--- title: "Patapon creator’s Ratatan leaves early access on PS5, Switch 2, Xbox and PC at $34.99" url: https://badiyaa.com/ratatan-launch-trailer-patapon-release/ published: 2026-10-16T21:27:00+01:00 modified: 2026-10-16T18:36:28+01:00 section: Entertainment publisher: Badiyaa --- # Patapon creator’s Ratatan leaves early access on PS5, Switch 2, Xbox and PC at $34.99 The 1.0 launch adds Chapters 3 and 4 after 391 days of Steam early access, a June delay for multiplayer fixes and the loss of PS4 and original Switch versions. Ratatan, the rhythm roguelike made by the designer and the composer behind Sony’s Patapon games, came out of early access on October 15, 2026. It now sells on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2, at $34.99 for the digital Standard Edition and $39.99 for the Deluxe Edition, with a boxed console copy listed at a suggested $39.99 by Game Source Entertainment, the Hong Kong-based company publishing it worldwide. The game’s official YouTube channel posted a 2:38 launch trailer on October 14, a day ahead of release. Version 1.0 adds Chapters 3 and 4, a final world with an end boss, and a finale in which every Dark Ratatan villain met so far turns up at once. Up to four people can play together online, and the ESRB has rated it 10+. “I never imagined that completing a game would be such a dramatic process,” Hiroyuki Kotani, credited as game designer, said in the launch announcement. The record backs him up. ## A 2007 handheld idea, revived through crowdfunding Kotani designed Patapon, a PlayStation Portable game that Pyramid and Sony’s Japan Studio made and Sony released in Japan in December 2007 and in North America in February 2008. Players acted as a god tapping drum rhythms to march, attack and defend with a tribe of eyeball warriors; Kotani called the genre “Command Carnival.” It sold 229,000 copies in North America by January 2009 and grew into a PSP trilogy. Kemmei Adachi, who scored Patapon, is back as Ratatan’s composer. The rest of the credits come from the new studio, Ratata Arts: Kenei Nakasha directs, Nelnal handles character design and Kazuto Sakajiri produces. Ratatan is its own property with new characters, led by the title heroine and her companion Cobun, rather than a Patapon sequel. Sakajiri pitched it at both camps, telling Patapon fans and newcomers alike to expect “something new.” ## From pitch to 1.0, step by step - **2023:** The game is first shown at the BitSummit festival, and its Kickstarter opens on August 1, clearing its funding target in less than an hour. - **August 7, 2025:** At an invite-only play session in Tokyo, Ratata Arts reveals the Steam early access date. - **September 19, 2025:** Early access opens on Steam. Sales later pass 100,000 units. - **Before the delay:** The team cuts the PlayStation 4 and original Switch versions and targets July 16, 2026, for the full launch. - **June 2026:** Release moves to October 15 so the studio can stabilize multiplayer and fix bugs reported by early access players. People who had already preordered receive the Deluxe extras as free DLC codes. - **September 2026:** Console preorders open at 10% off, and the game is playable at Tokyo Game Show from September 17 to 21. - **October 15, 2026:** Version 1.0 goes live on all four platforms. Counting both end dates, early access ran 391 days, from September 19, 2025, to October 15, 2026, or close to 13 months. Nakasha, in his own launch note, rounded it down to “about a year.” For anyone new to the model: early access lets players buy an unfinished build on PC while work continues, and Ratatan’s Steam owners keep their save data in the finished game. The platform cut was blunt arithmetic. The team said the units it expected to sell on older hardware “would not justify the licensing fees” needed to finish those versions. Kickstarter backers who had pledged for PS4 or Switch were offered Steam, Switch 2, PS5 or Xbox Series X|S copies in their place. ## The launch trailer, judged on what it can prove The clip went up on the developer’s own channel, which makes it the official record of how Ratata Arts wants the finished game seen, and the publisher’s launch announcement points readers straight to it. At under three minutes it has one job: convince lapsed Patapon players that the drum-command formula still works, and convince newcomers that a rhythm game can also be a co-op action brawler. It cannot answer the question that cost the game three months. The June delay was about online stability, and a cut-down reel of polished moments says nothing about how four-player sessions hold up on launch week, across four platforms that each needed final adjustments. The useful evidence will come from the version 1.0 patch notes and from player reports on the console builds, which were never part of early access. The pricing math is simpler. Console buyers who preordered paid $31.49 for Standard or $35.99 for Deluxe, saving $3.50 or $4.00. The $5 gap between the two editions buys a weapon and accessory pack, a Cobun pack and a supplies set. On Steam, those Deluxe packs are sold separately from launch day, while the Spirit Sword Banbansord bonus weapon lands in early access players’ games automatically. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Patapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patapon) *Image: RuinDig/Yuki Uchida, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*