And it’s looking pretty darn radical
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me… you can’t get fooled again.‘”
– George W. Bush.
PlatinumGames has announced that Sol Cresta, its April Fools’ Day shmup from last year, is now actually in development for PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch, and will launch at some point later in 2021 as the first release in the publisher’s new “Neo-Classic Arcade” range.
Sol Cresta was revealed on April 1, 2020 as one of the Japanese developer’s “Platinum4” announcements. Ostensibly a sequel to both 1980’s Moon Cresta and 1985’s Terra Cresta, Sol Cresta was supposedly a joint production between Platinum and the retro-loving Hamster corporation, before the former ultimately revealed that the title was merely a cute gag made in the spirit of the season.
So, roll on April Fools’ Day 2021 and trust Platinum to announce that Sol Cresta is seemingly a real release genuinely in development. The first trailer, which you can check out above, features slight footage of the vertically scrolling shmup in action, before teasing viewers with a release date without actually offering one.
As I noted at the time, Sol Cresta was a legitimately exciting idea, as both Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta were solid golden-age shmups that deserved a modern revisit. And so, if Sol Cresta is legitimately going to blast off on PC and consoles soon, I’m pleased that what started out as a goofy joke might actually end up giving us a cool sequel to one of the shmup genre’s forgotten forefathers.
