The downloadable game libraries on current-gen consoles are making for a lot of “indie developer makes good” occasions. Cave Story, one of my favorite games ever, is coming to WiiWare after years of being PC-only freeware (recently ported to Mac). And now La-Mulana, also known as “the game so hard that I just gave up… twice” is coming as well. If you’re a fan of Metroid and Castlevania-type games, La Mulana is the holy grail. It’s unbelievably huge and totally uncompromising.
Kind of weird that it’s coming to Wii then, right? Zing!
The thing is, however, that like with Cave Story, they’ve updated the graphics. I personally don’t like some of the changes they made to Cave Story, and I’m ambivalent about the La-Mulana graphics. Not because they’re bad or anything — on the contrary, they look great. But the whole idea was that this was a “lost” MSX game. I loved the graphics as they were:
But of course, there’s nothing stopping me from just playing that version. I’ll let you guys know when this hits, because it’s totally worth the 20 hours of your time it’ll take up. Winter 2009 is the expected release window.