Lollipop Chainsaw RePop, the remake of the 2012 hack-and-slasher about a cheerleader fighting hordes of zombies, finally has a release date: September 25. It also includes the first trailer showing the game in action in the modern, less brutal “RePop mode.”
As the video says at the beginning, RePop allows players to choose between “Original Mode,” which maintains the grindhouse violence of the iconic original, or RePop Mode, which replaces some of that violence with “pop art damage effects.”
According to producer Yoshimi Yasuda, this is one of several changes intended to make RePop the “definitive version of the game.” RePop will also have faster loading, support for 4K resolution and 60 frames per second.
RePop was announced in 2022 with a release window of summer 2023, but it soon moved to 2024. We haven’t heard much about it since then, and what has been shared has been cause for concern. Original creators Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture are not involved, nor is original writer James Gunn, who is currently quite busy making superhero movies.
Perhaps most concerning is that RePop is not expected to feature an original soundtrack, which would include licensed tracks from Skrillex, The Human League and MSTRKRFT, among others. Yasuda said that the original soundtrack will be replaced and will only contain “a few licensed songs.”
I never played Lollipop Chainsaw back then because it seemed stupid to me. (For the record, Revengeance and Bayonetta were really stupid.) It also received only average reviews, though it seems to have gained a cult following over the years thanks to its style and bombast, like many other Grasshopper games. Maybe in September I’ll finally get around to it.
