Nintendo in 2024 Predictions with Dale Plays Games, Pokemon SV: The Indigo Disk, Earthbound Pop Up Shops

[00:00:00] Welcome Tokyo Game Life, a Tokyo-based video game podcast focusing on Nintendo and gaming

[00:00:14] culture in Japan's capital.

[00:00:16] Your host Mono here to bring you a slice of gaming life from Tokyo.

[00:00:20] Today, I'm joined by fellow Tokyo resident Dale from Dale Play's Games as we dish out

[00:00:24] more than some predictions for

[00:01:42] tears of the kingdom. I'm going to be honest for Nintendo in 2024. Okay, first prediction, probably the biggest one to start with. 2024 will be the year of Donkey Kong. I've got a few reasons for that. As I'm sure most of our listeners know, the Donkey Kong expansion is coming to Universal Studios next year. Yes. And Donkey Kong is an IP that in the gaming space at least has been pretty quiet for some time.

[00:04:02] DK showing up back in the spotlight.

[00:04:05] Do you think we might get a DK game in 2024?

[00:04:06] I think we might.

[00:04:12] If not 2024, 2025 in the next few years, not produced by retro studios,

[00:04:16] probably a Japanese developer or a developer we haven't considered yet.

[00:04:19] And I think it will give us something different that we haven't seen from Donkey Kong before.

[00:04:20] I like Donkey Kong Country, fair enough, but I'm more of a Donkey Kong arcade

[00:04:24] kind of person.

[00:04:25] I like the city aesthetic.

[00:05:26] Mario Kart will hit Switch 2 next year in 2024 and it will have a track editor. You will be able to make your own Mario Kart tracks in the game and share them.

[00:05:31] The reasoning for this, of course, this is kind of a dual prediction.

[00:05:34] Mario Kart 9 or 10 or whatever number they give to it.

[00:05:38] On Switch 2 is, that's a prediction in itself and I think a pretty safe prediction.

[00:05:42] Eventually we will see another Mario Kart up with. Speaking of Mario Kart and what a gimmick could be,

[00:07:01] I mean, we've had Double Dash with two players.

[00:07:04] We've had Anti-G courses in Mario Kart 8 if you count the deluxe courses and also the booster course pass You know you might think okay. Well is the next Mario Kart going to have over 96 courses and it might So that's what kind of led me to the track editor idea where okay? What's bigger than 96 how about technically infinity if people keep making courses?

[00:08:21] But your idea of also kind of taking existing courses and kind of remixing them movie that's coming and in general It's just been a good time for adaptations of games. You had the Last of Us TV series also very well received We've got a fallout series on the horizon for next year Not direct adaptations of games, but we also had Tetris and Gran Turismo, which were also quite

[00:09:41] Well received and what all of these properties have in common Knowing that illumination is owned by Universal, the same company that has no problems with putting out a fast and the furious movie every other year, I think they are gonna be pressuring Nintendo hard

[00:11:00] to make more and more adaptations of games.

[00:11:02] So I think it's inevitable.

[00:11:05] Yeah, I think that's definitely gonna be the next wave

[00:11:07] because Mario was such a huge success. kids from all over the world because you don't need to know a specific language to enjoy it. It's all done through physical comedy or physical action. So I think taking that and expanding it to even like a 15 minute or 20 minute show where it's depicting in their in nature and they're doing fun things, maybe with very little dialogue or almost no dialogue, I think it would be a popular

[00:12:21] show on streaming services, especially since there's a lot of kid oriented programming

[00:12:26] on these streaming services that are pretty popular. in 2024. I do think it will be animated. I can't really see them going to another studio to make it since they are so tied in with illumination and Chris Melisandre, I forget his name. Me, Miro always calls him Chris Sun. So I always think of him as Chris Sun, but since Chris Sun is on the board of Nintendo, I don't think they will step out of the illumination world and go to

[00:13:43] another animation studio. So I definitely think illumination will eventually make a 2024. Yeah, I completely agree with you there. I hadn't even considered a Splatoon adaptation, and that's because we're old school. I think of Donkey Kong because that was my childhood. That's what I want. But yeah, the young people here, especially in Japan, the kids, they absolutely adore and love Splatoon. Same with animal crossing too. Even a serialized or feature length adaptation

[00:15:02] of animal crossing, for the same reasons

[00:15:04] you said about Splatoon could happen.

[00:15:06] I love the idea of Splatoon more. Third prediction is about Pokemon. We're going back to Unova. Yeah, as we're going to talk more about Indigo Disk later, but that game does take place in Unova, the Blueberry Academy is a Unova itself. The music has a lot of references to the black and white soundtrack. It could be hinting at something, but even hinting or not hinting, I think it's likely Pokemon Brilliant

[00:16:23] Diamond and Shining Pearl, almost one-to-one remakes of Diamond and Pearl were still quite is originally being one Pokemon. So perhaps that could be the legendary of the game. Explore that, have an adorable Wild West setting, show us some things we've never seen before. That's what I want to see. Whether or not we get that remains to be seen, but I think a return trip to Unova is coming soon. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of Unova imagery and hints

[00:17:43] in the Indigo disk. It takes place in Unova, kind of the table. Yeah, Wild West setting would be cool, even though New York is not really the Wild West. Yeah, it's not, isn't it? But they could just pretend New York is the Wild West. It doesn't matter. Yeah. They can make up whatever. I like the idea about, oh, yeah, they were one Pokemon. So if you want to expand upon that idea, do it in the Legends game.

[00:19:01] And just one more note about any Pokemon game that comes out in 2024.

[00:20:04] And earlier that year, Monster Hunter generations, there was a 3DS version and a Switch version.

[00:20:06] And you can actually communicate between them.

[00:20:08] So a lot of people were kind of suspecting that,

[00:20:10] oh, it might mimic Monster Hunter a little bit

[00:20:13] where maybe there were stars on 3DS,

[00:20:16] but also a Switch stars game.

[00:20:18] But then all of a sudden they just announced

[00:20:20] Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon only for 3DS.

[00:20:22] And a lot of people were mad,

[00:20:24] but it still sold pretty well, and everyone got over it.

[00:20:26] So I think history some sort of similar idea to arms where, say, a brand new IP that is a game. Yeah, I think Nintendo, even though ARMS was not a huge success, it still sold about 2 million or so copies, which is not bad for a brand new IP on new hardware. And I think they need a game similar to show that, okay, we're Nintendo. We have a ton of established IPs, but we aren't risk-averse when it comes to making

[00:23:01] something new.

[00:23:02] Yeah, you could show another Mario that would look awesome.

[00:23:05] That will definitely sell Switch 2s. Nintendo are going to play it very safely. And we've already seen this. We've already seen remasters and remakes coming. We just had Super Mario RPG. We've got Paper Mario next year. Luigi's Mansion 2. I think next year we're going to see a lot of remakes and remasters, similar towards the end of the 3DS era and whatever.

[00:24:20] I think it's going to be a pretty off year

[00:24:23] for Nintendo themselves in the dying days

[00:24:25] of the Switch leading up for the Switch. And that was a fantastic remaster. I love the art style. It translated very well. I loved the extra content that they added. And from what I understand, triple deluxe and Robobot were built on the same engine as Return to Dreamland. So I think it could be possible

[00:25:41] to remaster them,

[00:25:42] port them to the Switch in the same style

[00:25:44] as Return to Dreamland Deluxe,

[00:25:46] add a bit more extra content.

[00:25:47] And that would just do very well. think they will be alone in the remake category for 2024. I like your idea for the Kirby games. Planet Robot is also my favorite Kirby game. It's just an excellent game and it did come out kind of late in the 3DS's life span in 2016. A lot of people were kind of checked out by that point, but it still sold pretty well enough, but that is an excellent game. And I think a lot of people haven't played it yet, but it is an awesome, awesome game.

[00:27:04] My favorite Kirby game.

[00:27:05] Do you think Fire Emblem 4?

[00:27:07] Is that a possible remake for 2024?

[00:28:05] another 3DS remaster. So I was definitely thinking that maybe Triple Deluxe and Planet Robot might show up on Switch as well. I would definitely pick Robot Bot out of those, but I

[00:28:09] haven't played Triple Deluxe, but the concept of Robot Bot is definitely more eye-catching and

[00:28:13] exciting to people who have never heard of either. We have Luigi's Mansion 2 coming out next year.

[00:28:19] There's actually quite a lot of great 3DS in 2019 when Epic Garden came out. And also on the Wii, when the Kirby Dream Collection came out and I wanna say 2012 and that laid that console to rest. So Switch cannot end until Kirby says it can. I wouldn't be surprised if in 2026

[00:29:42] there's a Planet Robot remaster only on the Switch,

[00:29:45] but we'll see.

[00:29:46] Yeah, as for Kid of Cross uprising, controls were a little finicky. So I've only played about an hour of this game because there's some games that just make me a little nauseous and I don't know exactly why, but this is one of them. So I've always been wanting an HD version. So I can just sit down on my couch and play it. It would be almost like a new game to me because I don't really remember it so much. So that's definitely a game I'm looking forward to.

[00:31:00] I think you're definitely not in the minority there? I think it will still be zones. While the open world experiment in Bowser's Fury was nice, I would like to see some elements of that translated into a new Mario game, like the stackable power-ups that you can keep in your inventory. I loved that. I would love to see that in a mainline Mario game.

[00:32:20] But honestly, I just can't imagine a Mario game

[00:32:24] without segmented levels and environments. with Mario Galaxy, if I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong about that. But I'm pretty sure that team has a lot of ideas left over from Mario Odyssey, and they've just decided to save it for the Switch too. I think it's been done for some time, and they've been waiting for the next hardware to release it. There's definitely no stranger when it comes to launching hardware with Mario, and even

[00:33:42] though Switch did not launch with Mario, it still came pretty close to launch within

[00:33:46] the next right now. And maybe you don't need a new piece of hardware. So I think they really need to go hard and try to get people to move over from the Switch to this new hardware. And Mario, he's probably bigger than ever if you think about it with the movie and the games are selling so well. So having a really impressive 3D game that blows everyone's

[00:35:05] mind, I think is definitely really important for 3 last year. They had the Xenoblade 3 DLC this year. They had Xenoblade 2, they had the first games remaster. They've been in the, I don't want to say Xenoblade mines, but they've been working on Xenoblade for a long, long time. And I think Xenoblade, while not done, I think it's maybe time to put it on the back burner for a little bit

[00:36:20] and move on to something else because I haven't played all of the games. There's Zeno Blade 3, Future, Redeemed DLC was

[00:37:41] one of the best DLC expansions I of the branding. It's still,

[00:39:00] you want to get the new audience, but you also want to get those Zeno Blade fans in there as well.

[00:39:04] I think as you know, Gears remake would be new IP. And then if you need a GAT filler, put X or a Gears remake in there as well. So I definitely think we'll see a lot from Monolith Soft in the Switch 2 era. I think so. It has to be said that they've been one of the best developers in the whole Switch era. Xenoblade 3 looks and Yes, absolutely. It's that color. Mmm. Yeah, it is funny when you go to a game store. It is very laid out where, okay, Red is Nintendo, Blue is Sony, Green is Xbox. I think they might add in another color though, maybe like Red in Black or Red in Gold to

[00:41:40] make it a little more distinct.

[00:41:42] So when you see it, okay, it's not just a switch.

[00:41:44] It's switch to number three. Bring it on, I say, the weird of the better. And the last one, this is kind of an easy one. There will be some sort of Kirby game in 2024. Yes, as we've already talked about. I'd love to see a 3D one. We had Kirby in the Forgotten Land. How about Kirby in the Ancient Kingdom? We travel back in time and there's it's Kirby with dinosaurs. That's my dream. Yeah, I was surprised we didn't get another Kirby game in 2023.

[00:43:02] We had returned the Dreamland Deluxe, but it is very fun and I love the story as well. If you compare Scarlet and Violet to Sword and Shield, Scarlet and Violet is just better in almost every way.

[00:45:24] I definitely agree with a lot of your points where open world Pokemon is also one of my dreams. And yet it is open world Pokemon and there's so many fun things about that.

[00:45:28] There was just some sort of game decisions that I didn't agree with or that it didn't really hit.

[00:45:33] So it kind of felt like a lesser version of what I've always wanted.

[00:45:37] And the performance also, when I was playing the game, I was mostly focused on kind of the structure of the game,

[00:45:43] which I think is really cool because you can really the newest piece of DLC, the Indigo Disc? What surprised me most? I thought how much value there is in there, especially compared to the DLC of Pokemon

[00:47:01] Sword and Shield.

[00:47:02] Pokemon Sword and Shield's DLC was a little bit subpar.

[00:47:06] I felt there was not beach zone, there's a savannah or plain zone, and each of them have very specific Pokemon. Many of them knew to Scarlet and Violet, so a lot of the Pokemon that you couldn't bring in earlier, you can finally catch or bring in this time around. It kind of encapsulates the exploration and catching aspects of Pokemon.

[00:48:20] It is like its own region, but really shrunk down. What did you think of the terrarium concept?

[00:49:23] Safari zone or the Great Marsh, which is a plus that's something that's been missing from Pokemon for a while.

[00:49:25] Yeah.

[00:49:26] So I did come around on the idea of the terrarium.

[00:49:28] I did enjoy it.

[00:49:29] Yeah.

[00:49:30] When I was playing it, I thought this is what the wild area of Sword and Shield should

[00:49:34] have been because the wild area is like this really random mishmash of different sections.

[00:49:40] And you walk one step and then you're suddenly in a sandstorm and you walk back one step

[00:49:45] and you're suddenly to the Japanese countryside. I don't know why because the game is supposed to take place in Spain, but Japanese island is not so far away. I'm sure you have also been to the Japanese countryside and they really nailed the atmosphere of the Inaka of Japan, the countryside of Japan, but so really fun aesthetic. And there's

[00:51:03] a lot of Johto Pokemon in there as well, almost like a mini, so I had to start over again. And I thought, oh, why have you wasted so much, so much of my time building a sandwich? But I liked the one where you could only use Pokemon caught in the terrarium. I thought, oh, that's nice because I was just planning to bring in my MVPs from Pokemon home and just cheese my way through it through it as the NPC says.

[00:52:23] Yes.

[00:52:24] So I liked being restricted in that sense.

[00:52:26] You can only use ones that you've caught in metagross. Metagross, he could learn this psychic attack if you dig into his forgotten moves. So that part was pretty fun. And I thought all the elite four battles were fairly challenging. I thought the steel one was a bit more challenging than I expected. And yet the steel girl is maybe my favorite. She has a really cool design. Some of them did make you make a sandwich,

[00:53:40] which I also did not do for a year.

[00:53:42] And I also do not like that mechanic at all.

[00:53:44] So I was a little sad that it appeared again.

[00:53:47] But that's kind of the final boss of sandwiches. way to wrap up that storyline. So I think the storyline is finished in a nice way, but there's still some answers that I would have liked with gotten. Yeah, I quite like the conclusion to the DLC only story with Kiran and Carmine where yes, I thought that was quite interesting because Kiran, he really liked this Pokemon and then you take the Pokemon and then it gets really

[00:55:01] mad at you and he gets this crazy makeover.

[00:55:04] I didn't even recognize him when he showed up in the

[00:55:06] Indigo Disc, but he's really determined to be your rival.

[00:56:02] Also like, okay, the Pokemon was here and then I battled it, but I still have a lot of questions.

[00:56:04] There's definitely a lot of loose threads or things

[00:56:08] that a lot of people could speculate about

[00:56:10] for years to come.

[00:56:12] Yeah, I agree with you.

[00:56:13] The battle itself with that Pokemon

[00:56:15] was probably one of the most challenging

[00:56:17] and frustrating Pokemon battles I've ever experienced

[00:56:20] in the entire series.

[00:56:21] It took me about four or five attempts to get past it.

[00:56:24] And I was so glad to be done with it.

[00:56:25] I found that Pokemon go back to Asia. I would love to see a region based on China. And I think there are some hints

[00:57:41] towards seeing a Chinese region in a Pokemon game, both in the game, some souls and in real life.

[00:58:45] This expansion pass feels a lot more necessary, in a sense. Necessary in the fact that it wraps up the storyline, but you are getting a lot of value here,

[00:58:50] whether or not you care about the story.

[00:58:52] I'm so glad we're getting DLC expansions over third versions.

[00:58:56] It's nice to have something different.

[00:58:59] It's nice to expand what you've already built on instead of having to start a new game.

[00:59:04] So I would recommend it.

[00:59:06] I think if you are a big kind of playing the game, but every now and then you do kind of need to look at them and see what specifically they want you to do. There are some fun ones like taking pictures of Pokemon, which I always

[01:00:23] appreciate, but some of them are walk 500 feet.

[01:01:22] going downhill with Golden Ghost. That's quite a fun experience.

[01:01:23] Yeah, this feature is totally pointless

[01:01:25] and has no reason to be in the game.

[01:01:27] And it probably took a lot of work to add it to the game,

[01:01:29] but it is kind of fun to be the Pokemon.

[01:01:32] I was Lugia, so it's fun to just fly around as Lugia.

[01:01:34] And when you go in the water,

[01:01:35] he swims like he does in the opening

[01:01:38] to Pokemon Golden Silver.

[01:01:40] And yeah, I've seen some fun videos online,

[01:01:41] like Ray Quaza looks really awesome.

[01:01:43] And I was Venusaur just kind of hopping around.

[01:01:46] Again, I don't know why they added this to the game pop-up shops. These are temporary stores that run for a few weeks that sell goods from Nintendo's Cult Hit mother franchise. The podcast is certainly no stranger to talking about pop-up shops. They happen all the time here in Tokyo and in fact in the news section I'm going to mention yet another one. They can be kind of hard to dedicate a whole feature segment to because they're time limited and mostly straightforward. They just sell merch from the series. So

[01:03:03] sometimes there's not really a whole lot to discuss. But this feature is not going about why mother has maintained relevance in Japan is because of its creator Shigesato Itoi, and specifically, his company Hobonichi. Hobonichi originated as Hobonikon Itoi's Shinboon, Itoi's personal blog. It has a very memorable URL, 1-1-0-1.com. Due to its popularity, Itoi created a company centered around the website, one that Spain

[01:04:20] focuses selling lifestyle goods.

[01:04:23] Its most famous creation is the Hobonichi Tach an event space on the eighth floor of the Shibuya Parko, home of Nintendo Tokyo, which gives ample space to sell some Nest Plushies. The first major pop-up shop under the Hobonichi Mother Project was Mother No O'Mise, or just Mother Shop, in late 2020. This introduced a lot of new merch, including posters,

[01:05:40] Mr. Saturn Plushies, and a reprint of the Mother 2 Suukeha

[01:05:43] on, which is a famous style of jackets in Japan.

[01:05:46] The jacket is highly, highly sought after, The next pop-up shop was in 2021 titled Mother No Hiroba or Mother's Square. Remember in Earthbound that area with all the merchants with their match laid out? That's the theme for this shop, where the interior and tables are all green to mimic that section of the game. From here on out, shops have a very specific gimmick or theme, even if a lot of the merch is similar. And this time the merch ramped up big time, including the plushy magnets, more hats and

[01:07:04] shirts, keychains, pen badges, and it out just to see hundreds of Mr. Saturn plushies is well worth your time. The next one was during a Golden Week of 2022 titled Mother No Departo or Mother's Department Store. This is, you guessed it, modeled after the department store in the game. Again, more new merch including plushies of the four playable characters from Earthbound.

[01:08:20] This was a hot ticket item that was recently reprinted, I'll get to that.

[01:08:24] But I wanted to check this out. of the abstract art enemy. I think this may have also been the debut of the teddy bear plushie, an item you can get in the actual game. Items like this are the most tempting, don't you want to use things from the actual game, instead of an object with a picture slapped on it? There are Earthbound yoyos too in the shop. No baseball bats, yet at least. 2023 saw a street of mother, a pop-up shop themed around the skate punks from Annette. You can tell that they are

[01:09:44] really stretching it when it comes to making a unique theme. This shop actually wasn't in There's a few other standees and decorations like the Pigmasg army and Porky flying with balloons. There is surprisingly a lot of brand new Porky themed merch. You would think that there wouldn't be a whole lot to do with Porky, but there's a t-shirt featuring his family, a new Porky plush doll, keychains including him riding a helicopter, a memo pad that looks like Porky Dollars, and yes, Porky now has his own plushy

[01:11:02] magnet.

[01:11:03] I don't know.

[01:11:04] Do people like Porky? Or, if you're more on the practical side, there's tiles and stationery. They also sell some Earthbound books, such as the scripts from the game and Pollyanna, which is an Earthbound manga collection. If you're an Earthbound fan, it's hard to imagine you won't walk out with at least something on your first visit. Repeat visits do feel very deja vu, since many of the items are the same, but the store

[01:12:21] layouts have gotten more elaborate, so it's always fun to just pop by.

[01:12:24] I think it's safe to say that 2024 will have. I am still waiting for a physical table turf card, though. Those have to come out eventually, even if they are just purely a collector's item and not natural game. Hamster put out Konami's 1993 beat-em-up arcade title Mystic Warriors on Switch a few days ago. This is often described as the spiritual successor to Sunset Riders, their more famous run-and-gun

[01:13:41] type of side-scroller.

[01:13:42] There's even a very blatant, that's all this time. 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 really helps with its visibility.

[01:15:00] This podcast is also available on YouTube, so like and subscribe there as well.

[01:15:04] I'm on Twitter, threads, blue sky, Instagram.