Back in 199564 releasing this Spring in Japan, now New Nintendo 3DS-only, no western release planned

Back in 2016, a Japanese indie game called Back in 199564 (originally released on PC) was announced for the Nintendo 3DS. It’s certainly been a while since we last heard about it, but today, Takaaki Ichijo (the creator) finally shared an update.

He announced that Back in 199564 would be released this Spring in Japan, on New Nintendo 3DS. MediaScape is the publisher, with the game being part of their “Play, Doujin!” brand. As of today, development is over, and the game is currently at the debug phase.

As for why the game took so long to come out, there’s actually a good reason for that. Takaaki Ichijo explains that back in 2016, Nintendo opened its Nintendo Developer Portal, allowing independent developers in Japan to make games for the Nintendo 3DS without the need of a publisher.

Initially, Takaaki Ichijo’s plan was to take advantage of that and release Back in 199564 on his own, but plans ended up changing along the way, and he ended up partnering with MediaScape. The reason? The costs associated with the CERO rating, but also the need to provide customer support, which is a lot for a lone, indie developer.

Some other things also changed during development. For example, it was initially announced that the game would make use of the microphone (where you blow in it), but it could not be implemented due to that particular feature not being supported by the version of Unity used to make the game.

Also, Back in 199564 was initially announced for all Nintendo 3DS models, but after testing, Takaaki Ichijo found that it was too difficult to optimise in the latter parts of the game. Also, he was not able to fix a memory leak issue with the version of Unity used, and so he decided to release the game only on New Nintendo 3DS.

Finally, Takaaki Ichijo has some bad news. First, there will not be any additional ports (including Nintendo Switch), because the game is already (almost) 2 years old, a port would take too much time and effort, and he considers there’s already similiar titles on Nintendo Switch. He also confirms that no western release is planned (at the moment?), despite the PC version already being available in English on Steam.

Back in 199564 (New 3DS – eShop) comes out this Spring in Japan. The Upcoming Games page has been updated!

Source: Takaaki Ichijo