I don't care how much photographic evidence you can bring that says otherwise; I simply do not believe Mickey Mouse is real. The whole idea is preposterous.
Kicking a tree and watching a beehive fall out and chasing me all over the yard this week is our latest N64 release for Nintendo Switch Online (which, sadly, I can not abbreviate as easily as I can "NESflix"), and it is Pilotwings 64. Which also marks the first time Pilotwings 64 has been re-released since 1997, presumably owing to the fact that the World Trade Center is in the game, and you can fly *awful* close to it with an airplane (or at least an airplane analog). In any case, it's back and it got a fancy pants remaster well above what most N64 ports on NSO have offered, as its running at a full 60fps and looks generally much cleaner. Take one of many Weird Flying Things and do challenges, and be challenged by them!
I don't know if this ends with a tense, exciting helicopter shootout like the original did, but maybe?
Next up is a game that just feels like it exists to taunt copyright protection lawyers; Thems Fightin' Herds, is a fighting game that was originally based on My Little Pony, then Hasbro looked at it and said "Well... no... no it isn't." BUT the peeps what made that cartoon said "Well I think it IS, actually" so they provided actual character designs for the game and they just changed the name.
Long story short, it's a fighting game where everyone is horses. It's apparently a very good fighting game where everyone is horses; and violence is magic
On the subject of bewildering corporate tie-ins, we also have Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher. Which takes the tried-and-true Monster Rancher gameplay and replaces all the existing monsters with Kaiju from Ultraman.
I love this premise, deeply, and I am completely on board with it, but that's a weird couple of properties to mash together, right?
And speaking AGAIN of weird crossovers... well, Mario and Rabbids used to be one, but then Kingdom Battle proved that it actually works extremely well to mash those two series together and make it XCOM. And so they did it again with Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. Based on early reports, this si very much an "If it ain't Broke" approach, as it really doesn't seem appreciably different from the first game. But, as noted, Kingdom Battle was inexplicably good, and remains one of the high points of the SRPG genre on the Switch, so I can understand them not wanting to stray from what clearly worked.
Explore scenic "Outer space", and kill flank enemies and stomp on their heads before Super Mario puts a bullet in their heads, execution style.
Touhou Gouyoku Ibun ~ Sunken Fossil World is the latest Touhou game. I think it's one of the competitive shmuppy-ones? I'm not sure, because the eShop description instead talks about the games plot (it's that oil mining, and also capitalism, is bad) and the screenshots are difficult to parse. It looks pretty though, I'll give it that.
And speaking of relentless gunfire, deceptively simple lore for how complex it appears, and how capitalism is bad (albeit less directly) we have Warhammer 40000: Shootas Blood & Teef, a Warhammer game that appears to be based more on Contra than a prohibitively expensive table top RPG. You, and possibly several buds, get to run through a whole bunch of levels with an Ork with customizable weapons, and proceed to explode the ever-cussin' mustard out of every damn fool that enters the screen. Presumably while screaming "WAAAAARGH" a bunch.
I understand screaming WAAAARGH while shooting things is very important to the Orks in this series.
And speaking of... I guess an excess of testosterone, we next got Beholgar, a troids-em-up starring a barbarian in a barbaric land and it looks all Turbografx-y.
Half the bulletpoints in the eShop are basically saying what a Metroidvania is, despite it being specifically referred to as a Metroidvania so... y'know... they know what kind of game this is, gotta give it to them for that much.
Persona 5: Royal is finally out on the Switch, which at last explains why the guy from this was in Smash Brothers Ultimate. Take a bunch of High School (college-aged?) anime Master Thieves out on the town in order to do High Profile Heists, which generally take the form of plonking into someones subconscious and solving their social problems by beating the ever-loving hell out of their personality flaws. I did not play Persona 5 in any of its previous forms, but I understand that some of these problems are resolved in ways that make you go "Uhhh...?"
Literally every text box looks real cool, can't take that away from them. The creative team had a goal and they reached it.
And we'll wrap things up with another game with a Whole Lot of Yammerin'; New Tales from the Borderlands, a sequel to Tales from the Borderlands, which was, itself, a spinoff of Borderlands. I understand Tales From to be the best that the series has to offer, despite lacking in lootin' and shootin', and indeed, this one lacks any of the things you'd expect from the franchise, like Vault Hunters or Handsome Jack; just three lovable losers who want to be lovable winners.
Unfortunately, it still has Randy Pitchford, but you can't win them all.
Kicking a tree and watching a beehive fall out and chasing me all over the yard this week is our latest N64 release for Nintendo Switch Online (which, sadly, I can not abbreviate as easily as I can "NESflix"), and it is Pilotwings 64. Which also marks the first time Pilotwings 64 has been re-released since 1997, presumably owing to the fact that the World Trade Center is in the game, and you can fly *awful* close to it with an airplane (or at least an airplane analog). In any case, it's back and it got a fancy pants remaster well above what most N64 ports on NSO have offered, as its running at a full 60fps and looks generally much cleaner. Take one of many Weird Flying Things and do challenges, and be challenged by them!
I don't know if this ends with a tense, exciting helicopter shootout like the original did, but maybe?
Next up is a game that just feels like it exists to taunt copyright protection lawyers; Thems Fightin' Herds, is a fighting game that was originally based on My Little Pony, then Hasbro looked at it and said "Well... no... no it isn't." BUT the peeps what made that cartoon said "Well I think it IS, actually" so they provided actual character designs for the game and they just changed the name.
Long story short, it's a fighting game where everyone is horses. It's apparently a very good fighting game where everyone is horses; and violence is magic
On the subject of bewildering corporate tie-ins, we also have Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher. Which takes the tried-and-true Monster Rancher gameplay and replaces all the existing monsters with Kaiju from Ultraman.
I love this premise, deeply, and I am completely on board with it, but that's a weird couple of properties to mash together, right?
And speaking AGAIN of weird crossovers... well, Mario and Rabbids used to be one, but then Kingdom Battle proved that it actually works extremely well to mash those two series together and make it XCOM. And so they did it again with Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. Based on early reports, this si very much an "If it ain't Broke" approach, as it really doesn't seem appreciably different from the first game. But, as noted, Kingdom Battle was inexplicably good, and remains one of the high points of the SRPG genre on the Switch, so I can understand them not wanting to stray from what clearly worked.
Explore scenic "Outer space", and kill flank enemies and stomp on their heads before Super Mario puts a bullet in their heads, execution style.
Touhou Gouyoku Ibun ~ Sunken Fossil World is the latest Touhou game. I think it's one of the competitive shmuppy-ones? I'm not sure, because the eShop description instead talks about the games plot (it's that oil mining, and also capitalism, is bad) and the screenshots are difficult to parse. It looks pretty though, I'll give it that.
And speaking of relentless gunfire, deceptively simple lore for how complex it appears, and how capitalism is bad (albeit less directly) we have Warhammer 40000: Shootas Blood & Teef, a Warhammer game that appears to be based more on Contra than a prohibitively expensive table top RPG. You, and possibly several buds, get to run through a whole bunch of levels with an Ork with customizable weapons, and proceed to explode the ever-cussin' mustard out of every damn fool that enters the screen. Presumably while screaming "WAAAAARGH" a bunch.
I understand screaming WAAAARGH while shooting things is very important to the Orks in this series.
And speaking of... I guess an excess of testosterone, we next got Beholgar, a troids-em-up starring a barbarian in a barbaric land and it looks all Turbografx-y.
Half the bulletpoints in the eShop are basically saying what a Metroidvania is, despite it being specifically referred to as a Metroidvania so... y'know... they know what kind of game this is, gotta give it to them for that much.
Persona 5: Royal is finally out on the Switch, which at last explains why the guy from this was in Smash Brothers Ultimate. Take a bunch of High School (college-aged?) anime Master Thieves out on the town in order to do High Profile Heists, which generally take the form of plonking into someones subconscious and solving their social problems by beating the ever-loving hell out of their personality flaws. I did not play Persona 5 in any of its previous forms, but I understand that some of these problems are resolved in ways that make you go "Uhhh...?"
Literally every text box looks real cool, can't take that away from them. The creative team had a goal and they reached it.
And we'll wrap things up with another game with a Whole Lot of Yammerin'; New Tales from the Borderlands, a sequel to Tales from the Borderlands, which was, itself, a spinoff of Borderlands. I understand Tales From to be the best that the series has to offer, despite lacking in lootin' and shootin', and indeed, this one lacks any of the things you'd expect from the franchise, like Vault Hunters or Handsome Jack; just three lovable losers who want to be lovable winners.
Unfortunately, it still has Randy Pitchford, but you can't win them all.
