Having been wowed by the news of the Vectrex Mini at Gamescom , I rushed off some questions to VectrexOn's main man David Oghia . After a post-event, well earned, break, he's kindly given us a lot of detail about the project and some new images of the unit to share. His story mirrors mine somewhat, Vectrex represents a glowing, unaffordable, obelisk of gaming power from our youth! But he's had the energy and drive to do something about it, and met the right people to get the job done! What first got you interested in Vectrex and what spawned the idea of a Mini version? I’ve always been passionate about retro-gaming, but my first love was computers rather than consoles — the ZX81, then the Commodore 128. I only really discovered the console world in the late 90s, which is when I got my very first Vectrex. Of course, I had seen it in stores back in 1983, but at that time it was far too expensive for me. Today, I own five Vectrex systems at home. Vector-based games ...
Ratatan, a modern Patapon, funded!
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The PSP's Patapon (one of the handheld's top 10 all-time highlights) from Pyramid represents some of the most fun anyone can have with a portable. Rhythm-actioning your tribe into battle, with a series of increasingly fiendish drum beats, along with the strategic element of picking the right troops for the fight, Patapon was unashamed fun. But after a trilogy of stellar PSP releases (all still available on the UK Vita's PSN for around £6.50 each), nothing.
September 2025 Update: Ratatan will hit early access on Steam this month, with the console versions arriving sometime next year.
July 2025 update: At the recent BitSummit indie game event, Ratatan won top prize, the VERMILLION GATE AWARD.
Update: Ratatan's Kickstarter has come to an end with over £1.2 million raised, ensuring, if all things go well, a great new experience for gamers in 2025.
First, it was a hellish shame there was no Vita edition with touchscreen support, and second, very few people took up the series' genius ideas and marched further with them. The closest was a PS4 remaster. Fortunately, now we come to Ratatan, a spiritual successor, fully funded in its opening hours on Kickstarter (which I have to say I'd largely forgotten about as a source of games).
Conceived by Patapon's original developer, Hiroyuki Kotani, Kemmei Adachi and Ph Studio, with Red Art Games handling physical releases, Ratatan deserves great success. Ignore the drunken mumblings of the team (gameplay from 4:20 in the video) and enjoy the amazing scope of the Ratatan tribe on a big screen, and their infectious singalongs (reminds me of the Gremlins, a bit).
The great news is the game was funded in its first hour, currently sitting at £550K of an £110K original goal, and is roaring its way through stretch goals. It has passed the console stretch, but there's no word on what platforms that would include, has to be PS5 and Switch at a guess.
Estimated launch is April 2025, so don't get too excited just yet, but Ratatan could and should be huge - congratulations to the team on their efforts so far.
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Currently playing on my Vita/PS3/PS4/PS5
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