Shovel Knight May Be the 8bit Homage Weve Been Waiting For
The music in Shovel Knights launch trailer sounds nothing like the music in the game. I can personally vouch for this. The trailer above is all dour, thrash-y, melodically minor guitars and calf-murdering double-bass drumming. The actual game is scored with scritch-popping chiptunes that's the hipster way of talking about 8-bit music in 2014. With respect for Jake Kaufmann, who's listed as developer Yacht Club Games' sound designer, the trailer's music doesn't hold a candle to the mad genius of his vintage-infused in-game tunes, like this one, , Shovel Knight is an 8-bit-like coin a genre, a platformer starring a shovel-wielding knight, out to defeat the evil foozle, and his thumb-torturing adventures along the way. It's like Wizards and Warriors meets Castlevania meets Faxanadu and I'm told, DuckTales  for shame, I never played that one. It's the result of a wildly successful Kickstarter that blew past its 75,000 goal by nearly a quarter of a million bucks back in April 2013. It's the latest release in a sudden parade of mature Kickstarter-spawned games putting paid to crowdfunding's promise. Bask in its unabashed genuflection to 1980s game design tropes. Bathe in its classic NES color palette. Chuckle at the notion of a horn-helmed knight nobly brandishing a sharpened spade. William Faulkner said it best "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner would have understood and probably played Shovel Knight. Shovel Knight costs 15, and you can have it on PC, Mac, Linux, 3DS or Wii U this Thursday, June 26.