Earlier this year Matsuzo Machida and Akifumi Kaneko, the men behind the classic JRPG series Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts, announced a joint project to revive both games at the same time, albeit unofficially. Machida was planning out Armed Fantasia: To the End of the Wilderness, a spiritual successor to his Wild West JRPG series Wild Arms, while Kaneko was making Penny Blood, based on his PS2 trilogy Shadow Hearts.
It became clear a Kickstarter would be needed to partially fund the projects and gauge interest. Then they thought, “why not team up for double the attention?” Thus begat the Armed Fantasia / Penny Blood Grand Crowdfunding Campaign Of ’22. The Kickstarter launched itself late last August with a goal of hitting $750,000 by September 30.
Today is September 30, so we can properly judge if the campaign was a success. They didn’t earn $750,000….they earned WAAAAY more than that. Over two and a half million dollars were raised to bring Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood to life. It’s definitely happening now…..or eventually.Machide and Kaneko estimate that it’ll be at least 2025 before either of the games are in a completed state.
Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts were both JRPGs yet had entirely different approaches to the genre. Wild Arms was more traditional, but used a unique Wild West setting instead of the fantasy worlds most other JRPGs used at the time. Shadow Hearts was something different, a dark, gothic world with splashes of unconventional humor, using a unique menu system called the Judgment Ring. Both series had their last installment on the PS2 ages ago.
In the end the campaign raised $2,620,780.22 from 17.920 backers…..excluding me, who forgot the campaign was still running until the SECOND it was too late. The physical versions will be made available outside of the Kickstarter, right? …RIGHT?
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