2023 Tokyo Game Show with Mr. KN1V3S, Splatoon 3 X ZOZOTOWN, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet: The Teal Mask, F-Zero 99

[00:00:09] Welcome to Tokyo Game Life, a Tokyo-based video game podcast focusing on Nintendo and gaming culture in Japan's capital. Your host, Mono, here to bring you a slice of gaming life from Tokyo. Tokyo Game Show 2023 just wrapped up, and I, along with special guest and Tokyo resident Mr. Knives, are here to tell you all about the demos, the boosts, the merch, and everything else.

[00:00:30] In the games, I highlight Nintendo's two September releases, the first wave of Pokemon DLC and F-Zero 99. Plus, in the news, I give some very belated Nintendo Direct impressions. Let's get into the Tokyo Game Show with Mr. Knives. Tokyo Game Life, only on the Tokyo Beat Podcast Network. This episode's feature is about the 2023 Tokyo Game Show, Japan's biggest event of the year.

[00:01:00] I went to it yesterday, so these impressions were coming in hot, but I'm not alone. Joining me is a special guest. So guest, please introduce yourself. Hello, everybody. My name is Kyle, or Mr. Knives, as my Twitter and I guess Twitch profile goes by. I currently live in Tokyo, Japan, and I do PR for a bunch of games through an agency called Stride PR. Thanks for joining me. Before we get into this year's show, what's your history with the Tokyo Game Show?

[00:01:30] I mean, if we're going way, way back. When I was young, when I was a teenager, and they still had magazines covering these events, Tokyo Game Show was always up there with E3 for me to see the big new releases, especially from Japanese publishers back in the day. But moving up until recently, A, it's a show that I'm actually in the country and able to go to because it's available to the public.

[00:01:53] And B, some of the clients that we work with at my agency actually had games and boots at TGS. So it was kind of nice to see them there and see them out in the wild as well. Cool. I've been in Japan for several years now, but last year was actually the first time I visited. Some context for listeners, but Tokyo Game Show is actually held in Chiba at Makuhari Mese, which is a huge complex filled with event spaces.

[00:02:18] It kind of looks like you're in a bunch of aircraft bunkers. It always reminds me of that. And compared to last year, this year's event felt much bigger in scope and hype and definitely in attendee size. I guess we should start big. What was the biggest thing that left an impression on you at Tokyo Game Show? I am a very big fan of this franchise. So my objective going there was to see Konami's Metal Gear booth that they had there.

[00:02:45] And to me, that setup absolutely blew me away. The construction of the booth, the gimmick that they had in there with the alert status going off that played the Metal Gear 1 alert song. They had actors there walking around the top of the booth on the catwalks that were guards patrolling the area. A lot of images and items from other Metal Gear games as well, obviously to promote the collection coming out in a few weeks.

[00:03:09] But to me, that was the one that kind of just sort of blew me away because Metal Gear, there was nothing from Metal Gear at all for years after Phantom Pain. And just the whole Kojima fallout, I was just left to assume that, well, this is it. We're never getting another Metal Gear game. So to see it live and featured so prominently and so many people walking around the booth and playing the games and walking around with the merch they gave from there.

[00:03:35] That's something that just sort of really blew me away. And it's just overall, it was very, very impressive to see. Yeah, out of all the boosts, I think Konami definitely had maybe the coolest design. They have tons of these huge LED screens and oftentimes they're flashing red because of the alert signal. And yeah, they had boxes from Metal Gear and they had chain link fences. They tried to, I guess, I don't want to say mimic Shadow Moses, but it does feel like you were in some sort of military complex sneaking around.

[00:04:02] And it was a bit surprising because if you think about it, these are sort of ports or remasters of very old games. But Konami dedicated a huge portion of their booth to these classic titles. Yeah, it just blew me away too because you said this isn't a new game. This isn't a new edition of Metal Gear. This is just a collection of the past Metal Gear games. Granted, really storied, really well-respected games.

[00:04:26] But to see so much effort to promote it and put into it, kind of, you know, slightly unrelated to TGS, kind of fills me with confidence that they're really pushing this game hard and they really want it to be a good reflection of the franchise and stuff. So just all those factors coming in, it was overwhelming, but in the best way, kind of overwhelming. For me, I mentioned it earlier, but the biggest thing that left an impression was just how crowded it was compared to last year.

[00:04:50] There were many times when I was just shoulder to shoulder with people and times where nobody could move because it was just so congested. Last year was the first event after COVID, and I think there was some hesitancy for people to return. And it was reported that last year's number were actually quite below the pre-COVID numbers. But I think it returned to normal or maybe even exceeded it in terms of attendees. And for context, the record is 298,000 attendees from 2018's show.

[00:05:18] So I'm curious how close this show's number is compared to that one. But what did you think of the crowds? Was it too much? Do you think that maybe they should switch to a bigger venue eventually? I was really surprised to see so many people there. And my first inkling that this is going to be big was I had friends that were able to get passes to go on during the business days, which for context, you're able to get special tickets if you're worked at a business related to gaming or you're an influencer.

[00:05:46] And the benefit is that it's typically less congested during those days. Yeah. But they told me, no, it was packed during those days. They ran out of swag at the booths and they had to stop the line. And if it's going to be like that during businesses, I can't imagine it during the public days. But yeah, just at certain points, it was just an absolute, for lack of better terms, wall of people. It was extremely difficult to move around or go anywhere or it would be multiple minutes just to walk inside somewhere.

[00:06:15] And it's so funny because that area is so big to begin with, you know, to have space and stuff. And it seemed it was divided into three or four just separate halls and separate areas, which are all extremely large in and of themselves. So to go somewhere, I can't, I'm not quite sure where anywhere else bigger would be, but I don't know how you would solve that. Maybe add more days, maybe a bigger venue. I don't know.

[00:06:41] For shows like that, PAX, for example, it's normal to have a lot of people and have congestion at that. But to have so many people there and just walk around just to kind of cross to the other side was it was pretty overwhelming sometimes. But it also kind of added to the atmosphere. And it's exciting to see, like you said, post COVID in Japan, when the borders are closed, to see it open and everybody walking around and excited to be at TGS again. Yeah, this year they expanded it to halls 9, 10 and 11. Last year was only halls 1 to 8.

[00:07:09] So the indie game section, that area wasn't even there last year. But even that was extremely crowded. I felt at the time when I was walking through the very, very crowded halls, I thought they've got to move this venue for next year. But I also thought, okay, what's a place that is bigger than this? Because it is quite huge. Years and years ago, they had it at Tokyo Big Site in Odaiba. But I don't know if Tokyo Big Site is bigger than this place. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:38] Maybe splitting it up half as in Odaiba, half as in Chiba. Maybe that might be better. But if you have one thing only in one place, that would be quite inconvenient. Maybe they could do it like PAX East and West. Yeah. Odaiba Game Show or the Chiba Game Show or something like that. Okay, let's talk game demos. I want to hear about what you played. What demos stood out for you? I think the ones that stood out for me the most. Obviously, I mentioned Metal Gear and the booth over there.

[00:08:07] And it was just, it's sort of nice to see that those games were, for what I could tell, still played as I remember them with the slight upscale and just visual fidelity. But everything seemed to be fine. A lot of things that I played were just sort of the indie games because, A, they were a bit more available. And, B, to me, and just, again, this might be coming from an area of bias because I work with a lot of indie publishers and developers.

[00:08:33] For them to be at a big show like TGS and to be standing side to side with so many big publishers, it's a very exciting experience and sometimes a very imposing experience as well. So any kind of attention that they get with people coming over there and playing them was great. One of the ones that I really thought was interesting, and it's something that just, again, have been tenuously involved with. It's a game called Go Go Town, and it's made by a prideful sloth group of developers from Australia.

[00:09:02] And basically what this is, it's sort of a hybrid of Animal Crossing and also a hybrid of just sort of a city builder, a city or city skylines builder. But it does it in such a cohesive way that it never really feels it's at odds with each other. So it was really nice to finally kind of be able to play that and have a good sense of the game and to see it working and running so well. So that's probably one of the ones that I walked away with impressed the most.

[00:09:28] For me, the first thing I played was Sonic Superstars, which is the 2D co-op Sonic game out in just a few weeks. And actually last year, the first game I played was Sonic Frontiers. So it's becoming a TGS tradition to play Sonic as the very first thing. And it's kind of funny because the Sega booth was in the exact same spot and the Sonic line was the exact same area in the booth. So it definitely felt really deja vu because, oh, I'm here lining up for Sonic again. They had another big balloon. Last year, they just had a big Sonic balloon.

[00:09:58] This time they had a ring and it had the four playable characters in the balloon. It looked quite nice. Actually, I was quite impressed with Sonic Superstars. This is supposed to be, I guess, their new Super Mario Bros. equivalent where it's multiplayer Sonic and it's really going back to sort of the original style. It's heavily influenced by that. So all the characters look, I think Sega, they officially call him Classic Sonic.

[00:10:22] It's this weird thing where modern Sonic and Classic Sonic are technically two different characters in two different universes. It's something really ridiculous, but it's that art style. It's more chibi looking art style. And when I first saw the trailer, I was a little worried that it would be too slow because the trailer, it looked quite slow. But after playing it, I didn't feel that it was slow at all. It seemed to have a pretty good speed. I do want to compare it to Mania, but it didn't feel sluggish or slow at all.

[00:10:51] It felt a pretty good speed for a Sonic game. And it feels like they're being quite ambitious with this title because there's a lot of new elements that I've never seen before in 2D Sonic games. And there's a big emphasis on, I want to say, maybe mini games in the level. For example, there's these portals that you can jump into and it takes you to another special gameplay segment. One had you skydive and collect rings. Another one was a classic, you collect the Chaos Emerald one.

[00:11:18] And it shifts your perspective to behind you. So it's like a 3D platformer. And you're doing like these Spider-Man swings across these orbs. And then at the end, you grab the Chaos Emerald. So this is something I've never seen in a Sonic game. And there's definitely a lot of emphasis on multiple routes. There's definitely different paths you can take. So it's not just one straight line. So I played as Amy in the kind of Green Hill Zone equivalent. And all the characters do have different abilities.

[00:11:48] Amy has a hammer. I think it just gives her more kind of AOE attack when she does her spinball attack. Nice. And Knuckles can glide, of course. So I played Knuckles in the pinball casino level, which was pretty cool because there's these pinball portions where if you do it right, you can unlock a new path or you can get more rings. And that level was still kind of confusing to navigate. But since it is a casino level in Sonic, I think all of them are like that. So I can't really criticize it for that.

[00:12:18] And then I briefly played. If you've never been to TGS listeners, most gameplay demos are about 15 minutes. And so I had about 40 seconds left and already cleared it with Amy and Knuckles. So I had 40 seconds left. So I thought, OK, I'll play Sonic in a different stage for 40 seconds. And I played in the cyber stage where all the graphics go into sort of these blocky 3D pixels. I thought it was quite fun because all the levels felt different and the characters feel good.

[00:12:47] And there's definitely a lot of fun things in the levels, these weird mini games and these different paths. And it is developed by Arzest, which their most recent game, I believe, is Balan Wonder. Is it Balan Wonderworld or Balan Wonderland? I always forget the name, but it's the Balan game. The Balan game, which was not a good game. And Arzest, they also made a lot of Yoshi games that a lot of people don't like. They're not a highly regarded developer amongst a lot of people. But I felt this game was quite good. I was quite impressed with it.

[00:13:15] So hopefully the final version is just as good as the demo. Were you playing on the Switch? Were you playing on... No, it was PS5. Actually, last year, a funny story, I played Sonic Frontiers, which I assume was on a PC. And they gave me an Xbox 360 controller to play Sonic Frontiers. Oh, wow. Which I thought, this is so strange. Why do you have this controller here? And I asked other people and some said, oh, I had PS5. I had Xbox One or Xbox Series S at the time.

[00:13:42] But I drew the short stick and got the 360 controller. That's interesting. It's what we ran out of. We ran out of the new controller. So we have to dig in the box. Another game I wanted to talk about, I guess my other second big game, was Deca Police from Level 5. And this game is supposed to come out this year, but it does not have a date yet. I kind of wonder if today they're going to announce the date or if they're going to delay it. But it's a half a detective adventure game and half JRPG.

[00:14:11] So you play as a cop and half of the game, you're doing like these, I want to say kind of maybe Ace Attorney style investigations where you're going around and you're talking to people and they give you some information. And then there's a segment called the crime report. It's called a Jiken Report in Japanese, which I guess translates crime report. And so you take all the information you have and you kind of arrange it on this string board about who is connected to what, what fact associates with what person.

[00:14:41] So you need to do some deduction skills. And after that, after you kind of figure out who the criminal is, then you go into a JRPG battle. And it's ATB style. And the way the battles are, there's aggressive attacks and there's also mental attacks because the battle is also kind of like a story almost. It's not just you mindlessly pick attack. The first part, you are just attacking them with physical attacks, but then the enemy takes a hostage.

[00:15:09] So you can't use physical attacks. So you have to use these. I'm not sure what they're called, but the image is a brain. So I call them mind attacks or these non physical attacks to weaken the enemy. And when you do that, then you could go into like a sniper mode and you could snipe the weapon that the enemy has. You can snipe that weapon out of their hands so that we can free the hostage. And the battles end when you arrest them.

[00:15:36] You just hold triangle and they throw out these handcuffs, which looks kind of cool. And this demo was actually, it was 30 minutes long, which is double the normal demo length. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's long. Yeah. So it's 30 minutes or until you beat it. And it took me about 25 ish minutes to beat it, which is quite long because I think since the game has these two very distinct gameplay segments, they wanted people to get a feel about what's the flow of the game.

[00:16:04] Because if you just do the battle section, well, that's not the entire game. If you just do the deduction section, that's also not the entire game. The line looked short, but you're actually waiting much longer than you would expect because everybody is playing for about half an hour and they don't have as many demo booths there. Right. It was definitely quite cool. The graphics are really gorgeous. I played on PS5, but it is coming to the Switch. So hopefully the Switch version also looks quite nice. And this was a big return for level five in general.

[00:16:33] They had Deka Police. They had Inazuma 11. And they had Fantasy Life there as well for people to play. Did you stop by the level five booth at all? Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up. The level five booth just sort of blew me away. It was gigantic. Actually, it was huge. It was this giant white wall and a giant stage on there. And what to me, level five in terms of just there's a lot of swag that's given out of TGS, obviously.

[00:17:01] But level five is giving out this amazingly designed booklet that was laminated and had and was actually thick, too. It felt like an actual magazine of just past titles and sort of a celebration of some previous level five games on there. And just the quality of it just absolutely blew me away. You expect just sort of bags or maybe a one page pamphlet or something that. But something of this quality of them just giving it out. I'm holding it right now.

[00:17:30] And I'm just absolutely amazed that they were able to make something like this. It was awesome. Yeah, this is definitely the best thing I picked up in terms of freebies or swag. It's something they could easily sell. It's that high quality. And it has all the information about every single one of their games, even going back to Dark Cloud. And it's got these beautiful layouts, these really high-res photos and some articles and writing about the games. So if you're a hardcore level five fan, this is a really cool thing to have. Yeah, I was absolutely blown away.

[00:17:59] Yeah, level five's boot just out of there were a lot of big, impressive boots there. But if I had to choose one of the best for sure, level five definitely is up there. Were there any other gameplay demos that you wanted to touch on? The unfortunate thing is because it was so busy there. And I was sort of there with the intention to see certain clients. I didn't have as much time to go hands-on with demos as I wanted to.

[00:18:23] But based on what I saw and based on what people told me there as well, playing Persona 3 was a really, really, really good experience. The Hoyoverse booth and the games there were really good as well. And of course, the big one I think that everybody talks about that unfortunately I didn't get the chance to play was Final Fantasy VII. They had, I think, over 100 stations there.

[00:18:46] But even that being said, the line to go in was extremely, extremely long in order to get in there. But that's the unfortunate thing about these shows. You're not, you're just simply not going to get the time to go. And even if you plan out specifically one game you want to go and play, you're going to have to wait. And even then, you still might not have the opportunity to play it. It's just so many people there and so much interest in there.

[00:19:13] And obviously, Final Fantasy VII is extremely, extremely popular. So getting it is not guaranteed. So unfortunately, I didn't get to play as much as I wanted to. But based on what other people have told me who were able to go earlier on business days, those are the demos that were really, really good and sort of left a good impression. Yakuza, I heard, was very good too, actually. But I know somebody I talked to walked away particularly impressed in Final Fantasy and said the combat system felt great. The performance ran better.

[00:19:43] And he said just for some background, he was used to playing it on just a base PS4 model. Now it's on PS5. So it just runs better. Everything's smoother. The added horsepower really helps out. So he said that's one he's really looking forward to as well. Yeah, I had to pick a quote unquote game of the show. It was definitely Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. That was the one that got the most attention. The line was enormous. I can't even accurately describe how long the line was.

[00:20:09] And I think, I don't know if they used timed entry tickets as well, but when I was walking into TGS, I could see from the outside the line for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. For the people who were already there, for context, the line was going outside of one of the halls. So each hall is its own kind of bunker. And there's an area that's kind of a transition area where people typically rest. And I've never seen a line go outside of the hall into that area before. But Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the line was that long.

[00:20:37] And this is technically before he was even open. It was 10 a.m. and that line already existed. So I don't know how people got in there. It was insane. I saw some friends a little bit later and talked to them. And a few of them were in, what was the longest line you were in? And they said, oh, it was the Street Fighter line. I was there for a bit. And another person said, I literally spent my morning in the Final Fantasy line. And we all laughed. And then he said, no, I'm not joking.

[00:21:05] It was that packed and it was that crowded and stuff. But the power of Final Fantasy, I suppose. And the popularity of it, for sure. Yeah, it's pretty funny because we didn't even know the release date or that he would even appear at TGS until maybe a week or two ago. So people definitely heard about it and wanted to check it out. And yeah, the Square Enix booth in general was really cool because it was definitely heavily Final Fantasy VII Rebirth themed. They had these huge LED screens showing the trailers.

[00:21:34] And every now and then Sephiroth would appear. All the flames would light up the LED screens. And then One Winged Angel would play. It was really kind of oppressive and loud because you just don't expect Sephiroth to pop up and catch TGS on fire. That classic image of him with his standing in the flames and stuff like that. And it's so funny because you want everybody to keep moving because it's so crowded. You don't want people to stop, right? Yeah. If you're going to stop, you have to go in the booth.

[00:22:01] But I swear, every time I walk past that booth and that scene came up with Sephiroth, at least one or two people would just stop in their tracks. And we're just all inspired by this giant Sephiroth on the screen over there. It was so cool to see. Yeah, Square's booth, they had their own kind of mini museum. So even if you weren't playing a demo, you could still walk through their booth and see some cool stuff. They had this, I want to say maybe Lego or NanoBlock version of a city from Final Fantasy XIV.

[00:22:27] And they also had these foam stars, neon lights. They had these giant slime statues for Dragon Quest Monsters 3. They had Cloud's motorcycle from Final Fantasy VII there as well. They also had a small Star Ocean display of a costume from the game. And they had every Star Ocean game on display there. And also the Star Ocean 2 remake, special edition, which looks really cool to see in person. So even if you were not interested in playing Final Fantasy VII or couldn't get in the line,

[00:22:57] just walking through their booth was quite cool because it is a mini exhibit. It's so nice to see Star Ocean getting so much attention now. Yeah, definitely. Speaking of franchises that I thought I'd never see again. Oh, well, that's kind of nice to see. Very cool. Going back to gameplay demos a bit. Deca Police and Sonic Superstars were my two big ones, but I did play some smaller titles. I did go to the Konami booth not to play Metal Gear Solid, unfortunately, but I played Heberike 2, a.k.a. Euphoria the Saga. This is from Sunsoft. Yeah.

[00:23:27] So this is a remake of Euphoria the Saga for NES. And it's called Heberike 2 in Japanese. So this series, I guess, is kind of a cult hit because the original game did come to the West. And there's been a few games starring this character in Japan, but not recently. This is kind of its big comeback. And also recently, Sunsoft has kind of been, I guess, quote unquote, reborn. They've been putting out more titles recently. This is just a remake of the NES platformer. But what really stands out is the art style.

[00:23:57] It looks like it's kind of made out of felt or kind of made out of wool. It's very Yoshi inspired. That type of arts and crafts, handmade look. It looks really beautiful. The gameplay is pretty simple because it is an NES platformer. So you're just jumping on stuff. But I had fun with it. It looks really beautiful and it has a good sense of humor. The demo ends with you fighting your friend. And then you just jump on him. And then after you beat him up, the fireworks go off.

[00:24:24] And then 8-bit versions of the original graphics start appearing in the fireworks. So it just seems like a very silly kind of game. So if you're into that, it is coming to the West next year. So it's something to look out for. I also played a few other indie games. I played, I'm looking at the leaflet now because it has a strange name. It's Kamikara no Shizuku. And this is an indie game from a company called Rabbitly. And it's a 2D 8-bit, maybe action game or also a bit of platforming. But you play as a fox, a kitsune.

[00:24:55] And then you can transform into other characters. So I could transform into a girl who had a sword. And then I fought some ogres. And pretty straightforward gameplay. But the graphics look really nice. It has this really beautiful 2D pixel art. In the indie game section, it's always fun to just walk around and see, OK, what game can I discover when I'm walking around here? Because, of course, I made a plan to play Sonic Superstars. But I also want to discover games at Tokyo Game Show and see, oh, I've never seen this before.

[00:25:23] It's a great way for indie game developers to get a lot of eyes on the game, even if they can't play the demo booth. Yeah, especially in Japan as well. There's several events that, in my opinion, really give indie developers the opportunity to kind of showcase and to kind of put their game up front with the public. BitSummit is definitely one of them that comes to mind that takes place a little bit earlier in the year, in the summer. But TGS as well, and especially this year. I know last year was a bit odd because we were still,

[00:25:51] I believe, TGS last year was happening before Japan officially opened the borders or announced the opening of them. Maybe. Yeah, the numbers weren't quite there. But this year as well, it was so nice to see so many people stop by the boots and just talking to several of the developers there. They said it was much busier than they expected. But of course, that's a good problem to have, you know, when you're showcasing your game for sure. And I think one last game I played is Machikoro. And this is based off of a board game, which is from Japan.

[00:26:21] And I think it is quite popular because they have international versions as well. I won't get into the rules, but it's a pretty straightforward card slash board game. The fun thing for me, though, is that I got to play it on the Steam Deck. And this is actually my first time ever playing a Steam Deck, believe it or not. Oh, nice. So it was fun to, oh, it's real. I can actually play it. You can buy a Steam Deck in Japan online through the official website, but it is quite expensive. So just playing something on the Steam Deck was really fun for me. It's kind of a similar situation for me.

[00:26:50] It was my first time they were playing the Asus, the ROG Ally. Oh, yes, yes. I actually own a Steam Deck and the Ally kind of came out afterwards. And some people have said, oh, it's a little bit better. It's lighter and stuff like that. But it's so hard to kind of comprehend or just for that to register without you actually physically holding the device or playing a game on there. And so I was kind of blown away by just how light it was compared to the Steam Deck because the Steam Deck is pretty heavy. And it's nice to have, but to carry it around and pack it on

[00:27:19] when you're taking flights and stuff like that, it's a bit bulky. But the ROG Ally was very lightweight and stuff like that. So interesting to hold for sure. Yeah, the Steam Deck looks something that you would put on a rocket ship to control the oxygen or something. It has this very distinct industrial clunky design. But it felt fine to me. But yeah, it is heavy, especially compared to the Switch. Oh, yeah. And TGS is not just about playing games. It's also about walking around and seeing statues and other weird things.

[00:27:48] What kind of fun stuff did you bump into in walking the halls of TGS? I mean, one of the, I guess, obvious ones was it was the day for cosplayers to be there yesterday. So to see a lot of the people dressing up and cosplaying just well-known characters, in some cases, super obscure characters, that obviously was really cool. So one of the things, it really wasn't as much of a display. It was sort of a hybrid game, I guess.

[00:28:16] And I've seen this appear at other shows before in Japan. So it was really surprising to see it show up at TGS as well. It was this game where you use a mannequin head as the controller. I don't know if you saw that. I've seen it before, but I've never played it. Yeah, it's just insane. It's some fever dream. Because everywhere I go in Japan, I see this thing. And it's never where you think it should be. And this isn't to criticize the people behind this thing at all. I think it's great. But it's never where you think it should be.

[00:28:45] Oh, it's obviously going to be in the indie section. No, it's between D3 and Asus. It's right in between there. There's people waving their head around and shooting lasers with it. So that was really cool as well. I think one of the things that I thought was also really interesting is, and I don't quite remember it last year, for the official merchandise, for TGS, like the t-shirts and things like that, it was actually spread out in more than one area. It seemed that every area there had a location that was equally crowded,

[00:29:15] the line wrapped around the booth. But you were able to kind of get the sort of official TGS merchandise and stuff that there. So I thought that was cool as well to kind of just see it everywhere. Yeah, for me, I'm looking at my photos now to refresh my memory about what kind of weird stuff I saw. I saw Real Life Sonic. He was walking around. Oh, I missed him. I know other people saw him, but I missed him yesterday. The second booth also had a really cool Aegis statue from Persona 3. So a lot of people were taking a picture of that.

[00:29:43] I saw the Real Life Morgana from Persona 5. And the Tekken booth, it had a big statue of, I don't know if it's Kuma, the panda bear one. I don't know what the name is. He's front and center. Yeah, he's front and center. And next to Panda were these two actual women dressed up as other characters from Tekken doing Kung Fu poses, which was really fun. And a fun piece of swag is that they gave out a panda fan, like a shape like Panda's face. I was looking through pictures too.

[00:30:12] And they were there last year, but I thought it was especially interesting this year. The company, Nitori, they had a whole booth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, me and my friends always joke around, it's Nitori Gaming over there. And I'm just like, why do they have such a big booth? It's just basically a desk and for gaming chairs and just equipment and things like that. But it's so funny to see them nestled between every other thing that it's so odd to see. For people living outside Japan, Nitori is basically just a general store to buy furniture

[00:30:40] and home stuff like that. Japanese IKEA, I bet. Yeah, yeah. It would be like going to PAX and seeing a big IKEA. But actually, no, I think there was an IKEA booth there as well, next to the ACES booth or something like that. So it's just so weird to see that. I don't know why you're here, but I guess it's good you are. I guess, I don't know. Some other fun statues. I saw a tank from Sandland. So this is from Akira Toriyama.

[00:31:07] So it's cool to see Akira Toriyama's iconic machines in person. Some other fun stuff. Oh, Takahashi Meijin was there as well. Listeners, if you don't know who this is, originally he used to work at Hudson Soft and he became sort of a pseudo celebrity through that. And also he's very famous for his, it's called 16 shot finger, where his finger speed, his trigger finger speed is unbelievably fast in terms of like button mashing. So he's been in a lot of commercials

[00:31:36] and a lot of things showing off his fast fingers. But he was there and I did see him use his finger a little bit, but he had a watermelon there. So I was thinking, is he going to break the watermelon with his finger? But sadly he did not. But it's very fun. Just when you're walking around, you never know what you're going to see. You might see a celebrity. You might see a cosplayer. There was one booth there that really took me by surprise, but they had a booth that was set up a mini military base for Escape from Tarkov.

[00:32:05] Yeah, I saw that too. Yeah. And then people like, what is that? I'm like, that's a really brutal extraction shooter. One hit, you lose everything. And they're like, is it popular in Japan? I thought, no, but it was so odd to see just full cosplay people there in a giant booth. And then what are they promoting? Apparently nothing. There's no game ready. I guess you need to get your name out there somehow. I don't know. There's always weird things to bump into, even things you might not think are popular in Japan.

[00:32:35] Some other cool booths, I saw the booth for Omega 6, which is a game from Takaya Imamura, who is a very famous artist at Nintendo. He designed the characters for Star Fox and F-Zero. And his new game has that exact same art style. The characters look like they could be from F-Zero. Some other fun stuff, there's a big dragon for Dragon's Dogma 2. There was a samurai girl statue for Fate Remnant Samurai. I forget the name, but the Fate game. Yeah. Also saw, Konami had their huge booth, but Momotaro Dentetsu World

[00:33:04] had its own special little area that was kind of themed like an airport. Yeah, I saw that. This game is hugely popular in Japan. And it's kind of funny to think about, oh, this is the game that might outsell every other game here, at least in Japan, if the sales for Momotaro Dentetsu World are as good as the other Switch game. So it's kind of funny to think about that. Final Fantasy VII has this huge booth, but if we're talking purely about Japanese sales, this small Konami game might top it.

[00:33:35] That's crazy. In a good way, though. I like that. Yes. Koei Tecmo, a big part of their booth was dedicated to the mobile Atelier game. And the cool thing is that they had a bunch of Atelier cosplayers there so you could see them. I saw a hologram girl in the indie section. I'm not sure what game. I'm sorry, listeners, but there was a hologram girl that I bumped into. And some other, yes, some people had cool booth designs. This game called Yasha Demon Blade. It was shaped like a big Tori gate.

[00:34:05] Yeah, I saw that one. Which was really, really cool. It's always fun to see these very small games you've never heard of have these very elaborate booth designs. Did you see the Earth Defense Force booth that they had over there? No. What was there? Yeah, it's for their, I guess, spinoff series, but I guess it's not even a spinoff series anymore since it's getting a sequel. It's called the World Brothers series. And basically, it's a Minecraft version of Earth Defense Force. So it's still the same gameplay. You're fighting off waves of giant insects, but a very blocky style,

[00:34:34] which allows you to kind of customize and build your loadouts and your mechs and everything. But basically, what it was, it was a giant, it just looked like a giant wall collapsing and just some blocky ants coming through. And then every, seemingly at random intervals, the cannon there would just explode steam everywhere. And it just, it was so startling because I'm trying to talk to people. The cannon would be going off in the background and I'm just, I'm sorry, we're under attack. We have to wait a second here before we can continue. Yeah, that really, I thought that was an impressive booth. Did you see

[00:35:04] the Google Play booth? I thought I, Yeah, that was a huge area. It was giant. Yeah, it occupied, it almost seemed a fourth of that whole area back there. But on the inside of it, it was set up like a summer festival. There were just a lot of booths that where you could play little mini games and stuff like that. So it was, it was this weird, almost juxtaposition of this giant, techno giant, big streaming screen background. And just these little quaint summer stands in the middle of it and stuff like that.

[00:35:33] These two ideas clashing, but yet somehow they made it work. So that was interesting as well. Yeah. And I guess before we should wrap up, I have to ask you, did you see the Colonel Sanders statue? No, I did not see it. Somebody told me about it though and I thought he was just misinterpreted. The Colonel from Metal Gear, I'm just like, no, I didn't see a statue there. Where was the Colonel at? It was kind of weirdly hidden. It was at the Square Enix booth, but it was on the outside of the booth. It's very easy to miss actually. I was specifically looking for it, so that's how I found it.

[00:36:03] But I can understand people are totally missing it if they didn't know. But listeners, in Japan, it's very common for KFCs to have some sort of Colonel Sanders statue where he's just standing upright. And this one was decorated with a Final Fantasy XIV theme. So it was a black mage Colonel Sanders. So he had a black mage hat and he had a staff and he was holding a Moogle. Oh my God. I'm so disappointed I missed this. I need to post it on Twitter, actually. I haven't posted it yet. It's a very funny statue. So it's just,

[00:36:33] you never know what you're going to see at TGS. We didn't get to everything, of course, but hopefully we gave listeners a good view of TGS. Mr. Knives, where can people find you? You can find me mainly in two places. You can find me on Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it nowadays. I can't keep up. You can find me on there and you can find me on Twitch as well. Generally, I stream more on the weekends in Japanese time but for those

[00:37:03] who watch me in the States, it's usually Friday night and it's usually either a combination of playing older games, retro games or retro FPS games specifically. I also do interviews with other people in the gaming industry as well. So it's always a good time. It's a very comfy community that we've worked hard to build so it would be great if you guys drop by and see you guys again. Awesome. And the links to everything will be in the podcast description so listeners, check it out.

[00:37:32] Mr. Knives, once again, thanks for joining me. Thank you. It's an honor to be on here. Thank you so much for having me on. Let's take a brief ad break. And we're back with another great episode of Hold Your Horses, mister. This is a commercial for our show Nasty Labs, not the actual show. You mean to tell me this is a commercial for our bi-weekly show from Game Studio Chuhai Labs where we talk about games, game dev, Japan, and whatever else comes up. Yep, and it stars me, Kinsey Burke. And also it has my junior co-host,

[00:38:02] Mark Lentz. Sup though? So catch brand new episodes twice monthly for only three easy payments of 4-20-69. That doesn't make sense. Nasty Labs, only on the Tokyo Beat Network. Before I wrap up the feature section, I visited yet another pop-up shop. This time it was the Splatoon 3 and Zozo Town collaboration event in Shibuya. The gimmick is that Zozo Town, which is a huge Japanese fashion brand, is making real-life versions of Splatoon 3 gear. Shoes,

[00:38:32] clothes, hats, etc. that look exactly like stuff from the game. Maybe the most iconic piece are the pink trainers, those bright pink sneakers. But there is a cyan version as well. But don't you want the pink one instead? I mean, that's the shoe. My favorite though, the thing that I can't believe they made in real life, is the Apex sweater. Look this thing up if you've never seen it, but it's very difficult to describe. Imagine if you melted a bunch of crayons onto a sweater. But I did wear it often in Splatoon 3 because it had the

[00:39:02] thermal ink ability which fit my build. The pop-up shop was held in, honestly, I don't know how to pronounce it, but it was written as HZ. It's right across the street from Parko Shibuya, home of Nintendo Tokyo. I saw some pictures of the event online and I assumed it was quite small, but no, it was far bigger than your typical pop-up shop, at least in size. And unlike a lot of pop-up shops, you can't just stroll in there. It was wildly popular, so in order to get inside, you had to get a dreaded timed entry ticket. I lined up at 1130,

[00:39:32] got my ticket at 1150, which allowed me to enter the shop at 140, a two-hour wait, which wasn't terrible since I could just go and get lunch and come back. But still, I was really expecting just to pop in here for 10 minutes and split. But outside of the hassle of entering the shop, the Zozo Town collab was indeed quite awesome. It invokes the feeling of stepping inside the game and it isn't just a pop-up shop with a bunch of merch. It feels like a big exhibit of sorts. You've got the blue and yellow piping, chain-link fences, traffic cones, lockers.

[00:40:01] They did an excellent job mimicking the atmosphere of the game. When you enter, there's an immediate photo op of some inkling standees. Then the shop is kind of like a big oval where you follow a path. You pass by the clothing, which you can buy, but can't really try on in the store. It's not like there's a changing room. So you've got to hope that the M-size sweater fits you. Not sure how the shoes work, maybe it's also just SML and you've got to pray your feet fall into one of those categories. The staff are also wearing the clothes so you can get a feel on how they look on an actual person.

[00:40:31] But Zozo Town is a well-known and highly regarded brand in Japan, so I doubt this stuff is lower than their typical standard. The Apex sweater, for example, was 9,980 yen, as were the shoes, so you won't be walking out of here with a $20 t-shirt if you do decide to buy something. So it's certainly a bigger commitment. I didn't buy anything, but I didn't walk out empty-handed. Once you pass the clothing area, there's a small section of lockers that look like they're straight from the game. One is just filled with squid plushies, another has weapons, and those inflatable

[00:41:01] squid targets. They're all adorned with stickers from the game too, which I wish they would sell. The main photo op area lets you pose with some Splatoon weapons. Once you're done with the photo op, the final part is a real-life shell-out machine, aka a giant gachapon machine. I was surprised that it was totally free. I would have paid to have a go at it. Also, if you check in via the My Nintendo app, you can get a free sticker, which, of course I did. I got a keychain out of the shell-out machine, so no lucky-duck prize, but I can't turn down a free keychain.

[00:41:31] The person who had me won a shirt though, so I guess I was too slow. So I got a free sticker, a keychain, and they give you a catalog of all the collaboration merch. This thing is really nice. It's filled with 40 or so pages of professional photo shoots of models wearing the clothing. The index also has QR codes that takes you to the website in case you regret not buying anything. Although the pop-up shop is limited and hard to get into, you can actually just buy this stuff online via Zozo Town's website, but it's more fun to see in person. If you're listening to this podcast, well,

[00:42:01] the pop-up shop is over, but I am hoping that we see some fun new marketing collabs when Side Order comes out next year. That's it for the feature. Now for the games. Nintendo doesn't have any big first-party release for September, but it does have two smaller yet still exciting offerings. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, the hidden treasure of Area Zero Part 1, the Teal Mask, yes, that is the full name, and F-099.

[00:42:30] I've been spending time with both, so let's get into some impressions. Let's start with the Teal Mask from Game Freak. It's the first piece of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet DLC, not too dissimilar from the DLC content Sword and Shield got. Gone are the third versions. Instead, we have these smaller gameplay segments, yet with completely new content. I was never a big third version guy, especially in the days when I didn't have a whole lot of money. Buying nearly an exact same copy of a game wasn't really a huge selling point. I do prefer the DLC strategy Pokemon is implemented in the Switch generation.

[00:43:01] It allows for a lot more flexibility in terms of what they design, and it gives players way more new content compared to just a souped up third game. In the Teal Mask, you travel to Kitakami, a small island heavily influenced by rural Japan. Why are we going to the Japanese countryside in a game themed around Spain? I don't know, but also, I don't care. No offense to Spain, but this is far more my type of aesthetic. I'm still a little shell-shocked that they moved Pokemon outside of Japan, but I guess they

[00:43:30] already covered most of it, right? It's a completely disconnected adventure from the main game, but since the Pokemon here are around level 70, it's definitely targeted to those who have completed the story. And the story in the Teal Mask is pretty straightforward. You're selected to go to Kitakami on a trip, you meet some new characters, discover the local legends, and then you fight and or collect Pokemon. The structure is not vastly different from the main game. The DLC for Sword and Shield were a bit unique in a way, since those were structured almost like wild areas

[00:44:00] and gave you way more freedom in terms of exploration. They basically were the predecessor to the Scarlet and Violet format. But since Scarlet and Violet is already open world, well, the DLC doesn't really stray away from that. You're on a small self-contained island, but you're free to go anywhere, you want. You could easily just completely ignore the story and wander around collecting Pokemon. It's sort of shaped like a big donut with a huge mountain in the middle. Most of the island is filled with grassy plains, so not a whole lot of variety in terms of the biomes,

[00:44:29] but I think the game does a great job in making you feel like you were in the Japanese countryside. The main little town, Mosui Town, looks and feels exactly like a small town that's also kind of a tourist hotspot. The community center, the traditional houses, the old-style shops selling snacks, as somebody who's been to a lot of these places in Japan, it's very cool to see it represented in a game. The big festival event is also pretty authentic to what you would find in Japan, but in real life, they're way bigger and have about 10 times as

[00:44:58] many people. I should get into it now. While the DLC feels somewhat like a Johto expansion to the game. You've got the traditional Japanese look and a lot of the Gen 2 Pokemon appear here as well. All the new Pokemon are themed around Japanese culture too. You could easily slide this into Johto without it feeling out of place. Is this a hint towards yet another gold and silver remake? Probably not, but I would not complain if we got a full-fledged remake of Gen 2 every 10 years. But they have a lot to live up to after HeartGold and SoulSilver,

[00:45:28] aka the best Pokemon games. The story segments mostly just have you bounce around the island, talking to characters, and then engaging in boss battles. Yes, there are quite a few Titan fights, so get ready for those. The story surrounding the new Pokemon is heavily inspired by the Japanese fable Momotaro, something literally everybody in Japan knows. Till Mask has a fun twist on the story, which I assume had to have been done before, but I thought it was executed in a really fun way. The story both wraps up and doesn't, as it does lead directly into the

[00:45:58] second piece of DLC content, and it has a big to-be-continued screen on top of that. Some Eagle Eye fans also noticed hints towards a Pokemon not in the game yet, and there have been data mines that Kitakami will get even more content once that second piece of DLC drops. Now, I love the theming of the island, but the layout kind of has the same problem as Scarlet and Violet. Traversing it isn't interesting, and there's no real landmarks to help guide you. This is made doubly frustrating with the fact that the center of the map has a giant mountain

[00:46:27] that's hard to actually see because the camera doesn't tilt up that much. So when you're climbing it, you're just kind of looking at the cliff face hoping you're going up. I just think moving around the world in this game is kind of mindless in general. Your ride can easily clear any obstacle with little thought. It doesn't matter if something is a mountain or a river or high or low. Compared to Zelda, where you have a ton of versatile movement options, yet still need to carefully consider how you move and traverse the region. I know comparing any open world game to Zelda

[00:46:56] is a bit unfair, but it does feel like Game Freak thought, okay, it's open world now and that's all we need. But there are a few sidequests well hidden in the world, which is something different from the main game. I know quest logs are more convenient, but I do like the classic Pokemon sidequests where you need to pay attention to what the character says. It feels much more integrated into the world and doesn't feel like checkboxing. Before we wrap up, my team was Cloth, who I brought over from the main game. Poltergeist, which is easily one of the best Pokemon ever, Houndoom, Quagsire,

[00:47:26] Diplin, which is another new Pokemon, and Yanmega, which I've never really used before but always wanted to try out. So a good mix of new Pokemon and Gen 2 Pokemon to further emphasize the Johto-ness of the DLC. If you didn't like Scarlet and Violet, I don't think this DLC is going to radically change anything. I didn't feel like it was a marked improvement over the base game. It's really just more of the same. If you did like SV, well, here's more of it with a stellar Japanese aesthetic. If you're kind of on the fence about the DLC, I would hold off

[00:47:56] until Part 2 comes out. Realistically, there's about 5-7 hours of content here, which isn't a whole lot for a $35 piece of content. Not sure if Indigo Disk will be bigger or about the same. I don't think there is a need to rush out and get it right now unless you badly want Poltergeist, which I do understand if you do. But for those who do have the DLC, I think this is a pretty solid start. F-0-99. It's a real game. The first new F-0 title since 2004's F-0 Climax on GBA,

[00:48:26] a game that did not come out in the States. I would say that this was a completely out of nowhere announcement, but Puro did leak it. Even knowing F-0-99 was coming, it was so hard to picture exactly what it would be. But it's right there in the name, an F-0 race with 99 participants all at the same time. Now, the fourth entry in the 99 series, after Tetris, Pac-Man, and Mario 35, yes, I'm counting it, unlike the other titles that were developed by Arika, this is being handled by NST,

[00:48:55] aka Nintendo Software Technology. You could consider this to be the American development branch of Nintendo, but that sounds a bit lofty, but they have developed titles like Wave Race Blue Storm, Teneti Avalanche, and hey, the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, which is going to show up later in the podcast. They've never touched F-0 before, so they are a somewhat surprising pick. The game is as straightforward as it can be. You're in a race with 98 others, and you do the best you can. Get first preferably, but admittedly, it's not something

[00:49:25] I've pulled off yet. It mimics the look of the original SNES game, which at first I thought was a bit odd, but again, that is likely the highest-selling F-0 title, right? It was an important early SNES game and showcased the incredible Mode 7 technology, which simulated 3D gameplay. But it's not just the SNES title with 98 other racers, there are some new features. The most notable being the Skyway, a track above the surface with no obstacles that you can access after collecting enough energy. How do you get energy? Bumping into other racers,

[00:49:55] which is pretty easy to do, since there's a hundred of them. There are also special bumper cars that appear on the course that give you a lot of energy, and you can do a spin move that can knock racers away, and everyone spams it during the first jump. The appeal of seeing a hundred other people racing against you never gets old. It's just so silly to see dozens of cars on your screen all clanging into each other as they're trying to make these turns. As the race goes on, they'll start exploding, leaving black marks on the map that makes it feel like you're driving through a war zone. I'm sure min-maxing

[00:50:24] aggression so you can get on the Skyway is a major part of the meta, but you're going to get ahead of the pack via pure F-0 skills. Making those tight turns, knowing when to use ahead of the pack. One of the calling cards of F-0 is that your health bar and your boost power are the same, so you need to carefully consider this before you wantonly boost. Couple this mechanic with dozens of other people trying to ram you, and one bad boost can easily spell your doom. But even if you lose, it's still fun, and you'll be back

[00:50:54] in another race in about a minute or so. And that's an important thing about all battle royales is that it should be thrilling to win, but also fun to lose. I think F-0-99 captures that spirit with its quick and intense gameplay, and the fact that you're not going to instantly get eliminated unless you horribly mess up. They've tried to diversify the gameplay as much as possible. There's the single F-0-99 race, three track races, five track Grand Prix's, and even a team battle where half is on one side and the rest on the other, and you vie for first place. I'm honestly not sure

[00:51:24] how this is calculated or even if you can effectively work as a team. But again, it's very surreal to have a team F-0 race. But I think most players will stick with the one-race mode and grind out unlockables like car colors and things for your pilot card. Currently, there are only four cars available, but even one car can look very different due to the color swaps in decals. I have a really rad-looking white fire stingray, so look out for me on the tracks. Speaking of looks, the menus have the comic art style from the original game, which is very fun to see in high definition.

[00:51:54] It's hard to say how long this game will last. Pac-Man 99 shut down after two years, which wasn't a bad run. Tetris 99 is still going, but the core gameplay of Tetris is so timeless that I can totally see people constantly playing it. But I think this is a very smart move to revive F-0 that's fairly low stakes. I was expecting a remaster of GX, and while that would satiate a lot of people, I don't know how many people are going to become fans of the franchise after jumping into the hardest entry. F-0 99 though,

[00:52:23] you get the appeal immediately after one race. If enough people play this, maybe Nintendo will see the potential for the franchise and put out another retail game. But for now, it's fun to see so many people get into F-0. Is this the most amount of people playing F-0 at the same time? It has to be, right? If you have NSO, well, there's no reason not to try it. Even if you're not an F-0 fan, the spectacle is worth experiencing. That's it for games. Now for the news.

[00:52:57] A bunch of crazy news items this week, but really, I just want to talk about the Nintendo Direct. Sorry, dozens of other announcements. Nintendo had their fabled September General Direct highlighting the holiday games and quite a few early 2024 titles. It definitely had a big we are working on Switch 2 vibes, but there are still plenty of games that are coming out. We've had years where we literally had no idea about their Q1 calendar, but now we have a pretty clear picture. The biggest announcement was easily a remake of Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door,

[00:53:27] a classic Intelligent Systems RPG. I want to say a remaster has been rumored forever, but that may have just been wishful thinking. This is a full-blown remake with HD graphics and maybe some other notable changes. This is a great game, but I much prefer the original Paper Mario, which is one of my personal favorite games ever. A from-the-ground-up remake of Paper Mario 64 is by far my most-wanted remake out of any game ever, so it was kind of bittersweet to see that they are just skipping that and giving the second game the remake treatment. I even think a remake

[00:53:56] of Super Paper Mario is now more likely than 64, considering that game is available on NSO. Is it weird that we're getting two Mario RPG remakes within a year? Yes, but I can't complain. There were no Mario and Luigi titles on the Switch, so we gotta make up that ground somewhere. Other big Nintendo announcements, let's just go around the horn. Splatoon 3's DLC, Side Order, will launch in spring of 2024, which is much later than I expected. I thought for sure that it was a 2023 title, but if it needs more time in the oven, so be it.

[00:54:26] The trailer is appropriately mysterious, but we do actually see gameplay of Agent 8 fighting waves of these translucent skeletonfish. Nintendo did say that it was designed to be played over and over again, so I am thinking that it is going to be similar to a roguelike. We see the player equipping color palettes that give buffs and numbers flying off enemies, which we never see in the main game. So there might be a heavier emphasis on min-maxing your damage output. No matter the premise, I have a lot of confidence that the game will be absolutely fantastic and a legit game of the year contender.

[00:54:55] It is probably my most anticipated title of 2024, if we're being honest. There are some fun story teases in there as well, like a Pearl drone, and Deadfish also appears under the name Oct, so they are making some deliberate callbacks to Octo, which has me excited. Hey, remember when NST put out F-099? Well, they are also going to put out Mario vs. Donkey Kong, a remake of the original GBA title. I've never touched this series, but I do like Donkey Kong 94, and the Mario vs. DK franchise is supposed to be

[00:55:24] the spiritual successor. A lot of people say the first game is actually just Donkey Kong 94-2, while the others are a bit more like Lemmings. I wonder why they decided to remake this over DK 94, which I would say has a stronger reputation, but if you can put the word Mario on the box, you might as well do it. It comes out February 16th, filling out that Q1 calendar. A big surprise was Another Code Recollection, a remake of the original DS and Wii titles, the latter of which never came to the States.

[00:55:54] Again, another series I haven't touched, but it is a puzzle adventure game not too dissimilar from Leighton. The original developer was Sing, also known for Hotel Dusk, a game I really enjoyed, but they're not around anymore, so I have no idea who could be developing this title. Is it Grezzo? Grezzo has to be on something. The thing that sticks out is how gorgeous the game is. It has a beautiful cel-shaded art style with a soft color palette. I'm not really into these types of games, but the art style alone has me interested. Plus, it easily has one of the best

[00:56:23] box arts of the Switch era, so look up this beauty if you haven't seen it yet. The game will be out on January 19th. And we finally got a name for Princess Peach's game, Princess Peach Showtime. The premise is that Peach attends a stage show, things go awry, and it's up to Peach to save the day via costume changes. Much like Kirby, she gets specific powers based on her costume, and the gameplay is centered around that. We saw Swordfighter Peach, Detective Peach, Patissier Peach, and Kung Fu Peach. A very unique concept for a Peach title,

[00:56:53] and I'm really wondering how all the gameplay styles gel together. Swordfighter and Kung Fu seem like action stages, but the Detective Peach portion looks like it focuses on puzzle elements, and Patissier Peach gives me big Mario Party minigame vibes. Is every segment of the game going to be radically different? It does remind me a bit of Luigi's Vention 3, where every floor had its own distinct setting and challenges, but here every level you enter seems to be much more diverse. I wonder what the bulk of the gameplay is actually going to be. Is it just a 3D action platformer

[00:57:23] where you're just mowing down enemies? But hopefully this game is good and a hit. Peach having her own distinct series like Luigi would be fantastic. Again, who is developing this? Grezzo? Is it you, Grezzo? It could be next level games, which would make a lot of sense considering how they've handled the Luigi's Vention series, but maybe they are working on Luigi's Vention 2 remake instead? I don't get why Nintendo is so secretive about developers sometimes, but Showtime will be out on March 22nd.

[00:57:52] Speaking of Luigi's Vention 2, it is coming out next summer, which is way later than I thought. It's simply titled Luigi's Vention 2 HD, so they got rid of the US-exclusive subtitle. It's a pretty good game, but 3 is just so much better. I don't think this would be the last random 3DS game to get an HD version on the Switch, though. We also got the final piece of Mario Kart 8 DLC featuring, yes, finally, Diddy Kong! And they didn't stop there. Funky Kong has returned, and they added Pauline and Peachette.

[00:58:21] If they just added one of these, I would be happy, but to go 4 for 4 like that is just crazy. I fully expect to see an all-Funky Kong race soon. Man, is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe one of the best packages ever? With the DLC, you have dozens and dozens of tracks, plus a ton of racers, including many fan favorites. I have to wonder what could they possibly be cooking up for Mario Kart 9, because 8 Deluxe is going to be incredibly hard to top. A bunch of other third-party games were shown off, but the only one that really spoke to me

[00:58:49] was Unicorn Overlord from Vanillaware. They're boldly claiming it to be the rebirth of strategy RPGs, and I'm here for it. Aesthetically, it looks very Final Fantasy Tactics-inspired, but with the striking art style Vanillaware is known for. It's a little hard to get a sense of the gameplay. There is a town, there's overworld exploration, and you seemingly fight on the overworld as well, but then it transitions into battles that look very similar to Ogre Battle 64. It's a bit hard to parse, but it looks incredibly ambitious.

[00:59:19] It's not just a bunch of characters on grids, though there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It comes out in March, which, hey, is very soon. 13 Sentinels was announced in 2015 and released in 2019 for reference, so a six-month turnaround is much, much better. Not the greatest Nintendo Direct, but not bad. I mean, there are games to play. Let's look at the next six months. September had the Pokemon DLC and F-099. October has Mario Wonder. November has WarioWare

[00:59:48] and Super Mario RPG. December, nothing, but I bet the second wave of Pokemon DLC and probably that last piece of Mario Kart 8 DLC will come out then. January is another code. February is Mario vs. DK. March is Princess Peach. This is not counting a bunch of interesting upcoming third-party titles like Unicorn Overlord, Star Ocean 2, Prince of Persia, and so on. Yes, it is very remake-heavy, but Switch still has a vibrant release calendar. I am fully expecting

[01:00:18] that there will be a healthy flow of first-party Switch titles up to the Switch 2's release and even beyond. On that note, let's wrap up. Thanks as always for listening. Be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app. Leave a 5-star review as well. It helps with visibility. This podcast is also available on YouTube, so like and subscribe there as well. I'm on Twitter and Instagram. Just search for Tokyo Game Life or find the links in the podcast description. If you like the podcast, be sure to share it with your friends or on social media. If there's anything you want me to talk about or cover,

[01:00:47] don't be shy. Just message me on Twitter. The next episode will be on October 8th. See you next time. Matane! Matane! Matane!