This Monday, we revealed our latest creation… An old school mix of beat’em all and platformer games, set in the worlds of Go!Go! Ackman and Dr. Slump, from the late Akira Toriyama. The fun (or sad?) part of the story is that, well, actually, there’s no game. Ackman X Dr. Slump, as we called it, isn’t a real game. It was our little trick for this year’s April Fool’s Day.
Wanna know more about it? Follow our lead.
Every year, our team at Umeshu Lovers gather and think about what will be our next « fish ». This is actually quite a big deal, since not only it is really fun to work on those projects, but they can also bring new opportunities. We won’t get too much into details here, but let’s say that some of the most exciting projects we’ve ever worked on happened because someday, somewhere around the globe, some people enjoyed our creations and thought working with us could be great. Anyway, a couple months ago, we all sat and thought : « Ok, if we were given the opportunity to bring back to life a very old game and add to it our own flavor, what game would you like to work on ? ». Among the studio, many of us are huge fans of Toriyama-sensei, and one of the name that kept being called was Go!Go! Ackman.
If you are not familiar with that name, Go!Go! Ackman is a short manga series, written and drawn by Dragon Ball legendary creator Akira Toriyama. Released between 1993 and 1994, Go!Go! Ackman tells the story of Ackman, a little demon who just woke up from a 50-years nap. Like his demonic family, Ackman is supposed to harvest souls for the Great Demon King, but he has little interest in this task. As he tries to murder people, he faces Tenshi, an angel sent from the Heaven to stop him. The thing is, while Ackman isn’t really motivated, Tenshi is the actual danger and the cherub ends up doing all the killing. And that’s basically the story. The manga was adapted into an anime, and then into three Super Famicom games. For this year’s April Fool’s Day, we wanted to resurrect those games. And then, while we were laying the foundations of our little trick, Toriyama-sensei passed away.
Akira Toriyama has always been a huge source of inspiration, for all of us. His stories, characters, gorgeous machines and weird monsters fed our imaginations for decades. So our project switched a little bit. We wanted this « fake game » to be a tribute to what he gave us. And that’s how we decided to include Dr. Slump’s Arale to the project.
Over the course of three weeks or so (8 days for the dev part!), several of our artists and devs gave birth to Ackman X Dr. Slump, showing once more their amazing talent and passion. If you want some details, please take a look:
- Alexandre Arpentinier (3D Character Artist) shared some of his work on his own Artstation page.
- Mickael Lelievre (Lead Artist) shared his work on his Artstation page, including Gordon, Ackman winged partner in crime.
- Lucie Martin (Concept & 3D Artist) shared her work, including her amazing models for Arale, Ackman and Gatchan.
Kuddos to Inkeri, who provided the soundtrack for this project, remixing Kajima Shitamachi’s original work, and to all the fine people at Umeshu Lovers who helped giving birth to what was a crazy idea at the very beginning. Working on this small project was a dream come true for all of us. It’s not only a tribute, but also our way to mourn and help ease the pain after Toriyama-sensei’s sudden passing. He will be missed.
Full credits :
- Mickael Lelievre: 3D characters
- Alexandre Arpentinier: 3D characters, render and keyart
- Lucie Martin: 3D characters
- Hugo Roux: Keyart and assets
- Bryan Audric: Animation
- Killian Prevost: Houses sketch concept
- Adrien Quillet: 3D models for houses and cars
- Sylvain Sarrailh: Art direction, game assets, key art
- Inkeri: Music
- Antoine Maniet: Lead dev
- Andoni Lapeyre: Main Dev
- Sacha Yerle, Leo Bergougnoux, Khénan Benanou, Noé Jacques: Dev room's cheerful atmosphere
- Amélyne Gauthier: Production and animation
- Gabrielle Clégnac: Production
