The director of one of Bandai Namco’s IPs revealed a few direction changes during development, resulting in the Klonoa IP, primarily known during the PS1-PS2 era and is now remembered more by veteran gamers.

The Klonoa series was a series of great platformer games, but the previous game was released 14 years before its return in 2022. Last year saw the release of the Klonoa Phantom Reverie Series for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, but it was little more than an HD port of the first two games. It’s more than nothing, though. However, the franchise could have gone in a completely different direction!

Tsuyoshi Kobayashi, Klonoa’s director, told the British magazine Lost In Cult, which focuses on gaming culture and preservation, that the franchise could have had a different story because they used another IP from Namco’s repertoire as a starting point. Then during development, the Japanese developers realized they couldn’t use that intellectual property for this project. A competition was then launched within the studio to see who could create an original character to take the main character’s place. In the end, Yoshihiko Arai’s concept won, and the character resulted from his work.

Kobayashi added that the team hadn’t thought about Mario and Sonic and didn’t want to create a PlayStation mash-up (it was unofficially Crash Bandicoot, let’s not deny it…). Instead, they wanted someone who could represent Namco. That’s why there’s a Pac-Man symbol on Klonoa’s hat, and the character eventually appeared on Bandai Wonderswan’s handheld. But when they were working on Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Voice, the Mario and Sonic brands got the developers thinking. That’s why the character got older, and the gameplay was closer to what we saw in the Sonic franchise. This character design eventually made its way into the GBA platformers, the Japan-only RPG, and finally, the Namco x Capcom crossover game.

Did it all start as a Pac-Man project? Pac-Land 2?

Source: GameRant