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Digital Down-Low for 04/08/2022: Like Sliders, if John Rhys Davies was Macavity

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I have no access to my laptop and so have to make due tippy- tapping this thread on just my iPad. But it’s a big week, so I couldn’t in good faith leave it to the wayside.

So let’s kick things off with the most known property in this weeks new releases. Which is kind of odd as it’s a new release, and there are two full on remakes coming up, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga! Which is… another Lego Star Wars game, this time focusing on I guess all the main Star Wars movies. I really don’t know if there’s a non Main Nine Movies Lego Star Wars game, but… well… this one is 9 movies instead of three, so… there you go. Anticipate some pretty casual beat-‘em-up action alongside some slapstick goof-‘em-ups.
Live Long and Prosper with some of your favorite Star Warriors, like that guy with the scarf And Edward James Olmos

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Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition is next, and easily the thing I’m most excited for. And probably the thing the Talking anime collective is most excited for. Or at least it’s the number one choice from my gala poll. It’s a deeply gussied up rerelease of Chrono Cross, the Chrono Trigger sequel, and possibly the game I’ve had the greatest number of Hot and Cold takes about over the years. Instead of Back to the Future, its Sliders. And “Deeply gussied up release of one of the nicest looking PS1 games” is enough of a perk, even setting aside all the QoL improvements like a fast forward option and remastered music (and the ability to turn those things off for more vermilissitude) BUT there’s also a finally localized release of the visual novel the game was based of of, Radical Dreamers!

And it’s all coming out in the middle of my vacation, maximizing the amount of time I can play it! Nice!

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The House of the Dead Remake is… perhaps the most on the nose title for a video game since New Super Mario Brothers Wii. It’s a remake of The House of the Dead. And it looks pretty spiffy, certainly spiffier than the original as modern consoles are, on average, a great deal more powerful than the Sega Saturn.

Anway, railshoot your way through a house and kersplode all the zomboys you see inside. I can only presume that the joycons can be used as light guns, otherwise what are we even doing here?

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Sherlock Holmes: The Devils Daughter is a sleuth ‘em up about Britains favourite opioid addict, ol’ Sherly himself. he’s Dunn going to find out which murderer locked a room and was afoot!

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Chinatown Detective Agency is also about detectives in another time and place! But in this case it’s a futuristic China Town in the year CYBER CRIMES. Like Johnny Mnemonics and Shadowruns, and not, like… I unno… stealing credit card info and pretending to be foreign royalty.

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Astro Dogs is the non Chrono Cross game I’m most excited for this week, by merit of it looking a fair bit like Star Fox, and thats a recipe for getting right to the centre of my heart. Fly a dog down a tube and do an explosion on all the bad spaceships and big monsters that are inside it. Einstein would roll like a barrel if he ever heard of such a thing As a dog flying an airplane!

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The Last Friend is the OTHER dog-centric futuristic shooter this week! But instead of being like a Star Fox, it’s like a Plants vs. Zombies! Or maybe a beat-em-up. You know, depends on how you look at things. I choose to look at it as being like a video game where a guy puts a dog into a gun turret to explode encroaching monster hoards.

You know, one of those kinda games.

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Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
I was watching some gameplay of the PC version of Astro Dogs, and the flight movement just looked off (granted they were playing with a mouse), so it's a wait and see for me...
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
Thread is live a day early, here's what I've covered at the moment!

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is nine movies' worth of Star Wars (and DLC stoofs for other things) in one game! At one point I was more excited about this release...but then I learned that Traveller's Tales has some pretty shitty crunch culture to get these games out the door. So way to justify me usually only buying these when I can pay less money for them, I guess.

They're all the same basic frickin' game anyway.
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Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a remaster of that thing Kato did way back in The Day of Lavos! Recruit all kinds of wacky companions and explore a beautiful tropical setting as a teenage boy who ends up in an alternate reality where he's dead and all your friends from Chrono Trigger got fucked over.
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(There is no doggo in ACNH as floofy as Poshul but Harriet's good enough.)

And it also comes with Radical Dreamers, a visual novel which it's a heavily expanded adaptation of! Go explore a spooky manor full of death traps where everything is text-based.
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The House of the Dead: Remake is the classic zombie-shooting arcade game brought back from the dead with new HD visuals and gyro aiming. Forever Entertainment's remake record is pretty spotty (Panzer Dragoon was not well-received) but I'm curious how this will turn out. A light gun shooter where you control a gunsight is probably easier to adapt than a rail shooter where you move a dragon around.
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Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is another Frogwares adventure game starring everybody's favorite detective! Get your Sherlocking fix on the go with this game the eShop description doesn't say much of the plot about but I can only assume has to do with the little girl in one of the photos.
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Happy's Humble Burger Farm is a game where you work at a fast food restaurant, doing fast food stuff and trying not to get murdered by the creepy mascots as you look deeper into the history of the restaurant.
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Bibi & Tina - New adventures with horses is a game based on a licensed property I never heard of where a girl who's a witch and her non-witch best friend and her best friend's boyfriend go horse riding and use magic to fix broken tents and stuff.

Apparently this started off as a radio show before branching out into cartoons and movies...and the wiki page makes note that Tina gets jealous and hurt whenever she sees her boyfriend Alexander within the vicinity of a girl who's not her or Bibi. Way to teach kids to be possessive of their S.O.s at a young age I guess.
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Radioactive Dwarfs: Evil From the Sewers is an old school style top-down game where a bunch of killer dwarfs are kidnapping and eating people and you are a lady who's gone down to the sewers to shoot them all.
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And Traditional Braves is a no-budgety strategy RPG that has its characters represented on the field as squares with their art in 'em ala Terra Battle.
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MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
Heads-up, I might be going on hiatus 'cuz real life is getting real heavy right now.

But for right now, making these is a source of stress relief, so here's a few more!

The Last Friend has unfortunately been delayed on Switch. But there's still plenty of doggo options! Astro Dogs is a Star Fox-y rail shooter with good doggos. And if you have a Japanese eShop account and moneys you can get Metal Dogs this week, which is a rogue-like Metal Max spinoff starring dogs with heavy artillery! I think it has an English localization included!
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Mech Mechanic Simulator is a game where you fix up mecha. I think you can pilot them too!
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Axolotl is a game where a pink elephant goes platforming and climbing in a desert.
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And our Arcade Archives game this week is Pac-Land! It's not the first 2D platformer, but it does have a lot of the DNA of what would become the 2D platforming genre and was an inspiration on Super Mario Bros.

Anyway, help Pac-Man get a fairy home while those ghost monsters chase after you with whatever tools and vehicles they can find.
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MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
Here’s a shot of the player sprite in Axolotl:

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I can see how this could be read as an elephant, but I’m pretty sure it’s an axolotl. I would love to know how the cover art and text on the Switch store got made without someone pointing this out. Did they realise afterwards and decide to just go with it?
I assure you, I'm well aware the character sprite looks like an actual axolotl. I just assumed it was one of those cases where the description and cover art were intentionally off as a throwback to the days when people would just make up bullshit for a manual's localization. So what the hell, throw Chai in a pink bodysuit and swim cap.

I'd totally have Dr. Shrunk there if I had his Amiibo though. And Paolo, Animal Crossing's one pink elephant.
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
Looking at the publisher's catalog, I can definitely believe this could be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Is it possible this was localized from another language by someone who... just doesn’t know what an axolotl is?
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
"The role of Ms. Pac-Man will now be played by Mary Ann Mobley."
I knew this was going to be a problem later. Damn GenCom should have just sold the rights to Namco where they belonged in the first place. THANKS, AtGames. Was screwing up Genesis games not good enough for you?
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
Given its status in history as, effectively, one of the earliest romhacks out there could the rights to Ms. Pac-Man have ever become anything other than completely nonsensical?
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Played the first few levels of Astrodogs.

I love it.

Your ship is way more responsive than the Arwing is (admittedly, the game is also moving at a steady 60fps so that’s also making it seem faster) and has multiple weapons built in, which consume your special weapon energy at different rates. And you can turn on Bullet Time in order to take your time to target and explode large swathes of enemies at a time. There’s p8les of unlockables that are tied to getting high scores in levels, but there doesn’t seem to be branching paths through the game.

Also, the game is So Dog. The in game chatter is all pitched up woofs, the background music has some barks mixed in, the commands in the level Select are “STAY” and “GO”, level descriptions indicate if the planets population is chonky or Good Boys, and all the enemies are definitely robot drones so you don’t have to worry about exploding Bad Dogs
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Apparently they realized the mistake with Axolotl, as the elephant on the cover art has been airbrushed away and all instances of “elephant” on the eShop description have been updated with Axolotl.

Our weird dumb national nightmare is over
 
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