This crossover badminton video game was released on April 1, 2022. The game was to some extent an April Fool’s joke, born from a conversation between Destructoid journalist Jonathan Holmes and SUDA51 during an October 2021 interview. Holmes later reached out to a number of designers to realize his vision and asserted that further updates were planned.
Background
Following his interview with SUDA51 in which they discussed the possibility of a GRASSHOPPER MANUFACTURE badminton game, Jonathan Holmes pitched his ideas for a fanmade version to different designers in the hope of an April Fools’ Day 2022 release. Will Brierly, commonly known as Snowrunner Games, agreed to program the game, which Holmes likened to a mod of Brierly’s own Retired Men’s Nude Beach Volleyball League. Character sprites were drawn by Maddie Copp, while Holmes drew additional effects, including some animations only seen in the game’s trailer. Holmes also reached out to Magic Man Tony Astro, co-composer of the “Gold Joe” theme from GRASSHOPPER‘s own NO MORE HEROES Ⅲ, to produce a short music piece for the game. Instead, Magic Man Tony Astro supplied nearly 10 minutes of music for the game’s soundtrack and also brought venoSci onto the project, designing the game’s title screen and soundtrack cover art. Other creators known to have been involved were saltdere, who contributed to the soundtrack theme “ULTIMATE BADMINTON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CUP HD SUPER TURBO DELUXE,” Douibyorthst, who assembled the game’s trailer, and Ashton Simeon, who created effects for the YouTube video version of the soundtrack.
For the release of killer BADMINTON, Holmes changed the YouTube channel for his own Talking to Women about Videogames podcast to that of Little Grasshopper, a purportedly family-friendly division of GRASSHOPPER. In reality, while most of killer BADMINTON could pass for tame, Travis Touchdown‘s losing animation was graphic enough to dispel claims that it was meant for all ages. Many details about the game were left vague for several days, such as the Little Grasshopper channel apparently having had existed for nearly a full year, and the game being released through Snowrunner Games’ itch.io creator page rather than through GRASSHOPPER or Little Grasshopper. Individual credits for the game were also not provided, other than some names listed in the notes of the soundtrack, and GRASSHOPPER did not promote the game, which SUDA51 only acknowledged by retweeting some of Holmes‘ words on it. On April 4, 2022, Holmes admitted on the Talking to Women about Videogames Podcast that the game was fanmade, and explained how it came to be, before confirming that future updates are genuinely planned despite the game’s initial April Fools’ nature.
Characters
- Travis Touchdown, a character playable at launch, appears with his design from NO MORE HEROES Ⅲ.
- Garcia Hotspur, a character playable at launch, hailing from the title Shadows of the DAMNED.
- Deathman, the referee, and a character who first appeared in a game within a game in NO MORE HEROES Ⅲ.
Other characters planned in future updates include Bad Girl, Gold Joe, Notorious, and Shinobu Jacobs as seen in NO MORE HEROES Ⅲ, Shoko Ozora from LIBERATION MAIDEN, and a team-up by Toriko Kusabi and Christina from Flower, Sun, and Rain. Johnson from Shadows of the DAMNED briefly appears in the game’s trailer when Garcia shoots Travis with the Boner, however, this animation was only produced for the trailer and never takes place in the game.
Soundtrack
The game’s soundtrack entitled killer BADMINTON DIRECT AUDIO was scored by Magic Man Tony Astro. The track “ULTIMATE BADMINTON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CUP HD SUPER TURBO DELUXE” also features Sylvia Christel voiceclips by saltdere.
- “THEME OF “KILLER BADMINTON””
- “ULTIMATE BADMINTON WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CUP HD SUPER TURBO DELUXE”
- “SCREW CRUSHER DROP SHOT”
- “YOU SUCK!”
- “KILLER BADMINTON INTERLUDE”
- “FATAL CONFLICT (BECAUSE YOU’D DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT IF YOU LOSE)”
- “ULTIMATE BADMINTON VICTORY”
Photos
Nomenclature
- GRASSHOPPER ALL-STARS IN KILLER BADMINTON
- killer BADMINTON
References
- https://www.destructoid.com/suda51-interview-future-of-no-more-heroes-and-shadows-of-the-damned/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD917ehe0go