Cancel the apocalypse: there’s a Pacific Rim board game and RPG coming to punch the crap out of kaiju

Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 film Pacific Rim proved the human race’s love of one of pop culture’s simplest pleasures: watching giant robots punch massive monsters in the face.

Starring big names such as Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam as the pilots of ‘jaegers’ – huge Japanese-inspired mecha that take two people to control and work as a line of defence against the Godzilla-esque kaiju invading from another world – made more than $400 million in cinemas, earned positive reviews and has become a firm cult favourite in the years since.

With a sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising, on its way to the silver screen next February, film studios Legendary and Universal have granted the rights for a series of board and roleplaying games based on the universe to be created in time for the film’s release. (via License Global)

Helming the board games and RPGs will be River Horse, the UK publisher behind fellow film spin-offs inspired by Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, Terminator Genisys and The Hunger Games, as well as the My Little Pony RPG Tails of Equestria.

Little is known about the mechanics or format of the games, other than the fact they will focus on the battle between the jaegers and kaiju. But isn’t that enough of a reason to be excited?