“Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” is back in a major way, and not a moment too soon.
In July, the Michael Cera-led cast that brought Bryan Lee O’Malley’s famed graphic novel to life ten years ago reunited for a virtual table read to benefit Water For People. Ubisoft announced this week that “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game” will officially make its return later this year.
It’s a big deal, and longtime fans have been flipping out on social media.
Universal’s “Scott Pilgrim” film adaptation was deftly delivered by Cornetto trilogy director Edgar Wright and is heralded as a modern-day cult classic. But the 2010 ode to Gen-X geekdom and twentysomething romance lost a modicum of charm in its translation from the black-and-white page to a live-action blockbuster. However, the video game that it inspired seamlessly bridged the gap through its use of the comic’s stylized art and character models.
The game was a retro-inspired 2-D beat’em up that almost seemed out of place a decade ago when it was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. However, its faithfulness to the spirit of the source material, tight controls, and a perfectly struck balance between difficulty and playability made the digital-only release a surprise hit.
It was further aided by Anamanaguchi’s incredible soundtrack, which somehow managed to snag a spot on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart and still retains a place among the greatest game soundtracks of all time.
However, four years after it had dropped from the ether, “Scott Pilgrim: The Game” was seemingly reclaimed by it, having been delisted from both the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Arcade in December of 2014. In the ensuing years, it has been oft-lamented that one of that console generation’s ultimate hidden gems was forever lost to all, save for the precious few that may have kept their original installs on old machines.
With the surprise announcement of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game – Complete Edition,” fans of the game, the comic, and Wright’s film have all received a bit of good news in a year that has mostly been devoid of it.
Check out the trailer below:
Between tragic, untimely deaths, mass protests for justice (that’s still yet to be found), and a deadly pandemic, 2020 has been a lot.
The grand return of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game” is something we can all get behind for a change. In a world where so many of us are stuck indoors watching the same Netflix shows on loop, re-reading the same books, and playing the same games over and over, Scott, Ramona, Knives Chau, Sex Bob-omb, Gideon Gordon Graves, and the rest of the crew are back to give us an experience almost no one has enjoyed in the last six years.
It’s precisely the diversion all of us Zero shirt-wearing, Smashing Pumpkins-listening, Streets of Rage-playing oldies need right now.