Lollipop Chainsaw Remake Producer Message Clarifies Project Direction
The past can't be mended.
Remakes are a touchy subject in the gaming industry. Even the most polished ones like Final Fantasy 7 Remake still continue to receive criticism for not following the original storyline to the letter. The earlier Lollipop Chainsaw Remake announcement raised similar concerns, and so the producer Yoshimi Yasuda took to Twitter on July 13th to explain the circumstances behind the project and what’s in store for the future.
Lollipop Chainsaw is a 2012 hack-and-slash video game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture for the PS3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles. The game follows the adventures of Juliet Starling, a high school cheerleader that gets caught in a zombie outbreak led by musical zombie rock lords. Equipped with a chainsaw, she slices and dices her way through countless hordes of the undead to survive.
The statement, which is available to read in both Japanese and English, is very clear and detailed, and somewhat justified. The developer promised that the story will be untouched, as well as the design of the main character ‘Juliet’.
In the producers’ statement, which can be read below, they state that “the primary goal of the Lollipop Chainsaw Remake project is to make it so that players who wish to play Lollipop Chainsaw can do so easily, not to make a new Lollipop Chainsaw game”. They do however state that they are “unable to include 16 of the licensed songs” from the original game.
The licensed tracks of the original Lollipop Chainsaw contained many irreplaceable hits from popular bands and musicians such as Skrillex, Five Finger Death Punch, The Chordettes, and many others. The original game even included DLC collaboration costumes from popular gory anime shows at the time like Highschool of the Dead and Deadman Wonderland.
The game was also a one-of-a-kind collaboration between game designer Suda51 and filmmaker James Gunn. Gunn also confirmed later that drew influence from Lollipop Chainsaw when he directed The Suicide Squad, and it greatly inspired the “Harley-Vision”, the aesthetic of mixing this horrible gore with Harley’s starry-eyed way of looking at life, as he calls it. Sadly, Suda-51 and Gunn were confirmed by the producer in an earlier message to be uninvolved in the production of the remake.
It should be inferred from all this that Lollipop Chainsaw was as crazy and gory as possible, raising other concerns about the censorship of the game on modern platforms. The answer to this is also included in the statement. They cannot say anything yet as they have not discussed the issue with the platform holders. It is however clear that the producers intend for the remake to be as faithful to the original as much as they can.
Mohamed Hassan
Mohamed (He/Him) from Egypt is Interested in gaming as a storytelling medium and how it can give shape to new emotions and life lessons. He is currently learning the Japanese language and is interested on learning more about the Japanese culture and other cultures and how they are represented in gaming. Also a Long term fan of JRPGs, Indie games and VIsual Novels.
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