Oh, hey, Nintendo suddenly noticed it has one of the best handheld libraries of all time
Zelda, Metroid, Etrian Odyssey, Ghost Trick, and more: Some of Nintendo's best handheld oddballs are finally getting some Switch love
Games Features Nintendo
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
If there’s one takeaway from this week’s Nintendo Direct—the company’s shockingly effective press conference replacement/cult-stoking system of online announcement videos—it’s that We Love Katamari is finally getting a modern remaster. (Okay, yes, technically they also released a new trailer for Zelda: Breath Of The Wild sequel Tears Of The Kingdom, but that can’t really compare to our joy at getting to roll the ball all over again.) But if there’s a second takeaway, it’s this: Nintendo finally seems to have and noticed that it has one of the best handheld libraries of all time, and all those games have just been … sitting there, lazing around, and not making Mario any damn money for a year or so now.
Nintendo used to put those games to work regularly: The eShop for the company’s late, deeply lamented DS and 3DS handhelds was filled with Virtual Console versions of many of the best Game Boy games of all time. (My personal 3DS still plays host to Donkey Kong ’94, Kirby’s Pinball Land, and other beloved classics.) But now that the sun has set on those venerable two-screen weirdos, some of those masterpieces have begun to fade into the dustbin of history once again.
Well, no more: Nintendo announced during the direct that it was officially adding Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games to its subscription-based Switch Online (in the case of the Game Boy titles) and Switch Online Expansion Pass (in the case of the GBA games) services. The announced titles are an impeccable (if small) list, too: Two of the best 2D Zelda games (Link’s Awakening and the underrated Minish Cap), Wario Land and Warioware, and charming oddities like Gargoyle’s Quest and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. It’s a great collection, even if you’re not willing to shell out 50 bucks a year for the Expansion Pass portion of the collection.
Meanwhile, the DS also got some love: I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but as one of the biggest supporters that odd little touchscreen system ever had, it was heartening to see some of its best oddballs get their time to shine. A remake of charming dead person puzzler Ghost Trick; the continued promise of a new Professor Layton game; a Fantasy Life sequel; the Advance Wars reboots: If nerdy kids were furtively playing it on the bus in the 2000s or 2010s, it seems to be getting a new version some time in 2023, all headed to the Switch.
The crown jewel for me—and I’ll confess to being such a stan for this series that it functionally short-circuits my critical faculties—is news that Atlus’ first three Etrian Odyssey games are getting an HD collection on both Switch and PC. The Etrian games are my ultimate nerd titles: Story-light, combat-heavy turn-based dungeon crawler RPGs where you make your own maps, and build your own parties out of complex character classes and skills. The first two games (originally released in the U.S. in 2007 and 2008) got remakes on the 3DS, but the vastly superior Etrian Odyssey III has gotten very little love since it came out in 2010. These games represent, for me, the very best of what the DS and 3DS could do: Extremely focused and accomplished modern entries in genres that had fallen by the wayside, big-budget approaches to low-budget styles of gaming that—in the case of the Etrian games—capture the old-school magic of being lost in a maze, desperately fending off monsters as you scramble for the exit. It’s heartening to see Nintendo embrace the spirit that powered these systems, importing it into the hybrid handheld/console Switch. Certainly, it’s the most exciting news to come out of this week’s Direct—give or take a new-old Katamari game, of course.
15 Comments
Golden Sun, baby. I’m excited to return to Golden Sun. Just hope they release the sequel; my favorite mechanic was that, while you start with a new party in part 2, you can port your team from the first one over and you eventually get to battle then team up with said team. In the early 00s that meant either having a second GBA or, in my case, writing down and re-entering a few hundred random characters.Golden Sun 3 though…never could gel with that one.
I wish they’d figure out DS emulation and release those Castlevania DS games. Those things are unbelievably expensive, and they’re also some of my favorite sidescrollers of all time. The GBA collection from Konami was a great first step, but the DS games were better (and also are far more expensive on the used game market).
One of the first things I played when I got my Steam Deck. Never had a touchscreen computer before. You can play on the built in screen but plugged into a monitor in desktop mode you can use both screens wiiu style.
.
I feel like this is a bit of a hot take, but Portrait of Ruin is straight up my favorite Castlevania. Is it BETTER than Symphony? I do not know. I know that it’s my favorite, that’s all.
As it happens, I’m going through some old handheld games in a Switch remake collection thingy right now: Great Ace Attorney. I’ve previously played the original trilogy (once as separate games, once again when the remake came out), Apollo Justice, and the first Investigations game, with a plenty big gap in between those and the cases I’m going through right now.I’ve been surprised so far how much variety there is in the structure of the cases. The first one was vintage Ace Attorney, the second never even entered a courtroom, and the third was a new legal system entirely. And, sure, the core of the game is still presenting the right piece of evidence at the right time and occasionally choosing the correct answer on a multiple-choice question, but they’ve successfully gotten away from the very formulaic court >> investigation >> court >> investigation >> court >> court (part 2) >> LATE THIRD ACT TWIST >> court (part 3 (Jesus, please let this be the last one)) flow that has been pretty consistent throughout all the games I’ve played up to now.I’ve heard some complaints about the pacing of these games’ cases, and I’ll agree that the first case went agonizingly slowly to pad out what was not a very exciting murder case, but at least the second and third have exceeded my expectations so far. Or maybe the cases people were complaining about were late in the first game? I dunno. I’ll see. Been pretty fun so far, though. I just wish that the new mechanic for people showing their tells while other people are talking wasn’t so obvious, though. Game makes a huge fucking noise, the tells are over-the-top, and even the interface has a big, flashing ! the moment it happens so you know to scroll over and look at the character freaking out. I’m gueeeeeessing there are going to be some more subtle and/or complicated versions of this in the late game? Because the way that it’s been used a half-dozen times, with the game aggressively grabbing your attention when it’s happening, has been a waste of a good idea. It’s just too damn easy.
Man, I love the Great Ace Attorney! A fantastic entry in my favorite video game series. I think it gets a bit harder further on? I still think the best cases are in the first few games. But Great Ace Attorney has the advantage of having an actual, acclaimed Japanese author, Natsume Souseki, show up (and get thoroughly dunked on) as a character. (Souseki frequently dunked on himself in his own writing, so it’s okay.)I’ve played through every Ace Attorney game at least twice, most in Japanese. The time I sat down and pressed myself to play through the first game in the original Japanese GBA version was a huge leap forward in my proficiency.
*sees Link’s Awakening DX on Game Boy list*
*downloads Game Boy client from NSO*
*promptly deletes the Link’s Awakening remaster from his wishlist*
Minish Cap is one of the few Zelda games I haven’t played so I am super pumped to have it on my Switch. I was in the midst of a Link to the Past replay but that had to be paused so I can wander through this version of Hyrule. After all that, I’m definitely going to play Metroid Prime HD because it looks gorgeous and is one of the best Gamecube games out there.
Minish Cap is great. I wonder if we’ll see the original Four Swords that was bundled with GBA LTTP? That was a good time.
Honestly, playing Forspoken. I’m really enjoying it. It doesn’t break the mold when it comes to open world exploration, but it does make getting around that world super fun and the combat can get interesting when it opens up the different spell trees. The lore and the story have been much more interesting than many of the reviews would have you believe as well. I relate to Frey, and I think her attitude and decisions make sense with the character (if that character agrees with you is another matter).That being said, it does have optimization issues on PC (patch apparently coming soon), and it does start slow. Not sure I could justify the $70 price tag for anyone, but I’ve found it much better than I would have expected from the reviews. But after some patches and a sale, it could be worth a look.
I also wait to finish Chained Echoes soon. I’m in Act III, I believe, and was doing a lot of running around the world to find things, and that feels like a typical ‘clear everything up before the end’ stage of a game, so I’m thinking there’s not a ton left. Great game, though, and also worth a look.
With the GBA library announcement, just waiting for the inevitable painful news that Mother 3 will finally come to Switch… but only in Japan.
My 3rd playthrough of The Movies is up to 1948, and I’m doing about as good as before- I’ve got one award so far, need another to unlock a certain tier, my stars all seem very stressed and I think I have a surplus of directors. And not enough maintenance crew. Also people are asking for entourages and I’ve never been able to wrangle that mechanic. I gotta see if I can make mods work with this, like I assume I can. Wonder if any of the modding places are still around.Also have started replaying an old favorite I never got too far in, Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, adapted from the Buck Rogers XXVc tabletop RPG from 1990. TSR made that game adapted from the AD&D 2e rules (by Mike Pondsmith) and this is equivalent to the various Gold Box AD&D games they had, with first person navigation but third-person semi-isometric turn-based combat based on the game rules. Like the AD&D games it suffers from the swinginess of the rules, especially with fragile first level characters- It’s a very “save early, save often” game like so many of these old Western RPGs were. But it’s got neat retro graphics and feels good to play. I’d love to see a game in this style with more modern mechanics (this would have been perfect for a 4e D&D game.)
I immediately downloaded both the GB and GBA add-ons and fuck it was fun.Playing Tetris was great as was Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins. They were my first two Game Boy games when I was a kid so that was delighted to get to revisit them. I can’t wait to see what else they get on there. My great hope is to see Pokemon Red/Blue.I’m really excited to try out the GBA games. I had one but ultimately only got Mario Kart on it because it was sadly right around the time I was in high school and spending far more of my time PC gaming, reading comics and working part-time.
This weekend I’m playing the Metroid Prime remake and while part of me is mad that we did not get all 3 of the trilogy (especially knowing there is in fact a version of all 3 all the way back on the Wii on one disc, and they’re definitely gonna charge for 2 and 3 individually when/if they get remakes), the other part of me is too captivated by just how good it all is. It’s so damn pretty and the game still holds up as an absolute masterpiece. The real thing that bothers me though is that they flipped the visors. Scan visor was on left arrow and now it’s on right and it is wrecking my muscle memory.