Category: Nintendo News

The prize in Limited Run’s Marvel Maximum Collection, unquestionably, is Konami’s 1992 X-Men: The Arcade Game. Famously, it holds a Guinness World Record for being the only arcade beat ‘em up to support six simultaneous players. This port allows you to switch between two, four and six player options — in line with its original cabinet variations — and take the game online with rollback net code.

Superb fun, and elevated considerably through multiplayer, while its character movesets are somewhat limited by modern standards, early ’90s Konami were such a tour de force that they could barely put a foot wrong. It offers a thrilling romp through the X-Men universe of yesteryear, featuring a cast of six favourites — Colossus, Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Dazzler — fighting against Magneto’s hordes: Sentinels, Juggernaut, Wendigo, and more.

The backgrounds are lovingly detailed; the sprites and animation are excellent; the colour scheme is straight out of a ’90s comic book page; and the game is full of superb voice samples, grammatically incorrect or otherwise. It does work better in multiplayer, although with six on the screen, the action gets confusing.

While this is the collection’s high point, and the only title with online functionality, elsewhere there’s plenty to enjoy. The frontend and quality-of-life features are surprisingly well done, with archival materials for each game comprising flyers, manuals, and design documents. Save states are available, as is a rewind function; you can configure the difficulty level of every title; and the CRT screen filters are very granular, allowing fine adjustments that render really well.

What’s interesting about the Marvel Maximum Collection is how far-flung the titles are, including arcade games from Data East, as well as Super Nintendo, Mega Drive, NES, and Game Boy titles from Software Creations. Many of these come under the LJN label, the best recognised of which is probably the NES’s Silver Surfer (1990), a shoot ’em up made infamous by The Angry Video Game Nerd.

And honestly, it’s a game that gets a bad rap. Yes, the hit-box is infuriating, and being unable to discern what constitutes impassable objects is a test, but play enough to learn layouts and win power-ups and orbs, and it’s certainly not the worst of its kind, nor the worst of this collection. It’s also carried by a great soundtrack from Tim Follin.

Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge (1992) is probably mid-tier in terms of the package offerings, although a lot will depend on your nostalgic mileage. Here you have SNES, Mega Drive, Game Gear, and Game Boy versions. The handheld ones are curious but poor, and the 16-bit versions remain tough, frustrating, and confusing to get through. The Mega Drive release is best, but generally its collision detection, sharing lives between characters, and a final boss with some painful RNG persist across all iterations. Still, if you exploit Gambit’s stage glitch to stockpile lives (or use the rewind function), there’s some enjoyment to be had getting through it.

Spider-Man Maximum Carnage (1994) is a Final Fight-style scrolling beat ’em up for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, and it’s pretty mundane, all things considered. It’s notable for being based on an actual crossover comic miniseries, and having a soundtrack by ’90s punk band Green Jelly.

These aspects make it cool in a throwback kind of way, but the action is limited and repetitive. With little variation in its enemies or action, it quickly becomes a slog. The backgrounds are fairly uninspired, and it seems to go on for so long that your interest is likely to wane long before you reach the final boss. A little interesting trivia: Maximum Carnage, with its special red cartridge, was never released in Japan, and with an already fairly limited print run, the original US version of the game can fetch up to $5000 in stores there.

However lame Maximum Carnage is, though, Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety — its 1995 follow-up — is somehow slightly worse. It carries over most of the flaws of its predecessor, throws in some really ugly pre-rendered backdrops, and feels incredibly dull. Its monotony is alleviated slightly by allowing you to switch between Spidey and Venom, and it has a ton of great Marvel cameos — but the combat is imprecise and muddled, and too limited in scope to hold your attention. Both the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive versions are present, although the former wins out for better colour breadth.

The more unlikely addition to the Maximum Collection is Data East’s 1991 beat ’em up Captain America and The Avengers. Predating Konami’s arcade attempt by a year, it’s far less visually impressive with much smaller sprites, but has an enormous amount of charm to it. The cutscenes look great, and there’s some nice variation between beat-’em-up stages and shooting style action, whether through the skies or underwater.

There are four characters to choose from, including the eponymous Captain America, Iron Man, Vision, and Hawkeye. On your crusade to defeat ultra-villain Red Skull, you also get to battle some enormous bosses, but sadly the combat is very limited, and as a result, it becomes naturally repetitive.

Nevertheless, it’s enjoyable to experience, and worth playing through with a credit feed. What’s puzzling most about this particular port, however, is where the multiplayer option is. Not only can you not realise the original’s four-player antics, but it seems like two-player isn’t available, either. Even odder is that you need to pick your character from a pre-boot screen — probably aping the original cabinet’s coin slot fixtures — but once inside the game there doesn’t seem to be any way to switch characters at the continue screen.

This heavily leans toward the fact that it — and probably everything else — is little more than a rom collection. While that’s to be expected, it would have been nice for the title to have enjoyed the same attention and augmentations given to Konami’s arcade game. The Mega Drive and NES versions of Captain America and The Avengers are also included, with the latter being a wholly different, pretty engrossing (but considerably tough) platform game, and the former a ropey, inferior arcade port.

Data East had one more Marvel arcade game — Avengers in Galactic Storm (1995) — that didn’t make the cut. Being a fighting game, it would have offered some much-needed variety to the package, and its absence is something of a missed opportunity.

Conclusion

The Marvel Maximum Collection does what it sets out to do well, and its bringing together of titles from various developers is what makes it so interesting. With all the console variations, the library on offer is large, and the emulation quality feels tactile and fairly accurate (although diehard enthusiasts will probably find something to gripe about).

It must be noted, though, that there are no truly ‘great’ games here, and the quality of offerings ranges from ‘good fun’ and ‘worth sticking with’ to ‘not much fun’, ‘frustrating’, and ‘rather poor’. It’s an admirable attempt to combine some of the more prominent retro Marvel titles into a nostalgia package, and Konami’s arcade game is the icing on the cake. Just keep in mind that nostalgia, and not an assembling of gaming’s finest, is what’s driving this thing.

Since its somewhat rocky release on Switch back in 2022, Disney Dreamlight Valley has redeemed itself through several updates and a plethora of DLCs which can make any Disney fan happy. You see, I originally played the game on the Xbox One during early access, when the game used to be free-to-play but full of performance issues.

When Gameloft later announced that they’d be charging for the game (unsurprising in my opinion) and with the reports of poor optimisation even on the Switch, I knew it would be extremely unlikely I’d ever pick up the game again. However, after news on the Switch 2 upgrade and a momentary bout of sickness, I decided to give it another crack in hopes that it would change my mind.

Disney Dreamlight Valley – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition has finally hit the eShop promising magical improvements, and I’ve been wishing (perhaps upon a star) that it keeps that promise.

For those unfamiliar with Disney Dreamlight Valley, you play as The Ruler who seemingly just appears in Dreamlight Valley, a dark and dreary village and once a magical place filled with familiar Disney characters but now succumbed to The Forgetting, which, as the name suggests, caused everyone to forget and disappear. With some help from Merlin and other Disney friends, you must restore the valley and uncover the mystery of The Forgetting.

If you’re looking for a broader overview, you can check out our launch review, which covers the basics as they were in 2022. Otherwise, the gameplay is your bog-standard life sim with decorating, farming, and social elements which can easily be mistaken as a Disney-skinned Animal Crossing. However, I’ve always felt there’s something more magical about Dreamlight Valley sparkling beneath the surface.

It can be overwhelming at times, but much like any other cosy game, you’ll have duties or quests to fulfil and DLV is no different. You’ll have daily goals known as Dreamlight Duties which reward Dreamlight, a form of magical points allowing you to unlock more biomes to explore, character realms, items to craft and of course, storage upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. You can gain more Dreamlight from just playing the game. Anything from foraging, cooking, and forming friendships with villagers gains you Dreamlight and level your character up in the process. Levelling up helps you unlock special items and increases your max energy level.

Yes, there’s an energy bar which in the early game is frustrating and tiresome, but can be quickly rectified through foraging, resting in your home, and cooking later on. Forming friendships is quite important, as each character can hang out with you and, depending on which skill you’ve assigned them, they can give you a hangout bonus. Whilst each character levels up during hangouts, you can unlock special items or clothing along with quests you wouldn’t be able to access otherwise.

Disney Dreamlight Valley also offers events in the form of Star Paths, limited-time promotions offering exclusive items through completing quests or purchasing tokens with Moonstones (the game’s form of microtransactions). I’ve never personally purchased any Moonstones, as I’m happy to grind away during quests and prefer not to spend real-world money, so these are obviously optional.

As the game has a real-time clock, there are often quests which require you to wait a couple of days before you can progress, so I’d keep myself busy with shorter quests or gardening to earn the extra coins and pass the time. As tempting as it would be to spend my real-life money on an imaginary currency for a pretty dress or to complete a quest, I get more gratification pulling carrots from the ground to sell at Goofy’s Stall and seeing those coins pile up. Perhaps I’m more like Scrooge McDuck than I thought?

You can unlock more characters through the use of Realms found in the Dream Castle, a huge central hub housing 13 Realm doors with more available to unlock in future updates and DLCs, the latter already amassing many more hours of content as well as more Disney pals to join the Valley.

Compared to when the game was initially released, it has evolved into a very different experience. From focusing on merely designing, building the world, and exploring the story, it’s now expanded into a world of premium paid content and a ‘catch ‘em all’ mentality.

Like any game, there are bound to be tweaks and improvements along the way. Since 2022, Gameloft added Dream Teams, a multiplayer feature as a way of connecting with other players in private communities where you can help each other with resource requests, follow each other’s progress, and even contribute to a social feed within the team. You can also visit other team members’ valleys through Dream Teams.

I’ve played a lot of Disney Dreamlight Valley, so I’m quite familiar with the state of the game before and after the free upgrade. Upon booting up on Switch 2, I wasn’t expecting much. Even with the promise of improved loading times, enhanced resolution, a smoother frame rate of up to 60fps, and double the amount of item storage (now up to 6,000), I still had my doubts.

I was sorely mistaken, though! What used to feel like a bit of a crunchy mess became a crisp and, dare I say, gorgeous sight to see. I quickly noted the sharper character details, less erratic camera manoeuvering, and less stuttering in frames. Plus, the outside lighting, especially at sunset, is an obvious improvement compared to the Switch 1 version.

I wouldn’t say the technical improvements have been 100% successful, though, as the more I’ve played, I found minor frame drops in both docked and handheld, which were pretty obvious when it was raining and in busier areas like the Plaza or Forest of Valor. I also found the random pop-in of buildings or items from time to time, which isn’t a huge distraction considering the state the game was in at launch, but still somewhat disappointing. On the plus side, I can now move around the menus with ease and no longer need to make a cup of tea during the painfully long loading times.

Unfortunately, some bugs were not fixed for me in the upgrade. This included a strange issue where the screen would continuously flash until loading up the main menu — something I hope wasn’t present for those with light sensitivity — and another where I’d be trapped whilst cooking, unable to complete the dish, remove the ingredients, or leave. This would mean having to fully close the game and hoping it had autosaved.

Conclusion

Whilst the Switch 2 Edition has fulfilled most of its promises and fixed some bugs, I can’t help but feel somewhat disappointed that it took this long to fix on Nintendo platforms. With no other new features such as Mouse Mode for building/decorating, it’s a little underwhelming.

Saying that, DDV looks stunning on Switch 2, and compared to when the game originally launched on Switch 1, this can be considered — finally — the ‘full-release’ version.