Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP has now been rescoped, from a remake to a remaster.
As reported by Gematsu, Dragami Games president Yoshimi Yasuda shared this message on Twitter:
“We have changed the game design of RePOP from remake to remaster based on your requests!”
It isn’t clear where Yasuda received this feedback, but it does change expectations for the rerelease.
As many fans were made aware, the gap between a remake and remaster couldn’t be more obvious than with the differences between Metroid Prime Remastered and Red Dead Redemption, saying we talk about both versions on the Nintendo Switch.
Red Dead Redemption on the Switch meets the minimum expectations of a rerelease. The game is running on the same resolution, at a lower framerate from 60 FPS to 30 FPS. However, if you were playing the game for the first time, or if you were a casual player, you may not even be able to tell the difference.
On the other hand, Metroid Prime Remastered is ironically named because this was actually a full remake. The game seems to have been nearly programmed from the ground up, with higher resolution textures, improved lighting effects, better sound, added extras and options. It even has an improved physics engine, all seemingly demonstrating that having low spec hardware for this console generation is not an impediment to making remasters of old games at all.
When Dragami officially announced the project last year, they made it clear that this was to be a remake and not a full remaster. Jumping forward to last August, however, they already revealed its first official delay.
While there are some fans complaining that they actually wanted a remaster, perhaps the feedback Yasuda is referring to is related to that delay. Obviously, if Dragami Games scaled Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP down from a remake to a remaster, fans would not have to wait as long.
And a quick release would be vital in this case, as the game is now over a decade old. In spite of its relative vintage, there is an upside to bringing the game to market now, with Suda51 also working on his own remake of another game of his, Shadows of the Damned. Alongside that, the game’s writer, James Gunn, has himself come up into prominence as one of the two chairs and CEOs of the newly formed DC Studios.
On top of that, we seem to be on the verge of the rerelease of new consoles. While all eyes are on Nintendo’s pending announcement of their next game console, Sony and Microsoft are also rumored to be working on mid-generation console refreshes. If Dragami don’t have the budgets or connections to make Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP updated for those newer hardware iterations, they are better off releasing this game as soon as possible.
We certainly hope to get more news about Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP in the near future.
