Awhile back, NetEase Games announced that a remastered version of the 2011 Suda51/Shinji Mikami title Shadows of the Damned is coming to Switch as Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered. For those who don’t know, the game is an action-adventure game that takes place in a supper-eccentric “Hell + rock & roll”-themed world. It’s very Suda and Mikami, and apparently that didn’t sit well at all with original publisher EA.
In an interview with Game Informer, Suda51 is asked about being unhappy with Shadows of the Damned back when it originally launched. It’s true that Suda51 and Mikami seemed to have a rather rough go of things working with EA as the game’s publisher, but now he looks back on the entire experience a bit more fondly. That said, there was one moment during the game’s development where EA apparently really came down hard on both Suda51 and Mikami.
A lot of things happened at the time, but I look back on the whole experience pretty fondly now. While we were making the original, we definitely had a lot of friction with EA – we argued about a lot of aspects and ideas for the game, and both we and EA made a lot of compromises, but those experiences are what brought about Garcia, Paula, Fleming, and their whole story, so I love the end result as a Grasshopper game in general and as our own personal creation as well. I had some great experiences with Mikami making the game; we got called out to Los Angeles by [publisher] EA this one time, and there were like ten people in this hotel suite sitting at this big table. When we walked in, it kinda freaked us out. We got really bitched out, getting asked things like, “Just what the hell are you trying to make?!” That kind of experience is rare – especially in the video game industry – and I feel like if this was the underworld or something I probably would’ve gotten whacked in that room (laughs). So many of the experiences we had back then were super interesting and are really fond and valuable memories now.
Now that I think about it, I believe that hotel thing happened at the Marriott in Los Angeles. Like I said, there were like ten people from EA – some of their top dudes – all lined up, and we had no idea what was going on. We were simply told, “Come to this meeting.” No context or anything, so we were shocked when we got there. It’s actually sort of an awesome memory now. It wasn’t exactly scary, since being the video game industry and all, I knew we weren’t actually going to get killed or anything, but we were definitely surprised.
Anyway, I’m really proud of what we made, and I cherish all the memories I have of those times.
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