The Real Reason Gal Gun Returns Was Canceled For Xbox
Inti Creates' Gal Gun Returns is still scheduled for launch on PC and Nintendo Switch, but the remastered rail shooter won't be returning to Xbox. The developer shared this week that although Gal Gun Returns was considered for a place in Microsoft's home console family, it was pulled from the Xbox platform after a discussion with Microsoft.
In an official statement on the Gal Gun Twitter account, Inti Creates announced that Gal Gun Returns won't be joining Xbox consoles anymore. The statement noted that the developer wanted to keep the remaster true to the original Gal Gun. However, "It became apparent, after productive discussion with Microsoft, that we would be unable to ensure consistency of experience across all platforms."
Inti Creates, alongside publisher PQube, will "re-focus" their attention to Gal Gun Returns' Switch and Steam releases. "Please accept our sincerest apologies for this change in the planned release," the statement concluded.
The joint statement was certainly a bit cryptic, so it's unclear what Inti Creates meant by "consistency." However, some of the tweet's replies from fans seem to suggest a possibility of Microsoft attempting to censor Gal Gun Returns. For those unfamiliar, 2011's Gal Gun sees players take on the role of a Japanese high school boy who is shot with Cupid's arrows and becomes so attractive that he must fend off all of the school's girls. The Gal Gun series is known for featuring Japanese girls in their underwear, and there was even an achievement in Gal Gun for collecting all the panties in a locker room. Plus, pre-ordering Gal Gun Returns will land players a bookmark that supposedly "smells" like a high school girl.
Of course, Gal Gun Returns' Xbox cancellation could also boil down to a simple performance issue on the console. However, as Destructoid pointed out, a censorship disagreement wouldn't be far-fetched, given Microsoft's history with Gal Gun's original release. The game did see a full release on Xbox 360 at the time, but Microsoft later decreed that publisher Alchemist had to release a patch to fix the camera controls. Although the patch was described as a "Fix For The Camera Control Bug," it really changed the camera angles so that players could no longer point the camera up a girl's skirt. This change only occurred on the Xbox version of Gal Gun.
Gal Gun Returns will mark the first time that Gal Gun makes its way to the west. It will be available on Nintendo Switch and PC in February 2021.