[News] HD version of Toki announced

Toki, the arcade platform game from a whole two decades ago told the story of a man that had to misfortune to be transformed into an ape by an evil wizard, perhaps in an attempt to piss off evolution.

Silly plot aside (then again, most game plots back then were utterly bonkers) the game itself was a wonderful platform with a great system of power-ups and ideally balanced difficulty. It was hard enough to ensure you wouldn't finish it on your first few tries, makes sense what with it being an arcade game and all, but not so hard that you would simply move on to the next game that wasn't about to devour your whole allowance and/or soul.

Not surprisingly, then, Toki was a success in the arcade and console/home computers (where it was subsequently ported) markets. Twenty years after the fact, French-based developers Golgoth studio are working on a high definition version of the original, with all-new graphics. Head over to their blog to check out some screenshots and direct comparisons to the original.

I personally find the new graphics true to the original and charming in their own right, and the gameplay should still hold up as 2D platformers usually age quite nicely. If the finished game is priced smartly, meaning around $10/8 euros, this should be a must for fans of the genre.

(via JeuxVideo.com)

TL;DR version:

One of the arcades back in my hometown had a version of this game called Juju instead of Toki. It wasn't until much later that I would learn that this was the Japanese version of the arcade, but to this day I still haven't figured out which name is more ridiculously funny.