Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes comes out on June 24th, 2022. Looks like your typical Dynasty Warriors-esque spinoff like Hyrule Warriors was.
Advance Wars 1+2 Re-boot Camp comes out on April 8th. CO’s have voices now. I love the look of this remake or reboot, Advance Wars was one of my favorite games for the GBA and really does a good job of giving us a simplified turn-based strategy game. Hopefully this reboot is good, too.
No Man’s Sky comes out “This Summer.” It’s a fantastic chill-out game, No Man’s Sky will have a good home on the Switch if it can handle it performance-wise, and at that point the Steam Deck should be in more hands so it will be interesting to compare performance between the two versions even though I’m sure someone could enjoy it either way.
Mario Strikers: Battle League is out on June 10th. It’s a new sequel to the Mario-universe soccer games that were on the GameCube and Wii. I feel like the entire internet has memory holed Super Mario Strikers for the Super Nintendo which doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Battle League has customizable gear with different stats for the characters to wear. The single-player game is 5-on-5. Multiplayer is 4-on-4 local or online, presumably with an automated goalie.
Splatoon 3 is still scheduled for “Summer 2022.” showed off the co-op multiplayer Salmon Run: Next Wave with three new Boss Salmonids. The first was a Fish Stick tower that got dropped in and the squid kids had to paint and slide to the top to destroy the flying fish around it. The second was a Flipper-Flopper in the shape of a dolphin that drops a huge ring of ink before doing a body slam on whomever is caught in the ring. The third was a giant Kaiju without any more details given on it. Inklings can now pass eggs by throwing them to another player.
Front Mission 1st: Remake is coming out “This Summer” from Square-Enix. Never thought I’d hear about Front Mission again. It’s a turn-based tactical RPG with mechs called Wanzers. The sequel is also getting a remake later on.
Disney Speedstorm is a free-to-play kart game coming out “This Summer” from Gameloft SE using Disney and Pixar characters. Cross-platform multiplayer was mentioned, so it’s coming out for other platforms. It also has split-screen. This seems like a cash-grab.
Star-Wars: The Force Unleashed is coming out on April 20th from Aspyr. It’s a re-release of the Wii version with motion controls that are newly “enhanced” and 1 versus 1 local multiplayer duels. This looks like a lot worse than I remember Force Unleashed looking but maybe that’s because it’s starting from the Wii version.
Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection is coming out on February 17th from Ubisoft. It gets touch-screen controls (Why?) HD-rumble, and “optimized on-screen display.” They’re still great games if you like stabbing dudes.
SD Gundam Battle Alliance is coming out “This Year” from Bandai Namco. SD is short for “Super Deformed” which means the Gundams are all cute smushed versions of the original designs.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is coming out on April 9th from Square Enix. It’s a remaster of the PlayStation RPG that Nintendo says will let players turn off enemy encounters (weird!), an enhanced soundtrack, and the Satellaview’s Radical Dreamers interactive fiction game from Japan.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is coming out on March 25th from Nintendo. Kirby partially inhales a car in the new footage and we find out about the oddly-named Mouthful Mode that enables Kirby to do so. Kirby can drive the car when it’s stuck in his maw. Similarly, he can shoot cans from a vending machine that gets inhaled or pierce things when a traffic cone is inhaled. Kirby also inhales a few other items like lightbulbs and scissor-lifts and upgrades Waddle Dee Town. A vendor in Waddle Dee Town upgrades Kirby’s copy abilities. Looks fun.
MLB The Show 22 is coming to the Nintendo Switch on April 5th from Sony. A grizzled announcer let us know there’s a single-joycon mode for exhibition matches and has cross-play and cross-progression so the Switch can carry on from the PlayStation or Xbox versions of MLB The Show 22. Still very weird to see a PlayStation logo on a Switch box. This version looks like a PSP game, the gameplay footage wasn’t even scaled correctly for the Nintendo Direct stream so portions of the footage were cut off.
Kingdom Hearts: Cloud Versions is coming out tomorrow the 10th from Disney and Square Enix. Three-ish Kingdom Hearts games are getting released as streaming garbage. Really incredible to take offline single-player games and then make them truly offline by making versions that will stop working some day once the streaming services are shut down.
Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series is coming on July 8th from Bandai Namco. It includes the two original side-scrollers from the PlayStation 1 & 2.
Portal Companion Collection is coming to the Switch “This Year” from Valve. It’s got both Portal 1 and 2, including the co-op features for the sequel. I believe this is the first time Valve has released a game for a Nintendo platform. The gameplay looks good, if a bit lower resolution than these games were originally intended. Portal 2 also recently got updated to work better on the upcoming Steam Deck. It’ll be interesting to compare the versions.
Live A Live is coming back on July 22nd. The Square Enix RPG was only ever released in Japan on the Super Famicom. Nintendo called this updated version a form of “HD-2D” which looked great in the video. It seems like Nintendo is doing the work to bring this updated version out since Square wasn’t mentioned.
Nintendo Switch Sports is coming on April 29th from Nintendo, it’s a new iteration of the Wii Sports motion control games that probably sold millions of the Nintendo Wii. Glad these are coming back, there are plenty of people who never got to play the originals and I’m hoping they’ll be more accurate to the newer Joy-Con technology instead of the old Wii-motes. There are the original games like Tennis, Bowling, and Chambara which looks like a padded ring-out game similar to something out of American Gladiators, and new games like Soccer with a huge in-game ball. Badminton and Volleyball are also new. The leg-strap for the Joy-Con from Ring Fit is included with the physical version of Nintendo Switch Sports for some of the games like a kicking mode in soccer. All of the games have local multiplayer and online either against friends or random matchmaking. Nintendo says that an update later on in the summer will add leg strap support for full soccer matches and that another update will add Golf in the Fall. Nintendo will have an online play test between February 18th to the 20th and people can register at https://sports.nintendo.com on February 15th at 5PM Pacific Time. The online test will only have random online matches for Tennis, Bowling, and Chambara and it requires a Nintendo Switch Online membership.
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rythm Festival is coming “This Year” from Bandai Namco. It sounds like an adventure with a storyline instead of just selecting different songs, although you still get to play to 76 different songs and some that haven’t been in Taiko no Tatsujin before like an orchestral version of The Legend of Zelda Main Theme. Namco added a way to replay sections of songs in order to practice getting better at them, a four-player multiplayer mode called DON-chan Band, and a two-player Great Drum Toy War. Bandai Namco is also selling a subscription service that they say has more than 500 songs to play along with. I really recommend getting a drum for these games if you can find it. They can be a lot of fun, hopefully this new game turns out well.
Triangle Strategy is coming from Nintendo, they’re also releasing another demo that lets you play up through Chapter 3 and transfer the save data to the finished game. Nintendo previously announced a March 4th, 2022 release date but that wasn’t mentioned during today’s Nintendo Direct.
Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course DLC is coming on June 30th from Studio MDHR. New levels, new bosses, a new playable character called Ms. Chalice. That DLC is also on its way for the other platforms that Cuphead came out on.
Metroid Dread is getting an update today that adds two new difficulty levels. Dread Mode difficulty game over’s Samus after one-hit. Rookie Mode improves Samus’ health regeneration. Another free update comes out in April with a boss rush mode.
EarthBound is coming today to the Nintendo Switch Online SNES emulator and EarthBound Beginnings to the NES emulator. They’re classic RPGs and the only other release EarthBound Beginnings got was on the Wii-U Virtual Console in 2015. EarthBound 3 has never been released outside of Japan but there is a popular community translation of the Japanese ROM for Mother 3.
Zombie Army 4: Dead War is coming out on April 26th from Rebellion. Have we ever killed enough Nazi Zombies?
GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon is coming out today from Konami. It looks like a side-scroller with watercolor art that looks nice.
Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles is a mouthful of a name of a game coming on June 20th from Sega.
LEGO Brawls is coming from LEGO Games some time in June. It looks a little bit like a platform fighter.
Two Point Campus was already announced for other platforms from Sega, and it’s coming to the Switch on May 17th. This is a collegiate follow-up to Two Point Hospital.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass is 48 remastered courses from old Mario Kart games as $25 paid DLC for Mario Kart 8. They tracks will be released in 6 waves of 8 courses through 2023. Coconut Mall, Choco Mountain, and Tokyo Blur were three mentioned courses. The first wave will be released on March 18th, 2022. It’s also included with the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack that costs $50 year for one person or $80 for a family membership. I’m still on the regular subscription and honestly don’t like paying for it. I’d recommend buying the DLC for $25 and then it’s yours for as long as Nintendo keeps the download services alive.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was announced for September 2022.
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