moments, but honestly made us feel a bit like the critic from the film Ratatouille - except this time the flashback was to a wee ginger lad with curly-ish hair playing EA’s Road Rash in a very 90s jumper. What may surprise you is that they were added to the development plan later, as response to positive feedback received by the developer. “At first the idea was to just make side-scrolling bike sections, but after the good feedback from players about the superscalar section in Blazing Chrome, we decided that Moonrider should have one of those too,” notes Dias. “It was mainly Andre’s idea and I loved it. We even brought back Iuri Nery, the programmer of Blazing Chrome, just to write the code of those sections.” Designing those sections differed from designing the
and number of colours makes most Mega Drive games look grunge and badass. I think that looks awesome on a cyberpunk ninja game. It’s high contrast and has a big emphasis on texture.”
When it came to deciding on which retro design elements to bring forward, and which to leave in the past, for JoyMasher it was just a matter of making it fun and not trying to fix things that aren’t broken.
“I always try to bring in the good stuff that worked perfectly then and still works great nowadays,” says Dias. “I like making it challenging without it being frustrating. Fast combat. Vehicle sections. Patterns in bosses’ attacks. I think those things are very important to our games. The endless pits that instantly kill you? I left those in the past!” Games from the 8-bit and 16-bit era of consoles would often take on entirely different styles and perspectives based on levels and their context. These shifts were often to showcase a unique console hardware or cartridge feature like sprite scaling, or show off fancy 3D polygons that would wow players and critics alike. JoyMasher is no stranger to trying to emulate the design hallmarks of times past, so we weren’t surprised to see superscalar arcade game style motorbike sections in Moonrider. They’re not only some of the game’s best
retro 2D action the studio is well known for, as you’d expect. Especially as the challenges included having to abandon their more familiar methods. “The faux-3D action sections were a huge challenge, because a ‘level editor’ tool for those sections just doesn’t exist.” remembers Dias. “Basically, we had to design all those sections as code, and then replay the level multiple times to see if everything was working, if the pace was good, if the number of enemies was right, or whatever. It was a nightmare!”
ISHINOMORI HEROES While its retro game inspirations are perhaps more obvious, Moonrider also leans on tokusatsu special effects drama influences, with its title, lead character, story and even the core gameplay moveset making heavy nods towards Shotaro Ishinomori’s 1971 Japanese TV-series Kamen Rider and subsequent spin-offs like the 1987 show Kamen Rider Black.
“Kamen Rider Black was my favourite superhero when I was a kid,” Dias tells us enthusiastically. “Tokusatsu was a huge thing here in Brazil during the 80s and early 90s, thanks to imports of many of the shows from Japan. Another influence on the game was the film Mechanical Violator Hakaider.” There is even one part of the game that makes use of a trope well-worn in both tokusatsu and video games, with
54 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2023
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