[Emperor Charlemagne]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/.../project-giana

DEMO:
http://project-giana.com/download/

Well, that quirky Super Mario Bros clone continues to reinvent itself and find its own voice with each subsequent release.

After being taken off the shelves by Nintendo back on the C64, coming back on the DS a few years ago (as well as several indie homebrew reboots on the PC and Dreamcast), it looks like the original team wants another go. And heck, apparently Chris Hulsbeck, who did the original music for the first game (which is one of the best C64 soundtracks ever made), is back in too. The game seems to center around switching between the two iterations of the gameworld, kind of like light-world dark-world LttP style.

The game in action looks pretty nice, smooth, and very good-looking. The only thing i can fault are the character renders on the thumbnail. I personally liked the character designs on the DS remake much more, and I hope that ultimately, the character art is more based off of that.

One day in, and they already raised 15 Gs' (ha). I'm a sucker for 2D platformers myself, so I'm hoping this one makes it through. Some nice rewards in there too. The 10,000 reward probably pays for itself with that copy of Giana Sisters for the Atari ST.

[Sindra]

I was sent a message about this.


It looks a lot like the Nintendo DS remake so far, but I only gave it a quick glance. It didn't seem like Huelsbeck was making any new music for this, though. Am I wrong? (I know he's pretty wrapped up in the Turrican Anthology project so I don't see how he'd have time)

[Meteo Xavier]

That box art officially sterilized me.

[Emperor Charlemagne]

Probably because you weren't man enough to make a woman out of Giana.

Originally Posted by Sindra

I was sent a message about this.


It looks a lot like the Nintendo DS remake so far, but I only gave it a quick glance. It didn't seem like Huelsbeck was making any new music for this, though. Am I wrong? (I know he's pretty wrapped up in the Turrican Anthology project so I don't see how he'd have time)

Whereas the DS remake was a pretty straight-forward platformer, this one looks like they took ideas quite a bit further on switching between two game-worlds on the fly. Kind of like a parallel worlds type of deal.

Hulsbeck is remixing the original soundtrack in two flavors - "normal" version and a metal version (for the nightmare world). At least that's what I gathered.

1/5 of the way there!

[KyleJCrb]

Originally Posted by Emperor Charlemagne

[i]
Hulsbeck is remixing the original soundtrack in two flavors - "normal" version and a metal version (for the nightmare world). At least that's what I gathered.

Nooooot quite. The metal portion is being crafted by legendary Swedish SID metal band Machinae Supremacy (who did an excellent arrangement of the Giana Sisters theme a decade ago.) They are using this arrangement in the game and have confirmed that they have written new music as well. From watching the intro video on the Kickstarter page, it also sounds like there's new arrangements from Huelsbeck himself, so that is definitely exciting. From what I gather, this game has been in development for awhile and it's fairly close to completion; they just need a boost in getting over the final stages of development and distributing the game. Based on that, I'd presume Huelsbeck did the arrangements for this some time ago before the Turrican Anthology kicked off.

It looks like a new experience from the DS Giana Sisters, and I for one couldn't be more excited.

[Emperor Charlemagne]

A new video of one of the later levels.

Looks pretty neato. The worlds themselves look very nice and eye-catching, and the switching mechanic can lead to some interesting puzzles. The music changing constantly might wear a bit thin, though - however, that's a minor complaint.

[KyleJCrb]

Originally Posted by Emperor Charlemagne

The music changing constantly might wear a bit thin, though - however, that's a minor complaint.

I agree, but I have to wonder if they were switching so frequently just to show it off (it didn't look like they were changing back and forth for gameplay reasons so much as to show us that "hey, look! The music changes!) Regardless, a cool option to give players the option to have one soundtrack continuously playing instead of switching them back and forth.

[Arrow]

Donated like a BOSS.

[Emperor Charlemagne]

Awesome.

For those that really don't like money, a new reward tier has been listed - donating $60 will get you a physical copy of the game in a jewel case + soundtrack + artbook.

1/3 of the way there!

[Emperor Charlemagne]

I don't know now if the kickstarter will reach its goal. It's close!

However, they have released a demo for everyone to try!
So try it out and if you like what you see, support it!
http://project-giana.com/download/