Even though it wasn’t something a lot of people expected, but the Kickstarter campaign for The Wonderful 101: Remastered, which PlatinumGames will be self-publishing, has been going extremely well. It has continuously hit stretch goals, while Platinum keep adding new ones as it funding increases as well.
It’s surprising, of course, because The Wonderful 101 was deemed a pretty major commercial failure when it first launched on the Wii U back in 2013, with the eccentric action title only ever managing to sell a few thousand copies. Given that, in fact, Platinum’s decision to go with a crowdfunding campaign for a remaster of the game is even more curious. So why exactly did the decide to go down this route?
According to game director Hideki Kamiya, the decision to remaster the game was motivated by its failure on the Wii U.
“We first released The Wonderful 101 back in 2013 on Wii U, and for various reasons it wasn’t a successful business endeavor for us,” said Kamiya in an interview with Nintendo Everything. “[Studio head Atsushi] Inaba and I have since lamented that not many players were able to experience the game.”
Kamiya explained that PlatinumGames and Nintendo – co-owners of the IP – had discussions about the project, and ultimately both signed off on it, finally letting it come to life.
“I’m not really sure when we first started talking about bringing the game over to new platforms, but we had to consult with Nintendo first,” said Kamiya. “When we sat down with them, we explained our situation: how the game wasn’t successful upon release and how we wanted to bring it to modern consoles.
“I mean, it was really disappointing for us, you know? We worked so hard to make this high quality game and we were hoping a lot of gamers would play it, but that didn’t really pan out. So as a result of our negotiations, the kindness of Nintendo has made both the ports and this campaign possible.”
The Wonderful 101: Remastered is due out on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC in April.