RepentantSky

If you’re like me, you love RPG’s of many different genre’s. Whether they cover fantastical realms like Skyrim and Final Fantasy, or more technologically advanced ones like Borderlands or Star Ocean. 

Like all genre’s most RPG’s of different genre’s also suffer from different problems because of tropes and reused settings that people can grow tired of, but talking about RPG’s from two different parts of the world, is a whole other problem. Japan for example, is mostly marketing itself to Western players, while Western RPG’s, are mostly marketing themselves to Western players...uh wait, why does that make them different? 

It’s all because of style choices. See, Japan like most countries, has a lot of traditions that make a lot of it’s products fairly same-y. As I said that happens with everyone, but Japan has to try harder with smaller series to get western appeal, which is required to have a successful selling game, unless it’s a mobile title, since those all do really well in Japan, because people can just game on their way to and from work. I digress, but Japan is so rooted in tradition, that you can watch an episode of Gigantor, the anime that is considered by many to be the first anime ever created, and Demon Slayer, and notice a lot of similarities in the way the characters are speaking, because Japan has always made their shows where actors talk like they would in real life, which isn’t always true in other acting platforms around the world, which of course means, this translates to video games. 

Specifically what it means, is that Japan has to hop a cultural barrier that Western games don’t, and they have to rely on a lot more tropes, because there are only so many ways to translate the same basic plot of a JRPG, for Western audiences, before things become too cliché. A lot of RPG’s are successful in doing this, like the aforementioned Final Fantasy, and other JRPG’s are coming through with successful games to, like Fire Emblem. Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, Atelier, and several others. All of the games coming through lately, lead people to believe that JRPG’s are a thriving genre in the west, but that’s not really true. 

If you were to ask any random person what the most successful JRPG of all time was, a lot of people would probably think of a Final Fantasy game, but not even Final Fantasy 7, has come close. In fact the only JRPG that even made it to the top 10 best selling games ever, is Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow as a collective, with four different versions. The next best selling one is Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, and in fact, only 11 of the top 49 best selling games of all time, are RPG’s, and all of the JRPG’s are Pokemon titles. Final Fantasy 7 has still been wildly successful, as the original has sold over 11.8 million units, and the remake over 5 million, but the fact of the matter is, that even though RPG’s as a whole are the biggest genre of the top 49, the few that made it are exceptions to the rules. In fact, of the top 10 best selling games of all time, 6 of them are by Nintendo. The other 5 excluding Pokemon, are Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros. Mario Kart 8/Deluxe, Wii Fit/Plus and the original Gameboy version of Tetris, which itself is on there twice because EA’s version is number 3. so you’re actually better off in Japan, not making a JRPG. 

There’s a lot more that can be gleamed from looking at the list, so you can check it out here if you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games 

The point is that JRPG’s, aren’t always as successful as people think they are. I mean sure, you don’t have to be on the top best selling games list to be successful, but Persona 4 Golden on PC is considered a massive success for selling only just over a million units since it’s release, and the Tales of Series, which is one of the longest running in gaming, as recently as April of this year, had it’s sales numbers made public, and Tales of Symphonia, the undeniable Final Fantasy 7 of the series, sold a total of 940,000 units in the United States, and the game, easily the most successful title from Tales of, only managed 2.4 million in total. None of this is to say, that JRPG’s are struggling, because most of the ones I brought up are shining examples that they aren’t, but going back to that top 10 list, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V,  just the top two of that list, have sold 345,000,000 total units. That not only beats the entire mainline series of Pokemon, it’s only about 2.5 million short extra, of beating the original 151′s total sales, with how many spare units the two games over Pokemon’s  300,000,000 million total sales mainline games, which means likely, the two of them will beat the series out at some point in the future. 

Western RPG’s, don’t often suffer from as many problems, because they don’t have a border to hop, and it shows with Elder Scrolls, which has sold 58 million total copies with only five mainline games, and 30 million of those came from Skyrim alone. It took Pokemon, the undisputed champion of JRPG sales, 20 mainline games to reach 300 million, which means arguably, by the time Elder Scrolls reaches it’s 10th installment, it will have caught up to Pokemon’s first 20 games total sales. Borderlands, which is arguably the Tales of to Western RPG’s in most people’s eyes, has actually outsold Elder Scrolls with only 4 mainline entries, one of which is considered bad by many, with a total of 60 million total units sold. The better comparison, surprising for many I’m sure, for a Tales of comparison, is actually Fallout, which has sold 13.51 million units, to Tales of 23.5 million units. 

Enough about numbers for a few minutes, 3 paragraphs about it is a bit much, but the fact of the matter is, Japan struggles more overall to make successful RPG’s in the West, than the West does in the West, and it’s all due to how much of a challenge it is to hop that border. 

Outside of sales numbers, the other major difference between JRPG’s vs Western RPG’s is how they are classified. Generally, when someone thinks of a JRPG, they think of a fantasy world, with leveling, where rare items can be won off bosses, but your main way of improving stats is to level up, and have enough money to buy the best equipment at each new town you enter with a shop. However, a lot of games have been getting that label slapped on them by their marketing teams or fans, and some of it is just wrong. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one such game, despite the drops from enemies being the only correlation between BoTW and JRPG’s. The correlation was made by fans, which might seem like an innocent mistakes, and in fact could be nothing but that, but then there’s Monster Hunter, which actually does have two JRPG’s attached to it, in the Stories 1 and 2 games, but who took the reigns of JRPG to market, calling Monster Hunter World, a JRPG. despite it having few differences from other Monster Hunter action games, outside of having a story, and having nothing more to do with JRPG’s than Zelda. A lot of fans of Japanese games will classify simply playing as a fake character an RPG, which normally would be fine, but in games, that’s not how genres are defined. If that were the case, all of Yakuza’s games would be JRPG’s, instead of just Like a Dragon, and in fact most games would be RPG’s, and they obviously aren’t. Bubsy 3D RPG anyone? No? Ya sure? Yeah I didn’t think so.   

The west has the exact opposite problem of under classifying it’s games as RPGs. While sure, you wouldn’t call Halo an RPG, unless you know, Master Chief was shooting an RPG, you absolutely should call Ratchet and Clank one. Think about it, your main playable characters all have HP, most of them have weapons that can level up, and the action setting of these games, basically should make Ratchet, a response to Level 5′s Dark Cloud series, which did all the same things for combat. However, it’s just seen as series of action games, despite it also being a lot like Borderlands. 

So I was just told by someone due to the most recent trailer for a Pixar film, this one called Turning Red, that they have a problem, as do many non-white Disney fans, with Disney’s habit of making minority main characters somehow not be themselves, like in their own skin throughout the majority of their animated films. So I went and looked at the history of Disney films for the last 21 years, so for the entire century thus far. What I found, not counting Enchanto and Turning Red, the two most recently announced films, is that in six cases, those being Coco, The Princess and the Frog, Soul, Brother Bear, Luca and The Emperor’s New Groove (or if you prefer since Kuzco was played by David Spade, Spies in Disguise, which was a Fox film before the merger) that was the case, whereas in five films, those being Lilo and Stitch (debatable main character, but I always said Lilo since her name is first), Arjun: The Warrior Prince (not translated to English), Big Hero 6, Moana, and Raya and the Lost Dragon, with the caveat being that all but Arjun has the secondary main character being an animal or some other creature not in human skin (and even Arjun has animals as enemies from what I can tell) where that this wasn’t true. So basically, it’s either six to five or seven to five true what’s being said. So I want to know, are you more offended by that characterization of minority characters, or by the fact that in the last 21 years we only got twelve films with minority leads, or that between all of Disney’s/Pixar’s and acquired studios, they’ve had that I can say for sure, 54 other films with white leads in them, and who easily have more people not being in their skin who are white, a few times over, than minority films at all? And these are just animated films by the way, no live action included (though I could be convinced to do the math on that if anyone wanted me to). 

Of course as you can imagine, the numbers are more skewed towards white actors from the 90′s and as far back as the 30′s, and that’s not just counting main characters. in Snow White, every voice acting cast member was white for Western releases of the film and looking up the crew that’s mentioned around the world, the only black person I could find, was Hall Johnson, who created the amazing ending choir music for when Snow White awoke from her slumber. The only other role he has in Disney, which these are the only credited ones I could find, were as the Crow Deacon, in Dumbo, who is most famous for singing the reprise of “When I see an Elephant Fly” but here’s the thing, choir and singing weren’t Johnson’s only strength’s, there was also Piano, where he learned to play music, and Violin. While it’s true by 1925, he actually had switched to choir as a preference, which played into his roles at Disney, there’s potentially so much more that he could have done, and Disney, as far as I can tell, doesn’t even really recognize him, and google is so bad it doing so, that when typing in Hall Johnson Disney, looking to see if he’d show up at all (spoiler, he doesn’t) it tried to correct me to Ashley Johnson, who’s most famous Disney roles are as Gretchen from Recess, and as the waitress in The Avengers, who’s role was then given to a different actress.

So E3 2021 is a thing. It’s gonna be all digital, and several companies have already signed up to join, sounds like a good deal, but the question is, will it be what we normally expect out of E3, or will it be more like Summer Game Fest Last Year, where everything that looked like it was gonna be great, but just turned out to be okay? Who can say, but I have some...suggestions, that might make it better, along with some game announcements, that might make it all it should be cracked up to be. 

9. No low quality, at home interviews during the main show 

E3 has had a history of doing interviews during game shows to try and break pace a little, and keep people from being too excited, only to potentially be let down later. However, possibly the worst problem with Summer Game Fest last year, was the at home interviews, which broke pacing during game announcements in a way I can’t imagine was on purpose, and for many, was the time to take a bathroom break, or simply look away for a while. It’s important of course to hear from developers about their projects, and they can divulge some interesting information about games, that either puts something confusing into context, or is accidently leaked, but when we watch shows about game releases, we want to see the games. Interviews should be held in between shows, or better yet, the days following the conferences themselves. 

8. Nintendo finally talks about the big three 

While it’s safe to say Nintendo has done some banger numbers over the last year espeically, due to better console availability, which I never thought I’d say about Nintendo but here we are, it’s also safe to say that fans have been waiting for literal years on Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, and Breath of the Wild 2. While some have been more patient than others, and of course I understand there’s a flipping pandemic going on, Nintendo told us far too long ago about these games, or the restart of their development, and Breath of the Wild 2 was promised to at least get an update this year, and E3 seems like the best place to do it, especially after their last direct, one that was more than a year in waiting, and left so many people disappointed. And this is coming from someone who had literally only hoped to be excited about one thing, and it didn’t happen The future of how they present games, almost feels like it’s in question after such a show, which did not justify itself, so hopefully, they can finally let everyone walk away happy, and talk about the projects that have been generation the most excitement, for literal years now.

7. Space things out better

You might now know this, I only made one list about it after all, and literally no one reacted to it, but I’m a huge wrestling fan, and one of the promotions I watch, is WWE. Now, WWE is about to launch WrestleMania, their equal to E3 in a lot of ways, and are splitting it up over two days, and that goes for their third brand NXT as well, because they have a history of making the show sometimes 8 hours long. For fans of video games, watching The Game Awards, which can be two to three hours long, is arduous, and tiring, and E3, can also have that same effect. I remember in 2019, I literally fell asleep watching Bethesda’s conference, because I was so tired trying to write about the previous shows in between them, never mind actually watching them, that I was burnt out. Since E3 is going fully digital this year, and everyone is going to be in that same boat, it would be nice if we didn’t have too many shows, spanning over a near 12 hour period, which was happened before, making people stay up late to enjoy what they want to, or you know, work, which is free promotion for whatever gets announced. Spacing the shows out to no more than three a day, and giving people enough time to get their thoughts together, would just be really nice. 

6. Devolver Digital, tries a different style

Look, I don’t hate Devolver Digital’s approach to talking about games at E3, but what I do hate, is them telling the same jokes over and over again, and expecting everyone to laugh, because you know, it’s so funny when something that’s already been said, or shown, is modified ever so slightly for years on end. I’m not saying they can’t still tell jokes, please do, E3 is as much a good time as it is stressful depending on who you are, so the change of pace can at times be a lot of fun, but the last time they had a “conference”, it was a slog, and generally left me feeling annoyed, and I can’t help but feel I’m not the only one. They want to be different, I say that’s great, but they need to do it in a way that for one, is actually different, because their style has become a cliché in and of itself, and where they don’t spend time talking about fake games, because it’s hard to know at times what’s real and what isn’t. I honestly thought the last time they did one, the final game they talked about was just a play on the “one more thing” trope conferences have, and when I later realized it wasn’t, I never got that first sense of hype, and so lost interest, and that’s not a good business model. We don’t even know at this point if they’re going to declare for E3, and since it was announced late, it might be too hard to get a show at all, but if they do show up, or even when they next do a conference, it would be nice if they considered this line of thinking.

5. Drop the “Exclusive Online Portal” idea

Yeah I don’t know what the ESA was thinking with this one, but they mentioned that E3 will be streaming from an exclusive online portal, and not only do we not know what that means, but no one flipping cares! We’re all going to watching it on YouTube, Twitch, or dare I say it but it’s possible, Facebook Gaming, and any other platform is completely useless. We are all tired of hearing, download a new program to do a thing you can already do on other platforms, PC gamers especially, stop releasing new flipping launchers and...sorry, that’s for another list in the future perhaps, but the point stands. You might get streamers to download, or go to whatever site they need to, to watch the shows, but everyone else, is either going to watch those streams, or as it often happens, watch the highlights at a later time, so to add a potentially extra step to that process, is just not going to go anywhere, and since E3 will be free to watch, it’s not like this is going to be a good way to make money, unless you do plan to do the following...

4. Throwing flipping ads at everyone between shows or otherwise

Look, I get it, even an online show that’s going to be talking about games costs money to make, and so money must be made by other means, many of which are not available to the ESA without people actually being present, but the thing about E3 is, as much as we all love it, it is one massive ad, and even though it’s an add we like, it’s not one that needs too many ads thrown at it beyond what it already has. There are other, less annoying ways to make money, like having products from the games announced be available at a store online that people can access, that sees them getting part of the profit, or something of that nature, but this portal that was mentioned, seems like a place where the ESA can just throw ads at people all day, and that just seems like a horrible idea. A lot of people don’t see E3 as an ad, even though it absolutely is, and blowing away the smoke and mirrors that it’s not, by throwing countless ads at people for the sake of trying to make money, might be the end of E3 as we know it. 

3. Don’t spend too much time talking about games that are coming out close to the event, or just came out

Like I said, E3 is one big, massive ad, and for the most part, that’s totally alright, but E3 also has a habit of sneaking in little bits talking about games, that are coming out during the week of, or very close to the shows, to the point of being annoying. Most of the time these ads are short, show nothing new, and generally kill the pace of the conferences on display. While it’d be one thing to try and shadow drop a game this way, because we all love a good shadow drop, we really don’t need ads for games like FF7 Intergrade, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, or flipping Mario Golf: Super Rush. We know those games are coming, we are paying attention, give us a little credit, and save that for games that could use the push like Neptunia: ReVerse, Legend of Mana, or maybe even Scarlett Nexus who actually in way, has to compete with Mario Golf. This might be more a developer problem, and E3 itself might actually have little to no control over this, but whoever does it, needs to do it right.

2. Xbox needs to stop lying, and go big

I love Xbox, I really do, for whatever reason it’s become my go to place for physical indie games, and whenever I want to play a shooter, I start thinking green, but in their conferences, Phil Spencer has a tendency to oversell what Xbox is going to show, by talking about how many games are going to be at the show, or by constantly mentioning how Xbox is more powerful than it’s competitor consoles, like it does any good for the bottom line of the company. I don’t want to hear Phil say they are going to show off 80 games during their show, and have half of them be ports, or shown off in a montage. Doing that means everyone has to go look up a large portion of what they actually announce to learn anything, and that’s no fun. I don’t want montages during E3 at all, and while I’m at it, Xbox espeically needs to bring in the big guns. I’m talking Halo Infinite, Gears 6, the next Forza game, and maybe, finally, a Japanese exclusive title that will get people really hyped. Xbox might just have free reign over the show on the day they present, but another show that has extremely mixed opinions like in 2019, might not be the best thing ever. 

1. GET. SONY. 

Obviously we know that Sony and the PlayStation brand haven’t been associated with E3 for a while now, and I get it, it’s kind of hard to justify going down to L.A. every year, when an online digital show, saves a whole bunch of money, and can get people just as hyped as if they had been there, but this year, everything is online, and Sony’s State of Play’s have been a mixed reaction as a whole. Taking them to E3 not only sets up more hype for them, but it also gives people something they really need right now, something close to the norm, with all of console developers, showing off their best. E3 2019, just felt weaker, and too safe without Sony there, and last year was a total, long winded disaster because of Summer Game Fest. If the ESA is really going to go for this, and give it an earnest shot, and give us the best that they can, they need Sony to show up and blow our minds with, I don’t know, God of War 2, Spyro 4 (hopefully) and a new IP or two to really get the show to being considered one of the best. E3 will probably be alright regardless of if they are there or not, but if they are, the chances of it being truly great, go up in spades. 

Look, we all love our favorite games with a passion, and to an extent that’s fine, but when that passion becomes obsession and that obsession becomes forgetting our own moral compass for the sake of entertainment, it does feel like it’s gone too far. It’s one thing to love what a company releases, it’s completely another to ignore every problem they’ve ever had. Not all of the companies on this list have done horribly un-ethical things, but they’ve at least been anti-consumer, and the fact that people don’t question that enough has led to them sometimes, making horrible mistakes. I am RepentantSky, I love making lists that trash on things that are popular, and these are 5 companies, that have too much hype around them.

5. Nintendo

Already I can hear people getting angry, and in a way I get it. Nintendo is for many people the place where they either begin to play games, or the place they go to keep on playing them when everything else let’s them down, and of course, they put an end to the flipping video game crash of 1983, and no one else will ever be able to claim that from them. That’s all wonderful, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of them. I’ve talked about a number of things they’ve done wrong before, so let me quickly run down the list of some of their anti-consumer practices. They, charge too much for remasters and ports, they don’t drop prices in games, they used to charge for fixing Joy-Cons and now completely deny it’s a problem for legal reasons, despite everyone pretty much having experienced drift, they haven’t been good at getting stock for their items in at least 20 years, and oh yeah, they sell all the content for a remake for $115 on the 3DS, the system and the fans that helped them get by while the Wii U was massively underperforming, all while handing owners of the, at the time, unproven Switch, free content. Nintendo has a tendency to still think like a toy company, and they even used that idea to present the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy instead of a console when they first game to the West with it, but they aren’t a toy company, their a gaming company that also sells toys, just like everyone else. I get they’ve done amazing things, I own over 150 physical handheld games from them, and a ton of digital games besides, but when they start charging twice what they are worth for SD cards, while releasing games that absolutely won’t fit on the limited space of the Switch, and they simply don’t care when costumers complain, it’s time to at least question their motives.  

4. Bethesda

Boy I used to really rip on this company back when I posted lists on Facebook, but I haven’t done it in a while, so let’s do it again. Bethesda has absolutely spent at least the last 10 years lying to people, Todd Howard, has become famous for it, but I think I might have been the only person who wasn’t shocked when Fallout 76 was the disaster that it was. There were so many things wrong with that game, that I don’t even have time to go over every little thing, but lying, you know the thing that will get another company on this list very soon, was a big thing they did with the game. They promised at one point that they weren’t ever going to charge for items in the game that gave in-game benefits, and they did, allowing ammo and other items to be bought with real money for a time, they promised new, specialized servers if you paid for a yearly service that was way too expensive, and that wasn’t true because people found proof of things missing from what would have been a freshly made, private server, and there’s no excuse for that, games in early access do that correctly, and they aren’t, at least supposedly, even finished yet. I wish I could say that’s all they’ve done, but they also bullied an indie developer over their game Prey, a game they may have bullied the original developer for so they could get cheaper, but we’ll never know because they refused to comment on that when asked, they also refused to update their outdated game engine for years, which caused something they spent over a decade fixing, games releasing with glitches, some of them game breaking. Yet somehow, they have such a fan base that those who love their games will claim the glitches are just part of the charm. That kind of fierce loyalty led to Fallout 76, and even though we make jokes about it even now, the horse DLC from way back in the day, was an indication of everything they’ve done, including trying to charge for mods made for free, meant to be consumed for free, twice. Bethesda is a bad company and they do not care. 

3. Activision/Blizzard

You know one of the worst things Nintendo does that I didn’t really mention directly in the first entry, is limit the amount of time a product is available, instead of just letting it be there for consumption as long as it’s selling (that was what the toy company reference was about if it wasn’t clear). However, Activision/Blizzard are the Kings of doing this, as they not only limited things while they were in control of Destiny 2 to the point where you pretty much had to use real money to get everything, and never mind everything else they did to it, because we’d be here all day going through it all, but they also don’t support games as a service titles long enough for dedicated fans. Crash Team Racing Nitro fueled, is a prime example of this. People weren’t done with that game, and when fans thought for even a split second that an update was going to come to fix an issue, their hype (mine to) was so explosive, it was almost like we were getting a new game, but then nothing happened, because they didn’t care. A lot of companies that do yearly release titles as a service have this problem and nothing exemplified that more for Activision, than Skylanders, a series originally made off the back of Spyro, who didn’t even wait for a year to release new games, as technically between October 21st and November 20th of the year the first game came out, they released three of them, and I’m not even kidding. Two of them, were mobile games! You might have thought I was going to go after Call of Duty, for this, but that horse has been beaten to ground, somehow, more than Skylanders was. They also, for whatever reason, released each expansion on different generations console generations, at different months throughout Fall, like somehow the season of Fall, they needed a release every month, if not two, and so off they went. I didn’t even get into Blizzard, but all I need to say is “Blitzchung” and all the memories will likely come flooding back. There’s also the fact that in two separate years, after gaining massive profits, they dropped hundreds of employees, and hired more than they’d let go, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to some of you, because when they did it this year, with so little warning, most employees found out via the news articles about it, but we all made such a little stink this time around, it didn’t create any media buzz, so I guess that doesn’t matter, you’d all rather play flipping World of Warcraft, like better MMO’s don’t exist. 

2. CD Projekt Red

I know this one comes off a little more fresh in the mind, and they technically only lied about one game, but man, what a series of lies it was. Also, let’s be honest, one major game, does not a great developer always make. CDPR’s previous two Witcher games did exactly what the author of the books thought they would, and that was almost nothing in terms of making a serious impact, and the reason is, they are kind of bad. They aren’t the worst games out there, but there is a good reason why The Witcher 1 and 2 haven’t been ported and/or remastered, despite how important they are to the story of Witcher 3, and that’s because they both suck. Cyperpunk 2077, was in a lot of ways, them just going back to being the developer they were before, the BIG ONE happened. They lied about nearly everything in regards to the game, including how the main platforms where consumers were going to buy it, were actually running well. I made those references to Witcher 1 and  2 for a reason, although if I’m being honest, they actually look better than Cyberpunk did on day 0, and that’s completely unacceptable. The budget for CDPR was basically nothing for Witcher 1 and 2 combined to what Cyberpunk got, but they were so focused on the PC versions because PC ran the game better, somehow (like maybe because they didn’t try with consoles) and they missed glitches that were so bad, the game felt like it was still in beta, if not alpha upon release. The fact that they’ve only released eleven games in twenty-three years, and only two of them didn’t have The Witcher on them, should have told us all we need to know, and yet the game, even after returns, which was another massive screw-job that led to Cyberpunk being removed from the PlayStation store, still sold Sixteen million units, all because of hype, and because apparently, some people don’t care if they’re lied to. Do you want to know what the other game they released is besides a Witcher title? It was flipping Saints Row 2, a fun game, but also one that’s too goofy for it’s own good, and yet suddenly makes Cyberpunk’s release, make sense, because it was all a massive joke, and a parody of good, well running, open world games. CDPR needs to seriously do something, anything different, and never release a game in this poor of a state ever again.

1. Ubisoft

I put Ubisoft at number one for a damn good reason, and that reason is, that everyone seems to hate the company, but loves their games, and I don’t know why. They haven’t been the overall worst company on this list, although they are pretty bad, but the major problem they have, and have had for at least a decade is that none of their games have any identity, they are literally all the same game, with different coats of paint. Sure, an occasional gem sneaks through like Assassin’s Creed IV, but all of the rest of their games have the same visual style (although ACII does seem to be the base for which they create their art let’s be honest), the shooting mechanics they have in all the games that have guns, all feel exactly the same, which is something even Call of Duty manages to avoid most years (guess I took a shot at them anyways) and yet somehow, someway, I keep seeing people getting excited for their releases, and it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they throw a celebrity actor in from time to time, and the artistic style they use does look pretty cool, but everything is always the same with them, every single time, no matter what it is, and they still keep making money. It doesn’t really make sense either, because a lot of developers do make games that are very similar feeling, see the Life is Strange team or much as well all loved them, Telltale Games, but at least those titles told extremely interesting stories, and developed their mechanics at least a little, which is something most companies do just on principal, but not Ubisoft. They throw out a few Tom Clancy games every time they talk about what their releasing, the Trials and AC games are still mostly a yearly experience, and I’ll say it again, their entire list of releases since at least 2013, the year the previous generation kicked off, have pretty much all been the same. It would be nice if they made more games like Child of Light, but despite the fact that their games will likely never be as popular as Call of Duty, they keep churning out same-y shooters hoping that one day, maybe just one day, they’ll create their own CoD, and it’s just not gonna happen. The saddest part of all is that when they announce something different, something fans have wanted for years, we get The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which was literally delayed because fans said they wouldn’t buy it unless some actual effort was put into making it, why is this company so popular that it can keep doing this, someone please explain it to me. 

Hello, I talk about games a lot, and while I always seem to mention at least one or two series on my lists that aren’t the most well known, I haven’t yet made a list comprised entirely of less popular than they deserve to be titles, so I thought I should maybe do that. No, the irony of a damn near nobody talking about video games that should be more in the public eye isn’t lost on me, but I like a lot of things that aren’t as popular as they should be, so at the risk of making a list that falls completely into the void, here are 5 game franchises that should be more well known. 

5. Yo-Kai Watch. 

We’re starting off with a kid’s game, don’t worry, I swear it will get better for those looking for some of their favorites, or at least I hope, but Yo-Kai Watch as a series is truly fantastic. Not only had it at one point managed to out-popular Pokemon in Japan, and for good reason, that reason being it actually took place is town’s that look like Japan, and the cultural references everywhere make it a joy of a series to play, but there’s a dang good lot of content in these games. While the base games will probably only run you about 25 to 30 hours, which is not long for an RPG, their bonus content, and the collection aspect, will give you more to do than Pokemon. Extra dungeons, stronger versions of the final bosses, and the ability to grind your favorite Yo-kai, and there are a lot of cool designs, was and still is, far more enjoyable than most other games of it’s kind have ever been, and to top it all off, it’s actually pretty funny, which is rare for games to do. The charm of Level 5′s games is also on full display here, and oh man, the whole series is just a treat, and we really need to have Level 5 properly back in the West. 

4. Naruto games.

Now wait, I hear you saying, Naruto games are all really popular, the whole series only barely lost out to One Piece for several years, but no, you’re not right in that assessment, the only games in the series that reached true high level success were it’s leading 2D fighting games, and the series has a lot more to offer than that. Ever heard of Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Impact? What about The Path of the Ninja 1 and 2, what about Kizuna Drive, or the entire list of exclusive Naruto RPG’s in Japan? Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about handheld Naruto games. Did you know there were actually a whole ton of them, and they varied in genre’s from RPG’s, is side scrollers, to Beat’em ups, and yes, even fighting games, some of which were not just ports of the console versions. Naruto’s handheld adventures obviously did something for the series, or there wouldn’t have been so many as there are, but none of them reached the hype and the Ultimate Ninja Storm series, even if they were just as good, if not better, and it’s honestly sad. Naruto got a lot of out of it’s fans, and it still does even now, but it could have done so much better if only those handhelds had reached the numbers they deserve. 

3. The Asphalt series. 

It’s not often that I talk about racing games, but I do like a number of them, and my favorite that I swear I’ve never seen a sole talk about, is Asphalt. They aren’t the best games ever, but they do what most racing games should do, they come at you fast, with great cars to race, and they are also the only series of racers I’ve ever played a handheld version of that didn’t have me crying in pain because how awkward they were to on a handheld device, seriously have you ever played Mario Kart 7 for more than an hour? Never again I promise you. But seriously, the Asphalt series is a lot of fun. My favorite are the Urban GT games, but if whatever reason you can’t play those, 3D and Injection are also a lot of fun, and while the series doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and yes I understand how that joke will be taken by many, it’s still just a series you can sit down and enjoy without getting cramps. Seems like a series that’s underrated to me. 

2. Shin Megami Tensei

Some people after playing Persona 5/Royal and now possibly Strikers, are apparently super hyped for Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, and that’s great, it really is, but the problem is most of those people only aware of mainline SMT, and have either never experienced it, or are have only played something like SMTIV Apocalypse, which is a great game, but also an incredibly easy one. I hope you all enjoy finding out how hard the series can be. The SMT name, which has been dragged around a lot in the West since it’s more notable to Western fans, has several spin-offs, including just Shin Megami, The Last Bible, Majin Tensei, Devil Children and Devil Summoner. To be fair, a number of those games, or entire series, haven’t come to the west, and several are left on old platforms, I mean who collects for Macintosh these days, but that’s the problem. If the series was as popular as it deserved to be, we’d be getting those games on more modern platforms, and people who think they are hyped for May 25th in the west, might already know what they’re getting into. SMT has been around since 1987, that’s 34 flipping years if you can believe it, and the series has never gotten to the level of popularity it deserves. Persona being it’s most popular spin-off helps, but we’ll have to wait and see if the hype this year, really translates to what the franchise is long overdue for. 

1. The Legend of Heroes. 

You know ones series I really like, it’s Kingdom Hearts, and if you’re wondering why that matters, you probably haven’t played a Legend of Heroes game before. The series has become over the years, similar to Kingdom Hearts in one very specific way, that being that it’s all about over-arching stories, and every sequel mattering. It is true that not every game is connected, there are five previous entries that are two games long, and three games long as their own series respectively, but the franchise is turning 30 years old next year at least for the West, and it’s shameful that we still don’t have three of the games from the mainline releases, and neither of the two spin-offs that weren’t gatcha games, both of which are fantastic if you play them in their original Japanese with fan subtitles. Most of the Trails series can be found on Steam, which is great, accept that two crucial games are missing, because the series isn’t seen to be as important as it is. I love games with continued stories, and as far as I’m concerned, The Legend of Heroes Trails series is absolutely the best of them all, because it takes it’s time developing all of it’s characters and it wait it avoids trying to create hype moments for fans just for the sake of it. It can be a slow burner of a series at times, which can turn some people away from it, but man when it goes, it goes so much harder than almost everything else, that it’s a massive shocker that it’s not more popular. Sure, it’s not visually all that impressive, even when it first becomes 3D, but if you can get past the looks, it truly is something to marvel at. 

Did you know that I’m a fan of wresting? I haven’t really brought that up before, but it’s true, it’s damn true, and while my preferred promotion for watching it is more and more becoming AEW or even Beyond Wrestling, because you know, it’s okay to be hardcore, and it’s okay to be funny now and again, I still watch WWE, and I have a few complaints, so let’s talk about those. 

3. Putting the woman’s champion(s) in Tag Team Champion feuds. 

Look, I get it, the current era of wrestling has a limited amount of talent available, as it should to prevent the spread of COVID, which is not only a horrible thing for wrestlers to get because who knows how they’ll come out of it, but also, it looks bad when people keep getting sick, how do you Triple H, hope you aren’t gone for a while for that reason, but the idea of women having main title belts, and then also teaming with a friend or even an enemy to go after the tag belts lessens the value of each title in most cases. The only time that hasn’t happened, is when Sasha Banks and Bailey had all the gold, and like too many Women’s Tag Team runs, that only lasted for about a month. They’ve been doing this for a while now to, what with Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair fighting Asuka and Kairi Sane for the belts in the middle of Becky’s over year long reign as Raw’s women’s champion, and Asuka, has been on both ends of that fight, which doesn’t make sense, especially since those titles mean so little to the fans, as their constantly changing hands. Imagine how much better Becky’s run, or indeed either of Asuka’s runs since Becky left because she was pregnant, could have been if they could have been singularly focused on the belt they owned. Sasha is now in her second feud involving both belts, as the point this time around just seems to be an excuse to turn her or Bianca Belair heel, which is not a good enough reason to drag the Women’s Tag Team titles around. I swear if they start doing this in NXT, which is entirely possible considering the tag team titles there changed hands the same night they were introduced, I am going to be sick. 

2. Claiming they listen to fans, because they so rarely do. 

Remember, remember, that fateful, lying December. We all remember it don’t we? Barron Corbin was made to be a fool, and Triple H, and the whole of the McMahon family stood in the ring and told us we’d be in charge, and there was no need to have authority figures in WWE front and center anymore. That of course turned out not to be true because one of the first things WE supposedly did, was bury Asuka for years, the most over wrestler besides Becky Lynch as The Man, do you even remember that? I know it’s cliché to bring up that point in wrestling history now, but it still rings very true. If WWE were listening to us, Kofi Kingston wouldn’t have lost to Brock Lesner in a matter of seconds, Roman Reigns would have turned heel far sooner, and off the back of all the booing he was getting, instead of just coming back as a heel, Jimmy Uso, who appears to be clear to wrestle would have been back doing, something a while ago, and we’d have a second coming of “The Man” in Naomi, who feels like her talent has been wasting away ever since she last lost Smackdown women’s title, over let’s not forget, putting lights on it that matched her glow introduction, which we as fans all really loved. There are a number of other things WWE could do that we’d like if they listened, but unless Naomi comes in and grabs Asuka’s attention at Fastlane tonight, and it turns into a Charlotte Flair, versus Asuka versus Naomi triple threat at the main event of WrestleMania, where Naomi goes over by pinning Flair, we aren’t getting what we want, yet again. And speaking of WrestleMania... 

1. Not doing enough to make WrestleMania matches feel important. 

I understand looking back at it, and sorry not sorry for mentioning Becky Lynch in all three of these entries, she’s the best thing to happen to Wrestling since Stone Cold Steven Austin gave Vince McMahon his first, horrible looking stunner, don’t @ me, but the feud for the Raw and Smackdown Women’s titles went on a little long, as you could argue it went from the time Becky became The Man at SummerSlam, to that WrestleMania, where she won both titles. That does seem a little long, but WWE had time to make sure this year’s feud’s had a little more longevity to them, by booking them differently. It makes sense that Edge would take his time scouting the champions, he’d been gone for 9 years after all, and even when he came back, another injury saw him gone for nearly 9 months, and he wanted to check his options, but Bianca Belair was never going to pick anyone but Sasha Banks after she won the Royal Rumble, and only officially picked her after Elimination Chamber and there was no reason to do that. One of them could have become the detestable heel, my money being on Belair because of the whole EST gimmick and her becoming too confident and proud of herself, which seems like the perfect set-up for a turn, and they didn’t do that. Fastlane is also tonight, and neither tag belts have challengers for WrestleMania, the U.S. title feud going into tonight and I’m not even sorry for saying it, is not interesting, and likely won’t become interesting even if Retribution breaks up, and non-title matches have almost no build up either, and I don’t think anyone wants to see Shane McMahon facing Braun Strowman at WrestleMania. The only feud that’s got any real history behind it is the Intercontential title, and as much as I like Big E and Apollo Crews, this feud isn’t all that good, and the gimmick change didn’t do anything to make it so, especially after this last Friday, where you can clearly hear Apollo speak a few words while getting beat down, without the accent. WrestleMania is supposed to be the end of a season for WWE, despite them never taking a week off, and even though it’s WrestleMania 37 coming, I can’t remember a single feud besides Ronda, Charlotte and Becky that was even as close to as interesting or engaging, as Daniel Bryan versus the flipping Authority since, and if you can believe it, that was 7 years ago. 

I could probably make an entire career of my unpopular opinions, people seem to love to get angry about them, but seem to enjoy that anger. With that said, here are 5 unpopular takes on JRPG’s. Beware minor to major spoilers for every game mentioned on this list. 

5. Cloud, is an asshole, and he sure ain’t no hero - Final Fantasy VII.

Final Fantasy 7 is often revered as the best story and game of not only Final Fantasy, but JRPG’s in general, and yet, even though it would have been a bit less dramatic, Cloud’s horrible decisions, led to even worse consequences. Cloud knew that Sephiroth could control him, hell he even suggested staying back because of what could happen. Regardless of this knowledge, he kept bringing the Black Materia and himself in close proximity to Sephiroth, and kind of just let things play out as they would. If he had stayed back, his party likely would have been able to beat Sephiroth on their own, and Tifa could have even had a dramatic highlighted moment where she beat Sephiroth to death for Cloud’s sake and hers, and all could have been right with the world. Instead, Cloud went with his party, got tricked again into giving the Black Materia to Sephiroth, thereby making Aerith’s death a required sacrifice to make the planet strong enough to withstand a meteor, but not strong enough to avoid essentially an apocalypse. 

4. Veronica didn’t have to die, and time didn’t have to be restarted to save her. Dragon Quest XI. 

It goes without saying that hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn’t mean something entirely stupid didn’t happen that led to the death of Veronica, and the subsequent restarting of time before her death that could have dammed the whole planet. When The Hero, or Eleven as he should be called by DQ cannon, found the Sword of light, he just sort of, stood there gawking at it for a while. In the long run, this hesitation led to Veronica sacrificing herself, and as we saw when time was put back to before her death, that lack of hesitation resulted in more shenanigans than should ever be needed to save one person’s life, when the rest of all non-monster life is at risk. Simply put, grabbing the sword faster might have led to the same results as restarting time, but they pulled through that just fine, so it could have all ended just as well. But no, we had several more hours of adventuring to do, only to erase all of that, start over, and basically end up at the same place, and some people, might have actually preferred the original ending, and having Serena, grow a strength both literally and in game, that she ended up not needing. 

3. Persona 5′s Social Links, are all kind of bad, and Persona 5 Royal proves it.

Yes I’m calling them social links. Excuse me for playing other Persona games first and not liking the changed name that means the exact same thing, but Persona 5′s attempt to flush out it’s characters via non-required story all sort of fall flat. In games past, the characters grew up by handling their issues head-on, and in Persona 5, they kind of just, work through them while a nothing character spurs on their changes. Almost every character in Persona 5 is either being pushed around by another character and getting past them as a way to develop, or they are trying to help another character, and doing so does it for them. While it’s not a bad idea to let some growth come from handling the adversity that comes with getting involved in someone else’s life, to do it so often, and even to have many of the characters that move everyone’s plots by at times, entirely off screen characters, was just a bad choice, and felt extremely lazy compared to Persona’s 3 and 4. Other characters in those games, sometimes on screen, and sometimes not, helped other people as a small bit of their development, or let themselves be helped by others as a part of it, but to have the same kinds of characters be driving forces to character development, even if they aren’t or are hardly ever on screen, took the focus away from the people you interact with, thereby diminishing their roles, in their own stories. The popularity of Kasumi, who did have a story focused on her character development, and how she develops by interacting with Ren, the protagonist, and Goro who’s roll changed in Royal, proves that fans wanted that, and for whatever reason, Atlus originally, dropped the ball in that regard, almost entirely. 

2. Hating Final Fantasy XIII, but not Final Fantasy X, is kind of stupid.

If you aren’t a fan of FFXIII and it’s endless corridors, but love FFX, you might have a taste of nostalgia blinding you, or you might not be paying attention. Both games rely on corridor’s with limited space to move, FFX just, sort of hides it better, sort of. They do manage to make it feel like your traveling towards an end goal that’s worth fighting for better than XIII does, but even with that, they used a pretty similar idea, corridors with one open space towards the end, and then back to corridors. The only really noticeable change is that it’s far easier to get back to the open area, The Clam Lands, than it is to get back to FFXIII’s open space as you can get the airship sooner in FFX, than you can get to the area before you take on what is basically the Pope in FFXIII. I can already hear some people saying it was mostly about a difference of hardware capabilities, but that’s obviously not true, as games ranging from The Simpsons Hit and Run, to Grand Theft Auto, to Jak 3, to even Shadow of the Colossus to Yakuza 2 proved there were plenty of ways to implement a more open world, and Final Fantasy’s past, absolutely had open worlds as a standard. 

1. Vivi not stopping, would have actually been sadder - Final Fantasy IX. 

At the end of the Final Fantasy IX, my personal favorite in the series, Vivi has stopped, and we learn that he spent the remainder of his time, building smaller versions of himself. The ending text by him is supposed to make the ending bittersweet, after all Garnet and Zidane end up together, and there’s all those small Vivi’s are there celebrating the reunion of the two lovers in place of their creator who didn’t live to see it. However, as far as we know, Vivi wasn’t the last Black Mage to stop, meaning he got to avoid seeing much worse happen to his home, Black Mage Village. Vivi obviously felt a huge connection with the other Black Mages, even to the point where he considered staying with them and leaving the party to handle Kuja on their own, and while he missed seeing his friends reunite, he also got to miss seeing all the other mages stop, which arguably would have been more heartbreaking, espeically since the future of the village could have been in dire straits if everyone but Vivi had stopped. 

I don't know how new anyone who read this is to Warriors/Musou games. Maybe the game I'm about to reference was a first for you, or maybe you've been with the franchise since it moved to the style it uses today with Dynasty Warriors 2. Whatever the case, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity showed just how capable the style of gameplay is, and I think it would be a massive missed opportunity to not make more spin-offs in that style to bring new fans in. With that said, let's take a look at 5 Franchises that deserve their own Warriors/Musou games.

5. Pokemon. 

Pokemon, while it does have some experience with action combat in some spin-off games, most notably it's Mystery Dungeon entries, it's never really gone full in with the idea, but imagine what a success it could be. With so many Pokemon to catch, and so many options for the basis of a story, be it something more serious like the theorized "Pokemon War" that's not mentioned in X and Y, but something more recent, to something more simple, like your team trying to earn it's way into a special tournament by beating rival teams in Warriors style battles, Pokemon is primed and ready to go combat where Pikachu takes out thousands of Mupkip's or Charizard gets to burn a grassy plain full of Roselia. Whatever Pokemon would do with the idea, it could be a lot of fun.

4. Just, everything Atlus. 

Atlus has a history of many great characters, and many dark settings, but possibly nowhere could the type of games they like to make be made darker than by the idea of thousands of it's famous, or infamous demons prowling the streets of Tokyo, or the hell, go world wide and capture everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to Big Ben, to the flipping pyramids. An easy story to write would simply be that the God's who have done nothing while their kind of have been murdered by protagonists and their teams over the years are finally going to try to end earth, but their all converging to the planet, caused all the timelines to blend together, and the hero's of each Persona, each Shin Megami Tensei, Last Bible, Etrian and everything beyond all need to work together to put an end to the evil and return to their own homes. It's a plot that could be interesting, and practically writes itself, so get on it Atlus.

3. Castlevania. 

The Castlevania series hasn't been the most active as of late, for obvious reasons, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't make for a great Musou experience. Finding yourself, a Belmont in a castle that causes you to see things that aren't there, this Belmont could find power in the illusions they see to create false, but functioning versions of protagonists in their family line, even making up a few to better fill up the roster. From there, it's just fighting the many hoards that are blocking your way through the castle. To create more content, there could even be a second castle that you have to make your way through with harder enemies, much like many people's favorite game in the series, or make it a somehow improved Demon Castle, and simply have it restore itself faster than normal. Regardless, taking on Dracula's supernatural army, sure sounds fun.

2. Final Fantasy. 

We already know that Square has dabbled in the Warriors style of combat with it's two entries Dragon Quest's two Hero's entries. Both games were solid, and people love to see their favorite allies from across this legendary series fight together, or against villains from other entries in the franchise. It could even be the next step in the Dissidia franchise, as another round with Chaos himself would be something fans would love. Regardless of what would be done, Final Fantasy is full of iconic characters, iconic monsters, and has more than enough lore to make a fantastic (pun intended) Warriors game. Chaos would be the perfect reason for all the characters to be fighting alongside one another, and the fact that some Warriors games can have a long run time, it gives the potential game plenty of chances to really play into it’s roster of character’s stories, and their abilities to really mess things up, or save the day.

1. Legend of Heroes/Kiseki/Ys

Of all the developers that have really been coming up in the world, Nihon Falcom or NIS America for some, has been making spectacular games for 40 years now. Of all of those, the Kiseki, or Legend of Heroes franchise, is probably their most beloved at this point, and for good reason. The first entry, named Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, came out way back in 1992, which hello to the 30th anniversary next year by the way, and has had so many fantastic characters it could bring to the a Warriors style game. With action combat something the company is already well versed in thanks to Ys, espeically Y’s IX, and a number of great characters to pull from both franchises, a Warriors game is begging to be made, and hey, maybe Dogi can finally be playable again huh? That would be nice. Jokes aside, it really should be something worth considering. 

I’m critical of anyone who I think is ripping people off, and Nintendo, sadly, espeically since it’s games don’t drop in price, has done that a lot. That’s not to say Sony and Microsoft have never done it before, but since the Direct was an egregious reminder of how they mishandle business, I thought now was as good a time as any to remind people, they kind of have a history. 

6.  Charging over $100, for a remake’s full content

Now, I will say, in most cases a remake can go full price. If it’s ground up like a remake should be, and adds extra features or content to sweeten the deal, that’s fair play, however, locking content behind a paywall is cheap. Enter Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia. While the base game was just full price, which was 40 bucks on the 3DS, it cost far more to unlock all of it’s extra content. A $25 dollar Amiibo combo back, which unlocked special content, and a $50 dollar season pass, which was mostly just new dungeons and weapons, brought the total to $115 dollars for all it’s content. Hey, I get it, DLC is a thing, but a season pass that costs more than the base game, is just a shitty thing to do. Nintendo even went so far as to alter how they added it up, to make it seem cheaper than it was. To make matters worse, they did all this while giving out free content like crazy on Nintendo Switch games, kind of telling everyone who wasn’t an early adopter of the system, to screw off. It was also the first real screw ball thing they did after Satoru Iwata-San had passed away. Talk about a spit in the face. 

5. Overcharging for MicroSD’s.

One of the major problems of the Switch, is that it has too little space for all the games Nintendo wants you to buy on it, and to be fair, that we also want to buy on it. While most first party titles are pretty small in terms of what they require from the Switch, it has a massive 3rd party library as well, and how does Nintendo handle that, by charging double for what anyone could get for MicroSD’s that do exactly what the Nintendo branded ones do. I mean, seriously, imagine paying 100 bucks for 256GB of space, when you could pay 50. Be careful about that though, some MicroSD’s couldn’t be formatted, which would mean you couldn’t you them on the Switch. While that seems to have calmed down more over the years, it still happened at the time, and it still sucked. Overcharging because your name is on a product, is shameful, and screw everyone that does it, Nintendo included. 

4. Charging for Nintendo Online. 

I get it, Microsoft and Sony do it, and I hate that as well, but at least in return, you can get some actually decent games, and better deals on products, espeically with PSN for the latter, and come on, Game Pass is worth it no matter who you are. Nintendo though, even though it’s cheaper, has thus far refused to release any games past SNES era, a large portion of games released on Nintendo Online are cheap 3rd party rip-off’s of first party Nintendo games, and it really doesn’t appear like Nintendo plans to make the service truly worth it any time soon. As much as I love Nintendo, it’s really hard to justify paying for an online service that nets you so little, but alas, here we are. 

3. New Super Bros U Deluxe 

Yeah, a full price port of a game is never a good idea, and this whole list could have been made of them. Instead, I’m only going to include a few, but this one might be the worst. I mean, Super Mario Bros U is a great game, but it’s not worth full price just because it got ported. There’s not that much content there, even with the added Luigi U content inspired by the year of Luigi. It’s a hard sell trying to convince a logical person that the same 4 hour game, with an extra hour to hour and a half of content, which is just levels you already played as Mario, is a good buy, because it isn’t. I don’t know what Nintendo was thinking with this port, and it’s sad to see it, but alas, like all Nintendo games, it’s still full price on their store.

2. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

I will put it on record that I love Tokyo Mirage Sessions, it’s a somewhat more light-hearted game than the it’s source material, at least from Atlus’ end, but that doesn’t make it bad at all, in fact it’s great. However, it kinda failed on the Wii U, quickly leaving store shelves and never being heard from again until it’s Switch version was announced. It’s still a great game on the Switch, but either Nintendo got greedy, or Atlus let them, and a game that basically a commercial failure, came out at full price same as before, and that was easily a deterrent for many, as it should be. Selling a port of a game that flopped on a system that flopped, isn’t exactly a good consumer move, and yet, it’s exactly what happened. 

 1. Asking you to pay more for Miitopia

Look, I get that there is certain difference between playing a game on a handheld, and playing it on your 4K TV if you have one, and I’ll admit the idea of play Miitopia on my 4K display is both appealing and hilarious, but it’s just a port. It’s not a remaster, it’s a port. And for that extra 10 bucks we get what, a horse and some makeup? How people can justify that is beyond me. The “Oh I didn’t play it on 3DS so this will be my first time buying it” is an excuse to hide behind because your love of Nintendo is too strong. If don’t call out a company for it’s bad practices, or buy into those practices, they are only going to do worse, and if this list isn’t proof of that, that I don’t know what to tell you. Charging more for a port than an original release is shady though. 

After nearly a year and a half, we are finally getting another full on, Nintendo Direct. I am one among many who thought the Direct as we knew it was gone, but I am also so very happy to be wrong. While I’m also one to not put any expectations on a presentation like this, and please do not let this list hype you to the point where you are disappointed if they don’t happen, I can’t deny how fun it is to speculate. So, with only a little less than 12 hours to go before the show begins, let’s talk about 6 things that will hopefully be at the show. Please remember my lists are not ranked based on how much I want something or how popular it is, so much as how much I want to talk about it. That means your favorite possible thing can be in the first, or last spot of the list. Now let’s begin.

6. A Zelda Collection of some kind

There are a lot of important anniversary’s in 2021 for games, and none may be more important to many fans than Zelda itself. The series is turning 35 in four days if you can believe it. Mario got a lot for it’s recent anniversary and while it’s pretty likely something is planned for Zelda, getting a good idea of what that might be, would be nothing short of fantastic. Perhaps we’ll see Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, and something completely out of left field to round it up. Who can really say, but it is absolutely the perfect time to announce something, and something big at that. Nintendo does love to surprise people, so let’s hope something surprising pops in. 

5.  Falcom get’s some much needed attention

Falcom, one of the oldest developers in Japan, has been releasing hit after hit, after hit, but like many other fantastic developers making the best double A experiences, they’ve never really made it into the limelight like they deserve. With two games coming for the Switch YS IX: Monstrum Nox, and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV set to come out in April and Summer respectively, and with so many eyes on Nintendo, it’s time they got a proper slot to be talked about. It would also be nice to see something new come from Falcom that isn’t previously announced, as even though the focus of the direct is seemingly about the next 4 months leading up to E3, hints of something more are always possible. Falcom is a brilliant developer, so hopefully, they manage to get their time to shine. 

4. A Sonic Collection of some kind

Sonic is yet another franchise that’s hitting a major anniversary, as it’s turning 30. With that kind of history behind it, Sonic has a lot of ups and downs. Surely more than enough to make an enticing collection. to be...sure. Perhaps a remake of Sonic Adventure 2, a remaster of Sonic generations and maybe a fixed version of Sonic ‘06? Wouldn’t count on that last one especially, but Sonic has such a rich history of games it could pull from that could get everyone hyped. There’s also rumors of another 2D Sonic game, which would also be nice, but what’s an anniversary if you don’t target nostalgia in more ways than one? Hopefully, we’ll find out soon. 

3. Something Indie

While Nintendo has had some...issues with quality checks with the Switch, there’s no denying that it’s absolutely got hundreds of amazing Indies, and that the Switch is a great source for them. A couple of possible exciting indies could be Windjammers 2, Atomic Heart, Mineko’s Night Market (please gawd let’s hear about that one) Sports Story, Hollow Knight Silksong, Eastward and Garden Story to name but a few. Indie games need love just as much as any other game out there, and with so many potential high quality indies coming our way so far as plans go for 2021, it would be a sad thing to miss out on some spectacular games that are headed for the Switch. 

2. The next Mainline Pokemon game

Rumors were abound a few weeks ago that Pokemon’s 4th gen was already set to be remade for release this fall, 2021, and while as I’ve said this direct is planned and meant to tide us over until Summer when E3 comes along, it doesn’t change the possibility that something coming out past that point, if not several somethings will still be given an update or announcement. I think it’s safe to say based on the hype of the rumor that for a lot of people, Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum are top tier games and in a lot of ways, and rightly so. Sure, they could use a good number of updates, but that’s what remakes are for, and while a Pokemon direct on Pokemon day itself would suit just fine, I feel if something is coming for Pokemon 25, this is the time to get it out there. Just please, don’t throw in any DLC Pokemon you get for buying a special item. 

1. Metroid/Bayonetta/Breath of the Wild 2, get something. 

Am I mashing a whole bunch of entries into one, yer damn right I am, otherwise I’d be here until the direct started, and where would the fun in that be? Jokes aside, these franchises all of have been lying kind of dormant in the mainline entry department at the very least, and while it’s like I said, something for Zelda is going to be announced mostly likely anyways, to see a continuation of that as we look to the future for the series would be amazing. It would also be nice to see Metroid Prime 4 get an update, or see the original trilogy hit the Switch. Bayonetta 3 is the Devil May Cry of Switch these days despite having DMC on it, and darn it all, it’s time we got SOMETHING for it. Sure, none of these games are coming out before the holiday season this year and that’s fine, but just to know they are on their way, would be good enough.