Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game celebrated its 15-year anniversary on August 10, 2025. Below, we converse with the builders of the unique recreation about the way it got here to be and its enduring legacy.Trust an elder millennial on this one: The longer you reside, the extra you begin to see the media of your youth mirrored in a bizarre, recursive funhouse mirror. The previous Grandpa Simpson “It’ll happen to you!” meme isn’t just an ideal response to have right here, however an ideal instance. It’s a well-known meme, born from a present that’s now largely identified by youthful generations as an infinite meme manufacturing unit, from a scene that was directed at Gen-Xers with nostalgia for the 1970s, by a personality lamenting how he was cool within the ’50s, and nostalgia for the ’40s being the precise meant joke.Scott Pilgrim now occupies a equally unusual place in popular culture. Back within the mid-2000s, the unique graphic novels have been to old-school video video games, anime, and Canadian indie bands what Kevin Smith’s worship of Star Wars and Marvel comics have been to Gen X. Plenty of readers may latch onto the story of a nerdy slacker–the titular Scott–dating Ramona Flowers, a a lot cooler particular person with a checkered previous, and Scott having to reckon with mentioned checkered previous by combating her seven evil exes. The emotional honesty injected into the story by its creator, Bryan Lee O’Malley made it enchantment to the oldsters who could by no means have picked up a controller, the oldsters who merely noticed an especially well-drawn, well-written fantastical slice-of-life indie ebook. Scott nonetheless needed to take care of getting a job, paying his lease, and usually having to turn out to be an grownup. He simply occurred to take action whereas chatting with nerds in a complete different secret language of nostalgic metaphors.This is finally the factor that made Edgar Wright most likely the one cheap choose to deal with a movie adaptation. Wright had been talking the identical language by way of his work for the reason that early 2000s with Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz. This is a person who staged a climactic argument between roommates on Spaced as a spherical of Tekken 3, had Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now because the backdrop for a zombie getting crushed with pool cues, and used the traditional tropes of each zombie movies and large Hollywood motion films to look at the entire thought of how males evolve throughout the world.Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The GameThere’s an artwork to utilizing popular culture as shorthand. In Ready Player One writer Ernest Cline’s arms, it is low cost and meaningless, as a result of it is the validation of obsession, somewhat than saying something concerning the individuals obsessed. In Wright’s arms, it is charming and efficient, as a result of it is utilizing popular culture to intensify the feelings which might be already there.And thus we received Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in theaters in 2010, a still-incredible piece of labor, not simply as a devoted adaptation of the novels, however a still-staggering achievement in audiovisual storytelling altogether. Its closest visible analogue is the Wachowski Sisters’ Speed Racer. You can most likely rely the whole lot else in that exact echelon on one hand, and two of these slots are Spider-Verse films. Unfortunately, that is for good motive. Despite the unimaginable filmmaking, the zeitgeisty continuous comedy, a unbelievable indie rock soundtrack, the heartfelt story, a rock-solid essential reception, and a solid that may go on to turn out to be a number of the most acclaimed and acknowledged actors of a technology, the movie was truly a significant flop. It opened to a $10 million opening weekend and ended at $30 million, solely barely making again half its $60 million finances. It was lifeless on arrival. Turns out, the movie has extra in widespread with the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer than the visible language. It was onerous promote to an unsavvy informal viewers unaccustomed to hyperkinetic maximalist storytelling. Universal’s advertising and marketing division clearly felt the identical; the movie was bought as a musical with fights as an alternative of songs. It’s not a unsuitable illustration of the movie, nevertheless it’s nonetheless troublesome to promote.At the identical time Scott Pilgrim: The Movie was floundering in theaters, in real-life Canada, Scott Pilgrim was combating a distinct battle in a distinct medium.Jean-Francois Major is without doubt one of the co-founders of Tribute Games, the oldsters behind a slew of old-school pixel artwork throwback titles comparable to Mercenary Kings, Panzer Paladin, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and the upcoming Marvel Cosmic Invasion. But again in 2010, he was a part of a improvement workforce at Ubisoft that determined to make the corporate take a giant threat.”We mostly focused on Game Boy Advance titles: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Open Season, Star Wars, mostly licensed games,” Major mentioned, in a short interview with Gamespot over Zoom. “At some point we found out there was gonna be a movie made on Scott Pilgrim. And we thought, why doesn’t Ubisoft make a game based on the [intellectual property]. So we decided to make a pitch and get it cleared through Universal. That was actually the last pixel art game Ubisoft tackled. We kept it retro-looking, kind of a follow up to our Game Boy Advance games.”For reference, the larger video games that Ubisoft would launch round that point included Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, and Ubisoft’s first go-around with a recreation based mostly on James Cameron’s Avatar. The closest factor to a retro recreation in Ubisoft’s portfolio at the moment is a wholly forgettable TMNT: Turtles In Time remake. So how did Major and his workforce handle to slide a pixel artwork 2D recreation into the corporate’s slate on the time?”I don’t know how to answer this politely,” Major mentioned with fun. “I think it wasn’t really a project that was fully understood at Ubisoft. Luckily, they kind of let us do what we wanted, and didn’t ask too many questions. They were more focused on their bigger titles. Ubisoft was shifting away from [pixel art games], and that was kind of our last go. Our whole team was sent to work on more AAA games, and that wasn’t really our passion. It was why we ended up founding Tribute.” Bryan Lee O’Malley had related combined emotions, saying in our transient interview that “they didn’t really give us the budget to do everything we wanted to do,” and famous that the ending touches for the sport have been finally farmed out to Ubisoft’s Chinese studio.Still, because the movie was in manufacturing, Majors and his workforce set to work on what would turn out to be Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, which was, certainly, a uncommon sight in 2010: a side-scrolling 2D beat-’em-up that felt extra like River City Ransom on NES or the unique Turtles In Time than the character-action titles of that second in time. The artwork style–which had Bryan Lee O’Malley dividing his time between engaged on the movie and offering unique art work embellished by famed pixel artist Paul Robertson–would take most of its cues from the unique graphic novels, whereas nonetheless recreating particular beats from the movie, together with a really cute pixel artwork model of Edgar Wright directing Lucas Lee’s film at Casa Loma. In return, pixel artwork Scott would get a cameo on the big-screen. The recreation character appeared because the icon for Scott’s 1-Up after defeating the Katayanagi Twins, in addition to in a post-credit bit with Pixel Scott attending to throw just a few brick-busting punches, a shout-out that was an entire shock to Majors and his workforce.Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The GameThe recreation additionally had an additional ace within the gap with its wonderful, eclectic soundtrack from chiptune band Anamanaguchi.”Our style was a natural fit for the general vibe,” mentioned lead songwriter Peter Berkman in an interview with PlayStation Blog again in 2021, “but it was a lot of fun to flex and adapt for certain moments that a ‘band playing shows’ doesn’t normally get to do. Like a bossa nova shop theme, or boss songs.”His co-writer, Ary Warnaar, agreed. “There were a handful of prompts that took us out of our comfort zones,” Warnaar mentioned. “Some of those styles were definitely just for the game, but others started to shape sounds that became a bit more normal to us. Dance-tempo four to the floor tracks were a pretty new thing to us back then!”The recreation was not less than extra of successful story than the movie, promoting almost 150,000 copies inside its first 12 months, in accordance with analysis agency FADE. The drawback there was that the success can be, sadly, short-lived. Licensing issues aren’t new for video games–even as a lot because the business loves its remakes and remasters, there are licensed video games throughout the expanse of the medium which will by no means see the sunshine of day ever once more due to both the price or logistics of nailing down the IP. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was no completely different, and in 2014, the sport was delisted from the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade due to an entire mess of licensing issues between Ubisoft, Universal Pictures, and ABKCO Music, who owned the rights to Anamanaguchi’s soundtrack.”We didn’t have Limited Run back then, or smaller physical publishers to make sure we have a physical copy that can be resold and kept alive,” mentioned Majors. “There was also no release on Steam, that was also an issue.”That may have been recreation over when it comes to Scott Pilgrim’s full-court press into tradition at massive. But there was a proceed hooked up to that failure.There’s a well-known story Edgar Wright tells about discovering out the movie flopped on opening weekend: “Monday morning, [Universal’s chief of marketing] Michael Moses sent an email with three words. It was one of the sweetest emails I’ve ever gotten from anybody in the industry. It said, ‘Years, not days.'”That e-mail needs to be nailed to the door, Martin Luther-style, of anybody daring to make artwork within the 21st Century. Yes, smash hit, fast success is nice, particularly so far as the individuals who bankroll artwork nowadays are involved. But fast success is a flower. Lasting impression, legacy, and tradition are bushes.Despite the movie’s preliminary failure in theaters, it quickly turned a cult traditional within the making by way of phrase of mouth, with quite a few excessive profile creators singing its praises. The movie rapidly turned a midnight-movie mainstay at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly theater in Los Angeles. The house launch in 2011 was additionally a minor hit, managing to be the primary movie to knock Christopher Nolan’s Inception off the highest of the gross sales charts. More than that, the movie’s visible language–incorporating components from video video games, comics, and manga– begins turning into commonplace in media not lengthy after. That notably reveals in Edgar Wright’s personal work shifting ahead, with the effects-heavy manufacturing taking part in a giant affect in how he’d deal with results in The World’s End and modifying round music in Baby Driver. Ultimately, the movie cracked open a door that Marvel particularly would kick down solely within the years that adopted, leaning heavier on embracing the wilder and weirder elements of comedian ebook storytelling, compromising much less in the direction of Hollywood conventions of four-quadrant blockbusters. The kinetic wall-of-visual-stimulation model of storytelling that nerds had been immersed in for years is now very a lot mainstream.For the sport’s half, Scott Pilgrim was already using a wave of nostalgia for 8- and 16-bit model aesthetics, and the sport’s eventual disappearance from storefronts solely drove its reputation additional. But additionally, whereas there had been occasional blips on the radar so far as old-school beat-’em-ups, Scott Pilgrim confirmed there was nonetheless loads of life within the style. Not lengthy after, titles like Double Dragon Neon, Dragon’s Crown, and Charlie Murder joined the side-scrolling beat-’em-up roster, paving the best way for the true renaissance of the style when the likes of River City Girls and Streets of Rage 4 hit the scene.The story is, certainly, “years, not days.” In 2020, the movie’s reputation warranted an outright media blitz celebrating its fashionable traditional standing. The unique solid reunited throughout the COVID pandemic to do a read-through of your complete script, solely emphasizing the now-accumulated star energy of its solid. The reputation of the stream–currently sitting at over 3 million views on Youtube. The movie received a high-profile theatrical re-release in 2021 simply earlier than a 4K Blu-Ray dropped. That similar 12 months, a miracle occurred: Whatever licensing issues had been retaining the sport off cabinets had been resolved, and it was re-released that January, with a bodily launch from Limited Run promoting 25,000 copies within the first three hours after its announcement.Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The GameIt’d be simple to chalk all that as much as nostalgia turning into a cottage business on a scale even earlier generations may by no means think about. But one thing very completely different was taking place with Scott Pilgrim in these early days of the pandemic.”I’d moved on to other things, but Scott Pilgrim keeps calling me back,” mentioned O’Malley. “The fanbase just keeps growing. They’re getting younger. I feel like I owe them more and more each year.”That sense of duty led to what finally turned Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Except the nostalgia is slightly completely different right here. In 2010, Universal promoted the Scott Pilgrim movie with a 4-minute quick on Adult Swim, with Michael Cera, Mae Whitman, and Jason Schwartzman voicing a completely animated scene from the graphic novel. It was an ideal match on the identical community that quietly launched a technology to Naruto and Cowboy Bebop. It would additionally solely air as soon as, the evening earlier than the movie was launched.In 2023, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off turned a 10-episode anime splashed throughout the entrance web page of the world’s largest streaming platform, sharing promo area with the absurdly in style Delicious In Dungeon, and an anime adaptation of Castlevania. In 2025, it is one of many first issues Netflix recommends after Ok-Pop Demon Hunters rolls credit. Scott Pilgrim is now not a nostalgia journey; it is a part of the zeitgeist.”You’d expect the audience for Scott Pilgrim would be all 45-year-olds at this point,” O’Malley mentioned, “but I have an influx of 15-year-olds coming to conventions these days, and they don’t see the references the same way… They’re more interested in the characters themselves, and they’re the flashpoint, the thing they connect to most.”It’s with that angle in thoughts that Scott Pilgrim Takes Off forges its personal path. The first episode is the animated adaptation of the graphic novel everybody anticipated, proper up till the battle with Ramona Flowers’ first Evil Ex, Matthew Patel. Scott fights him…and loses.The remainder of the collection then turns into Ramona Flowers’ story. Her guilt about “dabbling in being a bitch” costing a brand new associate his life guides the collection into a really completely different course from the unique, a course that may solely come from 15 years of hindsight and maturity. As against most performs for nostalgia, Scott Pilgrim hasn’t simply grown up with its viewers, however tailored to a altering world, whereas guaranteeing that even the individuals who haven’t any attachment to the graphic novels or movie have an entry level.That entry level seems to be one way more thinking about Ramona being fascinatingly messy, Scott being frozen in time, and the way pathetic that stagnation might be if left unchecked. Scott Pilgrim is now not a mirrored image of the previous, however a dwelling examination of it. As the present finally ends up proving, nostalgia might be good, however a model of an individual that is nonetheless open to alter and progress is totally probably the most wholesome model of that particular person.That similar want for progress and alter wound up main Jean Majors and the oldsters at Tribute Games to the following step in Scott and Ramona’s journey: Tribute Games’ Scott Pilgrim EX.”[Bryan and I] have been friends ever since the original game, and when we started Tribute we always kept in contact,” Majors mentioned. “Over the years, after Mercenary Kings, we would reach out and ask if we could have a second stab. Things didn’t pan out, but over the years, we kept harassing him. When the anime was announced, we gave it another go…and that’s when the discussions became more serious.”Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game Complete Edition – Official Launch TrailerSize:640 × 360480 × 270 Want us to recollect this setting for all of your gadgets? Sign up or Sign in now! Please use a html5 video succesful browser to look at movies. This video has an invalid file format. Sorry, however you possibly can’t entry this content material!Please enter your date of delivery to view this videoJanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031Yr202520242023202220212020201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005200420032002200120001999199819971996199519941993199219911990198919881987198619851984198319821981198019791978197719761975197419731972197119701969196819671966196519641963196219611960195919581957195619551954195319521951195019491948194719461945194419431942194119401939193819371936193519341933193219311930192919281927192619251924192319221921192019191918191719161915191419131912191119101909190819071906190519041903190219011900 By clicking ‘enter’, you comply with GameSpot’s Terms of Use and Privacy PolicyenterA easy sequel to the Scott Pilgrim recreation can be a straightforward slam dunk in at this time’s market, given how profitable the re-release was and the ubiquity of retro beat-’em-ups nowadays, however that very same change and progress that guided Scott Pilgrim Takes Off prolonged to the brand new recreation.”When we first pitched Scott Pilgrim EX, we shared our vision of the target audience, and Bryan told us, ‘You need to revisit those, I don’t think that’s totally accurate,'” Majors mentioned. “We [initially] targeted older [audiences], because retro games have an easier reach for people who lived through it, but that’s no longer true. We noticed with [TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge] that it reached this massive audience that was younger, because the people who grew up playing Turtles In Time wound up playing it with their kids. We were missing out on the younger audience who grew up with the series and movie getting its second wind, and we saw it with the direction the animated series went. “With that in thoughts, Majors mentioned, very similar to Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, EX will develop up slightly extra. That particularly pertains to the place the problem for the brand new recreation will likely be coming from this time round.”The production [on the original Scott Pilgrim game] was so short we didn’t second-guess [the difficulty],” he mentioned. “We did some minor playtesting, but we probably should’ve done a better job making sure it wasn’t too hardcore. One thing we’re improving is listening to the feedback from the original game, because one of the things they thought dragged the game down was the grinding.””[Another thing] that will surprise people is it’s not a sequel, or even a simple beat-’em-up either,” Majors continued. “We’re kind of starting from scratch, thinking about how to structure the game the way we wanted the original to be. It’s not as linear, it’s more open-ended, Link to the Past-style. You have to [explore the world] a bit more to complete quests. We’ve adopted more of a River City Ransom structure.”For his half, Bryan Lee O’Malley continues to be closely concerned with EX.”I just wanna make a video game,” he mentioned, laughing. “Just, something new that reminds me of all the games I played growing up.”Not that there is something unsuitable with that in any respect. But O’Malley is greater than conscious of the experience Scott Pilgrim has gone on, from slightly black-and-white indie comedian born of nostalgia and a love of the video games, films, and bands of his youth, to a longtime favourite for a number of generations of nerds and weirdos who’ve grown up and out over time–a fond reminiscence born of fond recollections.”If they’re 20 now, they were born around the time all this was starting, when I was obsessed with the late ’70s, early ’80s,” he mentioned. “I feel like every generation has that ’20 years behind you’ nostalgia, ‘What was the world like before the one I was born into?’ To them, Scott Pilgrim’s become this sort of rosetta stone. It’s a map to an older version of pop culture.”
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