He also briefly mentioned the next newsletter drop.
Toby Fox has shared an incredibly brief update about the ongoing development of his latest game Deltarune.
In a post on social media, he mentioned how he’s working on Chapter 5 “every day” and “was planning on” having the next newsletter for the game out by “late December”.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Most of us know about the novel, the novella, and the rare novito, but did you know that Penguin briefly tried to market the ‘big nov’ – single sentences of much larger works, bizarrely serialised into hardbacks weighty enough to club the equally rare giga-seal? Some things are best left forgotten, but not Dragon Age! It’s Dragon Age month, and here’s Dragon Age veteran and good YouTuber, Mark Darrah! Cheers Mark! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?
It’s-a-him.
The early days of video gaming saw the birth of so many iconic characters, console stars that endure to this day. Amongst that early litany there is, of course, Super Mario. Mario Mario to his friends. Who would’ve thought 100-odd squares would one day become one of the most recognisable characters on the face of the Earth? He’s changed over the years, sure, but never strayed too far from that classic, early design.
So, with Mario & Luigi: Brothership on the horizon, featuring a shiny new in-game model for the main man to boot, we’re casting our eye back to chart the voyage of his visage. We’ve given the same treatment to his oldest rival and his fiercest competitor previously – so it seems only right that the portly plumber should receive the same service.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Video game remakes are everywhere these days. We’ve just had a new version of Silent Hill 2, the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is in full swing, and a recreation of Metal Gear Solid 3 is on the horizon. But few people know remakes quite as well as Shinji Mikami. The co-creator of Resident Evil has watched teams craft highly-successful recreations of his own games, and back in 2001 even helmed the remake of the first project he ever headed up – making him the director of both Resident Evil and Resident Evil.
So, if there’s anyone who knows what makes a good remake, it’s Shinji Mikami. “I think the comprehensive and fundamental understanding of what it was that made the original work in the first place is probably the most important point of a good remake,” he tells me.
“Everything from the ground up, basically,” he explains. “There’s a few examples of that with certain series that Capcom has put out.” He is, of course, talking about the recent run of Resident Evil remakes, the most recent of which is the almost universally-celebrated Resident Evil 4. Mikami has played it and offers glowing praise for the team at Capcom.
“I thought that it was really well-made,” he says. He’s particularly impressed by how the remake handles the more nuanced details of combat, such as the timing between aiming and shooting, which in the original was finely balanced to ensure mounting pressure and tension. “I thought that they showed a really good understanding of that element,” he tells me.
“Another thing I thought was really well done was the way they took the half-assed scenario that I just wrote up in two weeks and really built up on that and really fleshed it out,” he adds. “They showed that they really understood the characters and their interactions. They showed a good understanding of the backbone of each character. And they took not just the scenario itself, but even the dialogue, and they improved all that stuff so that was really great.”
My conversation with Mikami was part of his promotional work for Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, a spruced-up version of the cult classic he produced back in 2011 (amusingly, Mikami notes that “I personally don’t really have any interest in remasters” during the chat, so a passion project to revive Shadows this isn’t). We were also joined by Goichi Suda (AKA Suda51), Shadows of the Damned’s writer and CEO of developer Grasshopper Manufacture. Suda has more interest in remasters than Mikami; alongside this new version of Shadows, Grasshopper has also remastered Lollipop Chainsaw this year, and had previously restored No More Heroes and Killer7 for modern platforms. But Suda varies his approach when returning to his old games. Sometimes a remake is needed.
“One thing that really stands out about remaking The 25th Ward was, at the time when we did the remake, it was completely unplayable,” Suda explains. “It was originally only available on Japanese flip phones. And, on top of that, it never actually ended. The original version didn’t have a proper conclusion or ending to it.” These factors ensured that, instead of a remaster, The 25th Ward was totally remade in 2018 to both suit the PlayStation 4 console and to finally provide players with a conclusion to the story.
For Shadows of the Damned, Mikami and Suda have chosen to remaster rather than remake. Instead of expanding and reinventing aspects of their 2011 game, which sold poorly but garnered a cult following, the duo have stuck closely to the original version. The approach allows modern audiences to experience the game as it was released back on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Nevertheless, there are some new elements to ensure long-term fans are rewarded.
“I wanted to keep the game as close to the original as possible, but there were definitely things that I wanted to add on and emphasize or accentuate this time around,” says Suda. “For example, there’s some new costumes for the main character, there’s the new game plus mode. There’s a few things that we wanted to use to boost the experience a bit. But yeah, we certainly wanted to keep it as close to the original as possible.”
But, as noted earlier, Mikami isn’t all that interested in remasters. That’s not to say he’s not interested in revisiting the past, though. “Personally, I’m more interested in remaking Killer7 than I was in remastering Shadows of the Damned,” he tells me. “If I got to choose, I’d rather do a sequel to Killer7 or something.”
Released in 2005, Killer7 was an incredibly stylish action thriller. Its complex story, following the exploits of an assassin with multiple personalities, was co-written by Mikami and Suda. It’s another project from the duo with a cult following, and one that has largely been lost to time: aside from a 2018 PC remaster, Killer7 was only ever made for the GameCube and PS2, with no modern console re-releases available. As such, the game’s small but loyal following has long cried out for a sequel or remake.
Reflecting on the original, Suda says “I was constantly really, really conscious of the fact that I was making an action game together with Mikami, the guy who made the Resident Evil series. And with that, [he] revolutionized the way action games are made.
“Another thing that I was constantly conscious about was the fact that we were trying to make a game to put out to the whole world, not just domestically. All the new ideas that we had, for example, controller inputs and the gameplay and the action itself, we tried to make this stuff as new and original as possible. If we were to do another Killer7 thing, that’s something that I’d like to return to. Making something completely new and original and putting a bunch of revolutionary stuff in it.”
While Mikami likes the idea of returning to Killer7, he feels that his vision for the game’s art may clash with modern expectations. “I feel that, at the time, the art that we used for Killer7 matched really well with the specs of the time,” he says. “And if we were to make a new version of it nowadays, people would probably be expecting something a lot more realistic. And that would just feel funky and weird. That’s not really what the game was about.
“If we were going to redo it, if we were going to do something new with it, there would be a whole lot that would have to be changed,” he theories. “Everything from background settings and the art itself, it would have to be pretty much redone from the ground up.”
“This isn’t any kind of promise that we’re going to be making a sequel or a remake or anything,” he quickly adds. “It’s just two dudes shooting the shit.”
Even though it’s just two dudes shooting the shit, the conversation gives us a good insight into what one of the most celebrated directors in gaming thinks makes a good remake. The best are ground-up recreations that study and dissect the components that made the original game work so well, and then use that understanding to expand on the good and enhance any weaknesses. It’s a simple recipe that requires a deep, intricate understanding of the original game in question. Thankfully, Mikami’s work has inspired such dedication, and the result has been the Resident Evil remakes.
As for the remakes yet to come, let’s hope they’re based on original projects that also inspire such close study and appreciation for every little detail, right down to the microseconds between aiming and squeezing the trigger.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.
Angelic.
Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl!
Before we get cracking with this week’s battle, let’s see how things panned out last time. We took a look at Balloon Fight for the NES, a bonafide Joust-inspired classic from legendary developers such as Satoru Iwata and Yoshio Sakamoto. It was a close call on this one, but ultimately the pixel art black box seen in the US won the day with 42% of the vote. Japan managed 33%, while Europe scored 24%.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
“Thank you all”.
Sega this week released Sonic X Shadow Generations on the Switch and multiple other platforms. It’s a remaster of the 2011 title Sonic Generations and includes a brand new campaign starring Shadow the Hedgehog.
It seems the game has got off to a solid start with Sega revealing it’s surpassed one million sales in its opening weekend:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Nintendo rolled out this major update earlier this month.
Following Nintendo’s rollout of a new Switch firmware update earlier this month, there have apparently been some issues.
Version 19.0.0 included “general system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience” but it’s reportedly had the opposite effect – with some individuals claiming they’re now having “issues” with sleep mode, downloads, battery life and overheating problems.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Ys X: Nordics launched in Japan last year to some critical acclaim, and it has now made its way both west and onto PC. The PC version has a bunch of graphical upgrades and keyboard support, but also – unlike predecessor Ys IX: Monstrum Nox which got co-op as a cheeky post-launch bonus on PC – Ys X: Nordics has local co-op from day one.
Cities: Skylines received its final piece of DLC last May, as developers Colossal Order shifted their focus to its sequel, Cities: Skylines 2. Eighteen months and the release of Cities: Skylines 2 later… Cities: Skylines 1 is getting new DLC again.
The “Mountain Village” creator pack add 45 new buildings designed to help you construct quaint and picturesque destinations.
The weekend is officially here, and we’ve rounded up the best deals you can find! Discover the best deals for Saturday, October 26, below:
Sonic X Shadow Generations just released this week, and you can already save $10 off a Nintendo Switch copy at Woot. This package includes a remastered version of Sonic Generations and a brand-new campaign focused on Shadow. Both 2D and 3D levels are included, making for the ultimate package for any Sonic fan.
Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2 is on sale for the very first time this weekend at Amazon. Recreating one of Konami’s most beloved titles was never going to be easy, but the Silent Hill 2 remake delivers an immersive horror experience that preserves almost everything that made the original so great. In our 8/10 review, we said the game “smoothly polishes down the rough edges of the original game’s combat while taking a piece of heavy grit sandpaper to scuff up every rust and mold-covered surface of its nightmarish environments, successfully making them appear far more abrasive and menacing to explore.”
EA Sports College Football 25 is available on sale for $42.99 this weekend. This game marked the first college football title from EA since NCAA 14, as a lawsuit regarding player NIL (name, image, and likeness) prevented the company from producing further entries. Many of the older modes have returned to College Football 25, including Dynasty, Team Builder, and Road to Glory. Of course, dozens of new features have been added, including Stadium Pulse, which creates challenging road environments in college football’s biggest stadiums.
The remake of Super Mario RPG is $31.99 at Woot right now, which is a great price for this classic title. If you’ve yet to either play the original or check out the remake, this is the perfect time to do so. Composer Yoko Shimimura returned to compose the remake’s original soundtrack, and each boss and environment has been expertly recrafted for the Nintendo Switch.
Red Dead Redemption made the jump to PlayStation 4 in October 2023, and this release includes both the base game and Undead Nightmare. For fans of Red Dead Redemption 2 who have never played the original, now is a great time to check out John Marston’s story. This is the lowest price we’ve seen Red Dead Redemption at since last December, so be sure to pick this one up while it’s on sale!
Macy’s has multiple LEGO Super Mario sets on sale this weekend for a limited time. You can save on sets like King Boo’s Haunted Mansion, Peach’s Castle, Super Mario Adventures, and the Wiggler Set. If you own LEGO Mario, you can interact with each of these sets in ways like never before!
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is available this weekend at Woot for only $39.99. This is one of the best games available on Nintendo Switch, filled with charm and all sorts of fun puzzles. With Halloween right around the corner, there’s never been a better time to pick up the game if you haven’t already!
