Sometime in roughly Fall 2014 you will all be able to look forward to Jed Henry’s combination RPG/Fighting Game, complete with an Ukiyo-e inspired art style, Edo Superstar! While it originally looked like the project was going to come up more than a bit short, an eleventh hour shout out from Keiji Inafune’s Mighty No. 9 fundraiser managed to save it! To thank everyone for the successful funding, the creator has promised that the game will be available entirely free for a limited time when work on the mobile version is completed.
The game pits players in the role of Masaru – a Simian martial artist – whom joins a secretive ninja clan, all in hopes of being the greatest fighter that the Edo era has ever witnessed. He quickly discovers – however – that you can’t exactly become renown when everything you do is kept hush-hush, and quickly strikes on his own to make a more proper name for himself. Shortly afterwards he meets a shady seeming rat character who becomes his publicity agent, and together the two travel Japan in search of people to beat up and audiences to totally swoon.
The developer has promised that Edo Superstar will not be fettered by the clunky virtual button layouts that have beleaguered various other mobile fighting experiences, and instead will feature a highly intuitive control scheme based around context sensitive taps and swipes. While the combat will be straight up ukiyo-e art filled fighting bliss, the RPG half of the equation comes into play with how Masaru acquires new outfits (his appearance is entirely customizable) and moves: Fame Points! It’s not simply enough to beat the crap out of ne’er-do-wells all over Japan, Masaru must – if he wishes to become famous – tackle them with style in order to make all the ladies swoon.
The developers have currently stated that they intend to have Masaru’s journey to stardom comprise a total of eight different stages, each comprised of multiple unique battles. Already hinted at battles would have him dealing with everything from bandits, to members of the Yakuza, to even disgruntled seafood that has decided to go bad in a wholly combative way. There is even a tentative boss battle against an American battleship captain named Condor Perry, loosely based on real-life Commodore Perry’s attempts to forcefully open up Japanese trade back in the early 1850s!
Along the journey – which supposedly culminates in a tournament battle against an entire zodiac of grand masters – there will also be a wide variety of mini games, all of which play up Masaru’s largely braggart nature. This show-off trickster personality is furthermore reflected in Edo Superstar’s combat system where Masaru will be able to unlock moves such as a grapple technique that lets him execute an atomic wedgie upon his opponents! With as flashy as the simian upstart aims to be, one has to wonder if Masaru himself can sit still long enough to survive the nearly year long wait for Edo Superstar to finally hit the iOS marketplace.