This Week in Games

Tokyo Game Show @Home

Tokyo Game Show is upon us! Unfortunately, most of us couldn't be there even if we wanted to, since it's still a royal pain in the butt to actually get through the country's COVID travel restrictions. Most of the publishers showcasing are announcing stuff via YouTube and Twitch streams, which is nice, but if you're still longing for that big event experience, Tokyo Game Show's got you covered with a set of virtual event spaces, complete with their own metafiction, mascots, and (of course) merchandise. If you own an Oculus device or an HTC VIVE, you can use that to immerse yourself in a massive VR Tokyo Game Show environment. (If you don't have VR gear, there's also a standard Mac/PC app with mouse/keyboard controls as well.) There's also a smaller virtual space on smartphones and browsers that's more like a virtual hangout, and apparently a few Vtubers are going to join in at points. It's an interesting effort, and I do suggest checking it out if you're curious, since it's only going to be live for a limited time.

So, besides TGS… obviously the big thing last week was Nintendo Direct. With the gaming news cycle being what it is, however, most reporting has already moved past it. The big Nintendo news now is a Bloomberg report claiming that several developers have dev kits for a 4K model of the Switch. The Switch Pro: still a thing, apparently! So, since a lot of the news has been disseminated and dissected already, I'm not going to spend too much time on Direct stuff, but there are still several things worth commenting on. So, let's do this:

SPEEDRUN: NINTENDO DIRECT ANNOUNCEMENT REPORTING (ANY%)

Hey, do you want news on the final Smash Ultimate character? How about the long-awaited Animal Crossing: New Horizons update? TOO BAD BUDDY YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO WAIT! Well, not too much longer in the case of Smash, but still. Nintendo gonna troll.

Right, so, let's run down the announcement list.

• A Monster Hunter Rise expansion titled Sunbreak is coming in summer 2022! I assume this will also apply to the recently announced PC port as well!
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a new Kirby game and the first to feature full 3D roaming. This could either turn out amazingly or very poorly, I think… but I'm hard-pressed to remember a truly bad Kirby game, so I'm optimistic. Also: post-apocalyptic Kirby is certainly a concept!
• Nintendo 64 games will be added to Switch Online for an additional fee. This was heavily rumored. Sega Genesis/MegaDrive games are also coming. This was a surprise. There will also be re-issues of those consoles’ controllers for Switch. We get the crappy original 3-button Genesis pad. Japan gets the revised 6-button MegaDrive pad. What the hell?
• More info on Voice of Cards, and it's coming sooner than I expected. Excited to try this out!
• I played through Deltarune Chapter 2 on PC already, but I'm glad it's coming to more platforms so quickly. That final boss sure was a doozy, huh?
• Actraiser got a remake? And it's already out? Well, you bet I bought that instantaneously. But so far, it's… well, it's got problems. I'm a ways away from finishing it still, but man, Actraiser did not need this much tower defense.
• Mascot kart racer of yesteryear Chocobo Racing is getting a revival in the form of Chocobo GP. It's a Switch exclusive, which is a little surprising… and a bit disappointing, because from this trailer and the footage I've seen coming from TGS, the framerate seems inconsistent. Hmmm.
• Splatoon 3 is now subtitled Return of the Mammalians. The trailer includes disturbing depictions of hairy Octarians. Ewww.
• Metroid Dread is out next week? Damn, this game still doesn't feel real to me. Hard to believe I'm so close to playing it!
• Look, I'm not doing hot takes about the Mario movie casting, it was all over the internet last week and everything's already been said. Move along.
• Bayonetta 3 exists, everybody! And this time, she's going to Tokyo! Hell yeah! Now stop annoying Hideki Kamiya about it already.

So, overall: Not the best Nintendo Direct I've seen, but still some interesting announcements. No Xenoblade Chronicles 3 as rumored, either, but finally seeing Bayonetta 3 more than makes up for it, I think. Switch is still looking mighty strong overall.

FIGHTING GAME NEWS: FEATURING SABER FROM THE FATE/EVERYTHING SERIES

Melty Blood: Type Lumina is out now on your platform of choice, and early reception is extremely warm aside from various connection bugs being reported for the PC version. The various trailers and reveals in the final weeks leading up to Type Lumina's release indicated that this was going to be far more than just an HD reskin of the original Melty with some tweaks – in fact, much of Type Lumina reflects the changes made in the Tsukihime remake. But the final character reveal made just hours before the game's official launch showed just how far Type-Moon and French Bread were going.

Why hello there, Saber!

Saber's inclusion is interesting in that it's both surprising and yet completely expected. More and more, it feels like the Type-Mooniverse has become its own big, intertwined thing with a lot of shared concepts and terminology. Thus far, however, the crossover between the big two Type-Moon creations – Fate and Tsukihime – has been limited, so Saber appearing in Melty Blood really feels like a long-standing barrier has been shattered. Will there be more cross-pollination between the two series? I think it's very likely.

But that's far from the only big fighting game news to hit. Last night, SNK posted a special Tokyo Game Show King of Fighters XV presentation to introduce some of the new characters and mechanics. We now have a name for the mystery girl we saw briefly in the big trailer from a few weeks ago: Isla. She's got a more in-depth character trailer now, so let's take a look!

So… take Shunei, change his gender, add some melanin, and toss in a smidge of Jet Set Radio design, and you get Isla. I think she's great, personally – even this short trailer shows a character with a fun look and a distinct personality. The Tokyo Game Show presentation says that she's more or less the other “main character” alongside Shunei, so it'll be interesting to see how she fills that shared protagonist role.

But she's not the only sort-of clone to get a full reveal trailer either ‘cause K’ is back, baby!

If you're not so much into the newer King of Fighters games, though, there's still some great news for you: King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match Final Edition is getting a major overhaul this winter to add rollback and other features. KoF98UMFE is one of the most-liked revisions of one of the most-liked King of Fighters games, so this announcement was met with a lot of enthusiasm from series fans both old and new. Even better is that there will be a beta before the full launch, so you'll likely get a chance to try out the new and improved netcode for a bit before the official update. It sure is great that SNK is looking to update their classic games with great netcode! Maybe they can look at a few of their other releases coughsamuraishodowncough for this sort of upgrade as well.

CASTLE OF SHIKIGAMI 2 IS GETTING A RE-RELEASE

This is… unexpected.

Okay, so, I think I should explain this a bit. It's a weird and kinda long story. Back in the early aughts, Sony issued developer licenses to a bunch of fly-by-night publishers in North America and Europe who put out super-budget priced (around $10-20) releases. A lot of these super-budget releases were games licensed on the extremely cheap from Japan with little to no localization, because you sure as hell aren't spending money to hire translators with those margins. One of these publishers was XS Games, and one of the games they picked up was Castle of Shikigami, a character-, dialogue- and story-heavy arcade shooter from well-loved developer Alfa System. Of course, all of that was completely excised for the Western release, but XS also decided to get rid of all that anime-looking garbage on the packaging. Here's the Japanese PS2 release:

And here's the North American cover and retitling:

As you might expect, XS Games got a ton of flack for doing this, so when they picked up the license to Castle of Shikigami 2 years later, they decided to keep things authentic. All of the characters, story, and dialogue would be intact in the North American release. Great! Except they still didn't have a translation budget. Or a voiceover budget. And Sony at the time required English VO in North American releases. This is what happened:

Isn't it amazing? XS Games’ Castle of Shikigami 2 localization goes so far beyond astonishingly bad to the point that it becomes unintentionally brilliant absurdist humor. God, I love this release so much. It's idiot power!

Anyhow, fast forward to now, and XS Games is long gone. Degica Games announces a re-release of Castle of Shikigami 2, with new modes and a brand-new translation. I like this game quite a bit, and I'm super hyped for the re-release, but I think I speak for a lot of folks when I say you absolutely need the option for the original dialogue and dub. It's just too special to leave out. But even if we can't get it officially, there's always the potential to mod the PC release. Modders: you know what you need to do now.

TOKYO GAME SHOW ADJACENT NEWSBITS

• Monster Hunter Rise is having a collaboration with… Sonic the Hedgehog? Okay, sure, I'll go with it. I hope it's more than just costumes – it'd be kinda rad to take down Perfect Chaos or the Biolizard MonHun-style.

Hope we haven't been too slow on this one. Congrats, @Sonic_Hedgehog, on an amazing 30 years!

Let's celebrate in #MHRise with a collab this November!
🎉 https://t.co/GQpy2jZvlN pic.twitter.com/b0A5gqZeyr

— Monster Hunter (@monsterhunter) September 30, 2021

• It was leaked a while ago, but remaster masters Bluepoint Games are now officially a Sony-owned studio. Odds of a Tokyo Jungle re-release: still depressingly slim.
• NIS America will be publishing Yurukill: The Calumniation Games in the west. This is one I'm really looking forward to: it's a fusion of arcade shooter and visual novel set in a twisted amusement park where condemned criminals must fight through dangerous “attractions” in a bid to win their freedom. Also, the shooter sections are designed by beloved developer G.Rev. Why yes, everything about that sounds wonderful, where do I sign up?
• Wedged amongst all of the things showcased during the Xbox TGS presentation video is footage Eiyuden Chronicle's side game, Eiyuden Chronicles Rising. This Natsume-Atari developed action/RPG acts as a side story to introduce some characters from Eiyuden's massive cast, though the brief bits of footage only show a kangaroo character named Garoo (who, in a nice touch, has a hopping walk cycle). Natsume-Atari has a pedigree for putting out bangers, so I have high hopes here.
• Earth Defense Force 6 has been delayed into 2022. With how packed the rest of 2021 is, I think we're all ok with waiting to explode alien bugs for a little longer.

Jeez, even with a shortened Nintendo Direct section, this week's column still wound up being pretty lengthy! There's lots of news floating around – what's your takeaway from TGS so far? Still holding out hope for a Switch Pro? Or maybe you're too busy enjoying Saber in Melty Blood Type Lumina? We've got forums ready and waiting for your fresh gaming opinions, so click that link below to get chatting! We'll be back next week with more news from TGS and elsewhere in the industry. Have a great weekend!