More than ten years after its debut on the Xbox 360, the vibrant, chaotic world of Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds is storming back onto modern platforms.
Spearheading this revival is Rocket Panda Games, under the leadership of CEO “Mikey” McNamara, with the aptly named Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate.
Promising cross-platform multiplayer madness for up to 8 players, a massive roster including fan-favourite enemies, and significant visual upgrades, this aims to be the definitive version of the beloved anime-style beat ’em up.
We caught up with Mikey to get the inside scoop on taking stewardship of the franchise, the challenges of development (including a partner who “dropped the ball”), and why now was the perfect time to unleash the Ultimate experience for veterans and newcomers alike.
Please could you introduce yourself. What is your role at Rocket Panda Games and on Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate?
My name is “Mikey” McNamara, CEO of Rocket Panda Games – I run the company and find the right talent / partners to manifest game ideas into reality. I work with the director to ensure creative is up to par, and the producer to keep the schedule and budget on track.
So sell it, why should we be playing Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate?
The real question is… why WOULDN’T you play PBBGU?
Side-scrolling anime-style beat’em up with up to 8-player cross-platform VS and 6-player co-op multiplayer, with 12 playable “main” characters and 24 playable enemy characters.
It’s been more than a decade since we were playing Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds on Xbox 360, so why are you bringing it back to life now?
While I thank MAGES for bringing the Phantom Breaker franchise to life, under their reign the releases were fragmented across platforms, leaving users confused about what content / features were available on which platforms, and which versions had online play.
And, as the new stewards of the Phantom Breaker franchise/IP, PBBGU was the perfect project to show the world we’re taking our role seriously.
And how long have you been working on this Ultimate version? Has it been in the pipeline for a while?
We started the project with a few people back in 2022, but really scaled up the team towards the end of 2023 through our launch this month.
It’s taken longer than expected – our original development partner (whose name I will keep anonymous for their sake) dropped the ball and fell short of their development promises. Their shortcomings were a blessing in disguise, as it forced us to create our internal development team.
The main change seems to be the ‘Ultimate’ tag on the end of the title. What exactly does that bring?
“Ultimate” seemed appropriate, given this version includes everything from past versions and a lot more, including all the items highlighted in the “So sell it” question.
It’s the version of the game that our producer Masaki Sakari envisioned for the game over the past 10 years.
Could you tell us more about the visual overhaul? How has the power of Unreal Engine 5 helped with the re-creation?
The biggest visual change comes from the UI and visual effects. UE5’s Niagara tool has been instrumental in pushing our visual effects to the next level. The UI of the original game felt a bit dated, so we worked with our designer to bring it into 2025.
Multiplayer is obviously a huge part of Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate, but how important was the opportunity to drop cross-platform play in too? Were there any hurdles to jump in order to get that working as you wanted?
Getting cross-platform multiplayer to play nice with an indie game that has so many characters and objects on the screen at one time was a **** ** *** ***, shall we say.
Our engineers had to dig really deep in Unreal Engine and Epic Online Services to make the experience possible on an indie budget.
And what is there for solo players to involve themselves with? How deep is the single player experience?
There’s Story and Arcade modes, and players can play “Co-op” with CPU-controlled allies offline.
You’re selling this on the promise of ‘all the characters’, players will be familiar with, plus ‘more..,??’ Anything you can divulge in regards the size and variety of the roster?
First, all the enemy characters will be playable in PBBGU, in addition to all characters that were DLC in past versions, which brings the total playable characters at lunch to 38.
There will obviously be a huge amount of players coming to Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate on the back of the original game. But are there any big surprises in store for those veterans of the game?
The biggest surprise is definitely playable enemy characters, including one of the dev teams’ favorites: the Truck and the Drake.
What should newcomers to Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds be most excited about?
PBBGU offers a lot for beat ’em up fans with an “easy to pick up / hard to master” learning curve. But one of the biggest “fun factors” is going to be the chaos people will experience with 6-player co-op and 8-player VS multiplayer.
The dev team is also looking forward to seeing chaotic streams.
And could you speak more about the achievements that are tied to the game? Are we looking at plentiful boosts to our Gamerscores for standard play, or will there be tougher achievements that need chasing?
I’m going to pass this one off to my producer, Masaki Sakari:
Masaki: “Most of the achievements/trophies can be earned naturally while having fun playing the game – and it’s balanced so that excessive skill or repetitive play is not required.
Additionally, there are in-game challenges that are not tied to achievements, so players who want to dive deeper into the game can aim to complete the challenges instead. By completing these challenges, players can obtain new graphics and parts to customize their profile cards.”
If there’s one part of the game you are most proud of, what would it be?
Every game release, regardless of its reception, is a tiny miracle. The fact that someone halfway across the world can swipe their credit card and download our game and play it with their friends is crazy. Especially with all the ways game development can go sideways.
Joking aside, we’re proud of all the little “attention to detail” elements that came together to create the “Ultimate” experience. For me personally…? I think making the Truck playable was a huge W. I hope to see people playing Truck-kun at EVO 2025.
And finally, do you see a time and place further down the line for an even more improved version of Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate? Will we be looking to play Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate Ultimate in 2037? 😉
We would love to see more characters added to the game as DLC, once we get through the game’s launch. And, with the tools we’ve developed inside Unreal Engine 5, we might add more features and modes in the future.
I certainly hope the franchise will still be around in 2037. Perhaps by then, we will have Cyberpunk versions of all our characters. :p
From unifying the Phantom Breaker experience to navigating unexpected development setbacks, Mikey McNamara and Rocket Panda Games have clearly invested heavily in making Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate a reality. It’s pretty safe to say that there are many reasons why you should be looking to get this added to your library in the coming weeks. We’ll point you to the Xbox Store.
Huge thanks go out to Mikey for allowing us some of their time in the build-up to the launch of Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate.
You’ll find Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Ultimate releasing on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC come April 17th 2025. We’ll be looking to follow this piece with a full review.
