Update [Wed 30th Aug, 2023 15:50 BST]: Retroware announced yesterday that Prison City is now available to buy on PC. You can purchase it now for £14.29 on Steam or £13.49 on the Epic Games Store. Versions for PS4, PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch are also scheduled for later this year.
Original Story [Fri 4th Aug, 2023 11:00 BST]: The publisher Retroware and developer Programancer have announced that its Shatterhand and Power Blade-inspired action sidescroller Prison City will be coming to Nintendo Switch.
Prison City began life as a title that Programancer made for Retrograde Jam 3, a retro game jam that he hosted last year. It is scheduled for release on Steam this August, but now we also have confirmation that the game will also eventually be coming to Nintendo Switch in the future.
The news was revealed in a video uploaded to Retroware's YouTube channel, called "This Game NEEDED to be on Nintendo Switch", where its developer Programancer spoke with Retroware's creative director Justin Silverman. In that video, Programancer described the project with the following:
"Prison City is a love letter of sorts to games that I grew up with in the early ‘90s, like 1990/1991. It’s a high-octane, in-your-face, action platformer that draws a lot of inspiration from things that I love like approach-a-thons like Mega Man, Shatterhand, Power Blade. And it just takes all those elements that I love from those games and this genre of games and puts it into a modern package."
The game sees players battling their way across a version of Detroit that has been turned into a mega prison, fighting techno-terrorists with their chakram and grenades and taking down bosses with the help of local contacts.
Asked about the porting process to Nintendo Switch in the Retroware video, Programancer claimed:
"When I started development on Prison City, I had the Nintendo Switch in mind, so I made sure that everything that I did making it ran well on the Switch as well. And it just kind of makes sense to me to have a game that’s inspired by those Nintendo games go on a Nintendo console."
As stated above, Prison City will release this month for Steam (a precise date is currently unknown), with the Switch version following soon after. Retroware has also teased the possibility of it coming to more consoles too in the video description, with the publisher asking fans to wishlist the game on Steam to help show interest.