Yes, we know we said Bubsy: Paws On Fire! was coming to the Switch this month, whether you wanted it or not, but it turns out the game’s publisher Accolade and developer Choice Provisions have decided to delay the return of the infamous video game mascot from the ’90s.
Instead of launching on the Switch eShop next week on 16th May, the game has now been pushed back to this summer, “to allow a bit more time for final adjustments.” The other versions of the game for PlayStation and PC are still on-track. The game will also receive a standard and limited physical edition when it arrives, for $29.99 and $39.99. The limited edition includes the game, a soundtrack sampler and a ‘Mini Collectors’ Booklet’.
The co-founder of Choice Provisions provided the following statement to explain what was going on with the Switch release (thanks, Gematsu):
“The Switch version of Bubsy: Paws on Fire is in great shape, we’re in the final push on some non-gameplay aspects on Switch.”
If you haven’t heard about the anthropomorphic bobcat’s latest game, Choice Provisions were formerly known as Gaijin Games and were responsible for the Bit. Trip series. This new Bubsy release is a runner-like platforming game for “lovers and haters alike” and includes four playable characters, new moves, collectibles, a unique combo system, in-game cosmetic shop (not requiring real money), boss battles and more than 100 levels.
Were you planning to get this on release? Are you prepared to hold out for it on the Switch? Tell us below.
In the same interview with VGC, Platinum Games’ studio head, Atushi Inaba, spoke about the positive relations the company had maintained with Nintendo over the years and how respect and trust played a major part in the relationship.
“Nintendo is a company that respects creators. From that perspective, it is a strong, organic fit for us.”
Obviously, these professional relations have not been built overnight, with Inaba acknowledging the fact he’s personally known the video game giant for more than 20 years and Platinum, in general, has been communicating with the people there for a very long time.
“It’s not like in the last two years they came knocking at our door saying, ‘let’s do all these games!’ We’ve been friends for a long time and through that cycle we’ve built up a lot of trust, got to know who that other company is and that opens the door to a lot of new opportunities as time goes on. So, it’s simply that both companies have a lot of trust.”
He was also commented on the success of the Switch and how it made both parties happy:
“It makes both sides happy because if you make a game and unfortunately it’s for a platform that doesn’t do very well, then neither side is happy. To be able to make games for hardware that is doing very well makes both sides happy.
“Without a doubt the Switch plays a huge part in the growth of the Japanese market right now.”
Are you glad to hear Platinum and Nintendo are getting along? What Platinum games would you like to see on the Switch in the future? Leave your thoughts below.
In a recent interview with VGC, Platinum Games’ studio head, Atushi Inaba, was asked if the upcoming Switch exclusive Astral Chain had been influenced by the previously cancelled Xbox One title, Scalebound. There are supposedly no similarities between the two games:
“I can’t go in to detail about how the different gameplay systems of ASTRAL CHAIN and Scalebound work, but they’re both very different. Any feeling of similarity between the two projects is not true. It’s all in your imagination!”
Inaba was also asked how Scalebound’s cancellation had impacted Platinum:
“I wouldn’t say our experience with Scalebound influenced us to go towards self-publishing. Quite frankly, the reality is that we’ve had plenty of titles cancelled in the past: that’s part and parcel of what comes with making video games.
“Watching fans getting angry at Microsoft over the cancellation wasn’t easy for us to watch. Because the reality is, when any game in development can’t get released it’s because both sides failed. I think there are areas where we could’ve done better and I’m sure there are areas that Microsoft as a publishing partner wish that they could’ve done better. Because nobody wants a game to be cancelled.”
Are you looking forward to the release of Astral Chain on the Switch this August? Tell us below.
Mortal Kombat 11 hasn’t had the smoothest launch. The new fighting game was criticised for being a grind-fest and more recently, there have been serious allegations of toxic work culture at NetherRealm Studios during the development cycle. If that wasn’t already enough, one of the individuals involved in the creation process has revealed how working on the latest entry in the excessively violent series eventually led to a PTSD diagnosis.
During an interview with Kotaku, the individual – who requested anonymity to protect their career within the video game industry – said they spent their days throughout 2018 viewing violent animations and referring to “real-life” research material to create overly gory in-game animations while breaking down each cinematic sequence frame-by-frame.
“You’d walk around the office and one guy would be watching hangings on YouTube, another guy would be looking at pictures of murder victims, someone else would be watching a video of a cow being slaughtered.”
After roughly a month, all of this violent content took its toll on this particular developer, resulting in a loss of sleep due to graphic dreams:
“I’d have these extremely graphic dreams, very violent.”
They then saw a therapist, who diagnosed them with post-traumatic stress disorder – which is believed to be because of Mortal Kombat and its explicit development process. Apparently, this particular individual wasn’t alone, with other co-workers who eventually left also suffering from “similar problems” during the creation of the game.
Warner Bros. Games and NetherRealm Studios did not respond to this story. Read the full report here.
Remember the free ‘Alien Bopping’ game added to the Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit at the end of April? Well, Nintendo has now released another mini-game. This time it’s about smashing up a city as a gigantic green Godzilla-like creature. The only difference is this monster shoots red balls (imagine them as lasers) from its mouth to destroy the buildings.
Before you download this VR minigame, you’ll need to have first unlocked the Toy-Con garage VR programming tool. You can gain access to this mode by completing the activities in the Discover menu and from there, you load up the garage and save this new mini-game data by selecting “Name and Save” within the Toy-Con VR programming tool.
You can initiate this download by visiting the Switch news channel on the system’s HOME Menu and clicking on the Labo VR Channel. Once you’ve done this, view the ‘VR Minigame’ post and click the button at the bottom of the page to start up the software and receive the game.
Have you downloaded this or the Alien Bopping game yet? How are you finding Labo VR so far? Tell us below.
One of the standout brawlers on the Switch right now is Dragon Ball FighterZ. The Arc System Works release first arrived on the platform in 2018 and has improved over time with a number of free content updates and DLC character releases.
The latest free content update unlocks seasonal gacha, a new course for the Arcade Mode and custom Tenkaichi. In addition to this, Goku [GT] and commentator voice packs are also being added to the game today as a part of the FighterZ Pass. Here’s a graphic of everything you can expect, courtesy of the Bandai Namco Twitter account:
The new paid DLC fighter – Goku [GT] – is based on the much younger-looking Goku from the Dragon Ball GT series. He’s ready for battle with his special “Super Kamehameha” attack, transforming him into Super Saiyan 3 and has many other moves such as “Super Spirit Bomb”, “Power Pole” and the “Reverse Kamehameha.”
Will you be trying out the free update for Dragon Ball FighterZ? Have you been eager to train up with this version of Goku? Tell us down below.
A couple of weekends ago we took our customary Saturday afternoon stroll through the local park. It was a bright sunlit day, with detritus from blooming trees floating in the gentle spring breeze while groups of people, young and old, wandered the park together, heads down, their eyes glued to smartphones. ‘Ah, must be a Community Day,’ we surmised. Sure enough, we fired up our own fruit-based mobile device and found an abundance of Bagons clustered around the park waiting to be caught.
The sheer power of Pokémon Go as a motivator to leave the house still impresses us
The sheer power of Pokémon Go as a motivator to leave the house still impresses us. Pokémon has been huge since the very beginning, of course, but the way Niantic’s smartphone interpretation caught on not only with seasoned Pokétrainers, but also lapsed gamers and people who’d never even played the RPG series – or any sort of video game – was extraordinary. And while it might feel that it’s been ages since we first witnessed roaming mobs hunting AR monsters, the game launched less than three years ago. Blimey.
Niantic has steadily added mechanics to the base game since launch, and the vast number of monsters beyond the initial 151 provided an inbuilt developmental roadmap and a unique pull for players. With around half of all the currently known monsters available in the game, it obviously can’t last forever and arguably one of Go’s most interesting developments has been how The Pokémon Company is cannily cross-promoting other ventures while Niantic’s Google-powered game is still at the height of its powers.
The exclusive Pokémon Meltan that appeared in conjunction with Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu & Eevee cunningly funnelled players between both games and a tie-in event with the new Detective Pikachu movie offers casual Go players a fresh opportunity to interact with the IP. Gamers are used to seeing the franchise crop up all over the place – whether in the anime, the trading card game, novelties such as Twitch Plays Pokemon or other games like Pokémon Quest or the various crossover elements in Smash Bros. (we’re still awaiting the inevitable ‘Pokémon Royale’ game) – but the Let’s Go games and the movie join Pokémon Go to form three prongs of a meticulously orchestrated offensive designed to reinvigorate the brand and bring in an entirely new audience – the next wave of franchise-feeding fans.
The mobile game provides the ‘in’ with the lowest friction, and from there they can be directed to other branches
It’s easy to imagine that such an all-consuming, powerful brand is somehow self-sustaining – that its ubiquity ensures it remains relevant always – but that’s obviously not the case. With the release of the film (notably titled ‘POKÉMON Detective Pikachu’ to drive home that branding), the hope is presumably that people see the film and want to know more about the world of Pokémon. The mobile game provides the ‘in’ with the lowest friction, and from there they can be directed to other branches, and hopefully to the complex, engrossing main RPG series which will really get its hooks into you.
While the franchise was evolved with the times, in some ways it’s been arguably conservative when it comes to mainline entries. For all its quality of life improvements and enhancements, the base game is still faithful to the original Red and Blue/Green template, as evidenced in Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee. By incorporating elements of Pokémon Go into that template, last year’s Pokémon offering on Switch rather successfully walked a very fine line between introducing Go players and younger gamers to a ‘proper’ Pokémon game and giving fans a nostalgia trip by reimagining the classic Kanto region in 3D. They’re not perfect, but they’re an admirable stab at pulling off the impossible and ‘pleasing everybody’ – onboarding new players and making old fans grin.
With all this cross-media synergy going on, you might be wondering where the Switch port of the original 3DS Detective Pikachu game is? How come stores aren’t packed with those giant Detective Pikachu amiibo from that game’s release? Fair questions, but it’s important to remember that you can have too much of a good thing.
It’s a balancing act; too little ‘product’ and you’re losing potential sales, but the opposite can be almost worse
Even the biggest, most successful companies get it wrong, and getting that release cadence right is tricky, especially with something as unpredictable as game development. Nintendo knows better than most the consequences of a content drought. Since pooling its home console and handheld development resources, it has managed a much steadier stream of first-party content, especially in Switch’s first year on the market, with the console’s success leading to an explosion of third-party releases in the following year. It’s a balancing act; too little ‘product’ and you’re losing potential sales, but the opposite can be almost worse.
Disney is a good example. Since acquiring the property along with the rest of Lucasfilm, the House of Mouse has produced four Star Wars feature films in as many years, with a fifth coming in December. While the ‘saga’ entries have done well, Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed compared to the studio’s expectations. Now, is it notably ‘worse’ that Rogue One, the first spin-off from the main films? That’s a matter of opinion, of course – the critical consensus currently gives them a Metacritic score within three points of each other – but the fact that it released only five months after The Last Jedi surely didn’t help. With the public facing a media barrage in the run-up to Episode VIII, then the fanboy controversy it stirred up, then a fresh build-up to a spin-off film (with a Blu-Ray release squeezed in there, too), the lukewarm reaction to Solo was understandable; predictable, even. We were getting Star Wars shoved down our ears, nose and throats – give us time to breathe!
He knows what he’s doing.
Consequently, the rumoured Boba Fett and Obi-Wan movies (allegedly) got put on the back-burner. Hopefully, they’re still planned for a later date – who wouldn’t want to see those characters on the big screen again? – but it’s something of a cautionary tale. Getting the golden goose to pump out egg after egg is fine, but too much of anything becomes a bore. Disney got ahead of themselves with Star Wars and forgot the golden showbiz rule: always leave them wanting more.
Although Pokémon has existed in a variety of forms, it’s still a video game aimed at kids, first and foremost
Conversely, another colossal franchise now under the Disney umbrella seems to defy that rule entirely. The Marvel Cinematic Universe just released its twenty-second film in eleven years with Avengers: Endgame. How come audiences aren’t suffering from franchise fatigue after an average of two films a year for over a decade, in addition to all the TV shows and other tie-ins? Perhaps part of the reason is that MCU films follow only a very broad superhero template. Each individual branch offers something slightly different, and even within a series there’s variety to be had. Captain America: The Winter Soldier feels like a political thriller in Steve Rogers’ suit, a far cry from Robert Downey Jr.’s wisecracking Iron Man, which is different again from the grandiose, overblown antics of Thor. Even that character’s mythic, Shakespearian qualities were skewered in Thor: Ragnarok, which delivered more comedy than any previous film in the MCU.
The fact is, variety fuels the success of the Marvel movies and it’s been an established element since the beginning, whereas Star Wars spent the best part of forty years being one very specific type of thing. Although Pokémon has existed in a variety of forms, from the games to the trading cards to the anime to the spin-off puzzle games and gatcha toys and merchandise, it’s still a video game aimed at kids, first and foremost.
Of course you’ll see this guy in Sword & Shield, too…
The Pokémon Company is carefully seeding new projects and expanding the definition of the brand – Detective Pikachu is a perfect example. We liked the movie a lot, but it remains to be seen how it’ll go down with a wider audience outside the fanbase, with early opinion being mixed. Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee certainly helped bring in the younger audience, cleverly targeted and timed to also appeal to parents who probably played the original Red & Blue games twenty years ago. And Pokémon Go appeals to the rest; lapsed gamers, fans of the anime or anybody with a smartphone who wants a fun time-waster and perhaps recognises that yellow electric mouse.
A new generation offers an opportunity to start afresh, and more significantly, start together
The hope going forward must be that people are channelled towards Generation 8 with the full-fat Switch release Pokémon Sword & Shield when it launches at the end of the year. The runaway success of the Switch makes this a more realistic proposition than it might otherwise be – a fully featured modern Pokémon game with all the complexities that entails is a significant jump from Go or even Let’s Go – but a new generation offers an opportunity to start afresh, and more significantly, start together. Kids and parents, young and old will be on the same page, with that brand recognition disseminated through the family. Let’s Go enabled parents to help their kids in a meaningful way by catching monsters in Go and transferring them to the Switch – we’d imagine this will continue to be a part of Gen 8. Mums and Dads everywhere won’t need educating as to the relative merits of Sobble versus Grookey – they’ll already be clued in and perhaps even helping to catch ’em all.
We’ve seen the series itself have lulls, with some of the monsters of in the middle generations feeling arguably uninspired, but all these converging elements show a franchise in the midst of a revitalisation. Having digested all this multi-media Pokémon content, we are absolutely primed and ready for the arrival of Gen 8 at the end of the year and hope to be catching Pocket Monsters for many years to come.
Be sure to check out our review of Detective Pikachu for an in-depth verdict, although if you’re reading this you’ve probably already made up your mind if you’re going to see it, no?
Occasionally a piece of concept art for a treasured icon of gaming pops up and we all gawp and have a laugh at how off-model the initial sketches looked before the character was established. Even official takes on characters can be vastly different from the versions we know and love today (we all remember the legendarily hilarious US Mega Man box art, after all).
@TanookiKuribo has posted on Twitter the discovery of an auction currently live on ebay featuring some rare promo art related to the ‘Super Mario Bros. Power Hour’, an animated show that never went into production. It seems that the estate of a former employee of DIC (the animation company behind classics such as Inspector Gadget and the Sonic cartoons) has come across four concept images of games that might have featured on the show:
As you can see, Double Dragon, California Games, Castlevania and Metroid would have been part of the (presumably hour-long) show, although the promo art shows a somewhat different interpretation of the sources than we’re used to seeing all these years later. To be fair, Double Dragon’s not too bad, and the California Games image expands on the original box art in a cartoon-y fashion. The other two properties, however, have gone through some changes. Let’s look at the Castlevania one first:
Well, it’s got the Universal monsters in there, although they’ve certainly been given a makeover for the kids. And speaking of kids, we assume the terrified children represent characters from the show rather than a hip ’90s makeover of the Belmonts. The current Netflix show is certainly a more adult take on the source.
Moving on, the Metroid image makes a more significant change to canon:
Yes, it appears Samus has lost her golden locks in this iteration. It seems that the artist never made it to the end of the game – at least not in five hours or under – and went for a different interpretation to the one we’re all accustomed to. If you fancy putting in a bid, there’s another five days on the auction, although you’ll need deep pockets should you want to bag these 8x10s. The description also states that there’s more ‘rare Nintendo DIC items’ to come, so you might want to keep an eye on the seller.
Of course, off-model versions of fan-favourite characters are still easy enough to find these days – you’ve all seen the Sonic movie trailer, right?
Ah, we remember having a good old chuckle whenever that company logo came up at the end of our favourite ‘toons… So, what’s your favourite ‘off-model’ portrayal of a favourite video game character? Let us know with a comment in the usual place.
Nintendo has revealed the theme for the next Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Spirit event, and this time it’s doubling up as a celebration for Mother’s Day.
Called ‘Mum’s the Word!’, the event will kick off this Friday and lasts for three days as always. The Spirit board will be littered with motherly characters for you to win, and you’ll earn triple the usual SP for adding one to your collection.
If, like us, you happen to live in the UK and are confused about the event being Mother’s Day-themed, worry not. In most places, Mother’s Day is taking place on 12th May (consider this your reminder to pick up a last-minute gift if you celebrate the day).
Are you missing any of these Spirits? Would you rather Smash received a new kind of event to enjoy? Let us know in the usual place.
In today’s episode of ‘here’s another RPG from Kemco’, we present to you Frane: Dragon’s Odyssey. The game launches on Nintendo Switch tomorrow.
The story follows Kunah, a boy from the fire dragon tribe, as he gets summoned by the god that reigns over the world above. His mission is to bring Escude, a lost girl from the angel clan, back to Vanneth. With his childhood friend, Riel, the daughter of the ice dragon chief, he follows after the missing girl and sets out for the vast world below the clouds.
Featuring all the RPG elements you’ve come to expect, Frane: Dragon’s Odyssey has you facing combat against enemies, gathering items, creating dishes, and giving gifts to your friends to increase their likeability gauges. The press release even hints at some potential romance, should your gifts be particularly liked.
As we mentioned above, the game launches tomorrow and is available from the Switch eShop for $12.99 / £11.69. If you’re quick, you can take advantage of a pre-launch sale giving you 10% off that price.
Do you like the look of this one? Ready for another RPG adventure? Tell us below.
