Table of contents for Issue 270 in Hyper

Nintendo Switch Core Wired Controller – Zelda Nintendo • $49.99  www.mightyape.com.au/product/nintendo-switch-core-wired-controller-zelda-nintendoswitch/28048376 While the JoyCons are pretty great controllers out of the box, there’s no denying they’re a touch on the dinky side – especially if you’ve got giant hands, like some of us in the office. Thankfully, Nintendo has that covered, with the Switch Core Wired Controller. But what if that’s not… extra enough? Well, there’s a range of themed controllers out there, but we think the best looking one is easily the Zelda one. Black with gold highlights on the buttons, it not only looks super-elegant, but features some really neat art of Link and his bow, and of course the Tri-Force emblem. If Breath of the Wild is your constant jam, this is your constant controller. Super Smash…

Nobody’s perfect, and sometimes Nintendo misses the mark, even with its biggest franchises (you’ll notice that the much-maligned Super Smash Bros Brawl is not on this list, because it’s not great). But Nintendo games that aren’t at the absolute top of their series are sometimes written off as flat-out awful, which isn’t always fair. A few of its most-hated-on games deserve a second look, having achieved more, or presented more interesting ideas, than they’re given credit for. Super Mario Sunshine GameCube, 2002 Many Mario fans can’t settle on whether Sunshine is worth it or not. The FLUDD backpack, some argue, was an unnecessary addition – the game was at its best when it offered pure platforming challenges that did not involve spraying water about – and the camera, which really…

Sam Gideon (the dude from Vanquish) I dunno, he slides around and shoots things and he’s very cool. Honestly we’re just trying to build a grassroots campaign for a Vanquish sequel on Switch and this seems like the best way. Proposed attacks Boosting around the arena on his suit’s jet boosters, triggering slow-mo as he circles around his opponents so he can simultaneously shoot their weak points and dodge between a barrage of lasers, being very cool and underappreciated. Bubsy the Bobcat Bubsy – the subject of the very first piece I ever wrote for Hyper, over ten years ago – returned last year for a reboot that made so little impact that I’m not even going to look up its name. Everyone’s favourite sneakily underrated bobcat deserves a proper,…

If you’ve been to PAX AUS, or any other Australian convention with an indie games section, you might notice that there’s an abundance of co-op and competitive couch multiplayer games being developed in Australia. These are games that exhibit well, but can struggle at retail. Putty Pals is a two-player cooperative title, a simple, enjoyable platformer focused on cooperation and family-friendly fun, which released on Steam in February 2017. “When we shipped on Steam”, creative director and studio co-founder Laura Voss says, “we knew it wasn’t the right platform for Putty Pals. We didn’t get great sales in our first week”. The moment Nintendo’s system had been unveiled, though, the team at Harmonious Games saw – fittingly – how the system and their game could harmonise. Here was a console…

Hand of Fate 2 is the only game in this feature that isn’t a console exclusive to the Switch – in fact, the Switch release this past July came about eight months after the game’s initial release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The idea of porting the game, a sort-of single player, card-based RPG with strong combat elements (it’s extremely good, by the way), had been ticking over in Defiant Development’s collective heads for some time by then. “Pretty much the second the Switch came out we were keen”, says comms manager Lee May. “It felt like a perfect fit for Hand of Fate 2. Fortunately, Nintendo and Unity have made the whole process pretty straightforward.” Fans were requesting a Switch port even before the game’s initial release. The…

“It’s perfect for Switch.” Admit it, you’ve said it. We’ve all said it, probably repeatedly. We’re well past the Switch’s first year and this phrase has become the default sentiment for almost every game announced for Nintendo’s hybrid system, or the argument made in the increasingly-commonplace act of ‘port begging’. But what does it really mean? Any videogame that comes to a major platform should be a positive, right? Yet the fervour surrounding games that make the jump to Switch has proven especially fierce because of its inherent versatility. And while that versatility can be a huge selling point for any title, there is almost certainly one genre that can be considered perfect for it: the JRPG. With huge worlds, an abundance of characters and complex, ever-escalating stories, JRPGs typically…

I spent my 1999 school holidays trying to pull all-nighters with friends. It was very important to us (‘us’ being the rotating group of me and Matt and Sam and Dan and the other Matt) that we play Mario Party, San Francisco Rush, and Goldeneye for as long as possible. Our goal was always to forego sleep entirely, and damn the consequences. We never quite made it – typically we’d be protesting that we weren’t tired at 3, and asleep by 3:30 – but the ambition to play multiplayer games for as long as we could manage was pure. Years later, when online services had expanded to the point where even Nintendo, somewhat begrudgingly, had to start offering them, the company was still focusing a lot of its energy on…

I was a child before there was an Internet, in a time when word could still be ‘passed around the school ground’ organically. There were rumours that you could find the Triforce in Ocarina of Time (false); someone ran around telling everyone that Maggie would be revealed as Mr Burns’ killer (true – it had already aired in the US); one kid said that America got much scarier entries in R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, with kooky names like ‘Children Can Be Dangerous When Exposed To The Moon’ (a total lie, but one I remember believing). We were used to implausible ideas spreading and eventually being snuffed out, but MissingNo changed all that. In 1999, the Internet was just barely a thing for us. It was ubiquitous enough that we were…

Super Smash Bros Ultimate was Nintendo’s big E3 game this year, and for good reason. Super Smash Bros Melee remains one of their most popular and beloved games of all time, and Smash Bros for Wii U has proven itself worthy across years of play. The elevator pitch for Super Smash Bros Ultimate is simple – this is a Smash Bros experience that mixes together everything that came before. It’s got every single Smash Bros fighter ever (and a few extras), lots of returning items and maps, and a huge number of tweaks and balance changes, some big, some small. Super Smash Bros has become Nintendo’s most important esports title, but the real reason for its success is that these games are easy to pick up and figure out. If…

NES (1987) The Nintendo Entertainment System’s boxy controller is an instantly-recognisable classic that has become synonymous with 8-bit gaming, but with only two action buttons, it’s so simplistic that it might be hard to believe that it was ever considered innovative. Yet, while other early systems had experimented with similar input methods, it was the NES that popularised the D-pad as we know it. Following the success of the ‘cross’ D-pad design on a few of their LCD handheld Game & Watch titles, Nintendo recognised the potential and opted to use a larger version in their first home console’s controller. The move proved undeniably popular, not only with players, but with the industry too, seeing the D-pad become not only a staple on practically every gaming controller since, but an…

3D is dead. The 3DS is not. Thanks to a large install base and continued support, the 3DS will continue to see new releases into 2019. But even if none of the system’s upcoming games grab you, it’s still worth holding onto, or getting your hands on, one – especially if you never got around to these ten games. HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Pushblox, Bravely Default/Second, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Pocket Card Jockey, Metroid: Samus Returns, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, Kirby: Planet Robobot, BoxBoy!, Dead or Alive Ultimate, the Zelda ports that felt wrong to include. 10 Rhythm Heaven Megamix The Rhythm Heaven series has split between many different systems and control methods, but Megamix brought all the best rhythm mini-games in the series together and unified them with button controls.…

“WHO IS WALUIGI, EXACTLY? HE’S NO ONE, AND YET HE IS EACH OF US AT OUR LOWEST POINT...” When Waluigi popped up in Mario Tennis back in 2000, few players took kindly to him. Who was this lanky man, this spindly inversion of Luigi? He appeared to be Wario without the ‘greed is good’ backstory, a purple-clad horror with enormous bags under his eyes and a terrible name. Where did he come from? Why was it that he was debuting in a tennis game? Why was he not named Tuigi, with the L turned upside down? The answer to that last question is easy enough to trace, at least. The ‘Wa-r(x)’ prefix, in Japan (where Waluigi is pronounced Waruiji) is a play on the word ‘warui’, Japanese for ‘bad’, ‘evil’,…

Hollow Knight is one of the poster-games for the indie movement on Switch. Originally announced for the Wii U back in 2014 during the game’s Kickstarter campaign, Hollow Knight would eventually make its way to the Switch in June this year. During Nintendo’s opening E3 presentation, Reggie himself revealed that the game was now available to buy and play; within two weeks, the game would sell 250,000 copies. The Adelaide-developed game has been lauded as one of the best indie games of the last few years. Put simply, it rules. Ari Gibson and William Pellen, the co-directors and founders of Team Cherry, have been working on Hollow Knight for what seems like forever. When I caught up with them they were deep into development on the game’s third and final…

“WE THINK WE CAN DO THIS, WE THINK WE KNOW HOW, AND WE HAVE AN IDEA OF THE CHALLENGES AND RISKS.” When Panic Button Games brought Doom to the Switch, they showed that the Switch was capable of far more than we realised. Its Wolfenstein 2 port is, if anything, even better – it’s a wonder, whether docked or handheld, how good a job it does at capturing the experience the game offered on PS4 and Xbox One last year. We reached out to studio head Adam Creighton to ask about the company’s work with the Switch, and how they’ve managed to squeeze so much out of a mobile chip set. HYPER>>: WHEN DOOM WAS FIRST ANNOUNCED FOR THE SWITCH, PEOPLE WERE SURPRISED THAT IT COULD BE DONE AT ALL.…

In the year and change since the Switch released, we’ve heard the same indie success story repeatedly. Games like Oceanhorn, Celeste, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, and other indie titles sold better on Switch than they did anywhere else. Super Meat Boy came close to matching its Xbox 360 launch sales when it launched on Switch, a full seven years later – and that’s a game that, surely, everyone already owns. The same thing happened with Shovel Knight. SteamWorld Dig 2 on Switch outsold the Steam version at a rate of ten to one – it was so successful that the first game was also ported to Switch. It’s a good time to put a high-quality indie game on the Switch, and Australia, having moved well past the collapse of…

Framed released for mobile devices in late 2014, and its sequel arrived in mid-2017. Both games task players with switching around comic-style panels on the screen to advance the action, making sure that the characters they’re following make it to the final panel on the screen safely. The games have been lauded, with famed designer Hideo Kojima nominating the original Framed as his personal favourite game of 2014. Framed 1 & 2 came to PC and Switch this year, leaving mobile behind for the first time and fulfilling a request the team at Loveshack Entertainment had been receiving since well before the Switch was first revealed. “People kept asking for the game on Steam and other platforms”, says Ollie Brown, a designer and the lead artist on the collection. “We…

“THE MACHINE QA IS AUSTRALIA’S FIRST GAMES-FOCUSED QUALITY ASSURANCE CONSULTANCY.” When previous Hyper contributor Jason Imms told us that he was forming his own quality assurance company, we wanted to know why anyone would leave the lucrative world of freelance games writing. Now, as his company works to ensure quality across numerous titles – including several Switch titles – it makes more sense. We caught up with Jason to ask about the process involved in quality assurance, and what it’s like to work with the console. HYPER>>: CAN YOU GIVE US A BRIEF RUNDOWN OF WHAT THE MACHINE QA DOES? Jason: The Machine QA is Australia’s first games-focused quality assurance consultancy. Our aim is to help the Australian games industry make the best games they can by consulting on how…

One night three years ago I heard that a Kmart across town had received a fresh shipment of first-wave amiibo (lower-case and irregular plural are the official grammatical rules for the word, I believe). The shipment, including several of the models that had disappeared from shelves - many of which I’d never seen in the wild before, having jumped onto the hype train just slightly too late. I told my then-girlfriend about this, and she agreed that it was worth the lengthy trip on a cold night. On the way there I pondered whether this obsession was going too far, whether it was, perhaps, better to have some amiibo that I could never collect so that the temptation to collect them all would not be there. I waved the thought…