Category: Nintendo News

If you’re going to strap on the shoes of anyone during the end of the world, who better than one of the Four Horsemen of Said Apocalypse? The end times have unexpectedly been unleashed, and as the armies of Heaven and Hell go to war on a ruined Earth, all the fingers are pointing to moody horseman War as the instigator. Banished from his lofty position as a result, our hooded anti-hero will need to slash his giant blade through waves of demons, angels and more as he carves a way to the truth, and his own absolution.

Co-director Joe Madueira has a long history as a comic book artist and writer, and you can tell from the moment Darksiders: Warmastered Edition’s menu loads up. Everything from its slick animated cutscenes to the character model and weapon designs look, play and feel like an interactive comic brought to life in video game form. Right down to the ridiculous story full of cackling demons and big-headed angels lording it over the burning ashes of the mortal world. It’s big, loud and silly and a world away from the ambience of The Legend of Zelda games, a series its developer so clearly owes much of its inspiration.

Truth be told, Darksiders isn’t a particularly original experience today – nor was it back in 2010, when it first released. There’s a splash of the 3D era Zeldas in its mixture of dungeons, exploration and puzzle solving, and the combat model owes more than a few doffs of the cap to the original God of War series. Yet even now, nine years after its debut, you can still see why it garnered so many positive reviews. That art style, reminiscent of early World of Warcraft, gives its a world a relatively unique feel on consoles, its voice-acting is pretty damn good (including Mark Hamill occasionally straying into Joker territory) and its hack-’n-slash combat is still deeply satisfying as you bisect an angel or skewer a demon.

Now-defunct developer Vigil Games found the ideal pace at which to unlock War’s growing array of powers and weapons. When you start you’re given a taste of the horseman at the height of his power, with tons of health and the ability to assume a giant Chaos Form wreathed in fire, like a Tolkien Estate-baiting Balrog. But then you’re stripped down to your bare essentials with only your hefty sword Chaoseater at your disposal. As you progress, you’ll unlock Death’s Scythe and a number of other powerful weapons. You’ll start to build up your Wrath powers, enabling you to unleash special moves that can make a big difference when you’re being swamped.

It’s also blessed with an AI system that’s actually pretty good at trying to exploit your weaknesses; smaller demons often try to overwhelm you from all directions (forcing you to dodge to safety or use your scythe to clear them out for good) while angelic lieutenants pull pack and attempt to snipe you from a safe distance. A jumping strike and a mid-air combo usually puts their winged antics to bed, but this isn’t a game that’s packed with dumb enemies. Darksiders may not have done anything particularly new with its mechanics, but it made them enjoyable to wield nonetheless.

Compared to the two games that have since followed, Darksiders does suffer from some repetitive and downright drab environment designs. There’s just only so many underground corridors and ruined buildings you can explore before you start hungering for something aesthetically diverse. Compared to the rich variation of locales featured in Darksiders II, the original too often strays into a dated look that not even a remastered version can rectify. In fact, most aspects of Darksiders were improved upon for the sequel – including the stiffness of wall-running, a new weapon loot system and the fact you get access to your horse from the start of the game rather than right at the end – so if you’re double-dipping after your first playthrough on PS3 or Xbox 360, it’s hard to ignore this rougher incarnation’s retrospective faults.

There are some improvements that were introduced to the game with the original Warmastered Edition, meaning Darksiders on Switch boasts enhanced shadows, updated textures, smoother rendering and better post-processing effects. Visually, the version playing on Switch is a noticeable improvement on the one released on Wii U in 2017, so now it looks and feels like you’re playing the remaster rather than a straight port of the PS3/360 build. Add in the satisfying tremble of the Joy-Cons every time you pull off a powerful strike, and you’re left with a port that does the original plenty of justice.

Conclusion

Darksiders: Warmastered Edition is a faithful port of the original that brings every slash of Chaoseaster and every bloody execution to Nintendo Switch in all its glory. While still the inferior entry in the Darksiders trilogy, this first outing is still a robust action-platformer full of satisfying melee combos, open-ended levels and a suitably over-the-top story. Easily one of the most underrated franchises to appear in the previous generation, Darksiders is a solid port that finally unleashes the Apocalypse in handheld form.

In an alternate timeline, Alex Kidd could have remained Sega’s mascot, instead of being unceremoniously dumped by Sega in favour of the much cooler Sonic the Hedgehog and forced into early retirement (a retirement that’s now lasted nearly three decades).

Just think: if things had been different and Sonic had never been created, we could instead have enjoyed a whole bunch of Alex Kidd games on the Mega Drive, been treated to Alex Kidd Adventure on the Dreamcast, tolerated a bunch of ropey 3D Alex Kidd platformers and could now be morbidly curious about an upcoming Alex Kidd live-action movie.

Actually, in hindsight, that’s probably for the best. One of the reasons Alex Kidd was probably ditched in favour of a cooler, bluer alternative was that the quality of his games decreased with each entry: fans of the Liam Gallagher lookalike generally agree that the first in the series, Alex Kidd In Miracle World, was the best of the bunch.

It’s this high point in the series that Sega and the emulation masters at M2 have decided to grant the Sega Ages treatment, meaning what we have here is – like the other Sega Ages titles – the most definitive version of the game by a country mile.

For those too young to remember it (or too American; the Master System was huge in Europe and Brazil but was destroyed by the NES in North America), Alex Kidd’s debut adventure has the big-eared lad heading out to defeat the evil Janken the Great, rescue the prince and princess of the city of Radaxian and bring peace to the land. But don’t worry about that; nobody remembers the story.

What everyone who played it does remember is how difficult it is. Alex Kidd In Miracle World is unrepentant in its trickiness; part of this is down to the game’s slightly loose controls which, even back in the ‘80s, never felt quite as tight as those of the moustachioed brothers across the shopping aisle. The other part, though, is clearly deliberate: enemies are placed in awkward locations designed to annoy you, and some apparent power-ups instead trigger the appearance of Death, who mercilessly pursues you until he catches and kills you.

Add to that the numerous Janken (Rock, Paper, Scissors) games you’ll encounter along the way – adding a seemingly random element to whether you’ll lose lives for the sake of it – and it’s fair to say that Miracle World doesn’t so much hold the player’s hand as thrust it into a tiger cage.

Thankfully for some, the Sega Ages version of the game on Switch introduces a short rewind function, which allows you to undo any errors and pretend they never happened. It only goes back five seconds, though, meaning you’ll need to trigger it almost immediately after your mistake or it may be too late to do anything about it.

This rewind function is one of many little tweaks and additions M2 has bestowed upon Miracle World. Most of these are found in the new ‘Ages’ version of the game (there’s still the option to play the untouched classic version, for grumpy old purists who don’t like change).

The most notable new feature in the Ages version is a reworked soundtrack that makes use of the Master System’s FM sound unit: this was an add-on that was released exclusively in Japan, and greatly improved the quality of the music in some games. The interesting twist here is that Alex Kidd In Miracle World didn’t actually have FM support back in the day – the FM unit was released later – so the FM soundtrack you get in the Sega Ages version is a brand new one, designed to give fans an idea of how one would have sounded back then.

Also new to Ages mode are lovely little illustrations that appear between stages, and – more importantly – the ability to continue as often as you like without jumping through hoops. The original game had a little-known Continue feature, where players who died with at least $400 collected could hold Up on the D-Pad, press the second button eight times and sacrifice a goat to trigger the secret ‘Continue’ option. Well, everything except the goat bit. This time, though, you can continue over and over, regardless of whether you’ve collected enough gold.

Attention to detail just permeates every nook and cranny of this re-release, as is the Sega Ages way. In the options screen, you can choose between three versions of the game: the Japanese release (complete with Sega Mark III intro logo), the western re-release and even the ‘Hamburger’ version. Long story short, when Alex Kidd was built into the Master System II consoles, the game was tweaked slightly: the jump and punch buttons were swapped over to the more widely-accepted standard, and in between each stage Alex was seen eating a hamburger instead of a rice ball. It’s the little things.

In an even better touch, the game’s default border contains a little secret of its own: along the top of the screen, you’ll see a series of icons from the Rock, Paper, Scissors mini-games. These aren’t just dumped on there for the hell of it: they’re actually the solutions to each of the Janken battles in the game (the bosses don’t actually select a random option, you see). This means you no longer have to memorise a sequence of 14 Janken solutions; you can just refer to your handy border and get on with your life.

All this combines to make the ultimate version of an important retro game, one that many gamers – especially those in Europe and Brazil – may associate more with their childhoods than the Mario series. Modern players discovering it for the first time may take a while to get used to its slippery controls, which don’t really hold up well these days (hell, they didn’t really hold up back then). Overcome this clunkiness, though, and you’ll happy to see that Alex Kidd’s debut outing remains as charming as it was back when he was still the main man, and sneaker-wearing hedgehogs didn’t exist.

Conclusion

Alex Kidd’s floaty, slippery platforming may not be for everyone, especially those who didn’t get to grips with it the first time around. Long-time fans and newer gamers willing to see past its niggles, though, will be treated to the definitive version of an iconic Sega game, one whose new additions are both genuinely useful (adding a Janken walkthrough to the border is genius) and transformative (you may have played the game hundreds of times, but you’ve never played it with FM sound). A must-have for fans, but merely recommended for newcomers.