Happy Shark Week to one and all!
Kicking things off with the stealth update to NESflix last week, and it's... a real contender for being the most implausible update the service has had yet. ANd I know I say that every time, but *man* this is a weird selection; on the NES we have Daiva 6 (which I infer is a shooter, as the trailer was largely spent on the password screen...) and on the SNES we have Fighters History (a Street Fighter 2 knock-off so blatant that it was sued for copyright infringement) and Kirbys Avalanche a Puyo-Pop spin-off with Kirby characters added and also its revealed that Kirby is just a raging asshole.
Next up we have Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, the... umm... 6th Gunvolt game. But the first one to star a female protagonist. As before, it's Mega Man by way of X-Men, but based on the trailer, it seems to be toning down what always kind of put me off on the Gunvolt series, so I at least have my eye on it.
Enjoy dash jumps through Future City as you chop the hell out of robots and The Brotherhood of Evil Mega Men.
And speaking of 2D action games that hearken to things I love, we have Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony the other Metroidvania based on everyones favorite anime bullethell witches; the Touhous! And unlike Lunar Nights (which I liked well enough) this one looks to be learning HARD on the SotN comparisons.
I mean, it has "Symphony" right in the name and it stars the one that's half-dracula, it's not subtle.
Anyway, there's a demon castle that emerged from the mist, and a vampire lord ruling it, and so a Castlevania game happens inside it.
They added a whack of bonus tuff for anyone who played the original release, but I didn't know that this game existed until it showed up in the eShop preview screen, so I can't be overly excited by that!
And speaking of things that are based on things I know nothing about, we have Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimension which I am completely unsure if it's a video game spinoff or an original property or what. Totally in the dark here. That's what not doing research gets you; a lifetime full of surprises. I *think* it's all original. Anyway, it's an SRPG that sounds like it gears a bit younger than average for the genre with a kid what uses *imagination* to turn themself into an anime and then use stratactical gameplay to pound the bajeepers out of STELLAR HORROR BEASTS.
And speaking of SRPGs that may or may not be based on existing anime properties, we have Digimon Survive, which very much IS based on an existing property! And was originally supposed to come out in late 2020, so... it actually being released is a bit of a surprise and it showing up in this weeks thread is pretty surprising; NGL. Still think it's an elaborate long-con...
Anyway, while it's a Digimon game, it seems to be tonally more in line with the Cybersleuth games in that it's effectively a Megaten game by way of Tron, and if the average monster was much more merchandisable. In this case, it looks more like it's inspired by Devil Survivor than regular Megaten; buncha anime teens accidentally get plonked into a stitched-together mishmash Digital World which is swarming with... well... tron-y merchandisable folklore monsters.
Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a point-and-click adventure game starring a detective who is also a giraffe. Not, like... an antropomorphic giraffe. Just a regular one. One that's wearing a dapper waistcoat, I guess, but otherwise ints anatomy is what you might call "Giraffe-Standard". There's a murder what be afoot in it, and a giraffe can solve it.
Next up is definitely the biggest name release of the week; Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which I believe is the only game this week to use all three of those dimensions people are familiar with. While I've played all of the preceding Xenoblade games, I was largely overlooking this one, and the trailers don't really lay things out succinctly. I infer that it's looking to be a lot less dauting than the other entries of the series (hard not to be, honestly) and I feel safe assuming it's a sprawling SPRAWLING JRPG set on the backs of giant critters. And one of the screenshots in the eShop was of a battle scene and I had no idea how to parse what was happening in it.
Much easier to grasp is Avenging Spirit, which was supposed to come out last week, but got moved ahead to this week. The world simply wasn't ready for a game about an cute widdle-ghost that possessed people in order to use their bespoke abilities to murder the entire mafia and rescue your girlfriend after being gunned down. Like a combination of John Wick, Deadman and Kirby. Most notable thing here is that the only port the game got prior to this was on the Gameboy, of all places, where it looked and played so differently that it's basically unrecognizable.
And speaking of ports of 90s side-scrollers, we have Turrican Anthology Volume 1 and 2, which is... hard to unpack. There's some overlap with the existing Turrican Flashback collection in each of them, but not much, and these are largely the ports that didn't show up in that one. Volume 1 has the Amiga ports of Turrican 1 and 2, the SNES port of Super Turrican, the Directors Cut edition of Super Turrican (no idea what changed between the two) and the Score Attack Mode for Mega Turrican. Volume 2 offers Turrican 3 (Amiga) Mega Turrican, Mega Turrican: Directors Cut, Super Turrican 2 and Super Turrican Score Attack Mode.
So if you can follow all that, and have strong thoughts and feelings for the various releases of the Turrican series, your cup runneth over.
Kicking things off with the stealth update to NESflix last week, and it's... a real contender for being the most implausible update the service has had yet. ANd I know I say that every time, but *man* this is a weird selection; on the NES we have Daiva 6 (which I infer is a shooter, as the trailer was largely spent on the password screen...) and on the SNES we have Fighters History (a Street Fighter 2 knock-off so blatant that it was sued for copyright infringement) and Kirbys Avalanche a Puyo-Pop spin-off with Kirby characters added and also its revealed that Kirby is just a raging asshole.
Next up we have Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, the... umm... 6th Gunvolt game. But the first one to star a female protagonist. As before, it's Mega Man by way of X-Men, but based on the trailer, it seems to be toning down what always kind of put me off on the Gunvolt series, so I at least have my eye on it.
Enjoy dash jumps through Future City as you chop the hell out of robots and The Brotherhood of Evil Mega Men.
And speaking of 2D action games that hearken to things I love, we have Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony the other Metroidvania based on everyones favorite anime bullethell witches; the Touhous! And unlike Lunar Nights (which I liked well enough) this one looks to be learning HARD on the SotN comparisons.
I mean, it has "Symphony" right in the name and it stars the one that's half-dracula, it's not subtle.
Anyway, there's a demon castle that emerged from the mist, and a vampire lord ruling it, and so a Castlevania game happens inside it.
They added a whack of bonus tuff for anyone who played the original release, but I didn't know that this game existed until it showed up in the eShop preview screen, so I can't be overly excited by that!
And speaking of things that are based on things I know nothing about, we have Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimension which I am completely unsure if it's a video game spinoff or an original property or what. Totally in the dark here. That's what not doing research gets you; a lifetime full of surprises. I *think* it's all original. Anyway, it's an SRPG that sounds like it gears a bit younger than average for the genre with a kid what uses *imagination* to turn themself into an anime and then use stratactical gameplay to pound the bajeepers out of STELLAR HORROR BEASTS.
And speaking of SRPGs that may or may not be based on existing anime properties, we have Digimon Survive, which very much IS based on an existing property! And was originally supposed to come out in late 2020, so... it actually being released is a bit of a surprise and it showing up in this weeks thread is pretty surprising; NGL. Still think it's an elaborate long-con...
Anyway, while it's a Digimon game, it seems to be tonally more in line with the Cybersleuth games in that it's effectively a Megaten game by way of Tron, and if the average monster was much more merchandisable. In this case, it looks more like it's inspired by Devil Survivor than regular Megaten; buncha anime teens accidentally get plonked into a stitched-together mishmash Digital World which is swarming with... well... tron-y merchandisable folklore monsters.
Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a point-and-click adventure game starring a detective who is also a giraffe. Not, like... an antropomorphic giraffe. Just a regular one. One that's wearing a dapper waistcoat, I guess, but otherwise ints anatomy is what you might call "Giraffe-Standard". There's a murder what be afoot in it, and a giraffe can solve it.
Next up is definitely the biggest name release of the week; Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which I believe is the only game this week to use all three of those dimensions people are familiar with. While I've played all of the preceding Xenoblade games, I was largely overlooking this one, and the trailers don't really lay things out succinctly. I infer that it's looking to be a lot less dauting than the other entries of the series (hard not to be, honestly) and I feel safe assuming it's a sprawling SPRAWLING JRPG set on the backs of giant critters. And one of the screenshots in the eShop was of a battle scene and I had no idea how to parse what was happening in it.
Much easier to grasp is Avenging Spirit, which was supposed to come out last week, but got moved ahead to this week. The world simply wasn't ready for a game about an cute widdle-ghost that possessed people in order to use their bespoke abilities to murder the entire mafia and rescue your girlfriend after being gunned down. Like a combination of John Wick, Deadman and Kirby. Most notable thing here is that the only port the game got prior to this was on the Gameboy, of all places, where it looked and played so differently that it's basically unrecognizable.
And speaking of ports of 90s side-scrollers, we have Turrican Anthology Volume 1 and 2, which is... hard to unpack. There's some overlap with the existing Turrican Flashback collection in each of them, but not much, and these are largely the ports that didn't show up in that one. Volume 1 has the Amiga ports of Turrican 1 and 2, the SNES port of Super Turrican, the Directors Cut edition of Super Turrican (no idea what changed between the two) and the Score Attack Mode for Mega Turrican. Volume 2 offers Turrican 3 (Amiga) Mega Turrican, Mega Turrican: Directors Cut, Super Turrican 2 and Super Turrican Score Attack Mode.
So if you can follow all that, and have strong thoughts and feelings for the various releases of the Turrican series, your cup runneth over.
