James Pond, a classic fish-based 1990 platformer that spawned (I am not sorry) a few sequels is, decades later, getting not only a surprise new game in the series, but a rerelease of the originals as well. Which could and should be good news for fans, but sadly, the vibes here are off.
First, the new game! Not only did its reveal last year feature a ton of terrible AI-generated imagery, but original series creator Chris Sorrell went out of his way to throw the entire project under the bus, telling Time Extension in August 2025 that James Pond: Rogue AI (made without Sorrell’s involvement) was “yet another warmed-over re-hash of a 34-year-old game that somehow makes it look like 30 years of tech progress never happened”, and lamented that developers Gameware were “promoting it with lazy, AI-generated bull-shit”.
A year later and a new trailer for an upcoming rerelease bundle, James Pond Legacy, is facing many of the same allegations. As Go Nintendo report, the top comments on Legacy’strailer are all accusing the video (and the game’s box art and other marketing materials) of using AI-generated images, while some are also suspecting the team used AI-generated music for the trailer as well:
For your reference, here is a collection of three screenshots from the trailer, featuring art that also appears across the bundle’s marketing material:
Were these images–centrepieces of a marketing campaign for a video game that you are expected to pay money for–generated by a glorified autocorrect? Who is to tell! Because despite the allegations put forward by those YouTube commenters, and perhaps even your own eyeballs, developers System 3 have released a statement in their defence, titled “System 3 reveals the painstaking, human-led process behind the transformation of an original James Pond character from retro pixels into a modern 3D creation“.
Specifically, they reference this character:
The Bovine Bomber’s transformation began with the original low-resolution retro character graphic, which was carefully cleaned up in Photoshop.
The character was then manually redrawn in Illustrator and Photoshop. This allowed details restricted by the original pixel resolution to be restored and defined, including its distinctive markings, cockpit, twin weapon system, rocket propulsion and electrified horns.
The redrawn artwork then provided the reference for a full 3D render. This translated the original two-dimensional design into a modern character while preserving its recognisable shape and unmistakable James Pond humour.
The final stage involved a detailed manual clean-up and paint-over in Photoshop by the System 3 art team. Particular attention was given to the Bovine Bomber’s expression, surface detail, colour, weaponry and the appearance of Dr Maybe inside the cockpit.
No generative AI was used in the creation of the artwork. Every stage began with the authentic original James Pond graphic and was completed using traditional digital illustration, 3D rendering and manual artistic refinement.
This is all such a huge bummer. System 3 is a name that resonates in retro gaming circles; they were the developers of pioneering fighting game International Karate, for one, but also made The Last Ninja, which may well have the best video game soundtrack of all time. It would be bad enough to see them trying this on just one release, but their website reveals that being accused of slapping AI garbage onto classic video games (like Dropzone) is now a regular part of their business.
