Cheers To Six Great Years! Celebrating Cuphead’s 6th Anniversary With a Special Update!
Wow!!
Another year gone in the blink of an eye, and just like that, pals, it’s Cuphead’s 6th Anniversary. It’s surreal to think about how much time has passed since we launched our little animated adventure. The one constant through all the years, however, has been the kindness we’ve received from the wonderful Cuphead community. If you’re reading this, today is every bit as much your day as it is ours, and we wouldn’t be here without your support. From all of us here at the Studio MDHR, our deepest thanks! But it wouldn’t be a true Cuphead anniversary without a little surprise up our sleeves, would it? So today, we’re introducing…the Xbox Anniversary Update!!
It’s no exaggeration to say that we couldn’t possibly have envisioned Cuphead reaching as many people as it has since it launched on Xbox six years ago. Like so many developers releasing their first game, our dream goal was to connect with a large enough audience that we could stay together as a team and work on another project. We ended up – and remain – blown away by the audience we found for our little animated adventure. And it all started with the love and enthusiasm we received from fans on Xbox! For that reason, we have been tinkering away on a free update for our swell pals on Xbox & Windows 10 containing a bevy of behind-the-scenes features.
One of the great byproducts of a game like Cuphead, where so much of what you see is done with physical materials, is the fact that we end up with tons of stuff in the vault Original sketches, concept art, process footage of painting or model work, unused music tracks, orchestra session footage, you name it. Knowing that we wanted to give our thanks to the Xbox community that has shown us love from day 1, we really thought about the kinds of things we would want to see as fans of Cuphead. The goal was to make this update feel like a real peek behind the scenes at what went into bringing the game to life, across all parts of development!
In true Studio MDHR fashion, this update was very much a case of wanting to get the fine details just right. One thing we knew from the beginning was that we didn’t want an update like this to be just a series of menus. A lot of work went into concepting and designing spaces that felt tactile and fun to explore, like you were visiting the real spaces where the work on Cuphead was done. For example, on the Music Player screen, players will notice a gramophone sitting on a table – this is a real 1930s piece of ephemera that we acquired and photographed in detail to include in the scene. We don’t want to spoil all the fun easter eggs, so we won’t say too much more, but that sort of faithfulness to the era Cuphead was inspired by is littered throughout the screens of this update!
In the meantime, to players on all platforms: keep your eyes peeled to our official social channels (Twitter / Facebook) for fun surprises throughout the day. To anyone who has ever taken a trip to the fantastical Inkwell Isles, and gone on grand adventures with their pals Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice, we hope you have a great day and then some!