French development studio Golgoth is remaking 1989’s Toki, a 2D side-scrolling run ‘n’ gun featuring an ape as the chief protagonist and lots of various jungle monsters to destroy on the way to an evil wizard who stole the love of his life.

Anthony De Sa Ferreira is leading the recreation of Toki ready for a release later this year on PC and the consoles. In a world dominated by 3D mega-bucks hits, Golgoth Studio is aiming to show the world that 2D isn’t dead yet. To find out more, I spoke to Anthony about the team’s work on Toki and his thoughts on 2D gaming in a 3D world.

Resolution Magazine: On your website, you state that your goal is to keep 2D gaming alive in a 3D world. Why the focus on 2D?

Anthony De Sa Ferreira: Most of the guys here at Golgoth are around 30 years old, so we all grew up with the crazy 2D generation of games on the Atari, Amiga, NES, SNES etc. As such, we love to play and make 2D games. Our decision to focus on 2D games was one that came out of love for the style. That doesn’t mean we don’t like 3D games, but they are not really representative of what we would like to do. I also think 2D has an important part to play in gaming history, so I think it is important to save and preserve it.

RM: Has the success of 2D titles such as World of Goo and Braid influenced you in any way?

ADSF: Not really. I mean, of course we know of these amazing 2D games. But when we started Golgoth Studio, World of Goo and Braid were not released, so we were not waiting to see if there was an interest from gamers in 2D games to decide whether to work on our own titles. I am really happy, though, to see that these games, and also Castle Crasher, met such huge success on release. I am confident with our choice in going 2D. A game firstly needs to be fun and let you have a good time. It doesn’t matter it if is 2D or 3D, or whether it requires 20 hours to finish.

RM: So you think people should look beyond the graphics in a game and appreciate it for what it really is?

ADSF: You know, honestly, I think with the current generation of consoles this is already the case. It is because of the free demo, where gamers can simply play some of the game on something like [Xbox] Live. Even if the graphics aren’t particularly great, they try to look beyond it and just enjoy the game. Saying that, graphics are of course very important because they are what the gamers notice first. However, I am confident that gamers will spread the word of a great game that needs to be played even if the graphics aren’t truly amazing. Like I said, the most important thing for us is to provide great moments in a game, not to be the best at everything.

[Continues...]