STACK #201 Jul 2021

GAMING FEATURE

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Mario Party Superstars

No More Heroes III 27/8/21 WarioWare: Get it Together! 10/9/21 Metroid Dread 8/10/21 Mario Party Superstars 29/10/21 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel 2022

FEATURE

Hopes were high for some big Switch announcements at Nintendo’s E3 Direct, and there certainly were some pleasant surprises in store for us. F irst up, some cheeky types were claiming that this presentation might just be a 40-minute introduction of a new Super NINTENDO

the series celebrates its 35th year, and what we got wasn’t expected, but very welcome – a Legend of Zelda Game & Watch! It’s set to feature three classic games – The Legend of Zelda (NES), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES) and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Game Boy) – plus Game & Watch Vermin , starring Link. It’s landing on November 12 – get in quick! Nintendo weren’t so cruel as to leave us with no update on the sequel to Breath of the Wild , and we did get to see some new gameplay footage, revealing wondrous floating cities. We also received word that they’re “aiming for” a 2022 release. Other exciting forthcoming Switch exclusives included sort-of Japanese-styled Buffy tale

Party then it’s time to celebrate, with the announcement of Mario Party Superstars. It’s set to plunder past releases for an updated collection of games, including five from way back in the Nintendo 64 era, all with online play and the ability to save progress. Get ready to party in October. One of the coolest series to grace the Game Boy Advance back in the day was Advance Wars , and we could hear strategy buffs going “Squee!” upon hearing news that Advance Wars AND Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising have been “reimagined and rebuilt from the ground up” for the double-pack release Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp . It’s scheduled for December 3. Everybody was hoping for Zelda news as

Smash Bros. Ultimate character, and guess what? It kicked off with a new Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character! Kazuya Mishima – whom Tekken fans will know well – is coming to the all-in beat ’em up. We wanted something new and big, and we got it next with the return of wascally Wario! WarioWare: Get It Together! is slated for a September release, and it’ll be bringing us another bunch of crazy micro-games that will make us do everything from performing facials to dodging bird poop – and it’ll also include two-player co-op. From naughty to nice, if you’re into Mario

Shin Megami Tensei V in November; a 10th year celebration compilation of the Phoenix Wright meets bonkers visual novel fun of Danganronpa ; and another classic IP return in Wii U update Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water – the camera-centric ghoulie- fighting horror adventure is coming this year. It was great to see some classic support players from Nintendo’s vast canon getting some love, and if you’re a Switch fan you’ve got some big buying decisions – including Metroid Dread (see boxout) – coming up before year’s end!

EEP! METROID DREAD WILL BE WITH US SOON! Metroid Dread , which was teased back in the GameCube days as the successor to Metroid Fusion , is finally seeing the light of day after a wait of some 19 years. OK, so it isn’t the much-anticipated Metroid Prime 4 (that’s still coming), but if you’d told us going into this Nintendo Direct that there’d be a new, classically-styled 2D Metroid game then we’d have been very happy little Samus fans. Metroid Dread is set to conclude the

five-part saga of Samus and the Metroids, which commenced way back in the NES days of the original Metroid . This time out, Samus heads to a remote planet where she’s hunted by a new mechanical threat in the form of E.M.M.I. robots. In the style that we’ve become accustomed to, we’ll be able to return to previously explored areas once powered up to discover more and more of this mysterious world, and hopefully emerge victorious. Switch exclusive Metroid Dread hits on October 8.

Metroid Dread

22 JULY 2021

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