Ready? WALLOP! The first two words of a Cuphead battle say everything about the immediate and powerful impact of Studio MDHR’s remarkable debut: a haymaker delivered through the combined force of its astonishing audiovisuals and equally eye-opening challenge. Here is a game that is old-fashioned in a very literal sense, its rubber-hose animation realised largely via traditional techniques, just as its run-and-gun mechanics lean on (and refine) ideas first introduced in the 8- and 16bit eras.
The result is a captivatingly unlikely fusion of influences. Those vintage cartoons and videogames may be writ large across it, but there was nothing else quite like Cuphead when it belatedly launched in 2017, and that’s still the case as expansion The Delicious Last Course finally takes its bow five years on.
“A love letter to the early history of two mediums” is how we described it in E313’s review: indeed, it’s a letter that dates back to Chad and Jared Moldenhauer’s childhood, and their shared formative experiences of the medium. “Chad and I grew up on a steady diet of retro games from the ’80s and ’90s,” Jared says. “We probably lost the most hours to series like Gunstar Heroes, Mega Man, Street Fighter, Wonder Boy and Ninja Gaiden.”
Their affection for these games manifests in Cuphead through individual references to characters or attack patterns. Leggy fighting frogs Ribby and Croaks, for example, borrow moves from Ryu and Ken; one of Sally Stageplay’s transformations, meanwhile, sees her descend from above sporting a pair of purple wings akin to Final Fantasy VI antagonist Kefka, before completing the homage with a meteor attack. Yet their influence goes beyond simple tribute: as Jared explains, each title had a profound effect on how the brothers think about making games as a whole. “The central thread that exists across all these games is that sort of flow state the player gets into, where things that might at first appear chaotic or difficult gradually become easier, to the point of feeling satisfying and second nature,” he says. “I think there was a real ‘learn by doing’ approach to most of our favourite games as kids, which made overcoming challenge in them all the more triumphant.”
