Categories: RetroSwitch

Cotton Reboot Team Explains How The Revival Came About

In an interview with Famitsu, publisher Beep and developer Rocket Engine provided an inside scoop into their newly announced revival of the Cotton franchise: Cotton Reboot.

During the interview, Beep and Rocket Engine discussed how their partnership on the project got started, why they chose to base Cotton Reboot on the X68000 version of Cotton, as well as some of the new features gamers can expect in the new game.

A translated summary of the interview’s highlights can be found below:

The Beginning Of The Partnership

Beep’s Mitsuru Maruyama met up with Rocket Engine’s Isamu Kondou via an early issue of a retro PC gaming magazine

Back then, Kondou had created his own X68000 game Valist Leznalt

The two became friends, and in 2018 they worked together again to rerelease Valist Leznalt on floppy disks

Rocket Engine has worked on the Trouble Witches series of doujin bullet hell shmups before

Cotton from the Cotton series was a crossover playable character in one of them

The Cotton series hasn’t seen a new entry since Cotton Original’s re-release on PS3

Kondou thought that it was a waste to not use the IP, so he asked Success if they could do something with it

Success said yes, and then Kondou asked Beep to be the publisher

Why the X68000 version of Cotton

The X68000 version of Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams is more polished than the arcade version

It is also better balanced and has more attack patterns for certain bosses

This is why the X68000 version is the base for this new project

New Features For Cotton Reboot

New features include having Pril Patowle from the Trouble Witches series be the playable character

There’s also an autofire feature

There will be an Arrange mode that makes the game widescreen and more

The team is making sure the Arrange mode will not lose the spirit of the original game