What better way to kick off a brand new year than a heartwarming story about one gamer and their journey from lost Nintendo Switch to heartfelt reunion? A story involving the positive power of Reddit no less? Maybe we ate a little too much cheese on New Year’s Eve…
The story first popped up on Reddit last week when user Itcybun posted that a friend of their’s had found a Switch and wanted to know what to do next. Itchybun then reached out to Nintendo to help track down its owner, wisely holding off handing it into lost property. “I decided against bringing it to the lost and found office because the owner might not return to the location soon enough, and the console would then be auctioned off or something,” they wrote on Thursday.
In the meantime, another user just happened to be looking for their own lost Switch.
Turns out these two Reddit users were talking about the very same console. An hour and 15 minutes after the original post, a separate thread from user Pizzaboxmonster sent out an SOS in the Nintendo Switch sub-Reddit saying they’d lost their Switch on a bus at Frankfurt International Airport. “I’ve seen several posts about people losing their Switch so I thought I’d give it a try,” they wrote on the same day. “I know this has 0,000001% possibility to work, but here I go: Today, 27/12, in the bus from Terminal 2 to the Ryanair flight to Madrid. It’s in a black case, has two game cartridges in the card slots from the case and many eShop games. Last one played is Floor Kids.”
Pizzaboxmaster was already on their way back to Spain when they realised the Switch wasn’t with them, and knew that the chances of regaining said portable pal were slim to none. Thankfully, someone saw the two stories matched up and linked the two users up. A few security checks later and said console was winging its way back to its owner. Pizzaboxmonster was, understandably, ecstatic: “Today I love this community even more and especially that great user and person who decided that finding the owner would be more fun than just keeping it,” they gushed in an update.
See, 2018 has already started strong with Switch firmly in hand. Have you guys ever lost a recovered a handheld console? The relief must be incredible…
Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love, aside from having an absolutely wonderful name, is a game that was released for Nintendo DS in Japan back in 2009. The game sadly never saw a western release but, thanks to some very dedicated fan-translators, you can now play the full thing in English. What a time to be alive.
The game is strangely based on elements of The Wizard of Oz; Tingle is thrust into a fantasy world where he has to team up with equivalents of Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion to win the heart of a princess. Tingle’s overall aim is to do a waltz with this princess during the great Dance Party in order to return to his own world.
Before you get positively giddy with excitement, however, it is worth noting that you’ll need a copy of the original Japanese game in order to apply the fan-made translation patch. If you do happen to have a copy lying around – today is your lucky day!
Are you a fan of Tingle? Would you like to see more games starring him in the future? As ever, let us know your thoughts below.
Nintendo’s hybrid console is literally built for local multiplayer, and there is no shortage of incredible competitive and cooperative examples to get everyone milking, racing, snipping or dancing. While FIFA or NBA2K have the simulation side sewn up for now, Danish developer Swing Studios brings its retro themed and completely zany sports title Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure Deluxe to the Switch with a few extras compared to its 2016 console release.
Assuming the role of dashing, happy go lucky Stikbold player Björn and his more serious team mate Jerome, you have to deal with the devistation of coming second place in a highly prestigious Stikbold tournament. Their tyrannical coach is understandably not happy, and vows to push the dynamic, ball hurling duo to superiority once again. No only that, but Björn’s crush has been kidnapped. With regaining the highly coveted title of Stikbold champions and winning his damsels heart, Björn embarks on an adventure across sand, sea and even somewhere resembling hell.
In reality, stikbold bears a striking resemblance to dodgeball, albeit with a few tweaks to the rules. Individuals, pairs or trios face off against each other in a circular arena, with the surviving team declared the winner. If a team mate is knocked out, you are able to bring them back with a trusty, if a little time consuming high five. Serving as a tutorial, coach will remind you how to use accuracy as well as defensive and offensive maneuvers to be all conquering once again.
Despite stikblod being a sports title, and a party game, for all intents and purposes it controls like a typical twin stick shooter. It works really well, being easy to pick up but offering a satisfying level of mastery, which can especially come in to play when facing off against other human opponents. Move your player with the left stick, aim with a combination of holding ZR and the right stick. In addition, there are environmental hazards to quickly avoid as well as structures to use as cover or other, level themed objects to chuck. Learning more advanced moves such a catching an incoming projectile or being able to add curve to your throw sets you up to take on an increasingly tough array of rival teams, a variety of human and not so human bosses.
Spread across 12 stages and casual, professional or all star difficulty, the campaign might be short to some but there are three objectives to achieve in each level which adds replayability. In the early exchanges, these are essentially incentives to learn the extra tricks, but become a mixture of utilizing the environment, performing specific tasks with certain objects or avoid particular attacks. Rather than rehashing characters or stages, the number and variety in the campaign felt just right.
Some stage specific hazards such as waves or a hippie’s Winnebago were hilarious diversions, and later stages require strategy and concentration to recognize and counter enemy attack patterns. As well as being able to play the story mode cooperatively, your AI buddy when playing alone is pretty responsive, and if you get knocked out, you’ll automatically switch players so you can revive your fallen teammate. Upon beating a stage, the NPCs become available to select in the games multiplayer modes. While they don’t have any specific special moves or other attributes, they are a fun and varied bunch.
Presentation wise, Stikbold’s blocky, vivid world and instantly likeable range of wacky, fully voiced (and amusingly unintelligible) characters are exaggerated and expressive, if visually a bit on the basic side. While the amount of environments may be limited, they all have personality and specific themes, hazards and characters.
Where Stikbold shines is in its local, drop in/drop out multiplayer. Up to six human players can compete in teams or individually in straight up quick matches, one of four mini games or a random selection of everything in the form of new addition retro style game show Wheel of Rumpus. While it is possible to play alone and add up to three bots with four levels of difficulty, its best to snap the Joy-Con off and get friends involved. The Wheel Of Rumpus can be set up to first to five, seven or nine points lasting roughly 20, 30 or 40 minutes.
Whatever you’re tasked with or whomever you’re team mate is, your goal is to win points to increase your own score. As a reward, you’ll earn glamorous accessories to kit your character out with such as hats or sunglasses. Challenges include hitting someone with a particular object, avoid instakill water balloons and so on. In most instances, felled players can return to seek revenge a la bomb karts from MK64 and fling things at remaining opponents to keep everyone involved.
The mini-games are brief and objective based but no less entertaining. Handyball is a team-based affair, with the side scoring the most goals in a set time emerging victorious. Pop Pop is a risk reward challenge, simultaneously trying to deplete your opponents beach ball while keeping yours intact. Crate escape allows you to lib rivals crates into the sea while safeguarding your own, and new mode Rainbow rumpus is a no holds barred, last person standing. All of the multiplayer modes strike a great balance of doing easy to understand and get started, but its perfectly possible to lose a few hours to a tourney or two, if you’re so inclined.
Conclusion
Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure Deluxe fully deserves a place among Nintendo Switch’s already amazing line up of local multiplayer titles. It’s accessible yet deceptively deep twin stick-based mechanics make for a decent amount of challenge in the solo campaign, even if it’s a little on the short side. Even with no online, using bots or getting up to five other friends involved, multiplayer matches are a joy and always thoroughly entertaining. Striking a great balance between cooperative and competitive play styles, It’s combination of charming presentation and witty retro humour are sure to keep the laughs coming regardless of player demographic.
PlatinumGames has amassed a rather dedicated following over the last few years; games such as The Wonderful 101 and the Bayonetta series – including the upcoming Bayonetta 3, of course – have given Nintendo fans more than enough reason to get behind the studio’s works. Interestingly, Platinum has always developed games for other publishers – Nintendo, SEGA, and last year’s Nier: Automata published by Square Enix are some examples – but this may well be about to change.
In an interview with Game Informer, PlatinumGames’ Head of Development Atsushi Inaba mentions the studio’s desire to work on, and then self-publish, a brand new title.
“One of the things Platinum is focused on is we’re looking into creating our own IP, creating our own game. Up until now, obviously we’ve worked on original IPs for a wide variety of publishers. We’ve also worked on other Hollywood IPs for other publishers as well. But we’re becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title.”
When asked about the scale of potential project ideas for this approach, Inaba talks about a mid-range effort.
“We can’t put together a AAA, $10 million-plus game, because we just don’t have that sort of cash as an independent developer. However, we don’t plan to go the indies route with just a few people on a team making a game, so it’ll be somewhere in the middle, looking at probably about 20 people on the staff making the game, so that’ll still be a healthy [size].”
Of course, if Platinum does develop and publish its own IP there is no guarantee that we would definitely see it released on a Nintendo platform, although the success of the Switch and the recent partnership between Platinum and Nintendo would suggest that it is rather likely. For anyone concerned about the development of Bayonetta 3 or other AAA releases through other publishers, you needn’t worry – Inaba goes on to say that they will continue to create these games for other publishers as they will not be “competing in the same markets.”
The thought of a studio like PlatinumGames allowing itself full flexibility to create its own title without any pressures from external publishers is very exciting indeed. What would you like to see from this potential new IP?
Even by a company of Nintendo’s enviable standards, 2017 has been an incredible year. The Switch has captured the hearts and minds of millions of gamers in a way its forerunner, the Wii U, failed to do, and as a result the hybrid system is selling almost as fast as Nintendo can manufacture it.
While Nintendo has unquestionably done incredible work in 2017, there’s still room for improvement in 2018, and here are the things we hope to see happen during the new year.
A proper online infrastructure (with all the trimmings, please)
The runaway success of the Switch has masked some of Nintendo’s critical blunders during 2017, one of the most obvious being the console’s half-finished online system. Games like FIFA 18 have been hamstrung by the fact that it’s not possible on a system level to easily matchmake with friends; instead, the game itself has to have such functionality coded into it, something EA clearly wasn’t prepared to do with its popular soccer sim. On PlayStation 4 and Xbox One all of this functionality is provided “out of the box” by the console’s paid online subscription service – an approach Nintendo is going to take itself in 2018. Alongside this system we hope that Nintendo also introduces cloud save support so that if you happen to lose or break your Switch you don’t also lose the 100+ hours you’ve sunk into Breath of the Wild. With Nintendo being Nintendo it’s likely that (initially, at least) its online service will be found lacking when compared to Sony and Microsoft’s, but it will have to get up to speed pretty quickly if it’s going to charge a similar fee to its rivals.
Continued first-party support
Nintendo clearly front-loaded the Switch’s first year on sale to ensure that buyers would have a steady stream of first-party titles to play and enjoy; in fact, you could argue that 2017 contained too many Nintendo titles, with ARMS and Pokkén Tournament perhaps getting out-muscled by games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Even so, by giving the console such robust support in its first 12 months on sale Nintendo has ensured that new buyers have a plethora of solid games to purchase, but consequently 2018’s slate is looking rather bare. Obviously E3 will give us a host of new games to anticipate, but will any of them be released in 2018? While we’re sure Nintendo has a few hidden projects to reveal it would be nothing short of a miracle if it can top 2017 in terms of in-house software volume; however, Nintendo will need at least a few big-hitters in the line-up to keep sales brisk. Hopefully in ’18 we’ll get Animal Crossing, Pokémon and Smash Bros. to keep us glued to our screens.
Better third-party support
This point is perhaps outside of Nintendo’s power, but we’d love to see more third-party titles make their way to Switch. DOOM, L.A. Noire, Skyrim and (in 2018) Wolfenstein II are leading the way, and it’s likely that we’ll see more publishers and developers flock to the console in the next few months. Many of gaming’s biggest names were cautious about Switch during 2017 (which is perhaps easy to understand, given the dire performance of the Wii U) and as a result, any projects put into production that we don’t know about won’t appear until 2018 at the earliest. Given the relative ease of porting, one would suspect that companies like Rockstar, Ubisoft and EA will see the benefit of bringing their titles (both past and present) to the console; the impeccable conversion of L.A. Noire has us convinced that we’ll be playing Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto V on Switch within the next 12 months. Whether that happens or not, Nintendo will need third-party games to plug any gaps in a first-party release schedule which has perhaps been sucked dry by an amazing 2017. That might mean using the company’s considerable reserves of cash to grease the wheels a little, with publishing agreements required to bring some of gaming’s biggest names to the system.
A vastly improved Switch eShop
Let’s be honest here, the Switch eShop is a mess. It may have been acceptable had it been on Wii U – a console which had single-digit weekly download updates – but some weeks we’re seeing a veritable flood of games on Switch, and the current eShop is woefully inadequate when it comes to managing discoverability on such a packed storefront. Unless your game is riding high in the charts, it’s often lost after a week on sale as more games arrive. The Switch eShop badly needs a spring clean to make it easier to browse and older titles need a chance to shine via proper curation.
Virtual Console on Switch (or whatever else Nintendo has in mind)
Given the sheer volume of retro goodness on Switch – including amazing Neo Geo games and classic arcade ports, as well as collections such as Namco Museum – you might wonder why we’d need a “proper” Virtual Console on the system at all. While fans of vintage gaming have been well-served by companies like Hamster and Zerodiv, we need to see some classic Nintendo releases on the hybrid console. Should this come as part of the sub-based online service – and it certainly seems like that will be the case – then our fingers are crossed that Nintendo gives us the “Netflix of gaming” by granting access to the entirety of its Virtual Console back catalogue from day one, and we don’t have to (again) endure the ignominy of getting a drip-feed of NES, SNES and Game Boy titles, like we did on Wii U and 3DS. If you knew you had access to the likes of Super Mario World, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Tetris, Mega Man 2 and EarthBound from day one, then chances are you’d sign up for that online subscription in a heartbeat and never, ever let it expire.
Apps, apps and more apps
Nintendo should be commended for making gaming the primary focus of the Switch during its first year, but even the most dedicated player will admit that it badly needs some additional app support. Streaming services such as BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Instant Video, YouTube and Netflix could turn the console into the ultimate portable companion, offering games, films, TV shows and music in a portable form – something the PS4 and Xbox One can’t do. Hulu is already available, so hopefully 2018 will give us more apps to enjoy.
Fine-tuned accessories
It still pains us that Switch didn’t launch with a proper D-Pad, but thankfully the modular nature of the Joy-Con controllers means that Nintendo has the power to rectify this oversight in the future. All it has to do is release a left-hand Joy-Con with a proper, old-school D-Pad in place of the button cluster, and all will be well. If you’re reading this Nintendo, make sure you do this to coincide with the release of Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, pretty please? This is just one example; there’s scope for other Joy-Con types which could be especially designed with certain games in mind – a turntable Joy-Con for a Beatmania revival, perhaps?
A stay of execution for 3DS
Despite Nintendo’s platitudes regarding the 3DS, it’s obvious that the aging handheld has been supplanted by the Switch, which now enjoys the lion’s share of the company’s first-party software support. However, one only has to pick up the system and browse its packed eShop to realise that it’s a remarkable console, and perhaps one of the best Nintendo has ever produced; given that Switch is still quite expensive, there’s still an opportunity for 3DS to thrive in 2018, even if the chances of more AAA games along the lines of Metroid: Samus Returns is unlikely. Perhaps Nintendo can support the system with lower-budget digital downloads or a renewed drive of Virtual Console releases? Whatever course of action it takes, the 3DS doesn’t have to be put out to pasture just yet.
More classic hardware
Given the amazing commercial success of 2016’s NES Classic Edition and 2017’s SNES Classic Edition, we’d put money on Nintendo pulling the same trick in 2018. The tricky question is which platform should it tackle? The N64 sounds like the obvious choice, but we’d personally love to see a Game Boy Classic Edition, which offers a better screen, a rechargeable battery, pre-loaded games and (let us dream, please) support for original carts.
What are you wishes for 2018 when it comes to Nintendo? Let us know with a comment.
Unless you’ve been living under a video game-deprived rock for the majority of 2017, you’ll likely be aware of Nintendo’s rather overwhelming success with the Switch. We recently saw that the console has sold 10 million units to consumers in its first nine months on sale, and news of Nintendo ramping up the Switch’s production only confirmed that there are no signs of momentum slowing down.
Projecting even more positive signs, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima recently spoke to the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper, setting a goal for the Switch to shift another 20 million units in the next financial year (ending in March 2019). For comparison, Nintendo was initially aiming for 10 million units to be sold in its first year, although this was raised to an estimate of 14 million in October as sales soared.
Jumping from a target of 14 million sales this year (which saw the console’s launch momentum and big-hitters such as Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), to another 20 million the year after, seems like a pretty hefty task. Of course, we’re still seemingly yet to see much of what the ‘big N’ has in store for us in 2018, though, and if they can combine the ever-growing momentum with another mammoth franchise hitting the console such as a new generation of Pokémon games or the like, perhaps these targets aren’t as wild as they may seem.
Needless to say, things are looking good for Nintendo’s hybrid console. Do you think these targets can be met? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Picking up numerous Game of the Year awards for 2017 (including our very own), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a huge success for many reasons. Something that particularly stood out to fans of the series, however, was the almost limitless freedom on offer that hadn’t been utilised to such an extent in previous titles.
Having access to the game’s entire, huge, map immediately – and particularly the way in which you could technically go to the final boss in a matter of minutes if you wanted to see Link get brutally defeated – were very special inclusions indeed. Talking to IGN, Breath of the Wild Producer Eiji Aonuma has talked about fans’ reception of this new approach, and how he plans to incorporate it into future games.
“You know, I can’t speak to what other people, other companies will do in their own games, but I think for me, especially just in terms of the Zelda series, the incredible freedom that this game offers you and how well that’s been received…to me, it means that freedom, that level of freedom is something that needs to be maintained in Zelda games going forward. My eyes have been opened to how important that is.”
Trying to predict what we can expect from the next game in the Zelda franchise has suddenly become rather tricky; with the usual, run-of-the-mill, linear dungeon approach seemingly being dropped in favour of large open worlds, each new entry could present an entirely different feel to it.
Would you like to see the next entry follow Breath of the Wild’s footsteps very closely, or would you prefer something that takes this idea of freedom to create something even bigger and bolder? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Kaede is fighting Yuki and weapons slash quickly as the two leap about the screen. Quick strikes from both, the action is fast as each looks to string together a series of moves to end the battle. Another day, another fight between Kaede and Yuki, but this time things are playing out differently. This time the combatants have found themselves standing their ground, trading powerful blows, each gambling that their energy bar will last longer than their opponent’s, while also keeping an eye out for the opportunity to try something different. There are many ways battles can play out in The Last Blade– even in fights featuring the same matchups – and it makes for plenty of varied and enjoyable action.
The Neo Geo has a lot of one-on-one fighting games in its back catalogue. Most were entertaining, many were very good, but The Last Blade is a step above, sitting comfortably alongside The King of Fighters ’98 and Garou: Mark Of The Wolves. Set in a Japan of centuries ago and using weapons in its fights, it has obvious similarities to the Samurai Shodown games, but here fights are quicker, more free-flowing and even when looking for an opening you’ll usually find yourself doing something to at least counter your opponent’s attack.
As is the norm, you partake in a series of best-of-three fights as you make your way to a couple of boss characters and ultimately your character’s ending. If you prefer you can dive into the options menu to change to best of five or single round fights. You can also enable a ‘Short Mode’ that as the name suggests gives you fewer battles to fight in the arcade mode if you’d like a quicker playthrough – you do not get an ending with this mode, however.
Whichever way you chose to play through, there are 12 characters for you to pick from with differing speeds, strengths and attacks. The character lineup is well-balanced, meaning these differences are just that and no-one is clearly more powerful than anyone else. The weapons also lead to variances in the fighting styles, with a number of differently sized bladed items and tools – Juzoh for instance, is swinging a baseball bat and Okina attacks with a fishing rod.
The combat system initially seems quite basic, with two strengths of weapon slashes and a button for kicking, but the moves flow together well. Soon, you’ll find you have plenty of options for attack as you mix in regular strikes with special moves, whether going for the odd hit here and there or stringing together a combo. The repel button also adds to your options as if timed correctly you can deflect your opponent’s attack, with your hit leaving them vulnerable to a counter attack.
After picking your fighter the game gives you the choice of either a power or speed fighting mode. Each offers benefits such as power being the best option when dealing with a serial blocker, whilst speed works better for combos. As was common with fighting games by this point in time (1997) there’s a power meter that builds up as you fight and once full you can unleash a devastating attack. You have to make sure to time it right, because while it can turn the tide of battle or lead to an unexpected victory, you’ll just look foolish if you opponent manages to avoid it.
As impressive as Neo Geo fighters are, there often comes a point in the reviews of these ACA releases where talk turns to the bigger, better sequel that’s either already available or expected to turn up on the eShop. While The Last Blade 2 will no doubt get the ACA treatment at some point, which is the better of the two games is not as clear cut as with other series. Playing largely the same, the sequel makes some changes including featuring more fighters (but fewer backdrops) than the first game and it adds a third fighting mode that sits somewhere between the two existing ones. This EX mode suits some characters better than others and the game is generally less balanced than this first instalment. That uneven playing field will be off-putting to some players, despite the extra characters and the slight edge it has in terms of audio-visual presentation.
Brief scene-setting animations appear before fights and the stages you fight on are varied and detailed. There’s lots to look at on some stages such as background spectators or the way birds will fly down and then hop along the ground. In other instance there are simple, but effective touches such as a mist, falling leaves or the way one stage has the fight in shallow water; ripples moving out from the feet of the combatants. The audio is also impressive with yells and impact noises from the fighters immersing you in the action. There’s a mix of mystery and sombre music between fights and on some stages, but other times the music makes way for background effects such as wind or a chattering crowd. At times it feels like something is missing, but generally it works well and adds to the atmosphere.
HAMSTER’s usual Hi Score (one credit) and Caravan (five minutes) modes are present, giving you a different way to play as you try to improve your point-scoring to move up the online leaderboards. The modes don’t suit a fighting game as well they do other genres however, so the main replay value comes from simply fighting through the arcade mode again or with two-player battles.
There’s replay value in playing through to get each character ending, but the way fights can vary also helps due to the unpredictable nature. Will you be combo-ing your way to victory or leaping about striking when you can? Your approach can even change during a fight should a missed attack from one player lead to a new opportunity. There’s a lot of depth to the game, but it’s fairly welcoming to newcomers should you bump the difficulty down (the usual eight settings available) whilst you get used to it. Likewise bumping the difficulty up will provide a tough challenge, requiring quick thinking and mastery of your various fighting abilities.
Special attacks do not require overly complicated inputs and the game gives you some leeway with the input timings. Even the powerful desperation moves are fairly straightforward; one input that crops up a lot being a quarter circle back, start to go the other way, hit forward and both attack buttons. Straightforward controls mean that in a push, the game works okay with detached Joy-Con should you be out and about and feel like an impromptu two-player game. Mistakes can happen however, so ideally you’ll play on the big screen with your special moves, combos and deflections all happening as intended.
Conclusion
Easy to pick up and play, The Last Blade may at first seem a simple fighting game but you’ll soon discover a good range of fighting options as you employ a mix of defensive and offensive tactics to see you through. Fights among the well-balanced cast of characters are hugely entertaining whether putting together a series of moves, interrupting an attack with a well timed deflection or simply stopping your opponent’s assault with a kick to the face. Its excellent sequel will make an appearance on Switch in the future and should you only wish to have one Last Blade game, you’ll need to decide if you prefer some extra characters and the EX mode to the balanced fighter lineup in this first game. Ideally, they’d be bundled together, but even on its own The Last Blade is one of the best picks for Switch-owning fighting fans.
Looks like Retro-Bit is once again targeting retro gamer’s wallets in early 2018 with a couple of exclusive physical re-releases.
R-Typepe Returns will bring both excellent entries of the series exclusive to the Super Nintendo (Super R-Type and R-Type III: The Third Lightning) in a single multicart. This limited edition includes box, instruction manual, stickers, lithographs, a pin and a certificate of authenticity. The first run which is limited to one thousand units is currently letting costumers choose the desired cartridge colour.
NES fans need not feel left out because Retro-Bit is giving a similar treatment to another Irem retro game a new chance at the spotlight: the rather impressive Castlevania-like Holy Diver. The same exclusive thousand run physical treatment will be given to this challenging platformer, along with all the same extras you will get with the previous R-Type bundle.
Price points have not yet been disclosed or a solid release date other than “2018”. Yet considering the amount of money currently a complete-in-the-box copy of R-Type III will set any SNES collector these are certainly enticing. You will be able to pick these two from Castlemania Games while Switch owners will look forward to further Irem games showing up on the system courtesy of Hamster’s Arcade Archives.
If you spend much time playing games, watching anime, or reading manga, Japanese is certainly an appealing second language option, and if you want to try your hand at learning, Hiragana Pixel Party — originally a mobile title — aims to kickstart that process. While it won’t help you with words or phrases, it will teach you how to read two of Japanese’s several scripts, and in that regard it’s a real success. Combining fun, simple rhythm gameplay with catchy chiptunes and character-learning, Hiragana Pixel Party is both a great way to get started reading Japanese and an enjoyable game in its own right.
First up: a bit of background. Japanese is written primarily using three systems: hiragana (ひらがな), katakana (カタカナ), and kanji (漢字), all of which are ultimately derived from Chinese characters. ‘Nintendo’, for instance, could be written in hiragana as にんてんどう, in katakana as ニンテンドー, and in kanji as 任天堂. While kanji are logographic characters — meaning you generally need to already be familiar with a certain kanji to know how it’s pronounced — hiragana and katakana are syllabaries, which means you can read them phonetically, much like an alphabet.
Just as in an alphabet, each symbol in hiragana or katakana represents a certain sound. But instead of a single consonant or vowel, each hiragana or katakana symbol represents a particular mora, a linguistic unit similar to a syllable. The Japanese word for cat, ‘neko’, for example, is written in hiragana as ねこ (ね ‘ne’ + こ ‘ko’). The same word in katakana is written as ネコ (ネ ‘ne’ + コ ‘ko’). Hiragana and katakana each consist of around 45 symbols, and while that sounds like a high number if you’re used to a 20-odd-character alphabet, since you don’t have to worry about combinations and irregularities (think of the ‘gh’ in English ‘cough’ vs. ‘gherkin’!) they’re actually much easier to learn quickly — and that’s exactly what Hiragana Pixel Party sets out to help you do.
Hiragana Pixel Party is a rhythm-based runner that uses these Japanese symbols as button-prompts over several hundred individual levels (or lessons) split over two distinct paths: hiragana and katakana. You can choose either syllabary to start with, and bounce back and forth between the two, but the gameplay remains the same in both: in each discrete, thirty-second-or-so stage, you’ll control a girl who runs steadily to the right in-time to chiptune soundtrack, and need to press the correct face button (or touchscreen version of the same) to jump over boxes as they come up on the beat. The kicker is in how you’ll know which face button to use, and that comes down to repeating a pattern of either hiragana or katakana.
These patterns are delivered PaRappa-style; you’ll first see the girl run through a riff for one bar of music, and then have to copy it yourself in the next measure. The cues can be either visual, audio, or a combination of the two, and can involve up to four symbols, each of which are mapped to a face button in an on-screen diagram. You might see and hear a pattern of ‘ne ne ko ko’, for example, and noting that ‘ne’ is assigned to the ‘B’ button and ‘ko’ to the ‘A’ button, tap out ‘B B A A’ when your turn comes around.
The rhythm side of the gameplay is fun and forgiving, with relatively lenient timing on both sides of the beat, which lets Pixel Party focus on its main goal of teaching you how to read. Each level concentrates on a few characters at a time, and the game introduces new ones carefully and slowly. The first time you see a symbol, it will usually be the only one in that verse: you’ll hear ’ko’, see ’こ’, and learn to associate the two by repeated on-beat button presses. In later verses or levels, these cues are switched up: you might see ‘ko’ (written in the Roman alphabet) and have to pick out ‘こ’ from among a few other familiar hiragana symbols, hear ‘ko’ without any visual and have to do the same, or see ‘こ’ with no associated sound and have to press the button marked with ‘ko’, as opposed to ‘ka’ or ‘ke’.
By varying your cues between these several different mission types, Pixel Party does an excellent job scaffolding your learning, ensuring you get plenty of repetition and practice at matching sound and symbol in different ways. It also smartly peppers in characters you’ve yet to learn as red herring choices, ensuring you’ll have at least a passing familiarity with new symbols even before you’ve learned their sounds.
The game’s structure of short, focused levels also fits in very well with its educational aspirations; working through a few a day is a great way to get the continuous practise that really helps with language learning, and each stage is quick enough that knocking out two or three is easy on even the briefest of morning commutes. Our only real complaint with this pacing is that it feels restrictively linear; you’ll unlock new levels in groups of three at a time, by scoring well in the prior group of three, so it’s a bit of a slow grind working your way through the lot. Again, the approach works well for language learning, but we would have appreciated more flexibility in choosing what to tackle when.
Similarly, Pixel Party’s overall structure sees it working its way down the hiragana or katakana chart in a relatively linear fashion by consonant group, and while that certainly works, we would have loved to see levels based around themed groupings as well. Who wouldn’t want to challenge a lightning round with the four horsemen of the katakana apocalypse, ツ (‘tsu’), シ (‘shi’), ソ (‘so’), and ン (’n’)?
Still, these are minor quibbles, and Hiragana Pixel Party is absolutely an effective learning tool. Stick with it, and you’ll learn how to read hiragana, katakana, or both. Just as important, however, is that it’s also genuinely fun to play. The rhythm base is simple but addictive fun, and it’s gamified in a way that’s enjoyable even if you already happen to know hiragana: the specific face-button mapping changes not just in each level but also with each verse, so being able to register the cues in time while also reaching for the right buttons can be a satisfying challenge in and of itself.
The soundtrack helps elevates all that button pressing to joyous musical purpose, too; it’s Anamanaguchi-style chiptune synths accompanied by noise channel percussion and acoustic guitar, flitting comfortably between rousing footstompers and calmer, more introspective tunes. And while there’s not a unique track for each level — at almost 400 it would be quite a feat! — there’s enough musical variety that we only ever noticed repetition in extended play sessions.
This is also a surprisingly good-looking little pixel party; it uses a simple, retro-inspired graphical style, but adds in a generous helping of colour and dramatic lighting effects to create an appealingly oversaturated aesthetic. The backgrounds are also thematically intriguing and diverse, jumping from giant robots and abandoned urbanity to green grass, butterflies, and titanic turtles acting as walking biospheres.
Hiragana Pixel Party is a great time, and a great way to learn to read hiragana or katakana; if you’re planning on learning Japanese, it makes for a perfect head-start. It won’t teach you any of the actual language, but you’ll be able to hit the ground running in hiragana the moment you crack open your textbook or attend your first class, rather than having to spend the first few lessons struggling with the symbols.
We’d argue, however, that there’s real merit to learning these syllabaries even if you aren’t actually planning on learning Japanese. If you’re an import gamer, for instance — or if you aspire to be one — learning hiragana and katakana will change your life. Especially in retro titles, so much of Japanese game menus is made up of either direct loans from English (i.e. ロード/セーブ ’rōdo/sēbu’ — ‘load/save’) or a relatively stable set of terms (like ふたり ‘futari’ — ‘two-player’), and being able to sound out these words will make a treasure trove of incredible games instantly more accessible. Likewise, if you’re planning a visit to Japan, learning at least katakana (the syllabary used for most foreign loanwords) will open up a world of sign-reading; you’d be amazed how much is interpretable with English fluency and basic katakana literacy.
