Night Slashers: Remake from Storm Trident and Forever Entertainment is a promising remake of the classic Data East beat 'em up arcade game. Of course, it's hard to tell how accurate and/or improved a remake of an older game like Night Slashers will be before we can play it. We have a solid idea now, thankfully, because a free demo of the remake has arrived on Steam. The demo supports 2-player local co-op, but the full game will be 4-player.
The demo reveals that the game will have two modes: Normal and Custom. The latter allows players to turn on various modifiers to make the game harder, sort of like the custom game options in TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. Players can listen to the remixed and original songs in the Music Room. As for options, the color palette can be set to monochrome or black and white for increased spookiness, and several visual filters simulate CRT and scanlines. The only option you won't find is the ability to play with the original arcade graphics; only the new HD graphics are available.
Night Slashers: Remake is an arcade-style beat 'em up in which the world has been overrun by an evil army of biological monsters and zombies. Gameplay is simple, with only attack, jump, and block buttons available. A special button would have been welcome; players must hit two buttons at once to perform special attacks. Enemies can also be thrown, and there are a variety of bonus items to pick up, just like in Final Fight.
The main selling point of Night Slashers has always been the chance to beat up hordes of zombies and other monsters. The combat is simple but fun. Levels are nice and short, culminating in battles against evil scientists or huge monsters. The remake adds new dialogue exchanges at the start of each boss fight, giving the game a little more personality.
Night Slashers: Remake is due sometime this year on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. The original arcade was was recently delisted from Switch and Steam, but it's still playable via Antstream Arcade, the classic game streaming software for Xbox, PC, and mobile.