Croc studio Argonaut wants to remaster cult N64 shooter Buck Bumble
“We hope that Buck Bumble will have his day in the sun eventually”, the studio’s co-CEO says
Argonaut Games execs say they would like to see the newly resurrected developer remastering Buck Bumble one day.
The third-person shooter was originally released on the Nintendo 64 back in 1998, where publishing duties were handled by Ubisoft.
The game was well received at the time but then enjoyed a new lease of life in later years, when its speed garage title theme gained popularity online.
Following its dissolution in 2007, Argonaut returned last year and subsequently released a remaster of its 1997 platformer Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.
In a new interview in MCV Develop magazine, Argonaut founder Jez San and co-CEO Mike Arkin noted that Croc was chosen to be the revived studio’s first remaster because it was easily the most popular of the options available to it.
“Starglider was the game that originally put Argonaut on the map, and I definitely want to do something with it in the future as it’s my ‘first-born’,” San explained, “but it’s primitive by comparison with later games, and almost 40 years old. How many people who play games in their 60s (or older) really remember it?
“I-Ninja is a really well-regarded and underappreciated game and we’d love to revisit it. Buck Bumble too, but that was N64-only so less people know about it.
“Croc, on the other hand, sold well over 3 million copies (back when that was a lot of copies) and was the first big platformer on the original PlayStation console. It’s also got broad appeal, both to men and women. Croc really appealed to everyone. It was the obvious choice.”
Arkin then added: “But we also hope that Buck Bumble will also have his day in the sun, eventually.”
Fans of Buck Bumble eagerly anticipating its return may have to wait a while, however, because it appears Argonaut will first be working on a remaster of the sequel to Croc.
“We’ve made no secret of the fact that if Croc does well in the market that the obvious next project is to remaster Croc 2,” San said, with Arkin adding that early work had already started on it.
“Croc 2 was built in a different engine from Croc, and the remastering approach is also a little different,” he explained. “We’ve done some early R&D to validate our approach, and it’s looking like it will work well, so assuming we greenlight it from the commercial and financial side, we’re confident that it will be another step forward from what we achieved with Croc.”
