Grasshopper, Digital Reality making 3D shooter

In Aesop's fable, the Grasshopper is a lazy creature incapable of working hard today to ensure a better tomorrow. It's an odd namesake for Grasshopper Manufacture, the Suda-51-led No More Heroes developer, as the eminently productive shop today added more projects to its already busy slate.

"Punk's Not Dead," according to the Grasshopper motto. And neither are side-scrolling shooters.

Grasshopper and Digital Reality today revealed that the pair has formed a partnership to create a new line of games, the first of which will be a side-scrolling shoot-'em-up called Sine Mora. The game is being touted by the companies as traditional genre gameplay tweaked with time manipulation mechanics and support for 3D displays. The resulting mix will be available as a downloadable game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Though it is best known in the West as the developer of the No More Heroes franchise, Grasshopper has a number of notable works to its credit. The studio has also created the DS role-playing game Contact, Capcom's unconventional GameCube and PlayStation 2 game Killer 7, and a Wii entry in the Fatal Frame survival horror series that never saw release outside of Japan. Currently, Grasshopper is working on an unnamed horror adventure game with Shinji Mikami for EA Partners as well as a pair of DS remakes for its Silver Case series.

Based in Hungary, Digital Reality has been publishing and developing PC games since 1994 but recently moved into online publishing for consoles as well. Among the PC games it helped bring to market are Hegemonia: Legions of Iron, Imperium Galactica, Papyrus, and War Front: Turning Point.