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Extreme G, Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls Hit Nintendo Switch Online

Extreme G, Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls Hit Nintendo Switch Online

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An unexpected pair of games landed on Nintendo Switch Online this evening. Nintendo throws us some curveballs now and then but usually those balls aren’t literal. Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls is now on NSO, originally released for the Nintendo 64 in 1999 — and a pretty darn original title for the system. It’s a racing game where you play as one of many wacky heads rolling down a curving, looping track. You must avoid not only enemies and obstacles but your fellow racers, who can knock you off if they feel like it. However, it’s possible to roll off track on purpose and find a shortcut, turning a fail into a victory. The multiplayer mode supports up to four players in split-screen. Who needs to race in a vehicle when you’re spherical? Ball out with Iggy and his eclectic reckin’ crew as you smash and swing your way through vertical races set on a series of towering tracks. Take shortcuts, zip through loops and avoid enemies bent on stopping your ascent

Nintendo Switch Online Surprise Drops Three SNES Obscurities

Nintendo Switch Online Surprise Drops Three SNES Obscurities

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With no announcement, Nintendo silently updated the SNES department of Nintendo Switch Online this afternoon with three games, two of which have never been released in the US before. The biggest surprise of the three is Wrecking Crew 98, which if you can’t tell by the year cited in its name, came out at a time when the SNES was just about dead everywhere except Japan. You could still technically buy the “reduced fat” model (and a Frogger game came out that year), but overall Nintendo didn’t feel the market was really there anymore. It’s a remake of the NES game where Mario was tasked with breaking down walls on multiple floors in multiple screens while avoiding hazards. This portion of Mario’s career was made a canon part of the Super Mario Bros Movie (Mario’s “boss” is from that game). Super R-Type is the second game, a brilliant space shooter from early in the SNES’ lifecycle. It’s not an easy game (and if you can master it, you’ll see it’s

F-Zero Maximum Velocity Joins Nintendo Switch Online Tomorrow

F-Zero Maximum Velocity Joins Nintendo Switch Online Tomorrow

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F-Zero Maximum Velocity joins Nintendo Switch Online, bringing classic high-speed racing to fans. The latest addition to Nintendo Switch Online will be F-Zero Maximum Velocity: a sequel to the SNES original. The first game was mainly built to show off the SNES’s Mode 7 background scaling capabilities, which were new for a game console. Likewise, it was also new for a handheld in 2001, and served a similar purpose. F-Zero has been one of the more dormant of Nintendo’s properties, to the annoyance of its fans. The last real title in the series was developed for the Gamecube by Sega’s Amusement Visions; an arcade version of the game, F-Zero AX, debuted at the same time and would accept Gamecube memory cards. The early 2000s were the most fruitful time in F-Zerr’s history with an arcade game, a console game, two handheld games and even an anime. Since then it’s just been silence. Well, unless you count F-Zero 99, the latest of Nintendo’s battle royale makeovers for NSO. 99 players are

Three Game Boy Marios Join Nintendo Switch Online

Three Game Boy Marios Join Nintendo Switch Online

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Yesterday was Mario Day (March 10, or MAR10) and Nintendo announced, among other things, that three Mario games would be added to Nintendo Switch Online…not on that day, but two days later on March 12. They seem to have moved it up a day because they’re live now. Many, many years ago I was about to go on my first plane trip and was staring at the rack of Game Boy titles, trying to choose which would make sitting in a cramped chair for hours more suitable. I narrowed the choice down to Mario Golf or Pokemon Trading Card Game, despite having no experience with playing card games or golfing. I picked Mario Golf. The thing about Mario Golf was that it was rather different from what a golf game traditionally was built from. It was more than just a simulation of smacking a white dimpled ball, it was a full-on RPG where you traversed an overworld, leveled up your character’s skills and challenged a series of rivals. Its pseudo-sequel

Five Rare Games Join Nintendo Switch Online At Once

Five Rare Games Join Nintendo Switch Online At Once

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During their Direct this morning, the usual Nintendo Switch Online update turned out to be rather unexpected. Not only were five additional titles from Rare confirmed for the service, we’re getting them nearly immediately. The first two are for the NES: RC Pro-Am and Snake, Rattle and Roll. Pro-Am was one of Rare’s first stand-out titles in the US, before anyone here knew who they were…an overhead RC car racing game with smoothly rendered vehicles and support for up to four players at once was quite an achievement back then. Snake, Rattle and Roll wasn’t quite as well known back in the day but has gained a cult following now. If anything, its soundtrack is a bop. Killer Instinct and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs are the two SNES entries. Killer Instinct was promised as an N64 launch title (the cabinet told us so!) but delays in the launch created the necessity of an SNES port to pad the time. It’s no KI Gold but it does its job. As for Battlemaniacs,

Jet Force Gemini Announced For Nintendo Switch Online

Jet Force Gemini Announced For Nintendo Switch Online

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Jet Force Gemini, Nintendo 64 game from Rare, is coming to Nintendo Switch Online in December. Will it stand the test of time? There’s a big problem with the Nintendo 64 library on Nintendo Switch Online: a sizable chunk of the good titles for the system were released by a studio that is now owned by a rival business. Rare was considered one of the best, if not the best, developers of N64 games. In the 90s Nintendo owned a controlling interest of Rare’s stock and their games were released exclusively on the N64. Early in the Gamecube era, Nintendo cut Rare loose and Microsoft, needing reasons for people to purchase their new XBox console, bought them outright. So as the Nintendo 64 library on NSO has filled up, one big question has been what they’re going to do when they run out of first-party games. Most of the remainder of memorable titles on that system came from Rare — are they going to negotiate for them or are they

Nintendo Switch Online Adds Three Surprising Ones

Nintendo Switch Online Adds Three Surprising Ones

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Nintendo Switch Online updated its base package just now, adding three more games to the library — one for Game Boy and two for NES. They’re all very uncommon titles, and in more than one situation, they’re being officially released in the US for the first time. Devil World was one of the original Famicom games, but was rejected by Nintendo of America for overt religious symbolism — one of their many taboos. It was Miyamoto’s attempt at a Pac-Man clone, and starred a Bubble Bobble type creature as he wandered around a shifting maze collecting crosses to defeat the literal devil (who, contrary to Western belief, is blue here). Was NOA’s concern unfounded, or is Devil World about to get a lot of complaints today from overprotective parents? Probably not, unless DeSantis becomes a retro gamer. The other NES gsme is the Mysterious Murasame Castle, a top-down action game. We’re not sure why NOA did not localize THIS one — it’s steeped in Japanese culture, but so were a

This Week’s Nintendo Switch Online Update Is A Weird One

This Week’s Nintendo Switch Online Update Is A Weird One

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We’ve got some new 8 and 16-bit games coming to Nintendo Switch Online today, but I doubt anyone expected any of them. The first, Kirby’s Star Stacker, was only released in America as a Game Boy title. There was a Super NES version, but it came out in Japan in 1998, and Nintendo’s last batch of first-party SNES titles for the West was released at the end of 1997. What we’re getting is the SNES version, released in the US for the first time. The downside is it’s the unaltered original with Japanese text, so you may find navigation a bit difficult. But it’s not alone. Four games were added to NSO today and THREE OF THEM are in Japanese. Both titles added to the NES library are Famicom originals. Downtown Nekketsu March Super-Awesome Field Day! is the mouthful title for what’s actually a Kunio-Kun game. You know Kunio-Kun from all those “River City” beat-em-ups. Joy Mech Fight is an interesting experience; the fighting game craze of the 90s mostly

Zelda: Oracle Of Ages And Seasons Added To Nintendo Switch Online

Zelda: Oracle Of Ages And Seasons Added To Nintendo Switch Online

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Surprise! Normally Nintendo gives us at least a day’s notice before adding something to NSO, but here they are, two of the most demanded titles for its Game Boy section: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons. Originally planned to be a three-game trilogy (to match the Triforce), this ambitious Capcom-developed project was pared down to a duology and released simultaneously. Imagine two Zelda games on the same day. They had it made in 2001! Which should you play first? That depends on your tastes in Zeldas. If you prefer action, Oracle of Seasons leans more toward combat to progress. But if you’re more of a puzzle person, play Ages first — it’s more full of brainteasers. Whichever one you start with, you can carry your progress over to the other game, and once you complete them both, face the REAL final boss! Like you, I am also hoping Nintendo remakes these games in the “shoebox” style the way they did Link’s Awakening. The fact that

Nintendo Switch Online Gains Sega’s Finest Zelda Knockoffs

Nintendo Switch Online Gains Sega’s Finest Zelda Knockoffs

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In the early 90s you either had a Super Nintendo or a Sega Genesis — it was the parents who paid for these things and most would chafe at the idea of buying a second console. There were many Genesis kids who looked on at the Zelda series with some jealousy, but there WERE options to get a similar experience. Both of them have finally arrived in the Genesis section of Nintendo Switch Online as of today. Crusader of Centy was released by Atlus in 1995 and is as close to Link to the Past as you can get — the graphics are similar, the top-down sword-slashing adventuring is the same, the sense exploration is duplicated. The game didn’t get much attention at the time of its release, though, and it’s only recently been embraced by the gaming community as a Genesis Classic — so you know what that means. It costs a ton. A premium NSO subscription (at $49.95) costs way less than a Crusader of Centy cart. Also,

Nintendo Switch Online Gets Kirby, Harvest Moon And More

Nintendo Switch Online Gets Kirby, Harvest Moon And More

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It’s been months since the NES and SNES categories of Nintendo Switch Online were updated. They were the libraries that started this whole service, but as time has gone on the number of available titles you can add that aren’t already there has dwindled. Yeah, there are some popular third-party games that are still absent, but that’s because their respective holders consider them too valuable to give away here. As for Super Mario RPG….no, we still don’t know what the case is with Super Mario RPG. Nintendo managed to find two games that weren’t there yet, though, and they added them today in a surprise update that also updates the Game Boy library with two more titles, for four altogether. The biggest surprise of the bunch is the original Harvest Moon, released for the SNES in 1997 when no one bought games for the SNES anymore. Because of its scarcity, its value has skyrocketed, and the only available copy beyond the SNES cart was the Wii U version, which you

Nintendo Switch Online’s Next Update Is All Mario

Nintendo Switch Online’s Next Update Is All Mario

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Nintendo has picked May 26 (the same day you can’t watch Willow anymore) to post its next Switch Online update — this one for the GBA section. And this time, we’re getting three games at once…and not just any three but three of the greatest games ever made. The first three Super Mario Advance games will be added that day, which are really Super Mario Bros 2 (All-Stars version), Super Mario World and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. Enjoy the 96 exits of Dinosaur Land, pulling up turnips, and chasing after an incessantly crying baby in a bubble. These games will never get old. Only problem is that this is a bit redundant. The original versions of Super Mario Bros 2, Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island are already on NSO, and they’re part of the non-expansion section, so you don’t have to pay extra to get them. There are differences between the SNES and GBA versions of the latter two games, but they amount to a lighter color

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