#eggconsole

[slapegg]

Some Thoughts About... Popful Mail

Some Thoughts About... Popful Mail (PC-88 EGG Console re-release, 2024)

Popful Mail is one of my top 5 favorite games so I was very excited to see it come to the Switch. Very quickly tampered by it being the PC-Engine version, not the Sega CD one. Or even that SNES version. Or even the PC-98 version... But still! A chance to play Popful Mail again! It was one of the first games I got for my Sega CD and I love it to this day. I mean, if you look at Lust or my other demon characters and wonder why they have such long ears, it’s a healthy mix of Popful Mail and Shining Force/Yoshitaka Tamaki’s art.

Just to reiterate! This is the PC-88 release. It is not the (fantastic) Sega CD one. The game is in Japanese. Just about everything. Popful Mail isn’t the most story-based of games, but you’re going to miss out on all the dialogue. And the menus. And the stores. An overlay explaining the shops would be nice or just stick a translated picture in the instructions. I remembered enough of the Sega CD one to find the heal option and buying items at least shows a picture of what you’re buying, but some of the options don’t make sense to me. There’s a PC-Engine 98 walkthrough on GameFAQs and that was most useful, but there are enough differences between the 98 and 88 versions that it’s not perfect.

There’s a point where you have to “swap disks” to continue and for some reason that’s not automated in the overlay and the message is in Japanese. So you go to the disk change menu in the EGG overlay and there are way more options than you think there would be. There’s a “2” in the Japanese message so you try switching to disk 2 and nothing happens. So it’s just trial and error swapping thing around. If you swap disks in both drives and load the visual disk, the game progresses! BUUUT! After the cutscene, the game just goes black with no message, English or Japanese. I tried every combination of disks but couldn’t get it to progress. So I reloaded my previous save and ignored the “2” in the message and only swapped to the visual disc, and then after the cutscene, NOW swapped it to the “2”disc, and it worked! There is absolutely no reason this should not be automated or be in the EGG instruction manual. This was just a straight up garbage process. I could understand leaving it how it is for history’s sake, but to not have a translated step-by-step guide in the EGG instruction manual is just laziness, incompetence, or being so cheap that you won’t spring for an extra three sentences of translation work.

It’s still an action-adventure game but it used a bump combat system. So weird! Instead of slashing a sword, fighting is just jumping over enemies and hitting them from behind. Attacking from the front either has the enemy block the attack, do damage to you as well, or shoot you with a projectile. Just smashing into them from the back makes some of the early bosses easier than regular enemies with projectile attacks. The bump system actually makes Mail terrible for the majority of the game. In the Sega CD version, I used Mail for all but a few fights. In this version, Tatto is the star of the show where you’ll spend stages in a row never switching off of him because of how much enemies spam projectiles or how most bosses fight you from a distance.

Lining up shots from the back is made more difficult by the how limited the color palette is. The graphics are hard on the eyes. The backgrounds are super busy and just as saturated as the main characters while being the same colors, plus it kind of blurs when you walk. So yeah, it’s a rough play and I stuck to very short play sessions.

The music is still awesome. It’s similar to the Sega CD’s but just different enough to be fun in its own right.

The changes the Sega CD version made are interesting. In this version, Mail can toss daggers up and down! The wedding ring sidequest is gone so you never fight the leader of the Badger Gang, but that same lady now leads you to freeing Slicky from the cave-in. Muttonhead has an evil Gaw! Your health refills when on the world map! You’re not allowed to change characters during boss fights! The boomerang is governed by a mechanic where you have to hold the attack button down to send it and it returns when you let go (making it almost useless). The economy balancing is... well, it’s actually pretty close to how Working Designs re-did the Sega CD version. Everything is crazy expensive and you die in just a few hits so the game is super grindy and unfair.

In short, if this was the first/only version of Popful Mail I ever played, I wouldn’t have any reverence for the series. This game is just frustrating, grindy, and the fetch quests are tedious even if you can understand the language. This is a neat historical piece but it is not a fun game to play.

To be honest, I couldn’t force myself to finish the game. I got up to the boss of the ice world (world 4 of 5) and it’s one of the most poorly made fights I have ever played in a video game. The boss’s attacks move too fast for how bad the controls are and how small the gameplay window is and each attack drains your health so you die in a few hits. It took me multiple deaths to even realize why one attack was almost instantly killing me even when I dodged it (it leaves a like 3 pixel tall trail behind the shot that is blue on a blue background on top of blue ground). The boss spends most of the fight invulnerable and only opens up for like two seconds, which is barely enough time to hit it and can line up with the other shots it’s firing so you lose half your health to take off two percent of the boss’s health. And to top all that off, you’re dealing with ice physics while trying to fight it. It’s not a hard fight; it’s a poorly made unfair fight that has no redeeming factors or entertainment. In the Sega CD version, this fight is a slog, but it’s entirely doable and certainly doesn’t feel unfair. It’s simply not worth beating that boss to see the end of the game. The EGG Console overlay has a weird “scene select” option that lets you jump to specific points in the game and one of them is right after the ice world, so I gave the last world a try, but the bosses remain absolute trash. I forced myself to beat the Golem boss in 5-1, but once I got to the Fright Knight in 5-2, I just put the game down again and gave up. The boss itself isn’t difficult, it’s that the boss is designed to take advantage of the worst part of the controls and camera so you’re fighting the game rather than the enemy. And, yet again, the boss has an insane amount of health, kills you three hits, and spends most of the fight invincible. I had to look up online how to even hurt the boss. So thanks, Youtube, and for showing me the end of the PC-E version of Popful Mail. At least in the PC-98 version, Mail’s fight against the Overlord actually looks more interesting than the Sega CD’s, but I’m bummed out I never got to experience it.

Whatever EGG’s porting overlay is, it has an option to speed up or slow down how the game runs, so that’s neat. It has a rewind feature, but instead of it being the normal “hold down to rewind”, pressing the button jumps you back a little bit, so you have to keep pressing it until you get where you want to be. But it doesn’t seem to jump you back the same distance each time you press the button. There’s no precision to it, but it kind of gets you there as long as you’re willing to go way farther back than you intended.

The rerelease includes a gallery with some fun art I hadn’t seen before. Buuut they didn’t translate the text or notes so it feels super low effort.

The game is only $7, so it’s hard to gripe about some missing features, no matter how basic/needed they may seem (outside of that disc swap menu translation), but man this is just a lousy version of a great game. The PC-98 version looks bad but still a lot better than this one, so why wasn’t that one ported instead? Maybe the EGG engine only does PC-88 games? I dunno. Maybe interest in this version is enough to push Sega/Falcom to just pay for a new translation and VO for the Sega CD version so people can play the best version of a great game. The Sega Genesis Mini 2 had Popful Mail, but only in Japan, so the English-speaking world is really missing out. And now I’m mad again that Shining Force CD is also trapped on the Mini 2 instead of also releasing it as a stand-alone game!

[tomo3p]

EGGコンソール イース PC-8801mkIISR for Nintendo Switch（EGGCONSOLE Ys PC-8801mkIISR）

https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000075600.html

[twinklestarsprites]

Go play EGGCONSOLE

The Switch has basically turned into a game historian's dream come true, with classic titles getting ported, remade, remastered and localized for the first time all over the place. From Hamster's weekly Arcade Archives, to M2's fantastic as always work with Sega Ages, and Nintendo's own library available via their online service, there's no shortage of great titles for anyone who wants to revisit their own childhood, or just dive deep to better understand the past.

What I definitely didn't expect was for classic Japanese computer games to start ending up on the console, much less in North America. For a long time, these games have kinda had a forbidden fruit appeal for Westerners, a last frontier of games that was difficult to navigate due to the language barrier, the aging hardware, Windows cannibalizing all other operating systems during the 90's and of course, few of the games being exported over here, but it's gotten a lot better in recent years, mostly thanks to D4 enterprises.

They started with Project EGG, ostensibly Japan's equivalent of GOG, and after a few other ventures on various platforms, they've decided to port their most classic titles to Switch under the label of EGGCONSOLE, including, as I mentioned earlier, on the Western eShop. This seems odd at first, but considering the vintage of these games, they don't have that much Japanese text to parse, and often using joysticks and controllers back in the day, rather than keyboards, meaning they transfer to typical console controllers rather easily (you can still use an emulated keyboard in-game, if you wish).

As you can imagine, not all of the games have aged super gracefully; the action titles are straightforward enough, but the adventure games or RPG's with more complex systems and labyrinth-like levels are a bit too incomprehensible, though the releases have a lot of effort put into them to make sure you can see what they're all about, from level selects, to savestates to rewinds.

The three titles I've definitely put the most time into are Thexder, Silpheed, and Relics. Relics is definitely the most stymieing of the three, but it's so cool I keep trying to slog through it; it's got a body stealing mechanic which is always great, and a cool biomechanical aesthetic way ahead of its time.

But the two titles that are the easiest to get into are sort of a duology that compliment each other, as they're both by Game Arts and insanely impressive on a technical level; Thexder and Silpheed.

Silpheed is insane. I was aware of the Sega CD release before, but I didn't realize it was a sorta-sequel, sorta-remake of the computer original, and that it was basically Star Fox running on an 8-bit computer. I dunno how they got wireframes and polygons like this on the PC-88, but it's insane. The actual gameplay is pretty good, nothing compared to other shmups of the era and especially now, but the level design is pretty good and the weapon loadout select is pretty great, and adds a strategic wrinkle.

Thexder is a sidescrolling mecha-action title, and again, the technical prowess on display really steals the show. The animation on the robot as he lethargically strides forward, then turns into a plane blasting enemies down with an Itano Circus-type laser really makes the whole experience and feels really satisfying, even if the enemy layouts are a little too insane, at times. It's also nice to have a perfectly emulated version on a console since the Famicom version, developed by pre-Final Fantasy Square, was a bit of a disaster, and the PS3 remake (which included the original) is probably gonna be delisted soon.

It really does fill me with a glee that these titles are so much more easily playable now; you can really see how some of them shaped and molded more accessible contemporaries (such as the streamlined RPG's on the Famicom) while having their own identity that would never really be replicated. I'm super excited to see what other titles they rerelease down the line, though I'd really like to see titles from other platforms, like the PC-98, MSX or X68000. Looking at the upcoming titles, they seem to be sticking to PC-88 for now, but there's always hope for the future. For how much we (kinda rightfully) complain about game companies not doing enough to preserve the past, you gotta pay due respect to the few that are, to serve as a blueprint of what we need more of.

[castleinthemist]

am i just looking in the wrong places or has no-one really translated the original (or at least one of the ports) of famicom detective club (original) at all. Only the 2nd one...?

[locustsummers]

it's precious babies!

(shush, of course goban counts; c'mon look at that smile)

[postgamecontent]

Nintendo Switch Weekly Round-Up for the Week Ending September 21, 2024

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the Nintendo Switch Weekly Round-Up for the week ending September 21, 2024. Quite a few new and notable releases to check out this time around, so it's another large article. I've decided I'd rather do reviews as separate articles, so look for those when and if I opt to do them. My resources for such things are considerably more limited now, but I'll do what I can. Let's check out this week in the world of Switch!

Select New Releases

The Plucky Squire ($29.99)

After a storybook hero is kicked out his book, his story's ending is changed to a much bleaker one. In order to set things right, he'll have to explore both 2D and 3D worlds, solving puzzles and completing challenges. This game got some immediate attention due to James Turner, formerly of Game Freak, working on it. The game certainly looks to be intriguing, so let's hope it can deliver on its considerable promise.

Loddlenaut ($19.99)

You play as an interstellar custodian in this relaxed open-world adventure about cleaning up an alien planet. Collect trash and recycle it to craft items and upgrades, raise aquatic creatures, and use your bubble gun to make things nice and neat again. Looks like some good times if you're just trying to chill out with something this week.

I Got Isekai'd into a Shmup ($12.99)

You don't see a ton of shoot 'em ups with four-player multiplayer support, let alone ones with great titles like this. The story about the main character getting transported into the world of a shooter serves as a framing device for the vertically-scrolling bullet hell action. Eight stages, four ships, multiple difficulty modes, and even a bestiary to fill out. You almost want to reward it for the name alone.

Japanese Rail Sim: Hakone Town of Natural Beauty and Hot Springs ($49.99)

Hey, it's one of these. Hakone's a really nice place, so taking a train ride through its scenery is a solid idea. You're driving the train, and this is a mountainous route, so don't relax too much. As you play, you'll be able to view tourism info about Hakone and the Hakone Tozan Railway. Cool. Like the other games in this series, it relies on real video footage. As such, it can feel a little artificial when starting and stopping, but the effect in motion is decent enough.

Touhou Genso Wanderer -Foresight- ($37.99)

Another Touhou roguelike RPG, and these have all been of substantial enough quality that I am not sad to see one more. This is fairly similar to the Mystery Dungeon games, but the progression is a bit kinder. I'm going to be doing a review of this game on the site soon, so look forward to that. It'll be a little bit since I just got my hands on the game today.

Arcade Archives Crime City ($7.99)

Probably not the Chase HQ Universe game that people have been waiting for, but I have a real soft spot for Taito's Crime City. It's a Rolling Thunder-esque run-and-gun action game for up to two players whose playable characters are definitely not based on any particular cop movie duo of the era, no sir. There are also little sections where you move into the screen, like in Contra. Good goofy fun, which might be just what some of you are looking for today.

EGGCONSOLE Star Cruiser PC-8801mkIISR ($6.49)

Oh, this is a big one. This 1988 release offers polygonal 3D visuals, which was quite a sight to see at the time. You're exploring space and planet surfaces, engaging in action-based combat, and following a decent little story. There are some RPG elements here as well. Unfortunately, this game suffers from the usual issue of only having Japanese in-game text, and quite a lot of it. You might want to venture in anyway, just to experience it. Be forewarned that this is a very flashy game, so photosensitive people should probably give it a pass.

Keylocker | Turn Based Cyberpunk Action ($19.99)

A stylish turn-based RPG that incorporates rhythm game mechanics into its combat. In a messed-up future where music is banned, you are a rebellious singer. Seems nifty, and I've been given a review copy so I will be taking a deeper look at it soon.

Pixel Game Maker Series NYANxTECH ($5.99)

I suppose we're back on regular releases for the Pixel Game Maker line, which suits me just fine. This looks like a puzzle-platformer of sorts where you use different buttons to turn platforms on and off. Sure, that seems fine enough for this price point.

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble ($39.99)

There are a lot of people chasing that Shredder's Revenge success right now, and I think it is somewhat ominous that one of the first out of the gate is Game Mill's Karate Kid-flavored take. Play as Daniel, Miyagi, Ali Mills, or Kumiko as you punch and kick your way through locations and battles inspired by the first three Karate Kid movies. The Cobra Kai brawlers from this publisher weren't very good at all, and that makes it difficult for me to expect much here.

Byte The Bullet ($19.99)

Travel through the various systems of a computer to cleanse them of the virus infecting the system in this run-and-gun platformer. You can poke around each of the levels to find interesting secrets, and the game parodies a few popular classics in the genre. This is one of those games that could go either way, and I'm not going to be able to say which side it falls on until I put my hands on it.

Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game ($24.99)

Another interesting turn-based RPG to look into. The main character in this one is trying to fix a past gone wrong to make a better future. Hm, sounds familiar. Battles use Mario RPG-style timing-based commands, so if that's a thing you have strong feelings about one way or the other, make sure to take it into account.

Get in the Car, Loser! ($29.99)

This game describes itself as a "rowdy hot-blooded lesbian road trip RPG" and I feel like you're going to know just from that brief whether you're in or not. It comes from one of the co-creators of Ladykiller in a Bind, and it's been out for a while on other platforms. Generally seems to have gone over well with most. This release includes both extra DLC story chapters, so you get it all in one go.

Home Safety Hotline ($19.99)

One for the horror fans, I suppose. At least the set-up is interesting. You play as an operator at a home safety line, and people will call in with some very unusual problems. You'll need to try to help them with those issues, but you can count on things getting very weird in a hurry. This release also includes the Christmas-themed DLC. Not my thing, but maybe yours.

Matchbox Driving Adventures ($39.99)

You know, I think Outright Games is doing decent enough work in the licensed game area. Like, I'm not going to say the output is always great, but of all the publishers aimed at making games based on popular kids' properties, Outright seems to deliver the most agreeable results. And that's how this game looks, really. Agreeable. If you have a kid who loves Matchbox cars, they'll probably have fun with this.

Booom-Slang! ($14.99)

A quirky twin-stick shooter that offers up both a single-player campaign and a fairly interesting multiplayer mode. Up to four players can compete, but they'll do so with multiple targets in mind. There's more than one way to win, in other words. The aesthetic of this game is something else, and I suppose it could be best summarized as 3DO-ish. I can see some people being into it.

They Came From the Sky 2 ($9.99)

Be an alien invader… again. This is an entertaining action game where you play as an alien craft and need to wreak havoc on the planet. You can stomp things, shoot them, and cause all kinds of general mayhem. This advances nicely on the original game, I'd say. If you're looking for some mindless amusement, this does the job well enough.

Seasonspree ($11.99)

In this game, you play as a tanuki that can travel through time just by walking forwards and backwards. You have to use this ability to help out your friends in this relaxing adventure.

The Town of Nie ($43.22)

A "boys love" visual novel about a human who wanders into a supernatural world. He'll be interacting with some very unusual characters while searching for a way to return home, and perhaps finding love? That will depend on your choices, of course. There's a demo available for this game if you want a taste.

GINKA ($20.00)

This visual novel is about a guy whose childhood friend, Ginka, disappeared five years ago during a summer festival. When he returns to his hometown after a long absence, Ginka is still gone. But wait, here's a girl who looks just like Ginka did five years ago! She has no memories but she knows she loves the main character. What's going on here? You'll have to play to find out.

Aura of Worlds ($14.99)

A very cool roguelite platformer, and I'm not saying that because it has a grappling move. Okay, I'm not just saying that because it has a grappling move. That sure doesn't hurt, though. Really though, this is a game that gives you a lot of options about how you want to handle navigating its obstacles. If you've burned out on Dead Cells, check this out.

BZZZT ($14.99)

A precision platformer where you play as a tiny robot who has to save the world from an evil scientist. A tale as old as time, isn't it? While we have a whole lot of this kind of game on the Switch already, I must regrettably inform you that this one is very good. It's tough, as you would expect. It's even tougher if you're going for all the collectibles. But the controls are excellent, the level designs are clever, and it's very rewarding to play.

No Case Should Remain Unsolved ($9.99)

This is a short detective mystery game where you need to solve a twelve-year old case of a missing child. Examine the clues, connect memory fragments, and try to determine the truth behind this case and why it was abandoned for so long.

Sacabambaspis Chronicle ($2.99)

An odd little game where you play as a fish-thing, eating plankton to grow up while avoiding predators. Somehow there's an online multiplayer mode for up to ten players. If you want something unusual to spend a few bucks on, here you go.

pureya ($5.99)

This is a mini-game collection with more than thirty in total to play. All of them are played with a maximum of two buttons, so they're pretty simple to pick up. And that's a good thing, because you'll only be playing for ten seconds before it changes to the next game. That's the gimmick here. Of course, if you just want to play one game and see how high of a score you can get, that's an option too. Not bad for what it is.

Tamagoneko ($5.99)

A kaizo-style platformer, which is to say a game designed to make you scream in agony at the unfair difficulty of it all. There are one hundred and sixty levels to play, and your task is to rescue all of the kitten eggs in each. Wait, kitten eggs? I don't think that's how that works. Well, not really any of my business.

The Last Shot ($9.99)

Hmm, I don't know what to do with this one. It has a lot of style going for it, and I think having you play as an engineer who has to use their skills to solve puzzles is an interesting set-up in a platformer. But it just doesn't play well, which makes the platforming not so fun, and the puzzles aren't really good enough to make up for it. You might like it better than I did, though. It seems to have decent reviews on other platforms.

That's all for this week, friends. We'll be back next Saturday with another Round-Up, this time featuring a whole new Legend of Zelda game! As ever, I will plug both my Patreon (where you can find lots of cool exclusive articles) and my Ko-Fi (tips help me run this blog). There, plugged. I hope you have a super Saturday, and as always, thanks for reading!

[synplaysbadly]

So I just recently learned that D4 has been releasing some classic PC-88 games on Switch via their EGGCONSOLE engine. These are some basic action rpgs and shooters from the early and mid 80s. A few are not translated but still playable for the most part. If anything, these are great historic pieces and worth checking out if any interest. They run about $6.50 a piece. I’m currently playing Xanadu. Highly recommend these if you’re into nostalgic gaming.

[eliemcdowell]

[ACHATS JEUX VIDEO] Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes, ACA Neo Geo Cyber-Lip et EGGCONSOLE Shin Maou Golvellius MSX2 Switch # 570

« Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes » est sorti dans la polémique comme un grand nombre de gros projets Kickstarter. Néanmoins, comment ne pas croire en lui alors qu’il s’agit de l’héritier des deux premiers Suikoden. Prix : 48,14 euro sur Amazon.fr ACA Neo Geo Cyber-Lip : 3,49 euro (payé avec 3,49 pts gold) EGGCONSOLE Shin Maou Golvellius MSX2 : 5,59 euro (payé avec 3,04 euro + 2,55 pts gold) Les…

[postgamecontent]

Nintendo Switch Weekly Round-Up for the Week Ending September 14, 2024

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the Nintendo Switch Weekly Round-Up for the week ending September 14, 2024. I've decided to carry this on in some fashion even though I'm not at TouchArcade anymore. It's going to be weekly, it's mainly going to be focused on new and notable releases, and I'm definitely not going to be doing the lists of sales. I might call out some specific ones here and there when I consider them juicy enough, though. With that said, let's see what this week brought us.

Select New Releases

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics ($49.99)

The wildest retro collection you have never dreamt! Capcom tosses all of its arcade-based Marvel games into a package very similar in terms of interface and features to 2022's Capcom Fighting Collection. You get X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and The Punisher. All really good games, and don't ignore The Punisher if you pick this up. It's quietly one of Capcom's better beat 'em ups. A great set, and it's nice to see these games in circulation again.

The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case: The Okhotsk Disappearance ~Memories in Ice, Tearful Figurine~ ($44.99)

G-Mode presents a remake of Yuji Horii's classic mystery adventure game, The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case. It's very faithful gameplay-wise, so you can expect some very vintage Japanese adventure gaming from it. Talk to people, examine scenes for evidence, and try to figure out who was responsible for these grisly murders. This is the first official English release of the game, which is pretty nifty.

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines ($17.99)

Grappling pupper Pablo returns for more platforming fun, this time joined by the gun-wielding Luna. Are two dogs better than one? I haven't played enough to say for sure yet, but if you liked Grapple Dog you'll almost certain have a great time with this sequel.

Yars Rising ($29.99)

WayForward does its best to make a sassy Metroidvania out of a property almost as old as ol' Shaun, and the result is about what you would expect from this developer. It's fine. If you want a new Metroidvania, a new WayForward game, or want your Atari fan itch scratched, this will serve you well enough.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland ($24.99)

A surprisingly solid platformer in the vein of Super Mario Bros. 2/USA starring the most popular babies of the 1990s. You can play in classy NES style or go with the very well-done modern presentation. Either way, some enjoyable hop-and-toss fun.

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP ($44.99)

Lollipop Chainsaw was a really fun game back in the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 era, with a style positively dripping with James Gunn/Suda51 energy. So what happens if you take that game, drain a massive amount of the style from it, and port it badly to Switch? This. This happens. It doesn't even play Mickey when you go super. What the heck is the point?

Arcade Archives VS. Battle City ($7.99)

A Famicom pirate cart/handheld staple, Battle City is already on the Switch via one of Namco's 8-bit collections. But this is VS. Battle City, which… removes the stage editor and adds pretty much nothing! One for the completionists, I suppose.

EGGCONSOLE Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes PC-8801mkIISR ($6.49)

The sixth game in the Dragon Slayer series is also the first game in The Legend of Heroes, which is technically the same franchise as Falcom's recent bread-and-butter Trails games. A pretty good turn-based RPG for its era, but one look at the screenshot will tell you what the problem is for most people reading this. Japanese only, and very text heavy. Oh well.

Crossy Road Castle ($19.99)

Another Apple Arcade game escapes the zoo, this time the platformer based on the hit Crossy Road franchise. Up to four players on this one, online or local. Plenty of hats and characters to unlock. The levels are procedurally generated, so you can keep playing it infinitely! Whether you will want to or not is a different matter, though.

Wild Bastards ($34.99)

The follow-up to Void Bastards, and one I'm sure will find just as many fans. It's pretty different from Void, incorporating turn-based strategy, roguelite, arena shooter, and a few other bits and bobs into something quite distinctive. That uniqueness might turn off some players, but I suspect it will win over more than it pushes away.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Reckoning of New York ($19.99)

Here's the third installment in the Vampire: The Masquerade series of visual novels for the Switch. If you're new to these, play the other two first. If you're not, then I'm sure you can figure out if this is for you or not.

Elsie ($24.99)

Played the wheels of 20XX and 30XX but need more roguelite Mega Man X mash-up action? Perhaps Elsie is what you're after today. Procedural generation! It's a popular choice in the modern age. Still, if the bar napkin concept doesn't put you off, this is a rather enjoyable game.

Eden Genesis ($24.99)

A cyberpunk-themed precision platformer with an emphasis on speedy moves. It's decent enough, but not so good that I'd recommend it with any real vigor. It's stylish and functional, and that might be enough for some.

Beneath Oresa ($24.99)

Here's another game inspired by the likes of Slay the Spire, this one aiming to be a bit more lively with its roguelite deckbuilding turn-based gameplay. It's extremely demanding, the kind of game where exactly one wrong move can end your run. So don't make any mistakes, okay? Glad we cleared that up.

Celestia: Chain of Fate ($29.99)

In this otome visual novel, you play as a young woman who finds out she's half angel and half demon. She's been invited to attend the Academy of Celestia, where she will find among other things three hunky dudes to potentially smooch. But which one will she smooch? That depends on your choices, my friend.

Metro Quester | Osaka ($19.99)

Just like the original Metro Quester, this is a game that is very much tuned towards a particular kind of taste. If you're into what it's laying down, you'll likely be absorbed for a while. Everyone else is going to be repelled with the force of an angry pantsless Magneto. Dungeon crawling, turn-based battling, chunky character building… ah, I love it.

Doomsday Paradise ($14.99)

This might seem like another Slay the Spire-style deckbuilding roguelite from that screenshot, but it's also an off-the-wall dating sim and features multiplayer for up to four players via online, local, or local wireless. Quite well-liked on other platforms, and I think this particular combination will go over nicely with the Switch audience too.

Fabledom ($24.99)

A deliberately relaxed fantasy-themed city builder. As near as I can tell, it more or less does what it sets out to do. Not the fanciest of cat pajamas, but if it's the kind of jam you're after today I don't think it will let you down.

Jackbox Naughty Pack ($21.69)

Those Jackbox Party Packs sure are neat, but if you've got a room full of adults and want to dig into something a little more saucy, here's the Naughty Pack. The games in this one go a little more dirty, as you can tell by the publisher cleverly ending the price with a 69 instead of a 99. I can definitely see this one going over well at the right kind of parties.

NanoApostle ($19.99)

Nanotechnology? How nostalgic. Remember when that was the buzzword in video games? Here's another one of those top-down boss-rush action games where you have to dash and dodge around while attacking a far more powerful foe. A fairly good one, I'd say. It works the way this kind of thing usually does, with skill trees, multistage bosses, and so on. Solid execution makes it.

Caravan SandWitch ($24.99)

A game about traversing a small but fairly dense open world in your cool van, helping people out. There's no combat, and you can't die. So it's just you, the citizens you'll be assisting, the sci-fi world itself, and a mystery about your missing sister to serve as an overall goal. It's been getting relatively good reviews so far. Provided the Switch port has come out smoothly, this might be worth the pick-up.

Edge of Sanity ($19.99)

The core game here is decent enough. It's a The Thing-inspired survival game with a lot of interesting systems to deal with and fairly satisfying strategic combat. The big problem is that this game is really buggy at the moment, at least in this Nintendo Switch form. I wouldn't pick it up on Switch until it gets some patching up, but I'm not the mayor of Yourwalletonshire.

Deep Beyond ($9.99)

Today is a day for missing family members, it seems. The main character of this one is a sea explorer looking for her father, and her journey will see her taking deep-sea dives, solving puzzles, and hanging out with her dog. Not a terribly long game by any means, but I think it punches well enough for the asking price.

Selfloss ($29.99)

This Slavic-inspired action-adventure game ended up being more engrossing than I expected. Rough edges aplenty, but it feels good to play more often than it doesn't. Solid boss battles, a good story, and really satisfying puzzles to solve. I was really caught off-guard by this, in a good way.

Pixel Game Maker Series The Willow Man ($6.99)

A modest little survival-horror game where you're trying to survive long enough to escape a house that plays host to an unspeakable evil known only as The Willow Man. There are multiple endings to arrive at based on your actions.

Downfall ($5.99)

I'm sure at this price you're not expecting fancy dining, and you shouldn't. Pretty much just a mindless little grinder. The art is decent and it's not the worst time-waster for a short while, but it gets dull fast.

Line Time ($5.99)

Regular readers know I'm a bit of a sucker for puzzle games, and this one isn't too shabby at all. You have to push the ball or balls to the goal on each stage, and you're given a set number of moves to do it in. Plan things out move by move and if there are multiple balls in play keep in mind that they will interact. Over two hundred stages to play, which is probably more than you'll need but appreciated nonetheless.

Samurai Kento ($4.99)

An small Metroidvania-ish game with RPG elements that casts you in the role of a samurai trying to save Japan from evil yokai run amuck. Not a bad time for the price, if you're in the mood for one of these.

Nimbusfall ($5.99)

Ah, haven't seen one of these in a while. You're a tiny character and you need to square off against twenty-five big bosses. You've got a good array of moves at your disposal, so all you have to do is learn the patterns and land your blows. Seems fine.

That's all for this week, friends. We'll be back next Saturday with another Round-Up, this time featuring a review or two! If you enjoyed this and feel like tossing me a tip, I have a Ko-Fi where you can make that happen. I hope you have a super Saturday, and as always, thanks for reading!