Travis Touchdown’s retirement may be short-lived. Grasshopper Manufacture CEO Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51, says something is being planned for No More Heroes’ 20th anniversary next year, and he made a promise fans have been waiting to hear. “Travis Touchdown is definitely coming back!” he told Famitsu, as reported by Video Games Chronicle.
Suda was reminded during the interview that the original No More Heroes turns 20 in 2027. The game first came out in Japan on Wii on Dec. 6, 2007, before reaching the West in 2008. Asked whether anything was planned, he said the series’ publisher, Marvelous, is on board.
“Marvelous is well aware of this, so we’d definitely like to do something together to mark the 20th anniversary,” Suda said. “We’re planning to deliver something special, so please look forward to it.”
He did not say what that something is. It could be a new game, a remaster or remake of the original, a collection, or something that is not a game at all. No platforms or dates were mentioned either.
The comment is a turnaround from what Suda said around the release of No More Heroes 3, which he called “Travis’s last battle.” Even then he left the door open. “Nobody could say what’s going to happen 10 years from now,” he said at the time. “If there’s a big fan outcry, Travis might be back. Just like Tom Cruise came back as Maverick.”
The series includes three main games and the 2019 spinoff Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. All of them launched on Nintendo hardware first before arriving on other platforms, and the first two games were later ported to Switch and PC.
Grasshopper now has more freedom to choose how it makes and releases games. The studio split from NetEase Games and went independent in September, saying it had built up its own self-publishing know-how and wanted to keep making games with its own “NO GAME NO LIFE” flavor as it heads toward its 30th anniversary. Whatever the No More Heroes plan turns out to be, Grasshopper and Marvelous have not announced a reveal date.
