Billie Holiday Gives Thurgood Marshall A Beatdown in Hastings Paradise

Ever since secretly watching older cousins play Mortal Kombat II I’ve been a big fan of fighting games. Their colorful casts of characters, awesome special moves, and (typically) skill-based gameplay make them easy to play for hours on end. With that said, there are not many fighting games which attempt to position themselves as from a specific time period (other than the current day or future). Hastings Paradise brings us into a story where a young girl gets warped through time and discovers that someone is trying to stop historical icons from ever making their mark on history. Of course, it’s your goal to stop their plans from coming true.

Hastings Paradise has a distinct NeoGeo Pocket-style chunky pixel art look to it. This design makes its cast of real life characters seem strangely cute, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. The most appealing part of the project, to me anyway, is definitely the characters you’ll be able to fight as or against. Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Thurgood Marshall have (to the best of my knowledge) never been represented directly in a video game before, which is pretty cool. And honestly, why aren’t folks like Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman or Amelia Earhart the inspiration for existing games already?

In any case, Hastings Paradise definitely has a great concept. The biggest issues the Kickstarter campaign face are 1. getting attention and 2. inspiring prospective backers. My suggestions would be to improve the visual look of the campaign as well as beef up the pitch writing to be more engaging. They’re looking for $5,500 which is half of the goal from the previous Kickstarter attempt.

Track the progress of the Hastings Paradise Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.