Turning old into new with the French master of retro revival

By Jon Bailes

Sometimes a singular vision opens up a whole world of potential. For Paris-based Dotemu, that vision has been to recreate, leading the company to sift through videogame history for nuggets deserving of being remastered or remade. From its early years, as both developer and publisher, it has pinballed between classics as if the whole of the 1980s and 1990s were its kingdom, giving titles from Karateka to Final Fantasy VIII a new sheen or lease of life. In 2014, however, the company itself would be remastered, as original founders Xavier Liard and Romain Tisserand sold up, handing the reins to current CEO Cyrille Imbert. Under his management, Dotemu has retained its original focus on recreating, but redrawn the lines of its mission.

Imbert started in the industry as an assistant brand manager at Ubisoft, then established Chouquette Games, a mobile-focused studio that failed to take off but nevertheless provided plenty of experience that would feed into the Dotemu acquisition. “At the time, my father was looking for an investment and knew I had worked in the videogame industry already,” Imbert says, “so he asked me to look around.” Imbert was already aware of Dotemu’s work and heard that Liard and Tisserand might be looking to sell. “They were super-cool guys,” he says. “Very smart and passionate about what they were doing. But I could see that we could bring things forward and push the initial idea a bit further.”

Dotemu has grown slowly but steadily since then, with its staff roster expanding from around a dozen to over 30, and Imbert explains that he wants to retain a small-company atmosphere where everyone feels involved in creative decisions. Around two-thirds of the team is dedicated to production, he says, which includes working on internal development and production services for external projects published by Dotemu. Internal work is effectively split into two divisions: a group of programmers specialising in retro engineering and emulation; and the studio working on new projects, which recently brought Windjammers 2 to fruition.