The New Zealand Story game title by BITOBIT
TAITO logo

Bitobit is a publisher dedicated to reviving classic arcade games: we treat every pixel as heritage to be preserved and reintroduced, updating iconic titles for today’s players. Our first major project is THE NEWZEALAND STORY, TAITO’s 1988 cult classic, brought back to life with modern visuals, evolved mechanics, and new challenges without betraying the spirit of the original.

an hero returns

The adventure begins in the Auckland Zoo, where TIKI lives peacefully with Phee-Phee and other Kiwis. This peace is suddenly shattered by the arrival of LEOPARD SEAL, who kidnaps TIKI’s friends. Thus begins an extraordinary journey that takes TIKI across the New Zealand landscapes: lush forests, rugged coastlines, sea caves, mysterious labyrinths and more to save his friends and his loved one.

Tiki character artwork

original renewed stages

Our levels are the faithful transposition of the original stages, carefully restyled and visually modernized for today’s platforms,under the careful supervision of TAITO’s designers, so you can relive the same charm and playful identity of TAITO’s 1988 cult classic with a contemporary look and polish.

Boss artwork
Brand-new stage screenshot 1
Brand-new stage screenshot 2
Brand-new stage screenshot 2

original renewed bosses

All bosses have been faithfully restyled to match the game’s modern visual direction, except for World 5, where we created an entirely original, colossal new boss, WORMAGEDDON. To make every encounter more intense and satisfying, each boss fight now unfolds across three distinct phases.

brand-new stage

Bitobit has created an entirely original fifth stage inspired by New Zealand’s Kaikoura district, specifically the Māori Leap Cave, to honour the heritage of the arcade game and its real-world locations like Auckland Zoo and the Waitomo Caves. This new area continues that tradition by turning an authentic landmark into a playable world with four levels and a colossal new boss, WORMAGEDDON, designed for this remake under TAITO’s supervision. Within this stage, players wield the new Drill weapon and face Drillshark, Miner Bob and “drill” variants of classic enemies, while across the game they can enjoy a brand-new map layout, a new health system and many more features created for this version.

Worm artwork