Konami To Award 30 Million Yen Funding And Remake Rights For Classic IP’s

Video games have been around for several decades now. As a result, major video game developers have a huge catalog of games. Most of the time, dozens of great IPs just sit on the back burner with publishers focusing on the major money makers.

Fans have wanted so many publishers to dust their shelves and remake some of the older classics. Nintendo has a host of IPs that fans would like to play on modern consoles. The same is the case with Sony and Microsoft which have a large collection of titles.

Konami is another big developer which is based in Japan. It also has a host of video games it has released as it has been developing titles for a long time. But, unlike the other studios, it is doing something with its classic titles.

Major Takeaway:

• Konami held a competition to give development rights for its classic IPs to developers.
• Indie devs took part and presented ideas for different games.
• Winners got the development rights and 30 million Yen funding.

Konami has held a competition the prize of which is the right to make remakes of its classic games. This competition took place for indie developers and has been going on since last September. Now, we finally have our winners. 

In the competition, independent developers gave ideas to Konami for their old games. The ideas could be for any classic IPs but Konami preferred if the focus was on Action/shooter games. Winners would get 2 million Yen ($14k) and funding of almost 30 million yen ($207k) for the projects which had potential.

The first game getting a remake through this is The Maze of Galious. Takumi Naramura won the rights from Konami to develop the game through the competition. It is an action-adventure platformer based on Greek mythos.

Up next is Star Soldier RE:VIVE which will be made by Beep, who published the Cotton Reboot. It is a shoot’em up action video game franchise by Konami. The last game was in 2008 so this is a major return for the series.

A cute’em up, which is a sub-genre of shoot’em up’s, is also getting made through this competition. Parodius Reiwa edition will be developed by OOEGAMES for Konami. The series has been around since 1988 and features characters from other Konami games too.

The next game is the predecessor of bright-colored shooter games: the cute ’em-ups. TwinBee is getting a revival titled TwinBee Loop! which Ken Niimura will develop. The arcade game made by Konami was popular in the ’80s so this revival is nice to see.

Last but not least, pooyan from Konami is also getting a remake through this competition too. The arcade games which allow you to play as a shooting pig was big in Korea and Japan. So, it will be interesting to see how it works out now. 

Overall, it’s nice to see some old titles which aren’t in use now revert to indie developers. Sure you can say what the point of having the competition was when they could have just distributed the rights. But, seeing their recent track record this is a surprisingly good decision.