Ouch!

Conatus Creative's Kickstarter campaign for a new version of River City Ransom may have surpassed its original funding target, but it failed to meet the stretch goals which would secure a version for consoles — including the Wii U and 3DS.

River City Ransom: Underground is only certain for PC, Mac and Linux at present, but producer Daniel Crenna has revealed to Red Bull UK that consoles are still very much part of the team's plans:

We are looking at options for additional funding if we think we need more fuel to ensure we meet our goals, and to self-fund additional platforms we didn’t hit in our stretch goals.

Refreshingly, Crenna also admitted that he doesn't think the game would be a very good fit for smartphones — which rather goes against the modern trend of developers blindly flocking to touch screens without any real consideration for how games work minus buttons:

Beat’em up games can be horrible on touch screens. We’d have to really work to make our game sing on touch devices. We’re not ruling it out in the future, but we’ve prioritized our porting efforts around devices that will deliver a great multiplayer beat’em up experience, so for us that’s consoles and PCs.

Also revealed during the Red Bull UK interview is the fact that Yoshihisa Kishimoto — creator of the original game and Double Dragon — is involved with the project. Kishimoto said:

I'm very happy to see a renaissance of the belt-scroll genre which was our most popular and largest growing for the company. It's an important genre. I’m advising the team on artwork and story for the game.

Although the Kickstarter didn't quite cover the proposed Nintendo versions, it's encouraging to hear that the team is still committed to bringing the game to the widest possible audience. Hopefully the PC, Mac and Linux editions will sell well and give Conatus Creative the opportunity to port to consoles.

[source redbull.com]