From Akira Toriyama lending his spikey-haired designs to Chrono Trigger, to Hayao Miyazaki’s enduring influence on Final Fantasy’s airships, anime and video games have always been intrinsically linked. Yet if we’re being honest, few games have ever truly nailed the anime aesthetic. Despite some valiant attempts at cel shading over the years – we’re looking at you Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball Fighterz – there’s yet to be an anime equivalent of Cuphead, a game that truly feels like diving into a playable episode of your favourite shonen. Thankfully, those weeby prayers are soon to be answered, thanks to Switch 2 exclusive, Orbitals.

If you tuned in early to The Game Awards or watched the most recent Nintendo Direct, you’ll probably already have an eye eagerly trained on Orbitals. Played entirely in co-op, Orbitals puts players in the dusty space boots of teens Maki and Omura, as they embark on an interstellar adventure. After escaping a deadly storm that nearly cost them their lives, the dynamic duo journeys through space on a quest to prevent another catastrophic cosmic explosion.

“It’s a homage [and] love letter to our childhoods,” says Creative Director Marcos Ramos. Growing up in Argentina, he tells me he was mesmerised by the thrillingly alien Japanese animation he watched in the 90s, rushing home from school to catch each new episode. “The original Dragon Ball series was a huge inspiration… I feel Akira Toriyama was at all times just following what made him smile, unbounded by lore, science….” explains Ramos, ” If he felt something was awesome (martial arts, cool machines, anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs) he just went with it.”

It’s this sense playful abandon that courses throughout Orbitals. As Maki and Omura taunt each other during a game of laser tag, navigate a simultaneously-controlled hovercraft across burning lava, or discover an adorable alien creature sleeping in their ship’s ventilation shaft, Orbitals oozes frivolity from every frame. There is, of course, a Hazelight-shaped elephant in the room. With the co-op only genre dominated by Josef Fares’ EA-backed studio, it’s only natural to compare Orbitals to It Takes Two. Yet if Orbitals feels at all familiar, it’s because it’s been directed by a 10-year Hazelight veteran.

“I think the biggest differentiator is definitely the art style,” says Jakob Lundgren, Orbitals’ Game Director and Hazelight alumni, “Orbitals’ art style really makes it feel like its own thing.”

It’s hard to disagree. As I sit down for the world’s first hands on of this anticipated adventure, I can’t help but stare agape at what’s playing out on screen. Combining hand-painted static backgrounds with moving 3D assets, individual anime cels have been carefully layered over each character model, blurring the lines between where traditional animation ends and the game engine begins. As characters move in authentically juddery cartoon style and a soft VHS grain fuzz smooths over the expressive duo of Maki and Omura, stylish anime cutscenes seamlessly transition into me leaping around the game world.

It’s no happy accident that Orbitals looks like it was ripped straight from a dog-eared anime VHS tape. The first original creation from Shapefarm – an international collective of developers from New Zealand, Argentina and Sweden residing in Tokyo – the fledgling developer hasn’t pulled off this feat alone. Orbital’s secret weapon? A helping hand from legendary Japanese animation house, Studio Massket.

With over 150 different anime credits to their name, Massket has excelled in digital anime production, working on everything from Attack On Titan to One Piece. As I visit three of their stuffy blacked out offices, I walk between rows of young anime artists diligently drawing on their ipads. For each individual anime project Massket takes on, they partner with a different director – and for Orbitals’ nostalgia-tickling aesthetic, they needed to enlist someone special.

“We actually brought a very old school, legendary anime creator on board for Orbitals – Tôru Yoshida,” says Studio Massket’s CEO, Riku Seitei. With Yoshida renowned for his hand drawn work on the original Gundam, this anime legend was the perfect fit to draw the Cutscenes for Orbitals 80s-inspired retro-futurism.

As the two studios would hand deliver storyboards back and forth between their Tokyo offices, what began as just a brief outsourcing project blossomed into a true creative partnership. “It ended up being pretty much a co-development,” says Shapefarm’s Johannes Varmedal, Orbitals’ Assistant Art Director. “We learned a lot from them, how we make the character sheets for anime, how we structure the production and all the logistic side,” he continues, “we even made hand-painted backgrounds that we then scan and put in the game for certain elements in the UI… which was absolutely inspired by our collaboration.”

Alongside nailing the charmingly soft look of classic anime, my one-hour demo packed the grin-inducing gameplay to match. As players pilot their vessel to new star systems, between missions they unlock new mini games that are teleported back to your explorable ship. It’s a fun, homely feeling hub. Over time these unlockable minigames transform your between-level hub into a wonderfully distraction-filled space. Charming touches are littered throughout your homebase, for those willing to look. Anime Easter eggs are hidden on bookshelves. The Orbitals theme tune blasts out of a radio, and NPCs mutter jokes as you proceed to annoy them while they attempt to go about their business.

The in-level puzzles are just as fun, too. Where Hazelight’s Split Fiction had its world divided into two distinct gameplay styles, here ideas and mechanics flow with gravity-defying ease. Whether you’re playing as the exuberant Maki or the cool-headed Omura, you’ll find yourself wielding one of two puzzle-solving tools: a gigantic beam cannon that lets you solder together sparking electrics, or an object-grabbing grappling hook cannon – perfect for yanking items towards you, or vents off the wall.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s just derivative of the Hazelight games,” says Lundgren, “the gameplay that we’re doing is not very platformer-focused in Orbitals… It’s much more focused on the actual tools, and collaborating using those.” While there’s more than a whiff of Fares to Orbitals co-op capers, the emphasis on puzzle-solving over reflex-testing platforming makes it a far gentler experience.

As you leap about across lava-filled planets or rock-coated research bases, both players’ tools feel pleasingly distinct, allowing you to mess around with the environment – and each other – between puzzle-solving. Unlike in Split Fiction where players are resigned to one set of abilities for each level, here you’re free to chuck your tool to the other player, swapping roles whenever you fancy.

Many of these ideas came from the team sitting down to play the game near the end of development, Lundgren says, describing a “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could add this?” phase. “Ultimately, you’re the worst you’re ever going to be at creating a game when you start it, and you’re the best you’re ever going to be at creating that game when you finish it.”

While much of Orbitals is played in split-screen, for the big set piece moments the visual divide melts away, letting players share the spotlight in a single camera view. One such moment is a DDR-inspired dance off, with Maki and Omura sweating as they groove along to a sea of rapidly falling button prompts, while attempting to power a rusty-looking computer terminal.

Still, like in the best multiplayer experiences, these charming levels largely serve as springboards for forging memorable shared experiences. “What makes a truly great co-op game are the couch moments,” says Ramos. “The little conversations that start from something that you experience together. It’s not about the level… It’s about this thing that is created next to the other person. A unique memory shared with someone close.”

As a colourful, local multiplayer-centric experience, it’s easy to see why Nintendo snapped Orbitals up as an exclusive. Yet for art director Varmeda, Orbitals is actually the second Nintendo exclusive he’s worked on, having cut his teeth on 2015’s Devil’s Third. “What has stayed with me over time is the importance of being confident in creative vision and intent, rather than trying to anticipate an audience’s reaction. “

While Devil’s Third ultimately bombed, the future is looking far brighter for Orbitals. Even in this pre-release state, Shapefarm’s first original creation manages to capture the otherworldly magic of tuning in to watch anime on a grainy CRT – of discovering something alluringly alien that ignites the synapses. While it remains to be seen whether Orbitals can retain its sense of bombast and originality over its eight-hour run time, if it pulls it off, Orbitals will be something quite special indeed.