Campy Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami joint Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered gets Halloween release date
Hellaween or something idk I'm exhausted
Likely as a conspiracy to make me use the word boner in two different articles on the same day, campy horror shooter Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered has received a release date - this Halloween, 31st October 2024. This spiffier version of the 2011 console game was announced earlier this year. Aside from a few costumes and NG+, it's basically the original package you know and - if you’re one of the fifteen people that bought the original - love.
"A hot-blooded, hellishly twisted, feverishly filthy, love and hate filled road trip," is how the game’s Steam page describes it. "Join the crass Garcia Hotspur and his boney buddy, Johnson, as they traverse the depths of the Underworld to steal back Garcia's kidnapped lover, Paula, from the clutches of Fleming, the Lord of the Underworld. Let the soul of rock 'n' roll run loose in the heart of the twisted hellscape that is the Underworld." The page does not feature any quotes of Garcia referring to his gun as "My Big Boner," but this does happen sometimes.
Shadows Of The Damned was a collaboration between Suda 51’s Grasshopper Manufacture and Resident Evil’s Shinji Mikami. Famously, there was reportedly a bit of tension during development between the studio and publisher EA. Suda cleared up some details in a recent interview with GhenryPerez on YouTube, going into a few elements he wishes he’d manage to retain - including a gun with a tiny version of the character Paula inside, who would communicate with the player. Suda was forbidden to keep this in the game, being told "You guys don't understand... Americans hate little girls!"
In the process of googling a fact for this piece, I turned up this old EA press page thing from 2011 that describes the game as "a mind-shattering adventure that has to been seen to be believed," in the way only something written about a videogame in 2011 could.
Back in March, the credits for Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered revealed that Shinji Mikami had started a new studio, a year after leaving the (now shuttered) Tango Gameworks - who Edwin argued deserved to be remembered for far more than just Mikami’s contribution.
Boner.