Star Fox and F-Zero. Hearing those two names – assuming you’re of a certain age – will probably force you to come out in fits of nostalgia, your mind flooded by memories of the good old days when the SNES and N64 were the hottest tickets in town.
Today, neither franchise really seems to be at the forefront of the Nintendo’s mind; sure, we had Star Fox Zero not so long ago and there are rumours of a racing game showcasing Fox and his buddies, but surely such an esteemed series deserves better – and as for being part of an (admittedly good) Ubisoft toys-to-life game?Tut. And don’t get us started on the state of the F-Zero series…
Before we get too angry, it’s worth pointing out that those lovely people over at Hardcore Gaming 101 have produced any of their excellent ‘Digest’ books which is focused on – you guessed – Star Fox and F-Zero.
This fourth HG101 Digest covers a lot of ground; it lists every game in both series, as well as the history of British developer Argonaut Software (which looks at titles like Starglider and the Game Boy title, X) and a study of similar on-rails shooters. It’s packed with screenshots, art and loads and loads of lovely, and comes with supplemental bonus features focusing on Castlevania fan games and anime, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap remake and 11 (more) best video games of all time. Phew!
Fancy picking up a copy? Then head over to Amazon and lay down some cash.
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It’s not even a week since the February Nintendo Direct dropped and finally kickstarted 2019 for Nintendo fans. Of course, the world of video games is fast-moving, and we all knew it wouldn’t be long before the rumour mill began creaking and moving again.
Our friends over at NintendoSoup have noticed that @muguwus, a Twitter user who predicted a whole bunch of last week’s Direct has posted this enigmatic missive:
Not the loquacious sort, it seems. While truckloads of salt are required with most things found on the internet, Pokémon Day – the anniversary of the series’ launch in Japan back in 1996 – is coming up on 27th February. This mysterious tipster also accurately called a long list of games from the Direct, almost as if they’d seen the video before the broadcast:
Whether this rumour turns out to have substance or not, the absence of news in the last Direct coupled with the upcoming anniversary means it doesn’t take a Sherlock to foresee a Pokémon Switch announcement on the horizon.
Are you getting impatient for more details on Pokémon Switch? Would you be disappointed if the only news is a Pikachu with a different hat in Pokémon Go? Drop us a line below…
There’s no shortage of cowboy simulators for fans of the Old West, but Forever Entertainment’s upcoming Switch version of Hard West will let players enjoy barroom brawls with a shot of turn-based XCOM-style strategy.
From the screens and the trailer, it bears a passing resemblance to Wasteland 2, a game which struggled technically on Switch, but the developers promise that performance won’t be a problem for Hard West. Forever has remastered Creative Forge’s PC version for the handheld and it reportedly runs at 1080p in docked mode, too.
Here’s a little more flavour from their official description of the ‘Weird West’:
During journey through the world where the Wild West and the world of fantasy connect, the player will encounter events and choices that will determine his fate. In 8 scenarios consisting of 40 fights, you will meet a colorful cast of playable characters whose fates are intimately intertwined with yours.
During the fight, the player has an access to special skills in the form of cards collected during journey. In addition, the cards can be combined into powerful combinations that allow additional options during battles.
One of the unique features in Hard West is “Luck”, which introduces an additional, exciting element during skirmishes with opponents. “Luck of the Draw” is more than just a pure probability – in Hard West Luck guarantees an exciting and demanding fight, significantly affecting the chances of a shot or miss.
The Switch version comes with the Scares of Freedom DLC, making it cheaper than the same package on Steam at the time of writing. During the first two weeks of release there’ll be a 10% discount, plus 33% off for anybody who’s got another Forever Entertainment game in their Switch library. We’re not sure if those discounts accumulate, but either way it’s a sizeable chunk off the full price.
With ‘Mostly Positive’ user reviews on Steam, this may well be one to watch out for. It’s coming on 7th March for €19,99/$19.99 with pre-orders available from 28th February, so if you like the look of this turn-based West-em-up or enjoyed it on PC, you’ve got something to look forward to.
Played the original game? How does it compare to XCOM? Let us know below…
If Switch owners in the west thought they had to wait a long time for Nintendo’s belated Online service to arrive, spare a thought for their counterparts in the east. The service, which launched back in September last year, will finally arrive in South Korea and Hong Kong this spring.
Interestingly, @chinesenintendo, the Twitter account devoted to reporting Nintendo developments in the region, points out the use of Famicom controllers despite labelling the service as ‘NES’ in both the Simplified and Traditional Chinese banners:
To be fair, while four months is a long time, this is a relatively small delay if you look back over the history of product launches in the region. While South Korea is arguably the home of eSports, conversely, the Chinese government has historically been very restrictive with official releases, digital or otherwise.
Until as recently as 2015, a ban on the sale of video games consoles produced outside the country led to some inventive solutions from the likes of Nintendo and other companies. With that in mind, it’s impressive that Switch’s online service has come to Hong Kong so quickly.
The Chinese mainland, of course, is another matter entirely. Despite being the largest video game market in the world, companies of all varieties must deal with some very stringent restrictions to get their products on sale in China.
There’s no word on pricing just yet, but it’s great to see Nintendo slowly expanding the service.
Are you a Switch owner in the region who’s been waiting for NSO to arrive? Drop us a line below…
Oninaki was one of the new titles announced during last week’s Nintendo Direct, and has been the beneficiary of some significant coverage in this week’s issue of Japanese magazine Famitsu.
Published by Square Enix and developed by Tokyo RPG Factory, Oninaki is being described as an “intensely shocking title” and is currently around 65% complete; a release is expected this summer.
However, rather more interesting is the news that Takashi Tokita – who served as director and scenario writer on the SNES titles Chrono Trigger and Live A Live – is working on the game as creative producer. Tokita also directed Parasite Eve on the Sony PlayStation, and more recently was director and scenario writer on Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light.
The scenario is in the hands of Hirotaka Inaba, who also performed the same role on Tokyo RPG Factory’s previous titles, I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear. Atsushi Hashimoto (I Am Setsuna) is installed as director, while Ryutaro Sasaki is acting as producer.
Are you a fan of Tokyo RPG Factory’s games? Are you looking forward to playing Oninaki? Let us know with a comment.
We’re as partial as the next gamer to quality video game merch, however needless or useless it may be. Make a cool, smaller version of some retro hardware and we’ll snap it up, as the growing collection of mini consoles around the Nintendo Life offices attests. We’re also not averse to tiny rubber versions on key chains.
SNK reckons there’s a gap at the other end of the market, though. “Let’s a make a big mini” said somebody in an office somewhere, “and let’s make it a plush.” It seems nobody told this person to stop being silly, so say hello to the snappily-named ‘NEO GEO Mini BIG Plush Doll’.
The lovely folks over at Tiny Cartridge report that not only is the stitching quite lovely, but this beast even has a little sleeve on the back you can tuck your arm into when you want get some kip. The stick also detaches with what looks like velcro beneath.
Impractical? Yes. Adorable? Certainly. Affordable? Not really. At 22,500 yen (just over £150), there are cheaper ways to catch forty winks, but since when has novelty video game merchandise been ‘affordable’ or ‘useful’, eh? Rakuten is ready and waiting to take your pre-order money.
Got space for one of these in your home? Any other gaming hardware you think might be more practical or comfortable in plush form? Share your thoughts in the comments.
In the world of virtual fisticuffs there are 2D fighting games and then there are 2D fighting games, those series and franchises that are often the richest in mechanics and delicately-balanced subsystems, filled with equally convoluted plots and backstories. On the flip-side, that usually means said games are super-niche in their popularity and are almost impossible for new players to penetrate. BlazBlue has had that reputation for years, but recent entries have slowly started to peel away the layers of that violent onion.
And while last year’s BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle spinoff was a heavy dilution more akin to Blade Strangers or SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, BlazBlue Centralfiction Special Edition is a proper, full-fat entry and one that continues that trend of appealing to the hardcore input veterans while offering enough accessibility to coax in new fans to the rebel fold. Sure, it’s based on an arcade release from 2015, but we won’t let that count against it.
Fashionable lateness aside, it’s a joy to have a mainline BlazBlue on Nintendo Switch for the very first time. This is a franchise with a serious pedigree on handhelds, so not only is it well-suited to a flurry of battles in handheld mode, it’s also one that benefits from that extra time out in the wild. That ‘Special Edition’ moniker is the same as the ‘Extend’ subtitle given to previous re-releases, so Switch players are getting all the DLC that’s currently been released, bundled into one lovely package.
If you’ve played the series before (especially the previous entry in the series, the excellent BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma), you’ll be pleased to see all 28 of its combatants return to the roster, including mainstays Ragna the Bloodedge and popular new additions such as Kagura Mutsuki. Another eight have been bundled in from the console editions and DLC updates, making this the most complete and populous instalment yet. If you can’t find a character among this rowdy lot that takes your fancy, then fighting games probably aren’t for you.
Centralfiction doesn’t overhaul its formula – in all honesty, it doesn’t need to, such is the finely-tuned balance of its 2D fighting action – but it does make some important tweaks here and there. Speed and combo finesse is still the order of the day, so the new Active Flow system rewards players who are willing to press the attack. It’s a change that will give users playing in Stylish mode (Centralfiction’s simplified input model for less experienced fighters) more flair while veterans will love a little more firepower to play with.
Even without all the extra characters and costume variants afforded by the various updates and DLC released over the years, Centralfiction is a staggeringly vast package. Unlike many other fighters, which simply use their own respective arcade mode as a rudimentary story mode, Arc System Works’ latest mainline effort boasts a fully-voiced and fully-animated story that brings the current Ragna-focused saga to a close. New players might struggle to follow what’s going on, but if you’ve been invested in this multi-layered story previously, Centralfiction has plenty of pay-off (even if most of it is nonsense). It’s hard to know where the series will go next, but it’s a fine narrative sendoff, nonetheless.
Unfortunately, the issues surrounding an English dub – or the lack thereof, to be more specific – extends into Centralfiction on Switch so you’ll have to make do with the original Japanese voiceover and English subtitles. If you’re a purist, you’ll likely not be bothered, but it can be a struggle to follow everything going on in a cutscene and read every hyper-fast subtitle. There is the option to skip right into the action, should you lose your tolerance midway through. There’s even a huge index of terms and entries for various characters and events, so if you want to gorge on lore, it’s right there in the palm of your hands.
Mode-wise, Centralfiction is packing some serious heat. Alongside that long story mode (and we mean long – there’s even the option to watch a 30-minute recap of the entire mainline story plot), you’ll have access to Grim of Abyss mode (which sees you using and collecting special cards that increase your stats), Score Attack mode (which, unsurprisingly, is all about racking up the best combos and Drive finishes to compete on global leaderboards) and Star Score mode (where you’ll try and beat as many opponents as you can before a persistent clock reaches zero). The latter is one of the best setups in the game as you add time by pulling off impressive combos. There’s even the obligatory Network mode for when you want to take the fight online. We experienced minimal lag thanks to Arc System Works’ ever-reliable netcode.
Conclusion
BlazBlue Centralfiction Special Edition may a few years late to Nintendo Switch, but that time hasn’t dulled the sharpness of its 2D fighting package. Not only does it give the Ragna saga a proper send-off with a story mode that’s so rich in character development it could be a full anime season in its own right, but it offers a staggering number of modes to keep you playing long after the credits roll. It runs silky-smooth docked or in handheld modes and runs like a dream online. The lack of an English dub still rankles, and new adopters are going to have to do a lot of research to understand what’s going on, but it’s well worth the effort.
Coming to Switch and PC later this year, self-described ‘roguelike action shooter’ Black Future ’88 is set in an alternate reality where, it appears, it’s always 1988.
Presumably this is an alternate 1988 after Biff stole the Sports Almanac and gifted it to his past self because things don’t look too rosey. On the positive side, you’ve survived a nuclear event – yay! – but unfortunately it seems that almost everything in the world, robotic or otherwise, is trying to put an end to you.
Your job is to climb procedurally generated towers while avoiding the usual obstacles (lasers, murderous robots and the like) in order to reach the tower’s architect, Duncan – the man responsible for this apocalypse – and give him a taste of justice from a big gun or a beam sword.
If that’s not a tall enough order, it seems you’re suffering from some sort of Crank-like medical condition meaning your heart will explode if you don’t get a move on. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, eh?
With a plethora of weapons, powers, buffs and curses to employ, there’s also local co-op if you fancy bringing a friend along, plus daily challenges enabling you to climb up a global leaderboard if you don’t have any friends, or if they just don’t fancy a jaunt to a deadly neon dystopia. Here are a few more details from the official ‘factsheet’:
It all looks very stylish and we’ll find out more when it releases later this year, barring any cataclysmic events in the real world.
Like the look of this dirty neon shooter? Do you think it’ll have enough to set it apart from the countless other video game dystopias? Let us know with a comment.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker got off to a rocky start with fans. The ‘Celda’ backlash may seem like a dim and distant memory now, but at the time many fans were furious that their beloved series was being twisted and turned in a way they didn’t agree with. Fancy that, eh?
Fortunately, Nintendo stuck to its guns and Wind Waker’s timeless art style holds up in a way many other games of the era struggle to in these Ultra High Definition times. Even its harshest critics have calmed down a little and come around to its clean and simple animated style.
We got a chance to enjoy the game all over again on Wii U, but Twitter user @JasperRLZ has made an interesting observation regarding the game’s oddball cast that passed us by in the seventeen years since the game’s initial release:
Look closely and you’ll see that many of the game’s characters share identical body models, with only head and clothes textures changing.
It’s not something we’d have ever noticed without having it pointed out, but now it’s the only thing we’ll be able to think about when we next fire up the GameCube classic. It goes so show just how clever and economical Nintendo’s development team was when called upon to save memory on those cute little GameCube discs.
Had you ever noticed this before? Can you think of any other examples of body-swapping (or, more accurately, head-swapping) models in other games? Let us know in the comments below.
Yesterday we reported on an unofficial Fortnite event in the UK (in the fair city of Norwich, to be exact) and it seems that the weekend woes, bad press and refund requests aren’t the last of the headaches for the organisers.
According to Eurogamer, Epic Games has taken note of the hubbub surrounding the disorganised event and is taking legal action to prevent any further events.
According to Norwich Evening News, Shaun Lord, head of the snappily named Exciting Events company responsible for ‘Fortnite Live’, had planned further events in both Spalding and Newark, hoping that the festival would gain traction. However, that seemed to be unlikely after yesterday’s news stories, and impossible now Epic’s legal eagles have decended.
“We want to keep this going because we are a family business,” Lord said, “we want to do this for the kids and this is for the kids who love the game of Fortnite.”
We admit to feeling just a little sorry for the organisers. Their brazen use of Fortnite assets to promote the event notwithstanding, it’s a shame that their ambition outstripped their abilities to put on a decent show for fans. For all his missteps, it’s hard to disagree when Lord bristles at comparisons to Fyre Festival.
“To relate to that was a bit harsh. People are entitled to their own opinion and we can’t stop that.”
Unfortunately, Epic games are able to stop any future events, so if residents of Spalding and Newark want in on Battle Royale-based festival fun, they’ll have to hope that Tetris 99 gets its own knock-off event in the near future.
Think Epic is missing a trick by not organising more official Fortnite events? How far would you travel to participate in a well-organised one? Drop us a line below…
