Sony’s Japan Studio was a long-running developer that developed other developers. Rather than a development studio in a traditional sense, it worked with smaller studios to bring games to whatever consoles Sony had available at the time. It oversaw titles as diverse as Ape Escape and Elemental Gearbolt on the PS1, Ico and Flipnic on PS2, Afrika and Demon’s Souls on PS3, etc. Basically it was all over the place, and while not everything it oversaw was a smash hit at the very least games with the Studio Japan logo were almost always interesting. One of the series under its banner was Patapon, which covered three games between 2008 and 2011 on the PSP plus saw the first two games remastered for the PS4.
Patapon was a 2D side-view rhythm RTS with a silhouette art style, where you built up a battalion of patapon with different combat roles and gave them instructions by tapping to the militaristic beat. Each of the face buttons corresponded to a word, and new commands were introduced slowly enough that learning the battle language was a relatively gentle process. Keep to the beat and the patapon would enter fever mode, with the music ramping up in intensity to match the army’s extra power. There was nothing else quite like Patapon, and in the years since the third and final game that hasn’t changed.
While Patapon may be over, Ratatan was initially teased back in mid-July and followed up with a gameplay trailer released on Friday, in anticipation of the Kickstarter going live today. Ratatan basically is Patapon, except ditching the silhouettes for a colorful cartoon style and being coming out initially on PC. It’s a complete retooling of the idea that will be instantly familiar to series fans while also adding new details to expand its basic concepts. The music is being pushed to the forefront with major units carrying instruments rather than weapons, using special skills to supplement the abilities of the more standard sworsdcritters, archers, shield bearers, etc. The music in the trailer is a bit more upbeat than the more militaristic (but still upbeat) tunesof the original, and it will be interesting to see how it all merges together with the updated art style and mostly-familiar gameplay creating a new identity. Ratatan is being headed up by Hiroyuki Kotani, game designer for all three Patapon games, so there’s good reason to expect this to be a strong evolution from the original series. It’s been twelve years since Patapon 3, which is plenty of time for new ideas to develop and mature.
Ratatan is live on Kickstarter as of now, complete with a tempting array of rewards both digital and physical. It’s only just gone up and is already two-thirds of the way to the funding goal of 20 million yen (or $141,098) as of this writing, so barring something catastrophic in the next month of the campaign’s run-time it looks like a success. There may be no more Patapon, but Ratatan is ready to pick up the banner and march to musical victory.
