I once again got up at early-o’clock to see what this extra long thing was about before heading right to work. They started with a block about Super Duper Mario’s Rootin’ Tootin’ 40th Anniversary thing. The main takeaway from that is they’re mainly celebrating Super Mario Galaxy, from making a whole movie about it to re-releasing it on the Switch again, this time as a 2-pack with its sequel for more money than the last re-release pack. I haven’t seen anything on if this is also going to only be around for a couple months. They’re also sold individually this time, for those who want to potentially spend even more than how much it already is on Wii secondhand, or anyone who got the previous pack and just wants to get the one game they left out all on the same system. On top of that, there’s also a couple more Amiibo themed around Galaxy, and a book just like in the games but not including whatever pages got added to the updated games. There’s also a new Yoshi game, not so much about an island made of kazoos but more about a book that needs to learn about creatures or something, including how they taste. Maybe Big Boss is co-writing this one, after all Yoshi guest-starred in a version of MGS3.
Once they got out of the Mario block, it was just a bunch of games. I don’t even really remember most of the third-party stuff, but Danganronpa 2 is getting a remake over all the others and including a new story path of some kind. The new Tomodachi Life was shown to exist with a slightly less vague release window. The trailer made it seem less exciting than it potentially could be, more so when a wacky streamer gets hold of it. Kirby Air Riders is also getting Amiibo, but these can swap out the riders on the vehicles and even track stats individually per rider, much like some line of Skylanders kinda did ages ago and also that Ubisoft kinda-Star Fox game from slightly more recent, at least the in-store versions that ended up on clearance racks due to Ubisoft being late to the party. Mainly though, it’s Kirby, and I like Kirby. If they put Magolor on a Wheelie Scooter then I might just be compelled to sell out once again. Also another Direct with Sakurai about the game is up soon, something I’d much rather watch than a general Nintendo thing.
The biggest announcement however is the Virtual Boy. They’re bringing it back through their Switch Online Expand Ass thing, and they’re even releasing a replica system to slot the Switch into to experience it closer to as intended, with all the various pains including eye, neck, and brain. For those not willing to commit fully to the bit they’ll also have a cardboard one because Nintendo loves cardboard VR. They should have just bought that whole concept out from Google. Of course it’s just the headset thing, not the controller from what I can tell. I mean, why not re-release the Virtual Boy on a subscription-based model? That’s probably halfway to what Facebook is doing with their headsets anyway. Not to mention if they can bring Bubsy back and turn him into a hot dad, then why not the most primitive of VR? Let’s see a remake of that ceiling-mounted cube demo from the 1960s or whatever.
As far as other games, Samus now has a motorcycle and implications of a more open world setup alongside Link and whoever’s in Mario Kart games, and Donkey Kong Bananza is getting some add-on that adds a run-based high score mode that starts at Kong Island. There was also a small Pokémon block toward the end to show off a couple things, mainly on how much they could make people lose interest in Legends Z-A in one show. The obvious joke is “more like Legends EA” due to the whole announcing paid DLC about a month out from launch. I’ll be honest, the new Megas they’ve shown off up to now just look “fine” to me, as in I’m not really loving or hating anything here, it’s just something. I feel like Victreebel got the most amusing one out of the new ones so far. At this point if I’m checking out the game anytime soon, I’ll probably just borrow it from the library for the original Switch.
The much more interesting Pokémon game in the section features a Ditto who decides to vaguely resemble a human in order to build a village for other mons on an island, and it comes from the same company that was involved with Dragon Quest Builders, the second of which I played a fair bit of on Game Pass previously and found neat. I feel like this is a concept that would have ended up as a cult classic if it had come out on the PS2 as some experimental side project. Picture a game about some kinda alien blob that becomes a facsimile of a human and attempts to fit in with a village of animals that can be spoken with, while showing very non-human traits and powers, but that idea potentially risks being too close to Animal Crossing and ignored as a “bootleg” on launch because of the timing, then someone online is all “check out this weird game I found randomly” and then it sells on eBay for several thousand USD. I’m sort of reminded of Chulip. I’m just wondering what kind of connecting story there’s going to be and how dark it could get. That’s another trait of weird cult classic games.
The end of the Direct brought more footage of RE9. The Switch 2 is apparently powerful enough to not rely on the cloud to play modern Resident Evil games, though it’ll probably still come on a key card thing. At least it can still be played portably and responsively that way, provided it’s optimized for it, but hunting down one of those 1 TB or more express card things is highly recommended for anyone playing more than a few downloaded games on there. And for some reason they had another Fire Emblem as the big ending game, which was when I just decided to leave for work because that series is not for me. I’ve tried.
My major takeaways from this are the Virtual Boy, more Kirby Amiibo, weird Ditto game, and still not sure when I’ll want to get a Switch 2, though it’d probably be later on if so, but at least there’s still a minimum of two games that interest me already. Of course invalidating pointless game mechanic patents mainly meant to attack one specific parody game would also be nice, as well as reconsidering the whole passive-aggressive “allowing bootlegs of ‘bootlegs’ on the eShop” thing.
On another note, with all the bringing back of weird 90s stuff that wasn’t exactly a blockbuster, some more focus on the Sega Saturn would be pretty cool. It was neat finding Saturn-themed merchandise in addition to a couple more odd cheaper Saturn games during my most recent trip to Japan, but of course it was bigger over there in its home.