\n\tRetro Rewind players run a Blockbuster Video-like movie-rental store<\/a> set in the early 1990s, complete with spoofs of real blockbusters of the era. The game includes 14,000 (fake) movie titles, the vast majority of which were created by AI prompts. Gauthier went deep on the creation of 21 films \u201cinspired by the biggest movies from the \u201990s,\u201d he told The Hollywood Reporter, like his Ghostbusters send-up, Phantom Patrol.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe kind of take some liberties,\u201d Gauthier, 33, admitted. Gauthier\u2019s partner, who did not participate in our interview, prefers to remain anonymous.<\/p>\n \n\tJust like the old days, the (faux films) in Retro Rewind roll out weekly.<\/p>\n \n\tBut there is not much downtime. Players design their store, work the counter, restock shelves and even rewind movies \u2014 these were the VHS days after all. In return, your (computer-controlled) customers pay you \u201990s prices (cash only!) to rent movies and buy concessions. <\/p>\n \n\tIf we\u2019re still doing that stupid, \u201cHey dad, what were you like in the \u201990s?\u201d social media thing, Gauthier, a father of two, can just fire up his PC and show his daughter, 9 and his son, 5. He can then regale them of his rental memories, which for Gauthier, was more on the video game end than the film side. Makes sense \u2014 but Gauthier says he does retain a \u201cstrong image\u201d of renting the Lord of the Rings films with his father.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tA still from \u2018Retro Rewind\u2019<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBlood Pact Studios<\/p>\n \n\tRetro Rewind took 15 months of 60-plus-hour weeks from concept to release. The idea came out of both nostalgia and the fact that Blood Pact\u2019s first game, the exceptionally gory Bonesaw, did not sell especially well. Simulator games suitable for all members of the family have a much larger potential reach.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI was thinking of the time I was younger. I was going to my local video store \u2014 the little one, because there was not a big Blockbuster<\/a> in my town,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cI once spoke with my children and said, \u2018When I was younger, there was a time where we went (out) to rent movies.\u2019 They could not [picture it].\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGauthier, who lives in Quebec, has actually never stepped foot in a Blockbuster<\/a>, but movie-rental stores played a big role<\/a> in his childhood.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI thought, maybe we should do something like that so I can show them,\u201d Gauthier continued. \u201cIt started as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt is not lost on Gauthier how completely different his two games to-date are. Bonesaw, which was directly inspired by Buckshot Roulette<\/a>, is its own Russian Roulette-esque challenge. Players face off against the (literal) Devil in a card game in which the loser of each hand gets their fingers cut off by a buzzsaw in the table. It\u2019s pretty grotesque. Still, Bonesaw sold about 10,000 copies, Gauthier said, but its price tag was so modest (currently $6.66, which is so apropos of the game) that \u201cit didn\u2019t really make a lot of money,\u201d Gauthier said, \u201cnot enough for living off.\u201d Not when you have a staff, albeit small, to pay.<\/p>\n \n\tRetro Rewind, currently on sale for $15.92 (20 percent off $19.90), is accessible for so many more gamers, and has far stronger repeat playability. Gauthier says he does not currently know if Retro Rewind will come to consoles \u2014 like the Xbox Series X\/S, PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch 2 \u2014 a \u201cbig request from the players right now.\u201d After all, development kits for those platforms are \u201cvery expensive,\u201d and it is a lot of work to adapt a point-and-click PC game for console controllers. <\/p>\n \n\tBlood Pact still has some long weeks \u2014 at least \u2014 ahead of it in continued support of Retro Rewind for PCs, which includes various handheld devices including Valve\u2019s Steam Deck. And Gauthier and his partner already have their sites set on developing a new game, which Gauthier could not say much about. Another simulator sounds likely, especially if Retro Rewind continues to sell, but the Blood Pact boys would really like their next endeavor to return to the multiplayer or co-op space.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt difficult for for me and [my partner] to work on the solo game, because all the session were alone. We were play-testing alone\u2026 and just giving feedback to each other,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cIt was not the same as working on Bonesaw, because Bonesaw is a turn-based strategy game and we were playing against each other. So at the same time we were playing, we were testing the game. It was more interesting, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShould Retro Rewind grow like, well, Blockbuster itself did in the \u201990s, the secretive next game will probably be put on hold.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a perfect (virtual) world, Retro Rewind will remain so popular that the game continues to advance with the technology of the time, seeing DVDs replace VHS cassettes, for example. In Gauthier\u2019s head, the DVDs may require cleaning and repair work in lieu of rewinding. All of this costs money.<\/p>\n \n\tI pointed out to Gauthier that if he goes too far into the future, players will effectively put themselves out of business when Netflix disrupts \u2014 and destroys \u2014 the entire rental business. Together, we worked out a scenario in which this alt-universe, alt-Blockbuster Video does not pass on buying Netflix for $50 million in 2000, an insane thing that actually happened. (Another crossover of the former competitors happened in 2022 in a failed Netflix sitcom titled Blockbuster<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMaybe you become the next streaming website,\u201d Gauthier suggested for a Retro Rewind sequel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Samuel Gauthier has a ton of nostalgia for the early \u201990s, even if he was, like, a newborn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[106254,18,19,17,179482,82,3880],"class_list":["post-393664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-blockbuster","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-retro-rewind","tag-technology","tag-video-games"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116257366048200752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n