Put down your Joy-Cons and pay attention, because Vanillaware just drop-kicked nostalgia straight into our eyeballs. According to Nintendo Life, the June Nintendo Direct quietly slipped in the announcement of Muramasa: Revenant Blades, a full overhaul of the 2009 Wii cult classic Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
The game is scheduled for Early 2027 on both Switch 1 and Switch 2, meaning nobody gets left behind this time - unlike the original, which was buried alive on the Wii and only discovered by people who actually read gaming blogs at 2am. If you somehow missed it back then, congratulations, you are about to experience one of the most gorgeous 2D action RPGs ever made, and you get to feel smug about it in 4K.
Why should you care?
Vanillaware is basically the final boss of hand-drawn 2D art direction. Muramasa: The Demon Blade was already a visual feast in 2009, and now the studio is coming back to remaster it with what is being described as a full overhaul. The prospect of that painterly, ukiyo-e-inspired aesthetic running in 4K on Switch 2 is the kind of thing that makes your eyeballs file a formal complaint against every other game in your library.
The original game featured two playable characters - the ninja Kisuke and the princess Momohime - slicing their way through feudal Japan in a side-scrolling action RPG that was equal parts beautiful and brutally satisfying. Think of it as the stylish older sibling of every indie game that has tried to nail hand-drawn combat since.
The Wii graveyard just lost another one
Let's be honest: Muramasa was the kind of game that deserved way more than the Wii's motion-control-obsessed audience gave it. It was later ported to PS Vita with additional DLC content, but that version is now about as easy to find as a loot drop with max RNG working against you. Revenant Blades on Switch is basically a second life - an actual revenant situation, if you will - for one of gaming's most slept-on titles.
Early 2027 feels far away right now, but given Vanillaware's track record of making every single pixel count, we are more than happy to wait. Start your hype meters accordingly.
