing him the very first demo of “Goin Down the Fast Way”. His comment coming back to me was “It is in the right direction but it sounds like a diarrhea of sound” Because it wasn’t mixed correctly. I was just excited to hand him something. I was like ok this is one of those moments where I’m going to have to learn how to accept feedback even if it is not from a musician and I know that they mean well. I remixed a couple of things and I think this is what he was talking about and I sent it back to him and he said it was way better and it was awesome. Ok cool, this guy doesn’t just hate me.

It kind of just came from the heart. All the soundtracks I work on, it’s me. Even if it is stepping into someone else’s shoes, I have to remember that the source material comes first, then you put your influences on. So the source material is the structure of the house but you can put up whatever walls you want and paint on it, and hang and decorate, but just make sure that the house is still the same house that people remember.

Now to address the Tweet above, Whiskey and coffee fueled half of the Rise of the Triad soundtrack. Most songs were composed between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. That’s true. Here’s one little tidbit with it too. Terry Nagy, the guy I was talking about, the CCO from Apogee, he would regularly take me down to a bar called Hula Hands. And he would buy the drinks and then he would just take me home and be like, “Alright, now go write some more songs.” It was awesome. I miss those days.

TA: This reminds me of that one track in IDKFA where you used a tremolo to replicate a specific sound and it was the perfect way to do it.

AH: That was Dark Halls in DOOM. It has the tremolo guitar that’s supposed to be the rolling bass synth from that sound. I love that song.

TA: After ROTT 2013, another game I didn’t really play until recently was Bombshell and I literally only bought that game because of your soundtrack. I got it when I was researching boomer shooters for an article and was looking at the games I don’t own. I bought it and didn’t really care for much of it, but the music was great. I kind of think of that soundtrack with Nightmare Reaper where they feel like just metal albums from Andrew Hulshult rather than dedicated game soundtracks. Was this the point in your career where you realized you’re really good at bringing metal into these kinds of games? It felt like a turning point.

AH: That’s that’s a great question too like actually yeah like right around that time I was experimenting a lot with just you know making big atmospheric like synth stuff and like orchestral as you can hear on that soundtrack if you got far enough, laughs, but also like for the for the bigger fights and stuff, I really wanted to start dialing up you know my own sound and my own writing and you know I’d already done the cover stuff I wanted to want to show people what what I could do and so yeah that is kind of really where my introduction to like my own original pieces started coming into place, so yeah that is actually right. I never even thought about that that is where that started and also like I mean I gosh that’s if I think about it, that was 2013 is the end of 2013 is when development started on that, and it originally started as a Duke Nukem game before the lawsuit, and I had an eight string by that time. I was tuning down big time at that point, and there’s a lot of stuff that never made it maybe I’ll put that up on Twitter at some point but there’s a lot of stuff that never never showed up on it because it was a little too aggressive you know but that stuff would later show up in DOOM you know. laughs

TA: When just discovering your music many years ago, everything was really good metal, and this was probably around the time I was mainly listening to metal before I started broadening my horizons. I went through this phase when I was learning guitar and I started listening to more Dream Theater and then got a seven string guitar, and eventually got into Meshuggah. It got me thinking about how when I listen to your music now, you manage doing unique things for each game and make the songs fit the game properly. It isn’t just metal anymore so there’s no worry about being typecast. Did you have that fear that everyone is just going to expect metal from you when you’re behind a specific soundtrack?

AH: Oh man. You just saying that just out loud makes me wow. I still worry about that sometimes. There are moments where I’m like am I getting typecast at this point, and you saying, yeah I don’t have to worry about that anymore, I’m like oh thank god I heard it from someone else where they were you know like, because I don’t want to be like I don’t want to be like straight up known as metal guy you know like I love metal I love playing it I’ll make those records all day long as people as long as people will listen to it and even if they won’t I’ll probably make them, but yeah I like to paint with different brushes like especially when I get older, like I really enjoy mixing sound design with guitars.

I like mixing sound design with orchestral instruments, I like just going full hand on my Eurorack synth stuff over here and just getting lost. As a musician I’m fortunate enough at this point where I can just experiment, and I know I can find, I have the confidence now after working on all these games and having some success with it where I know if I get lost I can find a way out because I’ll find something that I like, and chances are if I like it, I can probably show it to some people who will dig it as well. I’m so glad to hear that you’re like I know that I can get some variety. laughs

TA: I mean if someone just heard DUSK and I’d say if they heard DUSK even that is pretty different. I mean if someone’s not into metal maybe they think dusk sounds the same as bombshell but you can totally tell that DUSK was trying to be like this middle ground of what you like and Nine Inch Nails’ Quake. I think it has one of my favorite guitar tones in gaming right now, and it’s still pretty timeless. I want to move to AMID EVIL. I love the soundtrack to the main game, but I want to ask about the DLC for two reasons. Now the first thing is kind of like a personal topic because I believe you were going through a family emergency during the time when you were recording the soundtrack, right? When I was playing Dragon Quest VIII on the 3DS and my grandfather was in the hospital before he passed away, whenever I think about Dragon Quest VIII now it reminds me of that. So do you go through the same thing with the AMID EVIL DLC music?

AH: I don’t think I’ve been able to sit down and digest it that way yet. But I know exactly what you’re talking about and I’m sure that is what I will absolutely go through. Yeah, to harp back to what you’re talking about, to what you’re referencing, my father had a heart attack. And it was just out of nowhere. And it was on, gosh, I think it was on New Year’s Eve. It was like 9 PM on New Year’s Eve. It was the year before it was released And I was halfway, I was like midway through working on that soundtrack. And it just scared the shit out of me. As anybody would. Your father’s dying And he ended up having like a, all four valves around his heart were like 90-95% clogged. So yeah, he had to have a quadruple bypass. And thankfully, We have a really, really good heart hospital right next to us. And they’re at an age now where they’re on Medicare. I think it’s Medicare. I can’t remember. It’s like once you’re past 64 at a certain age in this country, you can get on Medicare. And you know, like health stuff isn’t as much of a nightmare as it normally is. But they got great care, got taken care of. But it was months.

It took months for all that stuff to happen. And there’s like so many things that happened in between that. Like this was right in the middle of COVID. So like whenever he got, it was right in the middle of the big Omicron spike for the world. So as soon as he got admitted, he couldn’t get to an actual emergency room. He had to sit in another room for like two or three days and they actually had to sedate him for a few days before they could transfer him to another hospital to get looked at. Like it was just crazy. And I was out of my mind. I was crazy at that point. And so once they got to a point where they said we’re going to do surgery and he came out of surgery, I just needed something to occupy myself. Otherwise, I was going to self-destruct.

So I started writing a lot on the AMID EVIL stuff and started really finding that old like playing with a band and writing songs for you kind of vibe going in. And a lot of that stuff in a AMID EVIL, the stuff that’s like got a lot of energy behind it, that is pretty personal for me. There’s a lot of emotions on that soundtrack. There’s also something else that I haven’t talked about in public yet and I’m not going to talk about it here that I started working on that has a lot of that as well. And that’ll still be a while before that pops up. But I’d say that that was my main outlet for a while. You have something to look forward to.

But yeah, like that soundtrack let’s wrap it up. That soundtrack did have a lot of tension and a lot of emotions tied to my father almost passing away and me trying to wrap my head around that. You’re right. I hadn’t thought about that.

TA: The other thing about the AMID EVIL DLC is this specific song I want to touch on: Splitting Time. This song is interesting for a few reasons. It reminds me of some of my favorite game trailers like the song used in the Nioh 2 launch trailer, I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. But more interesting than that is I was playing Street Fighter 6 with a friend of mine and listening to this in the background and he asked me if I was listening to Killer Instinct music? I said it was the AMID EVIL DLC and he wanted to know who made it. It reminded me quite a bit of Mick Gordon’s non DOOM music. We spoke about Killer Instinct and my friend said “they should get Andrew for a new Killer Instinct album” and I wanted to ask if Killer Instinct influenced that song?

AH: No I didn’t actually. But there might be little hints of that back and forth because gosh, there are moments when I went back to that Killer Instinct reboot because I thought Mick did such a great job on it. Where I’m like, man, the production here is exactly what I have been trying to do for like a handful of years, And like that soundtrack was just really inspiring to listen to. I think he’s just, he’s a brilliant composer.

TA: That’s another game I bought because of the soundtrack because when I played DOOM 2016, I was like I need to play more games with this guy’s done the music for and everyone was like Killer Instinct. I was like I’ve never heard this. I didn’t own an N64. What the hell is this game? I bought it and liked the music a lot more than the game.

AH: That whole soundtrack slaps, man. He did a fantastic job on that.

When you realize @AndrewHulshult put his whole bussy into the Nightmare Reaper OST instead of saving it for DUSK 2 pic.twitter.com/tU1AsySok0

— Dave @ Home (@DaveOshry) October 11, 2023

TA: OK, so now let’s go to Nightmare Reaper a bit. I already mentioned how this could be your own metal album. I don’t even think it needs to be related to this game. And this is another game I just bought because the music was so good. And I was like there’s kind of like this disconnect between what I expected in the game and after I heard the music, because I heard the music before playing the game and I was like, OK, I need to get used to this. But so before I ask you about your thought process between doing the music, I want to just bring up this other tweet (linked above) from New Blood’s Dave Oshry, which is interesting for Nightmare Reaper. When I saw that Tweet, I knew I had to bring it up whenever I interviewed you in the future and here we are.

Laughs

AH: Whenever Bruno reached out to me, Bruno is the developer of Nightmare Reaper. Whenever he reached out to me, we just literally started talking about some of our favorite bands and we would just go off back and forth because he showed me a game that he was making. I was like, “That looks cool.” I was like, “Well, let me know if you’re ever interested.” And then we just started talking about music. He’s like, “Would you be interested in working with me on this?” And I said, “Yeah, I think that would be cool.” And he literally was like, “I just want this to be like a metal record from you.” I was like, “Really?” He was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “You’ve got good influences.” He’s like, “I just want it to sound like you just made a straight metal record.” I was like, “Well, it can’t be just that.” I was like, “But it’ll be mostly that.” You still need to like, we need to, it needs to still be for a game. Because otherwise you’d have me, you know, screaming over top of everything as well.

But yeah, it is pretty close to something I would have written at that time. You know, as you go with a, as time moves on, tastes change. And you know, but like at that time, for sure, that’s what you would have gotten for a metal record. I think that’s pretty close, yeah.

TA: How do you manage doing that and also keeping the soundtrack dynamic for a game then?

AH: Um, play through it a lot of times where you can figure out where you can have rests and lulls. And where somebody’s gonna possibly just walk around and look for things. And then try to write something that you yourself would not get bored of. And that’s still interesting in terms of like, you know, like an ambient track or like a low energy track that still moves a little bit. Just music to explore to, right? And then try and make a piece that complements what that is, but is super high energy or, uh, just higher energy for it. So like, so that those two can work together. You really have to think of it as like, you’re gluing two or three different pieces together. Because like Prodeus has like three pieces.

It has an ambient, it has a light combat, and it has a heavy combat. And they’re structured in triggers throughout that game. So I have to think of how this ambient works with this low combat song and then work with this high combat song. Or this heavy combat song. And do they all move well between each other, um, if you were to just crossfade them at random times, you know? Because that’s what the engine is going to do. So yeah, it’s like, I don’t know, you just, you gotta take one of those pieces of music, build it out first, and then think about the other piece.

TA: Since you brought up Prodeus, that was the next game I was going to ask about. I don’t even remember what happened with Prodeus when it launched on Steam, because I remember being sent a code for it and just tried it out for review, but was blown away by the music. I remember I even joked about that when I wrote about boomer shooters. At the time, it felt like everything boomer shooters was all about New Blood, Nightdive, and Andrew Hulshult. So Prodeus feels like metal, industrial, bass heavy, and punchier in general. It works well with the aesthetic but I think Cables and Chaos is my favorite. You’ve spoken a lot about Prodeus, but I wanted to know what your favorite track is from that and whether you can give us an interesting anecdote from composing which people might not know about?

AH: Cables and Chaos is definitely my favorite one. Like, for sure. Like, that was the moment. Um, so, like, they originally only wanted me to work on, like, the music that first shipped. Not a lot of people know that I went through, like, this whole nightmare where I had to pull the entire soundtrack down across the entire, like, all this digital distribution and put it back up with all the songs because originally there was only, like, ten pieces of music with Prodeus. And then when they were getting closer to release they were like, “Hey, we want to… we want to… we want, like, ten more.” And I was like, “Oh, uh, okay. Well, I’ve already put out the soundtrack.
We already agreed on this, so this is weird.” So, um, they showed me what else they were working on in terms of, like, the levels and everything that I hadn’t seen and I was like, “Good lord, these look incredible!” So I got really inspired with that and made a ton of really just more aggressive pieces of music which turned into things like Chaoscaster, Cables and Chaos, uh…I’m just trying to think of the other ones. Dystopian Dimension.

That whole soundtrack is awesome. Like, that whole soundtrack, like, it was built in an interesting time where it’s…it was… half of it was pre-pandemic and the other half was during isolation during pandemic. So, it’s got these really interesting tangents of, uh, the second half of the record’s way more aggressive than the first half. Just because, like, I don’t know, I was at home and I’m like, I can’t get anything out. Like, in terms of my outlet, I can’t go out. I can’t do this. So, like, all of my energy was focused on how aggressive can I make the rest of this, you know? Like, and then we finally get to put it out. I think that was 2022.

Here’s one thing from Prodeus that I thought was super neat. So, Spent Fuel is one of the only times that I’ve been…Well, it was one of the first times I’d done it at the moment. Where I’d taken an idea and I was like, how do I write a concept around this? And really, like, the map they showed me was just, you know, green sludge and radiated bullshit everywhere. It looked like Chernobyl. And, um…I was like, man, I really want to find ways to take things like Geiger counters, uh, and, uh, pulses from, from, uh, from fission reactions and, like, maybe even the sound of the, uh, the flash that happens in the video whenever they’re testing the atomic bomb stuff. Like, anything that’s gamma or uh, radiation that is audible, I want to take that and make a piece of music with it. So, there literally are all of those things in that piece of…that piece of music. So, there is the sound of a nuclear reactor turning on, doing what’s called a pulse, uh, for the first time. And that’s actually used in part of the beat. The Geiger counters used as portions of the beat that kind of sounds like a drum machine a little bit.

I reversed the sound of, uh, the atomic bomb, the initial flash hitting the camera, making this “bzzz” sound. I reversed that and made it pulse back and forth through the beat. And then, you know, later on the music is like a lot of guitar stuff to go with it and everything, but all that stuff that’s going on with the synthesizer is all based around, you know, like radiation. And I was like, “Ah, this is cool!”

Whenever I got done with it, I was like, “Finally!” I had an idea, like a concept idea for a piece of music that stems from like a real life thing and put it all together. So that was like, that’s one of the standout moments for me on that soundtrack. I was really proud of that.

TA: Can you say anything about the DLC music or is that just up to the devs for them to release?

AH: Uh, that’s up to the devs for them.

TA: Anything that’s different or interesting or should we just expect another banger soundtrack?

AH: I’m not sure if they’re going to use the base game stuff or if they want me to work on anything new. I have my suspicions that they’ll give me a shout probably somewhere in the near future, but I haven’t heard from them yet.

TA: I think in a recent interview where you spoke about the Iron Lung soundtrack, which you’re doing, obviously you can’t talk much about it, but I, don’t want to know about the soundtrack specifically, I’ll wait for the movie to come out, but I want to know three things: How is it working on a movie soundtrack? How is it working with Markiplier? How has the budget available for the soundtrack changed how you’re able to approach music composition?

AH: So the first one was, how’s it working on a movie soundtrack? Completely different. Like, I thought that, I thought that I’d be able to walk in and just be like, “Eh, this won’t, this’ll be simple.” Oh. Like, it’s just as challenging as the game stuff, but in a completely different direction. Where I would know exactly to talk to a developer about “Let’s put a piece of music here, let’s put a piece of music here, let’s do that.” I can do that with Mark, but they’re completely different conversations. One is, you know, I know exactly what’s supposed to be happening in the game here, this is, you know, you’re picking up this weapon, or you’re, this adventure is happening in front of you, this is the tone. The other is a film that I may get something out of, but Mark may be intending for a different emotion. So we have to talk about those things back and forth before I make a piece of music. So it’s really interesting. It’s a fun challenge, to be honest with you.

The second one was working with Mark? Mark is awesome. He is so much fun to work with. He hears things that I don’t hear, uh, brings things up in, in my own music, where I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that.” And he’s very much, um, a musician without, like, being a musician. Like, he doesn’t, he doesn’t write, like, as far as I know, he doesn’t write a bunch of music, like, on the regular, but he understands it very, very well. And will, uh, regularly make decisions when I hand him a piece of music, and he’s like, “Okay, this is, you know, sometimes we will have to cut these back and forth, but I promise you, like, like, to make it work for a scene.” He’s like, “But I promise you, we’ll do it as best as we can, or I’ll do it as best as I can.” I’m like, “Uh, you know, like, maybe I should just recompose the scene.” And every time he cuts something to, like, possibly make it, like, a tiny bit shorter, I’m like, “No, that’s exactly what I would have done. Like, how are you this good at editing this stuff?” Like, it’s, it blows my mind. Um, so he’s been fantastic to work with.

The third is about the budget for the movie soundtrack and how it changes how it affects composition? Budgets were a lot bigger. I’ll just, I’ll just keep it at that. They were, they were, they were much bigger. Um, just because of how much, it wasn’t, like, due to, um, you know, like, “Oh, you’re working on a film now.” It was, it was because of how much music we went through. Um, I wrote demos with them on the set. So, like, they flew me down to Austin and Mark said, “Hey, you know, why don’t you just write music while I’m doing scenes?” I’m like, “Wow, that sounds actually really, really f***ing cool, yeah.” So, I would go down there about once every two weeks and spend about two or three days there, just sitting at, uh, sitting out front while they’re, they’re doing scenes, and I’d be writing music with my headphones, just watching on a monitor, you know, what’s going on in front of me, like, 50 feet in front of me. And so, there was a ton of music from that, and there’s a lot more music that came afterwards that we wrote, and in fact, um, I’m actually about to jump on a call because I think they need one more, one more piece of music.

I’m gonna jump on a call in like two hours, ’cause I think they need one more piece of music. Um, but it’s, it’s just been a lot. There’s a lot there. And it’s picking the emotions that go where. So, like, there would be, I wrote all these songs for, you know, um, catching a vibe of depression, and these songs for catching a vibe of anger, and these vibes for tension, and this, and this, and we have this giant palette to just choose from and pick where we want things to go, and that’s what, that’s what Mark’s been doing. So, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty much, I mean, financially, the exact same thing as, that I would agree on with games, but it’s just, there’s the volume that, like, we’ve done with stuff is like, whoa, that’s a lot! So, yeah.

So, yeah, it’s been great. It’s helped me out a ton. I’d love to work with Mark again after this.

TA: Going from your first movie soundtrack, let’s talk about your first chiptune album, which was Dusk 82. So, was that actually the first time you did any sort of chiptune remixing or composition or arrangement, I should say?

AH: Yeah, the first real one, like, I mean, like, you could, you could argue that, like, the Rad Rodgers stuff has some of that on there, but that’s, like, closer to synth wave more than anything else, I feel like. And, like, that kind of retro feel. So, yeah, this was the first real time that I, like, approached, like, a chiptune. Like, this is, you have to stay within these boundaries of limited technology. And it was literally, like, you know, choose your, choose your sine wave. Do you want, you want sine, or choose your audio wave. Do you want sine, square, or, you know, triangle? So, it’s one of the three. Just building, like, drum kits based off of that and, like, white noise and everything. And, yeah, that was, that was interesting.

Like, when David approached me about that, I was like, “You wanna do what?” You know, like, completely make, like, the Dusk soundtrack and chiptunes of, like, why don’t we just, like, choose a handful of, like, the hits and go from there. Like, the ones that people remember the most, you know? And that was fun. Uh, that was super cool. Just bouncing those back and forth off Dave and David. But, yeah, that was, that was the first time I ever did that. And it was, it was pretty cool. I’m glad people like it.

TA: I think, uh, Dusk 82 was, like, this free pre-order bonus with the Nintendo Switch release. So when I started playing that, I was like, “Wait, did they actually do this for the soundtrack?” And then I looked it up and I’m like, “Of course they did!” I know obviously you’re, like, super busy with, like, a ton of projects, but if you had, like, unlimited time and resources, would you do a chiptune demake of any of your other albums? And if you would, which one would you pick?

AH: Gosh. Which one would be the most interesting is really the, uh, the question there. I think the one that would be the most interesting if I were to do that would be probably AMID EVIL. Because there’s so much going on in some of those, it would be, it would be a lot of fun to go back and, like, hear some of those melodies that are, like, on, like, all string sections and stuff, and here I’m taking all the way down to, like, 8-bit, you know? I think that that would fit really well too. But yeah, if money wasn’t an issue. Yeah, and time. Time’s the biggest one there.

TA: Speaking of time and money, I was going to ask you about remastering one of your old soundtracks, like bringing it to the modern Andrew Hulshult sound. You mentioned that you’d do ROTT 2013 if they paid you to remaster it.

AH: There’s a ton of work involved in that. Doing that just for IDKFA was a ton of work. Like, that was months of getting that together. Um, yeah, I’d love to do that for ROTT if Apogee would be interested in it, but, like, it’s a time thing more than anything else. I think it’s a time thing for them, and it’s a time thing for me. I mean, they’re literally down the street, so, like, they can open up that conversation anytime they want, and it’s just a matter of when, you know? When’s the right time.

TA: WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, I think is a game you composed a long time ago, at least in gaming, like, a few years ago, and it finally released this year. That’s a soundtrack where if anyone hears it, I think they probably wouldn’t expect it to be you when they listen to the soundtrack, and that’s one of the things I love about it, because here, like, he does more than just metal, like, you need to get that into your head, like, that feels like one of those things. How was it working on that soundtrack?

AH: It was interesting back and forth. Jeremiah, the developer on that, the original developer, at first, I think he’ll be okay with me saying this, at first we did not, we didn’t see eye to eye on things, because I wanted straight up, like, almost no guitar at all, Quake, Like, this is what you’re going for, this is the audience, we need to harp even further into this, and he wanted some guitar mixed in there, and like, we would butt heads back and forth on it quite a bit, until we finally came to like a mutual understanding, and I started hearing him out a little bit more, and he started hearing me out, and I was like, okay, okay, I think we’re all good on this.

But yeah, it was, that one was a little, a little more tough, just because the, like, the development cycle was, wasn’t, you know, as people know, like, didn’t, it didn’t go as great, like, towards about halfway through, maybe a little, even a little earlier than that, and I could see some of that happening in real time, just because I know all those guys, so like, it was unavoidable.

So that’s, that’s hard to make art for when you know that the product itself is having some problems. But I think Christalynne Pyle did a good job with wrapping everything up towards the end of it, which was a task in and of itself, for sure. But, I don’t know, there were some weird ideas pitched out there at one point, where like, I think Fred wanted like, like straight up, like really over the top metal tracks at one point. I think they even had a trailer at one point where I was like, this is not the tone of this game. I don’t know where you guys found that music, but like, this is, this is not that.

But I’m glad that everything in the end was able to have some cohesiveness and, and meld together. I really wish that we had time to do some action tracks, like, for that game. Like, I feel like there are moments where that could have, that could have been helpful, but also at the same time, that’s a big what if. You know, like, because there’s two things that you have to take into consideration. Which is, that’s the Quake engine. It’s like the OG Quake engine. You know, what are the limitations that we’re working with here? Can we dynamically swap music, and is it going to work well, just as well as you’ve heard in other titles? And number two, um, would that take people out of it?

Because everybody remembers like the OG Quake having like, you know, every map had its song. Well, I say that. It was a disc running that just played a bunch of music. But basically, every map had a song for it. So, yeah, there’s, there’s a handful of things there. But I like the soundtrack. I think it’s cool. I think it’s, it’s, it’s got some really interesting moments in it where like, one of them where I was, I just said, “F*** it, whatever. We’re gonna, we’re gonna bow a guitar through a bunch of pedals and see what that comes out like.” That’s one of my favorite pieces from that. I think that’s towards the end. But, um, yeah, it was a little bit of a struggle, but I’m glad I still went through it. I had fun, and I think that everybody that worked on it was pretty proud of it by the end.

TA: Now, DOOM Eternal’s DLC. How did it feel for you doing IDKFA and now doing official DOOM music? Like, it’s your soundtrack with David Levy? Did id Software actually talk to you about IDKFA beforehand?

AH: I know that IDKFA was, was passed around that studio a whole bunch, cause I, I’d get, um, DMs from people that work there that are now, like, I consider great friends, where they would reach out in, like, 2015, and 2016, and, like, all the way back as 2014, where they would be saying, you know, hey, I’m working at id right now, I just want you to know that I’m listening to your, to your music while I work, and I was always just like, oh, holy cow, that’s crazy, you know? Um, and I, you know, as far back as that, I was just like, hey, if you ever, you know, if you ever, if you ever need music, let me know, you know? So, but, like, never, never, you know, like, pushing like, the button or the boundaries, cause like, I think it was announced that Mick was working on there in, like, 2015? Like, it was like the year before, or something like that, when they really started showing some of the music, and I was like, oh, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve got that handled, okay, cool. So, um, but I was always interested in, in finding a, a way to work with that studio, cause I love DOOM, and, like, it’s really is, like, the core of my DNA wanting to work in games, is DOOM, and like, Duke 3D, um, so, yeah,

I always wanted to work with them, and IDKFA, I kinda looked at almost as a resume, like, I was like, I’m gonna put this out there, if it gets popular enough, it’ll speak for itself, and it did exactly that, because, uh, in, gosh, that was, that was right at, like, quarter one, quarter two of 2020, when, when they approached me, I think it was, actually it was, I think it was quarter two of 2020, and said, hey, we, uh, we are in a position where we need, we need music, where we need music, and, uh, we need it quickly, and would you be up to the task for this? They fully were, they knew what they were asking was, was a tall order, in a short period of time, and they said, you know, we can absolutely use the base game stuff, but we wanted to at least reach out and, and ask you, because we, we feel like we can trust you, cause I, I’d made relationships with, with, uh, with Marty, some light ones with Hugo, with Chad Mossholder, their sound guy, I knew all of those people by then, and, um, I was like, hey, you know what, it’s, it’s like 35 or 40 days, f*** it, we, let’s do it, it was like, this sounds like a challenge, I’m totally up for it, and, you know, I had to keep my composure the entire time, but in the inside I’m like, oh my god, you know, like, I’m working on an official DOOM game, uh, and when, but when we got done with that, like, I don’t know, it’s one of those weird moments where you go, holy cow, we went from, uh, you know, a mod project, uh, all the way to the official thing, and it’s just, it’s insane, it’s, it’s crazy, I keep running into those portions of my career, I hope they never stop, there are, something always surprises me like that.

TA: I think it’s safe to assume that a lot of people who tell you they love your music bring up Blood Swamps from DOOM Eternal’s DLC. Because I think every person I see on YouTube is like, everyone’s just doing Blood Swamps, it seems like the most popular thing and all, and for you that’s probably a weird feeling because you have this song which a lot of people love or something which you’re really proud of, but you can’t stream it or buy it legally. Can you comment on that in any form? What do you tell people who ask about buying your music from DOOM Eternal’s DLC?

laughs

AH: Well, Bethesda and id own all that stuff, they paid me well for it, so like I was happy to do all that, um, that’s not like a bullshit PR thing, like, for real, they took care of me. They own all that, so you know, if they, if they ever choose to put that stuff out, that would be awesome, I’d totally embrace it and get behind it with that, but sometimes studios do that, sometimes they don’t, and it’s just completely up to their call, but I will tell you that they have no problem with you, you know, grabbing it off YouTube or anything like that, so do that to your heart’s content, throw it on your phone, whatever you want to do, they just, they’re just glad that you like the stuff, and so am I, to be honest, but hey, hopefully one day we can get an official release, like, that would be cool.

TA: Yeah, because I have the DOOM 2016 vinyl soundtrack, and I’d love to have DOOM Eternal music on vinyl as well. Anyway that’s something I’ve been thinking about because it’s probably a difficult situation for you to be in, because people would who want to support you, like, obviously they can buy DOOM Eternal and buy the DLC and stuff like that, but it’s an unfortunate situation for fans, is all, like, I’ll leave it at that.

AH: It’s not really like a weird situation at all. I’m totally okay with whatever, Bethesda and id want to do with that, because they were completely up front, they’re like, we’re gonna own this, what we choose to do with that is…Yeah, yeah, and I was like, yeah, that’s fine, I just want to help, I want to make like, a cool DLC for everybody that’s stuck at home, and I want to write like, some kick-ass music for it. And, so there’s no feelings of like, you know, oh, this is weird because this isn’t out, or anything like that.

I know people are gonna rip it out of the game, I know, like, so do they, and like, that’s fine. But, you know, hopefully, I would like to see an official release one day, but that is completely up to them, and I will respect whatever they want to do, because they’ve been nothing but awesome.

TA: Now let’s just talk about Blood Swamps for a bit, because like, everyone loves the riffs and stuff like that, so, what was your thought process in creating that song? Did they ask you to make something that fit with the base game or tell you to just go wild and be Andrew with the music?

AH: They told me to go wild and just be me, which I was like, that felt pretty dangerous to me, because I was like, man, the, you know, what’s established here from Mick? I’m like, that’s pretty strong. Like, that’d be like somebody walking into another DUSK soundtrack, you know, like, for the Indie Shooter, and then being like, we’re gonna do all synthwave, you know, like, no, that’s not how that works. You have to serve what came before you. You have to show respect to what came before you. And that’s really important for the fans before anybody else. Doesn’t matter with an executive producer, doesn’t matter with the musician, doesn’t matter with the artist. It’s for the fans. Like, you have to make sure that whatever you’re going to do is going to, they’re gonna go, okay, cool, yeah, I understand, you know, why you chose this. So really, for me, looking at it when they were like, hey, you just be you, do whatever you want, what you think serves Doom the best. I was like, well, that’s a no-brainer. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna source some inspiration from 2016 and Eternal, and then write what I would want to write.

So, the colors that I’m painting with are familiar, but the writing that I’m using, what I’m using to paint, or the picture I’m painting is different. So there’s some familiarity there. Because, you know, like, Blood Swamps is quite a bit different than stuff that you would hear on 2016 or Eternal. It’s a little bit more, this is, uh, this is like almost like a traditional metal song. And like, in fact, uh, I remember handing that over to Chad the first time and him being like, “Oh, metal. Alright.” And I was like, “Really? That’s like, you’re surprised. But, um, the, uh, it’s just a little bit more almost traditional. But, um, yeah, there’s, like, it was nice having David and Chad to bounce stuff off of. Because where I would hand them something, like Blood Swamps was originally like just guitar, just, just bass, and just drums. And it started, I started adding things in at, uh, after talking to, um, to Chad and David quite a bit. Where they would be like, you know, “Have you thought about any sound design stuff?” I’m like, “Well, what did you, you know, what are you thinking? Show me the instruments that you’re working with and, you know, like, let’s just talk stuff out.”

We’d have like hour long conversations every single day. And we would all just learn from each other. It was, it was so cool. But, yeah, like Blood Swamps comes from a point, I just remember, I have to write something that if this is the only DOOM game I work on, it has to be just, like, way out there. Like, I have to, I have to, I have to just take my shot. And it has, I have to rip out all of the barriers that are like, “Hey, should I do this? Shouldn’t I do this? Who gives a f***?” Just, just just write the fastest, most aggressive thing that you can think of at this point in time, and we’ll go from there. And that’s what, that’s what Blood Swamps was. And then everything else came after it, I was like, “Okay.” It was like, “We can do different things now.” You know?

TA: I think you mentioned how you had a few weeks to do the DLC soundtrack, but because you had the support system of those two, it was all possible in the end. I think you mentioned that in one of the other interviews.

AH: Yeah, because David was handling, like, on the first DLC, he was handling the cutscene work, and he had his own, like, stuff where he was working on a boss, and a level, and then I got these two levels, so they split up the work evenly between us on both DLCs. And there’d be so many times where I’d call David or Chad and just be like, “Hey, how are you doing today?” You know? And one of us would be like, “Oh my God, I don’t know where to go.” You know? And we would just talk back and forth, and somehow we would give each other ideas. It was magical. Like, it was crazy. Just after talking to David, if I had nothing in my head on what I should write, after talking to David or to Chad, I’d be like, “I know what I need to do now.” It was cool.

TA: Going back to IDKFA a bit, you mentioned how much work you had to put into revisit and, like, Remaster the original soundtrack. What did you think about revisiting those songs? Like, did you feel like, you know, maybe I should have done something differently? Or were you like, “No, I’m happy with this. I just want to preserve it for fans of IDKFA.”

AH: Yeah, it was more of a, it was a little tiny bit of, “I want to do things a little differently.” But, like, I’m talking to really, really small degrees. It was more about preservation than anything else. And if something was being destructive while trying to preserve it, those were the things that I would try to eliminate. An example of that is there was a lot of compression on the original IDKFA. Just because I was still in my early 20s at that point, early to mid 20s at that point, mixing in an apartment that isn’t, like, acoustically sound or anything like that. So I’m making mix decisions that aren’t the greatest, but still hold up. Like, that album still sounds great, but just some of the compression side, like, on the master of it, is a little aggressive.

So when I went back this time around, I actually went through every single one of those songs one by one and just gave it a little bit more head room, a little bit more breathing room, so that if you listen to it enough times, you’re not going to get, like, ear fatigue or something like that. That’s really what I was concerned about. And that’s all of the Doom 1 stuff from the original IDKFA all got that treatment where the threshold has been raised just a little bit so that it sounds a little bit more open and natural. And I replaced a couple snares here and there, and maybe like a kick drum and a bass, but they’re so small I still haven’t seen anybody notice them.

TA: You should revisit Metallica’s St. Anger and do this for all the fans.

AH: It is impossible to fix that! laughs There’s been bands that have done that. I’ve re-recorded that entire record and I see it on YouTube every now and then. I’m like this is… this would have been a cool record if it would have sounded okay, and maybe some structure changes were different, but yeah, it’s whatever.

TA: I think when Metallica did Death Magnetic, they had the Guitar Hero Metallica stems which people used to mix it better than the actual album. How does this keep happening?

AH: James attests to it. Those guys are so big that they legitimately have final say on everything that they do. So whenever they’re touring and you already have Tinnitus and you’re mixing in a tent, I remember them talking about “Yeah, no shit, the guitars are bright.” I was listening to mixes in a tent and making mix decisions on the road. I’m like, “Oh, that makes a lot more sense now.” Like, oh my god. Because the Guitar Hero mixes do sound way better.

TA: This reminds me of when I watched Deafheaven and how amazing they sounded live. You have so many bands that release albums with brickwall mastering ruining the sound of an otherwise good album. It is a shame that some bands don’t get outside help for things like mastering.

AH: Yeah, it’s…I mean I still do my own mastering stuff so I’m the start and finish with all my stuff but I totally get it whenever I see a band that has a record that’s just completely smashed. I’m like, “Yeah.” If I was just a musician who really knew how to play guitar and that’s about it or really knew how to play drums and that’s about it, I understand how this happens. It’s just a bunch of guys in the room going, “Louder! This needs to be louder.” laughs

TA: So you revisited IDKFA’s original DOOM 1 music, but you also did almost a complete Doom II soundtrack. I think there was one track which was on YouTube or two tracks. When you were doing these new songs, how did it feel for you because now you’ve come so far ahead as a musician and did you feel tempted to make it a modern Andrew Hulshult album versus trying to be Doom II? How did you approach that?

AH: Man. This whole IDKFA thing with id’s blessing has been an incredible experience. It feels like I’m closing a chapter of my career with the fans because IDKFA is what got me so many jobs and so much recognition beforehand. Well, IDKFA and Rise of the Triad, but IDKFA was a big one and I still get people that are like devs that reach out that are like, “I know you from the DOOM stuff.” And I’m like, “What? DOOM Eternal?” They’re like, “No, IDKFA. I played that DOOM WAD.” And I’m like, “Oh my god.” So I still get jobs because of that. So whenever I sat down… Whenever Marty Stratton sent me an email about a year and a half ago to ask if I had time to sit down at QuakeCon last year and talk about some things, I was like, “Uh oh. Something’s either gone terribly wrong or he just wants to hang out.”

So we sat down and he was like, “Hey.” He’s like, “I have an idea.” And I was like, “What’s that?” He’s like, “What if we give you a license for the DOOM soundtrack for IDKFA so that you can put that out on all of the streaming platforms yourself and do whatever you want and you give us a license to do with what we’re working on, which was the DOOM and DOOM II remasters.” And I was like, “That sounds cool.” I was like, “I’d love to finally get that out on official sites and everything.” And he was like, “Oh, it’s awesome.” He’s like, “I was hoping you’d say that because this would just be so cool to have this as a selectable thing. Like to go from the Bobby Prince to this if people wanted to.” And I was like, “Yeah.” And I’ve been doing that with soundtracks recently anyways.

About halfway through that whole thing, we were just trading war stories about the industry and just getting along. And I was having a blast. I was thinking, “Man, this is really going to be closing a chapter in my career.” I was getting a little emotional. I was like, “I’ll tell you what.” I was like, “I’ll do you one better.” I was like, “Why don’t we finish DOOM II and make it the real deal?” People have asked for it forever. I’m like, “That would really poke my audience.” They’d be like, “Holy shit! Doom 2 is finally finished!” And he was like, “If you’re up for it, yeah, absolutely.” He’s like, “We’ll get you a license for anything that you do on that as well so that you can put that out as well.”

So, yeah. It was…walking into doing DOOM II was so much fun. Every step of the way. Adam Pyle, the guy that worked with me on Quake Champions, was the guy that I bounced all my mixes off of. He told me at the beginning, he said, “Hey, you know, do whatever you want.” He’s like, “It’s you. It’s the reason people want to listen to it, so I don’t really have much of a say.” I was like, “Bullshit!” I was like, “You worked with me on Quake Champions. I’m going to bounce every mix that I do off of you, and I want to hear feedback from you.” It’s like, “I respect your opinion because we got stuff like we did on Quake Champions because we talked back and forth.” So we did. I’d send him… I’d finish Running from Evil and send it to him, and he’d go, “This sounds great, or, you know, like, what if you did this?” It was only a couple times where he was like, “What if you did this?” I was like, “Oh!” They were always cool ideas. But I really respect Adam’s ability to throw out things every now and then. He’s just a great person to bounce mixes off of. So, just doing those one after another and getting to the end of it.

Once it was all wrapped up, I’m not going to lie, once it was all together, I was just in my office and I was like, “Oh my god!” Having a moment where I had a grown man cry where I was like, “I can’t believe that this is happening. I can’t believe that, number one, I’m going to be part of the original DOOM in an official capacity. Number two, they’re going to ask me to talk at QuakeCon, like, live on stage and announce everything. And number three, they gave me a license for all this stuff so that I can put it out and I can actually make some money off of it. That doesn’t happen with a big studio. They don’t just go, “Here’s the soundtrack. Have fun.”

I don’t know. It’s just still so crazy. It hasn’t really sunk in for me still. I’m still in that weird spot where I’m like, “Yeah, this is out there. We’re promoting it.” And once that’s over, I’m sure I’ll be like, “Oh my god.” You know, like, “Holy cow.” But it’s been fun.

The DOOM II stuff, I wanted it to be something a little bit more fresh on where I’m at as an artist. I didn’t want it to be exactly like IDKFA, like the original DOOM I stuff. Because if I were to do that, I’d have to go back and completely remix all of DOOM I stuff, which I was like, “No, that has to be preserved. People know what that is.” So you can’t touch that. That’s already done. So I thought, “Okay, well what if I just gave them how I would do DOOM II right now?” Which is exactly what it is. All that stuff is like, “Yeah, f*** yeah.” Those are the exact decisions that I would make with synths, with guitars, with drums. I think everything slams. I think it sounds great. So it’s just a picture from 2011, 2012 with the original IDKFA. It got officially released in 2016, but it started working on it as far back as back. So it’s a picture of where I was as a musician, that far back. And then this one is a picture of 2024. So you get it’s kind of like a time capsule.

TA: Was The Healer Stalks one of the new songs because it definitely feels like modern Andrew Hulshult?

AH: Yeah, that was the second one written. I think I almost went in chronological order doing that entire soundtrack.

TA: You and I have both been playing DOOM since the 90s. When I started learning guitar and playing a lot, I started thinking about the DOOM soundtrack and some of the songs definitely have bits that remind me of other band music like Pantera. When you did IDKFA and just heard the music in general, what did you think of that and how does it feel revisiting some of those songs now? Stuff like A New Level and This Love from Pantera instantly spring to mind.

laughs

AH: Yeah. Some of that stuff’s pretty close. Like sometimes, right? But it’s different enough where you’re like, oh, okay. Yeah. But yeah, there’s definitely some inspirations that were taken from like thrash metal for sure. Because I mean, like they always talked about Romero having on like Slayer and Metallica and all that stuff like playing while they were making the game. So it only makes sense that they’re like, you know, hey, make something similar around this. I don’t know exactly how that story went. I wasn’t there. I was like, you know, I was like four. But that makes complete sense in my head. And yeah, going back and listening to them like, yeah, it’s there somewhere in the ballpark of it for sure. Like

TA: So after DOOM II, have you gotten people saying, when are we getting an IDKFA version of Quake and stuff? Because you did one song, right?

AH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did the theme. I think I did that just for fun. And I think I honestly did that as people were, I saw a bunch of forum posts. It was either forum posts or Discord about people not sure like about me on DUSK of all things. Like it wasn’t even like a fully announced game, but they were like, “I’m not sure Andrew”. And I was like, OK, you know what? I was like, f*** you. I’ll just remake the Quake theme. And then you’ll see if I’m the right person for the f***ing job. laughs And so I put that out and people were like, oh, and I remember like a bunch of the comments were like, oh yeah, okay, he can work on DUSK.

TA: Do you listen to that soundtrack often? The original Quake?

AH: Oh, man. I don’t listen to it. Listen to it. But like every time I go fire up Quake, which is about like once twice a year. A little more than that if I’m playing multiplayer with friends. That’s the thing I look forward to the most besides like the level design is the soundtrack just because it’s so out there. Reznor did such a good job on that. It’s incredible. God, I wish it’s a pipe dream, but I’d love to work with him on something and Atticus Ross on something at some point. That would be crazy. But they’re like way up there, you know.

TA: Their movie soundtracks are amazing. I’ve actually been watching some of the movies just because they’ve done the music because I think the audio design in The Social Network is incredible. I think they did like the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing, which I still need to watch.

AH: It’s so cool when artists step out of their comfort zone like that, where it’s like you’re known for like you’re angry and depressing music and then it’s like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s like now I’m interested. Yeah.

TA: Going back to your music, we covered Blood Swamps being the most popular song which people bring up when they meet you and stuff. I saw this interview with Final Fantasy 14’s composer Masayoshi Soken who was asked about a song which he really liked, but no one actually brings up, and that he thinks deserves more attention. He said Game Theory. I want to know what’s that for Andrew Hulshult.

AH: Splitting Time. Like whenever you brought that up, I was like, oh yeah, from the AMID EVIL DLC. I mean like it’s well it’s DLC. So like by nature, DLC doesn’t get as much attention, you know. But like the AMID EVIL DLC altogether before I talk about the music, the DLC is incredible. Like that’s my that’s one of my favorite things I’ve worked on like in recent memory. Like all the music’s great. Like it was , it was a joy to put it all together. All the sound design, all the traps and everything. It’s just an incredible DLC. If you don’t have it, you should go get it. That’s not me shilling and just oh go buy the game. Like it’s f***ing awesome. They did an incredible job.

TA: Everyone should buy that game and DLC.

AH: Well, I don’t want to look like a shill. If you like it, you like it. Like if you don’t, if you don’t dig it, don’t buy it. You know we’re not not here to like, you know try and sell a bunch of stuff.

But like splitting time finishing up that piece of music. It felt like a real moment where I don’t know. I felt like kind of a shift as an artist where I was. I was way more comfortable with a lot of the more aggressive sound design elements being mixed in with compositions and finding ways to make them gel better. And everything really came together on that track and out whenever halfway through I was like, this is the final boss track. I was like I don’t care what you’re designing. I’m like, this is the final boss track. And you know, two seconds after they started listening to it, they’re like, oh yeah, this is the final boss track. We hadn’t even made the character yet. I was just like, here it is. That one hung around for a long time. And yeah, that’s I feel like that song is very much a good indicator of where I am musically right now.

TA: Now let’s get a bit into the weeds. Let’s talk about your current guitar setup, your pedals, your amps, string gauge, pickups, I want to know whatever you’re using.

AH: So the guitar I’m using the most is a Caparison Dellinger 7. I actually just had a pickup swap on it where I put some Seymour Duncans. I think I put an SH5 in the bridge and an SH2 in the neck on this one. Specifically because the SH5 on it has a really interesting thing where it doesn’t emphasize the low mids a whole bunch but they still cut through really well. So whenever you’re sitting there and like, you know, like chugging on stuff and you have to track that four times, it just sits a lot better in the mix than if you were to just use like stock pickups. There’s nothing wrong with Caparison stock pickups. They’re great. They’re super, super punchy. But for my mixing style I just, I know what I want in terms of pickups so I just, I swap those out.

I also did the same thing actually last week with the 8 string. This is a Caparison Brocken 8 string. I don’t think they make this anymore. I swapped out the pickups on this one as well to a gosh, what is it? It’s Duncan. They’re really, really famous 8 string pickups by Duncan. And I can’t remember what they’re called now.

TA: I didn’t know Seymour Duncan even had 8 string pickups.

AH: They do 8 and like, I was originally going to get some Fishman Fluences for it because they seem like they would hold the top end in the midrange a little bit better but after I don’t know, I’ve just always been a Seymour Duncan guy. And after finding a couple that I really liked at a shop called Tone Shop up the street from me. I was like, man, I really want to put these in my 8 string and they have a tech there that’s just incredible at what he does with all my guitars. So I was just like, hey, order those and I’ll just leave the guitar with you and like a week later they came back and I was like, yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted, sounds incredible.

I’ve got my Caparison 7 and 8, and I still have all the guitars that I’ve had over the years for the most part. I’ve got another Schecter 8 string here that is a really cool color. It’s super neat, like, it actually changes from blue to purple.

TA: I think it is called Prism or something like that. John Petrucci has something like that on one of his guitars.

AH: But yeah, this one has like the EMGs in it and it’s a cool guitar. It still plays great. Like, I still like it. But let me show you something that’s actually pretty sweet. So I still have, I bought this in like 2004. And I still have it. This is the guitar that I actually wrote all of IDKFA or most of it on and I wrote all of, I tracked all of Rides of the Triad with. It’s just a Schecter C6. It’s like just stock. It even still has the plastic in the back which is crazy. But yeah, this is like, I still have this guitar. I was like I was so close to going up to id, like which is just on the street for me and being like after IDKFA was finished, I almost was just like, here, you guys, you need this. You know, like, hold on to this or something. Like this is the one. But like, I don’t know. It’s not like a mainline DOOM game, you know? Like, it has to be something like a mainline game where I’d be like, I wrote this on this guitar here. You know, if you want this, it feels like it belongs to you. And also, part of me is like, no, don’t do that. Like, hang on to it.

TA: Ok now string gauges.

AH: For string gauges, 10 to 59 on 7 strings. And on 8 strings, I think it’s 10 to 65. And then typically on 6 strings, I just like 10 to 46.

TA: Do you use D’Addario strings? I use them mostly.

AH: I use D’Addario for the most part, but I bounce back and forth sometimes to Ernie Ball.

TA: What about your amp setup and your pedals and stuff like that?

AH: So amps, I’ve sold almost every amp I’ve ever owned. I had a JC-120. I had a couple of those Crate Blue Voodoos way back in the day. The ones that were like, yeah, the ones that were, were basically copies of those Ampeg tube amps that they made a long time ago. I had a Valve State 8100. I had a bunch of amps and a bunch of VHT cabinets as well too. And I sold all of them years ago. I’ve really just been like working inside the box for the most part with like neural DSP plugins into an RME interface and I also went as far as getting one of these recently, which is a Neural DSP Quad Cortex. So basically this is all of their plugins built into like a really nice processor. But for a project I’m working on recently they were like, hey you need an amp. And I was like, yeah, you’re probably right. I do need an amp. So I went and bought this and I plug it into two 100 watt Seymour Duncan power stages. Okay.

They’re like, they’re these little tiny like 100 watt power amplifiers. They’re solid state power amplifiers. And I run the stereo out from that thing into the left and right side of those and those go into two Engel 2×12 cabinets. Which, okay, Engel 2×12 cabinets are awesome. Ever since I heard a Rammstein record that used them I always wanted to grab one because I was like, god, those things sound huge.

TA: I wasn’t sure about this because a friend of mine said he was sure AMID EVIL was recorded on an Axe FX Ultra.

AH: Any guitar stuff I’ve done has used either Native Instruments Guitar Rig from way back in the day. Like IDKFA used a ton of Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 and Guitar Rig 4. But pretty much everything since DUSK has used Neural DSP for guitar work. It’s just me plugging directly into my RME UFX and sometimes I’ll use pedals going into it like the Exotic BB Preamp but most of the time it’s just a dry DI signal getting manipulated inside the box.

So, the ones that got the most use on DUSK were the Moogerfooger low pass filter. Believe it or not, like anytime you hear the sound of something becoming kind of lo-fi or anything. It was always run through this filter. It was pretty cool. But the thing I like about it the most is the drive circuit on it. Like I don’t even like it that much as like a filter filter. The drive section on it is just so aggressive that it’s a really interesting sound and like that sound that you hear on the DUSK soundtrack which is like all of the really high high end that’s like really high energy. It’s almost like the Nine Inch Nails stuff. A ton of that comes just from driving the front end of this thing. And same way with the Fulltone Catalyst. But yeah, it’s just a few of them. I think there’s one more that I use a lot. I don’t think I have it here. It’s the ZVEX Fuzz Factory which is just an insane sounding pedal. It just sounds like garbage. And that’s why I like it. It just sounds like you are destroying a signal which is perfect. I’m cool. That sounds cool. That’s a great effect. I like that.

TA: You’ve accomplished a lot in your career so far with recognizable music. As a musician, how have you been learning to improve your own skills like programming drums, software, and how do you balance doing that while you have a lot of folks who want to work with you on new projects?

AH: Every day is just like I don’t know. If you’re not teaching yourself something every day, this is my train of thought. If I’m not trying to sound better in my own head, whatever I think is better, I’m wasting my time. So if I feel like the drum kit I’ve used like two or three times on two to three different records, if I’m like that feels stale. If I then go if it feels stale and I know the ends and outs of it and how to make it sound good then I need to change that drum kit. I need to find something different and work with it and see if I can get some different sounds out of it. So I’ll change instruments and just purposefully put myself in positions where I don’t know where I’m at or what sounds good with it just so that I can find my way out of it.

It’s kind of like limiting yourself, like putting yourself in a box that’s really important as an artist to make sure that you are working within a certain scope of things and going hey, you know, here’s something that’s completely unfamiliar, get used to it and this is what you have to work with. So, yeah, like I don’t know, just constantly challenging myself is part of who I am for the most part. So, it’s just how it always goes.

TA: I’m glad you brought that specific bit up because in another interview of yours you mentioned how once you got to your thirties the most important thing became getting good sleep which a lot of people take for granted in their twenties. So my question is that trying to have a routine is very important even if you can’t stick to it 100%. What does a day in your life look like right now?

AH: A day right now looks like about, a typical day is about anywhere between 6 to 7 hours of sleep which is about what I need I’ve found out, like it’s like somewhere around there, sometimes 8 and then randomly I’ll have days where it’s like, oh you need like 11 hours I don’t know why, but I feel fine waking up completely recharged with like 6 and a half to 7 and a half hours of sleep. So what I’ll do every morning is I’ll wake up, I’ll go take a shower immediately, like that’s the only way I can start my day is like I feel like I’ve got to it feels like I’m washing off yesterday I don’t know how else to explain that and then I gotta have a coffee and then I gotta start writing things on a whiteboard that’s right over beside me to the left because otherwise I’m just gonna spin my wheels all day long and think, oh I should do this, I should do that, I’ll be thinking about everything I need to do and then never actually do anything. I don’t know if that’s ADD, ADHD or whatever that’s undiagnosed, I’m sure it is to some degree which I’ll get to that at some point but until then I have the whiteboard and as long as I write stuff down on it on what I want to do that day, I’ll knock it all out, every single piece of it. But what’s super important for me to do is just plan out the day early on and then everything just comes to it afterwards.

The other thing that’s kind of new for me too is around like 4 o’clock typically I’ll now try and do, this has been within the last 3.5 months, I’ll try and do about 20 to 30 minutes of cardio. Just because I feel like for some reason elevating my heart rate really takes me from hey I could focus before to now I’m super laser focused and can get through whatever I need to and it also puts me in a much better mood if I’m having a shit day.

TA: You’ve previously mentioned that you love playing Cities Skylines. Did you play Cities Skylines 2?

laughs

AH: Yeah, but you know like I haven’t gone back to it yet. I need to try it again at some point. But oh boy like it needed some more time in the oven whenever I tried it. Like no offense to them. I was just like wow.

TA: I mean you probably tried it on like your proper gaming PC. I just like to play Steam games on a Steam Deck and I could get it at 5 fps or something after a bit of playing.

AH: Even with the 3080 I think I was at points I was sitting there at like 35 frames a second. I’m like really? With the 3080? This is where we’re at huh? Okay.

TA: Do you still play Hunt: Showdown and did you try the new Hunt: Showdown 1896 update?

AH: Yeah. They had some really interesting choices with their UI that they just pushed with this one that a lot of people aren’t in favor of. I’m getting a little more used to it as time goes on. But man there are some things they need to hammer out with it. But yeah I still play that like a couple times a week with my buddies in New Blood. Like with Dylan who’s working on Gloomwood. I’ll play it with David every now and then. I’ll play it with Mason who’s the developer on Faith. Like we’re all, just like we all just hang out. We’re all just friends. So Leon, me and Leon play it I think the most. Leon’s the lead on AMID EVIL. But yeah like New Zealand and America playing an online fps game is a wild thing but we have a great time doing it.

TA: Before we wrap up, I want to know your favorite bands and artists right now in and out of video games.

AH: I’m pretty boring on this one to be honest with you. I need to branch out a little more. Favorite bands outside of video games right now like for sure and they’ve sat there for a while is Gojira. I really like their mixing. I like how tight they are live. I like their choices on composition. I don’t feel like they write a bad song. I could throw out the obvious ones. Metallica is another one just because James Hetfield’s right hand is like what inspired me to play guitar. Like how fast you can do those things is crazy.

Outside of or in video games I’d still say I still think and it’s going to be a weird choice because you’re like well you write all this aggressive music. What is Jesper Kyd? That guy is just like great on everything he touches and everything he touches is always unique. But I always go back to his early stuff like the Hitman franchise because it’s just so strange and like it really suits those early games really well. If you listen to it outside of it, it feels like a really weird cold kind of soundtrack. Even from the very first game which has a lot of interesting things like almost drum and bass choices. It still feels like a cold front.

You know, like a Hitman. And I always just find that stuff fascinating. How he was able to take so many different genres of music between all those games and still make them fit correctly for that character. So yeah and I think he worked on the Darktide stuff more recently which I need to give a listen to. Everybody’s told me that’s incredible but I don’t know I was knee deep in like four active developments whenever that game came out. So I just haven’t given it a chance.

TA: Hypothetical situation, if you had no time or budget constraints, if you could compose for any single game and any single movie which would you pick?

AH: So let’s see for any game if it had the right direction I’d really like to take a shot at like a Duke game. Because I feel like that is an IP that could be brought back if it’s brought back in the right way. And you have to think that’s really going to be dictated by whoever the creative production is at the time. So if it was done in the right way I’d love to step into that.

Either that or I’m going to throw another one out to you. I’d love to work on Minecraft. Just like chill out you know. Like just make something that’s completely chill. So those are completely two opposite sides of the spectrum.

But as far as a movie, man, that’s a great question. Let me think about it for just a second. Man on Fire. Like I love Denzel Washington’s work as number one: as an action hero I think he’s great. But number two whenever he is able to have enough time to put drama into things. And like either I don’t know how else to explain it other than he does a f***ing crazy fantastic job.

Either Man on Fire or American Gangster. One of those two soundtracks I think I could do would be great to work on. Because there’s so many different emotions between both of those films. It’s a big roller coaster that doesn’t go up and down once. It goes up and down and does like a loop. And like you know, it takes you side to side. Like both of those films do that really well.
01:48:40.760 –> 01:48:42.760

TA: You have a lot of bands you’ve been listening to for a long time like Metallica. What are your thoughts on their recent or new albums?

AH: I can find things I like on like the records that they put out because like I’m a die hard. Even with this last Megadeth record. I could still find stuff that I like I can chew on. No problem. Absolutely. But you know these guys aren’t going to write like another Master of Puppets. That comes around once in a lifetime. You know what I mean? And they struck it four times. Like with Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and …And Justice for All. So like to even just get that is crazy. But I do find things that I like on all their newer stuff. Like I think What was the 2016 record that they had? Hardwired to Self Destruct. Yeah I think that that actually had some real moments of really really good writing on it.

Specifically the last track. I felt like Hardwired was a great track. But I also thought Moth into the Flame was written super well. There’s a handful of just really really really good writing on that record. On 72 Seasons, there’s still a handful that I really like. But they don’t sync as much for me. And I’m not sure if it’s because I’m looking for something faster or not. Which that’s just not where they’re at at the moment. That’s not what they’re writing. And that’s okay. I will say the last track on that record I feel like is perfect. It’s so good. I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head at the moment. I’m terrible with song names sometimes. It’s crazy. It’s like 11 minutes and it feels like a 5 minute and 30 second song. I remember listening to it the first time. I was like gosh. There’s so much emotion thrown into this song that it’s just a joy to listen to. I love it when I can tell that someone really dumped all their emotions onto something. That’s when it really strikes a chord for me.

But yeah even the last stuff from Slayer, there’s things that I can find that I enjoy. but I know I’m not going to get the revolutionary record that we had growing up. That’s okay. I’m just glad they’re still making music. And it’s still pretty sick.

TA: What’s the most random piece of music memorabilia that you’ve held onto for a long time?

AH: I had a friend that I worked with a long time ago who fell on hard times at one point and he was friends and and like worked with Pantera for a long time. And he was like man he’s like I’m trying to get rid of this stuff I’m like why don’t you just hold on to it and like like here’s here’s you know here’s some cash if you need some cash to get by. He’s like no no no he’s like you hold on to it just pay me for it. I was like okay so I’ve got this vinyl of the Great Southern Trendkill that’s one of the original vinyl releases, but I also have a plaque that came like it was given to one of their either their sound or their lighting crew at one point and it’s like for the tour in Japan for the Great Southern Trendkill that same time. And I was like where did you get this you know like what the hell. And he’s like yeah we just you know had him and I knew the guy and he had like five or six of them that they gave him by accident so he gave me one. I was like oh okay all right. So I have both of those things in my closet they’ve hung out with me for like gosh I want to say 15 16 17 years now but those old ones will never go away.

Some people keep expensive booze in a decanter. Teah and I keep home made cold brew coffee. pic.twitter.com/7DJlgWcjaB

— Andrew Hulshult (@AndrewHulshult) October 10, 2020

TA: Ok for my last question, how do you like your coffee? I usually ask this at the end, but I remember an old Tweet of yours (linked above) made me even more curious about your answer.

AH: Yeah man I like the cold brew stuff. I loved hot coffee forever but like cold brew I don’t know the longer I go the easier it is to just sit on a desk and sip on. I don’t have to be like that’s hot. I can just be like no we’re just getting all of the caffeine all at once if I want to. So cold brew coffee. Cold brew black.

I’d like to thank Andrew Hulshult for his time and help with this interview over the last few weeks.

You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.

Over the years, I’ve been able to interview some of my favorite developers ever including a few I never though would be possible, but it isn’t often I get to talk to one of the few people responsible for what is likely my favorite game of all time. That’s where Christopher Ortiz AKA kiririn51 of Sukeban Games comes into the picture. We’ve covered their titles on TouchArcade for years because at one point VA-11 Hall-A was even supposed to come to iPad (and I asked about that later in this interview). With Sukeban Games’ newest project, .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, officially announced, I had a chance to have a long chat with Christopher Ortiz about the game, fan reactions, VA-11 Hall-A, inspirations, Suda51, The Silver Case, and also coffee of course.

TouchArcade (TA): Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Sukeban Games.

Christopher Ortiz (CO): I’m Chris, I’m a game creator and I do way too much in this company. I like to hang out with friends and eat delicious food when I’m not locked in.

TA: I last spoke to you in 2019 around the time VA-11 Hall-A hit PS4 and Switch following its prior release on PS Vita and its debut on PC. Even back then, as a fan of the game, it was wild seeing so much merchandise and promotion in Japan. You recently visited Japan for Bitsummit. How has it been for you visiting Japan and seeing the reception to VA-11 Hall-A and now your new project, .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND?

CO: Japan is like my home away from home even if its government doesn’t like it, so that’s a homecoming for me. Very emotionally charged. I also haven’t been at a game event as an exhibitor since Tokyo Game Show 2017; that was 7 years ago. That’s 7 years of roaming game events and being like “I want that” “I want some of this energy”. Now I feel like a pro-wrestler that’s coming out of retirement to a brand new world and industry; I’m lost, confused, not knowing if I still have it… but I was worried about nothing. People didn’t forget about us and still support the studio no matter what, so I’m never taking shit for granted, or letting these memories slip away. This will be my fuel to move forward.

TA: I consider VA-11 Hall-A one of my favorite games of all time, and I replay it each holiday season. When you worked on it many years ago, did you ever expect to see it grow this big and even get multiple figures with a new one coming for Jill soon?

CO: I didn’t expect the game to sell more than 10-15k copies, but we definitely knew we had something special brewing, or else we wouldn’t have pushed through with it. It’s just that the scale of said success was a little overwhelming and I think we’re still recovering from some of its unexpected side-effects.

TA: VA-11 Hall-A is now playable on PC, Switch, PS Vita, PS4, PS5 (through back compatibility). Whatever happened to that iPad version that was announced years ago? Are ports like that up to Ysbryd or do you also have some involvement? I’d love to see it hit Xbox as well if that’s possible.

CO: I actually playtested a build for iPad but it didn’t go anywhere for whatever reason. Maybe I failed to respond to an email. You’d have to ask the publisher.

TA: Many years ago, Sukeban Games were just Kiririn51 (yourself) and IronincLark (Fer). How has the team changed since then?

CO: We’re currently six people. Some have come and go, but overall we want to keep a small and tight operation.

TA: Leading into this question -> How has it been working with MerengeDoll?

CO: Merenge’s a trooper. She has this supernatural ability to pull ideas directly out of my brain and give them visual shape, so it’s always been a pleasure to work with her. It sucks that some of the projects she was working on as main artist got canned for reasons beyond our power, but it is what it is. The day will come when people will get to see Merenge’s true power. There’s still a lot of Merengedoll in 45pb so that’s cool as hell.

TA: Can you talk about how it was working with Garoad on the music on VA-11 Hall-A? Just like the game, the soundtrack is one of my favorites ever.

CO: Michael and I always had similar music tastes and influences, so the process was very free-form. He’d make a track, and I’d love the shit out. Repeat the process until the soundtrack is ready to go. Sometimes I would send him a song I liked as a reference, sometimes he’d create a completely original song that would inspire images in the game, then the images would inspire more music. This synergy gave the game a firm identity that stands the test of time in my opinion.

TA: I didn’t realize it until recently, but VA-11 Hall-A kind of became one of those indie games that had a very vocal fanbase and got a good amount of merch that keeps selling out. I think the vinyl box sets are also on multiple pressings now and that SLUT shirt keeps selling out. A good friend of mine recently bought it as well. How much input do you have in the merchandise? Is there anything you want to see made that hasn’t happened yet?

CO: I don’t have much input on merch creation. I mostly give the thumbs up or down once a whole chain of people already made the hard choices beforehand. Would like to be a little more involved for 45pb now that I know what I’m dealing with.

TA: I still have a few more questions before getting to your new game. Let’s go back to 2019 for a second. Playism’s JP release of VA-11 Hall-A included a fantastic art book cover. I really wish I could get that piece of art signed by you and framed. Can you talk about the inspiration for it and how you pay homage to your favorites like that in your work?

CO: Back when I drew that cover I was going through really tough times; even though I hadn’t fully realized yet. We were very focused on surviving the collapse of our country and many other things.

During this time, at our old office, we’d listen to a lot of Gustavo Cerati; his album Bocanada to be more precise and its tunes managed to keep us going in the face of uncertainty. So when I was asked to draw a new piece for the artbook I couldn’t help but pay homage to it. I admit now that it’s a little too overt and I would do it differently now, but I’m still proud of it. In fact, I’ve been reconsidering my approach to inspirations a lot in the past few years, and this will be obvious once people play 45pb.

TA: You and Fer have spoken a lot about VA-11 Hall-A over the years, but I cannot pass up a chance to talk about how amazingly written and designed the characters are. Looking back at the work you put into it, did you expect certain characters to become as popular as they did?

CO: I expected Stella to be the most popular one since her gifs would often go viral before release, but you can never predict this sort of thing. And it’s like I said before; I sort of knew certain things were gonna be a hit, I’m just unable to properly articulate why I thought that way or why it worked, and at this point I rather not know. The moment a hunch becomes a science the magic disappears. Formulas are terrible in this line of work. You gotta let things flow; Let them become their own beautiful thing.

TA: I’ve joked with friends about how N1RV Ann-A is my “Silksong”, but I have no problem waiting as long as it takes. I still enjoy revisiting VA-11 Hall-A often. Do you go back and try out whatever you had done for N1RV Ann-A or VA-11 Hall-A while working on unrelated projects?

CO: I like jotting down lore and characterization stuff for a rainy day. I love to draw Sam, I love coming up with new designs, characters; playing around with the general looks of the game, ideas for shots during cinematics; one liners, environments, atmosphere. I even like to imagine “what if this didn’t have to be a bartending game?” and other extreme musings, but that’s about the extent of the mindspace I dedicate to it currently.

Once we’re done with 45pb Nirvana’s development will pick up dramatically, though that really depends on if the spark is still there by then. So far it has no signs of extinguishing.

TA: As a huge Suda fan myself, I’m curious what you thought of No More Heroes 3 and Travis Strikes Again? As much as I love No More Heroes 3 (more than 11 playthroughs), I think Travis Strikes Again might just be Suda’s most “Suda” game yet.

CO: I REALLY like No More Heroes 3’s combat, but I wasn’t a fan of its writing. Maybe it was COVID, and game development is really tough; especially with the hardcore deadlines they had. But in general I think it wanted to be one thing at the start and then had to become another in order to be shipped. It’s a shame, and it is what it is. I just hope they only make new original games from now on and forget about sequels and reboots. Re-releases are OK; especially of the lost media kind, like Frog Minutes or the 25th Ward back in the day.

As for Travis Strikes Again, I agree it’s the best of the newer games. Feels like reading someone’s diary sometimes and that’s the kinda art I enjoy. I guess I didn’t see much of that in 3 outside of continuing some plot threads from TSA.

TA: What are your thoughts on Grasshopper Manufacture under Netease and the remasters announced? Suda even mentioned today that he’d love to bring Flower Sun and Rain to Steam.

CO: Netease is a big corporation so my hope would be that Grasshopper gets all the money and time they need to cook.

TA: VA-11 Hall-A’s journey from PC to PS Vita was quite something, and it involved many parties across regions. I remember buying the Japanese release just for the box art with no English included for publisher reasons. When it came to Switch and PS4, I think you wanted the JP release to have English so anyone could import it. How has it been for you now in Argentina trying to get your own game’s merchandise and merchandise in general? It is a pain over here with delays and extra import fees.

CO: I simply don’t import anything these days. I don’t wanna bother with Argentinian customs. Protectionist policies are stupid. Sure, make all electronics more expensive to import so the local market has a chance to compete, but there’s no Argentinian PlayStation to compete with, is there? There’s no Argentinian Steam, and so on. Only idiots come up with this sorta policy. Brazil does the same shit as well. Would be cool if they stopped.

TA: You’ve worked in PC-98 and PSX aesthetics a few times. When .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND was announced, I was floored by how it looked like the perfect game I’d want from you. The reception has been largely positive, but I can’t imagine what you and the team went through leading into its reveal with N1RV Ann-A and such. Can you talk about how the last few months have been for yourself?

CO: We’ve been locked in and doing our thing. No crunch, all fun. We party, we feast, we travel. We touch that proverbial grass. Lots of insecurities and self-doubt for sure. We even tried to downplay things and manage expectations before the reveal, bracing ourselves for possible apathy from the crowd because it’s not Nirvana. But when it came to actually putting in the work there was no hesitation. I’m happy the announcement worked out, but now we gotta buckle up and finish the story.

TA: .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND has been revealed, people can wishlist it on Steam, and I immediately thought of Vagrant Story x Sukeban Games’ Vibe when I saw the trailer. How has it been interacting with fans discussing it online and offline?

CO: It’s been incredibly fun, even though there’s so many comparisons with old games. Not that I mind but there’s been some ridiculous comments out there that boggle the mind.

One thing that surprised me was the amount of fanart right after the reveal. That shit was great. A fan even brought us a drawing that we proudly displayed on our table at Bitsummit for everybody to see.

Our crown jewel

By @TumugiV !!! Thank you as always!!!!! pic.twitter.com/N1hbLMY25Q

— Sukeban Games (@SukebanGames) July 21, 2024

TA: Probably too soon but when can I buy the key art as a poster and get it signed?

CO: Maybe on release.

TA: What were your main inspirations for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND from a visual and gameplay perspective?

CO: When coming up with the actual gameplay for 45PB there was a unique concern. People know Sukeban as a Visual Novel/ADV developer because of Va11halla, and I wanted a sort of bridge between that audience and something more action-focused. I saw Parasite Eve’s battle system, but instead of saying “I want more of that” I thought “This is a good solution to my predicament” thanks to the hybrid of real time and turn-based gameplay. And that’s pretty much the way we work. Rather than wanting to imitate something, or wanting more of it, I look to games of the past in order to solve modern problems. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time.

For the visuals, I remember roaming the streets of Milan in 2019. I was ultra depressed, and didn’t actually have a country to live in at the time so I was also in a state of limbo. The mix of modern structures and old buildings, then juxtaposed to all the neon lights and LED screens along the river had my imagination running wild. For me that was the genesis for the game’s look.

This marriage between the old, the new and the decadent. The cherry on top was when I moved to Buenos Aires and found a similar atmosphere, except it included that South American roughness and texture that’s absent in Cyberpunk worlds (which tend to be mostly inspired by east asian aesthetics), so I decided to lean on that to create something unique.

TA: Tell us a little bit about the team working on it including the composer, and how long it has been in the works.

CO: We’re two people working on it day-to-day (me and the programmer), plus Merenge helping with additional character and production design. The composer this time around is Juneji, who has been doing a LOT of work with us over the years. We have this massive stash of incredible music that he’s made, but it remains unfortunately private due to circumstances with failed projects. Same with Merenge’s art.

There’s been some hella demoralizing moments since it’s hard to work on things for so long, pouring your soul into them only to see them crumble in front of you, but we’ve remained a tight group over the years and one of my goals is that the world can finally witness their talents on a large stage. I owe them that much. We also added an old friend in a producer/babysitting role and it’s helped us to not neglect important non-game stuff.

As for how long it’s been in development: Technically since 2019 but the current iteration is roughly 2 years old. Before that it was all experiments until we arrived at the right “moment to moment” gameplay.

TA: .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND had a teaser, gameplay, and now has a steam page. Are there any plans to offer a demo on PC in any of Valve’s demo fests on Steam in the near future?

CO: It’d be a pain in the ass to maintain a demo for this particular game so we rather keep those for offline events. Never say never though.

TA: A lot of my friends who love VA-11 Hall-A are excited for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND. Will it be accessible for everyone or is it too soon to say how the difficulty will be handled?

CO: It’s too soon to explain, but as I’ve mentioned before, the battle system itself is meant to be a bridge between vibes-based players and action-oriented players. Not that I’m trying to satisfy both, but rather ease one type of player into a new system.

TA: What is your favorite aspect of .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND right now?

CO: As a game? definitely the atmosphere and the script. I sometimes play it for leisure on my Steam Deck while tryna sleep and wonder “Damn, what’s gonna happen next?” only to be like “you wrote this shit! you know where it goes!”. Also the combat is fun as hell once it opens up after the first chapter. Chaining skills and upping the tempo of combat after pulling off sick tricks makes for addictive gameplay. This will make sense later unless we fumble it.

TA: Can you give us an interesting development / design anecdote for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND and VA-11 Hall-A?

CO: So I mentioned the influences of cities like Milan and Buenos Aires in the creation 45PB’s world, but one thing that people might have noticed by looking at very early screenshots was that it used to feature some locales reminiscent of Hong Kong. I actually scrapped a lot, if not all of it, in favor of the “South American Cyberpunk” I’m aiming for after a conversation I had with a friend from China.

I was consulting with him about getting the fonts and the text of the billboards just right so it felt authentic, but then my mind broke and I began asking to myself “Why go through all this effort trying to be authentic when I can just leverage my own culture?” and it’s a sort of mantra I’ve been following ever since. I find terms like “cultural appropriation” silly, but the word “appropriation” by itself is something I’ve been contending with a lot. “Is it my place to tell this type of story?” “Is it okay if these characters speak this or that way?” and so on. Not that it limits my creativity or that I’m afraid of hurting sensibilities; I frankly don’t give a shit. I just think that more original works can be born if we leverage what makes us unique instead of trying to make more of what we like. It’s all about balance.

TA: Since the announcement, you’ve no doubt had folks asking for a console version when we don’t even have a release year for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, but I wanted to know if there was any thought into working with a publisher or will this be self-published?

CO: We want to self-publish on PC and let other companies handle consoles. We’re in the process of finding the right partner for this.

TA: What were the inspirations behind Reila Mikazuchi’s design and character?

CO: I don’t know if I’ll get in trouble for this but I admire actor and singer Meiko Kaji a lot.

I love her movies, you name them: Prisoner Scorpion, Stray Cat Rock, Lady Snowblood, Jeans Blues. Something in her look is so captivating and I wanted my own Meiko Kaji for 45PB. I needed a character design that can say a lot with just the eyes. Someone who can project that inner pain and tragedy effortlessly, so using Meiko Kaji as a point of reference was a must.

As for the writing, every time I come up with characters they’re always a composite of several people I know and myself. So as to not ruin your impressions of her, I shall keep these inspirations a secret.

TA: How many iterations did you go through for her final design which rules by the way?

CO: I always had in mind the main look of long, black hair and pale skin. Plus the third eye. The thing that took me the most work was coming up with the outfit. She was wearing a suit at first actually! Then I wanted her to have a jacket, but finding the right type of jacket was a challenge. I gave her a biker jacket but it looked weird and I had to experiment a lot until I stumbled upon the current design. Merenge helped me with some accessories, such as the shoes, gloves and the logo on the back of the jacket.

TA: VA-11 Hall-A saw VA-11 Hall-A Kids and Sapphic Pussy Rhapsody released following the game. Ahead of .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, should we expect any smaller projects like that?

CO: Never say never but our plan with this game is to release it, let it be and move on to something new. No DLC or anything like that. Ports to future platforms are always on the table but that’s the extent of it.

If A24 or someone else wants to make a movie about it I’ll listen.

TA: What does a day in your life look like right now?

CO: Right now I’m a little f***ed up. I’m usually a good boy who works from 9am, takes a little lunch break then locks in again until 4 or 5pm, but sleep escapes me lately so I’m just trying to contend with that in whatever way I can. The key is to not stress over not having much sleep. As long as shit gets done it’s all good. When I’m not working I try to catch a movie at one of the many small cinemas in my neck of the woods, or go outside and take a walk and buy books I’ll take forever to read.

Buenos Aires has this magic that inspires me to go outside and have low key adventures. Can’t get too crazy because this is still latin america and we don’t f*** around, but I love it here and being surrounded by so much culture, great food, and a crazy clubbing scene keeps me sane. Especially when there’s friends around. I owe them a lot for my mental health even if I’m a huge recluse sometimes. I’m the type to uninstall messaging apps for a minute when I really need to be alone.

TA: What have you been playing lately that you’ve enjoyed a lot?

CO: There’s so many video games. This year I really loved Children of the Sun and Arctic Eggs. Late last year I was really into The Citadel, Lethal Company and RoboCop: Rogue City. I’m now in the process of going through The Evil Within, which feels like a lost Grasshopper game sometimes. There’s the Elden Ring expansion, and I also recently replayed Kane and Lynch 2 with a friend and had a blast as always. That game is so f***ed up in the right ways. We need more grit like that.

TA: What do you think of the current state of indie games?

CO: Every time I go to a game event I’m always madly inspired by all the unique games I see at the indie spaces and that energy is partly what kept me going despite all our production hiccups. That sense of community. That we all have this burning desire to create for the sake of creation. That shit is great. I f***ing love indie games and I think they’re better now more than ever.

BUT… I worry that we are trying to lean too much on familiar concepts and inspirations.

Games like Arctic Eggs do it right in that it’s trying to look like an old PSX game, but there were no PSX games like Arctic Eggs. Then there’s games that feel so blatant in their desire to be like one of the classics that I’m like “weren’t we supposed to be the creative ones?” not to mention the over reliance on “Roguelike” mechanics and such. But it’s not all bad. There’s some really cool shit all the time; especially on places like itch.io. It’s just that humans in general can be creatively bankrupt regardless of production scale. There’s triple A slop, there’s indie slop. There’s no escaping the slop. Being indie doesn’t make you inherently more creative and that’s okay. There’s always room for growth as long as we’re cognizant about our shortcomings.

TA: Are you looking forward to playing any specific game this year?

CO: I’m really looking forward to Slitterhead.

Dunno if they’ll be out this year but there’s also Sonokuni, Elation For The Wonder Box 6000, Studio System: Guardian Angel, Eating Nature (from the Arctic Eggs dev)… There’s a lot I’m excited about. My Twitter feed is an endless stream of cool indie games I doubt will ever see the light of day but the attempt is appreciated nonetheless.

TA: Obviously scheduling and such, but if we managed doing this interview on a call, I’d have taken this chance to nerd out about The Silver Case with you. I’m glad I listened to my friend and powered through it because that typewriter sound was too much for me. I adore The Silver Case and I know you love it as well. What elements from it inspired you the most and what’s your favorite track from the soundtrack?

CO: The Silver Case has always been one of those games that felt like a white whale to me. It was so utterly inaccessible that my mind pretty much created its own Silver Case by trying to fill the gaps. I used to browse this creepy Suda51 fansite way back in the day and I was always searching for every bit of info on this inscrutable-ass game, so when it actually released in a language I can understand I was afraid I wasn’t gonna like it but I think it was much more than I could ever have imagined. In that sense, the way Silver Case inspires me is tightly related to this need to fill gaps. The space between the real Silver Case and what I was imagining it to be is where a lot of the ideas for the presentation in games like Va11halla or The Radio Wave Bureau were born.

I can’t choose a single favorite song if I’m being honest. The whole soundtrack has such a vibe. Could be the Sayaka Baian theme that plays in Kamuidrome, but tomorrow it could be the opening theme, then the next day another one.

TA: Did you end up trying it out on console or just playing it on PC?

CO: I bought and played the game on every platform.

TA: The Silver Case’s original box art and aesthetic is probably the only thing I love as much as that in VA-11 Hall-A. What elements from its visual style had you curious back then?

CO: Definitely the stoic look of every character. Takashi Miyamoto is my goat along with Yoshitoshi Abe. For Va11halla I had to be very expressive with the characters because that’s what the story commanded, but ever since I was a kid I always had an affinity towards designs that say a lot with minimal facial expressions. Two of my favorite films are Patlabor 2 and Ghost in the Shell, and Serial Experiments Lain is also one of my favorites, so you can probably tell where I’m coming from with this.

I was also so transfixed by the UI. I could go on and on about this subject, but I’ll always lament that The Silver Case didn’t create a movement after its release. Visual Novels could look so much better if we had 1% the imagination of that original Grasshopper team. I’m not sure, but I think the look was done by Akihiko Ishizaka who would go on to work on Killer7 and Danganronpa. I wish he was still working with GhM. Or maybe he still does and I’m talking out of my ass.

TA: I think you’ve met Suda more than once now. How has that been for you and has he played VA-11 Hall-A? I know Travis Strikes Again has a VA-11 Hall-A tshirt that is the objectively best and only one everyone should use.

CO: I’ve met the guy twice and I’ll always lament not knowing enough japanese to just talk and talk all day with him. We share a lot of common interests, though the generational gap can be felt when he starts yapping about Japanese media from the 70s. I do know he played my game but I’ve no clue if he actually enjoyed it. Will have to ask if I ever see him again.

TA: Are you still up for this if the opportunity arises?

CO: There’s a story behind this that I’ll have to sit on for a while longer.

TA: My current game of the year for 2024 is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I know you loved Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but did you end up trying Infinite Wealth/8 or Gaiden last year?

CO: I love Like a Dragon so much but I didn’t play Gaiden, and Infinite Wealth seemed like too much of a commitment when I played at launch. The game was throwing mechanic after mechanic at me in a way that made me feel overwhelmed. Like there was too much game ahead of me, so I put it off for the time being. Maybe once I’m in the mood again I’ll give it a honest shot.

TA: VA-11 Hall-A has always been perfect to play on a portable. I loved it on Switch and recently found a mod that adds full controller support to the PC version. I’ve been revisiting it on Steam Deck. Have you had a chance to try it on Steam Deck yet?

CO: I did and saw it sort of works but not quite. I wish I could go back and tweak it but it’s not technically feasible. The Game Maker version we used doesn’t even work properly on modern Windows and it’s the reason we haven’t been able to do any sort of fix or update to it. Aside from simply not having the time to deal with all that mess we made (at a technical level).

TA: Honestly I still have a lot more I want to discuss with you, but I think I should save that for part 2 or a future interview. Let me end this with one final question. How do you like your coffee? Go into as much detail as you can. If not coffee, talk about your favorite beverage.

CO: I like my coffee black like a moonless night. Even better if it’s accompanied by cheesecake on a beautiful afternoon.

TA: Probably not smart, but it is nearly 2 AM and sending these questions over made me want to replay The Silver Case. Next time we talk, let’s do a dedicated discussion on The Silver Case.

CO: Absolutely!

I’d like to thank Christopher Ortiz for their time and help with this interview over the last few weeks.

You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.

Later this month on September 27th, NIS America will release FuRyu’s action RPG Reynatis for Switch, Steam, PS5, and PS4 in the West. Ahead of the launch, I had a chance to talk to Creative Producer TAKUMI, Scenario Writer Kazushige Nojima, and Composer Yoko Shimomura about the game, inspirations, collaborations, how the project came into being, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, coffee, a potential Xbox release, and much more. This interview was conducted in parts with TAKUMI’s portion being done on video call with Alan from NIS America translating and then it being transcribed and edited for brevity. The portion with Kazushige Nojima and Yoko Shimomura was done over email and is towards the end of this interview.

TouchArcade (TA): Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Furyu right now.

TAKUMI: I’m a director and producer at Furyu. A lot of my work involves creating new games and working on brand new projects. For Reynatis specifically, I’m the person who came up with the main idea for the game. I produced it, I directed it, and I saw pretty much everything through from the beginning to the end so anything and everything related to Reynatis, I handled everything.

TA: I’ve been playing FuRyu’s games through many publishers in the West from the 3DS days, leading into PS Vita, PS4, PS5, PC, and mostly on Nintendo Switch. It feels like Reynatis has the most hype around it from any game which I’ve seen from FuRyu. How does that make you feel as a creative producer?

TAKUMI: First of all, I’m very happy. I take it very positively. I’m just simply pleased that people like it so much. About the buzz and attention it is getting, it feels like it’s actually more from abroad than inside Japan. I’ve been checking things out on Twitter and I noticed that a lot of times whenever they post information about the game, when they post trailers, when they post things like that, a lot of the comments that they’re receiving are from people outside of Japan. And so he says it seems like the fan base for this game abroad is large, or will be large.

And it also seems like, as you mentioned, up till now, this game has been receiving more feedback and more positive user interaction than any other FuRyu game in the past. So I’m really pleased to see how it seems to be being received in the West so far.

TA: Okay, so the game is obviously available now in Japan for people who live there to buy on console. How has the response been from players in Japan for the game?

TAKUMI: As someone who’s liked Final Fantasy Kingdom Hearts and things like that, I feel that the fans of those works, basically the works of Tetsuya Nomura in particular, seem to have really latched onto the game. They really appreciate what I’m doing and I really get the sense that they kind of understand everything. I’ve seen that as they’ve been playing the game, they’ve been noticing things and seeing how the story progresses and being like, “Oh, yeah, that’s how it should be,” or, “Yeah, I kind of expected that to happen.” And so they’ve gotten really excited and really delved into the world of Reynatis. They’ve also, kind of without really even being prompted, have kind of taken things farther to the next level, like, “I wonder where he’s going to take the story from here. I wonder what’s going to come next. I wonder…” All these little sub things that he hadn’t really had a chance to maybe flesh out or think about yet are things that the fan base has already decided to move forward with and already decided to start thinking about what’s going to come in the future.

Of course a creator, that makes me feel incredibly pleased and also kind of gets my creative juices flowing as it were, too, to think about what I want to do next. On the gameplay side of things, FuRyu games always kind of have areas that stand out a little bit more than others or have things about them that make them kind of unique and very FuRyu you could say. A lot of players have come to appreciate those things, too, and really enjoy those things as well. So for the people who really have always appreciated FuRyu games and have played them up until now and enjoyed them, they seem to be liking and enjoying the game as well. So far on both of those fronts, it seems that user reaction has been positive and people have really been enjoying it.

TA: I’m glad you mentioned Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy because from when the game was revealed, a lot of my friends who are hardcore Kingdom Hearts fans and who have been following Final Fantasy for a long time, everyone brought up Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s trailer and everyone’s trying to draw parallels with that and talking about how is this connected here, is that connected there? Can you comment on whether Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s trailer and that whole hype cycle over there had any influence on the project.

TAKUMI: So that question is a sensitive question, it’s a sensitive topic. There’s things that I can and cannot say in regards to it, but one thing I want to point it specifically is that as a fan of Nomura-san’s work and as someone who saw that original trailer for Versus XIII, and purely wondered what would this game have been like, what kind of game would this have been, how would it have played, and all these things like that running through my head, as a fan, I wanted to put myself on the same level as other fans. And as a representative of that fan base, I wanted to create my own take on it. If this game would have come out, maybe it would have turned out like this. So that feeling in terms of how Reynatis is related to Final Fantasy Versus XIII, you could say it’s something like that.

I can’t speak too much beyond this little window of speaking, but I have talked to Nomura-san. They’ve talked about several things about this,and the idea is that Nomura-san knows what he’s thinking and the things that they’ve talked about. As a fan and as somebody who really loves these works, I really wanted it to be from one fan to all the other fans out there. I feel like that group of fans who did love those games, that’s who Reynatis is for.

At the end of the day, all that really comes from that specific title is the inspiration. So seeing that initial trailer and that initial thought of “I wonder what this would be like” was an inspiration, certainly, for Reynatis. Reynatis is something that is wholly his own. It’s something that totally came from me as a creator. It is dyed in my own color as a creator. Everything that I wanted to express as a creator is what’s in this game. It’s not a copy or a rip-off of something else that’s come before, something that might have existed. It’s completely wholly my own. This was simply an initial spark of inspiration to make me think about what this world would be. Everything else about this world that is Reynatis is something that I made myself and created myself.

TA: So out of the many FuRyu games I’ve played over the years since Lost Dimension and stuff like that, my favorites are The Caligula Effect 2, Crymachina, and The Alliance Alive. Every single game usually has I’d say 75% of it is really good with memorable story, music, and stuff like that. But there are some aspects which fall short, and we usually see either technical shortcomings or some people might not like the gameplay or something like that. So I wanted to know if you’re happy with the current state of the game because I know there are updates planned.

TAKUMI: The game originally came out on July 25th in Japan, and from there, we had an actual play session where we streamed it, and there were people watching on Twitter, commenting, and since then, people have had a chance to play the game and receive their comments.

Obviously, to recreate the game, or to do things on a fundamental level, that’s impossible, but obviously, small things that we can brush up, as we are going through, for example, boss balancing, the amount of time that enemies come out, little quality of life features that kind of have to do with those things, all of those things will be addressed in the updates that are coming out. There’s an update coming out on September 1st in Japan, and then either with that, or a little bit before that, we plan to, again, start addressing some of those issues

Beyond that, obviously, if there’s any bugs or any kind of technical flaws or things like that, those are all intended to be addressed to over the coming months, because the last DLC is scheduled to come out in May, and so up until that time point, we are going to continue to work on the feedback that we’ve received, and implement as much as we can, as is reasonable and possible, into the game.

One thing I also want to point out is that specifically for players in the West, the version of the game that you be getting, essentially, will be a version that’s been refined and brushed up, compared to everything that’s come out in Japan, so please look forward to the best version of the game when it does come out here in the West.

TA: So I read the NIS America translated Famitsu interview with Takumi-san, Yoko Shimomura, and Kazushige Nojima in two parts (here and here). It was the two-part long interview and was really nice. So first, thank you to NIS America for translating that officially for us. Secondly, I wanted to touch on the part about how you approached both of them because it was very interesting and funny. I wanted to just ask you about that. How did you approach them directly? Is it just something like you messaged them or do you approach their representatives or the companies at all?

TAKUMI: It was pretty much what I said in the interview. Most of this was direct. I reached out to them directly. I didn’t contact them through a company. I didn’t do super formal emails or uptight things. The thing about Shimomura-san specifically is that Furuyo had actually done some work with her in the past on some other titles, so I kind of had an in there, but even still I ended up reaching out to her through X / Twitter.

For Naora-san, who was the illustrator for the game, it was a PM to him on X / Twitter. Kaburagi-san, who also did the illustrations, I spoke with him on X. Nojima-san, they did a lot of LINE. Even once the project had begun, a lot of the communication was still done via PMs and via private messaging and things like that. At no point was it ever really a very formal thing. I would just kind of reach out to people as necessary and say, “hey, what do you want to do about the music?” or something like that. It’s a lot rougher than you might have imagined in terms of how a company normally performs its business.

TA: That’s hilarious. It makes sense why you contacted them because they are very talented folks, and while the premise and game seem interesting, I wanted to know what prior works of theirs made you reach out to them individually? What are your favorite works by them?

TAKUMI: Well, basically, I’ve been playing Kingdom Hearts since I was a kid. I think the big part is that my personality and values were formed by Kingdom Hearts. So, when it comes to Shimomura-san’s music, I have a strong image of Kingdom Hearts. And then, in connection with that, I’ve been playing titles like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X. I think Nojima-san’s scenario has a strong feeling from that. I think I’ll just say that I wanted to do Nojima-san’s scenario with Shimomura-san’s music.

for Shimomura-san, obviously, most people think of Kingdom Hearts. It’s a really, really special game. It’s a series that I started playing when I was little. It influenced my values and who I am as a person. So, that was someone that I really wanted to work with specifically.

In terms of Nojima-san, obviously, I’m a big fan of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, and works like that. I wanted to work with them because I just wanted to work with them. I liked their work and he wanted to work with them.

TA: I wanted to know, before the game started production, what games did you play that maybe inspired some aspects of this thing? Did you start doing research and playing more action games from other developers to see how they are?

TAKUMI: I’m honestly an action game fan to begin with. So, whether it be older titles, whether it be more recent titles, I feel like I’ve played them all. Whether you’d want to call that research or not is kind of something different, but I have played them and I have enjoyed them and obviously, there’s a lot of things that I’ve taken inspiration from, you could say, from within that.

However, one thing I want to point out really specifically is that, and this is something you know as someone who’s played many FuRyu titles, is that FuRyu size-wise and scale-wise doesn’t have the budget to do something like a Final Fantasy VII Remake or a Rebirth. That’s just on another level. When I was creating the game and thinking about what I wanted to do, I thought carefully about what would be fun for the players. What will the players enjoy? Let’s make that and then let’s also try to make everything within the game something that’s fun.

So for example, even beyond the gameplay, you have the scenario, you have the story, you have all of these things that individually are disparate, but all of them together are what makes Reynatis the experience that it is. I want players to experience it as a whole and not so much as an action game solely, for example. If you compare Reynatis to something like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it’s obviously not going to compete on that level. Where it can compete is on this level as an entire package, as a game experience that is the sum of its parts beyond being some specifically one thing.

TA: Can you talk about how long Reynatis has been in production?

TAKUMI: About three years, give or take.

TA: So how was it working for the team during the pandemic?

TAKUMI: The pandemic was just at its peak. I think it was a time when we couldn’t meet face to face and talk about it. But I don’t think I was in that much trouble. The development company that was actually developing it was basically all-in-one, and we were able to work with the top development team. If we had been able to communicate with them, I think we could have made the game without any problems.

After the pandemic actually settled down, we were able to meet face to face. We were able to communicate while eating together. I don’t think there was a big problem in terms of development because we couldn’t meet face to face because of the coronavirus. Things kind of kicked off right at the beginning of the pandemic, specifically when it was really difficult to go out and actually meet people.

Truthfully, at the very beginning, we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to actually meet face to face and talk about things.However, A, as time went on, and B, because we were having lots of meetings and things like that, the people that we were working with to develop it, all of them actually were in the office. Because we had a good direct line of communication with the development staff, the head of the development staff, we felt like there were no issues there.

Also, as the project continued, things loosened up, and so I was able to meet people face to face. We were able to go out to eat and talk and have meetings and things like that. So things proceeded smoothly. Even in the midst of the beginning of the pandemic, when it was more difficult to meet people, I don’t feel that it really impacted the work negatively.

We were able, and I specifically was able to do my work without any problem, and things proceeded well. So there were really no issues from that sense in regards to the pandemic situation.

TA: So one of the things I noticed is, before the game was officially revealed for localization, there was a lot of hype around “NEO: The world ends with you. Everyone was speculating if this is part of the same universe or what’s happening And now we have an official collaboration, which is officially licensed and stuff like that. So I wanted to know two things: As a fan, play NEO :The World Ends with you and how did you approach Square Enix for the collaboration?

TAKUMI: I played the original on DS in the beginning. I played the smartphone game that only lived for a brief period. I played Final Remix when it came out on Switch and then of course NEO: The World Ends With You as well. I’m a simple fan just like everyone else when it comes to the series. I have played them all.

For the collaboration, I did go directly to Square Enix as a company and approached them from an official capacity as a company. Thinking in the console game space, looking at collaborations between companies it’s very rare. All I can think of is that there was a collaboration between Capcom and Konami using Metal Gear Peace Walker and Monster Hunter 2G. Aside from that, I can’t really think of anything else in terms of console creators coming together to make it. Because this is something that hasn’t really happened before, it had to be a bit more official. On the flip side, because it hasn’t happened before, there was really nobody I could talk to internally to be like, “Hey, so how do I go about approaching this? How do I go about making it happen?” I got a lot of feedback like “Oh, that’s impossible. You can’t do that.”

However, I have the kind of personality where I’m very strong and straightforward with things. I said “No, no, no, look, if it’s not impossible, there’s a way to do this. I’m going to find a way to do this.” The simplest thing in that case was to drop the plan, to go to Square Enix directly and say, “Hey, look, I’m making this game. I really like The World Ends With You. The setting for my game is also Shibuya. Is there anything we can do together?” That’s basically how the collaboration came about.

TA: Can you comment on what platforms Reynatis was always planned for? What was the lead platform?

TAKUMI: All of the platforms were decided from the beginning, but as you mentioned, you have to come up with a lead platform. In this case, it would have been the Switch and so the Switch was the main, and then the others came out from there.

TA: In the past, whenever I played FuRyu games, regardless of how much I liked them, the lead platform usually has some technical issues. I remember playing The Legend of Legacy on 3DS, which had a lot of technical issues, but now it’s perfect when you play it on modern platforms. Reynatis is a very visually striking and good-looking game from its trailers. So I was just wondering how it would run on Switch.

TAKUMI: I understand where you’re coming from. Even though the Switch is the lead platform, honestly speaking, this game pushes the Switch to its limits. Within me, there’s two rules I have to fulfill for this game. One is the producer, and the other is the director. As the producer, I have to be more mindful of things like unit sales. How many players are going to purchase and play the game? So within that, obviously, it makes the most sense that you release a game on as many platforms as you possibly can to maximize those elements.

On the flip side, as the director and as a player myself, it would have been great to focus on maybe one platform like PS5 or something to really push things to the next level. But at the same time, that’s a balance that I have to maintain within all things. There was a lot of internal struggle within how to handle that. But at the end of the day, the balance was essentially taken within those two elements of myself that I had to do. I’m happy with what came out.

TA: So far, FuRyu games release on consoles in Japan and get ported to PC for the Western releases. Has Furyu ever considered doing PC internally in Japan for these games?

TAKUMI: Actually, there was a title that came out recently that we did internally on PC. So it is something that we have been thinking about and working internally on. So yes, games are coming out made by us specifically for PC platforms.

At this point, Mr. Sonobe, FuRyu Localization Coordinator, added that FuRyu has established a partnership with NIS (America) to sell full-priced console RPGs due to their expertise in translation, promotion, and sales capabilities.

TA: The reason I ask is because we’ve seen a lot of promotions in Japan for Steam versions from publishers there. Like SEGA does with competitions for Like a Dragon and Steam Deck. Obviously you need to release on Switch, but you now also have a high end handheld PC. I see a lot of interest for Steam versions. Do you see more people recently asking for PC versions in Japan?

TAKUMI: Please take this as my opinion specifically and not a representative of the industry. For me and the people around me, the two worlds are very different. There’s the world of console gaming, as we call it, and then there’s the world of PC gaming. Those worlds don’t necessarily meet, and it seems like the players of one specific place, like console or PC, generally want to keep their play experiences limited to that space specifically. If you were to divide it up into three things, you would have consoles, you would have PCs, and then you would have smartphones. And so these are kind of the three arenas that exist. And these are kind of the three arenas that people generally tend to stay in when they’re developing and releasing games.

I don’t even necessarily know people who play on PC who have a Steam Deck or who want to play specifically on it. If they want to play a console game, they would play it on console if they had the desire to do so. That’s kind of where I feel the industry is specifically in Japan.

TA: Because you mentioned smartphones, I think FuRyu has one title which is available in the West on smartphones through another partner, Arc System Works, which is The Alliance Alive Remastered. I believe it uses NIS America’s translation for English. Do you have plans as FuRyu to do more smartphone ports of premium games?

TAKUMI: As a company we don’t have a plan to make games specifically for smartphones. It is more that our division specifically is focused on making console games and we believe that consoles are a place that can provide specific experiences that can only be provided by console games. The reason you saw something like The Alliance Alive Remastered come out on smartphones, was because we felt that it would be appropriate and because we thought it would still play well on the smartphone. For something like a super hardcore action game or something that would require more intricate controls, that wouldn’t really be suitable to be on smartphones so it wouldn’t happen. Our plan and goal going forward is to develop first for console and to bring out the best we can do in the console gaming space. IF that work is suitable enough to be brought to a smartphone, and still be able to be played well, and it doesn’t lose any of its intrinsic fun that you have from playing on console, then we will think about it in the future, but it kind of is on a case by case basis.

TA: So I play FuRyu games on multiple platforms, but there’s one platform that hasn’t seen FuRyu support much. This question isn’t just from myself, but also from readers who usually want to know why some games aren’t coming to Xbox. only myself, but a lot of our readers also usually ask us to check in on the possibility? I know there could be many reasons for why, but I still wanted to ask you directly about this if there are plans to do Xbox Series X versions of these games from FuRyu?

TAKUMI: Personally, I would like to do Xbox versions of the games but the reality is that in Japan there’s not enough demand from consumers. There’s not enough recognition from consumers for the platform itself to be able to justify being able to make an Xbox version. To talk about things from a development standpoint, you have to understand that adding another platform to the development cycle means you have to account for that within the schedule. Within that as well, the development team has to have the experience to be able, having worked on that platform, to be able to develop it appropriately for that platform. Because the team doesn’t have that experience, it suddenly becomes a very high hurdle to clear and be able to make this game. I would definitely like for us to be able to do it. I find it would be something that would be interesting. It’s just the reality of it that it’s a difficult thing to do for the reasons I mentioned.

TA: Reynatis is coming out in the West in a few weeks. I wanted to know what you’re most excited to see when players get their hands on the game in the West?

TAKUMI: I really want players to enjoy playing the game for a long time. Nowadays, you kind of have an issue that when a game comes out, it’s not uncommon for spoilers to get posted, whether that be videos or things like that. We’ve worked really hard to make sure that those spoilers don’t get out there. One of the ways that they’ve avoided having things spoiled is by having this– we talked about it a bit earlier–but by having this free DLC release schedule going forward that will bring up new story content and secret story content.

There’s going to be one that comes out October 1 that will be global. NIS America will release the game in the West in September. So players will kind of have to catch up first, but after that, they get to experience everything in real time with the Japanese player base as well as the updates come out. I hope that this is something that encourages people to keep playing the game and to play it for a long time to come and to really enjoy what they’re playing and seeing all the secrets and things that they have, because these are things that, again, are going to be not spoiled because it’s all coming out at the same time once the game gets released in the West.

TA: One of my favorite aspects of FuRyu games is always the art and music. That’s usually consistently very good. I wanted to know, are there any plans after all the DLC is out to have a Japanese release of the full art book covering everything and a full soundtrack?

TAKUMI: At the moment there are no plans specifically to do either of the things that you mentioned, but in regards to the music I really think Shimomura-san made a fantastic soundtrack and I would love to be able to get that out there to people in some fashion. So, hopefully we can do it, but there are currently no plans.

TA: Unrelated to Reynatis which we’ve covered a lot, I wanted to know what you’ve been playing outside of work in the last year, like in 2024, which you’ve enjoyed a lot, and what platforms you’ve been playing on?

TAKUMI: So for this year, I played Tears of the Kingdom and I played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Generally speaking, due to everything going on with Reynatis, I have a feeling that I didn’t get to play as much as I would have liked for everything else, but those are the two ones that I remember playing the most. Platform-wise, I probably played most on PS5.

As an addition, I’m a huge Disney fan and I’m also a big fan of Star Wars. All the information coming out about the new Star Wars materials has gotten, like, kind of reawakened that fire that I have, for the Star Wars property, so I’ve really been enjoying Jedi Survivor.

TA: What project that you’ve worked on so far is your favorite. If it is Reynatis, talk about another one as well.

TAKUMI: So I’ve only worked on two games: Trinity Trigger and Reynatis. To talk about Trinity Trigger, I was only the director on that game so I didn’t have the opportunity to do anything on the Producer’s role so thinking about the broader scope of things and how to reach out to customers on that. That’s something I felt was an area missing for me. I really wanted to do it. As a result of having that feeling on Trinity Trigger, I was able to, when the time came to Reynatis, I was able to take on the role of Producer, Creative Producer, and Director and therefore I was able to do everything that I wanted to do in this game. To oversee every single aspect of it.

By the same token, because Trinity Trigger was the first game I had worked on and I directed, I was able to do a lot of what I wanted to do with it. It is of course a title to him that remains really deep in his memory, but the game that I have the most affection for is Reynatis.

TA: For a lot of people, when they see FuRyu’s games, there are quite a few available on current platforms. Reynatis has the most hype. What would you like to say to folks who are excited for this who have not played a FuRyu game before?

TAKUMI: One of the things that I feel is most representative of FuRyu titles in general, is that they all have a very strong theme. If you look at each and every one of these games, the theme is very strong. The message reaching out to people is very strong. Reyantis is no different. This might be a rough or harsh way to put it, but if there are people who feel that they are weak, if there are people out there who feel like they are being put down by society, they can’t live and carry out their lives like they want to, I want you to play Reynatis.

One of the big themes in the game is that within Japanese society itself, there’s a very famous expression that you’ve probably heard many times before: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” People in Japan have a tendency to go with the flow, and supplement themselves into what the rest of society wants them to do or say, and as a result of that, many people kind of feel really pressured and they’re stifled within what they actually want to do. Whether it be in Japan or outside, if you feel that way, this is absolutely the game for you. The message within this is very strong and I feel like it will resonate with people who feel like they maybe are put down by society or that they are not a place they want to be in society.

Going back to what we spoke about before, while the game might not be able to compete in the arena of graphics or richness in setting, the game does have a message that resonates just as strongly as for Final Fantasy VII if not more. I believe it can compete and beat it in that. I think that because the message in the game is so strong, it will remain in people’s hearts and minds and it will be something that will be a really positive and memorable experience for them. I hope people pick up the game for those reasons.

This part of the interview with Yoko Shimomura and Kazushige Nojima was conducted over email.

TA: How did you get involved in the Reynatis project?

Yoko Shimomura: Via a sudden attack from TAKUMI. (laughs)

TA: What have you learned composing for games for many years now and how do you implement these learnings in your future compositions and recent ones like Reynatis?

Yoko Shimomura: It’s difficult to put into words. I think that experience does become a new power, but I mainly compose via feeling, so turning that into words is difficult.

TA: My favorite soundtracks done by you are definitely LIVE A LIVE, Radiant Historia, and Street Fighter II. I’m very curious about the Reynatis soundtrack. What has been your favorite part of working on it so far?

Yoko Shimomura: Thank you! The night before recording, even though I was totally worn out mentally and physically, I just had more and more compositions flowing out of me, which was fun. (laughs) I was really ablaze with the idea, “I’m definitely going to finish this!”

TA: As a composer you have a very distinct style that when someone hears a work by you, they know you composed it. How do you feel that your style is recognizable through multiple iterations of technology?

Yoko Shimomura: I wonder! I get told that a lot, but I don’t really understand it myself. People have said that in the past, my compositions tended to be different based on the work, so there isn’t really a feel that they were all composed by me. I think maybe my style hadn’t quite come out yet.

TA: Were you inspired by any other games when working on the Reynatis soundtrack?

Yoko Shimomura: I wasn’t influenced by any other work in particular.

TA: You’ve worked on the scenarios of many of my favorite games of all time. How do you approach different games today compared to how you worked in the 90s?

Kazushige Nojima: It depends on the game genre. For games where the narrative comes first, players today want a character who is a convincing portryal of a fully-fledged person, rather than a character that is an avatar for the player, as was common in the past. In that case, it then becomes important to give the world the character inhabits a sense of presence. I do like those old games that were more akin to a fairytale, though. I’d like to work on one again in the future.

TA: How did you get involved with this project?

Kazushige Nojima: I received a call from my old acquaintance, the composer Ms. Shimomura. She asked if it was OK to share my contact info with TAKUMI. Things started from there.

TA: Is it influenced by Versus XIII in any way?

Kazushige Nojima: I didn’t think it was when I was writing it, but I can’t say for certain.

TA: Having now seen the game’s scenario all the way, what is your favorite aspect of it, and what do you think fans of your other work should pay attention to here?

Kazushige Nojima: It’s difficult to answer this while avoiding spoilers. I think that Marin’s change in mannerisms [throughout the course of the game] is well-depicted.

TA: What have you enjoyed playing this year and have you played Reynatis yet?

Kazushige Nojima: I’ve been doing nothing but dying in it, but I’ve enjoyed ELDEN RING. I’ve also enjoyed Dragon’s Dogma 2. Embarassingly enough, I’m only partway through REYNATIS. Sure enough, I’m just not good at action games, so for the games I mentioned, I’m enjoying the atmosphere of their worlds. I think the game I’ve played the most of is Euro Truck Simulator.

TA: So now the last question is for everyone here. How do you like your coffee?

TAKUMI: I don’t actually like coffee. *laughs* I don’t like things that are really bitter. I generally go for iced tea or black tea. If I’m going to drink coffee, I’m going to put a ton of cream, milk, or sugar to drink it. It is kind of funny that in university, I worked at Starbucks so I had to know a lot about coffee, so it is kind of funny that way.

Alan Costa: I like coffee with milk or soy milk. If I’m drinking iced coffee, I like just an americano with just ice and no sugar.

The two responses below were via email.

Yoko Shimomura: I like iced tea. I drink it all the time. I like doubling up [on the bags] to make it strong.

Kazushige Nojima: Black. And strong.

I’d like to thank TAKUMI, Alan Costa, Chihiro MacLeese, Mr Sonobe, Anna Lee, and Lottie Diao for their time and help with this interview.

Editor’s note: I unfortunately lost the recording I took myself where the other attendees from NIS America and FuRyu mentioned how they had their coffee and could only include these two.

You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for September 6th, 2024. Well, this is the last one. You’ll see one more special from me next week with a few reviews that have specific embargo dates, but this is the final regular SwitchArcade Round-Up for TouchArcade by yours truly. We’ve been at this for several years and I wish I could have seen the Switch through to its end with these articles, but circumstances dictate another course. We’re going out with another chunky one, with a pair of reviews from our pal Mikhail, a pair of Shaun reviews, a handful of new release summaries, and the usual lists of new and expiring sales. Let’s ride one last time!

Reviews & Mini-Views

Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU ($49.99)

After Imagineer’s success with the Fitness Boxing games that led to the hilarious but good Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star, I didn’t know what IP the team would work with for a new fitness game. When Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU was announced, I thought it was a smart collaboration, but was curious to see how the game felt after Fist of the North Star. I’ve been playing it over the last few weeks alongside Ring Fit Adventure and I’m impressed with Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU in many ways.

If you’re new to the Fitness Boxing series, these games, as the name suggests, use boxing and rhythm game movements to get you into shape through daily exercises, mini-games that also get you sweating, and more. With Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU, everyone’s favorite vocaloid gets in on the action and there’s even a separate dedicated mode for her songs in addition to the normal songs included in this release. Keep in mind that this is a Joy-Con only game so you can’t play it with a Pro Controller or any third party accessories as far as I’m aware.

As with other games in the series, there are difficulty options, a free training mode to do as you please, warmups, and tracking with reminders and the systemwide alarm that can remind you even if your Switch is in sleep mode. There are cosmetics you can unlock through the points you earn by playing as well. I can’t comment on the DLC yet, but as for the base release, I liked Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU more than Fist of the North Star aside from one issue.

The audio in Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU is great, but the main instructor’s voice isn’t great. I ended up turning this voice down because it felt out of place with the rest of the game, and just sounded a bit weirdly directed.

Just like the Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star release from Imagineer, Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU is a solid fitness-focused game that does a great job of bringing Miku to the world of Fitness Boxing to try and appeal to her fans. While it is a competent fitness game with its daily workout, customization, and tracking, I feel like it would be better as a complement to something like Ring Fit Adventure or your own other exercise routine rather than being the sole exercise you do during the week. -Mikhail Madnani

SwitchArcade Score: 4/5

Magical Delicacy ($24.99)

Magical Delicacy from sKaule and Whitethorn Games is one I hadn’t paid much attention to until a friend of mine linked me to an Xbox Game Pass announcement for it. Since then, I’ve played it on Switch as well, but feel like it needs a bit more time in the oven. I adore Metroidvania-style platformers and cooking games, but it feels like Magical Delicacy takes the good bits of both genres while not putting them together in the best way possible. This results in a game I adore in parts, but one where the flaws hurt a bit more.

You play as Flora who is a young witch in a story that’s equal parts mysterious, magical, and wholesome. Your aim is to cook meals and craft for various folks, and I was surprised at how well the exploration was implemented aside from the backtracking that annoyed me sometimes. I expected it to be lacking compared to the cooking and crafting, but the team nailed the Metroidvania elements. There are some issues with ingredients in the crafting and in how inventory is managed. This is made a bit worse by the UI that I took a while to get used to with interaction.

Magical Delicacy makes a great first impression with its gorgeous pixel art visuals, lovely music, and tons of settings. The latter includes UI scale and text options that are both very useful when playing on Switch in handheld mode. I feel like Magical Delicacy would have benefited a lot from an early access release or will from potential updates.

When it comes to the Switch version, it plays very well aside from some seemingly frame pacing-related hiccups. It has good rumble as well. Having played it on Xbox Series X, this is definitely a game I’d play more on a portable so a Switch or Steam Deck version would be best. I just play the genre more on handhelds.

Magical Delicacy is a game I should’ve loved given it is basically a blend of a Metroidvania and a crooking/crafting game, but it feels a little undercooked (I couldn’t resist) in parts thanks to some inventory and backtracking issues. While it is a very good game right now that feels at home on Switch, a few quality of life updates and polishing will make it an essential. -Mikhail Madnani

SwitchArcade Score: 4/5

Aero The Acro-Bat 2 ($5.99)

A lot of companies tried their hand at the whole mascot platformer thing in the 16-bit era in the wake of Sonic the Hedgehog‘s explosive success. Like, the sheer number of them is just baffling. Even more than I remembered. Not many of them managed to see sequels, but Aero The Acro-Bat is part of that elite few. How each member of that club got there is its own story, but in Aero’s case it seems to have been a combination of the first game going over well enough, and sheer force of will to try and make fetch happen. Sadly, fetch did not happen. Aero spin-off Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel launched several months after Aero 2, but outside of that Aero was never seen in another original title again.

Does that make Aero The Acro-Bat 2 a bad game? I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem like it was a big enough success to merit another follow-up, at the very least. But then again, Sunsoft’s parent company had recently lost a ton of money on a bad investment involving golf courses, and that certainly put it in a fiscally conservative mood for a while. Either way, I don’t think the fault can be placed on the quality of the game. It’s as good as the first game was, with all that implies. A more polished experience that in shedding some of those rough edges loses some of its character, but a decent enough platforming romp.

I was fully expecting this release to be in Ratalaika’s usual emulation wrapper, but much to my surprise there’s been an upgrade in the presentation. This feels a lot more tailor-made for the game, and in terms of both options and extras I think this is a far better experience overall. Box and manual scans, achievements, a gallery of sprite sheets, a jukebox, a bunch of cheats, and more. I frankly have no complaints at all about how the game plays and the suite of features here. The only nit I will pick is that you only get the Super NES version of the game here. I feel like the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive version should have been included too, just to keep everyone happy.

Those who enjoyed Aero The Acro-Bat should naturally give Aero The Acro-Bat 2 a shot. I even think those who were slightly put off by the first game’s quirks might have a better time here. I really have to commend Ratalaika for stepping up its game with the emulation wrapper for this release. Perhaps I’m being greedy, but I’d love to see the first game updated with a similar interface just for consistency. A fine release for Aero fans and those on the look out for 16-bit platformers to play, and one that makes me optimistic for the remaining reissues of this series.

SwitchArcade Score: 3.5/5

Metro Quester | Osaka ($19.99)

I got quite a bit of enjoyment out of the original Metro Quester when it released a while back. It’s a bit of a bear to get into, but once you understand its rules and what you have to do, it’s an immensely satisfying dungeon-crawling turn-based RPG. Experimenting with party builds to try to find the optimal team was a task I truly enjoyed taking on. With that in mind, I was very happy to see that there was another game in the series coming. Metro Quester | Osaka feels a little more like an expansion pack than a proper sequel, but I’m more than happy with that given how much I got out of the original.

The story here is a prequel to the original game, and we’ve moved to Osaka as a setting. You get a whole new dungeon to explore, and some new character types to do that exploring with. Osaka is a much wetter location, so you’ll need to use your canoe to travel over the water in places. With the new dungeon comes new weapons, skills, and enemies to deal with. Definitely more to chew on here for those who have wrung out the original game, and if you had a good time there then you will enjoy this one, too.

That said, this game shares much of its broader mechanics with the original Metro Quester. If you need an explanation, please check out my review of that game for more details. Short version: turn-based combat, top-down dungeon exploration, and a whole lot of inching your way outward a little further each time before having to head back to camp. You know, the good stuff. Those who are careless will find themselves in hot water very quickly, as planning and cautious play is practically a necessity in this game.

Those who found themselves fully absorbed in Metro Quester will find plenty to enjoy in Metro Quester | Osaka, and new players should probably just skip right to this game. It’s more of an expansion pack than a sequel, but that in no way should be taken as a bad thing. Rather, it just seems like the designer wanted to send players on another adventure that pushes out the existing systems in some fascinating ways. It’s certainly a game you’ll have to be patient with to get the most out of, but those willing to invest the time will enjoy the dividends.

SwitchArcade Score: 4/5

Select New Releases

NBA 2K25 ($59.99)

NBA 2K is back… in 25 form! You know, I find myself wondering something. What happens to the name of this series when we hit the year 2100? NBA 2K100? Just feels weird. We’ll have to talk about that when the situation arises, I suppose. Apparently this year’s version has improved gameplay, a new feature called Neighborhood, and some nonsense about MyTEAM. I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on here, so instead I will just toss out the amount of space you’ll need on your memory card for this game and then move on. Here we go. 53.3 GB!

Shogun Showdown ($14.99)

Got room in your heart for another riff on Darkest Dungeon? This one has a Japanese-inspired setting, and there are a few bits in here that change things up a little. Setting all of that aside, this is very much a familiar style of game and I think it’s a decent enough example of such to be of interest to those on the hunt for another one.

Aero The Acro-Bat 2 ($5.99)

Well, there’s a review up above this section, but in case you’re in the habit of skipping down the page, let me fill you in. This is the somewhat more polished sequel to the successful Aero The Acro-Bat, all done up in Ratalaika’s emulator wrapper. Said wrapper was given additional effort for this release, and it looks good! The version of the game included is the Super NES one, and you can play the North American release or the Japanese one. I wish the Genesis/Mega Drive version was in here, but I can’t imagine Aero fans being unhappy with this overall outside of that.

Sunsoft is Back! Retro Game Selection ($9.99)

Sunsoft is back! Okay, Sunsoft has been back for a while now, and you probably don’t need a trio of heretofore non-localized Famicom games to sell you on that. So instead let the games sell you on themselves, as you get a trio of unique and varied titles in this bunch. A side-scrolling action platformer, an adventure game, and an action-RPG of sorts. I reviewed this set a couple of days ago, so I advise checking that out if you need more details. Short version: if you like weird old games, this is a good pick-up.

Sales

(North American eShop, US Prices)

Some fun stuff in the inbox today, including a really good price on the Cosmic Fantasy Collection. A little dear at its normal price, but at 40% off I think it is worth considering for retro RPG fans. I’ll also call out the enjoyable platformer Tinykin, which is at its lowest price yet. Have a good look through those lists and see what catches your eye.

Select New Sales

Zombie Army Trilogy ($8.74 from $34.99 until 9/12)
Zombie Army 4: Dead War ($14.99 from $49.99 until 9/12)
Wild Seas ($2.49 from $4.99 until 9/12)
Chants of Sennaar ($14.99 from $19.99 until 9/13)
The House of Da Vinci 3 ($4.99 from $9.99 until 9/13)
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun ($15.39 from $21.99 until 9/13)
Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge ($1.99 from $4.99 until 9/16)
Monkey Barrels ($7.49 from $14.99 until 9/19)
Banchou Tactics ($15.99 from $19.99 until 9/19)
Transiruby ($10.49 from $14.99 until 9/19)
Picontier ($19.99 from $24.99 until 9/19)
Kamiko ($1.99 from $4.99 until 9/19)
Fairune Collection ($3.99 from $9.99 until 9/19)
Alchemic Dungeons DX ($3.19 from $7.99 until 9/19)
Ninja Smasher! ($6.39 from $7.99 until 9/19)
Ninja Striker! ($1.99 from $3.99 until 9/19)

Great Ambition of the Slimes ($9.59 from $11.99 until 9/19)
Shinobi Non Grata ($11.99 from $14.99 until 9/19)
Let’s Build a Zoo ($7.99 from $19.99 until 9/20)
Owlboy ($8.74 from $24.99 until 9/20)
Hakuoki: Wind & Blossom ($44.99 from $49.99 until 9/20)
Omen of Sorrow ($7.99 from $19.99 until 9/20)
Dungeonoid 2 Awakening ($4.49 from $8.99 until 9/20)
The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt CE ($23.99 from $59.99 until 9/22)
Knights of Grayfang ($10.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Gale of Windoria ($7.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Justice Chronicles ($7.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Armed Emeth ($7.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Jinshin ($10.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Alphadia Genesis ($7.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Grace of Letoile ($10.49 from $14.99 until 9/26)

Tinykin ($6.24 from $24.99 until 9/26)
Despot’s Game ($4.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Cosmic Fantasy Collection ($29.99 from $49.99 until 9/26)
Cosmic Fantasy ($15.90 from $26.50 until 9/26)
Cosmic Fantasy 2 ($15.90 from $26.50 until 9/26)
Spirittea ($15.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Punch Club 2: Fast Forward ($9.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Railway Empire 2 ($37.49 from $49.99 until 9/26)
Lil’ Guardsman ($11.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Potion Craft Alchemist Simulator ($11.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Euphoria ($1.99 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Of The Red, the Light, & Ayakashi ($25.06 from $50.13 until 9/26)
Modern Combat Blackout ($1.99 from $7.99 until 9/26)
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa ($8.99 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Arrest of a Stone Buddha ($8.99 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Fading Afternoon ($16.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Astor: Blade of the Monolith ($14.99 from $24.99 until 9/26)
Tamarak Trail ($8.99 from $14.99 until 9/26)
Rigid Force Redux ($3.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)
Yaga ($6.24 from $24.99 until 9/26)
Rabi-Ribi ($13.99 from $19.99 until 9/26)

Sales Ending This Weekend

Dead in Vinland: True Viking ($2.79 from $27.99 until 9/7)
Gunslugs ($4.79 from $7.99 until 9/7)
Gunslugs 2 ($4.79 from $7.99 until 9/7)
Heroes of Loot ($4.79 from $7.99 until 9/7)
Heroes of Loot 2 ($5.99 from $9.99 until 9/7)
Meganoid ($5.39 from $8.99 until 9/7)
NOISZ re:||COLLECTION G ($19.99 from $24.99 until 9/7)
Phoenotopia: Awakening ($6.99 from $19.99 until 9/7)
Space Grunts ($8.39 from $13.99 until 9/7)
Stardash ($5.99 from $9.99 until 9/7)
Superhot ($9.99 from $24.99 until 9/7)
Dormitory Love ($24.49 from $34.99 until 9/8)
Dying Light: Definitive Edition ($9.99 from $49.99 until 9/8)
Fur Squadron ($2.79 from $6.99 until 9/8)
Tchia: Oleti Edition ($23.44 from $34.99 until 9/8)

That’s all for today, this week, this month, this year, and forever, friends. I haven’t been very loud about this, but this is not only the end of the SwitchArcade Round-Up, but also of my eleven and a half years at TouchArcade. I’ll still be writing here and there at my blog at Post Game Content as well as putting up exclusive articles on my Patreon, but other than that I think I’m hanging up the ol’ webs on this specific kind of work. Twenty-six years in this end of the business is a good run, and I’m ready for new challenges. Do look for me at one of the aforementioned places, hit me up on BlueSky and say hi, and if you’re a fancy executive looking to hire a very seasoned writer, I’m your guy.

With that said, I will extend the highest possible gratitude to all of TouchArcade’s readers for being with me on this leg of my life’s journey. I treasure all of you more than you can know. I wish you all the sincerest happiness in your lives, and forever and always – thanks for reading.

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Steam Deck Weekly. If you missed my Warhammer 40000: Space Marine 2 Steam Deck review, read it here. Today’s article focuses on Steam Deck impressions and reviews for many games I’ve been playing over the last few weeks with the Steam Deck Verified games and one notable set of discounts on right now.

Steam Deck Game Reviews & Impressions

NBA 2K25 Steam Deck Review

While many scoff at yearly sports releases, I’ve always been a fan of 2K’s NBA games despite the issues. NBA 2K25 is notable for a few reasons. The first is that this is the first time since the PS5 generation began that the PC version of NBA 2K25 is actually the “Next Gen” version rather than being based on the older consoles. The second reason is that the official PC FAQ confirmed that NBA 2K25 is optimized for Steam Deck. While it doesn’t have an official rating from Valve yet, this was great to see. Now that I’ve played NBA 2K25 on Steam Deck and also both consoles thanks to review codes and buying a disc, I’m more than pleased with the game, but it has some of the usual issues you’d expect.

If you’ve been playing NBA 2K on PC for a few years, the standout features of this year’s entry are the ProPLAY technology for improved gameplay which has only been on PS5 and Xbox Series X prior to NBA 2K25. WNBA also makes its PC debut with NBA 2K25 alongside the MyNBA mode. If you ended up skipping the last few years of NBA 2K games on PC in the hope of getting the full experience, NBA 2K25 is it for sure, and I hope it does well enough se we keep seeing not only the Next Gen version on PC, but also 2K doing good work on Steam Deck.

On PC and Steam Deck, NBA 2K25 has 16:10 and 800p support which is already a good sign. Beyond that, it has AMD FSR 2, DLSS, and XeSS support, but I disabled this. I’ll get into why a bit later. You can also adjust v-sync, dynamic v-sync that targets 90fps during gameplay and 45fps outside that (including The City), toggle HDR (yes it works on Steam Deck), texture detail, overall quality, and two shader options. I recommend letting the game cache all the shaders on initial boot for the best possible experience during gameplay. For some reason, NBA 2K25 on Steam Deck does a quick shader cache on each boot. It isn’t too long but is notable.

The NBA 2K25 PC graphics options have an advanced menu with many options including shader detail, shadow detail, player detail, crowd detail, NPC density, volumetric effects, reflections, era filters, global illumination, ambient occlusion, TAA, motion blur, depth of field, bloom, and max anisotropy. This is quite a feature packed PC port when it comes to settings. I left most on low or medium with turning off the upscaling since it made gameplay look a bit too blurry. The main settings I left at medium were player level and shader detail. I also capped the game to 60fps at 60hz using the Steam Deck quick access menu. This provided the best and most stable experience with better clarity than the defaults.

Speaking of the default, if you don’t care about adjusting any settings, the game has a Steam Deck visual preset which works fine out of the box, but it looked a bit too blurry for my liking. This is what made me play around with the settings over the last few days.

I was curious if NBA 2K25 is playable offline. I know many of the modes require an internet connection but what happens if you try booting up the game when not online? When trying this on my Steam Deck OLED in airplane mode with wifi turned off, the game booted up but didn’t let me load MyCAREER or MyTEAM. There’s a Connect option in the menu to retry connection, but I could get into quick play and eras fine while offline. I noticed some load times were quicker when offline as well.

When looking at the console versions, NBA 2K25 is a much better experience than Steam Deck technically, but I find myself playing it more on Valve’s handheld after years of enjoying these games on Switch and more-recently on Steam Deck. The biggest differentiator is the load times. Even on my Steam Deck OLED’s internal SSD, NBA 2K25 doesn’t load as fast as PS5 or Xbox Series X. It isn’t as bad as older systems, but this was a notable difference. Beyond that, keep in mind that there is no crossplay for the PC version with both consoles.

As with every recent NBA 2K, the microtransactions are still a problem. This is important if you want to play some of the modes that have a focus on them. If you just want to get this to have a great looking and playing basketball game, they might as well not exist, but keep that in mind when you make your purchase since NBA 2K25 is a $69.99 game on PC as opposed to being priced lower for the last few years.

With NBA 2K25, the Steam Deck now delivers a fantastic portable basketball experience at feature parity with PS5 and Xbox Series X. With a bit of tweaking, it looks and runs great, and I’m glad to see 2K finally bring all the features to PC after many years. If you own a Steam Deck and were hoping for a good experience with NBA 2K25, 2K and Visual Concepts have delivered. Just be aware of the microtransactions in some of the game modes though.

NBA 2K25 Steam Deck review score: 4/5

Gimmick! 2 Steam Deck Impressions

If you’re not familiar with Gimmick! 2 yet, read Shaun’s review of the Switch version here. I was curious to see how it felt on Steam Deck. As of this writing, Gimmick! 2 hasn’t been tested by Valve, but it runs fine out of the box. In fact, it even has a mention of Steam Deck and Linux fixes in its newest patch.

Gimmick! 2 is currently capped at 60fps on Steam Deck, and I even recommend forcing your Steam Deck screen to 60hz if you play on an OLED to avoid any jitter issues. There are no graphics options at all, but it does seem to support 16:10 display by default for the menus at least. When I forced the game to run at 1080p on the Steam Deck’s own screen, I wanted to make sure the game wasn’t stretching the visuals like some others do. I can confirm it indeed supports 16:10 properly after making sure of the aspect ratio of the UI and other elements. This only applies to menus though as the actual gameplay runs at 16:9.

While I was hoping to see Gimmick! 2 support above 60fps, it isn’t a deal breaker or even close. I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets Steam Deck Verified soon because it runs perfectly out of the box. As for the game itself, I definitely agree with Shaun’s review linked above. I’m just glad to see Gimmick! 2 run so well out of the box on Steam Deck.

Arco Steam Deck Mini Review

Arco is a game I adored from the get go, but it felt like it was a few updates away from greatness. The dynamic turn-based RPG with pixel art visuals and a lovely story hit PC and Switch a few weeks ago, and it has gotten a major update on Steam already fixing most of my issues. As of this writing, the update isn’t live on Switch and I decided to review the Steam Deck version since that is the most up to date right now.

When looking at Arco trailers, you might think it is just a nice looking tactical game. Well, it is a lot more than that, and the combat system is very interesting. In fact, the audio and story surprised me the most. Arco has you experiencing different stories with characters that have unique gameplay styles (in a way). While it is a turn-based affair, there are real-time elements. I saw someone call it Superhot meets a pixel art tactical RPG and I feel like that isn’t giving you the full picture, but it is a glimpse into the kind of blend of gameplay you can expect here.

On Steam Deck, Arco ships Verified from the get go, and I had no issues playing it on both my Steam Decks. It is capped to 60fps as far as I can tell and has 16:9 support only. The current build on Steam Deck includes an assist mode (beta) letting you skip combat, get infinite dynamite, and more. These are good to have if you want to skip the combat, but I’m happiest about the option to skip the first act when replaying the game.

On paper, Arco seemed like it would be very good, but I didn’t expect to love it as much as I do now. It feels dynamic across the board with superb visuals, music, and a lovely story. If you want an interesting tactical RPG with a memorable story, get Arco right now. There’s even a free demo you can try on Steam right now.

Arco Steam Deck review score: 5/5

Skull and Bones Steam Deck Steam Deck Mini Review

Skull and Bones is an interesting release to cover. It launched on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC earlier this year, but wasn’t on Steam until just over a week ago. Having never played it before, I wasn’t sure what to expect aside from a friend of mine telling me he enjoyed it despite its many flaws on Xbox. I was also curious to see how it felt on Steam Deck as a current generation console title, but Ubisoft posting about it being playable gave me some hope. For this review, I’m focusing on the Steam Deck port more than the game.

On Steam Deck, Skull and Bones has an official Valve rating of being Playable. On booting it up for the first time, you have to login to your Ubisoft Connect account and this process isn’t smooth because the interface feels sluggish. I was hoping it would just pick up my details since I logged into Ubisoft Connect for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, but I had to do it again for Skull and Bones. Beyond that, the tutorial runs fine, but I wanted to get more stable performance. I set it to a 30fps frame rate limit and it runs at 16:10 and 800p. I opted for FSR 2 quality upscaling as well, though performance is more stable with the performance upscaling preset. I left everything else on low aside from textures which I set to high. I found this delivered a good experience overall.

As for Skull and Bones as a game itself, I’m still early on since I’ve only played it for just over a week now, but I see the potential here. If Ubisoft keeps supporting it, it will be an easier recommendation. It is already a better experience than before looking at what was added in recent updates.

Skull and Bones is a hard game to recommend at full price, but I do recommend checking out the free trial. I enjoy naval combat and open world Ubisoft games, and Skull and Bones with all its updates so far is good, but it has potential to be better. If you do plan on playing Skull and Bones on Steam Deck, keep in mind that it is an online only experience. I will likely grab it on console to also play there with cross progression.

Skull and Bones Steam Deck review score: TBA

ODDADA Steam Deck Review

I love interactive toys like Townscaper because they are excellent at letting me spend a few minutes trying to create something cool. When ODDADA was announced, it felt like the next great interactive toy for me, and that’s exactly what it ended up being with a small caveat in its controls.

ODDADA is not technically a game, but a music maker hybrid that feels like a game. The aesthetic reminds me of Windosill in a way, but it really is a gorgeous and elegant little toolbox with a plethora of ways for you to create something special. You interact with it using a mouse or touch controls on Steam Deck, and slowly progress through the different levels and instruments working your way to the end. The randomness element makes it so every creation sounds and feels different.

On Steam Deck, I mentioned ODDADA has no controller support yet, but it runs perfectly at 90fps out of the box. There are a few graphics options like resolution, v-sync, and anti-aliasing toggles. You don’t need to worry much about settings in this one, but the text in the menu is a bit small for Steam Deck.

Aside from the lack of controller support, I have nothing bad to say about ODDADA. I would argue that even with full controller support, it will play best with touch or mouse controls, but I know some folks prefer a controller across the board.

If you enjoy music, art, or just want to make your own music with a lovely little game, ODDADA is for you. In its current state, ODDADA doesn’t have controller support, but it plays perfectly with touch controls on Steam Deck. The team is working on getting it Steam Deck Verified so keep that in mind if you plan on purchasing it now or later.

ODDADA Steam Deck review score: 4.5/5

Star Trucker Steam Deck Mini Review

Sometimes, a game is released blending two genres together in a way that might not satiate either fanbase. These situations can result in a game that doesn’t hit as hard for anyone, but there’s also a chance that it manages to capture a new audience. I feel like Star Trucker is one of those with how it tries to do automobile simulation and space exploration at once, but without going too deep into either of those genres. This one hasn’t been rated by Valve, but I didn’t have any issues playing it on Proton Experimental right now.

Your aim in Star Trucker is to explore space, take on jobs, earn money, and unlock more to do on the massive galactic map. It includes many difficulty options and the ability to tweak things as you like before starting a new game. While I love the gameplay loop, the real highlights are the visuals, writing, and voiced banter on the radio.

On PC and Steam Deck, Star Trucker lets you adjust video mode, resolution (16:10 support included), refresh rate, v-sync, graphics quality, render scale, shadow quality, temporal anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, mesh detail, and light shafts. I opted to use a custom preset with low shadows but left everything else at normal. I also turned off temporal anti-aliasing. This was good enough for a 40fps or so target. I’m sure someone will find a better compromise in visuals for improved performance, but I was happy with this while playing.

The major issues holding Star Trucker back are the controls that took me a good while to get used to. I hope these see some improvements in updates.

Star Trucker surprised me with its blend of truck simulation and its setting in a way I didn’t think was possible. This feels like a game catering to what I enjoy a lot in automobile simulation and exploration games. While it might not be for everyone, I’ve enjoyed playing Star Trucker quite a bit ever since I got review code on Steam Deck. I hope the developers optimize it a bit more for Valve’s handheld though.

Star Trucker Steam Deck review score: 4/5

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia Steam Deck Mini Review

Originally released in Japan on PS4 only back in 2020, Sting and Idea Factory’s DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia has made its way to the West only on Steam, and it is a great follow up to DATE A LIVE: Rio Reincarnation. If you’re not familiar with it, Date A Live is a light novels series from Koshi Tachibana with illustrations by Tsunako. DATE A LIVE: Rio Reincarnation was a great introduction to that world, and every fan of that release needs to play DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia has you playing as Shido who has a dream about a girl named Ren, and this is where the narrative begins with multiple paths and returning characters. There are many choices to make as you’d expect, and it is all accompanied by very good art from Tsunako. DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia feels more lighthearted across the board, and it serves as a perfect compliment and follow-up to DATE A LIVE: Rio Reincarnation. I’m just surprised it took this long to see it released in English.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia runs perfectly on Stema Deck out of the box. I didn’t need to change anything. It has 16:9 support at 720p and plays all cut-scenes without issues out of the box. I recommend checking the system settings to ensure the confirm button is set to A and not B. Also make sure it isn’t stretching the 16:9 image to 16:10 in fullscreen mode.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia is an easy recommendation for fans of DATE A LIVE: Rio Reincarnation with its lovely art, music, and memorable characters. I don’t recommend playing it before Rio Reincarnation though.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia Steam Deck Review Score: 4/5

Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES Steam Deck Review Impressions

I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a free game update or re-launch get a new store page on Steam, but that’s what happened with Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES. When SEGA reached out asking if I wanted to try the update early, I figured it would just be early access to the update, but not a brand new app on Steam. I always thought Total War: PHARAOH was good and had potential, but it clearly wasn’t ready for a full price launch when it debuted. Fast forward to today, Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES is exactly what the original should’ve been, and it is an easy recommendation on PC, but the Steam Deck version has some caveats.

Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES builds on the original by nearly doubling the main campaign content, adding in four new factions, the Dynasty system, and tons of improvements to existing areas of the game. If you already own Total War: PHARAOH, Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES will feel like a sequel in some ways, but also an enhanced re-release in others. It is a great game right now.

On Steam Deck, Total War: PHARAOH DYNASTIES still doesn’t have controller support, but it is playable with the trackpad and touch controls. I’m still playing it on and off to see how it feels, but my initial impressions are very positive as someone who enjoyed the original Total War: PHARAOH but thought it needed more work.

Pinball FX Steam Deck Impressions

Shaun has been talking about Zen Studios’ Pinball FX series so much over the years, that I’ve always wanted to check it out on a handheld. I ended up getting some of the tables for older games on Switch before, but with the new digital version of the game simply titled Pinball FX out on Steam since last year, I was curious how it would play on Steam Deck.

When the two new DLC tables were released, I downloaded the game on Steam Deck to see how it and the DLC tables felt. What surprised me the most is the PC port features, and how it plays on Steam Deck. I’ve not played every single DLC table so I can’t comment on how the game will run there, but having access to a lot of PC graphics options including proper HDR support on Steam Deck makes it hard to not recommend at least downloading the free client to see how you find it.

As for the gameplay, I’ve played about 7 tables since getting the game, and I love this release. I’m looking forward to covering more of these tables in the future, but Pinball FX feels like a love letter to the world of pinball. While not a review, Pinball FX is absolutely worth your time on Steam Deck. Even if you don’t want to buy anything, I recommend grabbing the free to play version on Steam to access a few of the tables at no additional cost. This will let you see how the game looks and runs on Steam Deck as well as sampling a bit of the many tables available as paid DLC.

New Steam Deck Verified & Playable games for the week

I’m surprised Black Myth: Wukong is marked Unsupported and not Playable given it performs better than a lot of Verified games. I’m glad to see Hookah Haze and OneShot: World Machine Edition Verified this week. I’m looking forward to playing them both.

• Black Myth: Wukong – Unsupported (Read my review here showing it is playable)
• F1 Manager 2024 – Playable
• Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery – Playable
• Hookah Haze – Verified
• METAL SLUG ATTACK RELOADED – Verified
• OneShot: World Machine Edition – Verified
• Slash Quest – Verified
• Syberia – Verified
• Toree’s Panic Pack – Verified
• Volgarr the Viking II – Playable

Steam Deck Game Sales, Discounts, and Specials

Check out the Games from Croatia sale with discounts on the amazing Talos Principle series and much more this week. This sale is on until Monday morning.

That’s all for this edition of the Steam Deck Weekly. As usual, you can read all our past and future Steam Deck coverage here. If you have any feedback for this feature or what else you’d like to see us do around the Steam Deck, let us know in the comments below. I hope you all have a great day, and thanks for reading.

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for September 5th, 2024. Thursday already, eh? Where does the time go? We’re going in hard on the reviews again today. I have two for you, covering Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate. Our pal Mikhail chimes in today too, with his looks at Nour: Play With Your Food, Fate/stay night REMASTERED, and TOKYO CHRONOS & ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos TWIN PACK. We then move into the finest new releases of the day, then sweep up with the lists of new and expiring sales. Ah, Thursday. I shall miss you when it is Friday. Let’s go!

Reviews & Mini-Views

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club ($49.99)

It seems like the latest trend is making sequels to decades-dormant franchises. Video games, always trying to be like Hollywood. Nintendo has rather unpredictably decided to resurrect Famicom Detective Club, a series mainly known in the West through the “blink and you’ll miss it” remake of the first two games that came out on Switch a couple of years back. I feel like there may be a connection here. At any rate, for the first time this millennium we have a brand new Famicom Detective Club adventure! That’s nifty.

The challenge with bringing back an old brand is in deciding how faithful to the original the new game should be. The risk of being too faithful is that the game could be seen as old-fashioned or out of date, but change too much and there’s a chance fans could be completely turned off. Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club leans more toward maintaining the style of the recent remakes, themselves hewing quite closely to the originals. It’s an odd blend, to be sure. The visuals are as good as anything you would see in similar games from modern times, and the story certainly pushes a little further than what the Nintendo of the 90s would have done even in Japan. But the gameplay feels very old-school, and I think that is a determining factor in whether or not you enjoy this game.

A student is found dead with a paper bag over his head that has a smiling face on it. This digs up some old unsolved murders from eighteen years ago that featured a similar calling card, which raises all manner of questions. Then there is the urban legend about Emio, a killer who promises to give his victims an eternal smile. Has a previous killer resurfaced after all this time? Is it a copycat? Is there really any such thing as Emio? The cops are stumped, so it’s time to call in the Utsugi Detective Agency! Using the powers of going around to places and badgering people, you’ll do what the law enforcement was powerless to: find the truth!

Basically, you’re searching around every scene for clues, talking to all of the people you meet (sometimes you need to press the issue and ask multiple times to get what you want), and trying to find the connections you’ll need to solve the case. Think of the sections of Ace Attorney outside of court and you’re not too far off the mark. Depending on how well you take to this kind of gameplay, you mind find parts of the game to be annoying or a slog. There are certainly bits I feel could have been handled more smoothly, and it feels like specific chains of logic needed just a little more signposting. Well, this is a Cat Hair Mustache genre, and I suppose by that standards Emio isn’t doing anything particularly egregious.

And you know what? That’s where I’m going to leave it. I have some criticisms of the story, but I enjoyed it on the whole. It was engaging, twisty, and well-written. Some of the plot beats didn’t hit me the way it seems they hit others, but I can’t really talk about that in detail without ruining the story. And I really don’t want to do that, because this is a tale that is best experienced fresh. I liked more than I didn’t, and when it picks up it really picks up.

Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club is not the sort of thing we typically see from Nintendo, but if there was any rust on the team it assuredly doesn’t show. It’s perhaps a little too adherent to the original games in its mechanics, and while the plot is mostly excellent there are some times where the pace falls off or things resolve in ways I didn’t find as satisfying as I would have ideally hoped for. Still, these are minor complaints for what is otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable mystery adventure. Welcome back, Detective Club. Don’t stay away so long this time.

SwitchArcade Score: 4/5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate ($29.99)

We’re starting to get a nice little set of TMNT games on the Switch, aren’t we? You can enjoy the Konami classics in the Cowabunga Collection, get an incredible modern take on the arcade beat ’em up formula with Shredder’s Revenge, bring the modern arcade home in Wrath of the Mutants, and now satisfy your urge for something with a little more home console flavoring in Splintered Fate. There are a couple more on the way, too. We’re swimming in Turtles! With Turtles? Turtles, they’re everywhere. So how is this one?

Not too shabby, actually. I mean, if you’ve played this on Apple Arcade then you know the deal, and if you’re reading this site then the odds are somewhat decent you have. But just in case, let’s go over the broad pitch. Basically, imagine taking a TMNT-style beat ’em up and blending it with Hades. Alright, that pretty much does it. You can go it alone in the usual roguelite style, or play with up to four players via local or online multiplayer. Mikhail and I did the online multiplayer thing together and it worked rather well, so that’s a good way to go. The game is fine when you’re on your own, but adding more people predictably improves the experience. That’s TMNT for you.

Anyway, some kind of shenanigans occur with Shredder and a mysterious power. Splinter is in trouble, and the Turtles have to try to figure out how to save him. When all you have is a katana, every problem looks like a Foot Soldier. Slice, dice, and/or bludgeon whatever enemies come in front of you, dash tactically to avoid attacks, pick up some perks that you can enjoy in your current run, and collect another currency to score some permanent upgrades. If you die, it’s back to the lair to try again. Roguelite beat ’em up. But with the Turtles, so it’s automatically better than it would be without them. It isn’t particularly inspired, but it does its job well enough.

I wouldn’t call Splintered Fate a must-have in general, but TMNT fans will probably enjoy this twist on the usual fare. The multiplayer is well-implemented, and it’s good to see that important TMNT element wasn’t passed over despite this being the kind of game that is usually played solo. Those without an affinity for the Turtles can find better roguelite games to play on the Switch, but with this being such an intensely competitive genre on the platform it’s to the credit of Splintered Fate that it can manage to keep pace at all. Not bad.

SwitchArcade Score: 3.5/5

Nour: Play With Your Food ($9.99)

When Nour: Play With Your Food originally released on PC and PS5, I was a bit surprised to see it not also released on Switch and mobile. It felt like a perfect fit for touchscreens as an experimental food art experience. I played it on PC and liked it quite a bit, but this isn’t a traditional game for everyone. If you enjoy playful sandbox-like experiences and love food, you will likely find a lot to love in Nour: Play With Your Food, but the Switch version is a bit lacking.

If you’re new to Nour: Play With Your Food, it has you playing with specific food types across different stages with interesting music and a lot of over the top nonsense (compliment). It feels like a combination of an interactive app made for those who love food and art equally. Initially, you only get access to the basics, but I found myself surprised at how much the developers added to let you literally play with your food as the name suggests. This is when I realized why it might not be as easy to play on a touchscreen.

I am disappointed in the lack of touchscreen support on Switch though. Aside from that, Nour: Play With Your Food was a bit of a heavy game on Steam Deck as well, and you can see the cutbacks on Switch to have it run decently. The biggest issue is the load times being long both docked and handheld on Switch.

Nour: Play With Your Food is worth experiencing if you love food, art, and interactive apps. While the Switch version isn’t the best way to experience it, Nour still feels best on a portable, and I hope it does well enough to get more DLC or even a physical release. We don’t see many releases like this in gaming, but games like Nour and Townscaper are the perfect compliment to more-involved RPGs and story-driven games. -Mikhail Madnani

SwitchArcade Score: 3.5/5

Fate/stay night REMASTERED ($29.99)

Fate/stay night REMASTERED launched about a month ago on Nintendo Switch and Steam worldwide. I was hoping to have it covered sooner, but the month has been really busy and Fate/stay night itself is very long. Before covering the game itself, I want to take you on a bit of a journey. Many years ago, a close friend convinced me to watch Fate/Zero as one of the first few anime I watched from start to finish. Back then, I wanted to experience more from the universe, but there wasn’t really something interesting I could officially play in English. I ended up importing the PS Vita version of Fate/stay night Realta Nua just to own it, and since then have basically been playing whatever Fate-related release or Type Moon property we see in the West. This includes Fate/EXTELLA, Fate/Samurai Remnant, watching Fate/stay night, and even trying out Fate/Grand Order for a bit.

All of that led to me being very glad that Aniplex brought over Witch on the Holy Night and Tsukihime‘s remake recently, but there was the one game I was hoping we’d see released in English somehow. I didn’t bother with fan translations, and kept hoping we’d see Fate/stay night in English. Here we are. It still feels unreal that this is in English and on Switch. But is it worth your time and money? Well I can save you some time and say absolutely on both fronts with a few caveats.

Fate/stay night REMASTERED is a remaster of the 2004-released Type Moon visual novel covering the story of Emiya Shirou, the Holy Grail war, and more. This is basically the best entry point into the Fate universe, and I know there are many who have only experienced it through anime and other games so far, so this is now a chance to see the origin of the series as it was meant to be. Fate/stay night REMASTERED even with its few quality of life features is still a 55+ hour experience at least, and that makes the low asking price shocking. I get that this is a remaster of an older game, but the volume of text and work done really makes it one of the best value releases on the eShop this year.

If you already played the original versions of Fate/stay night in Japanese, Fate/stay night REMASTERED does a lot to improve the experience. Obviously it adds English, but the 16:9 support is welcome. It also feels like a lot more work went into this than I initially expected. I’ve been playing a bit of the PS Vita release to compare, and the developers of this remaster have done a great job at making Fate/stay night look good on modern displays, but don’t expect the gorgeousness of Tsukihime‘s recent remake.

While I love Fate/stay night itself, I’m glad that the developers actually put in touchscreen support on Nintendo Switch. I played most of Fate/stay night REMASTERED on my Switch Lite (which is sadly busted now) and then synced it to my Switch OLED to play at home and also docked. It feels perfect on Nintendo’s hybrid system. Hopefully it gets more platform releases in the future like iOS and PS5 so more can experience it.

Speaking of more platforms, I also played a good amount of Fate/stay night REMASTERED on Steam Deck. It works perfectly out of the box. If you were wondering where to play Fate/stay night REMASTERED assuming you owned a Steam Deck or Switch, get it wherever you want but make sure you play it. It is that good.

There’s nothing really holding Fate/stay night REMASTERED back right now aside from no physical release on Switch, and I hope it does well enough to get one in the future to go on my shelf with Witch on the Holy Night and Tsukihime.

Fate/stay night REMASTERED is basically an essential for visual novel fans and I still can’t believe it is not only available in English, but also on both Switch and Steam. The low asking price makes it an even easier recommendation. While it may not look as good as Tsukihime‘s recent remake, Fate/stay night REMASTERED is still worth your time, and I’m glad I finally got to play it in English after all these years of owning the Japanese PS Vita release. -Mikhail Madnani

SwitchArcade Score: 5/5

TOKYO CHRONOS & ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos TWIN PACK ($49.99)

As someone who didn’t bother with VR outside of borrowing a PS VR headset on PS4 Pro years ago, I know I’ve ended up missing out on some great games. When looking at what my friends who own current VR headsets talk about, in addition to games like Thumper or Beat Saber, I used to see rumblings of TOKYO CHRONOS and ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos mentioned. Both were praised for their stories and also for being full experiences in VR. I never got to experience the stories until TOKYO CHRONOS & ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos TWIN PACK hit Switch through Izanagi Games just over a month ago.

When you first boot up TOKYO CHRONOS & ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos TWIN PACK on Switch, you get to choose which game you want to play. The first game has you experiencing the story of high school friends in an alternate version of Shibuya, lost memories, killers, and more. If you’ve played many visual novels or adventure games, the narrative here will feel very predictable in parts, but it isn’t bad. It has good visuals and I feel like trying it out in VR after seeing how it feels on Switch just for the novelty of a full visual novel in VR.

ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos on the other hand is a lot better with its production, music, writing, voice acting, and characters in general. It also goes beyond being a pure visual novel in parts, and I love when developers do this. Punching above your weight in a visual novel usually makes for a more memorable experience when coupled with important story beats. ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is the standout of the two, but I think the pack is definitely worth buying if you’re ok with the controls and movement in the demo.

Aside from some aspects of the stories not hitting as hard, the Switch version has some performance issues when it comes to camera movement. These aren’t a dealbreaker, but it is distracting having that happen during first person and other encounters. The rest of the Switch features more than make up for it though with touchscreen support (my favorite feature in adventure games) and good rumble.

TOKYO CHRONOS & ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos TWIN PACK is a great experience on Nintendo Switch with its touch controls and rumble support added to make it even more immersive. I’m glad I got to finally experience these stories since I never owned a VR headset, and I hope to see more from this team in the future. If you enjoy sci-fi stories, I urge you to download the demo at least to see how this one feels on Switch. -Mikhail Madnani

SwitchArcade Score: 4.5/5

Select New Releases

Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku ($49.99)

This might be the winner for the title that does the most clear and concise work in explaining a game’s content. At least for 2024, anyway. So yes, this is Fitness Boxing. Featuring Hatsune Miku. It has 24 songs from Miku and friends, plus 30 more from the Fitness Boxing series. Plenty of tunes to punch it out to, in other words. Mechanically, it looks like the other games in the series. No surprise there. Pick it up if you want a Fitness Boxing game featuring Hatsune Miku.

Gimmick! 2 ($24.99)

I reviewed this yesterday, but in case you missed that, allow me to bring you up to speed. This is a very faithful follow-up to the original cult favorite, building on its foundations a bit, bringing in a slick new presentation, and still as hard as that piece of a Subway pizza sub you lost under the sofa back in the 90s. If you don’t mind a challenge and enjoy clever platformers, you’ll want to check this one out.

Touhou Danmaku Kagura Phantasia Lost ($29.99)

Are you tired of switching between games based on whether you feel like playing a rhythm game or a bullet hell shoot ’em up? Touhou Danmaku Kagura Phantasia Lost is here to save you from the inconvenience! There are two modes in this game, and it kind of feels like peanut butter and chalk in some sense. But the Touhou theme ties them together, and for fans of the property I’m sure it will pass muster. At least you know the music will be good?

EGGCONSOLE Hydlide MSX ($6.49)

We’ve already seen one version of Hydlide release in EGGCONSOLE, but here’s another one for good measure. It came after the one we have, but before the NES one. It falls somewhere in between them as a result, and I suppose if you are a Hydlide super-fan then you’ll want to grab as many versions as they release. For everyone else, I’m not sure how much more you’ll get out of this MSX version if you already played the PC-8801 release.

Arcade Archives Lead Angle ($7.99)

Well, at least Hamster’s mixing it up a little. This is a 1988 Seibu Kaihatsu release, a follow-up to Empire City 1931. It’s one of those gallery shooters that were all the rage at the time, though I can say with some confidence that Lead Angle was not all the rage at the time. It’s a decent enough example of the genre though, so if you enjoy this sort of game you probably shouldn’t be too quick to push the plate away. Shooting gangsters! You don’t see that kind of theme all that often anymore either, come to think of it.

Sales

(North American eShop, US Prices)

Not much excitement going on today, but No Man’s Sky is never a bad choice. The rest of the good games in the inbox are frequently on sale, so do what you will with them. Oddly, one could say the same about the outbox. I’ll leave all of that business to you today, as I don’t have any strong feelings on the matter.

Select New Sales

No Man’s Sky ($23.99 from $59.99 until 9/17)
The Last Campfire ($1.99 from $14.99 until 9/17)
XALADIA: Rise of the Space Pirates X2 ($8.09 from $17.99 until 9/18)
Scars of Mars ($15.99 from $19.99 until 9/18)
Die for Valhalla ($3.59 from $11.99 until 9/25)
Moonlighter ($3.74 from $24.99 until 9/25)
Thea: The Awakening ($5.39 from $17.99 until 9/25)
Children of Morta ($5.49 from $21.99 until 9/25)
Dungeon of the Endless ($3.99 from $19.99 until 9/25)
Yes, Your Grace ($2.99 from $19.99 until 9/25)
Hypnospace Outlaw ($4.99 from $19.99 until 9/25)
Nowhere Prophet ($2.49 from $24.99 until 9/25)
Soccer Story ($7.99 from $19.99 until 9/25)
Family Man ($1.99 from $19.99 until 9/25)
South of the Circle ($6.49 from $12.99 until 9/25)
Wingspan ($9.99 from $19.99 until 9/25)

Sales Ending Tomorrow, September 6th

Ambition: A Minuet in Power ($4.99 from $9.99 until 9/6)
Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey ($2.39 from $15.99 until 9/6)
Fear Effect Sedna ($1.99 from $19.99 until 9/6)
Galak-Z The Void Deluxe ($2.99 from $14.99 until 9/6)
Kingdom Rush ($5.49 from $9.99 until 9/6)
Kingdom Rush Frontiers ($5.49 from $9.99 until 9/6)
Kingdom Rush Origins ($8.24 from $14.99 until 9/6)
My Time at Portia ($4.49 from $29.99 until 9/6)
PowerWash Simulator ($17.49 from $24.99 until 9/6)
Skulls of the Shogun ($3.99 from $19.99 until 9/6)
Suhoshin ($4.49 from $14.99 until 9/6)
The House of Da Vinci 2 ($4.99 from $9.99 until 9/6)
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4 ($9.99 from $19.99 until 9/6)
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger HD ($10.49 from $29.99 until 9/6)
Violet Wisteria ($7.49 from $14.99 until 9/6)
What the Fork ($4.49 from $17.99 until 9/6)

That’s all for today, friends. We’ll be back tomorrow to finish things up, with more reviews, new releases, and sales to look at. Hey, did you know? I have an at-the-moment dormant blog that is going to get active again soon. You can find it at Post Game Content. If you like reading Shaun’s thoughts on games, you’ll certainly find some there. I hope you all have a thrilling Thursday, and as always, thanks for reading!