Nintendo will be making available four more games for their online Nintendo Switch subscription service. Three of them for the Super Nintendo (SNES), one of them for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and all of them seemingly picked through the trusty method of throwing darts at a giant board and seeing what sticks.
The three SNES titles consist of 2D one-on-one fighter “Doomsday Warrior,” caveman platforming game, “Prehistorik Man,” and the never before released outside of japan, “Psycho Dream.” The latter of these is a side-scrolling action game where you run, shoot, and uh, twirl your way through levels that range from a park to an inter-dimensional, purple hellscape of some sort.
On the NES side, the sole addition is Tecmo’s “Fire ‘N Ice” otherwise known as “Solomon’s Key 2″ in the rest of the world. In fairness, at least the changed name makes sense in that it’s a puzzle game in which you attempt to extinguish all the fires in a level by creating and destroying blocks of ice.
Worth noting back on the SNES side is that both “Doomsday Warrior” and “Psycho Dream” were developed by divisions of the now defunct, Telenet Japan. “Super Valis IV,” which released in the previous drop of games, was also developed by Telenet Japan, suggesting that perhaps Nintendo secured a deal with the current rights holders to bring these games to the Switch online service.
The odd assortment of lesser known titles did not sit well with some fans, many of whom took to Twitter to get the game “Earthbound” trending. “Earthbound” is a beloved cult-classic RPG that released near the end of the SNES life cycle in North America in 1995. This resulted in the game having a very limited run and physical copies being incredibly hard to find.
When it comes to third party games, it’s easy to understand why Nintendo is turning to obscure titles to fill out the library. Why for example, would Konami want to make their “Castlevania” games available for free to Switch Online subscribers, when they’re selling a compilation of those games on the Switch online store? Considering that the Switch has now even outsold Nintendo’s own 3DS, that’s a lot of potentially lost sales.
The same excuse can not be said for “Earthbound” however, unless there’s something going on behind the scenes that the public isn’t privy to. The drip feed of titles to the NES and SNES store pales in comparison to the plethora of games that were available for purchase on the Wii and Wii U virtual console.
But hey, the Wii and Wii U didn’t have “Psycho Dream” available for them, so that makes up for it, doesn’t it?
The four titles will be available starting February 17th, 2021.
