Mikami and Suda51 in an interview about the remastered version of Shadows of the Damned

Resident Evil, No More Heroes – The list of achievements that Suda51 and Shinji Mikami have worked on is long. The two heavyweights in video games met up in Cologne to talk to us about the remastered version of Shadows of the Damned.

Interview conducted by Florian Merz.

Sport1First, thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. And to get straight to the point: What inspired you to develop a remaster of Shadows of the Damned?

Soda51: Actually, this was and is something we've wanted to do for a very long time. We actually talked to EA (Electronic Arts) about this 7 or 8 years ago. We were told we could do it, but only if it was exclusive to Origin. And that didn't really work out for us.

Additionally, one of the main reasons for implementing the remaster was to create a kind of catalog of games that everyone could play whenever they wanted. So the original, being a restricted system, would not have been an ideal platform. Fortunately, thanks to NetEase, the opportunity now exists to release Shadows of the Damned in a remastered form on all possible platforms.

Sport1: Shadows of the Damned is basically the brainchild of several great and well-known video game characters. On one hand, we have you, while Kyu Hayashida was in charge of the design and Akira Yamaoka contributed the music. From your point of view, what is the highlight of the game on a personal level?

Soda51: Exactly what I just described: we all came together – the idea by Mikami-san and myself, the design by Hayashida-san, and the music by Yamaoka-san. Nowadays, it would be almost impossible to get all of us in the same room to create a similar game. The voice actors are now big stars in their field as well, which is why it would be difficult to get the original cast together again.

Besides, it might be a waste of talent to put us all in the same room again. *laughs*

Sport1:This leads me directly to my next question: Is there any possibility of a sequel in the future?

Mikami: As Suda-san said, the whole thing feels like a wasted talent. But you have to say that the game is quite charming because all of the people mentioned were involved in it.

Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered is scheduled to be released on October 31 for all major platforms. Previously, the game was only available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. is acting as the developer and publisher (Steam), while NetEase is handling publishing for the remaining platforms such as PlayStation or Xbox.