Yesterday, PlatinumGames revealed a Kickstarter campaign for The Wonderful 101, allowing backers to pledge their support and get a remastered version ported to Switch, PS4 and Steam. The campaign appears to have took the world by storm, amassing an incredible $1 million in just over 12 hours.
As this article goes live, the Kickstarter has been up for 13-and-a-half hours, generating a total of $1,010,374 so far. If you go and check the page for yourself, that number will no doubt be even higher - watching it increase in real-time is a sight to behold.
Incidentally, this means that one of the campaign's new stretch goals has already been hit. Raising $1 million means that backers will also be treated to 'Time Attack', which PlatinumGames is calling "a speedrunner's dream".
If we're honest, when we first heard about this Kickstarter project, we weren't entirely convinced that it'd take off in the way PlatinumGames would have wanted. Turns out we needn't have worried - what an amazing start!
Have you backed the campaign? Do you plan on doing so? One reward tier even lets you get blocked by Hideki Kamiya on Twitter.
[source kickstarter.com]
Comments (41)
The force is strong with this one!
I... I kinda don't get it...
Loved the Wonderful 101 on Wii U, but it has always been there floating in the Wii U library as that good game very few cared or actually wanted to play.
Why now so many people are tossing money to play it like it is some kind of never released lost game?
Sometimes I feel like noone even noticed the Wii U existed @[email protected]
Anyway very glad for Platinum Games and of course very glad that this little hidden gem of a game is getting a second chance to shine.
They'd probably have enough money to make a whole new sequel if the money keeps rolling in.
Honest opinions on this game?
@Mogster it’s one of the most creative action games I’ve ever played. It’s easily one of my top ten of all time favorites.
Been playing since the NES.
You should really try it. It’s epic. Don’t let the art style fool you.
@Mogster Personally, as much as I wanted to like it, I really just couldn't get into it at all. Just didn't find it fun to play. I got it as my free game from the Mario Kart 8 promotion but ended up just uninstalling it before long
@BakaKnight Well, don't forget that whilst it seems ''incredibly popular'' out of a sudden. There are ''only'' 15,000 backers. And backing this problem seems like a good deal, because €30 or so grants you a copy of the game. So yeah, even I, and I wasn't the biggest fan of the original, am considering donating to this, because a copy of W101 for €30 isn't too bad.
Anyway, it's difficult to say how much this will sell once it hits the market. If it's mostly the hard core fans buying it, and it sells around 100,000 it's done probably not much better than the Wii U version, but maybe it catches on with the rest of the public and goes on to sell more than a million. Difficult to say.
@BenAV @Mogster Yeah, I got it for free with MK8 as well. I played a bit of it, but I couldn't really get into the control scheme. It's one of those games with a control scheme you either get, or you don't.
@BakaKnight it might be because at the time it was released on the Wii U, whilst it was very good, it looked to some just like a gimmick where you drew on the game pad, plus the advertising for it was very poor. Now though, people know about Platinum’s rep even more, so are more invested In it I think
@BenAV I don’t know how much you played of the game, but I really encourage you to play longer. You’ll find it’s a really enjoyable and epic experience.
Also I don’t get why people never understood that you didn’t need the touchscreen to play. You could use the analogue sticks, that was the best way to play.
It’s one of those games that it’s difficult to master but really satisfactory once you understand what’s going on. Just like Bayonetta and Astral Chain.
It’s the Platinum signature.
@fafonio I'm generally good at judging what I will and won't enjoy. I played enough to be pretty confident that it's not for me.
Is this digital release only?
I backed a physical copy
I've backed it for the physical version, I enjoyed it on Wii U and hopefully the controls have been sorted out now. Either way it'll be a nice addition to the collection
@PlayedNSlayed Physical version is coming at well, unknown if a retail version will exist, but you can get one backing the kickstarter.
@Mogster Honnest opinion : it's a gem. Truly. One of the funniest games I've had the chance to play on the WiiU. It is also one of the reason why I kept my console - It's a masterpiece.
Looking forward to trying it with more conventional controls.
I've backed a standard phyiscal copy. It should work out about £35 including postage to the UK.
the reason why nobody bought it on wii u them god awful controls with the gamepad that flatout didn't work, with them hopefully out of the way this will be a day one.
My favorite Wii U game, my favorite Platinum/Clover game, my favorite Kamiya directed game, and one of my favorite games of all time.
Switch Pro isn’t this year and PS5 can wait, I went in hard on this Kickstarter
Impressive! Congrats to Platinum and all the people backing this. What a great start indeed. Kickstarters aren't for me personally so I'm not going to back it but I'm happy for everyone who is excited about this project. Enjoy!
I have the Wii U version so I feel like I have already supported the game and company. Cheers!
Typo in the article: 'The campaign appears to have took the world by storm' should be 'The campaign appears to have taken the world by storm'.
W101 is probably one of the reasons I loved my Wii U so much. It was very fun and unique and colourful and humorous and... I’m not entirely sure if I would want to play through it on a console it wasn’t built for. Plus you can only be surprised by all the moments once.
Personally I don’t like the idea of a kickstarter campaign. It wouldn’t take a lot of funding for W101 port, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the sales reached 1M copies. I understand the idea or crowdfunding small, indie studios, but Platinum isn’t one of them. They’d definitely get a solid return on that game.
@Krzysztof And yet, Nintendo did not step up to publish it and the money needs to come from someone. Plus this is fun for backers, shows concrete evidence of the size of support for the game, allows for a cross platform release, has unique rewards that would likely not ever be available otherwise, and is already very successful. I'm not seeing a lot of downside.
@BakaKnight it's probably the PlayStation community bankrolling this one.
@BakaKnight "Sometimes I feel like the Wii U never existed"
It didn't. That's exactly why we're all throwing money at the game now. The Wii U was a mistake, and it was painfully obvious early on how bad that console was. So now that Nintendo has an amazing console out, we all want the chance to play a game that was good but came out on terrible hardware.
Idk, it makes perfect sense to me.
EDIT: My tone seems a bit harsh, but I assure you, this is just my opinion. Not aimed at you or anything either. If you liked the Wii U, good I decided not to purchase it because to me it wasn't worth the money. Simply wasn't a quality product (to me).
@RadioHedgeFund I highly doubt that. The comments, for example, is all switch backers and people crying about it not coming to Xbox. Granted, it's a small sample size, but I highly doubt a niche game like W101 is suddenly super popular with PS4 owners.
@Santa Yes thanks for the info.Pledged my support for physical copy today
@Blizzia I agree the WiiU had issues. I do believe though that Nintendo took a risk that didn't quite come off. It was a necessary step though to get to the console we now have. Off tv play was a huge feature that was praised by all that actually used it. And let's not forget it actually had a decent number of games. Nintendo really are the only ones that ever take a risk to do things differently when it comes to their hardware, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but each of their consoles are unique which is why they're always important for the industry IMO
Backing the physical version, myself. Going to create a Kickstarter account just to do so. And here I thought I’d get away with not spending any money on games in February.
I think a bigger, or at least as big, consideration of why they went with the Kickstarter route is publicity rather than money. This game has gotten a huge publicity boost from the success of the Kickstarter, and it’s a clear demonstration that fans love and support both Platinum and this IP (which many considered DOA after the first game came in with such low sales numbers, even for the Wii U) for potential investors and collaborators in the studio. They might get offered collaborations on dormant IPs (like Okami), and after this and the success of Astral Chain they’ll have a much easier time shopping around new IPs as well. Plus now they have over a million dollars with thirty days to go. It’s worked out phenomenally well for them.
I guess I have to play it now
I'll bet Nintendo is wishing they had funded this so that it would have stayed exclusive
Exclusive is good here I might jump to KS to get this Physical as well.
I didn't care for the gameplay on the Wii U, so this will be a hard pass for me. Glad fans are getting this though.
@leo13 They did offer to fund it with the condition of exclusivity, and Platinum said no lol.
@BakaKnight No one did notice the Wii U existed. It was horribly marketed and countless casual gamers and consumers thought it was just some weird upgrade for the Wii. The Wii U only sold about 13 million units world wide, pretty much only the die hard Nintendo loyalists and a few curious types in game stores bought one.
Add to that it had a slow and irregular release rate with huge spells of time lacking any significant releases... What games it got were often good and the reason they are getting ports is to give them the chance to shine that they missed on Wii U.
@Mogster lots of people felt it was meh when it came out but now it's grown on people enough to be remembered better than it was.
Hell I just pledged. The game was amazing back then and I won't be taking the wrapping off this game once it comes in (I'll buy a separate, digital copy to gameshare with the family). All I need now is Pikmin 3, the Zelda remasters, and Mario 3D World, and I can finally put the Wii U out to pasture.
I'll definitely replay this gem. This is gonna be so much fun.
This is one of those games that I somehow missed on the WiiU. I know it was well received at the time, but for reasons I can't even recall - let alone explain, I guess I just never pursued it. With all the talk of a possible Switch port, I got curious, so I finally read the Nintendo Life review for the original yesterday, and it sounds....in a word.... wonderful! 🥰
I still have my WiiU, though, and when I saw that it was only $30, I had planned to buy it this upcoming payday. But now that I know that it's hard-confirmed for the Switch, I think I'll probably just wait it out instead.
Do we have any loose ideas of when it will be available? If it's gonna be something crazy, like a year or more, I might be tempted to reverse, and tide myself over on the WiiU version after all. If it's less than that, though, then yeah, I think I can wait.
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