Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Sammy Roberts, and I’m joined today by Matthew Castle. Hello. How’s things, Matthew? How are you keeping yourself busy during these ongoing, forever lockdown times? I’ve decided to play and replay some of the entire Yakuza series. Nice. We’ve got to do a Yakuza episode at some point, because- Yeah, I’ve got very patchy knowledge of it, and they recently added all of them to Game Pass. So I’m thrashing my way through Yakuza 1 or Kwami or whatever it’s called, which is a great use of my time. Yeah, we should get PC Gamer’s Phil Savage to come on that episode, and we could do a ranking or something. That might be fun. Oh, nice. But you’ve got to get through him first. That’ll take you another four years. Yeah, I’ve got a patchy record, so it’ll take me. I think if I’ve checked how long to beat, and I think it’ll take me about 600 hours. Yeah, I’m currently trying to finish Ghost Tsushima, and it won’t fucking end, Matthew. Like I thought, oh, wow, 45 hours. That’s got to be near the end, right? Nope, it’s like there’s a whole other island I haven’t even unlocked yet. I’m like, oh, I regret all the side quests I did in the first 10 hours of this game. Yeah, the problem with the island structure in that game is once you’ve cleared out one island, and then the big baddie moves to the second island, you kind of think to yourself, well, maybe I’ll just live on the first island, and it’ll be fine. Like, we’ve cleared this place out. This place is safe. Let’s just call it a day there, and who knows? Out of sight, out of mind. Yeah, it’s very serene here. Their base is gone. Our textile stores have reopened. Seems pretty good. I’ve learned a lot about a very inaccurate historically version of Japan, so yeah, it’s been good. Matthew, we’ve switched plans a little bit. We’ve recorded Best Games of 2007 episode. That was planned to go up the week that people are hearing this, but we’ve moved that a week so we can talk about the Nintendo Direct that dropped this week. So this was a big deal, right? I mean, the first big thing that happened in gaming this year, so we thought we’d do a little kind of reaction pod to it, really. Famously, everyone enjoys listening to you talk about old Nintendo games, Matthew. They’ve featured prominently in this presentation. So yeah, the Nintendo Direct, what did you kind of make of it, Matthew? Did you think it was a good livestream overall? Were you happy with the reveals? Uh, yes and no. I mean, like, it was only announced, what, like 24 hours beforehand. So it’s not like, oh, man, I was hanging on for weeks and weeks, and then this was it, you know. It’s quite strange, the kind of hype cycle that builds up so quickly around these Nintendo Directs, and then you have people who are, like, raging, and you’re like, well, this thing didn’t exist 24 hours before. It’s not like you’ve pinned your hopes on it for, like, a year, unless just the general concept of a Nintendo Direct is so exciting that people do do that. I don’t know. There’s this weird stat doing the round of, like, it’s their first Direct in, like, a year and a half or something, which I thought, is that right? That can’t be right. Like, if you don’t count the mini Directs they do, I think maybe people got a bit excited for this one because they thought, oh, this is going to be, like, a biggie. This is where you’re going to get your Switch Pro or Breath of the Wild 2. So I think, yeah, there was some anticipation grew out of nowhere. But actually, I think, just taken for what it is, there was plenty of fun bits. Yeah, I quite liked it. I thought that the expectations were settled very nicely by Nintendo. They said it will be for existing games, the likes of Super Smash Bros Ultimate, as well as games coming out in the first half of this year. And to be fair to them, they talked about games that are coming out beyond that. There are some 2022 games in there. So, yeah, but do you not find that Twitter is just extra awful when it’s a Nintendo Direct but also a pandemic? Those two things mixed together are like a fucking nightmare. It was a night of many mutes. That’s what it was last night on Twitter. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I think, you know, there are within Nintendo, there are so many like individual fandoms and everyone pins their hope on their particular corner of the fandom being well fed. And so, you know, the idea of this magic Nintendo Direct that’s going to please everyone is very, very hard. I would say this one kind of managed to announce a lot of stuff without announcing like any of the traditional biggies. You know, it was almost like everything you could possibly do to not announce, you know, one of your major kind of games. So that was quite impressive. There was a light sort of not trolling element, but there was almost a hint of that with some of the Zelda stuff at the end, where it was like, we’re not going to talk about this, but we are going to talk about that. And it’s the this that everyone wants and it’s the that no one wants, which I quite enjoyed, but we’ll get to that. But yeah, to see people who are like, oh, we’re going to see Metroid Prime, we’re going to see Breath of the Wild, we’re going to see the next Mario. You’re like, come on. If you’re ever going to have an episode of Stuffed as That, it will be their E3 episode. That just doesn’t happen any other time. Yeah, I’m inclined to agree. I feel like the sort of sense was that if you’re like a Pokemon fan, for example, and you’re waiting for like a remake of a certain Pokemon game, which I understand is like a thing that’s happening in that community right now. Yeah, it probably does seem like a lesser sort of deal. But no, I found plenty there to like. So what I’ve done Matthew ahead of this is I’ve made like a list of 12 highlights from the show. There’s some stuff I missed, like I didn’t feel like we need to talk about Fall Guys coming to Switch. Not really the biggest Fall Guys fan. I understand why it’s very appealing to people. It’s very much like junk food for the brain in the same way that Rocket League was for me for about five years. So I understand. I understand. But Matthew, is there anything like about Nintendo Directs overall that you kind of had thoughts on from like working in media? How important did they become to you? Because I feel like they’re a major sort of master straight by Nintendo in how they talk to their audience after, you know, a number of widely mocked E3 conferences where they seem to get the tone wrong. But these have always seemed to be sort of just right. What’s your sort of overall vibe on them? They were, yeah, they were like massive. I mean, you know, when we were making the mags, you know, often they were like mini E3s through the year. And when you are as desperate and starved for games and information as we often were, like that was it, you know, whenever they announced one of these things. And they used to announce them a bit more, you know, like two weeks in advance or something. You’d have a bit more time. You know, it would really be kind of, you know, all hands to the pumps for that. You know, you basically guarantee like a huge chunk of your magazine could be filled with whatever was inside it. I mean, sometimes that didn’t work out. Like, I remember we’d, you know, on our flat plan, which is the big plan you use to plan each issue, you know, we’d often have put, you know, it’d be like a gamble of how many blank pages do you just leave for whatever Nintendo Direct is. And sometimes it works out great. You know, sometimes you put aside like 16 pages and then it’s, you know, that’s the one where they announce Breath of the Wild and they had show off Wind Waker HD for the first time and, you know, various other things. And you’re like, well, this is fantastic. This is like easy peasy. Just bang in some big old screens. And there’s so little information that you can basically be really comprehensive. Other times you put aside that space and then it’s all a little bit like, here’s a Rabbids game. And you kind of scream into your fist and think, what the hell am I going to do? There was a lot of like deadline stress with these because you’d be trying to hold your cover. If you knew there was a Direct, you’re trying to hold your cover back, you know, as long as you can, because, you know, people don’t know the cover gets printed earlier than the rest of the mag. You have to send it off earlier. So be trying to push the deadlines on things to just desperately, you know, wait for the, you know, a better cover hit or even a better cover story to suddenly emerge from it. So, yeah, they were pretty massive. I mean, they were huge for the internet as well. You know, obviously, you know, everyone is competing with that information competing to be first. So there’s all that. And you may not think that pressure exists in print, given the running and the kind of lengthier deadlines and whatnot. But they were still like massive things, you know, plenty of issues made and broken by good and bad Nintendo Direct. So, yeah, I kind of when I like watching them now as a punter, but they also give me the fear a little bit. So I think it just takes me back to that time of like, you know, please be good. You know, this, the mag depends on it. If I had to like ask you to take a punt out of the 12 highlights we’ve put here, how many of the games in there do you think would have made like good O&M or NGamer covers? Oh, like none. Oh, really? Because I would have guessed like three or maybe two. Um, yeah, like in terms of like familiarity, like if we were desperate Mario Golf, because Mario is in it, right, like get Mario on the cover, but it’s still Mario Golf. I mean, of all the things you want Mario to be doing, playing golf is pretty far down the list, I’d say. Um, you know, I’d much rather have him dressing up as a cat than playing golf. Yeah. Um, and we did put, and we put Luigi playing golf on the cover before, as we talked about in Covers from Hell. Yeah, famous, famous cover. Yeah, a lot of these, yeah, not really. Nothing jumped out as like, holy, you know, Skyward Sword, like, could have maybe led, like, a year of Zelda celebrations. But they didn’t announce, you know, it’s like, Skyward Sword HD leads our Zelda special. But it would have only been Skyward Sword HD and not very special. All right then Matthew, well, that’s a good kind of prelude to us firing through these announcements with a little bit of commentary. So I had, like, one more observation actually in terms of an overall pattern here. I noticed motion control making a little bit of a comeback. At least, like, I feel like Nintendo doesn’t talk all that much about how important motion control is to the games it’s already got on Switch. But here it felt like they were actually keen to draw a bit, slightly more attention to the fact that the Joy-Cons can be used almost like Wiimotes. Did you pick up on that? Yeah, there was a bit more. I mean, to be honest, I found Nintendo’s relationship with the Joy-Cons pretty strange through most of Switch. Like, at the start, there were, you know, specific Joy-Con tech demos, for want of a better word, your kind of one-two Switch and things like that, you know, and then which is quite old, you know, that’s almost like Wii kind of thinking and Wii kind of marketing that they used to do. And then, yeah, it was almost like the interest, I don’t know if the interest wasn’t there, or, you know, plenty of games have interesting Joy-Con bits and bobs, but it’s never the focus. So, yeah, like, sometimes you can forget, I think, and you’re like, oh, yeah, they are pretty, pretty amazing motion controllers. So, you know, it’s good that they’re getting a bit of love, but they were definitely a bit more love in this episode than, you know, the last couple, maybe. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, I’ll talk a bit more about what I was surprised to learn about them when we get to them. But let’s kick off then, Matthew. So, the first big announcement was Pyra and Mithra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 being added to Smash Bros Ultimate. That’s coming next month in March. So, I don’t, we’ve talked about Smash Bros before. It’s kind of a series you’re slightly, you don’t have, like, massive feelings on beyond the sort of fan service anger. Yeah, I loved it, loved it, loved it on N64 and Gamecube because I played loads of it with my brother but I just don’t really have the time to play it and love it as much as it is, you know, in my current life. Yeah. Did you have any opinion on these? Because I thought, first of all, because I don’t really know much about Xenoblade Chronicles, I thought, oh, this is some kind of Namco Tales RPG because there are, like, anime women with large breasts and so that’s probably what they’re announcing. And I was actually quite surprised to learn that these are like Nintendo-owned characters. Yeah, Xenoblade Chronicles has got two, specifically, it’s got like a really weird art style. A lot of the individual characters, they’re all sort of designed by different people. I think they even got, like, the artist’s name on them in game, you know, it’s like one of its selling points is that they’ve got all these different sort of anime artists. And because of it, some of them are like very traditional and quite demure. And some of them are basically just like breasts with feet. It’s pretty, I mean, some of them are just like, baffling, like just physically, you think, how can this body like function? It is odd. This announcement, like, it doesn’t surprise me at all, really. I mean, you know, it’s pretty much the only first party thing they haven’t put in at this point. There’s got to be a Monster Hunter character at some point. I’m amazed that they haven’t put in, you know, the Monster Hunter, or, you know, a kind of generic character with all those weapons, because just the relationship with the game is so tight on Nintendo. That’s quite puzzling to me. Yeah, it might be good promo for that Rise game they’ve got coming up as well. Yeah, I just feel like it’s… Yeah, it’s odd that this came like so late in the DLC lineup, because Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you know, isn’t massively relevant. Like at first, I thought, oh, is this like Xenoblade Chronicles 3? Like, I’d be down with that. I mean, you know, I really love Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you know, despite its bizarro creature character design. Or maybe because of it, secretly. Oh, yeah. Welcome to The Back Page After Dark. It’s erotica from now until 3am. I would describe some of those characters as erotica. No, that’s not what it is. It sure is something. But also hearing a, I know this is just part of like the voice acting in the game, hearing a northern British accent in a Japanese RPG, very quaint. I like that. That’s like the big Xenoblade thing is it’s all kind of British regional accents. It was the same in the first game. I quite like it. It’s quite a fun sort of selling point of it. There’s a Scottish woman, I think she’s called Morag, with a very nice Scottish accent. Okay, good stuff. Yeah, I mean, I was, I think some people were saying, oh, not more characters with swords. But I was kind of there thinking, well, like all Smash Bros players, I’m sure I just wish that a character that I knew and liked was in the lineup instead of one I don’t really know. So yeah, that’s the takeaway. So Matthew, number two, Outer Wilds is coming to the Switch this summer. No release date given beyond that, but that’s good news, right? Yeah, fantastic news. My second favorite game of the generation, I believe. I put it there. It’s been a while since we recorded that episode. Yeah, a really fantastic game. I actually thought this might be a bit beyond the abilities of the Switch, because despite its relative visual simplicity, there’s an awful lot going on. And, you know, I swear I’d heard them talking about, like, the challenges of getting it working on Xbox and whatnot. You know, I think it’s quite a task. Yeah, I hope people go nuts for this, because it’s, you know, I genuinely think it’s one of the all-time greats. Maybe even a maybe like a better fit for Nintendo in that it’s like slightly cartoony and, you know, a bit more of a sort of friendlier world on the surface than maybe what you’d associate with Xbox. It’s just a great game. More people play out wild, the better. Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing as you, because even with my 1080 Ti graphics card, it still seems to have a few problems with stuttering. So I’m wondering, like it said visuals not final. When it comes out, will it look like fucking R-Type DX on the Game Boy Color or something? That would be cool. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, it’s got like an art style, though, that I think you can dial back without it becoming too ugly. Like it’s quite chunky and simple. You know, it’s more like the scale of the thing that’s impressive rather than the specifics. So I think you could probably lose some stuff, but that’s still like, you know, it’s basically having to simulate this entire solar system at all times because of various gubbins where you can basically zip across it. And it’s a pretty complex simulation. Yeah, I will play this game this year. That’s on the list. If Ghost of Tsushima ever fucking ends, then I’ll move on to that. So next up, Matthew, an exciting one. Famicom Detective Club, two adventure games released in 1988 for the NES, being remade or basically modernized and brought out on the Nintendo Switch. This is the only announcement where I WhatsApp you because I was like, holy fuck, this is the most Matt Castle thing I’ve ever seen. Is that the vibe you got from it? Yeah, very much so. These are games which I’ve never played. There are English language patches for the Famicom versions. They never got released outside of Japan. They’re kind of interesting. They come from… They’re actually written slash created by Yoshio Sakamoto, who is Mr. Metroid and Mr. WarioWare. He’s kind of like… I always think of that. They’re Nintendo R&D1, which is kind of like back in the day was like Gunpo Yukai’s team. They’re the kind of Game Boy hardware, slightly oddball stuff. You know, they’re slightly kind of weirder. I think they’re less celebrated generally as creators than like Miyamoto and the kind of Super Mario Brothers gang, which is a shame because they’ve done some interesting stuff. And there was an absolutely brilliant GDC talk about probably about 10 years ago now where Sakamoto, I think it was in the lead up to Metroid Other M, was talking about like his design philosophies and his process. And he was talking quite a lot about these games, despite them never having come out in English. And I remember back then thinking, oh, it’s such a shame, you know, that we weren’t able to play these because I remember him talking about being like really inspired by the films of Dario Argento, which is like Miyamoto when you go, hey, why do you make Donkey Kong? You know, he never says like Suspiria. That doesn’t happen in Miyamoto interviews. So just for that, like part of me is like, I’m kind of really interested to see that. And people who have played these and whether in the patched version or the original Japanese, speak quite highly of them. They’re meant to be pretty good. Kind of visual novel, kind of slightly spooky mysteries. Very not traditional Nintendo fare, really. Yeah, I’m really curious to know what the mindset was behind retrieving these. Because I am kind of ambitiously aware of like a sort of fan appreciation for these games. And a kind of like a small cult audience, I guess, that’s built up because of the fan translation. But yeah, internally, I’d love to know where these came from. Yeah, I think the fact that they’re still calling them like Famicom Detective Club speaks to the fact that they know this is like a bit of a niche interest. I think they’re presenting this as a deep cut. They could have easily renamed this, you know, just Detective Club or, you know, Adventure Detective Gang or something. But by putting Famicom in there, it’s kind of, I don’t know, it’s like leaning into the appetite in the West, I think, for like, you know, Japanese games in quite a pure form, I think, is the thing. Yeah, good stuff. I look forward to playing those. I think they’re out in May. I didn’t actually put that in my notes here, but I’m pretty sure. Yeah, I believe so. Cool. So next up, Matthew, it’s a Mario Golf Super Rush, launching June 25th. We talked about this before. Your sort of vibe on Mario sports games is the first ones on the N64 were generally the best. And do you think that’s going to remain the case here? Or did you like what you saw? Oh, yeah, I sort of stick with my thoughts that it’s generally downhill from N64 with these sports games. I think that’s fair. I think some people aren’t alike. There are a few rare fans who are just nuts for Mario Tennis or Mario Golf, who I think have forced themselves to like these games. Through gritted teeth, they’re like, this is so much fun. I quite like the thing where they were like legging it up the golf course. I thought that was quite funny. Multiplayer mode, the simultaneous. Yeah, where it’s just sort of like, just total kind of chaos of it was quite good fun. But yeah, you kind of have to get these in your hands to know if they feel okay. They often feel fine, but then the structure around them is a bit bland or a bit flat. Yeah, I just don’t know why these sports games have been a bit off. Maybe people will write in and tell me I’m wrong and that they’re not off. But if you just look at Metacritic, for example, it’s generally like games that start in the 90s on N64 and are now kind of hovering around the mid 70s. And it’s just been worse, worse, worse every time. But at the same time, this has been a generation where generally lots of Nintendo things have been very good. Lots of series have been good. They put their best foot forward. Maybe they’re going to hold them to account and make sure it’s sort of up to standards. Yeah, this is another one where they… Well, this is the first one I think, actually, where they brought out the motion control thing and showed you could do the old kind of like holding the Joy-Con like a golf club and swinging it in order to play, which I thought was interesting. That actually kind of brings more alarm bells to me, though, that makes me kind of excited about it. I also think about how, like, if you want a sort of like a rich, good sort of party game, golf game, everybody’s golf has sort of surpassed those like Mario alternates on PS4. Everybody’s golf games are very, very good, so it’d be nice if this one was up to the same standard, because you’re kind of in an ideal world. All these games would be as good as like Mario Kart is, as a party game. Yeah, that’s what you’d hope. Yeah, it’s hard. Like, I do struggle to cast my mind back to, like, what the conversation was around these games on N64 and why they were particularly good. Like, you know, I haven’t gone back to them in, you know, probably 20 years or something, so it’s kind of quite hard to gauge, you know, remember, you know, what they got right, and maybe it was just the split-screen multiplayer was definitely a big part and maybe just, you know, the age of local multiplayer softened a bit. I don’t know. It’s a weird one. Maybe I’ll do a deep dive into Mario sports games and dig into them. I’m glad that it’s not Mario Strikers. I forgot to mention that in the 2007 episode, which you’ll be getting next week, yeah, Mario Strikers came out and we had to play loads of Mario Strikers online and it was absolutely rotten as hell. But I’ll save that for another time. Yeah, I look forward to it. Previously undiscussed but now confirmed Mario sports episode of The Back Page. No, I’m up for that. I think people might have an affinity for the Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf as well, which is like an RPG element to it or a story element. I’m vaguely recalling that though. That’s not based on original research, so I’ll just move on. Matthew, No More Heroes 3, releasing August 27th. That was one of the coolest things they had there, I thought. It was nice to see that No More Heroes is now just considered part of the… I don’t know. I feel like Nintendo sees it as part of the Wii canon or their recent history and sort of treating it like it’s a kind of, I don’t know, like a second-party game or something, even though I think that Grasshopper is self-publishing it. What did you make of it? I thought it looked like pure No More Heroes to me, like a kind of action game, like really kind of like a sort of a reverent anime nonsense. I was well up for it. What about you? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it’s… You’re right, it does sort of belong to Nintendo, even though it was on… They ported it, didn’t they, to 360 and PS3? Definitely PS3. I think Konami did. I have vague memories of that. I don’t think it ever really got a foothold there. It was… Yeah, No More Heroes is a strange one. I absolutely loved the first one. The second one kind of left me cold a bit. This one, like looking at the trailers, it’s kind of hard to gauge where it’s going to sit because the kind of the, you know, the whole, you have to do all the boring shit to kind of get to the exciting bosses is kind of like classic No More Heroes. The second game lost something, like the characters weren’t quite as good or the boss fights, you know, they’re a bit too over the top or the pacing was off on it. There were numerous problems I had with it. So it’s hard to kind of, really hard to gauge until you’ve actually played this one. Look, I’ll definitely play it and, you know, it looks like it’s got loads of weird, is it alien stuff going on? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. Alien invaders. That’s the kind of key art is Travis touchdown face to face with a big alien dude. Yeah, but they had like, you know, I saw them tweeting out like the voice cast list and, you know, there’s lots of returning characters and lots of remaining characters from No More Heroes 1 and the voice actors. You know, that’s quite sort of nostalgic. So it’s quite a bit of time now passing and it’s quite nice that he’s kind of getting this gang back together. Incidentally, side note, one of the great NGamer features that never came together, I don’t think I’ve spoken about this before, was when I was so into No More Heroes and I said, let’s do a feature where we interview all the assassins, all the voice actors from that game. So we’ll just get every single assassin, we’ll ask some fun questions and da da da. And so I basically set about trying to get together. I’m what was probably about 15 voice actors when you factor in a few side characters. And I got like half of them and it never felt like I had enough to do the feature. Like it felt like it was all or nothing. So I ended up with like pages of interviews with like all these random voice actors. Weirdly, I ended up on one of them, one of their, I must have ended up on one of their email, one of the voice actors like email lists and they kept sending me their like Christmas round robin letters. So I’d get these guys saying like, oh, it’s been a great, you know, great year for like, you know, Marcy and the kids or whatever. And I’d be like, oh, I don’t really know what to say to this. But that’s when I saw those names again, I was like, oh, yeah, that feature I never delivered. But sort of sat half done. That would have been a great feature. But there you go. That’s a great idea. Like I sort of had a similar feature with When Hotline Miami 2 came out, I wanted to interview a bunch of musicians about what affected having your music in Hotline Miami 2 do for, you know, your kind of reputation or whatever, or how do you feel about it being in the game? And I got three of them. But again, it didn’t feel like enough. So I just sort of gave up on it because I was an editor and I was too busy to actually do shit other than make a magazine. So yeah, I was curious, though, did you get the guy? I think it’s Richard McGonagall, the guy who’s like clearly Sully, who plays the like baseball singing guy. In No More Heroes 1, did you get him? I don’t know. I didn’t. No. That’s the one I think everyone remembers of the bosses, or at least like that’s the one that comes to mind for me, because that’s such an iconic entrance for a boss. But yeah, it’s quite funny in No More Heroes because I, the guy who plays Travis Touchdown, whose name escapes me now, but he’s in everything. And he was basically, he voiced a lot of the generic gods in Metal Gear Solid 3. And the problem is everything that he does just sounds like Travis Touchdown. And I remember playing Metal Gear Solid 3 later and it just sounds like Travis Touchdown is in the game, like being silly. Like he’s saying all these sort of, he’s like if Travis Touchdown was like, what was that noise? And you know, where’s the guy gone? And all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it’s quite jarring. Yeah, Robin Atkin Downs, I believe. Robin Atkin Downs, that’s his name, yeah. Yeah, he is the main character in 2009’s The Saboteur as well, where he is basically Irish Travis Touchdown, like liberating Paris from Nazis, basically. I think they get quite touchy if you ever bring this stuff up. I won’t mention who, but I talked to a prominent voice actor once and was like, oh yeah, I always know when it’s you. And they seem like really offended, that as if to say like, oh, one note, it’s that voice. It’s that one voice you’ve got. I mean, it’s not his fault. He’s got a voice, you know. Conversely, we’re getting way off topic here, but conversely, I did interview the guy who played Tidus in Final Fantasy X and told him that I played the game for 400 hours. And he went, God bless you. That was his response. He should have done the crazy laugh. Yeah, that’s what should have been his response. Imagine if that was his natural laugh. He discovered that in the interview and you’re like, what the fuck? Oh man, yes. What a hard life you’ve had. My one remaining thought of this is that, yes, I did think it looked a bit more like No More Heroes 1 than No More Heroes 2, which was much more of a boss rush. Maybe like a bit of a blend of the two, because it seemed like there was quite a heavy minigame presence in there too. And some weird sort of like a JRPG screen comes up at some point, which suggests some quite inventive stuff going on. But it looked like you were doing jobs and there was a bit more of a kind of, I don’t know, that lazy sort of Santa Monica vibe of the first one that I really liked. Even though there were lots of boring patches, but they did add something. They did add some kind of texture to it that I really liked, you know. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I’ve got, yeah, you know. I got hopes for this one. Cool. All right. Neon White, Matthew. This was a new game announced by Annapurna Interactive, who, games journalists get very excited about because they publish lots of different games. I believe one of the Donut County developers is working on this. It looked like a kind of shooter where you kind of like burn cards to do shooter moves. But I must confess, I did get my phone out halfway through the trailer for this one, and that’s all the information I have retained. Did you have any thoughts on this one? At least you’re honest. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it looked like Paradise Killer if it had a shooting game in it. Yeah, it did look, what was it about the sort of perspective and the setting that did remind, the colour palette was different, but there is something weirdly similar about it, isn’t there? Yeah, I don’t know, just like the building architecture or something, there was just something slightly unreal about it. Yeah, very hard to put your finger on, but like at first I thought, wait, is this their thing? Is this their next thing? Yeah, it looked cool. I have much sophisticated to add to this one. You know, it’s a very like Annapurna game, whatever that is. You just know it when you see them. Like whenever the Annapurna thing comes up at the start of a trailer and then the trailer happens, you’re like, oh yeah, I get this. Like I get why they went for this. Yeah, no matter what it is, there’s either something a little bit more going on, I don’t know, in the kind of like the intellect behind the game or the type of art direction, the style of it. There’s just something a little bit, there’s a through line. I can’t quite figure out what it is. They’re all games which I, if they were people, would be too cool to hang out with me. I think that’s the thing. It’s people I’d admire them, but I’d absolutely blow it if I tried to talk to them, I’d like mumble and end up saying something weird and they’d be like, yikes. That’s my vibe of an Annapurna game. That’s probably what they’re looking for. I imagine that’s written somewhere in their internal documents. Yeah, I would think so. There you go, Matthew, that’s some great insight. So next up, Miitopia coming to Switch on May 21st. I looked at this and thought, I don’t know who this is for, I don’t know what the point of this is, but I’m sure the whole Miitopia thing maybe means more to Matthew than it does to me, so what do you reckon? Yeah, I’m going to have to put my hand up here and say this is a little bit post-ONM, this is a kind of a game that falls slightly into my blind spot as a Nintendo person. It’s a 3DS game, it was a 3DS game, tied to Street Pass. You know, like a big version of Street Pass Quest. God, I really hope I’m not wrong on this. This is just a game I have not played and I’ve not written one word about. But all I know is that when the thing came up, I thought, oh, that’s odd. That was like a definitive 3DS thing and it tapped into something only the 3DS can do, which is Street Pass. So I don’t really get what the appeal of it is and I should probably read more about that game before I did the podcast. But then I didn’t, as you can tell now. Neither did I, but it’s out on May 21st. Hooray! I like the Miis. I think it’s a shame that they don’t have masses to do. They kind of hit gold with the Miis on the Wii and then they were quite front and centre on the Wii U and on 3DS and on Switch. They’re kind of there, but they’re not like, you know, essential things anymore. Yeah, I did love the Catherine’s observation about how turning on the Wii U now, and like the Miis plus, there is like, you know, basically like a pandemic town. Bleak, but hilarious. Yeah, OK, we’ll move on from that one then, Matthew, because we have no further foot thoughts, clearly. So Project Triangle Strategy, an RPG, a strategy RPG in the Octopath Traveler visual style published by Square Enix and coming in 2022. There’s a demo out now. This was probably one of the highlights of the whole thing, right? Like Octopath Traveler, not something I got into. I know Catherine was big into it. The writing didn’t do much for me, but it definitely looked amazing. And I thought this was a really kind of cool looking, sort of like, you know, kind of Disgaea styles or Final Fantasy Tactics side on sort of Japanese RPG. What do you make of it? Yeah, I love the look of it. I’m like intrigued, like, who the talent behind this is. I don’t know if that’s come to light yet through the demo. You know, it’s because I’m out at the time. Lots of people are like, oh, yeah, this feels like Matsuno, Final Fantasy Tactics, all very exciting. And, you know, often with these games, if you have one of those, like, legendary developers involved, it kind of solidifies that excitement a bit. Yeah, but, you know, as it stands, yeah, you know, I love that visual style of that engine. I love Square Enix’s commitment to, like, making, like, pretty fancy, shiny, exclusive things for Switch, like treating kind of, you know, Nintendo fans with respect. You know, one of my huge bug bears from all my time on Nintendo Mags was, you know, basically when third parties were desperate for a slice of the Wii pie and the sum of the crap they gave you to try and get a slice of the pie was incredibly depressing. But I feel like Square Enix have always, you know, from the Wii forwards, they’ve always been there. They’ve always made some really spectacular, special feeling stuff. Whether it’s exactly, you know, your deal, you know, varies from genre to genre, obviously. But yeah, this kind of continues that tradition. Yeah, I thought this looked cool. Like I had a lot of interesting ideas. I love the fact they’re putting out this demo to get like feedback and try and kind of tighten it up or whatever for 2022. Yeah, like, and they shouldn’t change the name. It’s a great name. It’s sort of like it felt like a name that came from a publisher where maybe the Japanese part of the company is calling the shots more than the Western part of the company. That was the vibe I got from the name. Yeah, it was quite fun. I saw on Twitter, I think it was one of the chaps who used to work at Platinum Games was talking about this, saying that all these Project blah blah blah games when they get announced, he’s just like, all the Japanese developers just think it sounds really cool in English. So they’re just like, that’s probably why. You know, that’s often the thing behind it. It’s just like a load of people going like, yeah, that sounds badass. Let’s call it that. Project whatever is fun. Yeah. Do you know, I have a real affinity for the Square Enix games on DS and PSP. Like that generation of like handheld games they made, they were really fucking good at it. Like they made Crysis Core, they made a really like full featured Kingdom Hearts game for PSP, and like The Third Birthday, Dissidia. They made all these like really strong sort of games, Tactics Ogre, there’s like a whole bunch of them, particularly on PSP, but some of the DS ones are really good as well. They did some really nice Final Fantasy ports, they did some nice stuff with Dragon Quest. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You can get all the Dragon Quests, get more or less all of them on DS and 3DS. So yeah, I kind of, when I, Octopath Traveler, I just wish they’d do more of that kind of stuff, like why not a bespoke Final Fantasy for the Switch, you know. Anyway, yeah, but it looked great, and yeah, I’m glad people were excited about it. And they’re like games that they feel like they can actually like deliver on, and quite a few, like this, whoever the masterminds are behind this, whatever, they’ve got a weird name, like 25D Division or something. Like they’ve made a lot of games, you know, across 3DS, you know, this week as well, you know, or you’re about to get Bravely Default 2, that feels like it comes from the same kind of group of people. Yeah, Octopath Traveler wasn’t that long ago, compared to like the wait for the next Final Fantasy 7 remake or whatever. It’s just a super efficient kind of team, making loads of good games. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I look forward to that one. So Matthew, another one that’s very much in your wheelhouse, World’s End, oh, it’s just called World’s End, World’s End Club. That’s coming to Nintendo Switch on May 28th. It originally launched on Apple Arcade last year. What’s your sort of take on this? I remember you saying to me that it was in a slightly rough state when it launched on Apple Arcade, but you were looking forward to it being complete down the line. Yeah, it’s… So, the Apple Arcade, when I play, I’ve got, like, an Apple TV, so I don’t have an Apple phone or anything to… iPhone… to, you know, so maybe the control scheme works better, but on the weird little touchpad, Apple TV controller was a bit grim. Also, like, production values-wise, it was quite rough around the edges back then on the Apple TV. Again, I don’t know if that might just be an Apple TV thing. Weird game from the makers of Danganronpa and Zero Escape. So they’ve, I think, both left their respective companies and have their own company now. It’s the vibe I get. That may be wrong. I may be getting that confused, but they make a lot of stuff together. This was, I think this is directed by the Danganronpa director, but kind of created and written by the Zero Escape guy. And it’s very, very similar to the Zero Escape games in that it’s a load of kids who are kind of locked in a game. They have like weird bracelets, and they’re each given a kind of a secret mission they have to complete, and they can’t tell anyone else what their secret mission is. And if that mission is completed, this bracelet is released, and they can leave this building without dying. But like all the missions kind of turn each other against each other, and it’s quite strange. But that’s only the opening stretch of the game. It then evolves into something else quite odd. It’s like a 2D, it’s a side on 2D puzzle platformer with like sort of physics-y puzzles about throwing boxes around, but mixed in with like big doses of like narrative strangeness. Yeah, I didn’t finish it on Apple TV, mainly because apparently the end of the game isn’t actually in it. It ends on a cliffhanger, and then the deal is you have to play this Switch version for the end or something. I found that quite puzzling what the decision behind that was. So yeah, I hope this is just a more polished version because it was quite rough, but it had a great hook. I liked the idea of the mix of the kind of zero escape, kind of locked room, kind of psychological mind games, but with this sort of strange platforming action. Looks kiddy-ish, is surprisingly dark. I think it could be cool. Yeah, it wasn’t totally sold on the art direction, but… Yeah, it’s odd, but the characters are quite… They emerge quite quickly. It does some quite nice stuff with it, but yeah, you have to… Yeah, I’ll check that out when it comes out on May 28th. So Matthew, Ninja Gaiden Master Collection coming to Switch and other formats, including PC, on June 10th. This is quite a cool announcement, I thought. I believe everyone knows that the first two Ninja Gaiden games are the best ones. But they’ve actually always been at their best in their original Xbox and Xbox 360 forms, as I understand it. Like the PS3 ones aren’t necessarily better. I think people did like Sigma on PS3, actually. But nonetheless, it’s quite cool to have those in a place you can get them. Did you ever play these back in the day? They were too hard for me. I’ve played like a bit of Ninja Gaiden 1 for like video purposes when I was on the Xbox channel. I played, I think I reviewed Ninja Gaiden 3 on Wii U, weirdly. It was one of the big early announcements for Wii U was like Ninja Gaiden 3 is coming to it and we had to write loads about it even though it had already been reviewed not spectacularly on other platforms. So it was kind of like Nintendo really getting behind Ninja Gaiden 3 in a big way and you’re like everyone else is a 6 out of 10. So that was always, it was fine. Not as good as 1 and 2 which are games I can only play about half an hour off before getting too frustrated. But a lot of people whose opinion I respect dig them. Rich Stanton. It’s a Rich Stanton game isn’t it? Yeah, mainly Rich. Yeah, I’m well up for playing these. I feel like these have always been my sort of games but I’ve only ever played them for a couple of hours each. So yeah, it’s cool to see. I don’t think I’ll play on Switch. I think I’ll play on PC but still. They are weird because I remember them from, you know, back in the Xbox era, you know, and I only had the Gamecube or whatever. These were one of the few games on Xbox that kind of broke through. Like when I was reading Games Master, I remember looking at like the Ninja Gaiden, you know, review, you know, the screenshots or whatever and thinking like, oh wow, this looks amazing. So it had quite, you know, neat background. It looked like the kind of next step up from your kind of like Resident Evil, you know, kind of pre-rendered backgrounds. Maybe I’m misremembering that but it sort of had a bit of that vibe. Yeah, it was a nice second game, an important early Xbox game for sure. Yeah, very envious of them, played them, it was too shit. And there ends my Ninja Gaiden story. But nonetheless, you’ve gone on to live a happy and fulfilling life. So, you know, who’s the real winner here? Rather than dwell on that, we’ll move on. So Matthew, there was nothing on Breath of the World 2. Ayanuma appears, looks fantastic. I thought he looked great. He looked fantastic. But had nothing to share on Breath of the World 2 other than there’ll be an update later this year. So before we talk about what they did announce, what did you make of that? Yeah, I mean, like, that’ll be their big, you know, they’ve got E3. That’s where you save all your big E’s for. They probably don’t want to announce it before then. They want to have something special. That will be suitably special. Yeah, like I sort of said at the start, it was too short to kind of get overexcited about seeing Breath of the World 2. So, yeah, that’s fine. It’s okay. I’d rather it was good. And they take their time. Yeah, we actually got basically nothing that’s coming out later this year, which was kind of notable about this Nintendo Direct. So, you know, there’s going to be some kind of holiday line-up. There always is from Nintendo. But this was not about that. So, yeah, there will be more games to come for sure. But, yeah, this wasn’t it. So, what they did announce, Matthew, was Skyward Sword HD. Now, this is very much like your domain, isn’t it? Like, the Skyward Sword, in our kind of review scores, we got wrong episode. It was, you know, one of the best segments, an iconic moment in The Back Page’s history. So, what did it mean to you that they announced this HD re-release for the Switch? The instant reaction, which then played out, was like, oh, God, we’re going to have the Skyward Sword discussion again, which is true. It’s happening right now. It’s happening right now, and it’s awful. So that’s fun. Man, people do not like Skyward Sword, and they are not happy that there are people who do like it, and they love telling everyone about it. So that’s great. Yeah, like, I sort of felt like this was a bit, you know, this felt like it was a bit of an obvious thing. You know, I was surprised they didn’t announce Wind Waker and Twilight Princess as well. I’ve seen people reporting today that that is like an absolute guarantee that those are coming to Switch, as part of a Zelda 35 anniversary type thing, in which case it is a bit odd not to have announced them all together. You know, last year I thought the episode they did where they announced all the Mario stuff together was quite a strong little burst of excitement, because you had all this other spin-off stuff, and maybe they’re still prepping that, in which case a bit odd. You know, it felt maybe like they’ll lynch us if we say we haven’t got Breath of the Wild 2, so let’s throw them something, a bit of Skyward Sword HD. I thought it was interesting what they talked about there, the control differences. They had all the motion control stuff, but better. But they also have button controls. Because a big thing at the time was they were basically saying when Skyward Sword came out that, like, no, that, you know, there’s no way this can be done without motion controls, which is why we don’t give you the option. But they’ve changed their tune now, which suggests that, I mean, when I was playing it, I was thinking, this could probably have been done with button controls. Like, the rules of the world aren’t that complicated, but, you know, they sort of stuck to their guns. I think Nintendo’s relationship with Skyward Sword is kind of odd. I felt that they threw it under the bus a bit themselves when Breath of the World came out. Maybe I’m misremembering this, but I felt like a lot of Breath of the World was a reaction to the reaction to Skyward Sword, if that makes sense. And in doing that, there were moments where it’s the closest I’ve heard them saying that they were unsatisfied with something or unsatisfied with the reaction to something, which is Skyward Sword. So yeah, I’m glad in a way to see it back, because I think, you know, I really like it. I think it is a great game for many reasons. But I was worried that Nintendo sort of disowned it, if that makes sense. I thought it was hilarious that they tried to sell it as like a stepping stone to Breath of the World. That was the most, probably the most unconvincing moment of a Nintendo Direct I’ve ever seen, where he was like, look, he has a parachute and a stamina meter. And you’re like, yeah, but they do not function the same way at all. I’m sorry, but that is bullshit. And I like the game. Yeah, it’s like if you close your eyes real hard, it’s almost Breath of the Wild 2. Yeah, that felt like, that’s what I mean about, I think they’ve got a weird relationship with this game. And that attempt to reframe it, I thought, I thought it was quite funny and endearing. I’ve seen some people who are like, fuck this shit. And you’re like, well, it’s not worth that kind of reaction. It’s more like, you’re like, oh, that’s dumb. At worst, it’s dumb. The funniest thing that happened in the Direct last night, Matthew, was I tweeted about Famicom Detective Club. And a dude with Dragon Ball Z avatar arrived in my mentions, who doesn’t follow me, and just went, shit Direct so far. And we were like five minutes into it or something. And I was like, yep, that’s games these days. That’s the games discourse. Sorry to derail you there. No, no. Yeah. So I don’t know. I found the kind of, yeah, the framing of it sort of endearingly odd. I think a lot of people know where they’re going to stand on Skyward Sword. I don’t think it’s necessarily a game where, you know, a different control scheme or 60 frames per second are going to unlock some like hidden greatness in this. You know, it is what it is. Some people dig it, some people don’t. You know, their attempts to try and, you know, that’s what was funny about when they talked about it, is it felt like they were like, you know, if you haven’t played it, but you did like Breath of the Wild, you’re going to really dig this. And you’re like, man, that is just not true. But, you know, I always wish they’d embraced it as the kind of wonky member of the family. I wish instead of all that stamina meter stuff, I knew we’d been like, listen, like, we know it’s weird. We know it’s a bit of a freaky Zelda. But like, it’s incredibly romantic. And it has this like amazing spirit of adventure. And we’re really proud of it. And, you know, it’s like the definitive, like one of the definitive motion control games. If you don’t dig motion controls, then obviously that’s not going to mean anything to you. But if you’re open minded, then, you know, you’ll probably enjoy the theatricality of this. If you’ve not played it like there are definitely people out there who haven’t touched this game, who will love it. And it is, you know, people talk about it like it’s a game that got like, you know, 50 on Metacritic. It’s not a lot of people gave it 10s and high nines. Thanks to you, Matthew, it didn’t get 50 on Metacritic. Yeah, I dragged it all the way up. I thought that people love this game. This is like this is a critically acclaimed game that for some reason has become this like cursed object, which doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, honestly, I’m up for this. And it will benefit greatly from the HD and the 60 frames because, you know, it has always had a very soft visual effect on it on the Wii. It didn’t age very well. It always looked god awful in screenshots, is my lasting memory of this in the mag because we were just like, wow. And then you looked at the screens and you’re like, yeah, are you sure? Wow. And you’re like, yeah, it’s good. You know, it was a game that was just great in the hands, but not necessarily on the eyes. When I played this in like 2013 ish, I did think that good lord, why does this look so awful? My HDTV. I mean, it happened all the time with Switch games, but sorry, with a Wii game. So I was playing on my Wii U and even with the HDMI cable, it didn’t really do much for it. But I must admit, Matthew, even with the HD graphics, it does look tons better, but there’s a slightly washed out colour palette vibe to it that I’m not a massive fan of, but I don’t know, maybe I’ll be swayed by the finished product. Yeah, it’s honestly great. It’s got loads of really mad good stuff in it, and it’s got some all time great Zelda puzzle mechanics. But as a puzzle game, it’s probably better than Breath of the Wild, you know. But the problem is it’s like only puzzles. It’s just, and I’ve said this before, it’s like overworld as dungeon design. It’s super strange. But if you happen to be into that, I think you’ll dig it. Yeah, I’m really excited about going back to it. I haven’t played it recently. I haven’t played for a long time. So, you know, going back through this and, you know, getting back in touch with it. You know, I wrote a really sincere, in my reviews, I wrote a couple for this, well, super sincere, and I really did mean it. Like it had a very positive effect on me. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just because we were in the massive Wii drought and I was like desperate to love something. You know, I’m pretty confident in the effect it has on me. So I hope people have an open mind about it and people who slag it off basically get permamuted on Twitter. So that’s good. Yeah, that’s what the button’s for. I did think it was quite interesting how they translated the motion controls onto if you’ve got the Switch Lite. Is it the light? The handheld one? Yeah, that you have to basically use the second stick to control the sword. But I thought that was actually quite an elegant solution. I imagine they’ve thought quite long and hard about how to do that in a convincing way. Yeah, just thought it was interesting. Yeah, yeah, it’d be interesting to see how that holds together. I mean, these ports tend to be pretty good. I mean, there are definitely other tweaks they could have made if they’ve managed to tweak how much fear your assistant kind of butts in with information. That will really help because that’s one of the things people hold against it. But it’s funny because I see some people who are like, oh, God, it means we’re going to have to do X again. And you’re like, that really wasn’t a problem. These features that… People talk about this game like it burned their houses down or something. It’s just a weird good Zelda. Yeah. OK. Well, Matthew, I’m sure we’re going to return to this one at some point down the line. I’m sure there’s like a Zelda episode kind of brewing in the background that we’ll do at some point. So, yeah, that’s out on July 16th. There’s a lovely pair of Joy-Cons or Joy-Con is a singular. I don’t really know how that works, but either way looks very nice with the two little bird guys on it. Yeah, look forward to that. So Matthew, final announcement of the Nintendo Direct was Splatoon 3 coming in 2022. What’s your sort of whole thing on Splatoon? It doesn’t strike me as something you’re kind of like big into, but I imagine you sort of respect what it’s about, which is kind of how I am with it. I think it’s like a great kind of approachable online multiplayer game, particularly for younger people. And the mechanics of it are really kind of elegantly designed, but it’s not something I’ve ever gotten like obsessed with. What about you? Yeah, basically, I think you’ve nailed it. This was a weird one, is it came at the tail end of O&M again, so it’s that weird little window where I wasn’t doing Nintendo stuff and I was really having to throw myself into official Xbox. I remember playing this at the post E3 event where they announced it and thinking, like, it feels great and it’s a killer mechanic and it’s a killer idea and it works brilliantly. I didn’t actually own Splatoon 1. I owned Splatoon 2, which I mainly bought just to play the kind of horde mode where you’re trying to steal lots of fish eggs or something. I think you play it for players and it was an early Switch online game. I spent a lot of money on that and then didn’t play it massively. I had a few great evenings playing with some friends and then kind of, you know, moved on because I don’t really have that relationship with any game. I think that’s the thing about Splatoon. It’s the closest thing like Nintendo have to like a games as service in terms of like, it has seasons and things going on and, you know, it has the turf wars where, you know, loads of strangers are fighting to the death over whether ketchup is better than mayonnaise or whatever. Irish will wars were fought over these things instead of sad things like oil. It’s a bit a lot more fun, wouldn’t it? When you got to the end and you were like, why everyone jumpers a bit in the t-shirts. Especially if they could wrap it all up in like a weekend, like a long weekend, you know? Exactly. You’re like the war, war weekend is two weeks away, but it will be grim. But after that weekend will have settled. What is better? Hats or scarves? Yeah. Is it going to be sunflower oil or vegetable oil? We’ll figure it out. Yeah. Nintendo fixed war basically. They made war palatable, which I liked. I love the world of it. The weird like music. What’s really great about Splatoon is that it was like a new idea that landed instantly. People really took to it. They’ve grown it out. As brilliant as they are, 95% of what we’re playing on Nintendo platforms is what we were playing on Nintendo platforms 20 years ago. So Splatoon being like the weird kind of example of what they should be doing more of. I’m kind of a little bit sad that we haven’t had another Splatoon sized project emerge during Switch. We had ARMS right at the start, which felt like, they were like, okay, Splatoon works, we’ll make Splatoon 2. What’s the next weird game we’re going to try? ARMS. People like ARMS. Some people love ARMS. But you get the impression it’s not necessary. I hope it wasn’t sort of too much of a bomb in that it stopped them from wanting to try these things. But the next, a younger team, what is the next younger thing coming out of Nintendo? We haven’t seen one of those for a while. But I thought this was great, what they showed off of this. I love the character customization screen, where she pulled back the hood when it was time to do the hair. And it was very beautifully animated, how it showed it. And everyone said, oh, this looks like it’s going to be more of a story component, because there’s always weird Mad Max shit going on. And I’m up for that. We know Splatoon is a good multiplayer game, but I think it would, to go next level with it, to have a big, proper juicy campaign would be great. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And to tie a bow on that as well, something you mentioned in our Mario 3D World episode is that there aren’t many lessons that Nintendo could take away from the Wii U generation, but clearly they took away the idea that Splatoon was like a winner and have kind of doubled down on it. And fair play, you know, they made it work. Yeah, 2022 for that one, Matthew. So do you have any kind of wider thoughts about the Nintendo Direct before we move on to a couple of listener questions? Just like, you know, a good mix of stuff, a nice mix of stuff. You know, as much as people scoff at the stuff they’re not interested, I do like that they have the, you know, the range of things and they kind of put things on an equal footing. I actually thought Monster Hunter looked really good as well. Monster Hunter is another game which, like, I play 20 hours of every Monster Hunter and have a great time, but I never play it enough to get to, like, the masterpiece level Monster Hunter. You know, I don’t lose myself for hundreds of hours, but I love the look of it. And, you know, again, a third party doing, you know, pumping a lot of money into something, especially for the Switch. Always good to see. I was disappointed that this alleged great Ace Attorney spin-off game wasn’t announced, which seems to be leaking every week as it gets ticked off at a different kind of certification process. We just need it to be formally announced. I was hoping, I was really hoping they were going to go, here it is, and it comes out in a week. And then I’d have like purpose in my life again. But sadly not. Yeah, that will have to wait until later this year. Hopefully that will happen. I mean, I would kind of imagine that rating sport in Taiwan would have mentioned it if it wasn’t real, unless it was just like a long troll towards Matt Castle. Yeah, I mean, that’s cruel. No, I agree with you. But as you mentioned, like the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ports are expected at some point. So there’s plenty more Nintendo to come this year, I’m sure. Yeah, for sure. All right, Matthew, so moving on to a couple of listener questions here before we wrap up. Right. Yeah, we had two here that I kind of bundled together. This one’s quite funny because it kind of suggests that you and I have to make a magazine as a Patreon goal, which I found very funny. Hey, chaps, I’m sure you don’t need suggestions, but in the best spirit of internet commentators, I’m going to give you one anyway. Your podcast is great, and you have a lot of interesting things to say on gaming, games and the industry. I would personally also love to see you guys put your print experience into practice and produce a monthly pamphlet with some select content, maybe even a guest writer on The Back Page. Think of all the covers and scores you could regret in the future. You can then look back and comment on them in future podcasts. It could be a perpetual content machine, a magazine, if you will. I added that bit. We’ll definitely subscribe into a Patreon for such a privilege. Cheers from James Thompson. What do you reckon, Matthew, should we just make a magazine on a whim in our spare time? They’re so hard to make. They’re very hard to make. They’re so hard to make. I know this podcast is all like, hee hee hee, magazines. But that’s because we’ve mainly focused on the episodes where like we were having fun. Yeah, I do sort of like, I strip out all the bits where it’s like meeting my third subway of the week and reading some like PDFs, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, they’re very hard to do. Also, like, oh god, I mean, just that without an art person, they’re next to impossible. Yeah, it’ll basically look like where your sort of uncle loses it and starts sending everyone like right wing pamphlets that he’s made himself with like word arts. That’s what our pamphlet would look like. Yeah, basically that. Yeah. But, you know, it’s an idea. Yeah, we’ve sort of we thought about we’ve we’ve we’ve like vaguely talked about Patreon stuff, but we’re definitely not at that point yet. We’re we’re just growing and having fun and talking about games. So we’ll revisit down the line, I’m sure. Next question, Matthew, from one of our earliest listeners and supporters, Robert August de Meyer, hoping hoping I’m pronouncing your name correctly there. How do you do? Forgive me for asking this, but since you asked in the last podcast audience questions, do you believe people can improve their taste in video games? And if so, how? What’s your take on this? Why not? Does this suggest that there is like an accepted good taste? Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this because I feel I would like to do like a best indie games episode of this podcast, but I do not feel equipped to do that. We would need a guest because I’ve basically just played like blockbusters and games that aren’t quite blockbusters for the last five years because I’ve become very culturally lazy. And I wouldn’t call that good taste. Do you think you have good taste, Matthew? Oh, I think I have reasonable taste. I think I’ve got quite open tastes. You know, I’ll try a lot of things and so I’ll discover a lot of stuff I like. I wouldn’t say I have particularly good taste. I mean, the fact that I really like Skyward Sword, lots of people would say, well, that’s you done then. Well, I would say that about them. So, you know, who knows? I mean, I’d say right now, like, it’s kind of never been easier to try stuff you haven’t tried because of subscription services. Like, is one of the big pluses of, say, Xbox Game Pass, is it does give you access to just 400 games or whatever it is, 300, you know, the number of fluctuates, to just dip in and, you know, there’s a genre, there’s a bit of everything in there. I think the problem with those services, if you look at them going like, well, what does this have that I like? It’s like, you probably already own what you like. You know, that’s the problem I have. My game collection is kind of, you know, the games I want, I tend to get. But the best part of those is discovering something new. Discoverability in games is just a fucking nightmare. Because, I mean, we were never particularly good at this on magazines, you know, in that, you know, we had quite limited space and we tended to skew with big stuff and, you know, there was a lot of indie stuff we didn’t necessarily touch, we didn’t get into. And, you know, I’ve worked on websites, you know, Rock Paper Shotgun was very, very big on pushing indie stuff and indie teams. But still, like, discovering it as a journalist is a nightmare, because there’s so much stuff. I mean, amazing games go past us all the time and, you know, it’s just a happy accident if you ever actually get to play them. So the idea of, like, developing and forming better taste or different taste is quite hard. Yeah, I echo your thoughts about Game Pass. Like, pick that up, and even if you haven’t really played that many indie games of late, you’ll find loads on there that are quite good or cool to check out, like, including new releases. So that’s a good call. Steam sales are great for this. One of the reasons I love working on PC Gamer, actually, was that, you know, it was very much about curation and people owned different sort of subject areas and would, like, you know, talk about their thing. And I thought that, you know, whether it was a big survival game or, like, a cool story-driven indie game, like, I thought PC Gamer was pretty great at surfacing that stuff. But there is so much out there. There’s so, so much, including, like, free games as well. So I think Game Pass, though, that’s my starting point. Get Game Pass. Download five things you like the look of. Give them a go. See what you learn, you know? Yeah. I think you’ve also got, like, slightly… In the indie world now, you’ve got the emergence of, like, indie publishers, like Annapurna, who’ve got, like, a slightly clearer, like, remit of what they’re after. So if you like something in their body of work, you can kind of dip into their other stuff. Like, there’s lots of people who will probably pick up the next Devolver thing because they know what a Devolver game kind of entails. So, like… And we didn’t have that necessarily five years ago. This idea of, like, these games are kind of of a piece, or they come from a similar kind of vibe, you know, in a way that, you know, oh, I’ll see everything this actor does or whatever you get in films. Yeah, it’s tricky. I wouldn’t judge us on, like, taste necessarily. Yeah, yeah, I would say I have very broad taste. Or at least, like, that’s all I’ve decided to play of late. But yeah, I think we gave a good answer. Yeah, also, you can listen to next week’s episode of 2007 Games because there are definitely some, like, hidden gems in the past that people can go back and discover. That’s always good. Yeah, so Matthew, that is the end of the slightly shorter podcast. We needed a slight break from doing the monstrously long ones. 2007 is going to be massive. But we also wanted to do something timely, so hopefully people have enjoyed the format change. Matthew, where can people find you on Twitter? I am at MrBuzzle underscore Pesto. I’m Samuel W Roberts on Twitter. You can also follow the podcast at Back Page Pod. You can tweet us questions that we will read out on the show. Or you can email us at backpagegames.gmail.com. But thank you very much for listening and we’ll be back next Friday.