If you don’t remember Jim Power don’t feel bad because I didn’t either. His last game, Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3D came out for the SNES and PC back in 1993. Jim did see the light of day in 2015 as the game released on Steam; however, besides this, there’s been nothing. Until now.
The Lost Dimension is a 2D side-scrolling game in the vein of contra. It’s often been labeled as one of the most difficult games of all time, and thankfully, it looks to be making a comeback thanks to Kickstarter.
The Kickstarter hopes to bring back five different playable versions of Jim, all working for retro consoles, which in itself is enough for me to get my wallet out.
Developers Piko Interactive hope to release the following:
- Jim Power In the Lost Dimension – For the NES, ported over by the team from scratch.
- Jim Power In the Lost Dimension – For Genesis, previously unreleased and now fully playable.
- Jim Power In the Lost Dimension – For Snes, a reworked version of the previously released game.
- Jim Power Mutant Planet – For Amiga CD32, a conversion of the Amiga version.
- Jim Power Mutant Planet – For TurboGrafx CD, a previous Japanese exclusive.
Stretch goals will also see the game released on the Switch and PlayStation 4 as well as various other incentives, including comic books. I don’t have space to list everything, but you can look at the Kickstarter and all the goals here and back it if you so desire.
The owner of Piko Interactive had this to say about the return of Jim Power:
“Reviving Jim Power started way back in 2014 with a planned release a couple years later. While it was interesting that we discovered a fully playable Sega Genesis version, we began work on the Nintendo NES port almost immediately. After some unfortunate setbacks in 2018 we were able to fully acquire the rights to Jim Power in late 2019 allowing us to do more than just a port and fixing previous releases. We can now do comics, toys, OVA content, etc – as much as fans want to see. It all starts with this Kickstarter project.”
As I’ve said, I don’t really remember Jim Power, although, in the pits of my mind, some synapses may be firing. That said, I’m an absolute sucker for games releasing on older consoles these days. I’d probably buy E.T. if they ported it to the NES. Admittedly, I have bought it for the Atari 2600, but that’s not the point.
Let us know in the comments if you remember a particular Mr. Power and if you plan on backing the Kickstarter. Are there any forgotten gems you’d like to see come back? We’d love to hear from you.