Hello, and welcome to The Back Page Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, how’s it going on this Tuesday night when we are recording this podcast? Feels like a dozy end of February day to me. How about you? Oh, I feel more like it’s time for us to break into a nighttime arcade shopping mall and have an adventure. Oh, nice. Is that a reference to a slightly mediocre episode of a TV show based on a PlayStation game? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, no. Question. How the fuck did they know about Mortal Kombat? They were born in what, 2012? I feel like 2003. Oh, that’s when the thing hit, wasn’t it? So it was after that. Yeah, okay. It’s a good question. Just a copy of Edge lying around with one of these sort of like camps or whatever. Fedra people reading old copies of Edge. Oh, God, I would love to have had a scene where two Fedra people are like, oh man, Edge has really overrated Skyward Sword. Yeah, or not sure about this Double Dash review, you know, that sort of thing. Well, actually, Skyward Sword wouldn’t, Nintendo’s dead by 2010. So that’s one positive, I guess. Yeah, so you only get up to 2003 in there. That’s, yeah, so that rules so many things out. They never got San Andreas in this reality, Matthew. Just, that’s tough. One of their last memories would have been Wind Waker, though, so that’s quite happy. That’s pretty good. Yeah, 2003 is a pretty decent year, but I know it’s tough. Tough, they didn’t get to see GZA reach its peak on there. But also, I think they miss out on Final Fantasy X-2 as well, and I consider that a blessing. So, you know, swings and roundabouts. Yeah, this podcast would land so differently in the world of The Last of Us. No one saw PlayStation 3 biff it, you know? Like, never mind, PlayStation’s unstoppable. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, like, what could go wrong after this? Nothing. Yeah, wow. I can’t wait to have a… install a hard drive for my copy of Final Fantasy XI. So, Matthew, this episode is not about The Last of Us again. We can revisit… Let me do the… what we’ve been playing later this month. Should we revisit The Last of Us a little bit and just talk about what we thought of the rest of the episode so people have that information? That might be good. It may only take, like, three minutes as we repeat exactly what we said for the previous one, but still. I want to do a quick run-through of what we’ve got coming up in March, Matthew. Just tease out what’s coming, because I feel like it’s an exciting month. So, this episode, Wii U and 3DS games to grab before the eShops close. Very straightforward. You’re listening to it right now. You’re going to have a great time, probably. Should be decent. That’s on March 3rd, which is, well, it’s happened already. This is going great, honestly. It’s a no from me, dog. March 10th, the Capcom Games draft. So, yes, we will both pick 10 great Capcom games to compete in some kind of ridiculous scenario. How do you think about that one, Matthew? Yeah, I’m excited about that. That will be good. That’s classic Back Page turf. Well, for some of the genres, it gets a bit patchy when it gets to fighting games. Oh, yeah. There’s going to be one bullshit fighting games category where we just begrudgingly pick something then move on, basically. I’m just going to say Street Fighter, Third Strike, or whatever it is, because I heard about it on Simon Parkins’ podcast recently. Yeah, I have actually been Googling which is the best Street Fighter, and no one can really agree. So, yeah, Third Strike did come up quite a lot, though. So, yes, that’s going to be a fun one, especially because I think there’s some different interpretations of Capcom’s catalogue that will come out there. So, yeah, March 10th for that, and then you’ll be able to vote on the winner, as ever, with the drafts. We’ve got another magazine-related guest coming on for the March 17th episode. I haven’t quite nailed down when we’re recording with them yet, so maybe that could change, but fingers crossed it won’t. It’s a good one, so fingers crossed that should be good. But before that, actually, on March 13th, our first Excel episode of the month. So for the Patreon subscribers, Excel tier, the Excel episode this month is 20 16-bit games that made us… The title might need a bit of work, but yeah. When you say it, it sounds like 2016 bit games, as in games from 2016 that made us. Some people are like, that is a niche subject. Yeah, that’s a bit confusing. So, yes, it’s going to be 20 times 16-bit games that made us. 16-bit games, 20 examples that made us. Okay, that needs a complete rewrite. That’s a piece of shit. But basically, self-explanatory, me and Matthew are each going to talk about the SNES and Mega Drive era games that were kind of key for us. And how we’re doing it is we’re just going to be five that we played at the time that really fundamentally shaped our game’s taste. And we’re going to do five that we each played later on, like years down the line around virtual console time relevant to this episode, which we discovered and sort of enriched our interest in 16-bit games a little bit further down the line. I think that’ll be good because I think some people really want us to talk about this era of games more, Matthew, but we don’t know anything. And it’s not like a good template for it. That episode is just going to be me not remembering Eternal Champions very well again. I’m looking forward to that, folks. That’s good. Yeah. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about the Jurassic Park game on Mega Drive again. I’ve got some slightly different material. If you want to hear about EA Hockey, you’re going to have a great time. £4.50 for the pleasure of listening to that. It should be good, though. March 24th, regular feed. Two giant men play Resident Evil 4 Remake. That is contingent on us getting a hold of the game before release, but we did it for Resident Evil Village, so we think we could probably do it again. Do you think we should rename it to El Gigante’s play Resident Evil 4? I do like that. That’s a nice one. It hurts the SEO, but… The PC Gaming Classics mini-series that Jeremy and Phil do this month is doing Trespasser Jurassic Park. That’s on March 20th. The dates here are actually scrambled. I don’t know how I did that. I’m fucking terrible at this. The XXL episode is Christopher Nolan films ranked on March 27th, so pop-culture-focused. That’s going to be quite an interesting one. Ahead of Oppenheimer coming out, a film that has every single actor in Hollywood in it, from Casey Affleck, who I thought was cancelled, but apparently not, to Alden Ehrenreich. Everyone is in this film. So, yeah. It’s like they got all the cancelled people and just drop a bomb on them. All the cancelled people and sort of failed Star Wars spin-off actors. So, yeah. Oh, yeah, I was sorry. I was mistaking him, Francis Leoghort. That’s my bad. Oh, right, yeah. Those are different guys. They did both audition for Han Solo, but yeah, Alden Eriksson is like a good dude. I don’t want to drop a nuke on him. I don’t really want to drop a nuke on Han Solo. I mean, I’m not that vindictive. I was about to say, we probably shouldn’t make jokes about dropping nukes, but then I think that XAO episode we did where I just talked about nuking Paris to get the Nazis out has set a quite a poor tone on this podcast for discussing nuclear weapons. Like, legitimately, if a nuke does get dropped in the near future, I don’t think people will be like, I need to hold that podcast to account. It’s a good point. We have a very little bearing on the situation. Do you know what I mean? We will have much bigger problems than I need to go and scold those two assholes from that podcast. Yeah, I’m going to see if the internet is still running, and if it is, ooh, I’m getting on Twitter immediately. Very darker vision of our future there. So final episode of that month is of what we’ve been playing on March 31st. So a bit of a bit torturous there, Matthew, but should be a good month, right? You excited about all that? Yeah, all sounds great. Yeah, absolutely. So this episode then, Matthew, do you want to talk a bit about why we were prompted to do this and the sort of significance of it all? Yeah, so this episode is about the Wii U and 3DS eShops are both closing on March 27th. And with them goes a library of digital only games and cheap or cheaper digital alternatives to physical games in some cases. And when this news was announced last year, loads of people did big features about like, you’ve got a year to buy all this stuff before the store closes. We like to leave everything to the last minute. So we’re doing this at the start of March where you only have 27 days, or fewer than that now, to actually act on any of these decisions. But yeah, we thought it would be a good chance just to kind of power through some recommendations. It’s not going to be a complicated or particularly long episode. It’s more of a functional one. Also, if you’re listening to this after March the 27th, I’m really, really sorry, but all this stuff is dust now. So like basically it is, you know, a figurative nuke has gone off in the eShop. So you’re too late. Stop using that analogy. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m still on nukes. Yeah. And, you know, maybe discuss a little bit about the Wii U and 3DS eShop, which were varying levels of success. Obviously a big part of my career on Nintendo Mags was covering these games and using eShop games to fill in gaps in the retail schedule, which were many and often. So, yeah, like, I don’t know. I don’t want to put forward this idea that, like, I’m this, like, huge champion of these stores. Like, there are some people out there on the web who are really, really into this scene and are, like, hyper knowledgeable. And I imagine a lot of the stuff they’re gonna recommend has already been recommended at great length by many of these other list features, which courtesy of amazing SEO, you can easily find on Google. So just type 3DS or Wii U, hidden gems, and you will inevitably get an eShop story. But, you know, you listen to this podcast. This is our take, so you can hear it from us first. Yeah, absolutely. So, Matthew, should I recap exactly what happens on March 27th when the shop’s going? This is quite technical, but I think it’s, like, interesting to know exactly where we stand. I think so, yeah. Just, like, what are the stakes, basically, if you are considering buying this stuff? And I will always say what I always say, which is, please don’t just buy everything because we discussed it on this podcast. Like, one person in the Discord at me saying, oh, can you let me know how much all these are going to cost so I know when to buy them after my 3DS gets here? And I was like, okay, if you don’t already have a 3DS, I’m not sure now is the time to start, but hey, if you weren’t already in, there’s probably no point getting in now. So with that caveat out of the way, what happens on March 27th? So on both Wii U and 3DS, users will still be able to redownload content they own and download existing software updates. So if you put in a physical game, then let’s say you’re going to buy a physical game from eBay or something, and it’s been updated by the publisher or developer, you can insert it and you can still download updates. That’s good. So the store isn’t completely going away, it has some bare functionality. This is fairly standard stuff when it comes to these store closures. I imagine that won’t last forever, but for the time being, all good. So what you can’t do, you can’t purchase any content, you already can’t add credits to your Nintendo eShop balance through 3DS. But if you have a switch, actually, you can do it through there and then go back onto your 3DS and it will work that way. On Nintendo 3DS systems, with the purchase content restrictions also applies to any paid content, plays and passes in software like Street Pass, Me Plaza, the theme shop, Nintendo Badge Arcade and Pokemon Bank. I know Matthew is a big fan of the Pokemon Bank, it’s his favorite bank, even better than Barclays. That’s what he said to me off the air. On Wii U consoles, this includes passes in software such as Wii Sports Club. Again, that was roundly dismissed in the Wii U Hall of Fame. You can’t download demos, you can’t download free to start software, you can’t redeem download codes anymore, so if you have any of those, get them out of the way, and you can’t add funds to your Nintendo Wii Shop balance as discussed, but yeah, so for now you can if you’re using a Switch. I think if you go onto the Nintendo website, you can do that too. The good news though, on Nintendo 3DS systems, users will still be able to download a small number of free themes from the theme shop. That’s a good addition by you there, Matthew, to the plan. That made me chuckle. So yeah, interesting restrictions there. Quite similar to what happened with the Wii Store when that closed, Matthew, the Wii Shop. That was like a very similar deal. I think it’s completely gone now, but for a while you could download stuff. And I think that anything you did download, you can still use on Wii, so that’s good. Yeah, I think what’s interesting about this is that it reminds you that on 3DS, not Wii U, but on 3DS, they had integrated purchases a bit more throughout the system. There are things to buy outside of the store, like it has that separate theme shot, which for people who don’t know it, is you can go on and download wallpapers, basically, for the system. They’re a little more substantial than wallpapers, because they add musical themes, special effects and things. So if you download the Skyward Sword theme, your 3DS menu will play music from Skyward Sword, for example. So there’s that. And the Mii Plaza basically had mini StreetPass games built into it that you could buy more of and download. So while Wii U, you’re just chopping off the store, like one clean cut. I think 3DS, you’re going to find a few more, maybe echoes of those stores throughout the system, in a slightly weird way. We are big theme shop heads, Matthew. We always go on that theme shop. I don’t know. I think it speaks to the same people who would respond to an advert in a magazine to pay like three pounds for a mobile phone desktop background of like Sarah Michelle Geller. I knew it was going to be Sarah Michelle Geller. I was about to make a similar joke. It was like, oh, fake pornography of Buffy the Moon. I mean, I have downloaded the Sarah Michelle Geller 3DS theme, obviously. I’m more of an Allison Hannigan man myself. Oh dear, some niche jokes from elder millennials there. So good stuff. Yeah, that’s a good point, actually, because I don’t really know much about some of this 3DF stuff you’re discussing, like the Mii Plaza and theme shop and badge arcade. I know Pokemon Bank. I did use that briefly when I had a phase where I thought, oh, maybe I’m into Pokemon again. And I wasn’t. When you didn’t trust the high street banks. Yeah, I can’t trust, you know, like nationwide to handle my chances and my electric buzz. That’s precious little dudes. So yeah, I did use Pokemon Bank to move some of my Game Boy Color Pokemon into the future onto a Nintendo Switch. So my Pikachu from Pokemon Yellow, I think I discussed this in the Pokemon episode, was extracted from his reality and now lives in Pokemon Sword and Shield, which is quite twisted as a concept. And that Ash in Pokemon Yellow no longer has a companion. He’s just got like a box with like eight Pidgeys in it and that’s his like life now. Pretty dark to be honest. Powerful children being separated from their demon in Northern, not Northern exposure, Northern Lights. That’s what they did in the optic, didn’t they? They used that guillotine to slice the spiritual connection between you and your animal power. A very apt and specific analogy there. So yeah, good stuff. I like that. So yes, so Matthew, I supposed to get into these shops a bit before we go into some recommendations. So the Wii U and 3DS eShops, were they a net positive? What did you think of these throughout their lifespan? I think the 3DS one was a lot more successful than the Wii U one. I think Wii U just like, it had the touch of death on it from so early on because of how badly it bombed and just as a sort of online machine, it felt very rough. You know, as Ash mentioned last week for a while, it was like incredibly slow, like it, you know, it was a very ugly sort of initial experience with it and it took them some time to kind of really tide it up. And by then, no one was really making anything exclusive for it. It didn’t really have the kind of like burst of indie support. You know, I will say in this episode, like we’re going to be focusing largely on stuff, which is kind of exclusive to, or has a specific reason to be on 3DS or Wii U, rather than loads of good games that are available elsewhere. Like Shovel Knight isn’t in this episode, because you can buy Shovel Knight everywhere, even though it was very good on 3DS. But like Wii U comparatively didn’t have that much stuff. You know, like its indie library is nowhere near as decent as 3DS’s, which in turn is nowhere near as decent, is what we now have with the Switch. So kind of the Wii U, I’d say, is definitely a bust. And like making this list and going through everything, I felt, well, actually, I can cut this down pretty quickly to the kind of core things that I need. And part of that’s tied in with like a bit of Wii U, anti-Wii U bias in terms of like the idea of people getting it out of the cupboard to plug it in and download things to play on it. Now, like, I just don’t think people are going to have that relationship with the Wii U going forwards in the way that you could with a 3DS. You know, 3DS is still, you know, despite losing this store, it still feels like it’s in play for, you know, mine still plugs in, it still works, it’s all fine, you know, it’s kind of isn’t that unchanged from how it was when you used it last, whatever, four or five years ago, perhaps. So, yeah, 3DS… I think 3DS has got enough stuff to justify its existence. I think 3DS was a lot more successful than WiiWare and Wii U eShop, but yeah, in the shadow of Switch, maybe seems, you know, it isn’t like… There’s a finite number of things on there which are like truly essential. I don’t think you can like lose yourself in it in the way that you can the Switch Store. So, yeah, I think I agree with that assessment. I did turn the Wii U on the other day when I was doing a bit of research for our Wii U Hall of Fame, and it is weird to go in the store and the store’s laid out like it’s pretending lots of things are still happening on there, but it’s kind of like dominated by Breath of the Wild and things like that. Whereas, I think if the last time I went to my 3DS and looked at the little news bit, it was kind of just like, oh, the Nintendo Switch is out now, by the way. All right. The Wii U feels like it’s still sort of like, I don’t know, trapped in like one particular moment in 2017, and then it was just abandoned, basically. Whereas 3DS is maybe, it doesn’t feel like slightly more curated, but it does feel like when things happened on Switch, they surfaced things like Animal Crossing and reminded you, you could still play on there if you wanted to and things like that. It’s interesting because I think when the 3DS shop launched, I was like quite big into the idea of it, because I think where it differs from something like the Switch store is that the Switch is obviously flooded with loads and loads of multi-format games and a massive volume of them, which is obviously why the Switch has succeeded and why it’s such a great console to own. The 3DS store felt more handcrafted. It felt like there were more, not too many, but there were a few games that were just laser-targeted to release on this thing, like slightly smaller games. I guess I’m mostly talking about the Guild series, Matthew, but that kind of Guild series of 3DS standalone games that were small but perfectly formed and really made sense on 3DS and nowhere else, that sort of thing almost set the tone to me of what that store was good for. That combined with the fact that this was the first time that Nintendo had sold its handheld 3DS full physical games as full-price games you could buy in its digital store. You couldn’t do that on DS. On DSi, you couldn’t buy a full DS game. It was just a download software. No, not at all. It was DSiWare only. That was completely new. You had this mix of these handcrafted things that felt specifically for 3DS. Again, not loads of them, but some of them. Everything that Nintendo released was on their full physical games. Then at the same time, you had this crop of virtual console things bubbling up over time. It meant that the store had this very specific identity on 3DS. It was like this little combination of classic Nintendo things, oddball 3DS stuff, and a growing library of retro games. I thought that was pretty cool. Even though there was still some rubbish on there, particularly when you went to the sales page, there’s always some games where it’s called Shoe, and it’s like 499 reduced from 799. You’ve never heard of it. Those kinds of games are on there, the shovelware, but they’re not really surfaced. It very much felt like a curated digital home for Nintendo stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah, I would argue though, maybe the difference between 3DS particularly and Switch is that they maybe over-curated it and it felt like just an extension of a Nintendo store. You go on there and on the 3DS eShop and it groups everything by Nintendo franchises. There’s not a lot of ways to surface the big indie hits in the front end menu. If you know what you’re looking for, you can find them very easily. But it felt like it was like Nintendo learning about digital sales of their own product first and foremost. And so it was all kind of geared to that. If you look at it, it exists inside the Nintendo ecosystem completely, where if you look at the Switch, I think it still obviously favors its own product, but it plays much nicer with other stuff. And there’s a much healthier kind of mix on the front end. I think how they push stuff through charts and sales is a bit more sort of friendly to non-Nintendo developers on Switch. I mean, maybe too much in that it’s very easy to exploit and it has its own problems there, where people cut things down to like 50p to send it like flying up the charts off kids’ pocket money and whatnot. And the other big difference is that in the Switch era, they are so much better at promoting it outside of the console, like in streams, little indie directs, the excitement of here’s a big thing and it’s available now, or having an online presentation where the centerpiece is a third party indie game, not a Nintendo product. That just wouldn’t have happened in the Wii U era. You know, those Nintendo directs were just so like, this is the one where it’s like the message is Mario, Mario, Mario. It wouldn’t have been like, hey, everyone, here’s a Nintendo direct telling you to buy Shovel Knight or Steamworld Dig. You know, they might have been in there, but so like, you know, a store which is in its interface more open to other people combined with a marketing department which is more open to other people, I think is just sort of like the perfect storm for Switch to like really finally nail it. I think like the reason I would sort of have this affection for the 3DS eShop is that I’m not saying that it was like better than the Switch, because I don’t believe that. But I do think it kind of hails from that era where maybe these stores on Xbox and PlayStation had these slightly more personality, like there was a personality or some kind of through line to the types of stuff on there, like your Summer of Arcades sort of stuff on Xbox and PlayStation doing its own things with like Journey and stuff like that. I think that 3DS almost feels like it has got some kind of roots in that era where the manufacturers were very much putting their stamp on this stuff. And now I think that to use the Switch, Xbox and PlayStation stores, they all have completely different interfaces, but none of them feel that different from each other in terms of like offering or you know what I mean? Like I don’t go to get one specific digital game on one platform. I can’t get another. It’s much more sort of like agnostic now. And so the 3DS has slightly more roots in that time. So that’s kind of why I’ve got a little bit of a walk towards it, Matthew, you know. I think the stuff you say about Virtual Console, you know, it exists in a very different form now. And maybe there is something a bit more special about being able to buy those games back there and like have them and keep them. And it just, you know, they may function the same, like for all we know. Nintendo Switch Online runs forever and you always have access to those games. It’s the same kind of end effect. But definitely there’s something, I don’t know, like when you buy something, you kind of sort of commit to it in a bigger way than just like pulling something out of a massive online library, which you can kind of dip in and there’s like no pressure to play. If you’ve actually spent money, you know, you’re kind of, you know, because there is like a literal buy-in, I think that does kind of change your relationship with those games and maybe make them feel a bit more special. Yeah, I think that’s definitely true. Like I did enjoy the Virtual Console on 3DS, even though it wasn’t like, it didn’t have a mega range to it, but I think that it was exciting when Link’s Awakening appeared on there, you know? That was like, oh, finally like some handheld games I can enjoy on the go, you know? Is this take skewed by the fact that they gave you a shitload of free GBA games? Well, those GBA games were like super viable and exciting until about two weeks ago, when suddenly, I now realize that all of them are going to obviously roll out, some of them already have, but all are going to roll out at some point. I did very much enjoy that as an early 3DS adopter, which we discussed before, but it was also like the ownership factor was something. It would be really nice to somehow that my purchase of A Link to the Past still counts as something I can sort of download and own, whereas there’s a slight sense that if they’re closing the Wii U and 3DS shop, that at some point, they’re just going to switch off those games and then a completely new initiative will start on some other Nintendo hardware. That’s not out of the question. So I do miss the ownership element of that. What about Virtual Console and Wii U, Matthew? Was that a big deal to you at the time? So we’re going big on that stuff, even as the Wii U was sort of floundering. Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. I don’t know if you’d consider the Wii games on Wii U Virtual Console. Probably not. Yeah, I would. There were oddity. They would say that straight back compact because Wii U can play them. But that’s the idea of if you didn’t have these discs, you could buy into them. Actually, some of the games they put on there are in my list just because they’re that much cheaper to buy on the Wii U store than they are out in real life and just the ease of use of finding them. Yeah, that was OK. I mean, I quite liked the idea of the DS game Virtual Console on Wii U. It had a novelty factor in terms of like, you know, we hadn’t had that before, you know. By the time you get to like Wii U and 3DS, the idea of like playing NES or STES games is a little kind of played out. But, you know, playing those games, like blown up on the gamepad, like, you know, in quite a strange new form, you know, I’ve got a couple of suggestions for DS for Wii U, just because there is like a little bit of a novelty factor for like seeing like the big fat Kirby sprites in like Kirby Mass Attack. You know, you’re like, well, this is kind of interesting. It’s games which are like touch only to kind of play on that pad as well, and that makes it nice and easy. Yeah, like definitely a curio, but like I guess if you were that obsessed about these games, they’re still kind of out there in physical form, you know, they’re not beyond the realms of like owning them for real. So maybe that diminishes them a bit. Yeah, I mean, it is weird that DS games ended up on Wii U and not on 3DS. Like you can never buy digital versions of DS games, which seems like a really strange oversight. Like think about the money they left on the table by not being like, oh, if you want to buy, you know, the Final Fantasy 3 or 4, the 3D versions that Scroogex did, like not selling them for 25 quid. That feels like the free money that they just left there. Hey ho. I’m curious, Matthew, outside of Nintendo, obviously, who do you think the MVPs of the 3DS and Wii U shops, eShops, were in terms of publishers or developers? Like who was supporting this stuff the most? Who had the most interesting stuff on there? Like what mattered the most to you covering this stuff? Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it earlier on when you mentioned the Guild games, which were published by Level 5. Originally, they were two anthologies of games produced as retail carts in Japan, but then released over here as digital standalones, which I think maybe makes the eShop feel at that early point on 3DS a little more exciting and exotic than it’s maybe going to be. If you just popped in, you’d be like, wow, there are all these interesting games by interesting creators. Because part of the hook of it was they were drawing in developers from outside Level 5. So there was like Liberation Maiden, which was a sort of shooter with Suda 51 involvement. And there was Bugs vs. Tanks, which is a Keiji and a Funie game. And this idea of Level 5 when they were quite a financial powerhouse back then, kind of throwing their money around to get in like superstar developers to make these little oddities. Like they weren’t making them for an anthology. They almost accidentally become like this great advert for the eShop. But like, yeah, in an ideal world, like they’re making those things forever. You know, in an ideal world, Guild Games is like the inside number nine of eShop. Every couple of years, you’re like, well, we’re going to get six of these things. And like three of them are going to be amazing. Three of them are going to be shit. But I’m kind of intrigued to see what they are. The latent money ran out there, Matthew. Well, that’s why latent’s back on the menu. Like level five are like, you know what? We really miss money. Let’s make more latent games. So, you know, I’m hoping this is the big comeback and then we’ll get Guild 03 on Switch and like all will be well with the world. But yeah. Yeah. So like they’re definitely an MVP. I mean, like Nintendo, and you said outside, but like Nintendo was was definitely more of an MVP on 3DS. You know, they made quite a lot of like weird standalone games. They weren’t all amazing, but they were definitely trying stuff. And there’s this quite sort of sad tier of like sort of third party developers who kind of exclusively made games for Nintendo to publish who you imagine were basically a lot of these people. If you track them back, they once worked at Nintendo and then they kind of left to set up their own kind of like development houses. And I can only think of Q Games. That isn’t quite right. But obviously, like Dylan Cuthbert, who founded Q Games, was at Nintendo making Star Fox back in the day. But there are other people like that, you know, like your Grezos and your genius Sonorities and your Mitchells. You know, these were people who were making lots of like DS games, you know, throughout the DS lifespan. And then a lot of them shifted into these little like download games. And I always got the feeling that like somewhere in there was Iwata kind of like doing favors for his mates. And basically keeping a really interesting collection of smaller studios kind of afloat with constant contract work. And that stuff does die out. And those studios, like most of them are gone. And it probably explains why one of the weaknesses of Switch is, I think, you know, there is a missing tier of like download digital only size 10 pound games from Nintendo. Because I think the people used to make them basically couldn’t survive the kind of gap between 3DS and Wii U and Switch. And that did for them. And, you know, that’s, you know, it’s a bit of a tragedy. You know, a more extreme one is like Alpha Dream, you know, who make the Mario and Luigi games and then they’re gone. You know, eventually these they all prove to be unsustainable. But, you know, definitely on 3DS, a lot of these, you know, where these studios lived was in eShop games, not in retail 3DS games. Yeah, I think they’re like that’s that’s fair. You know, they’re sort of like I like the water assessment there of like, you know, I’ll do a favor for my mates, you know, sort of like his version of having ash on our podcast. Yeah, I’m basing that on nothing, but you know how it is. Yeah, of course. You know, when people are like reliable, you try and do right by them. And I think that’s like a natural human instinct that does survive in business. Definitely. Plus, you know, like the use of Nintendo also needs trusted collaborators for the sheer amount of stuff, the volume of stuff they need making for their hardware. So that, you know, makes sense to go to people who are like trusted for sure. Do you think that Capcom are an MVP here, Matthew? Because I think that the actual the Phoenix Wright, the two Phoenix Wright 3DS games are actually a little bit unusual in terms of they didn’t have a physical release here, but they are basically full price games that you could buy on 3DS. And Capcom, I feel like, because they also had like Resi Revelations on there, 3DS felt like a little bit better supported from them than maybe it was by other publishers, including even like Japanese publishers like Square Enix and stuff. Were Capcom an MVP as well? Is that fair? Yeah, whether they were like specifically like an eShop MVP, I think they were just a general MVP. I think what happens for the 3DS with Capcom is that it coincides with like Capcom coming out of that disastrous generation of like 360, where it’s basically like all over the shop. And their whole kind of deal seems to shift to that, you know, engines which scale between platforms so that one game can live on everything. You get the, what the fuck is it called? You’ve now got like the RE engine, but the thing that they made a lot of games in meant that they could scale them down to 3DS. MT Framework, I think it was called. That’s it, yeah. I think that’s a big part of it, because all of a sudden that’s why you get like a Monster Hunter that can exist on both 3DS and Wii U. It’s basically the same version. You know, it’s why Resident Evil Revelation starts on 3DS and then obviously comfortably runs in HD on everything elsewhere eventually gets released. So that’s just, you know, Capcom’s whole deal has been to like spam everything everywhere apart from Street Fighter. And that’s worked wonders for them. Yeah, the 3DS Phoenix Wrights are weird ones, because, you know, hardened Ace Attorney fans have definitely kicked off at the time that they were digital only because they were like, well, this, you know, what is this series now? You know, it’s like it’s big enough to make sequels, but it’s not big enough to kind of like gamble on a physical release. And I always thought that seems slightly unwise, given that the kind of audience you had with Ace Attorney, you know, they would have bought something, you know, it’s kind of like it’s like an anime and manga crowd. You know, they they used to being like gouged and they could be gouged. You know, it’s idiots who spend 20 quid on like six episodes of Naruto on a DVD. You know, it’s you in 2008. It’s absolutely me in 2006. And so like, you know, that’s that’s an odd one. And like, I just think probably the truth is with Capcom is that they’re very, very pragmatic and they just do everything by the numbers. Now they’re playing it very safe. They know they got into a very bad place and they’ve very carefully kind of moved out of it. And now, you know, when they put Ace Attorney Trilogy on everything and there’s suddenly renewed interest, you know, then their next game that they remaster in that series does have a physical release, you know, and they’re just taking like baby steps. They’re weighing it all up. I think it’s, you know, they seem to be on top of that, you know, what they’re doing. And I like what they’re putting out. And I like the balance of re-releases to like new stuff. So I kind of trust them. I don’t want to step on the toes about Capcom. Well, no Ace Attorney Chronicles released here physically. It was released digitally here. I think my copy, my physical copy is from the US. So there’s still a little lack of… Yes, so even there, they’re not a place where they can put it outright everywhere. But A version of it is physical somewhere in the world. That makes sense, yeah. So Matthew, just to kind of wrap up, we go into the picks. So do you think going back to games on 3DS is a tough hang these days, especially as the Switch’s functionality has sort of grown over time? I ask this because I think there’s something, even though I love the form factor of the 3DS, and I think that some games truly are at home on it in a way where I don’t think you could port it elsewhere and then get the same impression because the art style was very carefully scaled to the functionality of the DS or the 3DS. I do think it’s still, next to a Switch OLED, it simply doesn’t feel like modern technology, and that’s a barrier to get over a little bit. But do you share that or is that just me? You can sort of see where you’re coming from. I think the thing that I think is fundamentally true about the 3DS is that it was a handheld only, people know that going in, everything is tailored to that. I think there is certain genres and a certain tier of games which struggles to live on Switch because people expect something a bit more, because it has to live both portable and on the TV. For whatever reason, like the Pitcross games, I was obsessed with Pitcross on the DS, played 3DS Pitcross games, but on Switch, that feels a little sparse to me. That to me, something triggers in my head and says, this doesn’t really belong on here. This is a different level of gaming. I think maybe that’s just a psychological effect, but when I’m playing stuff on 3DS, it just fits the form factor. It is designed very so clearly for portable play in the way that there is a difference between a portable game and a home game. It’s kind of hard to pin down what that difference is, but it means it’s not really a hurdle for me in the same way. But it’s definitely a bit of a tough hang in terms of everything is a couple of seconds too slow to change menus. It doesn’t feel modern in that sense. Compared to Wii U, 3DS feels like a rocket ship. It’s wild, like how fucking slow Wii U is. But next to Switch, it’s clearly like a 10-year-old handheld. Yeah, it’s funny as well how dirty that bottom screen gets when you haven’t touched it for a while. Somehow it’s not been anywhere. There’s just that kind of thin white layer of vague dust and stuff around the outside of that bottom screen. Well, you know, my house is reasonably clean, but it’s not super clean. I say house, it’s two rooms, but still. So, yeah, that’s something. I still love the 3DS, but yeah, I think they’re like… Someone pointed this out to me a while ago. They’re like, when you are used to the Switch and all the kind of joys that the Switch brings, it’s like there’s a little… You do almost have to like… You know, you do have to bear in mind it’s aged somewhat. And I will say that the Wii U is still a tougher hang than the 3DS, because as we discussed, it’s the plugging in the hard drive that kills me. By the time you’re plugging in your third device to make the Wii U work, you’re done. The third plug is just a no-no. Like, one plug or burst. Yeah, that’s it. A while ago someone asked Reggie, how come you never did it so you could play with two gamepads on the same Wii U? And he was like, oh, you know, we just didn’t get around to any games that sort of used that functionality. And I was like, no, it’s because no one’s got fucking four plug sockets for this thing. They’ve got to keep their TV plugged in as well. Do you know what I mean? Well, that’s grim. It’s all, not to just rag on the Wii, but like it’s so grim. You almost don’t want to recommend anything on the eShop. It’s almost just like, let it close. Like this eShop is going out of business for a reason. The 3DS eShop is like, oh, no, I can’t believe that amazing sweet shop’s closing. You know, like I mourn it. But this one’s like, you know, oh, it’s like when that shop, which only sold Christmas decorations in Barksha, you’re like, eh, you know, it was gimmicky. Yeah. The 3DS eShop shutting is like a great sweet shop, but only sold eight types of sweets I like is closing. That’s what it is. It didn’t sell every type of sweet, but the sweets it had, they were really good. That’s that kind of thing. Well, Switch is like kingdom of sweets, you know, like very obnoxious, but very like clean cut. And it’s just what people want. Yeah. And slightly better price as well. Anyway, before we get too deep into the candy, sort of like lore of Bath. Candy letter. Yeah, exactly. It would make such a big difference as well if the Wii U just had flash, like a flash memory, an SD card slot that you could just treat like the Switch. You do with a Switch, like it would be so much less of a hassle to go to get it out and plug it in. But anyway, no more ragging on the Wii U. Matthew, let’s take a quick break and come back with some recommendations. Welcome back to the podcast. So some recommendations. We’re gonna start with Wii U, then we’re gonna move on to 3DS. Matthew has compiled all of these. I’ve played some of them, but not nearly as many, of course. Matthew is the Nintendo Authority on this podcast. I just waffle on about PS3, brown shooters and other bullshit. So Matthew, how have you gone about picking recommendations for this list? I just went through the shop and looking down on the big list of all the things, and thinking, oh yeah, I have a fond memory of that, or no, I don’t have a fond memory of that. And yeah, like there’s no real great science to it. I appreciate your honesty there. I even wrote that question in the plan. You got tripped up by your own question and end up just being honest. I had no role in that. Amazing. Okay. Why are you not recommending cheap versions of games also available in retail? Another question that you wrote down. Well, this was put to us in the Discord and there are lots of games you can buy in retail and digital only, where now, due to scarcity, they are much cheaper to buy them digital. And obviously, I would recommend that. But it’s such an enormous task to compare the two libraries, like to scroll through eBay and go this one, yes, this one, no, this one, yes, because you can have a certain feeling. There are certain things which you know, like this didn’t feel like it was very popular at the time. So I imagine now it would be very hard to get and you can kind of base it on that. Like, it’s just too big a library. And fundamentally, like if you really cared that much, there are physical versions of those games in the world. Like the eShop closing does not cut you off from those things. It may spike the market in pre-owned prices annoyingly, but that felt like a whole other episode. And like, I think if you really care that much about the 3DS games, you’d probably be on top of the scene. Like, I don’t really think you’ll be coming to these machines. I’d be surprised if anyone listening to this episode is buying a 3DS in March to make the most of it now. Yeah, I agree with that. Plus we also did a 3DS Hall of Fame with Scribs about a year and maybe two years ago now actually. That covered all the basics. I will also say that for 3DS retail games, this doesn’t apply to all of them. Like you have kind of Ace Tourney, Professor Layton. I’m pretty sure that Nintendo, I don’t know if it still manufactures 3DS games, but I think it has been for quite a long time because if you go to Amazon UK, a lot of these games are available to buy directly from Amazon, brand new right now. So stuff that I thought was out of print, Majora’s Mask 3D, Dragon Quest 8. I’ve seen these games be scarce and be expensive, but the price of them has come down because there are retail copies of them still available, which makes me think Nintendo has quietly been supporting 3DS in the background with this stuff because it knows it keeps selling. So I would say that they should be the exceptions that you’re buying digitally for that reason, rather than the rule. That feels like the way to go to me, but too many games. Cool. Matthew, let’s kick off with your first recommendation. Yeah. So first one, I’d say if you buy one game before the Wii U store closes, it’s Affordable Space Adventures, which was one of our Wii U Hall of Fame games from last week with Ash. This is, of course, the 2D space adventure where you control a spaceship on the screen. But on the Wii U gamepad, you basically have the cockpit where you can kind of recalibrate the ship and change elements of the ship to survive the puzzles on screen. So that might be like switching off the engine for a particular reason, many, many different things. And you know, the puzzle is working out how to kind of like control the kind of innards of your ship on the gamepad while surviving on the TV screen. It’s one of the only true kind of like dual screen games on Wii U that makes proper use of the hardware’s possibilities. It’s already slightly nobbled because of it has like some Miiverse stuff, which should be in it, which isn’t in it anymore. But like 99% of what this makes this game special is still there for you to enjoy. Okay, great. Yeah, come up a few times. And yeah, I can’t remember. I think I might have bought this already, actually. But yeah, it’s only one for me to tick off. What’s next, Matthew? So next up is Year Walk, which I also gave a passing mention to, which is the Simogo kind of Nordic forest folklore horror adventure. This was, you know, one of their games that they made for iOS. What I really like about Simogo is that they really, really lent into what made the Wii U, the Wii U. I think they made this in collaboration with Dacko Dacko, who is another studio is run by a really interesting guy called Rodri Boardbent, who used to work at Q Games, who worked on Star Fox Command back in the day. He’s a huge evangelist for not just Nintendo hardware, but working to the specificity of Nintendo hardware. So he really embraced Wii U. Another one of his games is on my list in a moment. But yeah, Year Walk, I think he was involved with the porting of that. And yeah, it just takes this game, blows it up onto the TV, pulls loads of functionality into the gamepad to kind of like enrich the lore of the world. In terms of like something where you want to go, if you want to see Wii U do something on both screens and feel like someone really loved the hardware, this is quite a good pick and it’s about like £6. So it’s not going to break the bank as a short little horror experience. Quite spooky. I think you’d like this one. Yeah, cool. I think I had this on one of the Apple devices I used to have, but never played it. It may have ported it to PC as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there something specifically about the functionality you think is worth buying? If you had a choice between this and the PC version, would you buy this one? Yeah, well, like, yeah, I mean, personally, I would say this just because they tailored it so much and, you know, bought stuff out into that second screen and used some stuff with like sound effects on the second screen. Like, I think they did as elegant a job. Bringing it to every platform. But like Wii U is such an odd platform that most people bounced off of. To see someone like really like understand it and want to do right by it, you know, if we can throw them whatever, a pound of royalties this late in the day, we should do it. Yeah, absolutely. Oh my god, you just reminded me actually of my Wii U. You know how the gamepad’s audio is meant to be completely in sync with your TV? For some reason, the gamepad is running like half a second behind and the cursed noises coming out of that thing. When I was playing fucking Star Fox Zero, like, that was just like it was it was not good. I was like, oh, this is very cursed. It used to be this amazing synchronicity. And now it’s like something’s gone wrong and it’s a little bit behind. That’s what that’s the price you pay for getting your Wii U out in 2023. Okay, next up then, Matthew, this another interesting sounding indie thing here. Yeah, this is this is the game I was referencing. This is Daka Daka’s Scram Kitty and his buddy on rails, a top down sort of twin stick arcade shooter where the gimmick was you are this cat in this sort of like magnetic wheel which grinds along rails. You sort of view down from the viewing from a top down perspective and sort of shooting out from this little wheel with one stick while you kind of steer it along these rails with the other and use the kind of like momentum and the kind of physics of grinding on these rails to kind of fling yourself off and magnetize to other rails. Mainly uses the like the gamepad and tv combo to kind of give you like a slightly better view on one screen than you get on the other so you can get like you know you’re kind of doing quite specific targeting on one and and seeing like the wider play field on the other. I have a kind of like a sort of slightly abnormal, not abnormal fondness for this, but maybe an exaggerated fondness for it because this is quite a big game for us on O&M in terms of like an indie developer who was like super into Wii U. We did some really great interviews with Rod about this and he was always really really generous with his time and you know he’s a very deep thinker about Nintendo hardware which I really love and you know this is a really fun little arcade shooter. I think Year Walk is maybe like of the work they’re involved with this is maybe like a slightly like flashier Wii U game. But this was cool. They’re the Daka Daka. They also made the that’s is it like Cloud Gods? It kills the pilgrims or the little I think it was like a PSP little arcade game. They always turn up in interesting places doing interesting things Daka Daka. Okay. Yeah, with very specific types of game titles evident. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Another good recommendation there. Yes. Matthew, I think it’s about time you talked about NES Remix for the fourth episode in a row. Fucking hell. Yeah. How did this become like one of our go to games? That’s weird. It really did. I don’t know how that happened either. But yeah, I guess what I wanted to clarify here because there’s been some sort of to and fro on this remix, which is again, a mini game collection which takes classic NES games and turns them into like WarioWare-esque challenges based around individual moments from those games. There is a 3DS version, but that version is kind of like a best of one and two and has fewer games than one and two. And I actually think if you really want to have the full NES Remix experience, you want to buy one and two. If you only had to buy one, buy NES Remix 2, because it’s got the slightly friendlier, better known first party games in it. But it’s weird things like quick, do a Zelda level as Kirby or do this first level of Kirby, but you can’t breathe out, see if the kind of breath in the whole level and things like that. They just went in and tinkered with what these games could do and put different characters in different games. A really playful side of Nintendo, like one of their rare Wii U eShop games full stop that they made also happens to be really interesting. Ice Climber, but you’ve got no hands, you know, like it’s just, it’s absolutely hell. Dr Mario, but it’s Wario. Yeah, and he’s been struck off by the NHS. Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, I didn’t realize the 3DS version wasn’t the whole thing. That’s good, a good clarity point for previous pods. So that’s decent. Okay, next up Matthew, another game that’s come up two weeks in a row somehow. Yeah, I’ve put Star Fox Guard in there just because, like, as Ash said, you can buy this, this was sold in other forms. This is a sort of standalone kind of sort of tower defense game set in the Star Fox universe that was packaged in with some copies of Star Fox Zero. So like, you can feasibly get this outside of the store. But it’s also a kind of like a bit of a Miyamoto passion project. It kind of grew out of a Wii U prototype that he was kind of hawking at E3, going around going, who wants to see my prototypes? Well, people kind of shrugged. This is one that gets turned into a game. If you’re a truly obsessive Nintendo head, the idea of like, not owning a thing which has had like Miyamoto involvement at some point, you know, I could understand why you might want this in your collection. Yeah, it’s what I’m not going to bother with because I do agree that it’s quite a specific, you know, it’s an interesting, specific thing. It’s got Platinum’s name on it. It’s got Nintendo EPD on it like it’s, but I don’t know, they, I frankly think this should have just been included with Star Fox Zero. They should have been together, you know. I think the kind of person who would care about this would already own this. Yeah, yeah. So if you don’t already own it, don’t buy it because you don’t care enough. Nonetheless, it made the list, so. Well, you know, I felt like, listen, the Wii U list is kind of short, so. Yeah, that’s fair. Okay, so next up, Matthew, got a bunch of games here under the Virtual Console banner, so. Yeah, so like, this is one place I do break my rule where I think now some of these games are quite expensive to buy on Wii as box copies. They’re harder to find. Maybe you can get them on, yeah, here they’re all £18 to buy on Wii Virtual Console. I haven’t checked all of these. Some of these I know are hard to find. Some of them I just think are good. I’ve put Beat the Beat Rhythm Paradise, which is the Rhythm Heaven game, which we famously did a lovely cover for for Nintendo games. I say famously, it was famous to me. It’s come up at least five times in this bulk. Yeah, like some say there’s a 3DS game which kind of incorporates a lot of the mini games from this, but there’s also something about blasting that music out of a big fat TV, which is very satisfying. So I wouldn’t say the 3DS game completely over overwrites this. Pandora’s Tower, a kind of strange meat eating, sort of slightly Castlevania-y, slightly Zelda-y game where you had a chain whip, which you fired out with the Wii pointer. Quite expensive to buy now. £18, very sound for probably one of those sevens. But one of those sevens that Nintendo published, which makes it kind of even more curious. Sin and Punishment, successor of The Skies. This is the Wii U Sin and Punishment, aka Sin and Punishment 2. Again, quick glance, very, very expensive to buy. Sin and Punishment is kind of cool. It’s good to get behind treasure. This won’t exist in any other format outside of Wii. So why the hell not? Yeah, that’s an interesting one. And yeah, again, you know, a lot of these games, they look nicer on Wii U 2 because it upscales the picture. So you’re getting that experience as well. Yeah. OK, what’s next, Matthew? Metroid Prime Trilogy. I don’t actually know how much is this to buy on Wii as a retail copy. But a lot, a lot. Well, there we go. 18 pounds, then good value for money. I mean, is it diminished a bit by this remaster existing? You know, we don’t know if we’re ever going to see two and three again. I don’t think, you know, worst case scenario, you’re 18 quid out of pocket. I can think of worse things that could happen. Then you end up owning Metroid Prime 2 and 3 on top of a remastered Metroid Prime 1. Yeah, I think that the rumor is that Retro did Metroid Prime 1 remaster, and then like the 2 and 3 I think are being outsourced with their, you know, their supervision, basically. That’s what I think the rumor was on Reddit I read. But yeah, while they focus on Metroid Prime 4. So yeah, you know, for the time being, at least, this is probably the easiest way to just play those if you’ve got the appetite after, you know, playing the Switch remaster for the first one. Okay, next one, Matthew. I know nothing about this next one. So this one’s interesting. Like, I don’t think it’s a great game. It’s called A Shadow’s Tale. It’s a Konami 2D platformer where you play as the shadow of a boy kind of interacting with the shadows of a world in the foreground. The big kind of puzzle mechanic is like shifting the shadows by moving things around in the foreground to kind of like create new paths for him. In the run up to this, you know, people thought this might be like the Wii’s Ico. You know, it has that kind of slightly dreamy look. Like it looks like it could come from that team in terms of like its sort of vibe. As it turns out, it was merely fine. But to buy now is like probably plus a hundred pounds. Like this was a very niche game. It’s like a really odd inclusion on the Virtual Console service. You know, just to own a strange bit of Wii history. You could do worse than buying A Shadow’s Tale. Interesting. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But sort of offbeat to pick there. I can see what you mean superficially from the. It’s got a sort of slightly like D Diddley D kind of like. Yeah, it’s been a while since we rolled that one out, so, yeah, I’m satisfied. I’m Mr. Ico. We could do Ico 2 on the Wii. We could do this in, yeah, 480i, stretched onto a HDTV. Also just like, you know, a fond memento of when like, Konami made loads of games. Yeah, you could take loads of out of there. And, yeah. Hey, they’re going to again, Matthew, if, you know, obviously we’ve got the Silent Hills coming and some other stuff probably. Yeah. Fingers crossed. They’re back, they’re back, baby. This is where they’re like, they do their online direct for Shadow’s Tale, expanded universe. And they’ve got like five different games coming from the Shadow’s Tale team. And a movie, you know, like it’s… And a theme park at Universal Studios. Yeah, a movie specifically directed by Christoph Gans, or whatever he’s called, that guy. What’s your next one, Matthew? Yeah, Project Zero 2, aka one of the Fatal Frames. This, yeah, very hard to buy. I think it’s rock solid. You know, I just want to buy like newer, exciting Fatal Frames. But for completionist horror fans, everyone likes a little scare. £18 for a couple of scares. That sounds OK. Yeah, absolutely. So that will probably come out again at some point as well on other formats. But yeah, they are, yeah, re-releasing all of those things. And last up, a little shout out for Zack and Wiki. I actually think you can probably find this for cheaper than £18, to be honest. Yeah, you can. Definitely get this around less than a tenner, I think. But like, I can’t talk Wii on Wii U without talking about Zack and Wiki. I have to hand in my Capcom puzzle card. So, yes. Okay. Similar deal for DS Virtual Console. I’m actually going to skip a couple of these because they’re ass. Well, they’re ass, but they’re not needed. The interesting one here, I would say, is Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, which is quite expensive to buy on DS. And like, we kind of shrugged it off a little bit. I feel like in my magazine history anyway, we had a similar relationship with Fire Emblem that we did with Kirby, where we didn’t necessarily show it the love it deserved at the time. And now I’m like, God damn it, why don’t I own a copy of Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon on DS, which I think is a kind of all singing or dancing remake of like the original Fire Emblem or the second one, definitely one of the earlier Fire Emblems anyway. But yeah, like a little thing you could play on that touch screen tapping away, it’s going to be cheaper than actually buying on DS, that sounds sad to me. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a good shout. Well, just looking at what was put on that virtual console, just to see what an oddity it is to have all these DS games available on a home console. So go poke around, see what you can find. What’s next Matthew? Yeah, next one, Super Mario Advance 4, Super Mario Brothers 3. This was a GBA game that you could buy on virtual console. This one, including for like pure curio value. So famously, when this originally came out in GBA, it had the functionality of an e-card reader where you could get these collectible cards, scan them and unlock downloadable levels. Not downloadable like, but sort of like extra levels in the game. But infamously, you know, that system wasn’t like popular enough and they never fully released all of those things in the West. I don’t think they released them at all in the UK. What’s interesting about this is it’s a port of the GBA, not a port, it is the GBA game, but they’ve unlocked all those e-card, e-reader levels. So like, this is a real like, if you are a Mario obsessive, there is something quite interesting about buying this Game Boy Advance port of Super Mario Brothers 3 and enjoying these extra levels which weren’t formally available in the West, but have just been unlocked as a matter of course, as this part of this specific Virtual Console download. Now, the caveat with this is they could well bring this with these unlocks to Nintendo Switch Online. Like, you would think if things have been on these services in the past, they would be the first games to naturally come to like the GBA section of the Switch. So like, I feel like that’s probably gonna happen, but it is cool, the idea of like buying this thing, which has this little quirk, which means it has these extra levels. Yeah, 38 levels in all. And they did kind of interesting things in that they were like, they kind of mixed and matched mechanics that it feels a little bit like Mario Maker-y, if you ever look these things up online. So like, it would be like, you’re doing a level from Super Mario Brothers 3, but it’s got, they’ve added in the kind of radish turnip pulling from Super Mario Brothers 2. Or like, it’s the cape from Super Mario World, and you’re flying through levels from Super Mario Brothers 3. So it’s like definitely a deep cut, but I know a lot of people are very fond of it. So I thought I’d include it. Yeah, good shout. And not something you discussed before on the podcast. A couple more on Wii U, Matthew. Yeah, I’ve said, like, if you’re gonna buy a game, a full game that is retail, digital, you could maybe buy Xenoblade Chronicles X, because the digital version means you don’t have to worry about downloading all the extra, like, fast loading packs, which you have to download to make the physical version run better. Right. Like, just from a less of a ball ache perspective, owning a digital copy of Xenoblade Chronicles X, I don’t know, makes more sense to me. Like, I’m assuming under their update rule, you’ll still be able to re-download the high-speed download texture packs for the physical copy, should you own it. But, you know, do you really want to be doing all that? That’s a huge pain in the ass. Yeah, it is quite pricey as well to buy a physical copy of this. It’s probably going to spike massively as well when this store closes. I don’t know, like, I think if you don’t own Xenoblade Chronicles X by now, like, why are you buying it in the last four weeks of the store? Like, that seems like a weird move to me. Because Matthew Castle told me to. I don’t care about it. Like, I just don’t know if this game is going to, like, speak to you. This is, like, a harder Xenoblade to enjoy than the other ones. And that’s going in as someone who is super invested in Xenoblade. If you’re just like, ah, I’ll see what the deal about this thing is in its last week on sale. Like, I don’t know, what do you expect to happen? This is like the sort of Tokyo Jungle for the PS3 Digi episode that I did, basically. It’s like, you would have bought this by now, you know? But yes, maybe with some more prestige. So Matthew, one more Wii game? Yeah, I’ve just put Mini Mario and Friends because it’s free. This is like a Mario vs Donkey Kong puzzler. We talked a little bit about this series last week and about how it didn’t really do it for either Ash or myself. This one is free to download, but you unlock new levels with Amiibo. So if you own a shitload of Amiibo, this is, you know, it’s free. The only version of Mario and Donkey Kong I would really go to bat for is a free version. I wouldn’t ever really spend money on this series myself. So, you know, that’s there. You may as well get free stuff while it’s there, right? Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you’ve gone to the trouble of plugging in your HDD into your mains socket. OK, so that’s Wii U, Matthew, 3DS here. So definitely some stuff we talked about on that 3DS episode, but like a kind of like a much bigger treasure trove here. So, yeah, when it kicks off. Yeah, so Attack of the Friday Monsters. This is another one of the Guild games. First up is Attack of the Friday Monsters, Tokyo Tale, which is one of the Guild 02 compilation games. We’ve talked about it on this podcast before. Made by Millennium Kitchen and designed by someone called Kaz Ayabe, who is better known for a Japanese series called Boko no Natsu Yasumi, which have come to like prevalence through like a couple of like celebrity fans. Tim Rogers basically made a big video essay about this series, which kind of like brought it to a lot of people’s attention. It was one of those like six hour videos, which I know some people have an appetite for. And so this series of games that he made in the past are kind of about like everyday RPGs. You sort of on summer holidays and it’s about pottering around as a kid and collecting bugs and going fishing. They’re very low key, sort of like slight Animal Crossing energy to them, but like married to a sort of single player narrative of sort of very light RPG. And this was a version of that for 3DS about a boy who lives in a town doing chores. There is a strange narrative hook in that on Friday there are these sort of giant monsters appear to fight, you know, like sort of Kaiju style kind of Godzilla monsters. And it’s all about kind of working out what the deal is of this kind of very low key, slightly dreamy narrative RPG. Quite a short little throwaway game, but like a very distinct gem, like only lives on 3DS. Personally, like I had a much better time with this than I did the Crayon Shin Chan kind of version of this series, which came out last year on Switch, which has a similar kind of summer holiday vibe, except you have to spend it all with Crayon Shin Chan, who I fucking hate. It’s like this little boy who like screams the whole time. It’s quite hard work. Gets his dick out if I recall. Just all kinds of stuff. Kind of, yeah. It has the shape of a game I should love, but the protagonist was so ghastly. This one, on the other hand, is like far less obnoxious, much easier to buy into. Yeah, like this, we really champion this on O&M. It’s got a real cult fan following. It feels like something that will be greatly missed when it vanishes with the eShop. Yeah, I think we discussed that on the 3DS episode. Definitely one of the obvious ones to pick up from the Guild collection. It really stands out with its art style. We’re going to route through some things which are super popular, which we’ve covered a lot on this. Just to give them a little shout out, they’re interesting and worth grabbing. Another Guild game, Crimson Shroud, which had involvement from Mr. Matsuno, Yasumi Matsuno of Final Fantasy Tactics fame. A really interesting tabletop RPG where you roll dice physically into the world and play with little cast iron figures. That’s absolutely brilliant. Pull Blocks, Nintendo’s first party series where you pull blocks in and out of the background to the foreground. Makes really good use of 3DS. It’s also on Wii U, but I would suggest the 3DS iterations of this because they make really good use of stereoscopic 3D. Hydroventure Spin Cycle, which is my favourite water-based sort of metroid-y puzzle platformer. This one interestingly is controlled entirely with tilt controls, where you’re sloshing this water about changing its state between liquid, gas and solid, and using those different characteristics to shatter levels and solve lots of puzzles. That’s really cool. I also want to give a shout-out to the Boxboy Trilogy, which is a series we haven’t really talked about. To be honest, this is more of a Catherine shout-out, she’d kill me if I don’t include it on this list. Made by Hal, absolutely adorable mascot. It’s like a square with legs, but the animation on his little legs is very, very endearing. His puzzle mechanic is he can kind of stretch out and create more blocks, which he then throws in the world to build little staircases, but it obviously escalates massively from there, and across three games they layer in more and more mechanics. I think by the last one you’ve got a wife and kids who are also boxes and having to guide them around and all this mad stuff’s happening. Particular shout-out to this, because the first one’s called Boxboy, the sequel is called Box Boxboy, and the last one is called Bye Bye Boxboy on 3DS. There is a Switch sequel to these, but it isn’t a compilation. When these are gone, they are gone. It’s how the lovely creators of Kirby, so we should get behind it. I don’t really have time to dig into the Shin Megami Tensei scene on 3DS, but it is kind of amazing. There are loads of games which are absolutely beloved as cult classics. The Shin Megami Tensei IV, Strange Journey, Soul Hackers, Devil Survivor 1 and 2 remakes. The Shin Megami Tensei community will argue for years about which of these is the best, but they are all in agreement that most of the games bearing the Shin Megami Tensei name are excellent on 3DS, and it’s quite hard to go wrong. I would personally say Shin Megami Tensei 4, just because it’s a mainline series, so much effort and love goes into it. There are maybe quirky or more interesting things happening in the other SMT games, but this is the place to go for that. I think as well, these will probably get ported at some point. You think so? Sega is doing Etrian Odyssey, right? They’re doing that one now, and so it makes me think that these will be in line at some point just based on how diligent they’ve been with getting the Persona games onto PC. It’s got to be on the list at some point, you know what I mean? Yeah, but still, these are a good fit as RPGs. It’s famously the games before Persona. It’s Persona without as much story and all the anime horniness. It’s maybe a purer dungeon monster battling game, which makes them a little colder to attach, but maybe deeper strategically. Shin Megami Tensei, we should probably do an episode about this if I ever get my ass in gear and play more of these games. I’m a dabbler, a self-confessed dabbler. Ace Attorney, the two games, they are Dual Destiny, Spirit of Justice. They are available on Android and maybe iOS, definitely Android, so they’re not going to die with the eShop, but these are games that live on Nintendo handhelds. I really love the stereoscopic 3D in both these games. Spirit of Justice, I really, really rate as one of the best Ace Attorneys. Dual Destinies is one of the weaker ones, but I think they’re about £20 each. They feel like if you have any interest in Ace Attorney, you should probably own these games. You should also be sure to buy the DLC case for each of these games, because the one in Dual Destinies is probably one of the stronger cases in that game. It’s where a killer whale is on trial. You’re basically doing a trial at a sea park, trying to get a Shamu-esque killer whale, get him a not guilty verdict. The Spirit of Justice case is a big time travel mystery about someone seems to have traveled in time to commit a crime or not. Those will also close with the store, so you need to buy the game, download it, and then buy that case from inside the game. I did that ritual myself about a year ago, and it was a pain in the arse, but I’m glad I’ve done it. On a similar note, Fire Emblem Fates, which is famously the game with multiple campaigns. What I will say about this is, this is already off sale as a core game. You cannot buy Fire Emblem Fates on the e-store. You can buy a physical copy of either Birthright or Conquest. Think Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue. That’s how they split this. From within those games, you can still buy the other campaigns, which are then naturally cheaper. You pay for the main game, and then you buy the other campaigns. Birthright is the easy one. Conquest is the really hard one. Revelation is the kind of thing which brings it all together once you’ve played those two and fills in the gaps, and is the narrative cherry on top. Again, if you don’t have these games by now, you probably don’t care enough about Fire Emblem for this to be worthwhile. Yeah, okay, that’s a fair point. I think I did also do the ritual here of buying all the content I needed from within it, just in case I ever did get around to this Fire Emblem on top of the other seven that I owned. So that’s good stuff, Matthew. What else have we got? We’ve got Pocket Card Jockey, which has just come to Apple Arcade. This is like the original, some would say, best form of it. It’s a game freak game. It’s a horse racing game where you power your horse by playing solitaire during the match. This one definitely passed me by at the time, but when all these articles started coming out last year about you must buy these games, this was regularly in the list. It’s incredibly charming. A really odd tone of voice to it. I love the little horse animations are delightful, and I quite like playing solitaire. So like solitaire with more action drive to it is quite an interesting, exciting combination. And it turns out the internet was right. This is a good game. Yeah, absolutely. This is definitely one whose reputation, a bit like Attack of the Friday Monsters, has just lived on, really. People talking about it still years later. Also from Game Freak, if you are interested in their non-Pokemon work, Harmonite, which is a sort of rhythm game, a sort of platforming rhythm game where you run along bashing notes and monsters as they appear in time with the music. It’s a little bit stiff and not quite as light on his feet as I would hope from a rhythm game. It feels like you’re trying to fail you. It’s quite difficult, even on a base level. But again, always interesting to see Game Freak do stuff that isn’t Pokemon, with their art department and their sense, particularly their music department as well. It’s a great sounding game, so Harmonite is interesting. Tokyo Crash Mobs. This is probably the worst game I’m going to recommend, but it’s such a fucking weird game that I have to. This is made by Mitchell and published by Nintendo. Mitchell made this game called Puzzloop on the DS, which is a series of colored balls move down a track, and you basically fire colored balls into that track to make combinations of three and stop that track from gradually moving to a goal at the end of the screen. I hope that makes sense. This game reimagines that with, like, what happens you were doing the same, but for queues of people, and instead of balls, it’s people in a queue, and they’re almost like animated gifs of real life people that they photographed. So it’s got the energy of a mad FMV game with these little cutscenes in between about this Japanese woman and this non-Japanese woman having a really terrible day and falling into these bizarre comic scenarios where they’re forced to throw people into queues of people to get to their destination faster. Quite a hard one to explain at any kind of speed, but it’s like 5 quid. It’s probably a bit 3 out of 5, but you will laugh at how mad this game looks, and you’ll be sad that this will not live anywhere else other than 3DS. Yeah, that’s not the game I pictured from the name Tokyo Crash Mobs, so that’s super interesting. Very, very odd. One for The Back Page heads. Chase Cold Case Investigations was made by ex-members of Sing, and to look at it, you’d think this was Hotel Dusk 3. In terms of the art style, the main character in this looks just like Carl Hyde. It’s unreal. It’s not as good as a Sing game. It’s very short. It’s a couple of hours long, little kind of like graphic puzzle adventure. But if you just want to see the last visible remnant of Hotel Dusk’s and Sing’s in-house style, it does live in this weirdly 3DS exclusive game. Okay, interesting. I wasn’t even aware this existed. Again, it’s a bit 5 out of 10, but you know. If you listen to this podcast, you might be interested in this. Yeah, but at least worth Googling to see what it looks like. Last of all, I wanted to do a shout out for a couple of the 3D remakes of older games. On the Nintendo 3D Classics range, Kirby’s Adventure, very simple 3D version. It just sort of pulls everything out from the background, but it is weirdly the best technically performing version of Kirby’s Adventure. This is a game which struggled to run on NES and struggles to run on every re-released version on Switch Online services, lots of sprite flicker. This version, 3D aside, just runs, it’s the purest, cleanest version of Kirby’s Adventure, which, you know, we’re a big Kirby podcast now, so we have to get behind that. Yes, since last year, yes, that’s what we do now here. Yeah, that’s what we do. Kid Icarus, again, not an incredibly complex 3D job, but it’s kind of interesting in that they’ve added new backgrounds to the game that weren’t in the NES original, which kind of tie into the themes of the game. So like a lot of this game is you’re climbing up, basically ascending out of hell, and the backgrounds now reflect that in a way they obviously couldn’t on the NES. So it has added something to enable the 3D effect, but also kind of adds this like a slight unique twist, which means this isn’t quite the game you remember. I think Jeremy Parish has said that they’ve tweaked the actual like physics on Pit as well. So it’s actually a slightly smoother platformer. I don’t know the original Kid Icarus well enough to feel that myself, but I’ll trust Jeremy Parish on these matters. Yeah, absolutely. Good chat. I didn’t even know anything about that version of Kid Icarus. That’s cool. Yeah. And then outside of Nintendo, like the real powerhouse, like, you know, labors of love are the Sega 3D classics. I think this is M2 that ported these, and they are just absolutely stunning. All of them are just like so beautifully made. Use the 3D in such, like, rich ways. There are so many settings that you can tweak them. Like, if you are into the game at the heart of each of these releases, it’s hard to imagine them being treated with more love. The two that I’m pulling out is Gunstar Heroes, because Gunstar Heroes, like, fucking rocks. And also, it just, like, you know, it’s a 2D action game, but the way they kind of layer it up, and, like, the bosses, which use a lot of, like, weird 3D sort of shifting shapes, they look really, really striking. It’s just, you know, already a visually exciting game, but this looks unreal with stereoscopic 3D. And, of course, OutRun, which you can sort of imagine how good OutRun would look in 3D, and, you know, you can’t really imagine how good it’s going to look in 3D, it turns out. Like, the job they’ve done on this, and how fast it feels, and the way that kind of, like, endless kind of highway just stretches to sort of infinity into the screen, and you’re driving there. Like, you know, I’m not, like, a major OutRun head, you know, it feels a bit fake kind of coming for me, but even I’m like, this is a rad thing to behold, and, you know, really you should probably buy all these 3D classics, but those two games really stand out to me. Yeah, that’s a version of OutRun that you will just never be able to experience like this anywhere else. That’s, you know, important when it’s a game that’s been ported to as many systems as this. This is why this version in particular is worth having. Well, that was a better run-through there, Matthew. Yeah, so that was a speedy run-through, but like I say, we wanted to keep this episode a little shorter. Yeah, absolutely, and definitely there’s a lot there for people to dig into. Didn’t you try and beat me in some kind of draft with Hydro Venture? Was that the Wii draft? Was there a Wii version of that? Yeah, I think I tried using that. I think I had that as a WiiWare game. Oh yeah, now I remember. And you had, I think, somehow, didn’t you have Metroid Prime Trilogy for that? I can’t remember how that worked. No, I think I had a remaster or something like that. I can’t remember what happened there now, but yeah, it was definitely like the duff pick for your side that maybe lost it for you, but not to say the game is bad, but yeah, not to dredge up bad draft memories. But thank you so much for that overview, Matthew. I think that will be useful for people. For people out there, I will make this post on Patreon public. So anyone who’s listening to this podcast, you can go to patreon.com/backpagepod, find the list associated with this episode, the episode title, and you’ll be able to see everything Matthew’s recommended here in one place in case you didn’t catch any of that. So yeah, I’ll make it nice and easy for people. So thank you so much for listening to this slightly shorter episode than usual. I’m Samuel W. Roberts on Twitter. If you’d like to support the podcast, patreon.com/backpagepod for 2016 bit games that made us come into Excel this month and Christopher Nolan movies ranks. That’ll be fun. Matthew, where can people find you? I am at MrBazzill underscore pesto. Yep, there’s a Discord as well. You know where to find that. backpagegames.gmail.com if you want to email us. I will be back soon. Goodbye.