When you sit down and chat to a developer about their upcoming game, a lot of the same names often pop up. Open-world games have roots in Breath of the Wild, fighting game devs love Smash Bros or Street Fighter 4, etc etc. I’ve talked to a lot of devs, and heard about a lot of games. I never – not in my life – expected a developer to talk about Remember Me during a preview. Yet director Dmitry Pimenov lit up when discussing all the old action games that bled into his upcoming Gun Fu action title, SPINE.
SPINE, a 3rd person action game and a clear send-up of gun fu movies, comes from a small developer called Nekki. It’s best known for the Shadow Fight series of mobile games, but has decided to take a slow-motion leap into the PC and mobile market with a bold pitch. A Cyberpunk-themed project that aims to recreate that John Woo-style bullet ballet for modern audiences. While the film inspirations are obvious – John Wick, Hard Boiled, etc – it’s the games that raised an eyebrow.
“I usually say Remember Me and they blank because they don’t remember it”, Pimenov admits before laughing. Capcom’s incredibly niche euro-punk game holds a place in SPINE’s DNA alongside Stranglehold (produced by John Woo himself), WET, and other Xbox 360/PS3 deep cuts, and some of that distinct charm certainly comes across in the gameplay demo I saw for SPINE. But how does one boil down the spirit of Remember Me and these other often forgotten action romps and funnel them into a new, interesting experience? What makes them worth remembering? Pimenov has an answer.
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