Revisiting Cuphead after almost half a decade

The Game Awards 2021 had a special surprise for Cuphead fans: a new trailer for the upcoming DLC, Cuphead; the Delicious Last Course. The new trailer showcases the bosses that Cuphead, Mugman and newcomer Ms. Chalice will face including what appears to be a giant mountain man, an ice wizard, and, ironically, a cow dressed as a cowboy. 

Cuphead is already halfway there to becoming a classic, so I think it’s time to revisit it.  

Cuphead is a 2D run and gun styled as a cartoon from the 1930s that caught the attention of many due to its unique design. It was created when brothers Jared and Chad Moldenhauer decided to make a game based on their favourite thing, old cartoons, and after a few years of hard work, Cuphead was released in late 2017. 

The creation of Cuphead is fascinating. My favourite thing about this game must be the fact that every frame is hand drawn. This brings a unique feeling to the game that no other can. With a total of over 50000 frames, it’s no wonder it took five years to make. 

A cool thing you can see, is that in some levels there are real miniature sets in the background. An example of this is the castle in the Grim Matchstick boss and a book shown at the beginning of the game that tells us about how Cuphead and Mugman got into this situation. 

The music in Cuphead is really special, it was all recorded by a jazz orchestra live in a studio to make sure it had that old-time feel. With the new DLC they’re really going above and beyond with the fact they have over 110 musicians playing their new song ‘Overture’. 

Despite being very cute in some ways, the game is notoriously difficult. Most players will just rage quit after dying 30 times.  

All the bosses in Cuphead are unique and creative — from a blob of goop to the devil himself, some of these bosses can get pretty goofy. 

The first Cuphead DLC trailer was released on June 10^th, 2018, with the original intent of release in early 2020 but due to COVID the DLC was further delayed to 2022. 

The wait should be worth it though because, according to the creators Chad and Jared Moldenhauer “There are portions of boss fights in the DLC that contain more frames of animation than entire bosses in the original Cuphead.”  

I am personally a huge Cuphead fan, with over 60 hours on the game and every achievement unlocked you could say I’m pretty excited for all this new content. The boss I’m most excited for would be the giant mountain man because his fight seems pretty similar to my favourite boss from the original, Cagney Carnation in Floral Fury. 

 
I have high hopes for the new Cuphead DLC to live up to the base game, and so far, it looks like it just might. 

Image Credit: Studio MDHR