This Week in Games

EVO Japan 2024: You Ain't From Chicago If You Ain't Broken exA Before!

Welcome back, folks! As is my wont, I'd like to plug my El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster that went up earlier this week... but I've also got the disappointing news that Megaton Musashi W: Wired finally released in the US last week on Steam, with absolutely no fanfare. What gives? It's a great brawler featuring mecha, and it even has Getter Robo and Mazinger Z cameos. It deserves way better than being tossed out the window. Speaking of poor reception, it's a shame to see Endless Blue: Luminous getting panned in reviews. I understand folks aren't impressed with the randomly generated maps, but you'd also think it would be a hit with folks now that people are into "cozy" games. Alas.

My contempt for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has been made quite evident in my tenure as That Bitch™ for This Week in Games. I don't even hate the game; that well has just been poisoned by it having a very loud, vocal contingent of people whose passion for The Thousand-Year Door goes hand-in-hand with being some of the most annoying people ever to be trapped within the same room. I get it, Sticker Star Story wasn't the best, and the Mario & Luigi games didn't quite hit the same, but you let a perfectly-good Bowser's Inside Story perish on the vine twice all for your godforsaken millennial door and a Koopa with a bandaid on his beak. And you'd think that the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake would pacify folks. You'd think. You'd really like to think that.

So, Nintendo released an overview trailer for the game last week—and there is a lot to talk about because, holy crap, this is a comprehensive rehauling of the entire game. The Super Mario RPG remake astounded fans with its quality-of-life changes and updates to classic and beloved mechanics. The Thousand-Year Door remake is primed to blow it out of the water. First off, there's a newly remastered soundtrack, along with the option to play the original GameCube OST (I deeply, deeply wish Kingdom Hearts 1.5 had that option). This also comes with a music player to enjoy the music at your leisure. There will also be a concept art gallery, which is catnip to me—it's always nice to see a peek behind the curtains at how the sausage is made. Other quality-of-life features abound, like a revamped hint system and the ability to swap characters without going into a menu. That last one isn't a significant change—all-in-all, it takes about the same as the old-fashioned menu, but it feels faster by not needing folks to go into a menu—just one of those little gameplay details that "feels" good.

There is some consternation over the addition of new Warp Pipes that facilitate travel around the world. A lot of folks prefer the old way of getting around Rogueport: going into the sewers and using Mario's new abilities to reach new parts of the world—some folks even like the experience of waltzing back to old areas on foot to explore. And I can vibe with that! But it's nice to have the option of having a quick-and-easy warp pipe to a location when you don't want to trudge through an army of those annoying Spinias or Clefts.

Fans are also hopeful because Vivian might finally be done justice. I've covered this before, but the Japanese script refers to Vivian as a boy, while Vivian refers to herself with feminine pronouns. This is also why her sisters give her hell: the (very strong) implication is that Vivian is either a female-identifying crossdresser or outright trans. This was changed in the English script, where Vivian is presented as a cis-woman, and her sisters generally bully her for no general reason besides being mean. Now, the Thousand-Year Door remake has a brand new script in English because it is a completely new translation. Folks have already rattled their sabers about this one scene where Goombella isn't catcalled by some enemy Goombas (I can't be bothered to check), and a good while ago, there was some other gnashing of teeth because Bowser didn't call Kamek a bimbo in the new script. This stuff is too minor for me to care. The Vivian stuff, though, is something that many fans have been hoping would be corrected in the new script, and it looks like it might be. There were some claims by a user on the Internet who purported to be one of the writers of the new script, but it turned out to be fraudulent. Regardless, Vivian's gender identity is one of those things that many queer-friendly Paper Mario fans latched onto. I should note: the only script where Vivian is openly described as transgender is the Italian script, but Vivian has been adopted and widely-headcanoned as a trans woman in the decades since Thousand-Year Door's release. And I'm one of them.

The real thing that has me grousing—and the discourse that has overtaken Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's remake- is much dumber than that. Folks are upsetti-spaghetti... because it's clocked in at 30 frames per second.

The loud cry from a lot of Thousand-Year Door fans is that there's no reason for the game to run at 30 fps when the original ran at 60 fps on the GameCube twenty years ago. "Why does a port run worse than the original?!" they shout. "It's the same game; it shouldn't run worse!" they scream. "The rhythm elements from the Action Command system are going to be messed up with the reduced framerate!" they clamor as I hurriedly run out to get milk, never to return. Here's the thing: It's not the same game. The graphics for the remake have been wholly remade, with new textures and even some new assets being designed. There are also new graphical effects for things like lighting. Even the sprites seem to have a ton of new details that aren't on the GameCube original (mainly texturing for that improved "paper" look and feel). And those graphical updates don't come cheap. The downside of updating the graphics on your fancypants videogame remake is that those things come at the expense of rendering power: your console has to compute more information for the massively-detailed pores on John Thelastofus's butt to animate smoothly across your screen. Or the construction paper fuzz on Mario's overalls, in this case.

It astounds me that even a new and improved remake for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door still isn't good enough for the people stamping their feet for twenty years for a new Thousand-Year Door, let alone that there's such a good reason behind it. I try to avoid being so cynical about these matters, but if you're going to demand a new thing so much, you could at least show some gratitude for the work going into it. Abebe Tinari, the director of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon (which I really want to play) has a great thread on the matter, linked back to their experiences working on Cereza and the Lost Demon. Their final words on the subject hammer the thing home: "All I can say for certain is that the team made the choice that they felt would lead to the best overall experience for players. I promise you, it was not a decision made lightly or out of "laziness." And I think that's what it all boils down to. I really dislike this intense antagonism between "fans" and the creators of the things they purport to be fans of. I know the platonic ideal is a completely open-door policy with fans being informed of everything that goes on... but there are countless reasons why that couldn't work and countless reasons why it would cause more trouble for developers than fans think.

We like to believe that fans have a ton of wisdom that developers can or should consult more often. Maybe they do, in some remote cases. But it's important to remember that there are no such things as "magic solutions" in real life; the "silver bullet" in fans' eyes might be wholly incompatible with the current work demands, game engine, or budget. We should not consider modders to be some kind of standard for industry professionals. I, too, like seeing renowned modders get their flowers from studios, but it's also important to remember that modders break a lot of rules doing what they do—rules that people at studios really, really can't be breaking.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door arrives on the Nintendo Switch on May 23rd. Play it, or don't.

Current Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu promised a course correction for the company when he took command back in February, and it looks like he meant it. After declaring that Square Enix would now focus mostly on AAA projects, Square Enix took a ton of its internal projects to the chopping block. This has led to an astounding announcement of content disposal losses at 22.1 billion yen. That comes out to just over US$140 million.

So, what does this mean for Square Enix? Well, for one thing, they really want to stop the bleeding from a lot of their bigger failures. The past few years haven't been too kind to SE; while they've had their victories in the form of the Final Fantasy VII Remake games and Final Fantasy XIV, along with more minor successes like the Live A Live remake and the Octopath Traveller games, their failures have also been massive. Their Avengers title was a massive failure, Babylon's Fall didn't last a year, Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier was a dud, Chocobo GP withered on the vine as a result of its terrible monetization practices, and Final Fantasy XVI didn't sell to SE's expectations. Hopefully, keeping fewer pots on the stove helps them prevent further losses from other major failures.

What about the titles? Tough to say. A lot of people worry about what that'll mean for SE's not-quite-AAA titles like the Team Asano titles (Various Daylife, Triangle Strategy, Bravely Default). But I've also seen people fly into a panic over the fate of the announced HD-2D Dragon Quest III remake, and uh... guys, I don't know how to tell you that Square Enix is never going to lay a finger on Dragon Quest. However massive an institution you think Dragon Quest is in Japan, it's so much bigger. Square Enix canceling a Dragon Quest game would be like Costco raising the prices of their hotdogs and pizza slices.

For now, this isn't good or bad news—it's just news. We'll continue to follow the story. We'll let you know when it's time to panic.

Magic: The Gathering has been fielding a ton of crossovers lately, like the Godzilla-themed cards, the Lord of the Rings set they had a while back with that super-expensive One Ring card, and the Fallout set (also, as I look, they have cards based off of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Street Fighter, and that time Jeff Goldblum unbuttoned his shirt in Jurassic Park. Do you know who would go great with Magic? Apparently, Hatsune Miku!

I'm about as stunned as you are. The Miku cards will be sold in four waves throughout the rest of 2024, each retailing for US$29.99 (US$39.99 if you want foil versions). I don't play enough Magic to tell you if these cards are particularly good, but "Miku, the Renowned", "Shelter" and "Miku, Lost But Singing" seem pretty effective. This is far from the weirdest thing Miku has done in the US—a far cry from her appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, or that time sixteen years ago where they tried to use Miku to sell Toyota Corollas in the US and they decided to push her love for bacon-wrapped hot dogs The brilliant part of this crossover is that there's zero way to make the art incongruous to Miku's design. Hatsune Miku's design is pretty iconic, but she's also been put into a variety of other outfits and aesthetics throughout her career by all sorts of producers. That versatility has made Miku's stuff so beloved by fans, and the Magic set really brings that to life with the individual art styles for the cards. Will Magic players be charmed by Miku? Tough call; I don't know enough about Magic or its community to tell you if there's much overlap with the Nico Nico Douga crowd. But it takes all kinds. And hey, worst comes to worst, we'll get some sick art out of it.

The biggest issue with getting invested (monetarily or emotionally) in a mobile game is the dreaded End of Service. This is especially bad because no matter how much you stan a game, it could either get unfairly shuttered by its publisher (alas, Princess Connect) or fail to cut the mustard (alas, Dragalia Lost). And once those servers are gone, everything is gone. If you just so happen to really like the story, well, fool on you for appreciating the story, I guess?

But it seems someone is paying attention and trying to fight back against the tide of oblivion. The Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: Memoria Freese mobile game, based on the series with the same title, faces its end-of-service on June 24 after an eyebrow-raising seven-year run. Seven years is already a really long time for a mobile game, but it's particularly astounding for one based on an existing anime/light novel property. But that brings in even more of a problem: what do you do when the game ends? While a lot of the content is likely filler or retreading old story material that people already know, a lot of it is likely stuff that fans of the series will appreciate. New insight into old characters, fun fanservice moments like two weirdos finally getting to meet—that's the kind of thing a lot of fans tend to value a ton.

Memoria Freesia, thankfully, has a solution: turn the game into a memorial. The plan for Memoria Freesia is to archive the story, letting players access it through the app once the game is over. And in hindsight, that's a pretty brilliant solution. You could probably even condense all of the stories on the app into a tiny downloadable, letting folks access the story without having to connect to any server. Just log in and read more about amazons, minotaurs, tooth brushing, and boob-strings. (Note: I have never watched the Girls in a Dungeon anime; I don't know what it's about.) This is a pretty workable idea for many major mobile games. If and when EOS comes for Fate/Grand Order, I hope something like this is done for it.

Of course, this still takes time and money—and apparently, there's actively a crowdfunding campaign for Memoria Freesia so that the memorial version of the app can be developed. Ideally, they'd have been able to do it without crowdfunding; any game deserves to be archived so long as someone worked on it. Regardless, at least we have a solution for mobile games vanishing. If not everyone can keep the game alive offline like what was done with Mega Man X DiVE, at least let folks peruse the story at their leisure.

EVO had its Japanese tourney last weekend! No mere brawl between Salty Suite pugilists, lots of game studios leave their big announcements for EVO. Might as well, right? It's one of the biggest fighting game tournaments there, and you might as well share some exciting news while folks are gathered in the same room. There was a lot of exciting news this weekend; we may as well cover it. But first!

Special kudos go to a teenager known only as "Money Idol-chan," a teenage girl who showed up to the competition for Money Idol Exchanger and absolutely stomped competitors several times her age—beating them all in mirror matches with their characters, even. Money Idol-chan's exploits earned her two medals: one for dominating the competition and one for the speedrun category. Money Idol-chan, still in junior high, was chaperoned by her two parents, who, as it turns out, run Shooting Star, an arcade that specializes in shooting games. Her exploits at EVO Japan led to a cover story in The Guardian. Reportedly, this was also one of Money Idol-chan's first tournaments—most other shooting game tournaments were too late for her to participate. Bedtime, and all that.

For folks not in the know: Money Idol Exchanger is a competitive puzzle shooting game along the lines of SNK's arcade favorite Twinkle-Star Sprites. Players shoot yen coins into stacks, with groups of appropriate coins condensing into higher denominations. So five one-yen coins become five-yen coins, all the way up to the 500-yen coins, where linking two makes them vanish. Like Puyo Puyo, clearing out your coins fills up your opponent's screen with extra coins—but the extra coins means your opponent has more opportunities to rack up their own combos.

The attention this has granted Money Idol Exchanger has inspired series artist/character designer Atsuko Ishida to draw loads of new art of the series' characters. Ishida was lamenting earlier this month about Money Idol Exchanger's poor lot; according to Ishida, there were plans for a sequel that unfortunately fell through. Will Money Idol-chan's exploits be enough to resurrect interest in Money Idol Exchanger? Eh, weirder things have happened. Sure would be nice, though. For now, fans can purchase Money Idol Exchanger on the PlayStation store and Nintendo eShop.

The news of Money Idol-chan's fame comes at the same time as SonicFox, famed American EVO participant and champion, making a call for a more-inclusive fighting game community in the US where women, people of color and the queer community alike can feel more comfortable in participating. I agree with him completely, and it helps that SonicFox is using his position to make a public call, but we also know the problems the fighting game community has at large.

There are a lot of toxic participants in the community whose belligerent attitudes (or outright bigotry—or worse, actual abuses) are tolerated based on their being good at games. There's the fighting game community having some cuss-laden chants—I'm a genuine fan of "Somebody's getting f*cked~!" or Mag-f*cking-neto making it rain on the Mango Sentinel to the cry of "F*CK THE KNICKS!" (note: apologies to the New York Knicks and their fans)—but then there are genuine issues within the community and the way people (usually women) are treated. We all know the jokes about Super Smash Bros fans not showering, but the rot goes a lot deeper than that. Some people have even shared plenty of anecdotes concerning their bad experiences in the fighting game community. I can understand wanting folks to keep the characterful bits of their community (if I can't shout "It's Mahvel, bay-bee!" at a Marvel Vs. Capcom tournament I'll face God and walk backward into hell). But there's a reason people try to push back against the Geek Social Fallacies as much as we can. Gatekeeping communities suck, especially when the community you're gatekeeping is already lousy with missing stairs. People really, really need to do better.

Anyway! Announcements! Plenty of beloved characters were announced for fighting games. Guilty Gear -Strive- fans can look forward to the long-awaited return of the genteel pugilist and vampiric husband of Sharon, Slayer. Slayer hadn't been seen in a Guilty Gear since Guilty Gear Xrd back in 2014, so fans were excited to see the vampiric wifeguy dandy it up with his fists. With Slayer's return, Guilty Gear -Strive-'s third season comes to a close. A.B.A., Johnny, Elphelt, and Slayer made for a phenomenal season—and fans have still more to look forward to, as the rounding-out of Season 3 also came with the announcement of the upcoming Season 4. Fans hope this is the one that brings back Dizzy, the cute Gear-girl with the mismatched wings (and wife of Ky Kiske and daughter to Sol Badguy—long story). For now, I look forward to Slayer arriving on May 30.

We also have a trailer for SNK's Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which is still under the thumb of Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is responsible for the political murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Brazilian Marco Rodrigues is back! Marco (not to be confused with the Marco from Metal Slug) is a practitioner of Kyokugen Karate, the in-universe martial art made famous by Ryo Sakazaki, the protagonist of SNK's Art of Fighting series. In-universe, the Kyokugen dojo has been demolished, and its sign has been stolen, so Marco is training out of Yuri Sakazaki's fitness club. Also, Marco has his original name back—long story short, he was renamed Kushnood Butt following Garou: Mark of the Wolves so as not to be confused with mixed martial artist Ricco Rodrigues. (Also, yes, "Rodrigues" with an "S" is the proper spelling—Marco is from Brazil, and his name is correct for his region.) Marco's looking burly and tough as ever. I appreciate his attacks having a very grounded, stiff look to them; in a game where characters can have all kinds of high-flying fancy attacks, it's cool that we have a karateka who (mostly) keeps his feet on the ground while he does his punches. Marco can still shoot fireballs, but you get what I mean. The news that Marco is training in Yuri's gym has fans hoping that we may see a 38-year-old Yuri brought into the fold, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Anyone remember Breakers? It was one of the many tournament fighters that hit the scene in the '90s in the wake of Street Fighter II's industry-changing success. It only succeeded at gathering a small (albeit dedicated) fanbase. My introduction to it was seeing a positively ancient SNK machine running at an ice rink in Puerto Rico when I was in high school (2006 or so). Breakers had a bit of a new lease on life recently when the Breakers Collection was released on almost every platform available early last year. It did well enough that Visco is making a brand new Breakers Revenge remaster! The visuals are positively stunning, showcasing some of the best 2D sprites in a fighting game out there. Also, the game's full title is "Breakers Revenge: Chicago," in reference to its new gimmick: the game comes in three selectable "editions" that alternate between "Revenge Mode," "Extra Mode," and "Chicago Mode." Why "Chicago"? Best I can gather, "Chicago" was Breaker's name when it was still in its prototype stage.

Breakers Revenge: Chicago also features new updates like improved input times, clocking in at an alleged 0.03 frames; art from Mototaka Yoshihara; and newly remastered music from its original composer, Kenichi Kamio. The downer to the party, however, is that Breakers Revenge: Chicago was picked up by exA-Arcadia, which has many pugilists shaking their fists in anger. From what I've gathered, exA-Arcadia exclusively licenses games to their proprietary arcades in Japan, meaning that any kind of foreign release is extremely unlikely. While some of their games like Rage of the Dragon Neo or Shikhondo: Soul Eater were able to get Steam releases, people aren't exactly holding their breath. Let's hope for good news for poor Breakers...

Sadly, the same fate extends to Chaos Code. The good news is that Chaos Code NEXT is finally back in development. The game was originally worked on by a pair of brothers, with one of the siblings sadly passing away in 2020, leaving Chaos Code NEXT on hiatus. Now, with the new title Chaos Code: Nemesis Experiment, folks can look forward to the return of the beloved fighter... at exA-Arcadia's arcades because exA-Arcadia has the license. It wouldn't be a fighting game story if there wasn't some kind of monkey's-paw scenario attached to it all.

Finally, we had news of a new Hunter×Hunter game! Hunter×Hunter took a lot longer to take off in the US (mostly because it took ages for an animated adaptation to come along where American fans could finally watch it). So, it missed out on that era in the anime boom of the early '00s, where every anime property imaginable had some kind of fighting game. Dragon Ball Z had too many to count, but other shows like Zatch Bell, One Piece, Naruto, YuYu Hakusho and Bleach had a goodly amount of fighting games during the boom years. But not Hunter×Hunter. Well, the good news is that the wait is over: we're finally getting a fighting game for the series in the form of Hunter×Hunter: Nen × Impact (remember: the "×" in "Hunter×Hunter" is silent, like with SPY×FAMILY and ×××Holic).

The plus side is that Hunter×Hunter: Nen × Impact feels like a fighting game from those early-'00s days of anime fighting games, with a lot of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and 3 tossed in. It plays as a three-on-three tag fighter, complete with assists, tag-outs, and combination supers. The downside in the eyes of many is that Nen × Impact looks like a fighting game from the early '00s, with some fairly unimpressive graphics. Since I subscribe to the philosophy of "I want games to look worse and do less, and I am not kidding," it's no bones to me. Also, since my mental image of Hunter×Hunter always goes back to the '90s anime with its dusty, workmanlike visuals, I feel like it fits the series. Yoshiro Togashi has some wild art when he has the health to pull it off, but I feel like Hunter×Hunter isn't itself if it's not kind of grimy-looking. So far, the only characters announced have been the usual stand-bys: Gon, Leorio, Kurapika, Killua, Netero, and Hisoka. The series appears to be based on the earlier arcs, so I expect more hunters from the Hunter Exams to appear.

But that's where the story ends with EVO Japan 2024. Save your quarters, stretch your wrists, and meet the gang at the parking lot behind the 7/11 for the Melty Blood friendlies—no Johns.

An announcement was made for the Tsukihime -A Piece Of Blue Glass Moon- remake: the art book included in the PlayStation version of the special edition set will have edits on two pages. These edits won't be reflected in the Switch's artbook version. This does not affect the game; the game itself is unchanged. The changes are only on two pages of the artbook included in the PlayStation version of the special edition set.. Bolded for emphasis. Don't make me have to call... la criatura

That'll do it for this week. As a reminder to folks: this weekend is Free Comic Book Day! Remember to visit your local comic shop to pick up some free books and buy some stuff from them while you're there. Local comic shops always need extra support and are an underappreciated part of local nerd communities. Get some comics, rub shoulders with your fellow nerds, and maybe grab a burger while you're at it. That's basically my plan. Be good to each other; I'll see you in seven!