Breathing new life into classic titles, even unreleased ones, is a long arduous process. This is something that the team at Piko Interactive are quite familiar with. They have secured the rights to Jim Power in the Lost Dimension and are currently running it through the Kickstarter process. The cool thing about their efforts with this property is the planned platforms. From the original Nintendo Entertainment System to the Sega Genesis, Piko plan to give Jim Power the release it deserved so many years ago.
How Jim Power came to Kickstarter
Jim Power in the Lost Dimension is one of those titles that seemed to be positioned well to be a 16-bit era hit. Something happened though. We only saw the Super Nintendo and Commodore Amiga versions reach shelves in North America with the Sega Genesis version disappearing for years. That was until 2014 when Piko sought to acquire the rights to Jim Power on the Commodore Amiga with intent to create an all new Nintendo NES version.
Part of this process is release of assets for the properties. Included in these files for Jim Power was a fully playable copy of Jim Power in the Lost Dimension for the Sega Genesis. I personally remember seeing pics of this version in gaming publications back in the day, cool to know these were not just mockups.
Eventually Piko were able to secure the rights to Jim Power after a few setbacks (there is more detail on the Kickstarter page). Now that Piko owns Jim Power it was time to begin work on bringing the game to new platforms. This is where Kickstarter comes in.
What has been done already
Jim Power in the Lost Dimension for the Nintendo NES is already completed. This game was created from scratch by popular NES programmer Shiru who has created the needed tools (level editor, graphics conversion tools, etc).
The Genesis version received a bit of polish by the Piko development team while the new version for Super Nintendo received some much-needed fixes.
The SNES game is reworked over the original release. Remember that annoying parallax scrolling? It is gone now. Jim Power in the Lost Dimension now features a hit system which greatly balances out the difficulty. Niceties such as level screens and new endings have also been implemented. Think of this new SNES version kind of like Jurassic Park Rampage Edition on Sega Genesis – things have been tightened up and fixed making the game better.
Jim Power Mutant Planet will also see a port to the Amiga CD32 console. This version will feature the TurboGrafx soundtrack as well as the DOS version for play on Windows computers.
Finally, we have Jim Power Mutant Planet for the TurboGrafx CD. This version was formerly a Japan exclusive, something Piko plan to correct by making it available worldwide.
How to support new games like Jim Power
The easiest way is to hit the Kickstarter page and pledge. There are many levels available and plenty of stretch goals to get excited for. If enough support is given, we could see Jim Power comics and cartoons and even more ports such as to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
It all starts with you.
