This Week in Games

Hungry Wolves, Alluring Ninja, and a Stingy Hedgehog

Welcome back, everyone! I've shot myself in the foot; with Manga Preview Guide on the horizon, I've decided to help cover some manga instead of playing Xenoblade Chronicles. Mea culpa, but I can't help it; a lot of interesting stuff comes out every season, and Manga Preview Guide is normally how I find new manga to fall in love with. We should be okay, what are the odds Xenoblade Chronicles X gets ported anytime soon?

The loss of Atsuko Tanaka was a sudden development this past week. Her family has thus far refused to disclose the cause of her death, but regardless: this has been a tremendous loss for both the anime and gaming community. On the anime side, Atsuko Tanaka was known for her performances of strong leading women, chief among them her ongoing performances as Major Matoko Kusanagi starting from the 90s Ghost in the Shell movie. This is by no means an exhaustive list of her roles; she was also famed for characters like Slan of the Godhand from Berserk, the voice of Caster Medea from Fate/stay night, and Lisa Lisa in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Her iconic husky voice also breathed life into many beloved video game icons; Tanaka was also the Japanese voice of Bayonetta, Trish from Devil May Cry, and Karura from Utawarerumono. And this still is just a tiny slice of her repertoire; longtime fighting game fans might recognize her voice as Ruby Heart from Marvel Vs Capcom 2, and Atsuko had contributed to Final Fantasy twice: once as Ultimecia, and another time as Final Fantasy XIV's pirate queen Merlwyb.

Scrolling through her extensive repertoire will unearth a role in which you've heard her unmistakable voice. This is a deeply felt loss and she will be missed.

If I've been taking a miss on the Monster Hunter Wilds trailers, it's because they've mostly gone over the new features for each weapon. And I'm sure folks are super-excited at how the weapons have been remixed (like mixing the typical attacks with how dodges worked in an older Monster Hunter, but it feels a bit pedantic to comb over the minutiae--begging pardon from all the Monster Hunter faithful. Provided, the trailers have also confirmed the return of several fan-favorite beats to hunt, like Congalala. The Monster Hunter Wilds trailer from this week introduced a whole two new monsters, though!

First up is the insectoid Lala Barina. I am in love with this monster's design, it speaks to the brilliant monster design in Monster Hunter and how these creatures are far more inspired than just being big elemental dragons. Lala Barina isn't just a big spider. Its design (a giant spider covered in fluffy white flowers) combined with its elegant movement evokes a ballerina. Fittingly, Lala Barina is an anagram for "ballerina". Also, Lala Barina's "rage" manifests in the white flowers blooming into large red flowers, changing her design into one that evokes a flowing red flamenco dress. It's so brilliant. I get why so many of the flagship monsters in Monster Hunter are dragons (dragons are awesome), but I appreciate when Capcom designs big bugs to fight; they tend to be some of the coolest monsters in the game, with some of the coolest themed sets (alas, poor Nerscylla and Seltas).

We were also given a glimpse at the Rey Dau, a new thunder wyvern coming to the Wilds and described as the "apex predator" of the area. It's cool, but... it is just a big thunder dragon. No doubt it'll be more fun to fight than describe, but the design doesn't leap out at me the way Lala Barina does. There was also a major announcement involving the armor sets in Monster Hunter Wilds: they're no longer gender-locked. The fun of Monster Hunter has always been designing your own hunter's favorite attire. This understandably means that normally men get the big bulky suits of armor while women get the skimpy outfits. The decision to remove the gender restriction on armor comes after Monster Hunter removed differing armor sets for either ranged characters or melee characters, replacing it with a system of Alpha or Beta armor (making players choose between more skill points or more jewel slots in their armor). So folks now have far more options regarding properly designing their armor, which can only be a good thing. More importantly!

New cooking animation! Just look at those ribs! There's still no release date for Monster Hunter Wilds outside of a vague 2025 window. Have to wait until then to sink your teeth into that meat...

Similar to Monster Hunter, I've been lacking a little in my coverage of the new Fatal Fury game. No offense meant; you guys know I love my boy, Terry Bogard, it's just that I don't know how much I can say about Terry being in a new Fatal Fury game. That's like being surprised that jets are in an Ace Combat game. But the new City of the Wolves trailer gives us plenty to go over!

So, first off we have a breakdown of some of the new mechanics: stuff like the Rev meter, which can be charged up to pull off unique abilities. Following that we have stuff like Braking--as in, for a car. This lets you cancel out certain moves. There are other old stand-bys like Just Defend and Ultra Defend, as well as Guard Cancel (canceling out of a guard to throw some new attacks), and the Feint system which lets you fake out your opponent with false attacks. But the real wrinkle is the S.P.G. Zone. "S.P.G." stands for "Selective Potential Gear"; the idea is that you designate an area of your health bar as your S.P.G. Zone (either the start of your health, the middle, or the very last bit of your health). So long as you're at that area of your health bar, you gain access to certain buffs and attacks. Think of it as Desperation Moves that you can designate at different health amounts. This is an interesting mechanic; on the surface, you'd want your S.P.G. zone to be at your full health bar, because why wouldn't you want those buffs at the outset of a match? But then realistically, you'll also take damage so maybe the middle of your health bar is the safer option. Lots to chew over here, I'm sure the actual fighting game pugilists are drafting charts for optimal use.

Other fun bits are the confirmation that City of the Wolves will feature cross-play and rollback netcode, as well as an expansive character customization mode: players can recolor the outfits of their preferred characters at a whim. And the options are extensive: not just recoloring outfit components but even adding patterns or new textures to certain bits. Phenomenal stuff!

Speaking of fashion, the real reason anyone will pick this game up was confirmed:

It's Mai! I'm amused with her trailer; a few months back I proposed that Mai's leather jacket outfit ought to be an option for her once she arrives in Street Fighter 6. I'm guessing SNK agreed with me because they made Mai's jacket her default look in City of the Wolves! If you look closely, her jeans also have a cute flower print going up the leg. It's a great outfit, and much like how Kazuya's ending in Tekken 8 reminded the world that Kazuya is a massive sneaker-head, Mai's jacket is great for reminding folks that the flower of the Shiranui school loves heavy metal (she's canonically a huge fan of Pantera, as per the 1995 issue of Neo Geo Freak). Her old outfit is also available, but also: are we going to pretend that Mai in skintight jeans and a leather jacket somehow isn't drop-dead gorgeous? Come on.

While we're on the topic of SNK characters, we may as well discuss the Terry Bogard trailer for Street Fighter 6. There's a lot of fanservice in the trailer; stuff like some Fatal Fury characters like Joe Higashi being in the background (peep Duck King playing guitar on the stage of Pao Pao's café!). Eagle-eyed SNK fans have also noticed that Terry's Critical Art in the trailer is a reference to his special attack from the Fatal Fury OVA (similar to Cammy White getting a special based off of a move she used in the Street Fighter II motion picture). But the real eye-opener here is Terry's Passing Sway where he can sidestep attacks entirely. There's a lot of history to this one: the original Fatal Fury games had a system where each arena had three "lanes" (the background, foreground, and middle). Players could make their characters switch lanes at the press of a button. It was a very early and rudimentary way of implementing a sense of three-dimensional stages in a 2D fighting game, the evolutionary ancestor to things like Rival Schools's Ditching mechanic. It also gave players a ton of strategy: you now have a new way of evading attacks and the added benefit of having another offensive option in the form of jumping in from a different plane. This was a key component of the old Fatal Fury games, and an example of the things that made SNK fighting games stand out from their competitors at Capcom. All of SNK's games had unique feel or mechanics, from Art of Fighting's spirit gauge, Samurai Shodown's POW gauge, or Fatal Fury's lanes. When fighting game aficionados talk about the brilliance of SNK's fighters, this is the stuff they're referencing. So to see this mechanic implemented as a part of Terry's kit in Street Fighter 6 is stunning. It's akin to Super Smash Bros: Ultimate going out of its way to give Steve his block-building abilities, or giving the Hero an actual menu you have to scroll through for his spells. I'm a little bitter when I point this kind of thing out; there are a lot of pundits who haven't done their homework about SNK, so when we get stuff like "Who is Terry Bogard?" or people wondering why so many of us older folks (or the Latin American fighting game community) holds SNK's fighters in such esteem. In the same way, it's unfair to pretend that PC games like Quake or the Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons games were isolated cases that are worth overlooking, a lot of gamers do themselves a disservice by just overlooking the arcade roots of major companies like Namco or SNK.

At any rate, things look good for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Look forward to it next year on the PS4, PS5, Xbox X|S, and Steam.

Nintendo's history is their biggest asset and it goes much farther than people think. Some of Nintendo's biggest initiatives in recent history are the ones that bank on this history. On that note, Nintendo announced they'll open a new museum in honor of their long-running history. The museum will be based on their old Uji Ogura plant in Okura City, Kyoto prefecture. This past week they even held a Nintendo Direct previewing some of the exhibits, hosted by Shigeru Miyamoto.

The museum is being constructed on the location of Nintendo's old hanafuda card plant; given Nintendo's history of making playing cards, they're putting a ton of effort into preserving that part of their history through exhibits and activities. There's a giant floor upon which you can play an interactive version of Hyakunin Isshu, as well as a room where you can paint your own hanafuda card with stencils. Nintendo also offers a lot of floor space for a lot of their old toys and games. Folks might remember that Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo's old creator of the GameBoy and the Game & Watch, also invented several of Nintendo's old toys like the Ultrahand (an extending hand toy). They also have several exhibits for things like Nintendo's old lightgun games (which would go on to inspire some of their Zapper games on NES/Famicom). There are also interactive exhibits for Nintendo's shooting gallery games--there's a lot of history for that. See, back in the '70s, bowling alleys were all the rage in Japan... until the worldwide energy crisis made going out for bowling impractical. Nintendo made a killing by remodeling a lot of old bowling alleys into laser shooting galleries. These shooting galleries let you shoot up Koopas and Bob-Ombs with your choice of either the Nintendo Zapper or the Super Scope. You can also play in little batting cages with tiny Ultramachines (old batting machine toys Nintendo made); these rooms have a ton of nifty secrets you can discover by hitting objects on the wall with the balls you hit. The Direct shows bottles spinning to show letters spelling out "MARIO" or "LUIGI" and other cute secrets. It's neat to see all these old toys given their place in Nintendo's history; I remember discovering a lot of them in the pages of Tips & Tricks magazine, as well as toys I didn't know about like an honest-to-God baby stroller Nintendo produced.

Of course, folks will want to see the video game exhibits--and those are plentiful! Nintendo has exhibitions for a ton of their first-party lineups on the NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, and so on. Nintendo is very extensive, going so far as to display not only the Japanese packaging for these games but also the American packaging. Humorously, Nintendo also has a hallway for playing Nintendo games with giant controllers. These would be two-person exhibits; a famous picture going around shows museum employees struggling to wave a giant Wiimote around.

There is some consternation over the museum; mainly, your museum pass includes ten coins with which you can access the interactive exhibits... which aren't enough to visit all of the exhibits in one go. It seems a bit stingy, but it makes the Nintendo Museum something like an Arcade. Chalk it up to another one of Nintendo's weird choices.

Currently, the museum is slated to open on October 2nd. There is currently a randomized drawing for tickets to the grand opening, but you'll also be able to buy tickets off of Nintendo's website.

Does it ever feel like Limited Run Games has lost its way? While there have always been some complaints about how LRG handles its releases, those complaints have only grown with the rate of LRG being involved with the official physical release of certain AAA games. And now you can add another body onto that pile: Limited Run Games is handling the physical release for one of the most famous video game characters ever.

Limited Run Games announced that they'd be producing a Collector's Edition release for the Blue Blur's upcoming Sonic X Shadow Generations. The Collector's Edition includes a lot of feelies, like keychains of Sonic and Shadow's iconic shoes, figurines of the ever-beloved Chao, an artbook, a steel case for the game, and another figuring--this time of Sonic and Shadow standing on top of a non-functioning Sega Dreamcast where the original Sonic Generations wasn't even released on. Oh, and remember: the PC version doesn't come with a physical version of the game: just a card with Steam key. Because "Forever Physical" means "except for PC games."

As mentioned earlier, a lot of collectors have taken issue with Limited Run Games, and the complaints have only gotten stronger. Once upon a time, LRG's business model made sense: make a temporarily available physical release for a certain game that only ever saw a digital release. This was supposed to help archive certain digital-only games, hence LRG's motto of "Forever Physical"--there was the belief that all games deserved physical releases. Of course, there were issues then: these releases being timed and pre-order only meant that if you missed out, you were SOL. LRG was also criticized for the numbering of their releases, which some took as encouraging FOMO among buyers to amass a "complete" collection of LRG games. Many others took issue with the model on account of how easy it was for scalpers to manipulate: nothing was stopping unscrupulous types from buying a ton of copies of a given game release and then flipping them on eBay afterward at inflated prices, especially if it was for a game with a particular amount of demand.

As time went on, these issues only got worse. For one thing, LRG's model meant that it could take months for your physical release to arrive at your home if not years. Looking through my records, I can find an order I made for several Shantae games I made on October 1st, 2020. My emails show that order didn't get shipped out until the following May 15th (a whole seven months later). My ordering of the Blaster Master Zero 1 and 2 sets were worse--those took a whole eight months to ship out. They've gotten better with this; I only waited three months between ordering Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony and receiving it. But the other issue people have taken umbrage with is the sheer amount of tack added onto some LRG releases, especially if these releases don't include a physical copy of the game. Which is supposed to be the entire motto behind the company. This came to a head when special-edition sets of Shiren the Wanderer: Tower of Fortune and Dice of Fate for PC; while it was originally advertised as including a physical copy of the game, this was quietly replaced in official releases with just a card with a Steam code. The only notification buyers received, that I can find, was a tweet from Limited Run Games CEO Josh Fairhurst. It doesn't seem like the news was very well-disseminated, and the explanations that "only 60 preorders were made, making a full run was prohibitively expensive" doesn't ring true, given the company's stated MO. Sure, little pewter statues of the Sophia tank are cute and I'd pay extra for an acrylic standee of Shantae, but more than that I'd want an actual physical copy of the game the set is for. What are we doin' here?!

There were cases of games getting distributed through Limited Run Games outside of their numbered releases, which on paper made some sense because they were smaller games from smaller studios--things like Hyper Light Drifter or Panzer Paladin. But now bigger games are also seeing LRG releases. I know Lollipop Chainsaw wasn't a huge industry darling or anything, but that game saw a physical release back in the day--why is the RePOP version a Limited Run Games deal? Persona 3 Portable is a remaster of one of Atlus' games from a flagship series--why is that being handled by Limited Run Games? And now Limited Run Games is handling a physical release for Sonic the Hedgehog--one of the most renowned and beloved video game characters of all time. It's just the Collector's Edition set, but why can't Sega handle the fancy-pants special edition of their flagship videogame mascot?

A lot of companies do want to bail on physical releases as soon as they can, if only for the extra percentage in profits that this could earn them. And like many other similar corporate decisions, this has no benefit for the gaming community. A lot of stooges really like insisting that games ought to be more expensive, since game prices have stagnated for so long, but that doesn't explain why a digital release is still priced the same as a physical release (especially since a digital release doesn't have to factor in matters like production or distribution of physical copies). And the lack of a physical copy means that you don't own anything; look at how fervent fighting game fans are towards copies of the upcoming Marvel Vs Capcom collection. They just went through over a decade of those games being completely unavailable because the rights expired on the most recent version of that game--they will not let that happen a second time! And I've brought up the plight of several Nintendo 3DS titles, as well: several of Nintendo's first-party games like Fire Emblem are now effectively incomplete as major DLC for those games are now unavailable with the shuttering of the 3DS eShop. And this includes whole games, like the brilliant Crimson Shroud or Attack of the Friday Monsters!. It doesn't help that there are fewer and fewer physical storefronts that sell games, especially with GameStop seeing the woes it is seeing.

I don't know what a solution to any of this would look like. I can't imagine a come-to-Jesus experience for corporate executives across the industry to stop being such ghouls ever happening. But we can always ask (politely) for people to do better. And if we can't ask Sega to do better, maybe we can ask Limited Run Games.

That'll do it for this week, I think. Once again, there are people rattling sabers about specific games and targetting folks over them; I'm urging my readers to ignore the incitements to harassment and hatred masquerading as "criticism" or "concern for the industry". The gaming industry has always featured a wide variety of voices in its creation and enjoyment. Gaming is something to be enjoyed and celebrated, not an exercise in finding new targets for axe-grinding. There are a million and one ways we can improve both the gaming industry and the community, as members of the community; spewing hatred isn't one of them. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.