Posted in: Games, Retro Games, Video Games | Tagged: Data West
Data West Gives An Update On Return To The Gaming Industry
When you think back to '80s and '90s gaming, one of the big names that stand out to some of the old-school players has to be Data West. Not to be confused with Data East who did a lot of NES-based titles tied to licenses, Data West was more into creating games based on popular anime titles at the time, as well as making a variety of sci-fi shooters, action platformers, exploration games, rail-shooters, and more. If you're a PC gamer of a specific age, this is a name you saw pop up frequently. They weren't trying to be flashy, nor did they really go out of their way to be a public company like other publishers at the time. So when they kind of faded away from gaming in the mid-'90s, there wasn't a ton of fanfare about their departure. They just went about business as usual in other departments.
Back in January 2020, the company posted on its Twitter account that it had decided to resume operations in the gaming industry. But they didn't really go into detail as to what that meant. A new interview with DenFamiNicoGamer has surfaced explaining it a little. Apparently the company hired a ton of new employees, all who grew up on their games and are mega-fans of the company. Their plan moving forward is to essentially make sequels of some of their old games that probably deserved one but never got the proper treatment. Right now it sounds like they want to make a sequel to The 4th Unit series, but they also want fan involvement to make it happen since the game is so beloved. But there's potential for so much more.