Windjammers 2 is a sequel that's incredibly faithful to the original, which is a remarkable achievement. Making a sequel to an existing game is rarely easy, but things get much, much harder when the game in question is a cult classic that has lain dormant for decades. Despite this, French video game developer Dotemu decided to release a sequel to the 90s sports arcade game Windjammers, which was released back in 1994 for the Neo Geo arcade system. Windjammers 2 is fast-paced, colorful, and a love letter to the original game. In fact, according to lead programmer Kevin Delbrayelle and art director Stephane Perez, it exists because Dotemu loved the first Windjammers too much to let the IP go dormant again. Delbrayelle and Perez spoke to Game ZXC about how—and why—they resurrected the Windjammers series.
According to Delbrayelle and Perez, Windjammers 2 was a passion project. The seeds were planted when Dotemu got the chance to port the original Windjammers to new platforms—specifically, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Playstation Vita. Working on this port was Delbrayelle's first job at Dotemu, and he soon found himself falling in love with the game. As it turned out, he was in good company because the rest of the studio had known about Windjammers for a long time. Perez stated that they used to play Windjammers on the old arcade cabinets, so when the possibility of making a new Windjammers game was raised, the whole team was excited to start work. However, the developers soon ran into their first problem: figuring out who currently owned the property. This wasn't the first time the studio had made a sequel to a dormant franchise, but it might be one of the most difficult to get off the ground.
On the Trail of Windjammers
Apparently, it took Dotemu a while to figure out who owned the Windjammers property. Although the original Windjammers is often associated with SNK, it actually belonged to Data East. The rights were later transferred to a small company called Paon DP. To talk with Paon DP and get the rights to make Windjammers 2, developers had to go to Japan and speak with them directly. Fortunately, they were open to the idea of creating a sequel, especially after the port of Windjammers went well. And so, work on Windjammers 2 began in earnest.
One of the first decisions that Dotemu made was to try and get Seiichi Hamada, the original composer from Windjammers, onboard for the sequel. Delbrayelle shared that at first, he was worried the developers wouldn't be able to get in touch with Hamada, or that Hamada wouldn't be interested in working on a sequel. However, the rest of the development team made it clear that they wanted to work with Hamada if it was at all possible. Getting the original composer for a cult classic onboard for a sequel is generally a step in the right direction for fans and developers alike.
I remember we talked about perhaps using music from other composers, and a lot of people at Dotemu were lobbying to get the original composer. They were like "we’re not going to make it without him."
When Dotemu reached out to Hamada, he agreed to work with them and produced several original tracks in the style of the Windjammerssoundtrack for Windjammers 2. Delbrayelle and Perez both stated that working with Hamada was an incredible opportunity. Perez went so far as to say that listening to Hamada's new music made him feel like a kid again.
Recreating a Cult Classic
Windjammers 2 is an incredibly faithful sequel, both in terms of mechanics and lore, so it may not be a surprise to hear that work on Windjammers 2 began with the first Windjammers game. Dotemu dedicated the first full year of development to recreating the original Windjammers. There was a very good reason for this: the developers didn't have access to the original source code, so they had to reverse-engineer the game's ROM in order to understand how it worked.
To get a big understanding, and there’s still some things we don’t really know how they work in the original game. I think that the sequel replicates the original game like… 99%? It’s very close.
Delbrayelle compared the process of reconstructing the original Windjammers to an archeological investigation. They approached the task from multiple angles, which meant the developers played a lot of Windjammers so that they could pause the game and go through it frame-by-frame. Even then, they had some trouble reverse-engineering every aspect of the game. They had to guess a lot of what the code was doing, but through trial and error, they were able to put together a near-perfect recreation of the original Windjammers. Once they had that core build down and translated into modern coding language, the developers at Dotemu began to turn it into what would become Windjammers 2.
Everything Has a Purpose
Dotemu went through a lot of careful playtesting and iteration to ensure that everything it added to the base Windjammers formula had a reason to be there. The new features they added include a variety of new courts, four new players, and a few new mechanics designed to fill in holes in the original gameplay. One issue that the first Windjammers game has is that it allows players to hang back on the court and never approach the net. Windjammers 2 addresses this issue by adding the drop shot, which forces players to come closer to their opponent instead of guarding the goal constantly. This focus on tweaking the gameplay led to Windjammers 2's slow development pace, but it also kept the game feeling like Windjammers.
According to Delbrayelle and Perez, they made Windjammers 2 for two audiences: people who were fans of the original game and people who've never heard of Windjammers before. However, they definitely prioritized fans of the original game, which is why Windjammers 2 feels so much like its predecessor. A new player could pick up Windjammers 2, start learning the gameplay, and soon be winning matches. A veteran fan could do all of that and pick up on the many nods that Dotemu made to the first game, such as the fact that the new character Jao Raposa was created to serve as a stand-in for fans who grew up with the original Windjammers.
The idea of this character was to make a young guy who’s passionate about the original Windjammers game and is trying to reproduce some of his idols’ moves.
Dotemu was also careful to keep in mind the original concepts behind the characters of Windjammers—namely, that they were all champions of different sports before playing Windjammers. Each of the new characters, including Raposa, is also a champion in their sport of choice. This decision at once sticks close to the core of the original game while also adding new dimensions to it, which may be the best mindset to have when making a sequel to a cult classic. All in all, Windjammers 2 is a love letter to the original Windjammers and the impact it had on fans.
Windjammers 2 was released on January 20, 2022 and is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.