The original Windjammers was a delight back in the day. It was this little lesser known Neo Geo game that had a pretty big cult following. I was such a big fan of the game that I have a Neo Geo arcade machine in my gameroom featuring the game. And, while I was never great at the game, I always had a lot of fun with it, especially with friends. It seems that over the past few years the game has seen increased notoriety and love thanks to MAME emulation alongside the rise of streamers and YouTube stars, so much so that it got a physical release on the Nintendo Switch. I, of course, own that version too because that’s what real fans do.

So, when Dotemu announced that they were working on a Windjammers 2 I was pretty excited for the prospect of getting back into some flying disc game action. The possibilities in my head about what a new title could bring to the table in 2022 were pretty incredible. Imagine bringing back a cult-classic for a new generation and possibly creating a new competitive monster unlike any other game out there, especially in an age where competitive titles make millions. To that end, Dotemu succeeded in many ways but also played it far too safe to really stand out from the original.

The first thing to note is that Windjammers 2 looks fantastic. It has the Dotemu look with hand-drawn animations and characters looking fantastic as they pop off of the screen. It’s a huge step up from the pixelated original and looks super slick on the whole. There is a lot more life to everything and really helps to up the excitement and fill out this really wild retro-future sport world. Everything is over the top and makes battles feel like some crazy anime, a real benefit to the experience.

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But it’s with the gameplay where I have some issues with Windjammers 2. You see, instead of refining and updating the game for a new generation away from the arcades and making a competitive sport for the online world, Dotemu has essentially kept the original mechanics in tact with some tweaks. This means the buttons are essentially the same and that even on the easiest setting the game is going to kick your ass pretty hard. In an arcade this makes sense as you are trying to make as much money off players as possible, but now, with a console/PC only release, this sort of gameplay style holds the game back.

Windjammer players are going to be fine here. If you played the game before then you are going to jump right in and pick up quick on the small new additions to the action. But, if you are new, and I suspect most players will be, there is going to be a high learning curve with little help. That’s not the worst thing in the world, but if you are trying to build a competitive community then it will make that harder as new players will be pushed asway from long-term fun. There’s a lot to learn, sure, but the skill ceiling is so high that it’s going to be hard for the game to capture ones attention outside of a few matches per play session.

Windjammers 2 struggles to break away from its arcade roots. It’s really fun to play, the mini-games are a blast, but its overall design is still firmly locked into the early 90s original, almost to a fault. It feels dated, to the point that it might have been better to simply draw new animation over the old game like what was done with Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap than call this a sequel. And how the game explains how to play feels just as dated and challenging. You see, in the old days of the arcade you had to just figure things out as that way a machine could pull a few extra quarters out of you until you did figure it out.

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Windjammers 2 takes this approach by having a “How To Play” section that is nothing more than a couple of static images showing buttons and control motions. It’s the same thing you’d see on a Neo Geo attract screen or right after inserting a coin. The problem is that Windjammers 2 is a deeper game with a lot more little things you can do with your frisbee and the “How To Play” section does nothing to make you a better player. It simply shows what you can do and not how best to do it. It fails to tell you when certain techniques are best used, what sort of counters are best in certain situations, and so on. Again, for an arcade game this is fine, but not for a home release.

I still love the game because of my passion for the original, but I don’t feel like I’ll be coming back to this one as often as I do with the original, especially with the original being portable on my Switch. I love the new characters and their unique retro-future 90s style. They keep power levels and speed so you can find your favorite just like the original. It’s all neat but it’s just not enough here to really justify this as a full-fledged sequel. There is no story or campaign outside of a random world-map on which you can pick the next opponent to battle. Single player fans are going to feel like Windjammers 2 is really pretty but really barebones. Thankfully its all about the multiplayer and having an online mode should help the game catch on.

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That said, Windjammers 2 still leaves me wanting more, especially after all of these years of waiting. More mini-games would have been great! A campaign mode for each character like in Street Fighter would have given me a reason to play through the game at least 10 times. It would allow players to try all the characters and learn their strengths and weaknesses. I could go on, but you get what I’m saying. Instead of me loving the game I’m here dreaming of how much better and bigger it could have been.

I don’t blame Dotemu for how this game turned out. You are dealing with a really niche cult-classic that needs to pander to fans of the original. It’s a lot easier to keep things more like the original to grab that audience than to mix it up too much and hope new players jump in while ignoring the old ones. Windjammers 2 is like the old K-Car platform. The skeleton and frame is the same as the original, but the team slapped on a new shell on top with some fancy new additions.

In the end, Windjammers 2 is the epitome of a safe sequel at a safe price point. That’s not a bad thing when you release a game sequel every few years like a Madden of Call of Duty, but when you wait decades between releases you feel like you want something deeper. There isn’t anything here to dislike, but likewise, there isn’t anything here to really jump up and down about. Let’s just hope that Dotemu sells a lot of copies and we get a Windjammers 3 that isn’t afraid to step out of the shadows of the cult-classic original.

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Windjammers 2 is as fun as ever but never really manages to step out of the shadow of the original

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Final Score:

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