NINTENDO CENTRAL

SPRING2023 SPRING2023

NINTENDO CENTRAL

FAKE FAKE FAKE LLOOKINGBACKON LOOKINGBACKON OOKINGBACKON

POKÉMONLEAKS POKÉMONLEAKS POKÉMONLEAKS

Over the years, there's been a lot of attempts to claim the newest Pokemon games and starters are revealed..........here's just a few of them. (Page 12)

RETRO

RETRO RETRO WHYIS WHYIS WHYIS

IINACCESSIBLE? INACCESSIBLE? NACCESSIBLE?

Investigating the trend of old Nintendo games being unplayable for new audiences, and wondering if there's anything we can do about it. (Page 16)

Note from the Editor:

Welcome to the Spring 2023 issue of Nintendo Central, the premier thirdparty source for news and discussion of Nintendo products in the magazine world! We have much to discuss this issue, from the Nintendo Direct that broke the drought in February (page 1) to the future of games from the past (page 1). If you're looking for a throwback, we have a review of a less well-remembered Wii game for you to check out (page 1), or a retrospective on people's best ideas about the formerly upcoming Pokémon games (page 1). Whatever your interest in all things Nintendo, Nintendo Central can provide - we hope you enjoy!

- Beanie Pollard, Editor-in-Chief

CONTENTS: CONTENTS: CONTENTS:

PAGE 4 PAGE 4 PAGE 4

The More Obscure Parts of the February Nintendo Direct In 100 words or less

PAGE 8 PAGE 8 PAGE 8

I Played Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey. Here's What I Thought. It’s not the best-remembered video game for the Nintendo Wii, but Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey still does the job it was made to do

PAGE 12 PAGE 12 PAGE 12

Looking Back on Fake Pokémon Leaks

Or, how a generation of kids got false hopes up for Pokémon Gun

PAGE 16 PAGE 16 PAGE 16

Why is Retro Inaccessible?

Nintendo has made it impossible to play many of their greatest classic hits Why is that, and what should we do about it?

THE MORE OBSCURE THE MORE OBSCURE THE MORE OBSCURE

PARTSOFTHEFEBRUARY PARTSOFTHEFEBRUARY PARTSOFTHEFEBRUARY

NINTENDO DIRECT NINTENDO DIRECT NINTENDO DIRECT

....IN100WORDSORLESS ...IN100WORDSORLESS ..IN100WORDSORLESS

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Pikmin 4 Metroid Prime Remastered We all know they’re coming out, and we’re all excited. But what about some of the other games that were announced in last month’s Nintendo Direct? We’ll be taking a look at a few of them, as succinctly as we can manage Let’s-a go!

The first game addressed after the Pikmin cold open was SEGA’s Samba de Amigo: Party Central, a rhythm game releasing in Summer 2023 It offers a co-op mode and will contain over 40 different songs to play along to While this isn’t a groundbreaking release and was certainly placed here as a way to ensure most people didn’t need to pay attention to the continuing Direct while they reacted to the Pikmin announcement, it seems like a fun game and one suitable for families to come together and play

Fashion Dreamer proposes to give the player a chance to live their “new life as an influencer”, complete with plenty of outfits to choose from and other people to impress Your character will act as a “muse” to other players from around the world with wireless play enabled, and your task will be to set the trends and get the likes that everyone else wants! The graphics are clean and the animations are smooth, both important factors for a game that’s all about how you look

Image Credit: Nintendo UK

Image Credit: Nintendo UK

Moving further forward in the Direct, DECAPOLICE presents a world where law enforcement enter a virtual copy of reality to study mysteries and solve crimes. However, the machinations of a mysterious hacker start messing with the virtual world and threaten to ruin the police force’s operation This detective RPG has been likened by its developers to the classic Professor Layton series of games another franchise which was revealed to be returning in this Direct! and looks like it may also share the vibe of WATCH DOGS (2014) with the blending of physical and virtual reality in its mechanics

you’re meant to play that with a friend?) and provides an interesting strategic challenge to players who are looking for fun and unique play styles in their video game combat experiences.

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is less indie than you might expect from the titles we’ve chosen to speak about, but it still looks cool, so we're covering it anyway. The game mechanic of controlling both Cereza and her demon friend Cheshire at the same time harkens back to nostalgic cornerstones of childhood like Fireboy and Watergirl (what do you mean, weeee

On the other hand, Disney Illusion Island appears to offer the exact opposite of a unique playstyle This 2D platformer offers 4 player local co-op, but so does every recent 2D Mario game, and beyond its interesting art style which seems more inspired by the Mouse’s recent TV ventures than any typical video game’s graphics, there’s not much to write home about here Still, with money like Disney’s behind it, Illusion Island will undoubtedly be top quality and perfectly fun to play through either alone or with friends Just don’t expect it to be anything groundbreaking

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a narrative-heavy adventure game with deep-rooted worldbuilding and some serious stakes. You’re tasked with using your precognitive powers to see weeee

Image Credit: Nintendo UK

Image Credit: Nintendo UK

Image Credit: Nintendo UK

Image Credit: Nintendo UK

the branching paths of the future with that knowledge, you’ll choose a godly patron to side with, and hope they have humanity’s best interests in mind. The similarly divine musical talents of Celeste’s Lena Raine will play you through your attempts to save the world This one looks like it will be a favourite in the indie gaming community, and we at Nintendo Central can’t wait to see the Doom All Of Humanity% speedruns

ALL ALL ALL ANNOUNCED ANNOUNCED ANNOUNCED RELEASE RELEASE RELEASE

DATES: DATES: DATES:

Pikmin 4 21st July 2023

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Expansion Pass

DLC Vol 3 15th February

Samba de Amigo: Party Central

Summer 2023

Fashion Dreamer 2023

Dead Cells: Return To Castlevania

6th March 2023

TRON: Identity 11th April 2023

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Summer 2023

DECAPOLICE 2023

Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon 17th March 2023

Splatoon 3 DLC Spring 2023

Fire Emblem Engage Expansion Pass Out Now

Finally, Sea of Stars promises an RPG with all the beautiful pixelated graphics you could ask for Playing as a pair of magically gifted siblings, you’ll be able to fight, fish and ffffexplore your way across the ocean and towards the fleshy enemy that only the two of you can destroy with your unique Eclipse Magic The world looks great, the combat looks solid, and the side activities remind me of so many life simulator games that have come before this one, but what’s life if you can’t microdose on the joys of cooking pretend delicious meals every so often?

And time! If there’s a game you’re excited about from the Direct that we didn’t cover, it’s probably because somebody else did in more detail elsewhere. This was a Direct full of awesome announcements, and we're so ready to dive into the rest of Nintendo’s 2023!

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie June 2023

Disney Illusion Island 28th July 2023

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp

21st April 2023

Octopath Traveler II 24th February 2023

We Love Katamari REROLL + Royal Reverie 2nd June 2023

Sea Of Stars 29th August 2023

Omega Strike 27th April 2023

Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection

1st June 2023

Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe 24th February 2023

Nintendo Switch Online Game Boy / GBA Out Now

Metroid Prime Remastered Out Now

Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster

Summer 2023

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time 2023

Professor Layton and the New World of Steam 2023

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Wave 4 DLC Spring 2023

WBSC eBaseball: Power Pros Out Now

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

12th May 2023

Natsu-Mon! 20th Century Summer Vacation

Summer 2023 (Japan)

IIPLAYEDDISNEYPRINCESS: IPLAYEDDISNEYPRINCESS: PLAYEDDISNEYPRINCESS:

ENCHANTEDJOURNEY. ENCHANTEDJOURNEY. ENCHANTEDJOURNEY. HERE'S WHAT I THOUGHT. HERE'S WHAT I THOUGHT. HERE'S WHAT I THOUGHT.

When most people think of Wii games, the first ones to cross their minds are the juggernauts Wii Sports, which launched a thousand console sales (over a hundred million within the first year, to be more accurate); New Super Mario Bros Wii, which blended the 2D and 3D sides of the Mario franchise to great monetary success; Mario Kart Wii, the first motion-controlled instalment of the classic franchise; all of these were massively popular and beloved by a generation of families who were largely getting into video games for the first time.

Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey (2007) for the Wii was by no means a commercial failure, but does not stand the test of time nearly as well

The Wii was home to massive amounts of short and shallow titles referred to as shovelware; Enchanted Journey could cynically be considered among them However, I wanted to capture the spirit of childhood by playing a game designed for eight year old girls, something I actually used to be (although I am currently neither eight years old nor a girl), and so it was this game I chose to play for my retro game review. Let it never be said I don’t do things for you

Enchanted Journey opens with the tale of a kingdom, Gentlehaven, which has been struck by a curse It needs to be saved by a plucky young amnesiac girlthat’s you! - who travels across at least four different princesses’ kingdoms, solving their problems and helping to restore the castle back home on the way Each kingdom has three levels, and each level consists of a few minigames or fetch quests to help the story progress

After all of this (cover your ears if you don’t want spoilers… for… Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey ) you fight a final boss: the evil Zara, who wanted to prevent all princesses from ....

Image Credit: IMDB

achieving their happy endings, since her own princess dreams were crushed when she was just too evil as a child. Once she is defeated and the curse lifted, the truth is revealed - you, yes, you, little girl at home, were the princess of Gentlehaven all along, and you can now reclaim your crown

I played the game on co-op mode with my guide and friend Avery, who’s been playing the game since their youth and now regularly speedruns it on livestream. This was incredibly useful to me, a beginner, who wanted to get through the process and find out all the little details without having to put too much thought into Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey

The first thing I noticed is that the game is absolutely not designed for co-op every time the little girl speaks, the second player’s mouth moves in perfect unnerving unison with the first, and when the idle animations play at the same time it makes them look like synchronised automatons. Often, player two will spawn out of a cutscene standing on top of an NPC, or stand awkwardly in the middle of a cutscene and get in the way of what you’re meant to be looking at.

It also makes the combat laughably easy, not that it was particularly difficult in the first place, being a game designed for young children Quick attacks are done by shaking the Wii remote, and charged attacks involve holding the remote up and then bringing it down once you’ve amassed enough energy However, the charged attacks are largely pointless, as four normal hits will kill any standard target, and

attacks home in on the nearest enemy regardless of where you’re looking It’s easy to spam your way to victory, even on specialised enemies with unique powers such as a freeze mechanic or spawning weaker clones, and even during the final boss fight. We played through the levels from most to least difficult according to the game’s internal scaling, but they all seemed fairly evenly matched, other than the minigames which seemed to insert artificial difficulty on the harder levels.

An anticlimactic, unexplained ending that hinted at the villain’s potential redemption but went nowhere with the concept brought an end to my experience with Enchanted Journey Avery asked me whether I’d like to play the bonus Belle level; I politely refused

I remember a youth full of similarly underdeveloped, overpriced Wii games, so if you’re looking for nostalgia, this may just be the place for you. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to those seeking the ultimate Wii experience in the modern age of gaming. To you, I suggest just picking up the Mario title

Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey is available on Steam for PC or on Amazon for console

LLOOKINGBACKON LOOKINGBACKON OOKINGBACKON

FAKEPOKÉMONLEAKS FAKEPOKÉMONLEAKS FAKEPOKÉMONLEAKS

A time-honoured tradition of the Pokémon fanbase is to just straight-up lie about the beloved game franchise. From the first rumoured sightings of the mysterious Pokémon number 151, Mew, under the truck just north of the S.S. Anne, to those on the playground who were convinced that they'd be able to play with the elusive Pikablu if they only put their Raichu in the right conditions to evolve, it's not really a Pokémon game if somebody's not making stuff up about it (Nothing was under that truck, for the record, and "Pikablu" turned out to be the Johto Pokémon Marill.) Here is a short exploration of a few of my favourite such fakes.

Ever since Pokémon Yellow set the standard for each Pokémon generation to have a third, bonus game combining the best features of the prior two, people have been excited to see what ...

awaited them a year or two after the new games came out This excitement would usually lead to speculation among the likes of this fan-made cover for Pokémon Z (above), which matches the style of the Pokémon X and Y covers pretty perfectly, and makes it look like real Nintendo art. Pokémon Z never ended up being made, and we may never know why for sure, but it's likely because Game Freak spent the time they would have used to develop it on piloting experimental new franchises, none of which ended up very successful

There's also this beautiful starter concept art (left), which was posted anonymously to 4chan and fairly widely accepted as a possible leak of the real starter plans for Generation 8. It was mainly so successful because it looked so similar to the actual starter art which

Image Credit: kakashii182, Deviantart

Image Credit: 50ShadesofHeliolisk, Facebook

Image Credit: u/StickBreightley, Reddit was leaked two years prior in the runup to the release of the Generation 7 games. Like those real leaks, this fake used differentiation between the different writing styles of Japanese to set either a cuter or cooler tone for different starters, and depicted the fake starters in multiple different poses and positions that would not carry over to the Sugimori art. The ruse was kept up for days before the artist, an Italian Pokémon fan going by the username 50ShadesOfHeliolisk, owned up to being the true artist and having had a Japanese friend help with the lettering The confession post ended by saying that "if you want you can start throwing all the insults I deserve at me" - but we at Nintendo Central think such a good ruse deserves applause, not insults.

People do make "fake leak" art that isn't meant to be taken seriously at all: this cover for Pokémon Gun (left) and this fake scan announcing two new Pokémon lines (above) are simply funny or interesting concept art for things that the wider Pokémon fanbase never expected to be real I mean, really - can you actually imagine Nintendo publishing Pokémon Gun? The amount of emails and phone calls they would receive from concerned parents would be astronomical.

Still, it's fun to look back on all the times that we as a community got bamboozled by a particularly talented artist, and wonder what the next big fake might be My bet is on more starter predictions - whatever you come up with, it can't be as bad as some of the things people proposed to fill in the silhouettes of the Unova starters (below)!

Image Credit: Phatmon, DeviantArt

Image Credit: NuclearBandaid, DeviantArt

WHYISRETRO WHYISRETRO WHYISRETRO

INACCESSIBLE? INACCESSIBLE? INACCESSIBLE?

On March 27th 2023, the 3DS and WiiU eShop was officially discontinued. This means that, for any Nintendo console older than the Switch, it is now impossible to buy first-hand copies of games from Nintendo If Switch users pay for the Nintendo Switch Online service, a monthly or yearly subscription, they can access versions of NES, SNES and Game Boy games, and if they shell out up to an extra £30, that list expands to include N64, GBA, and even SEGA Genesis games. However, for those games in the ..........

middle, the market is restricted to second-hand reselling… and the dreaded emulation

Homebrewing consoles and illegally downloading games has been slowly becoming a more popular practice over the last few years We spoke to two Nintendo fans (names redacted, since we're technically discussing crime) about it, hoping to figure out why people think all this happens, and how we should deal with the growing inaccessibility of older Nintendo games

Image Credit: Dennis Burger, Flickr

Beanie Pollard (Nintendo Central): So, which Nintendo consoles do you own? How often do you play Nintendo games?

S: I don’t own any Nintendo consoles at the moment, unfortunately. I wish I could play Nintendo games more often, because they’re awesome! I used to play all the Pokémon games and Mario games - I love Super Smash Bros in particular, and I wish I had played Super Mario Galaxy more while I still had the hardware to do so - but I never got a Switch

E: When I was younger, my family owned a Wii, and I believe we still have that in storage somewhere But as for myself currently, I have a Switch (one of the original models, not a Lite or an OLED display), and a New Nintendo 2DS XL I play Nintendo games pretty regularly! At least an hour every week, although if I'm particularly interested in a specific game, I'll play it during basically all my free time

Beanie: Do you ever feel the desire to go back and play older Nintendo games?

S: I have that desire more often recently than I did in the past, both because I don’t own the hardware to play those games on, but also because the game selection available on other platforms doesn’t appeal to me very much these days. I have family who own an XBox, but the only platform I consistently have access to games on is PC, and there is a lack of PC games I really feel motivated to play A lot of the time, I wish I could just pick up a game like Pokémon Ruby and play ........

through it when I’m bored.

E: Oh, all the time. I'm a fan of Pokemon and Fire Emblem, and those two series have a lot of older games from old consoles!

Beanie: It can cost between £3 49 a month for the basic individual plan of Nintendo Switch Online and £59 99 a year for the expanded family plan. Do you think that’s good value?

S: As I said, I don’t have a Switch, but I believe that online functionality for video games should be completely free. When you’ve already paid for the console and the game, it’s just moneygrabbing to ask people to pay a subscription fee to play with others. This is a problem that comes from consumerism - you used to be able to buy a game fully made and with all its features included, but now there are day-zero patches, microtransactions, DLCs and other gated content in most modern releases Local play is also being neglected here; the old ways of including a split-screen multiplayer mode is now usually restricted to games that are specifically being marketed as “party games”

E: My brother pays for a family plan of NSO that includes the Expansion Pack. Quite frankly, I think that it's not worth that price. The benefits the expansion offers are nice, but neither of us actually use them at all. Free DLCs are helpful, but if we wanted them, it'd be less expensive to just buy them ourselves for whatever games we wanted than to continue paying a flat fee for something we mostly don’t make use of

Beanie: So what do you think of the recent popularity of homebrewing consoles and emulation? Do you think doing this is ethical? Does Nintendo give us a choice?

S: I have actually homebrewed a few 3DS consoles myself before I know how to do it, and I know the sites where you can download popular titles for free. I think that, if the game and the console have been discontinued, and Nintendo already made their paycheck off it, then it’s not an ethical issue. The thing I have a moral problem with is downloading third-party titles by independent game developers who don’t have the monetary backing that Nintendo has for their first-party releases - I would feel very guilty about emulating one of those, because I’d know that I was depriving those developers of well-earned compensation for their hard work. If I wanted to play a third-party game, but I couldn’t find a legal way to obtain it, I’d try to give money to the creators another way, like if they had a donation link on their website. But for big name games that Nintendo made a lot of money from, released on consoles that they don’t provide support for any more… I don’t think they’re going to miss the £13 99 I would have been paying for Super Mario 2: Gold Edition.

E: The first Nintendo game I ever played was emulated It was a copy of Pokémon Emerald that I played for days on end, and it started me off on the path to become the person I am today. I do go out of my way to look for online and physical availability for games that I want to play. But, for a lot of old games, there's no reasonable way to ........

acquire them. Physical copies of older Nintendo games are listed online at prices that are quite literally over half of my bi-weekly paycheck Sometimes more than it entirely. I want to support Nintendo! If they gave me an option to buy older games that wouldn't threaten my ability to support myself, I'd take it But in the current circumstances, where there are no online options available, and physical copies are limited and cost upwards of hundreds of dollars, I can't take those options.

The money from those second-hand physical copies isn’t going to Nintendo anyway - they create false scarcity with their older games by not making them available on the Virtual Console even when they have the ability and the demand For new games, the number of people downloading them illegally is comparatively so small that it doesn’t really matter to Nintendo’s profit margins; their current net worth is $53.09 billion, and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet sold over 20 million units in the first six weeks of their release (I was one of those numbers!)

I want to buy Nintendo's games, but more than that, I want to play them So if there are no other options available to me, I will emulate their games I've done it before, and I'll do it again.

Beanie: What’s your opinion on the independent developer question?

E: I may mainly play Nintendo games, but I adore games made by other developers. There's a sense of creativity and novelty that are sometimes absent from bigger games. I would never pirate or emulate from .......

small developers If there's a game I've found that I'm interested in playing, I'll pay for it It took effort and skill to make the game, so I'll reward them for that as best I can!

Beanie: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

S: Nintendo also have a huge problem with preventing user repair The DS was built to be easy to take apart and fix - you could see the screws in the device, and I’ve repaired multiple DS consoles before. Now, though, Nintendo intentionally builds their consoles to be more difficult to repair at home. In the Switch, it feels like every single part has been soldered in, and it forces people with broken Switches to send their device to the company and pay their in-house rates to get it fixed unless they’re experts or have a lot more mechanical repair tools than the average person. Nintendo are very wasteful, both with their hardware and

their software, and that disappoints me

E: Nintendo has recently cracked down on modders too, especially for BOTW. If you own something, you should have the right to destruction and modification of it You don't truly own something until you have total freedom of control over it

So that’s it - the people have spoken Nintendo make their retro games inaccessible to create false scarcity, to make it seem like the physical copies that do exist are more valuable than they could be Emulation provides an easy answer to that, and while these two would rather limit their use of it to just first-party titles that Nintendo already made their buck off, they’re not afraid of the practice!

What do you think about the issue? Let us know by tweeting your thoughts to us at @NintendoCentralHQ, or to me at @BeaniePollard, and we may respond!