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Dotemu reverse engineered the original Windjammers to make sure they got the sequel right
Dotemu is currently working on Windjammers 2, a sequel to the cult classic. Dotemu knows it's important to retain the feel of the original while creating new content for the follow-up, which is why they spent quite a bit of time picking apart that first release. In an interview with Siliconera, Dotemu's Stéphane Perez talked about the process of diving deep into the original game to see what made it tick.
We preserved everything that was already there in the first game, because as you say, it’s very important to make it just as it was in the beginning. There is a huge base in France, and we are working with Windjammers France. They are five guys who are really involved in this game. During development, we called them a few times to do some playtests and get their opinion about it. It’s exactly the same game as the first one.
In fact, we did reverse engineer the first game to see how everything was programmed. It was basic, very old development language. We took everything from the first in the second one, so every movement, every disc direction, every angle… that’s exactly the same. Even the speed of the disc is the same. The only thing we changed, because it’s a new game, is the court. The dimensions of the court are a bit wider because it’s not the same size of the screen now, but that’s it.
Then, when we had this background, we started to put some new gameplay stuff in. We did a lot of iteration to get exactly what could be interesting. We don’t want to put some crazy stuff in it, like bullshit just to put something in. So we put four new mechanics that people… deserve, in fact, to change a bit of the game and to make it more fair sometimes.