This Week in Games

What Would 2B Look Like If She Were In The Ruby-Spears Mega Man Cartoon?

Welcome back, everyone! Bit of a slow week, but we could all use an easy transition as summer blends into autumn. I'm hoping everyone along the east coast is keeping safe from all the storms that have been going on lately.

For my part, I haven't been able to play much Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but a game I was playing sure made me think about it a lot! I covered the Nintendo Switch port of Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris for ANN this past week, and it was sadly not very good. I had hoped to like it (I'll give anything a shot), but man that game is rough. What's really a shame is how badly it bungles its own open-world concept and its writing—and in doing so it made me appreciate just what Xenoblade Chronicles 3 accomplishes.

Xenoblade Chronicles isn't immune to casting some really, really bland protagonists (I'd be lying if I said Rex was any sort of "memorable"), but it at least gives them a lot of emotional matter to chew through: while Rex mostly exists to react to Pyra and Mythra's development and to serve as the muscle that helps them achieve their ends, he still feels (mostly) well-rounded. The game earns his emotional development (what little there is): we see why his friends matter to him, and we see how much it shocks him when his intentions are questioned.

Kirito Swordartonlinealicizationlicoricestick... doesn't get that. His friendship with Eugeo never manages to percolate, so we have to take the game's word for it when we're told they're friends. He meets a lot of people he can get invested in, but most of them only really serve to push the plot forward, so the game can't bother to do much but underline whether characters are sympathetic or antagonistic towards Kirito. It's all just "this is good for Kirito" or "this is bad for Kirito" and "don't ask why this kid wants to hug Kirito, he is a Brave, Selfless Loving Father & Husband." Also, SAO having a paid lootbox system just feels nasty after Xenoblade Chronicles 2 implemented a gacha system for Blades that nevertheless didn't take so much as a single red cent from players.

I've got other issues but you can read up on my opinions in my review, I just wanted to squeeze in some Xenoblade talk so you guys don't think I'm slacking on my Xenoblade duties. We'll beat this game together! Hopefully before Xenoblade Chronicles X gets ported!

This is This Week In Games.

Last week, we reported on the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection to be released next year. This week, we have sadder news concerning a beloved Mega Man title: the PSP classic Mega Man: Powered Up will shutter its servers after 16 years.

Mega Man: Powered Up released on the PSP alongside Mega Man Maverick Hunter X . The two were remakes of the first Mega Man title and Mega Man X, respectively. They both offered plenty as remakes: Maverick Hunter X featured 3D graphics and the ability to play as Vile (who had his own abilities and weapons separate to X). Mega Man: Powered Up, on the other hand, was packed with new goodies: two new Robot Masters, Time Man and Oil Man, were added to the game to round out its bosses to the conventional eight of later Mega Man titles as opposed to just six. (I recall that the IDW Mega Man comic cheekily referred to Time/Oil Man as being "powered up" compared to the original Robot Masters.) Speaking of the Robot Masters: you could unlock each of them as playable characters by beating them with the Mega Buster as opposed to their weaponized weakness. Each one had unique abilities that not only made them play differently (Cut Man could kick walls like X would in later games, Bomb Man could aim his bombs in ways Mega Man couldn't) but could also access hidden secret areas in each stage (all of them exclusive to Mega Man: Powered Up). Roll was downloadable, and she had a full 12 unique costumes—one for every month of the year. Most importantly: Mega Man: Powered Up had a stage creator mode, years before Mario Maker was a twinkle in anyone's eye. You could unlock stage components by beating the game (or rooting around in the hidden areas in stages that you could only access as one of the Robot Masters), then share them online with people all over the world.

16 years is a freaking long time to keep the servers up for any game—bigger games have lasted less! And part of why it's so mind-boggling is because Mega Man: Powered Up didn't actually do that well in the first place! It reviewed well with critics, but fans were very cold on the game, resulting in it selling very poorly. It was a perfect storm: it was 2006, where Mega Man was a whipping boy for having "too many sequels;" the game took the already-very-bubbly-and-charming Mega Man and made it even cuter with chibi character designs (which, for the average PSP fan, must've been painfully emasculating to look at—here's me playing on the world's smallest violin for them). It was on PSP and while the PSP had a murderer's row of great software, it was nevertheless a handheld and folks in the US never had fond feelings for portable gaming—at least until the DS. And also, it was an anime game, and 2006 was definitely around the time people in the US started breaking out in hives at games that used primary colors. More's the pity: Inafune had plans to go through the rest of the Mega Man and Mega Man X series and give them remakes along the lines of Powered Up and Maverick Hunter X. I can't claim its validity, but I remember seeing key art of planned Powered Up redesigns for all of the Robot Masters, and each one was pretty damn brilliant. As for Maverick Hunter X, well, it certainly would have been interesting to see story modes for the subsequent villains in the series like the X-Hunters or Bit and Byte. And the new graphics and voice tracks would've done wonders for some of the later PlayStation-based games like Mega Man X4.

The good news is, fans have developed a tool to download current Powered Up levels onto your PC. I'll let you folks track that one down. Otherwise, Powered Up goes dark on November 30. Alas, we didn't know what we had...

If you've been on the Internet for long enough, chances are you've seen this old GIF:

That GIF has been recolored and edited into all manner of generic advertisements for scuzzy websites for decades. And as it turns out: it's from a video game! And it's not even a porn game! It's from the Magical Drop series. Originally created by Data-East (you might know them as the creators of Joe and Mac), Magical Drop is a mix between Puzzle Bobble and Super Puzzle Fighters: gems fall down from the ceiling, and you shoot arrangements of gems up at the descending piles. Combos of three or more like-colored gems vanish, and you can set up combos and chains to send disruptions to your opponent and rack up score bonuses. It's simple enough. Magical Drop's conceit is that the characters are named after the Major Arcana from the tarot; Miss Boob-Ribbon up there is The World, and has been a fixture of the series since Magical Drop II (that GIF, incidentally, is from Magical Drop III). The games have been brought to the US in some capacity or other; Magical Drop V used to be available on Steam back in 2012. Keywords: "used to be," it was apparently in some seriously unplayable condition and hasn't been available for sale in a while.

But no more! Now Magical Drop (and World) is coming back to the US via Magical Drop VI!

On the surface, it seems pretty no-frills: it's got versus play, a puzzle mode, and about 21 playable characters (including World, whom you should be very well-acquainted with by now). In a move that the recent Puzzle Bobble should take cues from, the game's sound effects appear to be the classic twinkles and sparkles, which is charming as heck to read. Also, the crystals look pretty. About the one thing I take umbrage with is the animation: the character portraits (and the little clown at the bottom of the screen) recreate the layered sprites of classic 2D puzzle games, but not terribly well. I dunno how all those old sprite-based puzzle games made those big, layered sprites look so effortlessly good, but Live2D really doesn't cut the mustard in that regard. Developers: please, sprite animators still exist, the extra effort and expense from hiring them is worth it.

Will Magical Drop VI be any good? Well, as far as Magical Drop fans are concerned, they'll consider it a win if the game is at least playable. Hopefully, Magical Drop VI washes the bad taste of its predecessor away when it releases this winter.

Well, here's a new one. It's not every day a high-profile video game gets an animated adaptation—Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Arcane tend to be the exceptions in a very, very big ocean of stuff like the DOTA anime that wasn't very good, the Tekken: Bloodline anime that wasn't all that great, the Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness series that wasn't all that great... and so on. Sure, sometimes you get a Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture, other times you get a Final Fantasy: Unlimited (which I still like a lot, even if I know it's rough—real ones know how badass the Maggun is). And you'd hope that great games get great anime, but that doesn't always happen! They sure tried with Halo Legends, but that didn't really work out. Meanwhile, Arcane managed to trick people into trying League of Legends (and swiftly reminding them why they didn't play it to begin with), while Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has made people do some intense historical revisionism on Cyberpunk: 2077's disastrous production and state at launch.

Games produced under untenable amounts of crunch aside, we've got not one but two franchises that announced animated adaptations this past week. And the first one is an exciting one!

It's a NieR:Automata anime! Based off of Yokō Tarō's modern-day post-apocalyptic classic, NieR:Automata Ver1.1a will cover the story of YoRHA No. 2 Type B (a.k.a., "2B") and her supporter 9S as she carries out a proxy war between the YoRHA that represent humanity and the machines that fight for an alien race. Whether or not the anime will cover anything that led up to the events of NieR:Automata, like the events of NieR: Gestalt/Replicant, or how a murderous psychopath and his dragon-girlfriend chased a grotesquerie into Shibuya and killed her just before getting shot down by the JSDF, dooming the world to what we will refer to as an extra-dimensional disease for simplicity's sake. You gotta pay attention when Yokō Tarō is spinning his yarns, he will pull the rug out from under your feet. But he'll also really make you cry: while his games are known for being intensely misanthropic (as well as being populated by intensely violent, foul-mouthed women), Taro is also able to really stick the landings with the endings to his stories. Even Drakengard, which its biggest fans will affectionately admit is his worst game, can make you a little wistful as it kicks you in the nards for daring to have cared about its cast of horrible, horrible people.

NieR:Automata touches on a lot of deep science-fiction themes, like what it means to be human and whether humans ever had the capacity to be human in the first place. Folks who accompanied 2B on her journey still break down in tears upon hearing "Weight of the World" from that game's soundtrack. It turned Yokō Tarō's name from a secret handshake known only to people who really, really loved his stuff enough to deal with serious amounts of jank to a household name, and it propelled 2B to the peaks of waifu-dom as gynoid lovers worldwide daydreamed about her 148.8 kilogram posterior. Also, Yokō Tarō very famously asked for folks to send him a zip file of all the 2B smut artists hurriedly drew up, a request I hope was fulfilled.

Now, some major questions remain concerning this anime. We know it's coming from A-1 Pictures, so even if we didn't have that trailer we'd know it will look amazing. Ryouji Masayumi is directing, who's best known for his work on Blend S and Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. It's premiering this January, too. But the matters of the story are a bit up in the air; NieR:Automata had a ton of variable endings (and Yokō Tarō is and always will be a troll) so it's bound to zag when people expect it to zig. We know that the Japanese dub has confirmed the original VAs for the game: Yui Ishikawa and Natsuki Hanae will reprise their roles as 2B and 9S. But there's no word yet if the English dub will bring back Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley to reprise their respective roles. They're both known for being very passionate for the work they did for NieR:Automata, and it would be a tragedy if they weren't brought back for the role. Here's hoping for the two of them. In the meantime: if you need a refresher on NieR:Automata, you can pick it up on PS4, Steam, and Xbox One. There's also the End of the YoRHA edition coming out on the Switch next week on October 6 (I'd get that one because it's got these really nice Japanese Fox outfits for 2B and 9S). And if you really need Yokō Tarō's madness explained, Kira Buckland's got you covered!

Next up is a name I never thought I'd see—Onimusha. This old series from CAPCOM was best known for its feudal Japanese flavor, featuring samurai facing off against hordes of demons. It also featured Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro as series protagonist Samanosuke—and he played alongside Jean Reno in Ominusha 3. The series was well-regarded in its time, but CAPCOM eventually lost track of what made the series work, and Onimusha didn't really survive past the PS2 with Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams in 2006. The series didn't come back until 2019's Onimusha: Warlord, a remaster of the first Onimusha. The series has its fans and it definitely had its time in the sun, but Onimusha never did quite manage to escape Devil May Cry's shadow as CAPCOM's premier 3D action game series.

Which is why the announcement of an Onimusha anime is so surprising. It's been a hot minute since Onimusha: Warlords, for one, and I have to wonder if an ostensibly-unrelated animated spin-off is what the game's fans want. Serious money is being thrown at this project, though: for starters, Netflix is collaborating with CAPCOM on production. Takashi Miike, best known for films like 13 Assassins and Ichi the Killer, is directing, with Toshihiro Mifune's estate lending his likeness to the protagonist Miyamoto Musashi. The series looks like it's going for an edgy, hard-boiled "chanbara" kind of thing, which Miike would both excel at. Will it win over fans? Will it bring in new blood? We'll know once it comes out. There doesn't seem to be any information yet on an release date yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Toby Fox has been getting a lot of buzz lately! While he's working on Deltarune, Fox has also collaborated with Nintendo and GAME FREAK on a number of projects; he was involved with a new arrangement for Megalovania for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as well as composed tracks for Little Town Hero and the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. And he's a big fan of Japanese games: Fox has gone on record that Undertale was heavily inspired by the obscure JRPG (or rather, "anti-RPG") moon. With all his experience under his belt, he's leveraged it into... a column with the Japanese gaming magazine, Famitsu!

As if to show off his nerd-cred, Fox even titled his column "Tobymeki Memorial," in honor of the Tokimeki Memorial games (which he is apparently also a fan of). He'll also be answering letters from Japanese fans, in what I hope are the most trollish of ways.

It's rare for us to get insight into the minds of Japanese game designers (outside of huge names like Hideo Kojima or Masahiro Sakurai), but I imagine it's even rarer for folks in Japan to get much insight from developers that come from the United States; I struggle to think of John Romero showing up to Tokyo Game Show, but I live for the image of him getting drunk with folks at a Japanese bar somewhere and them recreating the old "BATTLE AXE! BATTLE AXE!" incident from when he worked at Id. "Shibuya Meltdown," indeed. Regardless, I'm hoping fans in Japan enjoy Toby Fox's navel-gazing. It's always interesting to hear stuff straight from the horse's mouth. Like, erm

...Yeah, I got nothin'.

SaGa is a strange beast of a JRPG series. Created by Akitoshi Kawazu (who spearheaded Final Fantasy II), the SaGa games eschew a lot of the typical mechanical trappings of JRPGs in favor of an experience more akin to an American RPG or even a tabletop session: choose a character and make your way in a wide, open world where you have no idea where quests begin and/or end or even what might trigger them, unlock abilities seemingly at random, and work your way up to a fight against some deity or other. I'm underselling the experience: when a SaGa game clicks, there's nothing quite like it. I plugged away for a bit at the Collection of SaGa set on Switch, and while it's definitely a bit of an annoying grind (stat potions for humans are obnoxiously annoying and your stats don't track once you hit 99 points in a stat; raising your Espers/Mutants can be harrowing) it's such a wild adventure that you can't help but get engrossed.

The SaGa series never hit it very big in the US, sadly, but it's had quite the latter-day resurgence. Adding to that is the upcoming Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered, a remaster of the PS2 remake of Romancing SaGa for the Super Famicom. While Romancing SaGa struggled to find a fanbase in the US back on the PS2 due to its inscrutable nature, I think we're all a bit older and wiser to the SaGa-brand of obfuscation. And thank goodness, because there's good writing in Romancing SaGa: all eight protagonists come from different walks of life and their stories go through completely different (albeit complete) routes. It's definitely an RPG where you can have a plethora of wildly diverging playthroughs. A pity it was overlooked on PS2, how lucky we are that it gets a second chance!

The good news is the remaster also includes a ton of quality-of-life features to make the game much more approachable. For starters: there's a minimap now! There's also a function for increasing the speed of your movement or the speed of battles, if you can't bear to be bogged down by random encounters. The game also adds extra characters that expand upon the story of the original.

Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song Remastered is due for release this December 1 on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Steam—as well as mobile platforms, curiously enough. If you wanna give SaGa the old college try, I also recommend the Collection of SaGa for Nintendo Switch (they're all fun little GameBoy adventures, and not too overwhelming). SaGa Frontier Remastered, also on the Switch, is another great option: a contemporary of Final Fantasy VII, it has a number of individual scenarios that play independently of each other, all telling their own fascinating little stories. It's a great example of experimental PS1 JRPG design. There's also SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambition, one of the more-recent SaGa titles. At the time of writing, it's on sale on the Switch for less than $10, definitely worth a look.

Monster Hunter Rise has been doing pretty darn well, so it's nice to see other studios stepping up to try and compete. This past week, we were introduced to a new game attempting to do so: Wild Hearts!

Wild Hearts seems to go for more of a "fantasy Japan" aesthetic, with its monstrous Kemono serving as their monsters. This is a bit concerning, seeing as Monster Hunter Rise already went for a hard Japanese-inspired setting. But, Rise at least has plenty of old monsters that don't quite fit the old look; Wild Hearts goes pure yokai with its Kemono, giving them the snarling fangs and wide eyes of classic Japanese art. It's a striking look. There is also a fascinating twist in the form of engineering: players can wield a variety of weapons that can have multiple functions. The trailer reveals a katana that can turn into a bladed whip, for example. Players can also set up little mechanical edifices, in a Fortnite-inspired twist. These edifices can serve as platforms for launching onto monsters, defensive turrets, harpoons, or even large bombs. It's a good way of manipulating the environment, especially in the light of so few Monster Hunter maps allowing you to use the good ol' Dragonator. Also, the trailer shows a samurai fighting a monster with a Japanese parasol and I've been in love with parasol-wielding samurai since I discovered Shizumaru from Samurai Shodown.

If you're getting strong Nioh vibes from Wild Hearts, it might be because they're from the same family: Koei Tecmo's Omega Force is handling this studio. But the real jaw-dropper is Electronic Arts handling the publishing under their EAOriginals line. This... doesn't bode well for me. EA has deservedly earned itself a pretty miserable reputation after its many years of desperate nickel-and-diming of fans, its horrid treatment of its employees, its vulture-like gutting of studios and their IPs, and their bald-faced defense of exploitative lootboxes once certain countries started making moves to regulate lootboxes as gambling in games. So you'll excuse me if I'm not exactly itching for Wild Hearts to potentially lock outfits or emotes behind digital roulette wheels. If EA can avoid being particularly hands-on with Wild Hearts, then hey, it might be a fantastic game for co-op. We'll see how this turns out.

That about does it for this week. I wanna take a moment from the column to mention something non-videogame related: this has been a really rough Hurricane Season for people that live in the Atlantic. My native Puerto Rico has been rocked rather horribly; at the time of writing, Puerto Rico has been in the dark without electricity for 10 days. And that's just Puerto Rico: my heart goes out for people all across the Antilles, the folks in Canada that received the last of Fiona's bustling, and all our friends in Florida withstanding Hurricane Ian. I won't lie, it feels a bit frivolous of me to write about video games over here in Portland while folks are sitting in the dark praying for diesel shipments. If you can spare a moment, please consider supporting the people in affected areas. I'd much appreciate it. Otherwise, I'm hoping I was able to give you guys a moment of distraction. I say it a lot, but it means a lot to me to see you guys getting excited about stuff I share with you all. As always: be good to each other. I'll see you in seven.