A small town in northern Alberta, cut off from the rest of the world. Lost somewhere among the thick brush and endless forests of an untamed wilderness, there is nothing left but the voices of the past.

I’ve travelled in search of this hellish place a realm where nothing seems to live except the false memories of what once existed there. You may call it nothing more than a mark on a map. Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s the sort of place where someone might have to fight the forces of evil just to free the town and whatever poor souls are still alive within it.

Something about places like that has always freaked me out.

Imagine travelling down some forgotten dirt road, wandering around on an adventure without a care in the world, only to find yourself stranded or completely lost. Eventually, you stumble upon a town you were never supposed to find. We’ve all ended up in some little town we never planned on visiting, five hundred kilometres away from where we started. You know the kind of place.

Sometimes it’s just another stop along the road.

Other times, it feels like the beginning of a nightmare.

Just imagine if spooky stuff like that actually happened in the real world. It’s crazy when you really start thinking about it.

When I was a kid, I remember going camping with my parents, and naturally, that meant spending time around small towns and those old campgrounds scattered across the countryside. I honestly loved those places. Back in the 1990s, some of those campgrounds would have a couple of arcade machines sitting around for the kids to play while their parents were doing whatever parents did.

I played so many classics that way.

There’s something incredibly cool about knowing I actually got to experience that era firsthand. Future generations will never truly understand how awesome it was to walk up to a Mortal Kombat arcade machine, put your money into it, and start playing.

Those were fun times.

And now?

Look around you.

LOOK!

Everything is turning to shit, and sometimes I think we need to take a stand, create a new standard, and forget about the crumb bums on Baker Street.

In a strange way, that’s what this game represents to me.

It originally started as nothing more than a demo, something I had always wanted to make but never really believed I would. As development continued, however, it started becoming something more. It became the kind of game I imagine I would have made if somebody had given me the chance to travel back in time with enough money and resources to develop something for the Atari 7800 or the Nintendo Entertainment System.

If I had been there, this is the kind of game I would have wanted to put on those systems.

So, in the meantime, I’m going to keep working away at it. I may expand the game considerably, experiment with new ideas, and see just how far I can take the whole thing.

It’s completely different from almost anything I’ve made in the past, and I think that’s one of the reasons I find it so interesting. There’s something exciting about making a game that feels like it could have existed decades ago but somehow slipped through the cracks.

Kind of like discovering some forgotten cartridge sitting in the back of an old video store.

And hey, speaking of classics, Mega Man 6 is still the best one in the series.

That’s just the truth.

Until next time, be great, folks.