Panzer Is Back, In This Sequel For The NES

A year ago, we brought to your attention a humorous sidescrolling platformer for the NES called Panzer. The game shared its name with the main character, an egotistical military general on a mission to bring his old gang back together, whether they wanted to be or not. Now, one sequel later, Panzer has succeeded in his mission, and just in time…a new evil has arrived in his land that will take the might of four warriors to defeat!

Unlike the first Panzer, in Panzer 2 you’ll have the ability to control four different characters: Vespeto the troll, Anzriaz the mage, Kankaro the archer, and Panzer himself. Vespeto can toss bombs and temporarily turn invisible. Anzriaz can conjure ice blades to stab monsters with. Kankaro can of course fire arrows, but he can also fake his own death to get enemies off his back.

Dave Nemeth, creator of Panzer, was really into MMOs a while back and had many adventures with his guild. It was at that time he was inspired to create a sprite-based webcomic based around the guild, which he kept going until the group broke up and the well of inspiration ran dry. Years later, he got into NES homebrew development, but was stuck on a subject until he got the idea to base the game around his old MMO character Panzer.

The Kickstarter to publish Panzer 2 in physical form is live as of today. The cheapest tier is $15 which gets you the digital ROM, an instruction booklet PDF and the digital soundtrack. The complete-in-box NES cartridge with all the trimmings (box, manual, cart) will normally run $65, BUUUUT since you read this article the day it was published, you get to take advantage of the Early Bird tier which knocks the cart down to $58. Yay! Higher tiers contain fancier rewards, including — believe it or not – – a 3D-printed statue of Panzer.

The Panzer 2 Kickstarter launched just today and has already shattered its goal. The campaign will remain open until August 14.