When the Japanese technology and design company Qute Corporation released the WonderWitch game development kit a little over two decades ago, the team likely never guessed it would set them on a path to become one of the defining boutique studios of the modern shooting game form.
Qute may not court the attention from the mainstream that genre heavyweights Cave and Treasure so capably attract, but its creations are celebrated by genre devotees, and include some very sought after shmup collectibles. Yet behind all their cult status, Qute’s library of releases remain relatively accessible in terms of their game and scoring systems, and are increasingly more available in the West. In fact, the team are still at it, having just taken their latest title Natsuki Chronicles to the PlayStation 4 and PC on these shores. It presents a remarkable, energetic horizontal shooter that is both a prequel and sequel to Qute’s earlier game Ginga Force – and its story really begins at a fateful game development contest hosted back when bullet hell was increasingly asserting dominance over the wider genre.
Natsuki ChroniclesDeveloper: QutePublisher: Rising Star GamesAvailability: Out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One
Like so many boutique or cult shooting game developers – including Triangle Service, Success, G.Rev, Moss and Milestone – Qute has shown that in a genre that is arguably constrained by its own conventions, there remains ample room for the distinct. Compared to Cave’s mesmerising intersecting bullet patterns, or Treasure’s grand, atmospheric shmup operas, Qute’s works have a rather different tone. While far from truly minimalist mechanically and aesthetically, they are to-the-point and pacey; uncluttered purebred shooters with understated charisma and a knack for the exhilarating. To enjoy a Qute release is to teeter on the boundary between attacking and defensive play, juggling those priorities as a delicate seasoning of random enemy placements nudge you away from complacency. Put simply, they are very good shooting games, if not entirely conventional.
And just as Qute’s shooting games are distinct, so was its development kit. A game making platform for Bandai’s WonderSwan family of handhelds, the WonderWitch was conceived with amateur coders in mind – though it used the C programming language, demanding a degree of proficiency not required to embrace today’s hobbyist dev tools. One of the then-amateurs attracted to the WonderWitch was M-KAI – who like so many shooting game developers from the era chooses to practice his craft under a pseudonym.
Natsuki Chronicles – Launch Trailer Watch on YouTube
As a youngster he had taught himself Z80 assembly in secret, choosing to keep his game making pastime private in a family environment that was at the time, he says, somewhat strict. M-KAI soon created several homebrew MSX shooters, but a yearning to build the bullet hell games he saw emerging around him meant he would quickly long for a more powerful creative platform.
The WonderWitch turned out to be that platform.
In November 2000, Qute launched the WonderWitch Grand Prix competition, encouraging amateur coders to push what was possible with the dev kit, while offering a ¥500,000 prize. M-KAI decided to enter the contest – commonly known as the ‘WWGP 2001’. He was about to create an icon of the shooting game genre.