Limited Run Games has started dipping into the retro scene, producing brand new cartridges of old games like Shantae for the Game Boy Color, and now it’s turning to emulation to combine the two, bringing classic games back to modern systems. Shantae, a cute platformer first released on the Game Boy Color back in 2002, didn’t just get a Limited Run cartridge reprint: it was also the first classic game Limited Run re-released digitally on the Switch, using its new Carbon engine.
Limited Run explains on its website that the Carbon Engine is “a multi-platform development tool that helps different emulators interface with modern hardware.”
If Shantae was a proof of concept, the second Carbon Engine game, released in February, feels like a mission statement. River City Girls Zero is a 1994 Super Famicom game never previously translated or released outside of Japan, which Limited Run and WayForward collaborated on to release with a new localization, animated intro cutscenes, and other special features. Its success could point towards the untapped potential of more unlocalized games.
“We wouldn’t put in the time and effort to develop something like that if it was going to be a one-off thing,” said Joe Modzeleski, Development Lead at Limited Run Games “I can say from a personal standpoint there’s a ton of interest. We want to get bigger, better, provide more… There’s a huge audience for Japanese games that never came over here. Absolutely massive. And that kind of wraps back around to the accessibility thing I was talking about earlier. There’s one more step to patching ROMs. Yes, that content is accessible—you can play Mother 3, but the people clamoring for [an official translation of] Mother 3 don’t want to do that. They want to turn on their Switch and play Mother 3. That’s the accessibility level we’ve got to meet them at.”
Modzeleski said that Limited Run is open to both facilitating new localizations or licensing existing fan translations on a game-by-game basis. Pulling that off will require good relationships with publishers, which Limited Run already has from its success with physical releases, and will also require good relationships with the emulation community, which it’s carefully cultivated.
The Carbon Engine will debut on PC soon with River City Girls Zero. And it’s still growing, with Limited Run planning to add support for the PlayStation, Sega CD, and more. The excitement is extremely palpable!
(All information was provided by PCGamer)
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