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# My God, Cuphead still looks beautiful
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/my-god-cuphead-still-looks-beautiful/
- Published: 2015-06-15T16:47:01.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T17:27:23.000Z
- Description: A new trailer showcases the animated stunner in action.
- Author: Clayton Purdom
- Tags: News, animation, cuphead, Film, handcrafted, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

Do you remember *Cuphead*? I remember *Cuphead*, because visions of it sing me to sleep each night. The game, which combines early-20th-century animation techniques and early-90s Treasure-style shooting, has been in the works for awhile. [When I talked to Chad Moldenhauer](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/where-did-cuphead-come/?ref=killscreen.com), one of the pair of brothers that forms the center of the small team working on the game, last year, he told me they have visions for [a full trilogy](http://killscreendaily.com/articles/cuphead-roughly-40-done-hey-its-gonna-be-trilogy/?ref=killscreen.com) of games in the universe. This sounds great, but mostly, the game has existed as a couple of short, dazzling trailers.

Well, here’s a whole lot more of it.

LET’S TALK BRASS TACKS. There is an aeroplane attacking a mermaid. There is a dragon. There are some ghosts on some real *[Swing You Sinners!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b8isnhYMjg&ref=killscreen.com)* shit. (watch that, if you haven’t) That a game so lovely was intended to evoke Japanese bullet-hell games always seemed a stretch, but the twirling plumes of flame in the air level do make you think of space management, perfect jumping, preciously conserved power-ups.

All the crazier, then, that this is literally a hand-crafted videogame. As I wrote last year:

> Just to be clear: they’re really doing it, animating this thing with the same scrupulous, hand-wrecking intensity that teams of Disney animators used to create those swells of water in the ’30s. The process is as important as the finished project. Chad hand-draws everything, paints the backgrounds himself, and helps out on game design, which Jared handles the rest of the way. (Chad does use Photoshop to color in the characters, a single concession to reality.) Studio MDHR has grown to also include a developer, in Romania, an animator in Brooklyn, and a jazz musician, also in Ontario, who is recording all of his music via analogue means. The result is a sort of artistic time travel: “We’re trying to keep everything as if in the 30s they were making a game,” Chad says.  
>  

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/screen_shot_2015-06-15_at_12.37.14_pm_big.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/screen_shot_2015-06-15_at_12.37.35_pm_big.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/screen_shot_2015-06-15_at_12.37.47_pm_big.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/screen_shot_2015-06-15_at_12.38.01_pm_big.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/screen_shot_2015-06-15_at_12.38.13_pm_big.png)