Namco Bandai’s ShiftyLook shutting down; Wonder Momo lives on

The online platform dedicated to reinventing Namco Bandai characters across media — including in the recent browser game Namco High — is closing down this month.

ShiftyLook opened in fall 2011 with a number of new webcomics. "The idea was to take the unused, 'sleeping' video game characters of our past and bring them back first with webcomics, and then — once they had gotten enough traction — expand into other media like web animation, games, and merchandise," Cory Casoni, the head of marketing for ShiftyLook, wrote in an update.

The comics will end one by one until the final website closure on March 20. The company will pull mobile game Bravoman: Binja Bash! from the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Appstore at the end of the month, and all in-app purchases will cease two weeks earlier, on March 16.

Servers for the Namco High browser game will stay open until June 30.

Some toys, apparel, and books will remain for sale, along with the free Wonder Momo anime on Crunchyroll and YouTube.

"While we are melancholy about ShiftyLook as an overall project going away, Wonder Momo, our star franchise, has some exciting things happening for it," wrote Casoni.

WayForward Technologies, the maker of DuckTales Remastered and the Adventure Time games, is developing a new title based on the 1987 beat-em-up arcade game. It's due this year.