Here are the 5 most interesting games from today’s Nintendo Direct
Kirby And The Forgotten Land, Nintendo Switch Sports, and Live A Live all top our list of Nintendo's most exciting reveals
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Few video game companies have nailed their marketing messaging in the modern era more thoroughly than Nintendo, which has transformed its semi-regular Nintendo Direct “press conferences” into the kind of watercooler moments that its rivals would kill to achieve with this level of consistency. Part trailer roll, part announcement platform, and part “ongoing effort to troll people who would like us to finally release Mother 3", the Directs do an amazing job of building hype for upcoming projects, announcing intriguing new ones, and making people who would like Nintendo to release Mother 3 increasingly, hilariously, sad and angry.
That being said, a 40-minute video with more than a dozen titles announced can be a little overwhelming to scan through. So let us break it down for you:
What were the 5 best games from today’s Nintendo Direct?
No. 1: Kirby And The Forgotten Land
Despite his cutesy appearance—and the generally low difficulty of the games he stars in—HAL’s Kirby has often been a sort of guinea pig for interesting experiments on Nintendo’s hardware. The newest Kirby game, Forgotten Land, doesn’t look especially revolutionary by the standards of the series. But it does seem like a dedicated effort to bring the little pink vore monster into more modern 3D gaming trends. Somewhat blasphemously, it also suggests that there are some things Kirby can’t digest, including wrapping his whole entire mouth around a Volkswagen so that he can drive around with it inside him. Grotesque, but cute.
No. 2: Nintendo Switch Sports
The original Wii Sports is one of the most potent system-selling pieces of software ever: An intuitive sales pitch for the Wii’s then-novel motion controls that made playing tennis and bowling as easy (and addictive) as making a few simple hand motions. Later installments in the franchise haven’t been quite as earth-shattering, but they’ve all shared the same basic ethos: Simple motion controls combined with well-known sports equals fun.
Nintendo Switch Sports, then, was one of the big reveals of today’s Direct, employing the console’s under-used Joy-Con motion controls to bring back 3 of the series’ most enduring games, and adding in volleyball, badminton, and soccer to boot. Soccer’s the most interesting one out of these, both for not being another fairly simple “rally an object back and forth by shaking your hand” game, and by including the possibility of getting your legs in the mix. (Although it’s disappointing to note that, at present, the leg strap attachment for the Joy-Con is only set to work with a mini-game, instead of actual soccer matches.) Adding in online play only sweetens the pot. (And what the hell is “Survival bowling?” Did these maniacs create Wii Bowling Royale?!)
No. 3: Live A Live
Of the many very weird, never-officially-translated Japanese role-playing games of the Super Nintendo era, few were weirder than Square’s Live A Live. Spanning across multiple eras of human history, each chapter of the game leaps heavily between genres, from the light comedy of the caveman era up through outright horror in the Alien riff that makes up its far-future campaign. If nothing else, news that the game’s getting a full Western release will raise all sorts of interesting questions about how such a deliberately eclectic title will be treated by modern audiences. (See also Square Enix’s Chrono Cross remaster, also from today’s Direct, which will now come packaged with not-especially-great-but-kind-of-interesting visual novel Radical Dreamers.)
No. 4: Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes
Omega Force’s Warriors games are some of the simplest carbs in all of gaming: Big, bright, loud games that allow you to mow down hundreds of enemies at a time with satisfying powerful attacks. The franchise (which has also partnered with Nintendo in the past for a handful of perfectly fun Zelda games) has dallied with strategy mainstay Fire Emblem before, but the just-showcased Three Hopes has something big going for it: A chance to return to the world of the franchise’s critically acclaimed Three Houses setting. We can’t expect the same level of character growth or hard moral choices as the original game, of course, but getting to mow down thousands of mooks with these characters again is probably worth the price of admission.
No. 5: Klonoa Phantasy Reverie
Namco’s Klonoa games are classics for a reason, combining sharp platforming action with inventive enemy designs and bright, bold levels. Having both main series games available in a nice-looking remaster is a lovely little bit of historical curation, and a chance to let a new generation of players experience them. Plus, unlike that one-hit kill Metroid Dread mode that was announced today, or that absolutely vicious EarthBound/Mother Beginnings tease, it’s unlikely to make anybody cry. (At least, until that ending…)
16 Comments
Sigh. Very well, I guess I’ll continue to wait for that remaster of Zelda II.
Best you’ll do is the game & watch. It’s pretty cool.
There were rumors of a Chrono Cross remaster and I thought those were too good to be true, but this remaster is an absolute disappointment. There’s no real changes apart from the graphics, and even then they’re not much. It’s not like they made it widescreen.I’ve seen “huge fans of Chrono Cross” defend it and bring up that you can turn off random encounters. Maybe those huge fans would remember that Chrono Cross never had random encounters in the first place. You could always run past enemies. In fact you were kind of encouraged considering there’s no exp in the game.I guess the one real addition that you could really hold up as putting this above simply emulating the game, something possible on whatever device you’re reading this right now, would be the first official English release of Radical Dreamers. But I emulated that with a fan translation over 10 years ago and I frankly don’t recommend it.All in all, such a disappointment. I’m a huge fan of the original. It was one of the things that helped me learn English as child. I wanted more for it. Ideally, I’d like a remake of course. I know the game is not perfect. The last third is very rushed due to tight deadlines during development. But there were improvements you could do even without writing new scenarios for the game. They could’ve made it widescreen (something I expect a modder will do for free when it comes to PC). They could’ve given us harder difficulty options just by adjusting some damage and health values. I do see a bullet point in the store page about battle features to make combat easier, which is a laughable proposition tbh since the game has always been criticized for being too easy.I see nothing about this remaster to make someone pay $20 fucking dollars for it over simply emulating it. Maybe the portability appeals to some, but personally I bought the PS Classic version of it for $5 forever ago to play on my Vita so I have that covered. For everyone else, maybe if it was way cheaper than that I’d get it.
I mean I would assume a remaster doesn’t change much. I wouldn’t want it to.
Apparently it has a lot of quality of life changes to it.
They could’ve made it widescreen (something I expect a modder will do for free when it comes to PC).
Since the backgrounds were pre-rendered and not a 3D asset, to make it truly widescreen people will have to manually redraw the edges of every background. I know a crew did that for FF9, but it was an insane task that was driven by the communities deep love for that game. Does Chrono Cross inspire that same amount of devotion?
The more you learn about Kirby and his world, the more messed up it looks.
Even though Jenna Coleman basically revealed its existence awhile back, I was excited for the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 reveal.
I’m thinking of checking out Live A Live purely because Yoko Shimomura did the music. I’ll at least give a cursory glance to anything she has her hand in.
Is that Kirby game a hold over from the Wii or something? The graphics look awful and the gameplay (granted it’s probably for children) looks pretty second rate as well.
I don’t know why I keep hoping for Metroid Prime 4 news when I should realize by now it’s not happening. … like Jesus, Nintendo, just give me a piece of concept art and say you’re working on it, that would be enough for me.
Live a Live is a game I’ve been half-jokingly bringing up every time Square’s remade a game in recent years. It’s an amazing game, but obscure enough that it was completely irrational to hope for.It is absolutely bananas that I got this wish fulfilled.
It’s an odd coincidence because I was going to fire up my Retropie this weekend and try to get an emulation of Live a Live up and running, because it has been a game I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. Hopefully, Nintendo hasn’t cease-and-desist-ed all ROMs from the sites yet.Perhaps now they can get a Mother 3 port going. (Yes, I know there is at least one *problematic* scene, but it would be pretty easy to change)
Personally loved this direct. Chrono Cross is one of my favorite RPGs of all-time and one that hasn’t been re-released at all to-date so I haven’t gotten to replay it. Earthbound is a classic that I never got a chance to play and that looks like it’s already available. I never picked up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch because it was same game as Wii U but my friends play it online often and 48 new courses is a good reason to get it. Mario Strikers looks like another fun online game with friends. And I’m also excited for some of the games mentioned in this article too (although not the new Sports game, I’m pretty over that concept).
I’m personally stoked for Super Mario Strikers, since I adored the Wii version. It was very fun, pick-up-and-play gameplay.
Hey Switchheads, any recommendations for games playable by a 10-year-old with modest video game experience?