Encore blimey
Namco acknowledges Klonoa! Other things also!
Bandai Namco have trademarked Klonoa of the Winds Encore. Is this enough information to give any real, concrete prediction on what this is going to be? No, not really. Is it enough to feverishly speculate? You bet your sweet bippy!
See, they’ve also trademarked Mr. Driller Encore, Splatter House Encore, Wagyan Land Encore and Genpei Touma Den Encore. Encore-agingly, these are all multi-game franchises, which puts juicy series-spanning compilations out there as a possibility.
I’d buy basically all of these, though the presence of the lesser-known-in-the-West Wagyan Land and Genpei Douma Ten don’t scream “localisation”. What interests me the most is the potential of a Klonoa collection to include the long-unavailable Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil, one of the very best side-scrollers ever made. Beautifully cel-shaded with gorgeous music and a downright ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere, its complete failure to see any kind of re-release has been a prominent bugbear for time. ‘Course, that might not be what this all is. It might just be Hamster-style re-releases of individual games, or even remakes. I’m sceptical on the latter, though, because the original Klonoa: Door to Phantomile already got a (by most accounts, good) remake on the Wii back in 2008. Additionally, Namco have used the “Encore” suffix before on Namco Museum Encore for PlayStation, a straight collection of arcade titles. Conversely though, they also used it for the Japanese release of Katamari Damacy Re-Rolled. Oh, please, oh please be a compilation.
A Splatter House collection would be cool, but they’ve been re-released before as part of the atrocious PS3/360 reboot. It’d be nice to have them on the Switch, but they’re not the major draw here. One hopes against hope against hope that we will finally be getting that brilliant Klonoa sequel in high definition. I don’t personally want or need a remake, I just want the original experience. Cheers. Yeah. That’ll do me. Lunatea’s Veil. Everything else is irrelevant.
