Category: Nintendo News

Games have, over their history, often sought to become interactive movies or cartoons. There is the general decades-long race towards realism in Triple-A games running on higher and higher-specced hardware, the labour-intensive, hand-drawn aesthetic of many indie games like Cuphead or Hoa and, of course, that art form traditionally maligned but subject of a recent renaissance: full-motion video.

The challenge has always been that the more a game resembles a movie or cartoon, the less it resembles a game. The more cutscenes, the less interaction; the more bespoke animation, the less resource available to expand the game. Madrid-based indie developer Gammera Nest’s The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo has decided which way that particular cookie is going to crumble: it takes a hit to its point-and-click-adventure gameplay, but makes almost no compromise on presenting a superbly animated and fantastically surreal cartoon.

The story of Mr. Coo is not the easiest to explain, since the minute-to-minute events are so absurd. But the overarching thread of it is that Mr. Coo wants an apple; Mr. Coo acquires and eventually eats an apple; Mr. Coo is sliced into pieces by a monster; Mr. Coo must recover and reunite his assorted parts. The scenes in which this all plays out are impressive in how bespoke they are to the scenario at hand. There are no overlaid inventory items that pop out from the scenery, no tile-based movement over which animations can be repeated, and no conformation of the playing areas to the size and shape of the screen. It seems like absolutely everything is hand-drawn specifically for each click of the cursor.

And the things that are drawn are wonderfully bizarre: a giant kung-fu chick, an eyeball on a leg wearing a dress, an arcade machine hosting a Punch and Judy show run by a cat following signals from a backstage lightbulb… we could go on, but we won’t in case we go mad. Meanwhile, the abstract jazz soundtrack couldn’t be more right for the action on screen.

The stand-out gimmick of the animation on display is the way objects regularly transmogrify from one thing to another. An umbrella magically – in front of your eyes, hand-drawn frame by hand-drawn frame – becomes a flower. In the same way, a house is suddenly a pig’s head wearing a top hat, or one eyeball is suddenly two. Perhaps the most captivating example of this is the loading animation. Usually, the mention of a loading screen in a review is not a good thing, but here, although their timing can sometimes be intrusive, we almost wanted more.

With so much creative work poured into every moment, the game can only be so long – it took us about 90 minutes, including crashing three times. With such priority given to scripted animation, the interaction can only go so far. Finally, with so surreal an atmosphere, puzzles struggle to adhere to any sort of logic. But it really does look lovely.

The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo is a standout title in its commitment to presenting spectacular, surrealist animation. However, it does so at the expense of having much gameplay to offer. The playtime is short, the interaction is limited, and the puzzles are obtuse. Fortunately, the animation and music are good enough to distract you from those facts and provide an hour or two of great entertainment.

Have you ever seen an original Contra up close? What about an original Mario Kart?

For Stephan Reese, organizer and showrunner for the non-profit Interactive Art Collection (and a Senior Producer at video game developer Bungie when he’s not busy doing that), it’s his life’s mission that you might have the pleasure of seeing pop-culture history outside of the confines of your TV screens and old magazines.

His team’s latest exhibit is the aptly titled “The Art of Nintendo Power,” a traveling art show that most recently exhibited at PAX West 2023 in Seattle. For four days, attendees could walk a room and bask in original Nintendo Power prints, line art, posters, 3D models, and much more. The exhibit features all original art with zero replications, stemming from the earliest points in the history of the 1980s print magazine, which was originally crafted and written for kids, as well as for all of us kid-like adults who now fondly remember its technicolor, off-the-wall pages.

Nintendo Life caught up with Reese at this year’s PAX and asked him to highlight choice pieces from the non-profit’s collection, hoping to gain a little insight into one of the most quintessential eras in retro media…

Stephan Reese: This is a number of panels by an artist named Kev Brockschmidt who’s most notably known for his Magic: The Gathering cards.

A lot of artists who had worked for Nintendo Power were also moonlighting doing other things, either working for the magazine and moonlighting or just contract artists who were also doing many other things. This is actually one of my favorite images of Kirby, this little chubby-cheeks Kirby in the upper right-hand corner of that first frame…I used him for my profile picture for a long time.

Kevin is just an absolutely amazing artist, and they used him for a lot of internal pages for first-party. This is an amazing example of his work.

Alan Lopez for Nintendo Life: Do you have any knowledge if this informed the eventual style guide for Kirby?

It was definitely an earlier depiction. But for Nintendo Power magazine, oftentimes, especially for first-party [games], this was the first time a lot of this had been drawn by hand. I think they did what they could…and he is already pink in these, which I think is interesting. [Editor’s note: Kirby was originally colored white on the cover of his debut game, Kirby’s Dream Land.]

This piece is an example of what is often referred to as ‘blue line.’ These would have been preliminary sketches for the eventual poster. This is Bill Morrison’s work, despite the fact that it says ‘Matt Groening’ on the finished product. That was common with Simpsons stuff; Matt would put his name on anything Simpsons, but almost all of the commercial work for The Simpsons, be it t-shirts, board games, advertisements, almost all of it was Bill Morrison’s work. These were purchased directly from Bill.

That method [of obtaining pieces] is common for us. Almost nothing [in the exhibit] was bought through auctions. Almost all of it is working directly with the artist’s estate, or sometimes, very seldomly, private collectors. I just knew, already, offhand, that Bill Morrison draws almost everything product-related for The Simpsons, so I just went to Bill Morrison and showed him this piece and asked him if he had it, and he had the blue lines.

Does this stuff get shared very frequently, stuff from The Simpsons?

No.

How does that make you feel?

I mean, it’s great! The whole mission is to share the work. This show in particular has been very validating for us. It’s very clear that people care about the work.

So this is a piece by Lee MacLeod. Actually, The Lost Vikings, the Demon’s Crest, and the Super C pieces here are all Lee MacLeod.

Super C in particular is a paint-over of a photograph. So underneath the paint is a photo of those two gentlemen holding guns and then he painted in, of course, the rest of the mountains, and the helicopter. So yes, it’s a paint-over of a photograph.

In fact, the painting is so exact, that I was able to find one of the actor’s Facebook profiles just by doing a Google image search with the painting.

These were the pencils that were used for the stencil for the final. The way that airbrush art works — and most of these covers are acrylic airbrush — it starts as a pencil sketch like this, and then it’s used to make a stencil out of a material called frisket tape. And then at that point, it’s basically paint-by-numbers. You peel off a piece of tape, you paint it, you put it back down, you peel off a piece of tape, you paint it, you put it back down…

And so that’s why these pencils, unlike the Itchy and Scratchy piece, you can clearly tell the difference between the sketch, and the final. They look different. [But] these pencils on the Star Fox are identical line for line to the finished painting because these lines were used to make the stencil for the final work.

Who made this?

David Harto. Almost all the covers came from U.S. artists. The covers and the posters are almost exclusively U.S. artists.

Do you have any insight on the back-and-forth between the Japanese creators and Nintendo Power?

Early on it was Gail Tilden and Howard Phillips flying to Japan once a month to work on the magazine with the Japanese team, both were members of a publishing company called Tokuma Shoten and Work House Japan. And then, over the years, they established Work House U.S. as a U.S. company, so it became kind of a hybrid.

There were almost always Japanese artists working on the magazine to some extent, but it did become more of a hybrid situation.

This is also another David Harto, [and] he also did the Darkwing Duck right next to it.

Between the two pieces you can sort of see the entire [creation] process, where Dave would have done the ink lines, printed those on a piece of acetate, and used airbrush to do the colors underneath.

These lines on Mario Kart are much thicker, yeah.

So the Mario Kart, that’s the lines that would be printed on the acetate. On the Darkwing, you can see where he’s printed those lines on a piece of plastic and then painted in the background.

Nintendo Power envelopes and letters

How did you obtain these envelopes?

These are all children’s envelopes that they would have drawn on and mailed in.

These came from an ex-Nintendo employee who had taken them off the wall in the call center. The original Redmond building was bulldozed in 2010, and when they were gonna bulldoze that, this employee came in and just took some art off the wall, and then years later connected with me.

We have about 125 pieces of envelope art, altogether. They’re very expensive to frame in a frame like that [laughs]. So it takes some time. But we’re really happy to have what we have. It’s just tough. It’s great that we saved so many, but at the same time, there’s tens, and tens, and tens of thousands that we didn’t save.

Did you ever submit any?

I did not! No. I didn’t write Nintendo at all. I called the Nintendo gameplay counselors once, for Mega Man 2.

This is the work of Dan McGowan. He was an incredible artist. Basically, most of the covers [at the exhibit] were either painted by Dan McGowan or David Harto. But Dan is no longer with us, he passed away about a decade ago from cancer. But we worked with his estate to be able to save a number of his paintings.

What I love about this piece in particular is that it really shows really bold talent on behalf of Dan in that, it’s painted to scale, or very close to scale. If you notice, a lot of these paintings are painted much larger than the covers, and that is, honestly, to be able to easily fix mistakes in the event that there are mistakes. And so when I see a painting that’s painted basically the size of the cover, it really shows bold talent.

It looks indistinguishable from a typical Disney depiction of Mickey.

Yeah, I worked for Disney Interactive for years, and before I had any of these Disney covers I thought, ‘I should be able to find these!’ And so I looked for them, and it turns out none of them were painted by official Disney artists. Dan McGowan also painted the [Road Runner] cover [in the exhibit], and he was not a Warner Bros. artist either. Nintendo just got really talented contract artists.

Nintendo Power “Top” lists

All of this work is painted by an artist named Orange Nakamura. This is some of the Japanese origin art in the room. He painted under a pseudonym, so we don’t know who he is. “Orange” is definitely not his first name. [laughs]

So this iconic Nintendo Power art style…is anonymous?

Well, he wasn’t [fully] anonymous at the time. If you look at Japanese credits in the magazine, most of them did paint under pseudonyms, not using their real names.

Why?

Just a cultural thing. There may be a little bit of the fact that they were artists working for Tokuma Shoten, a very established manga company. So, you would have people like Shotaro Ishinomori who created Super Sentai, [he] was the artist who drew The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past comic for Nintendo Power. Katsuya Terada was another one, an absolutely prolific artist who was ‘slumming it’ in Nintendo Power. There may have been a little been of that, I’m not sure. But mostly it was a cultural thing. A lot of Japanese artists just painted under pseudonyms.

What is your opinion on their art direction?

I love that, I mean, not that there wasn’t art direction, there absolutely was…but it was so varied from page to page. It made the publication feel like it was something that me and my friends could have made. I think that added to the charm of the magazine on the whole. And I love how Orange Nakamura’s work in particular really kind of bound all of the issues together, made it feel like a more coherent product.

It reminds me very much of EarthBound in that it was a Japanese artist’s interpreting American culture, and so these were the most American kids ever. It’s really incredible work, and we’re so lucky to have them because Japanese art is just so difficult to source.

Howard and Nester

The Howard and Nester work that we have is by Shuji Imai, who was the first Howard and Nester artist. And he was of Japanese origin. Shuji at the time did not read or speak any English, which was interesting because he lettered the English directly onto the pages, which you don’t necessarily see with comic art, especially of that age. Usually, the lettering is done separately, but he lettered the page directly. He basically interpreted those letters artistically…he was drawing them instead of writing them, if that makes sense? It’s an interesting distinction.

There have been about four or five artists who drew Howard and Nester, depending on who you ask, but he was the very first.

I feel like a lot of people might not even know this was real.

I think most of this work, you know, nobody really stopped to think about someone having to create any of it. It’s similar to how, as kids, we didn’t really think about there being a voice actor behind characters that we loved. We just didn’t stop to think that somebody had to create a thing.

I decided I wasn’t gonna try to restore him. I think it would have made it less ‘the thing.’

Most of these, with the exception of the cover for Nintendo Power #1, most of these are made out of polymer clay. It’s bakable clay that then hardens, so that’s why they’re in reasonably good shape, because they last.

Unfortunately, the cover for the first issue was made out of oil clay…it was made by the Will Vilton artists, the people who did the California Raisins and the Moonwalker video, and stuff like that. So, oil clay is made to never dry, and so when the model was unfortunately dropped, instead of shattering like one of these would do, making it repairable, the oil clay just flattened. And you can’t resculpt flattened clay like that.

I see this Mario is missing an ear.

Yeah, that’s just, you know, 35 years. Guy’s had a hard time. Early on I decided I wasn’t gonna try to restore him. I think it would have made it less ‘the thing.’ It doesn’t matter what kind of condition these are in, what matters is that they are ‘the thing.’ And so, I did ask the original artist, who doesn’t want to be named, I asked them if they would be interested in resculpting it themselves, and they declined.

So at that point, I was like, okay, if it isn’t going to be the original artist resculpting him, then I’m not going to bother trying to resculpt him. He can be missing an ear. That’s fine.

You got it directly from the artist?

I did.

Was that process difficult?

Yes, it was. Because with the exception of maybe Dan McGowen and maybe one other artist, none of the artists were credited. They were only credited under the agency name. And oftentimes that agency, Griffith’s Advertising, would also sub-contract other agencies. So it wasn’t necessarily even as easy as finding out who Griffith’s was representing, it was often deeper layers.

The Dr. Wily, the Dr. Mario, the Mario Paint, the Contra, and the Mario 3-Mario were all the same artist.

Did you get all of the 3D pieces at the same time?

The shoes came in separately. I’m not sure who the artist is of the shoes, but the shoes are basically just stickers and glue on a regular pair of Converse high-tops. But the Dr. Mario came in separately because he had fallen behind a bookcase for 25 years.

[laughs]

He was rediscovered when they were remodeling their office. When most of this stuff was sculpted…we have photographs of the Maniac Mansion mansion. That mansion was destroyed right after the photographs were done being taken, because it was a 300-pound piece of polymer clay, why would someone keep that? Nintendo wasn’t Nintendo at the time and it was just a job to a lot of these artists. They had no reason to keep it.

[It’s] the same thing with the METAL STORM robot. It’s a Gundam kitbash. At some point, I’d love to sit down with someone who really specializes in 1980s Gundam kits and try to pick apart exactly what went into that model, because I’d love to build one. We just have that one Poloraid of it, and that’s all that’s left.

Have you witnessed any of the creators’ reactions to these pieces?

I sent [Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert] photos of the mansion, because he hadn’t seen it either. Oftentimes, they didn’t view approvals for Nintendo Power, they were just like, “It’s free advertising!” It was very fast and loose back then. So he had never seen the Maniac Mansion mansion that they had done for the cover. The first time that he had seen it was for the photos.

[How did he react?]

Well. [laughs] He was very surprised.

Mario mascot costume

This was built in 1989, first used in 1990. This is the 1989 Mario mascot costume for Nintendo. We have a photo here of him as he was in 1990 at the Nintendo World Championships, and then another photo of how he was re-discovered; the structure of his head had completely collapsed, and he was missing his eyes.

There was a gentleman who found him before us, he was found in a storage locker that hadn’t been paid for, and so it was auctioned off. The same people who built him built all the miniatures, so I already had an existing relationship with them, so I was able to confirm that he was what I thought he was. And they had told me that he was beyond repair, and I was like, “Okay, well we’re gonna try anyway.” [laughs]

The gentleman who found him before us started a restoration and they did some things that probably we might not have chosen to do ourselves, and were kind of irreversible. So we had to finish the work that was started rather than redo the work that was started. He’s probably about 85%, I would say, the way how he looked originally. Originally, he had a plastic skull under him, and now he’s mostly stuffed. He’s basically the difference between a hard plastic doll head and a teddy bear. He’s more teddy bear than plastic doll head.

Do you have fishing lines out? How do people know to reach out to you for these kinds of items?

We make ourselves very findable. The phrase ‘Art of Nintendo Power’ is very good SEO. You type in ‘Nintendo Power art’ into Google and we will sort higher than Nintendo does — that’s not a mistake. Sometimes some things come to us, but we still hunt every day.

Every day?

Every day.

Who is “we”?

Well, mostly me. [laughs] We’re a 501(c)(3) non-profit art museum. And The Art of Nintendo Power is our flagship exhibit…

Contract artists, unless Nintendo paid them extra, they were contractually obligated to return the art to the artists. So like, none of this has been archived by Nintendo, it was all sent back to the artist. (Presumably, sometimes it didn’t happen for whatever reason, because things happen.) So these pieces were not a collection that was maintained by Nintendo at all. So there’s no paper trails, there’s no nothing.

All of the roads that we’re forging, we’re forging them brand new. It’s quite a challenge.

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This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Many thanks to Stephan. You can follow him on Twitter X @ArtofNP and Instagram, you can see where the Art of Nintendo Power show will be next on their website.

In the most positive sense, it’s amazing what gets approved for release on the Switch. Raindrop Sprinters is an indie title that could well be a mobile phone game in everything except its aesthetic, which accurately resembles an early ’80s arcade title.

You play a cat represented by a bobbing paw, tasked only with crossing a screen from one side to the other, on repeat, 40 times to finish the Standard game. During each brief transit, raindrops fall from a corrugated overhead roof, dripping randomly, with enough gaps to allow you to make your crossing unscathed. With one life only, it’s simplistic, but there’s a core scoring game here that’s both utterly compelling and unapologetically brutal.

The raindrops rapidly pick up speed. Spend long enough on the first screen and the patter soon becomes a hell of a deluge. Lingering can have a scoring advantage, with each screen dropping a set number of stars at intermittent intervals. Most are yellow, and a few pink, netting a double bonus. But, with the tempo of the rainfall on a constant increase, dawdling for points makes things exponentially tougher. After a few minutes, it’s already thundering down, a torrential threat to kitty’s survival. Fulfilling hidden objectives such as catching all the stars, clearing a set number of screens, etc., grants badges, with seven unlocking “powerful skills”. The element that will really separate the scoreboards, though, is the last-second dodge. The closer a drop is to taking you out, the more score bonus you get, up to what appears to be a maximum of 500, signified by a burst of green bubbles appearing near your paw. Think about it almost like a parry; a cat playing chicken with droplets of doom.

It’s tough to clear 40 screens, but by hitting a button you engage a slow-motion mechanic that can save you in a clinch. Governed by a power gauge that, when reduced, will refill slightly with each screen cleared, the effect slows the rain and slightly boosts your speed. The gauge drains fast, however, requiring it to be used both tactically and sparingly. TATE mode is available for an extra level of arcade authenticity, and there are additional gameplay modes, too, including ‘Endless’ for pushing your limits, and ‘Cats and Dogs’ for instantaneous rain-related havoc. There’s also a Customise mode, allowing you to spend accrued points on protective bonuses to make the game easier or harder, depending on your skill level, and what appears to be a couple of other unlockable variations on the theme.

Raindrop Sprinters is as pure an arcade experience as one could wish for, its base simplicity underpinned by a deep scoring game that can be approached in a variety of ways, ultimately presenting a bottomless reflex-based affair that will wash out the impatient and reward the dedicated in a shower of euphoria. It’s not a game for everyone and will hold little appeal or longevity for the vast majority, but it does what it does well, and its construction is a little bit clever. When you reach that moment of dodging zen, where you’re weaving those drops against impossible odds, you run a real risk of just-one-more-go addiction.

Hello one and all, and welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl.

Before we check out this week’s competitors, let’s take a look at how we fared last time. We took a look at New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS, the first entry in the polarising platforming sub-series. It was actually a fairly close battle, but in the end, the North American variant featuring a giant Mario won out with 58% of the vote.

This week, we’re going to check out Mario vs. Donkey Kong on the Game Boy Advance. Initially launched back in 2004, the original is now making a grand return on the Nintendo Switch via a full remake. Seems a great opportunity to chuck it into the Box Art Brawl ring then, no?

The Western design for this one is pretty similar across regions, so it’s going to be a duel this week between North America/Europe and Japan. Let’s get cracking!

Be sure to cast your votes in the poll below; but first, let’s check out the box art designs themselves.

Europe / North America

So this one is pretty straightforward in its design, depicting Mario facing off against, well, Donkey Kong. It’s a pretty neat illustration with a strong composition, drawing the viewers’ eyes to all corners of the box. Very nice!

Japan

The Japanese version, meanwhile, is wild. It acts as a fictional advertisement for the Mini-Mario toy, showcasing the figure in all its glory while plastering a bunch of buzzwords across the bottom half of the image. Oh, and look at Donkey Kong peeking out of the top right corner! Adorable.

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Thanks for voting! We’ll see you next time for another round of the Box Art Brawl.

When he’s not paying off a loan to Tom Nook, Liam likes to report on the latest Nintendo news and admire his library of video games. His favourite Nintendo character used to be a guitar-playing dog, but nowadays he prefers to hang out with Judd the cat.

Here are the full patch notes

• 
• by Liam Doolan 34 mins ago

Mortal Kombat 1 went into early access this week and players have finally been able to get their hands on all versions of the game. The question many have been wondering for some time now is how the game holds up on the Switch compared to other versions and now we’ve finally got some details.

The tech, visual and performance comparison YouTube channel ElAnalistaDeBits has released a graphics comparison of the Switch version alongside the Xbox Series, PlayStation and Steam Deck versions of the game. According to the source, here’s the rundown on the Switch release:

“Nintendo Switch: Dynamic 900p/~60fps (Common 720-640p) | Handheld Dynamic 720p (Common 480p)”

It’s further mentioned how the Switch “aims to reach 60fps during combat, but it’s a bit unstable”. In terms of cutbacks on Switch – all “visual aspects” have been impacted. This includes “textures, geometry, lighting, animations, post-processing effects” and more. One other note about the Nintendo release is the “wait times to start fights on Switch are somewhat tedious”.

Keep in mind, Mortal Kombat 1 is still technically in its “early access” period and has already received a day-one update addressing some issues across all platforms. In other words, there could be more updates in the future, improving the overall experience. Be on the lookout for our own Nintendo Life review of this new Mortal Kombat entry soon.

Will you be checking out Mortal Kombat 1 on the Switch? Let us know in the comments.

When he’s not paying off a loan to Tom Nook, Liam likes to report on the latest Nintendo news and admire his library of video games. His favourite Nintendo character used to be a guitar-playing dog, but nowadays he prefers to hang out with Judd the cat.

Summum Aeterna, a prequel to 2022’s Aeterna Noctis, riffs on a Dead Cells-style genre fusion, mixing roguelite elements into the tough Metroidvania structure of its predecessor for a game that doesn’t pull its punches. The result feels rough around the edges but it’s hard to deny that the gameplay feels pretty great.

Enemies hit hard, frequently gang up on you, and will almost assuredly send you back to the hub dozens of times before you manage to successfully complete a run. And while Summum Aeterna primarily demands dexterous skills to overcome its toughest challenges, you do have something to show for each failed run. You, of course, lose most of the upgrades you snagged while out and about, but every run will see you gaining currency and crafting materials that you can then reinvest into things like better stats and starting weapons. This meta-progression system thus ensures that you’ll always be making progress, even when you lose time after time.

In an interesting departure from similar games, Summum Aeterna also introduces a cool seed system for generating the world you run through each time. Before venturing out, you must first create the world by placing a seed in a machine that will generate it for you. Each seed is unique, spawns you in a different starting biome, and will have positive and negative modifiers that’ll change things like enemy health and the drop rate of certain rewards. Picking the right seed is thus as much a part of one’s strategy as deciding on a build, and we appreciated how this positively affects run diversity.

Controls are smooth and responsive, while weapon types feel genuinely distinct from each other and offer interesting twists on combat. A sword can be thrown and either quickly recalled or teleported elsewhere. The scythe, on the other hand, builds up Damage-over-Time debuffs on enemies with each hit which you can then trigger all at once. Moment-to-moment gameplay feels snappy and engaging, which encourages you to dare to try again.

The visuals feel like a cross between the illustrious Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and, of all things, Child of Light. Whether you’re exploring the shadowy reaches of a familiar-looking Gothic castle or the bright canal-bordered streets of a Venice-esque village, all environments feature a painterly, hand-drawn style that feels like a perfect fit for the somewhat dreamlike tone of Summum Aeterna.

Unfortunately, Summum Aeterna feels rather poor on the performance side of things. Luckily the frame drops here or there don’t affect things too much, but loading times can be pretty long and we had a few instances where the game outright crashed, ending promising runs and erasing some hard-won progress. Hopefully patches are forthcoming, as it feels like this could be an excellent addition to any roguelike fan’s Switch library with a little bit more elbow grease.

Launch instability issues aside, it may be a bit derivative, but Summum Aeterna ultimately ticks enough boxes to be worth your while. Smooth combat, tough difficulty, and an interesting seed system all come together to make this one worth investigating.

When I was working on my MFA in Game Design, I referenced Urbz: Sims in the City in a meeting with my thesis advisor, and he asked if I had played the console or the handheld version. I was confident that I’d played the console version growing up. I could recall the memory quite clearly—sitting against a study pillow on my childhood bed with the controller’s too-short cord pulled taut against the GameCube across the room, furiously speeding through the game in an attempt to finish every goal before Hollywood Video’s three-day rental period elapsed.

It’s hard to explain the cognitive dissonance I felt when my advisor started talking about in-game material that was completely unknown to me, that was certainly not what I remembered playing but had an eerie sameness to it, like the game I knew but in an alternate reality.

After that meeting, I got my hands on a copy of Urbz for my GameCube and booted it up. I was interested in the minigames I loved playing as a kid and wanted to take some notes for my thesis. The game loaded to a cinematic I’d never seen of a sim with big purple hair walking around a city in low-cut jeans trying to impress club bouncers with aerial dance moves. I launched the character creator and it was obvious that this was a different game than I remembered. The graphics alone were in a completely different ballpark, let alone the comparatively rich selection of hair and clothing options.

When I tracked down a copy of the handheld version of Urbz, everything came into focus. It was the game that I remembered— blocky graphics, ridiculous minigames and all. It turned out that I had played Urbz on my GameCube as a kid but only by way of the Game Boy Player, a genius contraption that clipped to the bottom on the GameCube and enabled play of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games right on my TV screen.

Double take

Urbz was far from the only title in the early 2000s to have distinct versions for handheld versus home consoles. 2001 was a big year for Nintendo with the release of both the Game Boy Advance (GBA) and the GameCube. These cousin consoles shared a library of titles that, despite sharing a name, were often completely different experiences depending on what console you played them on. Tony Hawk had multiple major releases during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube generation, including Pro Skater 3 and 4, the first two Underground games, and American Wasteland/Sk8land. Two of my all-time favorite games on the GameCube, SSX Tricky and Super Monkey Ball, had GBA ports that met with varying approval in comparison to their home console counterparts.

Games with handheld ports like SSX Tricky made the GBA experience feel like a consolation prize in lieu of the real deal on the GameCube

Taking a game from the console to the less-powerful handheld could be compared to a translation of sorts, like bringing a book to the screen or envisioning a game as a television series, either keeping as faithfully to the original as possible or making adjustments to suit the new format. The GameCube’s Super Monkey Ball received a port to the GBA under the name Super Monkey Ball Jr. about a year after its console launch. Super Monkey Ball Jr. includes levels that are direct ports from the console version and some that were made in particular for the handheld version. The mechanics are largely the same between the two games, but the GBA of course isn’t blessed with an analog stick like that on a GameCube controller which made for much more difficult navigation on the handheld version.

The Game Boy Advance outsold the GameCube by an incredible amount — 81.51 million units versus 21.74 million — a dichotomy in sales trends for Nintendo’s home and handheld consoles that continued into the Nintendo DS and Wii era, albeit with Wii closing the gap. Yet, many games that were made available for both the GameCube and GBA were clearly designed with the home console in mind. That’s why we have instances like SSX Tricky, where the handheld version is a severely watered-down, nearly impossible-to-play facsimile that stubbornly attempts to recreate the console levels and mechanics with far worse graphics and frame rate. Games with handheld ports like SSX Tricky made the GBA experience feel like a consolation prize in lieu of the real deal on the GameCube.

The games that came out of this era of development say a lot about the capabilities of different platforms at the time, but also speak to who the intended audiences were for console versus handheld gaming.

Take Urbz, for example. The handheld was rated ‘E for Everyone’ and had more of an action-adventure feel to it in terms of genre. The console version of Urbz was rated ‘T for Teen’ and frankly pushed at those boundaries with social interactions like ‘Strip Tease,’ ‘Grab Booty,’ and ‘Suck Face.’

The handheld ports for both SSX Tricky and Super Monkey Ball can be said to maintain the spirit of the console versions they’re derived from, showcasing the upsides and potential detriments of such an approach. Urbz falls into a different category, almost more adaptation than translation. At this point, I’ve logged dozens of hours in both versions of Urbz, and they are two games that feel like they’re drawing from a shared idea and source material instead of one game based on the other.

The same but (very) different

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Their shared elements, like minigames, reputation, social groups, and goal-oriented plot lines make them seem like similar games on paper, but in reality they couldn’t be more different.

You start out earning money by squeegeeing windows while dodging bird poop.

In the handheld version of Urbz, I was tasked with taking down harmful capitalistic forces as represented by the comically evil character Daddy Bigbucks. Goals are a big part of the home console’s Urbz as well, but they’re more formulaic. Everything is geared towards getting the right clothes, impressing the right people, and progressing into more and more neighborhoods as your reputation increases.

The minigames in both versions center around making money. Whether you’re earning cash as skateboarder, model, or piercing manufacturer in the home console version, the same mechanic is always present: hitting a series of four buttons in the order shown to boost your performance as quickly as possible.

The handheld version’s minigames are more distinct and are what drew me back to Urbz in the first place. You start out earning money by squeegeeing windows while dodging bird poop. My favorite was always being a comedian where I’d tell jokes to fill up a laugh meter, occasionally promenading to either side of the stage to avoid tomatoes from the crowd.

Urbz on GameCube gives you everything you need to engage in social roleplay, from piercings and tattoos to complete your look to all the bizarre social interactions that help you climb the reputation ladder. Handheld Urbz gives you community and a grand purpose where the social elements are tied into a fairly linear plot. They’re two completely different answers to the same prompt.

Worlds collide

The Game Boy Player helped to bridge the gap for home console owners who didn’t have a GBA and wanted to be able to play major, handheld-only titles (like the main Pokémon series). I don’t even have my GBA anymore; I just play all my Game Boy games on my GameCube.

But the prevalence of GameCube games with handheld ports created the possibility for strange experiences like the one that I had with Urbz, especially if we think about porting as a type of translation. Playing a handheld game that is a port of a GameCube game on the Game Boy Player is similar to reading a book that has been translated into one language and then separately translated back into its original language. It’s a bizarre game of telephone that dabbles in the uncanny.

In 2023, there isn’t such a distinct separation as there used to be between handheld and home console gaming. I can take a Nintendo Switch game from my hands to the television without ever having to change out a cartridge. The challenge for developers tasked with making something that worked on multiple systems with entirely different processing capabilities and player experience expectations resulted in some truly iconic games. Today’s developers have their own challenges that continue to lead to gains in the gaming world, but I wonder if we’ll ever see the likes of 2001 again: translations that confuse as much as they delight, doppelgangers that get further from the original the more they materialize, the reflection in the mirror winking just as you turn away.