Rebellion talks about bringing Battlezone: Gold Edition to Switch, confirms more Switch titles in the works

Rebellion has just released Battlezone Gold Edition on the Switch. In an interview with Nintendo Life, Rebellion's Rich May discusses why the decision was made, how the porting process went, and confirms that more titles are coming to Switch from Rebellion.

Nintendo Life: It's been two years since we first got to experience this exciting new take on an arcade classic, so why bring Battlezone Gold Edition to Nintendo Switch now?

Rich May: Battlezone was originally developed as a VR title and we focused solely on that format for its initial release. We then had a lot of people asking for a version that didn’t require a VR headset, which we duly delivered as Gold Edition earlier this year. We could have released Battlezone Gold Edition on Switch ‘as is’ but we wanted to make a version that played fully to the system’s strengths.

So, once Gold had ‘gone gold’, we were able to turn our attention to the unique capabilities of the Switch. Thankfully, TickTock, the same team that we worked with to bring Rogue Trooper Redux to Switch, was available to lend us their expertise and they’ve done a fantastic job of delivering Battlezone faithfully on Switch.

NL: Can you tell us a little about what the process of porting Battlezone to Switch? Were there major concessions you had to make in order to get it up and running on a very different platform?

RM: Our partners at TickTock have done an amazing job of getting Battlezone running on the Switch. We didn’t have to make any gameplay concessions at all – all the enemies, environments and enemy types from the original VR game are present. Keeping the gameplay running at a smooth frame rate was trickier. We turned down a few things to get everything running slickly, especially in the bigger fights. Interestingly, TickTock found that certain things that were a problem on the other consoles weren’t so much of an issue on Switch, but discovered other things we’d gotten away with that needed to be optimised.

NL: With Rogue Trooper Redux and now Battlezone, have these two games set a precedent for future Rebellion games on Switch?

RM: I can’t comment on future plans too much, but I can confirm we are working on Switch titles. We’re fans of the system here at Rebellion. So, please watch this space.