Beep On Why They Chose To Bring Back Cotton, Their Foray Into Publishing, And More

Yesterday, Japanese retro PC/video game chain store Beep announced that they were going into video game publishing beginning with Cotton Reboot, a tentatively titled updated rerelease of the X68000 version of the shoot ‘em up. A follow-up interview has been published, where Beep and developer Rocket Engine explain why they chose this game and this version in particular, and more. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

Here are the highlights:

On why Beep decided to go into game publishing:

It all started when Beep’s Mitsuru Maruyama met up with game developer 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. They became fast buddies, and later on, in 2018 they worked together again to rerelease Valist Leznalt on floppy disks for the X68000 once more.

Rocket Engine has worked on the Trouble Witches series of doujin bullet hell shmups before, and Cotton from the Cotton series was a crossover playable character in one of them. As the Cotton series hasn’t seen a new entry since Cotton Original’s rerelease on PS3, Kondou thought that it was a waste to just leave the IP out to dry, and asked IP holder Success whether they could do something with it. To their surprise, Success said yes. Kondou then asked Beep to be publisher for Cotton Reboot.

On why Cotton Reboot is based on the X68000 version and not the arcade version:

It turns out that the X68000 version of Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams is more polished than the arcade version, being more balanced and having more attack patterns for certain bosses. After discussing it with others, they decided to go with the X68000 version.

What’s new with Cotton Reboot:

While the game is an updated port of the X68000 version, as it is a complete port they have been able to add in extra features, such as having Pril Patowle from the Trouble Witches series be the playable character instead, and an autofire fire. There is also an Arrange mode that makes the game widescreen and more, but the other details aren’t finalized. However, they are taking care that the Arrange mode will not lose the spirit of the original game. More info is to come later on.

Cotton Reboot is in development for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.