RememberNight Slashers? The 1993 arcade beat-’em-up by Data East? Do you remember that it’s getting a remake? Well,that’s out on September 26.
If you haven’t played it,Night Slashersis a solid beat-’em-up. It has the melty, goopy gore ofSplatterhouseand the combat of… Um, I was going to sayFinal Fight, but it’s a lot looser than that. The KonamiX-Menarcade game, maybe. It’s a nice mashy time. It was also available digitally last year from Johnny Turbo’s Arcade, but it got delisted.
I hope this remake isn’t the reason. I don’t mean to be dismissive – it has a decent art style, and it adds some additional features – but part ofNight Slashers’ appeal was its pixel art style. It was a good-looking game for the time, and its graphics hold up. As much as the modernized art looks fine, it still takes away from the original.
On the other hand, it now supports four players instead of just three. This is enabled by a new character lifted from 1993’sFighter’s History, Liu Feilin. She’s cool, but kind of a disappointing pick. Hong Hua Zhao is already a female Chinese martial artist. So, now we have a cyborg dude, a waiter, and two female Chinese martial artists. I’m sure they control differently and have their own strengths, but diversity, please.
On top of that are some custom modes and modifiers that you can wrap into the experience. The original is a solid game, and the remake looks competently done. It’s $9.99 USD, which seems more than reasonable. Just hard to get excited about.
Night Slashers: Remakeis coming to Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC August 02, 2025.
