When we speak to Team Reptile’s co-founders, the pair have just recently returned from TGS, where the studio was invited to join the Netherlands Pavilion to exhibit Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It’s something of a full-circle moment for founders Dion Koster and Tim Remmers, given the inspiration their latest game takes from a certain Sega cult classic, itself set in an alternative version of Tokyo. We avoided naming that title in our review, and Koster is similarly keen for audiences not to rely on the comparison.
Team Reptile conscious that nostalgia for is a large part of why the game’s announcement, back in 2020, made such a splash online. But Koster insists, was born not so much from a desire to remake that game as wanting to use it as a template for channelling his interests in street culture, underground dance and hip-hop. “We are not creating a videogame world; rather we’re representing a world that already exists but we’re extrapolating it into the future,” he says. “A cyber street world.” It’s an idea that had been on Koster’s mind since the very first week the dev team was formed – albeit one they knew they’d need more experience before tackling.
