Review Fix Exclusive: Inside Okinawa Rush

Review Fix chats with Steve Miller, Lead Programmer of Okinawa Rush, who lets us know what makes this sexy retro side-scroller a must-play.

About Okinawa Rush:

Okinawa Rush is an intense and uniquely fluid beat-em-up, 2D side scrolling fighting game, inspired by the by the retro 16-bit era with its classic late 80’s, 90’s arcade style design and gameplay experience. If you enjoyed playing them back then and currently still enjoy retro games like The Last Samurai, Street Fighter 2, Tekken, or Mortal Kombat, and want to relive that experience and more in Okinawa by battling enemies, avoiding traps, fighting bosses, discovering secrets, collecting loot and saving hostages, then this game will surely enthrall you.

Review Fix: What has development been like?

Steve Miller: Development has been an interesting process that has taken many years now, partly because we both work regular jobs (so cannot work on the project constantly, as we’d like) and also because there has been no restriction to the creative side; so the game evolved many times, both in terms of graphics and the core-gameplay.

Okinawa Rush began as quite a simple “time-attack” style game, where you just kill stuff as fast as possible and get through the stage quickly.  You can still do this but now there are many more layers and playing on harder difficulty settings means the player must learn a variety of moves and the parry system to survive!

Review Fix: What games does this one borrow from the most?

Miller: “Dragon Ninja” arcade, Castlevania SOTN, the Street Fighter & Tekken series are all quite big influences on the game in various ways.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to affect players?

Miller: We wanted the player to initially have fun just mashing and killing stuff, messing around in the stages, finding hidden rooms, breaking walls etc.  But then, when they want to achieve a higher score (in the online leader boards) or better rank they must learn some fundamentals such as how to block, how to smash the traps and how to fight each boss in a tactical way (the bosses can be killed without being hit, if you know the “counter” to each attack – very much like the “Punch Out” games)

There are other, hidden ways of generating a high-score in each level such as finding the hidden “spider room” in stage 1 with the Goddess of Peace statue – bringing her a weapon will result in it being transformed into a giant gold bar!

Review Fix: How do you think it forces people to take notice of you?

Miller: The game has quite intense action and some shocking death animations, the “parry anything” system is quite interesting- if you are skilful enough you can parry lots of ninja-stars very quickly and then counter-strike!

Review Fix: This game would be a blast on the Nintendo Switch. Any chances at a port?

Miller: That is certainly possible. Depends on how well the Kickstarter performs.

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Miller: There is a playable demo available with newly added multiplayer coop mode, but as with most early-access games; it’s not perfect yet and we are ironing-out bugs on a daily-basis.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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