Summary
The now-defunctXbox Live Arcade(R.I.P) was a goldmine for fantastic indie games. Unfortunately, however, dozens of games were released as digital-only titles on the platform, and therecent Xbox 360 store closuremeans that many of them are now lost to time, unable to be purchased anywhere else.
One of the titles affected by the closure was The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, a super-stylish, hyperviolent beat ‘em up by Ska Studios, a studio that most notably released Salt and Sanctuary andSalt and Sacrifice.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai had built up a cult audience on XBLA and was the first major stepping stone in the Salt and Sanctuary team’s careers. But while the game is no longer available for purchase, the studio revealed exclusively to TheGamer that it does have tentative plans to revive it.
In a wider interview we had with Ska Studios and other developers regarding the closure of theXbox 360’sMarketplace, studio founder James Silva discussed his plans for the future of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
Silva told me, “Dead Samurai is what launched my career, and now you can no longer buy it. That’s not okay. I’ve been planning on porting it to PC for years, but I keep getting sidetracked.”
I’ve been planning on porting it to PC for years, but I keep getting sidetracked.
He said that while making changes to the original, like adding keyboard support, feels tedious, and there are concerns around the game’s resolution, he does still have the source code, “which is a giant relief,” and, as Silva and I talked, he created aSteamAppID for the title, meaning he took “step one.”
The biggest hold-up for Ska Studios re-releasing Dead Samurai is the time it will take to make the port and what Silva called “a sort of choice paralysis.” The developer said he’d like to “polish up the visuals a bit” but is worried about the impact it may have on the title. However, while it may take a while to complete, Silva did tell me that it’s “time to resolve that” adding, “hopefully, I’m not saying the same thing next year.”
