The Kickstarter campaign for an officially licensed sequel to River City Ransom is approaching the $100,000 mark. In order to be funded, it must raise about an additional $75,000 during its final two weeks on Kickstarter.

The crowdfunding campaign for River City Ransom: Underground began on September 9. The project is being put together by Conatus Creative, a small studio that has already licensed the rights to create an official River City Ransom game. That process involved turning to the IP's owner, Million Co., a company founded by former employees of Technos, the defunct developer of games like River City Ransom, Super Dodgeball, and Double Dragon.With those rights in hand as of this past April, pre-production was able to begin on Underground. The game is described as a "2.5D open world beat'em up with RPG elements" and is to feature support for four-player local and online co-op. It's being developed for PC with a tentative release date of September 2014, but if the Kickstarter is able to reach $280,000 CAD (about $271,587 USD), work will also begin on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions. Those two were chosen "because of Sony's obvious commitment to indie game development, and because we felt a console is the natural place for a platforming beat'em up RPG," though other platforms haven't been ruled out as possible future destinations.Underground's Kickstarter has steadily made its way towards its current total of $102,919 CAD (about $99,816 USD) from 2,401 backers. In order for the project's developers to receive any of the money, the campaign will have to reach $180,000 CAD (about $174,584 USD) by October 9; if that total isn't reached, Conatus gets nothing. As outlined in the project's pitch, this money is intended to cover the developer's living expenses, as well as QA and localization work that will have to be done.This is not the first attempt in recent years to revive the Kunio-kun series, of which games like River City Ransom and Super Dodgeball are a part. A sequel to River City Ransom developed by Miracle Kidz for WiiWare and PC was announced in 2011, but the project never panned out.

Chris Pereira is a freelance writer who spends his spare time agonizing over the final seasons of The X-Files. Check out what he's saying on Twitter and follow him on IGN