A Nintendo Direct Partners Showcase has been announced

[Shiny Gems]

This may not be an actual Direct, but this is pretty exciting to me, nonetheless. It is, of course, happening on a Wednesday. Are you all ready for this?

[Knight Terror]

Hmmm...

Interesting

[Lorekitten]

As much as I want to be excited about this, I just feel... meh. Part of it is that I've had a rough past few weeks and quite frankly even the upcoming Pokemon Day has me concerned (although I don't think anyone doesn't know by this point what we Pokemon fans are concerned about), but really, another part of it is that I haven't really had the energy to dedicate to playing video games for a while due to chronic illness and have a backlog of games sitting on the Shelf of Shame that I fully intend to play someday but don't really feel like playing now.

[Salamander]

Most of what I play these days are third-party and indie games, so whilst there are some first-party Nintendo games and franchises which are important to me, I'm not hugely troubled by this being a partner-only Direct.  ...At the same time, I also have a long list of already-existing games which I want to actually play at some point, so if there's very little announced which I feel an urgent need to get, then that's fine, too.  Just so long as it's an interesting show!

So, what might show up.  Unicorn Overlord is out quite soon and seems like an obvious candidate for a demo around this sort of time, so there's that.  There are rumblings of an updated rerelease for Shin Megami Tensei V, and whilst that's surely mostly aimed at multiplatform buyers then it might well end up on the Switch too (as opposed to Soul Hackers 2, which might end up on the Switch 2).  May as well throw in an obligatory wish for Dragon Quest III HD-2D, they have to release it sometime!  Ditto Silksong etc.  But it has to be said that Directs are often far less predictable than we pretend, so who knows.

[DarkRula]

Ooh, lovely. It might be a Partner Showcase, but these have still been fun watches in the past. Not sure there's anything on my list of games I'm waiting for that will appear here (except maybe Fantasy Life i), but I'm sure that something stands a chance of being added to it.

If I remember right, Nintendo games being developed by third parties can show up at these things, so I think I'll hope for a third Hyrule Warriors to make an appearance. Or some sort of Nintendo-franchise Warriors, anyway.

[Sonicka]

5 hours ago, DarkRula said:

Ooh, lovely. It might be a Partner Showcase, but these have still been fun watches in the past. Not sure there's anything on my list of games I'm waiting for that will appear here (except maybe Fantasy Life i), but I'm sure that something stands a chance of being added to it.

If I remember right, Nintendo games being developed by third parties can show up at these things, so I think I'll hope for a third Hyrule Warriors to make an appearance. Or some sort of Nintendo-franchise Warriors, anyway.

*Adds Xenoblade Warriors to the bingo card*

To be honest, a followup to Age of Calamity would be nice considering it set up its own continuity to BOTW. On top of this the events from TOTK would still eventually take place after this game anyway, so it would be interesting to explore the TOTK storyline from an alternate perspective, and with the Time Travel element it would be a good excuse to throw the setting to Hyrule 10,000 years ago in the past. 

[DarkRula]

21 minutes ago, Sonicka said:

To be honest, a followup to Age of Calamity would be nice considering it set up its own continuity to BOTW. On top of this the events from TOTK would still eventually take place after this game anyway, so it would be interesting to explore the TOTK storyline from an alternate perspective, and with the Time Travel element it would be a good excuse to throw the setting to Hyrule 10,000 years ago in the past. 

Yeah, that's my thinking with it. An alternate story that somehow sees both Link and Zelda travel back to the past, with some weird way of restoring the Master Sword involving the Secret Stones which also somehow connects them to the successor of that Stone.

[Shiny Gems]

For those who have not seen the Direct, which is out now...

Spoiler

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble was on the Direct.

 

[Sonicka]

Was an OK presentation, not live which allowed me to skip the fluff.

I think the main takeaway was that I did not expect Penny's Big Breakaway to drop today - so that's a pretty nice surprise! 

In addition, the new Super Monkey Ball title and the fact that the rumoured Endless Ocean game is a new entry and not a remake was also pretty sweet. I'm only a little bit sour that they announced a bevy of Retro Rare games joining NSO (but none were Banjo Tooie) XD

Edited February 21 by Sonicka

[DarkRula]

An enjoyable one, certainly. Classic Battlefront on the Switch will be brilliant, and it was nice to get a bit more of a look at Fantasy Life i, but there's nothing that I'm adding to my waiting for list from it.

[Kittea]

Fantasy Life coming out a lot later than I expected, but it’s ok. I’ve got plenty to play before then.

Edit: Forgot about the Suika VS mode! Definitely dragging people to that

Edited February 21 by Kittea

[ZinogreVolt]

Solid presentation! Focused less on the big stuff and more on little bit potentially very appealing things.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble looks fan-bloody-tastic. Pretty much all I've wanted out of the series since 2/Deluxe, and for once the bonus gimmick actually looks fun. The multiplayer novelty looks pretty neat but it probably won't be for me. I'm surprised it's Switch exclusive as opposed to just being the target platform like Banana Blitz HD and Banana Mania? I guess those games must have sold very poorly on other platforms, which wouldn't surprise me since Monkey Ball's demographic has always been more Nintendo-slanted.

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance looks like SMT V But More(tm), which is exactly what that game needed considering how incomplete it felt in spots. Even considering how it's performance is gonna be drastically boosted on other platforms, I'll probably still get it on Switch for the save data bonuses and because I just prefer SMT on a handheld. I'm mostly curious about how they're gonna address certain rebalancing quirks. Omegatoki: Critical being a lategame skill instead of the very first one you get, and nerfed Dampeners alone would smooth over so many difficulty balancing problems. I'm not expecting terribly much out of the story changes since this seems to be falling into the staple "Atlus Girl" trappings that their re-releases tend to, but I will keep an eye out I guess.

Monster Hunter Stories HD looks amazing. Stories 2 made me a diehard fan of the series, so I'm really glad they're putting a lot of love into a remaster of the first game considering it was stuck on 3DS and mobile. Considering the huge amount of effort being put in here, including voice acting with the cast of Stories 2 brought over to reprise, I would be shocked if Stories 3 wasn't already deep in production. It's weird that they're actually diligent about bringing over Stories 1 though, considering how Capcom has pretty much completely neglected porting over main series MH to new consoles.

All told, solid Partner Showcase. I got a good amount of stuff to get here.

[Salamander]

Monster Hunter Stories is out here looking humiliatingly better than Scarlet and Violet again.  I don't understand how it can be so obvious to everyone but GameFreak what a game like this should look like.  Ender Magnolia was a surprise, but a pleasant one; I actually only played Ender Lilies last year, but it was good enough that it seemed pretty obvious it'd get a sequel at some point, and a spiritual sequel with a different setting but the same gameplay is a smart move - and it's still coming out before Silksong...  Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance coming in June was a real "I'm in danger" moment, I put a hundred hours into the original and at first blush the new content looks easily enough to justify a hundred more, especially with a different build.

So, all in all, only two games I actually want came out of the Direct, but that's fine because my backlog is getting - wait, hold on.  The Japanese version had a Denpa Men game?  And it's a port of the fourth 3DS title that never came to the west?!  Tell me we're getting a localised version this time!

Edit: Apparently the Japanese Direct also had Mother 3.  Yes, really.

Edited February 21 by Salamander

[Lorekitten]

19 minutes ago, Salamander said:

Monster Hunter Stories is out here looking humiliatingly better than Scarlet and Violet again.  I don't understand how it can be so obvious to everyone but GameFreak what a game like this should look like.

The thing is, Pokemon games tend to sell well regardless of their flaws, so it's hard to argue with the literal biggest multimedia franchise on the stinkin' planet.

20 minutes ago, Salamander said:

Edit: Apparently the Japanese Direct also had Mother 3.  Yes, really.

F