In October last year , Treasure put its much-loved but little-played shoot 'em up Ikaruga on Steam Greenlight. We're happy to report that it has since been Greenlit by the community, and while it doesn't have a release date yet, Treasure is already looking to port its other games and even develop new ones for Steam.
“Ikaruga is the first one, and we don't intend on stopping there,” Treasure president Masato Maegawa told Famitsu according to a Siliconera translation. “There are some players who say 'How about Radiant Silvergun?' but we also don't intend to only do ports. We're thinking of making a new original title for the platform, Steam.”
Treasure added that while it continues to develop games for other hardware for a later release, it's currently focused on the PC first, explaining that it's almost impossible for a small company to release the same game on all platforms simultaneously.
Originally released in Japanese arcades in 2001, Ikaruga came to the Dreamcast in 2002, then for a limited run on Gamecube 2003, and then Xbox Live Arcade in 2008. It was praised for its take on "bullet hell" gameplay, which mixed things up by allowing you to switch between black and white polarities. If your ship was the same color as the bullets, you not only avoided damage, but gained energy that charges a special attack.
The main problem with Ikaruga was always that it was hard to get. Hopefully Steam solves this problem for all of Treasure's catalog.
