by Yesterday marked the debut of the first-ever Pixel Arcadia showcase, bringing with it a ton of exciting retro announcements.
There was the return of Quintet's SNES RPG Terranigma, the reveal of Commodore's Alien Breed 35th Anniversary Collection, and the unveiling of a new entry in Jaleco's Ninja JajaMaru series, as well as the announcement of Sanitarium Enhanced (a rerelease of the '90s psychological horror point-and-click). That's in addition to an updated release window for Bitmap Bureau's He-Man game, among other trailers for Ninja Baseball League-Man × Bases Loaded & Carrier Command 2.
What you might not have realised, however, is that the showcase also included another "hidden" announcement — one we initially missed ourselves, but later learned about thanks to an anonymous tip.
If you head to 1:39:38 on the VOD of the livestream and time it correctly, you'll see a blink-and-you'll-miss-it image of a Philips TV featuring a title card for a mysterious new game based on Gremlin Graphics' '90s platforming mascot Zool, called Zool 64.
This appeared for only a brief second during a round-up of all the games featured in the show, and notably includes a box featuring the name of the homebrew developer Lowtek below the monitor, and a reference to Umbra Dynamics in the corner, an "IP Revival" publisher that recently collaborated with 33 Games to produce a collector's box based on the Sega Mega Drive port of the game.
As pointed out to us, visiting Umbra Dynamics' website currently reveals a page teasing a bunch of upcoming projects, with one of these (labelled "Project 64") being described as a project which will bring "a classic IP to hardware it never reached — a first-of-its-kind port for a legend that belongs on this platform." With that in mind, it seems like Zool could be making its way to the N64 in the future.