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June 2023

Power Button - Episode 363: Nintendo Direct June 2023 Recap

Power ButtonNintendo wowed us with some exciting announcements in its most recent Nintendo Direct showcase including a remake of Super Mario RPG, a new adventure for Princess Peach, amiibo for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and the highly detailed Super Mario Bros. Wonder.  On this week's episode, we're breaking it down and discussing the announcements that intrigued us the most.  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 


Power Button - Episode 362: PlayStation Showcase June 2023 Recap

Power ButtonWith Not-E3 in full swing for the summer, all of the big publishers are holding digital events to debut new trailers and announcements, so on this week's episode of the podcast we turn our attention to Sony's recent PlayStation Showcase.  Yes, they showed Spider-Man 2, but did you notice everything else?  We'll take you through the items of interest.  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 


A Tale Of Two Link Commercials

LinkTime is making fools of us all again as Nintendo's Game Boy classic The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening turns thirty years old.  Thirty!  How on earth did that happen?  The gaming community is celebrating, of course, and as part of the discourse, a pair of commercials for the game have reappeared.  If you want to know how different the culture was between Japan and the United States in 1993. just watch these two advertisements.  The Japanese commercial features a peppy song and the game's cast appearing as dancing puppets, while the American counterpart is a man on a castle set rapping nonsense lyrics that tell us nothing set against projected footage of the game.  Which one makes you want to play this game more?

 


Legendarily Bad Nintendo Game Finally Coming To Switch

Everybody 1-2 SwitchWe don't often hear about Nintendo releasing a bad game, but if the online grapevine is speaking the truth about the just-announced Everybody 1-2 Switch due out later this month, we could be looking at a rare bomb from the famed publisher.  See, it all goes back to 2017 when the Switch had a tiny library and people were caught up in that fever of buying lots of stuff for a new console.  The Switch was the new kid on the block, everyone loved it, and games were bought rather they were good or not.  One such title, 1-2 Switch from Nintendo, was a collection of tech demo mini-games in the style of Wii Play aimed at the family and casual markets, and apparently it sold a lot after being produced for a modest cost.  That's when things get weird, as last year over at Fanbyte, Imran Khan told us about a sequel in the works that, at the time, seemed like it would never be released because Nintendo's own internal playtesting pegged it as absolutely terrible.

When playtesting groups received the game, the feedback to the development team was brutal. The target audiences Nintendo was hoping to hit — families with children — found the games boring; many didn’t even want to play through entire rounds. In the Bingo example, one player would use the joycon to mime digging out a number before reading it off the TV screen — a process that playtesters reported as tedious.

The main mode of the game, the Team Battle Mode, pit at least two teams of players against each other in various minigames. This mode prominently featured Horse, who would give color commentary during the games. During the localization process, sources started calling the game “Horseshit” as shorthand.

Yikes.  There's a few theories as to why Nintendo is releasing this game now, and most of them involve the company having spent so much on development that they can't just cancel the project (including an angle that the publisher printed up the cases and title cards long before anyone knew how bad the game would test).  I jokingly say that Nintendo needs to get Horse out there now so he can appear in the next Super Smash Bros.  There can be an allure to bad media (I enjoy the films featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax, for instance), so there might be some value in spreading the word through the mists of the gaming community that the new Nintendo party game is so bad, you just have to see it, but it seems obvious this game is being sent out to fail and be done.  Not every game can be The Legend of Zelda!