Platinum Games launches Kickstarter for The Wonderful 101 Remastered

Developer Platinum Games has launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring a remastered version of its Wii U game, The Wonderful 101, to PC, and it's already surpassed its goal.

The original game was a curious but much loved oddity on the Nintendo Wii U back in 2013. An action adventure game, it had players morphing and manipulating superheroes to save a fictional city. Frequently rather quirky, there were a series of special morph powers that could be used to solve puzzles and defeat enemies in a more impressive way than most. Because it was a Wii U exclusive at the time, it used the console's GamePad touchscreen extensively to make things more interesting. 

How that will translate to other systems, we don't know just yet but the key thing to takeaway here is that it's highly likely that PC owners will get to find out in the future. The Kickstarter campaign was launched by Platinum Games only yesterday and it's already smashed its stretch goals for a Switch version, Steam version, and PS4 remaster. At the time of writing, its pledge amount has surpassed £780,000 and is growing by the minute. 

It might seem a little strange that Platinum Games has gone the crowdfunding method given that only last month it received capital investment from the world's biggest games company, Tencent Holdings, but it seems the investment has no part in The Wonderful 101's development. 

Instead, a statement has explained that "it has been a goal of Platinum Games to own and self-publish the IPs that we create."

In an interview with Polygon, game director Hideki Kamiya, has suggested that the game's easy mode will be made slightly easier, and there'll be new on-screen prompts to help players understand what to do. There may be new modes too. 

No word has been said yet on how things like summoning Unite Morph actions will be conducted though, given it's required a touchscreen in the past. Features like that are what could make the difference between a great PC port and, well, a not very good one. It'll be interesting to see what the conversion involves. 

Making a pledge on Kickstarter is no guarantee that you'll actually receive the finished product, as it's effectively a matter of investing in an idea rather than being promised a product. Still, given the size of this one, it should be a fairly safe bet although a delay or two isn't out of the realms of possibility. 

The campaign runs until March 6th with The Wonderful 101: Remastered set for launch in April. A pledge of about £28 will get you one digital copy or about £32 will provide a physical copy.