Suda51 says he wants to bring back this forgotten PS2 game, ‘hopefully sooner rather than later’
Michigan is one of Grasshopper’s less well-known games in the West
Grasshopper Manufacture CEO Goichi Suda (aka Suda51) says he wants to bring back a PS2 game from the studio’s early days.
Michigan: Report from Hell was a PlayStation 2 title released by Grasshopper in 2004, and has the player controlling a cameraman in a mist-covered Chicago covering a plane crash in Lake Michigan.
Working as part of a television news crew, the player has to follow a reporter through a series of dangerous and deadly scenarios, and has to focus the camera on various elements.
The player can decide what to film and is scored according, with points allocated for ‘Suspense’ (for well-shot, interesting events), ‘Erotic’ (filming up skirts, aiming the camera at pornographic magazines) and ‘Immoral’ (filming citizens being attack by monsters instead of helping them out).
The games tracks the player’s behaviour, and delivers multiple endings depending on how well they filmed the action and how morally sound their decision-making was.
Suda51 came up with the original concept of the game – inspired by Stephen King’s The Mist – and was a producer on it while also directing Killer7.
The game was published in Japan by Spike (now Spike Chunsoft), and got a very limited release in Europe the following year by 505 Games – this PAL version of the game is considered rare.
In a recent interview with VGC set to be published in its entirely soon, Suda was asked if, in this age of TikTok and Instagram where everyone has a camera with them at all times, now was the right time for Michigan to make a comeback, either as a sequel or a remake.
“As far as Michigan goes, that’s something that I would definitely like to revisit or bring back in some form at some time,” Suda told us.
“And so if possible, I hope I’ll be able to speak with Spike Chunsoft and make it a reality somehow, hopefully sooner rather than later. But yeah, that’s something that I’ve been wanting to go back to for a while.”
In the same interview, Suda told VGC that Grasshopper currently has numerous projects “in motion”, including “stuff that even a lot of people in the company aren’t really fully aware of what’s going on, or that it’s happening yet”.
