No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Back Will Have Indie Game Crossover Potential

Grasshopper Manufacture surprised a lot of folks during the week of the PAX West event when it announced that it would bring the next chapter in Suda 51's No More Heroes series to the Nintendo Switch, complete with a knock-out trailer. However, there's a reason that the game was included with the indie games announcement instead of its own – it's got an interesting tie-in with other indie releases.

As you might see in the trailer, Travis is actually distracted by a game when someone comes into his space to attack him – and that game is Hotline Miami, the top-down classic where you literally have to fight to survive. It turns out that Suda 51 is a big fan of those games, and No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Again will have a number of these tie-ins when it releases.

Speaking with Gamespot, the director explained, "As far as collaborations with other games and stuff goes, well you saw Hotline Miami in the trailer, but basically we're calling it the t-shirt collaboration. Travis is going to be wearing t-shirts of different indie games.

"I've been going around the [PAX West] convention, talking to lots of different indie creators, checking out their games, and finding people to collaborate with the t-shirt thing. But that's pretty much all I can comment on as far as the collaboration goes."

That said, don't expect the indie game tie-ins to actually be motivators for levels within the game. Travis and Badman will apparently be battling through original levels created by Suda 51 and his team, though they will certainly have indie-style inspiration. We'll have to wait a little while longer to see what they're about though, since the game isn't due for release until late 2018.

But we'll see it again before then. Nintendo has a Nintendo Direct presentation coming up this week, where we could see the game in action; and there's also Tokyo Game Show happening later this month, where we could see something new. We've got our fingers crossed, because, hey, who doesn't want to see Travis Touchdown tear some poor dude apart? We sure do.