Long before Hideo Kojima made the first triple-A walking simulator, he was trying to spin sunlight into bullets. The game in question, Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand, is a Game Boy Advance title from 2003, in which you play a vampire-slaying gunslinger. The gun you’re slinging is a “solar-powered” pistol, which you could charge up using a cartridge-mounted photometric sensor by physically standing in sunshine. This was 13 years before the launch of Pokemon Go. Sadly, Boktai’s debut didn’t result in city parks or rooftops being flooded by crowds of GBA-wielding undead killers. But it was a fun gimmick and the game itself is good enough to carry it – an isometric dungeon-crawler in which you have to find a vamp’s coffin and drag it to the surface for purgation.
Three sequels followed, and then Daddy Konami called time on the series. But Boktai lives on in the shape of Kura5: Bonds Of The Undying, a non-canonical fangame which remixes the first game with one of its successors, Lunar Knights. It’s a free downloadable experience, and as such, the old baked-in photometric functionality is gone, but the solar charging mechanic has been overhauled to work with an online real-world weather-tracking system. The 1.0 version launched this month – here’s a trailer.
And here’s some blurb from developer ChickenHat.
It’s neither a full remake nor a sequel, but a remix of both familiar Boktai staples and new elements that seek to recreate the magic that we all loved from the series. Kura5’s weather system knows where you are in the real world, so there’s no need for a solar sensor. In-game events may even play out differently depending on if you play in darkness or in light… And that’s just the start!
The game gives you two characters, sun-gunning cowgirl Annie and vampire swordsman Emil. You can switch between them by playing in the day or after dark. That’s right, Kura5 is designed to be played round the clock, but you can switch off the weather/day-tracking functionality and play offline if you prefer.
If you’re interested in the overlap between between game design and the solar clock, you might also like to check out Kara Stone’s solar-powered server.