robinhoodie
robinhoodie It’s unclear what they have ownership over, but maybe Lufia II?
exodus Hmm, unless I’m wrong here I think you’re starting to conflate natsume-atari (the developer) with natsume the publisher
Correct.
Natsume, the US publisher, was originally the US subsidiary of Natsume, the Japanese developer, which became Natsume-Atari, but there’s not any kind of formal relationship between the companies (nor has there been for some time.)
I mean, there might be some mutual investment behind the scenes or a common shareholder or whatever, but they aren’t the same company. The main reason I think there’s a chance there’s some relationship case is because Natsume (US) is the Western publisher for Wild Guns Reloaded and Pocky & Rocky 2021 (for some reason, Inin got Ninja Saviors, however.) OTOH it might just be because the same Japanese dudes are at both companies as were there in 1993 or whatever, seriously.
Moreover, Natsume doesn’t have/never had any ownership in the Lufia IP. It is owned by Taito (the Japanese publisher of the franchise). Natsume actually engaged the developer of Lufia (Neverland) to make an original GBA game (Cima: The Enemy) because the cost of the Lufia license was prohibitive. That said, Natsume has been the only US publisher for Lufia, though I did talk to another publisher who was considering doing the GBA Lufia. Nintendo published Lufia II in Europe (under the title Lufia, confusingly enough.)
Anyway, to return to the original question @exodus asked, I was wondering if they had the rights to their own NES games or not. Could be! But the specific team remaking these games is the same team that made them originally, so they may not be responsible for THOSE games and not be inclined to revisit them!