UNDERSTANDING UNBOUND: VOGSTER’S COMIC BOOK BRAWLER UNBOUND SAGA

Somewhat lost in the ComicCon shuffle (and certainly off my radar until just now) was perhaps the most appropriate game to make its debut at the convention: following directly in the footsteps of Sega’s 16-bit brawler Comix Zone is another game breaking out of the comic’s proverbial box: Unbound Saga, which will be published, fittingly, by Dark Horse Comics exclusively as a downloadable PSP game via the PlayStation Network.

The game, developed by Vogster Entertainment (the same studio behind Tecmo’s overlooked 2008 light hearted real-time-strategy DS game Robocalypse), sees protagonist Rick Ajax struggling against ‘The Maker,’ a Looney Tunes-like omnipotent hand that draws the obstacles in Rick’s way.

In a recent talk with MTV’s games blog, Vogster producer Mike Kennedy promises the game will be steeped deeply in comics culture, saying that the game’s titular fictional comic “has been around since the ’70s in one form or another. They’ve kind of weathered some ups and downs in the industry; they’ve had their black-and-white version, their manga version, their foil cover Jim Lee version in the ’90s. So the idea is that [the video game] is their latest reinvention.”

Gritty with a satirical and self-parodying bite, then, which is just how we like our grit.

Unbound Saga [Vogster]