It is quite amazing to see the number of Super Famicom exclusives that not only would have probably done well in the West if released during the console’s peak years, but also still mix it up with current generation offerings. For your consideration, Sutte Hakkun (gesundheit) by Nintendo and the very talented folks of Retro Game Challenge and NES Remix fame: a platforming puzzle game starring the titular Hakkun who has to collect rainbow shards on every level using his unique ink and block absorbing powers. It sounds simple and it gently eases you into the lovely gameplay mechanics with the first few levels; before you know it the game becomes the ultimate hardcore puzzle solving experience.
The first iterations of the game were released from 1997 onwards exclusively on the BS-X Sattelaview broadcast service, with each one offering up new puzzle content. At a later date it became a Nintendo Power cartridge download and finally it got its own standalone cartridge release in 1999, much like Wrecking Crew ’98.
As you might have concluded, it is this cartridge release that is sought out by dedicated Super Famicom collectors; as such a complete in-the-box copy can set you back quite a lot of coin, with loose cartridges fetching more reasonable prices. But now thanks to ‘Raccoon Sam’ there is new incentive to grab this criminally underrated puzzle game: a complete English translation patch has been released, making the game even more import friendly.The most important bit of translation is the extensive tutorials included in the cartridge version that will allow the player to pick up some rather necessary advanced techniques for Hakkun. You can sample English gameplay in the following video.
The patch will work with your original Super Famicom cartridge on your RetroN 5 or Retro Freak clone consoles. Despite getting a Japanese re-release on the Wii Virtual Console, Sutte Hakkun still remains in relative obscurity, so perhaps this new fan effort will bring a much deserved spotlight to this unique and unlikely hero.
For anyone that’s been following the game closely, it’s no surprise to say that DOOM has some compromises in order to tick along on Nintendo’s diminutive system. The fact it’s there is impressive in its own right, but squeezing a current-gen game (originally released to critical acclaim in 2016) is no small feat.
Well, our chums at Digital Foundry have done their thing and provided a final analysis on the Switch version. It goes into resolution and framerate, and one core conclusion is that it’s an impressive game on the portable, but not when playing docked on a TV.
Check it out below.
If you’ve picked up DOOM on the Nintendo Switch this week let us know what you think of it in the comments.
Few systems have been blessed with the sheer number of RPGs of Nintendo’s plucky little 3DS, and perhaps no publisher has been as persistent in its contribution to that collection as KEMCO. It’s brought more than a dozen titles — most of them mobile ports — to the 3DS’ eShop, alongside a smaller number to the Wii U, and now that legacy continues on the Switch with Revenant Saga. An old-school throwback that borrows from both the 16- and 32-bit eras of JRPGs, Revenant Saga offers a functional but ultimately unimpressive take on the genre, and is hard to recommend as a result.
When Revenant Saga’s curtain rises, our hero Albert is in a bit of a bad place. Demonic beings known as ‘Revenants’ have been terrorising humanity, and a deadly plague is sweeping through the kingdom like wildfire. Albert’s best friend and her parents become afflicted by the disease, and in an attempt to save them he makes a deal with an unscrupulous surgeon to try and scare up a cure. As you might imagine, this doesn’t exactly go as planned — the experiment ends up implanting a Revenant into Albert’s body, and while he makes it out alive, his friend isn’t so lucky. Now sharing his body with a demon and hell-bent on revenge, he sets off to uncover the truth behind the Revenants, picking up a party of scrappy comrades along the way.
After that initial ramp up, Revenant Saga’s story is fairly predictable, and it’s unfortunately not very well told. The writing is strictly serviceable and the translation seems to have a stake in reviving long-lost English idioms — combined, it gives the sense of a script that never knows what tone to take. Characters feel flat and generic, and are also surprisingly verbose — the lengthy, frequent, and slow-moving dialogue sequences drag on well past their welcome.
Of course, JRPGs can certainly rise above their stories, and Revenant Saga hinges its hopes on a classic gameplay template: you’ll move your party across an overhead, Dragon Quest-style world map, heading from town to town in your quest for revenge, fighting random battles in dungeons and the overworld as you go. If you’ve played any other KEMCO RPGs (or really, any RPG) you’ll know what to expect here, and the basic hooks of the genre — levelling up, following NPC clues, sidequests and equipment upgrades — are all present and accounted for.
Revenant Saga does add a neat wrinkle to the proceedings by calling back to not one but two golden eras of JRPGs, juxtaposing its 16-bit-inspired overworld with 32-bit battles. As you walk the world map, explore towns and dungeons, and interact with NPCs, everything’s overhead and sprite-based, with SNES-style sprites and tiled backgrounds. When you enter a random encounter, however, the transition to battle triggers a perspective shift to 3D, with your heroes and enemies alike rendered in the chunky polygons of the PSOne days. It’s a cool effect, and helps give Revenant Saga a distinctive visual identity.
The combat itself is turn-based and straightforward — perhaps a bit too straightforward for its own good. You can choose to attack, defend, use items, or cast skills which consume SP, and while it’s certainly functional — it’s the standard setup for a reason — there’s a distinct lack of the nuance that more memorable examples of the genre offer with similar systems. Big damage from attacks and offensive spells is pretty much always the way to go, and enemy AI and attack patterns don’t offer any clever tricks to offset that issue. The result is that battles feel largely ceremonial, and in fact they can be; auto-battle can carry you through the majority of encounters with little trouble.
There is one standout feature of combat, however, which injects a bit of personality into the system: Transformations. Each party member can choose to ‘Transform’ during battle, which changes their appearance — Sailor Moon or Super Saiyan style — and sends them into an altered state, where they’ll deal more damage, receive less in return, and have access to special, more powerful skills. The catch is that they’ll be unable to heal (or be revived) while they’re going wild, so you’ll need to keep an eye on HP, and spend a turn ‘untransforming’ if anyone needs a top up. It’s a great concept, but in execution it feels under-baked. The ability to cancel the transformation whenever you like effectively kills much of the risk-reward dynamic, for one, and while we enjoyed using transformations for the visual variety and fun of it, they never really felt necessary; most normal battles could be won just as easily — not to mention quicker and with less SP spent — without transforming at all.
Unfortunately, that sentiment sums up Revenant Saga as a whole: there are some nice ideas here, but they’re let down in the details, and especially in the presentation. The graphics have bright spots, for instance — large, crisp character portraits, cute sprites, and weather effects on the world map — but the 2D backgrounds are heavily tiled and achingly bland. The 3D battles have the opposite problem, with interesting, varied backdrops but stiff character models and animations that could generously be described as ‘sparse’; most attack animations boil down to a party member moving towards, through, and then away from an enemy as if on wheels. The soundtrack is similarly uneven; the rocking overworld theme is an excellent, electric guitar-fronted call to arms, but much of the music you’ll hear elsewhere is generic fantasy fare, noticeably compressed and very MIDI.
There are also some significant issues with the interface and controls. The most noticeable of these is the movement, which feels oddly out of sync. Albert tears across towns, dungeons and the overworld at a way-too-quick clip, and the controls can’t quite keep up, making for an unwieldy journey. Text delivery, meanwhile, sits on the opposite side of the speedometer, and there aren’t any text speed options — it’s either agonizingly slow, typewritering out letters one-by-one, or fast-forwarded by holding down the ‘X’ button, and then much too fast to read. Finally, there’s a chat log feature, which lets you look back at any dialogue or narration, and while we found this quite handy — using it to fast-forward through the slow-paced cutscenes and then read them at our own pace after — it’s mapped to the same button (‘L’) as ‘Party Heal’, which means you can only access it if you’re already talking to another NPC. To be fair, that wouldn’t normally be much of an issue, but the ticker-tape speed of text delivery meant we found ourselves using the log more often than we otherwise might, and so this limitation stuck out.
To give credit where it’s due, however, we absolutely have to call out a very welcome feature in Revenant Saga: single-hand control options. A toggle in the menu lets you use a single Joy-Con held vertically to control the whole game, by mirror-mapping the face buttons to the left Joy-Con’s D-pad, and enabling the right Joy-Con’s analogue stick for movement. Being able to control the whole game one-handed is peripheral bliss, and a perfect fit for kicking back with an RPG — a fact borne out by the brief golden era one-handed controllers meant just for JRPGs enjoyed in the PSOne days. It’s also a significant boon for accessibility, and that’s well worth celebrating; we’d love to see one-handed Joy-Con control in more Switch RPGs going forward.
Conclusion
Revenant Saga sets out to offer a simple, throwback JRPG on Switch, and while it certainly ticks those boxes it doesn’t actually end up being very fun to play. An unremarkable story, uneven presentation and interface issues hold this already unambitious effort back, and while it brings some excellent ideas to the table — like battle Transformations and single-handed control — they’re not enough to recommend the experience. If you’re starved for an old-school RPG on the Switch, I Am Setsuna is still your best bet at the moment — otherwise, the 3DS’ treasure trove of turn-based adventures awaits.
The season of giving is almost upon us, and it seems the Nintendo UK Official Store is getting into the spirit. It’s launched a winner-takes-all competition with a lot of goodies in the prize, and it’s free to enter for UK residents up to 27th November.
As long as you’re a UK resident (13 years old and over, guardian consent needed if you’re under 18) all you need to do to enter is put in your email address; you don’t need to register on the store or buy anything. Head to this page if you want to try your luck – the winner gets everything in the image below.
10tons has been extremely busy bringing its back catalogue to the Nintendo Switch, and has confirmed another title that’s due to arrive soon – Xenoraid.
It’ll arrive on 17th November priced at $9.99USD (with regional variations), and aims to offer its own twists on the vertical shoot ’em up genre. Details and an old trailer are below.
Xenoraid is a vertically scrolling shoot’em with gameplay accessible to all action game fans regardless of prior shmup genre experience. The missions are driven procedurally, so there are no memorization requirements. Real time fighter switching and metagame featuring squadron management give the game strategic aspects, while three survival levels with online leaderboards provide replay value.
Features:
– Experience dynamic shoot’em up action with no level memorization – Switch between four fighters in the heat of combat – Manage your squadron with weapon and tech upgrades – Master advanced shooting mechanics like fighter tilting and weapon heat – Fight through a Campaign mode with more than 40 missions and four boss fights – Compete in three endless Survival stages with online leaderboards
One of the biggest criticisms early on with the Nintendo Switch was also admittedly one of the console’s greatest strengths: it just plays games. For some, this laser focus on being a gaming platform was a breath of fresh air; it does exactly what it says it will, and it does so exceedingly well. For others, the omission of some relatively simple things, like a browser or other entertainment apps, was seen as a drawback. Either way, Nintendo said streaming apps would eventually show up for the platform, and now the first Western one has shown up with Hulu, a North American service – the Japanese store got a NicoNico app earlier in the year.
It adapts the updated UI of the mobile Hulu app (as opposed to the outdated look of the website version), with plenty of frosted glass and a broad spectrum of colours that cycle as you move through menus. Shows are laid out according to what you’ve been watching or are in the process of watching, and recommendations are made based on the things you’ve shown interest in. If you want to search for something specific, a tap of the X button will take you straight to the search tab. All in all it’s clean, it’s quick, and it’s easy to navigate, all making for a great first impression.
Switching between the TV screen and the Switch is a simple and painless process, adding greatly to the versatility of the app. Whether you’re dropping it in or out of the dock, the video will continue with no notable hiccups unless you pause it. So, if you’re in the middle of watching a show and want some snacks from the kitchen (and simply can’t be bothered to pause the show for two seconds), you can take it with you for that long walk, prop it up on the kickstand as you assemble that massive plate of nachos, and resume watching on the TV in a seamless go. Shows look great on either screen although it is generally more preferable to watch on a TV, not just because there’s more real estate, but the text in menus is a little smaller than comfortable on the Switch screen. Not enough to be much of a hindrance, but enough that it doesn’t feel quite like it’s the right size.
Aside from that, one (minor) gripe is the complete lack of touchscreen functionality with the interface. You can only navigate using the buttons and sticks as of now, and it feels like a bit of a lazy move. Sure, the UI doesn’t have the chunky design that’s finger-friendly, but it feels rather strange tapping on a show icon and having no response as a result. Hopefully this will be rectified in a future update; it’s not a big problem by any stretch, but it would add a welcome extra bit of convenience to navigation. Maybe the company was rushing a bit to be the first streaming service on the platform.
All told, this is a perfectly functional and satisfying way to watch your favourite shows on Hulu (newcomers can have a free trial, but it’s a paid service). Being able to switch between the portable screen and the TV is a nice touch, and the ease of use in either configuration is welcome. Though the portable mode suffers from tiny font sizes and a lack of touchscreen use, this is a great first pass at the app and it bodes well for the future of streaming services on the platform.
As has been the case for a short while now, the three major territories (PAL, North American and Japan) are all going their own way when it comes to Splatoon 2 Splatfests. Now we have the details for next week’s Splatfest in North America, which would sure make for a fun real-life event at a convention.
It’s Sci-Fi Vs. Fantasy, which seems like a rather neat showdown to us.
As you can see in the tweet it kicks off at 9pm Pacific (which is midnight Eastern) on 17th November.
Frozenbyte will be a familiar name to some download enthusiasts, with Trine 2: Director’s Cut being a particularly impressive launch title on the Wii U eShop, for example. The studio is currently finishing off the rather promising Nine Parchments for Switch, but also brought us Has-Been Heroeson the system during the Spring; that title has now had a meaty, and free, update.
A blog post explains that a part of the team worked on the add-on when between projects, and it became bigger than originally anticipated. The fact that it’s a free update is a thank you to fans that bought the game; a trailer and further details are below.
* 8 Young Heroes to unlock * New “Sky Temple” region * 120+ new spells * 150+ new items
For players looking for another challenge, the expansion also brings two new game modes: “Challenge Mode” and “Seed Mode”. Challenge mode is a single difficult battle with pre-set loadout of characters, items, and spells. By completing a Challenge players unlock a new Young Hero. Seed mode allows players to share a seed number with friends and play the exact same game/run with a timer upon completion. Use this to host a competition between you and your friends and compare strategy.
It’s a rather nice gesture from Frozenbyte, and this extra content could certainly give those with the game quite a bit of free entertainment.
It should be available now, so if you own the game get that update and check it out.
Now we’ve all had time to play around with Super Mario Odyssey‘s moveset, we thought it was about time we gathered some of the ludicrous things you lovely people have been doing with it. Using the hashtag #MarioMegaJump on Twitter we’ve been inundated by you all with exceptional feats of Mario marvellousness, and it’s all been distilled into the audio-visual format most fitting of it.
Make sure you give the video above a watch, as it’s really not something that comes across well as a written essay. Trust us.
And remember, you can still get involved by sharing your crazy stunts on Twitter using the hashtag #MarioMegaJump! Who knows, you may end up in a similar video in the near future.
While some major third-party publishers have backed Switch enthusiastically from the beginning, others have been rather more reserved. Capcom has certainly been cautious early on, offering some support with ports and tweaked older games while waiting for indications of early sales.
With the Switch having enjoyed a positive debut year so far, it seems Capcom is looking to produce more titles to cash in on that popularity. Speaking to Japanese publication Jiji, a company executive outlined plans to bring more titles to the Switch after April 2018. The only specific franchise mentioned was Ace Attorney.
There’s certainly plenty of scope for easy wins with the series. In addition to the various 3DS entries and remasters the IP has had multiple HD versions on smart devices. Of course, the Switch could potentially be on the cards for any completely new entries, too. Beyond Ace Attorney there are various ports that could be quick projects for Capcom (we already have Resident Evil Revelations and its sequel around the corner), though many will naturally hope for new games.
What Capcom titles would you like to see on Switch?
