A while back, specifically in 1984, the Japanese anime team “Studio Pierrot” released Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. Later in 1986 World Events Productions (WEP) got the anime and with the help of Marc Handler reworked it, changing its name from Seijushi Bismark to the name above, and brought the anime to the West. Fast forward 31 years and we have a group named Team Saber Rider working with some of the originals to bring back the classic anime in the form of a game that seeks votes on Greenlight.
The anime had a lot of voice actors that are known in other iconic franchises like Peter Cullen behind the voices of Optimus Prime and Voltron, Rob Paulsen who did Raphael voice from TMNT, along with Pat Musick who played in ThunderCats, and Pat Fraley who also did the voice of Marshal Brave Starr in BraveStarr.
If you don’t remember the anime that came out during the 1980’s, a video should help you remember that stands to be the intro — and don’t cringe while watching.
In order for the devs, Team Saber Rider, to use the Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs IP they had to get full support from World Events Productions (WEP) — who is best known for Voltron: Defender of the Universe and Denver the Last Dinosaur. The team also got full support from the original animation producer Studio Pierrot, which is also known for anime series like Bleach, Blue Dragon, Naruto, and Hikaru no Go.
This now enables the team to make their dream game similar to Sunset Rider come to fruition, which is a 2D 16-Bit style run’n’gun that includes mecha action. The game is set to be for Steam (PC, MAC, Linux), Nintendo 3DS, and for some reason the Sega Dreamcast? Not sure about that last one, but it’s set in stone.
The game is also slated to debut during Q3 of this year, as seen below. However, what you’re about to see is a WIP build (work in progress build) that shows what’s been done so far. The video comes in courtesy of Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs – The Game channel.
I’m sure animations, special effects, SFX and other core elements will fall into place and will become more fluent as time goes on, which the initial release for the game is set to come out sometime around July through September, so we have a ways to go before we see the finished product.
Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs already passed its Kickstarter goal, if you want to help it pass its next goal, which is on Steam Greenlight, you can hit up the platform to learn more. For additional information regarding the 2D project you can visit the team’s main site.
