No More Heroes and Killer7 developer Grasshopper Manufacture is hosting a countdown on its website, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary.
There’s a timer counting down on Grasshopper Manufacture’s 25th anniversary website. Originally it was set to end on 10th June, but as noted by Twitter user Knoebel, it has now been set to 15th June. To be precise, ‘something’s gonna happen’ at 5am BST.
Grasshopper Manufacture was founded in 1998 by Goichi Suda, also known as Suda 51. Its first game was the visual novel The Silver Case, but the developer is probably most famous for the No More Heroes series, which debuted on the Nintendo Wii in 2007. The studio’s most recent title was No More Heroes III in 2021.
Grasshopper was acquired by Chinese publisher NetEase in October 2021. At around the same time, Suda 51 told VGC that Grasshopper’s ten-year plan included creating three original IPs as well as reviving some older Grasshopper titles, and possibly licensing some ‘dormant’ franchises owned by other companies.
Seeing as it’s Grasshopper’s 25th anniversary, I reckon a revival of one of their older IPs would make perfect sense. Grasshopper’s 2012 game Lollipop Chainsaw is already being remade by Kadokawa Games, something that Suda 51 has said he has nothing to do with, so the announcement is unlikely to be about that. Instead, I reckon we could be seeing a revival of one of Grasshopper’s earliest titles.
It probably won’t be a remake of The Silver Case, which was already re-released a few years ago in 2018 – unless there’s a second sequel in the works. Instead, I think we might see a revival of Grasshopper’s landmark 2005 game Killer7. It was critically lauded at the time and still looks incredibly stylish today, so it would make sense for a re-release. Then again, it was already ported to PC just a few years ago.
Possibly, we could be getting a remake of the rare PS2 title Michigan: Report From Hell from 2004. That would be a really interesting move – this survival horror game didn’t review particularly well at the time, but it has since built up a cult following, and the fact that it was never released in the United States has increased its rarity and desirability. European copies of the game regularly sell for hundreds of pounds on eBay.
We’ll find out for sure in just a few days’ time. In the meantime, Grasshopper has released a video showing them getting ready for… something.
