We have seen a lot of games come back to life in recent years in the form of remasters however none of them can beat this latest news that we are about to cover. Clockwork Aquario is a game that was originally planned for release nearly 27 years ago on a legendary arcade coin-op hardware. Due to various reasons the game never made it to a full release however Strictly Limited Games, Sega and ININ Games are now teaming to change that.
Both Strictly World Games and ININ Games have announced that the colorful game Clockwork Aquario will release later in 2020 on all modern consoles digitally as well as physically in the form of limited editions. More details about the release date will be announced at a later date. The development of this very game started back in 1992 and it is the last game to be ever developed by Westone. It featured beautiful 2D graphics and it was built to push Sega System 18 arcade hardware to its limits.
During the time of its development, the arcade scene was completely shadowed by fighting and other 3D games so the release of Clockwork Aquario was canceled. The game was originally designed by the chief publisher and co-founder of Westone, Ryuichi Nishizawa who described the game as ‘the swan song of a company that was part of an era with historic milestones such as the Wonder Boy/Monster World series’.
Strictly Limited Games is committed towards the preservation of video games as we’ve seen some of the best classic games come back to life as their Limited or Special Editions. Apart from the perseveration of released games, Strictly Limited Games has also been working hard to bring the unreleased games to life and make them part of the cultural video game heritage and Clockwork Aquario is one such game.
The process began three years ago when Strictly Limited Games set out to find the whereabouts of ‘Tokeijikake no Aquario’, the Japanese title of the game, and bring it to life. ININ Games joined the process as well and convinced Sega/LAT to fully release the game. A deal was successfully signed later and the game is now all set to release later in 2020. From the original source code of the game, the developers were unable to extract certain bits such as sound, music, and several graphics.
Seeing this, Sega decided to bring aboard as many members from the original Westone team as possible to ensure that the game released now is as closer to the original one which was developed back 27 years ago. Some of the original team of the game working on the game now include chief programmer, Takanori Kurihara, musical genius, Shinichi Sakamoto, and Ryuichi Nishizawa himself.
Ryuchi Nishizawa commented:
Clockwork Aquario is a great piece of 2D art, into which the pixel artists put their hearts and souls. I would like to express my heartfelt respect and gratitude to those who have worked so hard to restore it.
Are you looking forward to playing Clockwork Aquario when it comes out later this year? Let us know in the comments section below.
