Nathan Birch
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WCCFtechLatest Reviews
Donkey Kong Country Returns is set to return yet again. The fourth entry in the Donkey Kong Country series bounded onto Wii in 2010, was revived as Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D on the 3DS in 2013, and now, over a decade later, Nintendo returns to the well with Donkey Kong Country Returns HD for the Switch. You definitely can’t say The Big N hasn't recouped their original investment on this one.
In 2022, CD Projekt Red announced a remake of the first entry in The Witcher franchise was in the works at developer Fool’s Theory, to which many fans replied, “Who the heck are Fool’s Theory?” The Polish developer has actually been around for a while. They made the interesting sandbox cRPG Seven: The Days Long Gone, although that happened seven years ago. Since then, they have mostly supported other big projects like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Silent Hill 2.
Sony’s Horizon franchise has always felt like it had the potential to tap into a younger demographic, what with its plucky youthful protagonist, largely bloodless robot dino combat, and environmental messaging, but Sony never really pitched the games that hard toward kids – until now. This week sees the release of Lego Horizon Adventures, which reassembles 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn into a plastic-y kid-friendly form.
The Mario & Luigi franchise has always felt like the younger sibling amongst the various Mario RPG spinoffs. The series doesn’t have the historical significance of a Super Mario RPG and, unlike Paper Mario, always remained restricted to Nintendo’s handheld systems. Most figured that little sibling status would remain forever when longtime Mario & Luigi developer AlphaDream went bankrupt, presumably taking the series with them. Needless to say, it was a bit of a surprise when Nintendo announced Mario & Luigi: Brothership, an all-new, rather-polished-looking console revival of the series.
Other Nintendo franchises may rise and fall, but the ever-dependable Mario Party has been steadily rocking since 1998. We’ve already received two entries in the franchise on Switch, the fairly well-received soft reboot of the series Super Mario Party and the more barebones throwback Mario Party Superstars, and now, we’re getting a third. As the name implies, Super Mario Party Jamboree is largely a continuation of what Super Mario Party started, with a focus on new modes and features over nostalgia.
Open-world racing games have become fairly commonplace in recent years, but before the likes of Forza Horizon or The Crew rolled out, we had Test Drive Unlimited. Despite innovating many staples of the modern open-world racer, the franchise has laid dormant since 2011, so there was a fair amount of excitement when a third entry in the series, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, was announced back in 2020.
The Nintendo Switch has seen a lot of deep-cut releases over the past year, but arguably none slice quite as deep as Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club. A series of surprisingly-mature 8-bit visual novels written by Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto, the Famicom Detective Club games gained a certain amount of notoriety over the decades amongst hardcore Nintendo fans who like to keep up with the company’s unlocalized oddities. It certainly came as a surprise when Nintendo brought remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club titles, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, to worldwide audiences in 2021. While that was a big deal to a certain niche audience, the remakes didn’t exactly do Mario numbers, so many assumed the series might just disappear again. Thankfully, the surprises kept coming, with the first all-new entry in the Famicom Detective Club series launching tomorrow.
You just never know what Nintendo is going to tap for nostalgia next. The Nintendo World Championships are a concept the company has revisited in a scattershot way over the years, but it’s the original 1990 iteration most folks remember, and really, it’s not even the event itself that’s most famous. That first competition was held using unique NES cartridges, which are now the ultimate collector’s item fetching upwards of $25,000 apiece. That’s the main reason the Nintendo World Championships are still remembered today. Despite that somewhat obscure legacy, the Nintendo World Championships are returning once again, this time as an actual widely-available video game.
The Switch is home to more than its share of remakes and remasters, but despite having a hearty library of games worth revisiting, few if any Nintendo 3DS games have been up for revival. That’s about to change though, as the 3DS is finally getting a little love in Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (originally known as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon in North America).
A key ingredient to a successful horror story is a good setting and Still Wakes the Deep, which takes place on a massive deep sea oil rig off the coast of Scotland, has a pretty killer one. The game also has a critically acclaimed, if somewhat divisive, creative team behind it in The Chinese Room, the British developer behind past indie hits such as Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.