WarioWare Is Better Than Avatar: The Way of Water

It's been a weird week this week, with plenty of retro news. However, part procrastination and part being unable to tear myself aware from WarioWare has meant I've not really been able to form and flesh out my normal 1000 word target on a particular subject.

What I have managed to do though is flesh out a good 3-500 words over a couple of things so today, you're going to get a pick and mix of a newsletter. Hope you enjoy!

Bye Bye Daytona

Daytona USA has now been delisted from the original Xbox 360 and presumably PS3 online stores. This is notable as it is the only SEGA racer released on the previous gen stores that still existed. I’m not sure anyone really asked SEGA why but it is notable.

Daytona USA is probably the least licensed of SEGA’s racers, with just the name being owned by the course it shares its name with (and presumably in some cases NASCAR as well). But it had survived whereas SEGA Rally Online Arcade, the port of Sega Rally 3 from the actual arcades, and Outrun Online Arcade being a final HD port of Outrun 2’s various iterations, did not.

This meant that Daytona somehow survived not only the cull of many of SEGA Xbox Live Arcade games, but stayed long enough to be backwards compatible. You could only buy it from the previous generation’s online store but it was playable and still is if you own it, across all of the Xbox One family of consoles. Many games didn’t get that treatment thanks to licensing, so what’s so special about Daytona?

Honestly I don’t know, outside of an educated guess there wasn’t anything much to license, and that it didn’t really need re-licensing at all.

But now it is gone and I’m hoping there is actually a reason for it. I’m hoping we get some kind of collection from SEGA.

Everyone wants a SEGA racer collection. So what are the possibilities?

A) Daytona USA Collection

There are in fact 3 Daytona arcade games. Daytona USA, Daytona USA 2: Battle on the Edge and Daytona Championship USA (which is effectively Daytona 3). Could we see a collection of all these together?

I hope so. There’s nothing really except the name that requires licensing and the latter two have never seen the light of day on any console. The closest was Daytona 2 which was canned and eventually became a rework for Dreamcast of the original arcade game and previous ports under the name Daytona USA 2001. Maybe it’s possible we could get one with all ports, including the various Saturn versions and Dreamcast port?

B) SEGA Racer Collection

This one would involve a little bit more relicensing, namely two licenses. But another possibility could be a release of the early SEGA Model racers with online play. Virtua Racer from Model 1 is already available having been released as part of SEGA Ages line on Switch. Daytona was available until recently and. SEGA Rally Championship would require the license of three cars (total) from two brands (total). That’d round off Model 2.

Are these things that would sell well? You’d hope so, especially in the West but they would have to be available everywhere and not just on Switch. Even then? People’s buying habits when it comes to SEGA re-releases has always been weird.

Hello Game Boy

Well it finally happened. We knew it would, it was just a matter of when, what and how. This week's Nintendo Direct saw the release of another 16 games to the now 240+ library of Nintendo Switch Online legacy consoles. Which, when you think about how unavailable a lot of these classic games are legally on modern systems, is pretty impressive and decent value.

I never had a Game Boy. As discussed last week I had SEGA's answer to it and therefore I missed a lot, if not all, of what made the Game Boy great. Simple, fun games that were designed for the system, it's build and its battery life. Tetris is still a bloody addictive game that just encourages you to play continuously and leaves nothing but yourself to blame for failure.

The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening remastered on Switch is one of my favourite games on the console. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's my second favourite Zelda game behind Wind Waker (where's that WiiU remaster, hey Nintendo? *flashes wallet*) and just above Breath of the Wild. But it's the Expansion Pass addition of the Game Boy Advance and one game in particular that I've got really into this week.

2003's WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames! is an absolutely silly, simple, charming collection of small missions that all link together through a progression tower. These missions are to complete a set amount of mini games and finally a boss battle. The games are a mixture of timing based puzzles, shooting games and a massive nod to Nintendo's past games, that all have to be completed within a 3 second period that gets a little quicker the longer you go. That's the cold way to talk about it. If you haven't played it before, all you need to know is that it is bloody fun!

Where else can you tap a button when a cat is asleep? Where else can you repeatedly tap a button to sniff some snot back into the characters nose? Where else do you have a story setup where, running late for work, you try to outrun the police on your moped, using a carefully stored monkey wearing a targeting visor to throw banana peels at the chasing vehicles?

It's delightfully nuts and I know that WarioWare is nothing new, is still going and that I'll probably enjoy anything you throw at me with the franchise now. But it's just the right amount of pick-up-and-play fun, silliness and nonsense that this middle-aged boy needed this week.

It's so wonderfully charming and simple that it's probably a perfect encapsulation of Nintendo's brilliance when it comes to game design. I still don't feel like I missed anything much as a younger person not having a Game Boy or Advance. I had a lot of fun with my Game Gear and I know this Switch Online selection is very much just the beginning.

I can certainly see some Pokemon games heading to the platform, especially with one of the N64 Online games originally allowing you to transfer your Pokedex from the Game Boy releases to the game in order to battle. I can see so much more of the Super Mario Land and many of Nintendo's other regular license holders put out some of their catalogue.

One thing that will be an issue is the standard trade off of nostalgia vs license costs. If we've been unable to get Maniac Mansion for NES on the online service, I'd be completely shocked to see a great deal of the Game Boy's biggest strength hit the platform - Playable licensed tie-ins. I'd be surprised to see any Castlevania games, given all of the games on those platforms have their own release purchasable on the eShop.

But Game Boy on Switch is definitely a killer app for me and one that I hope grows massively, giving me a window into the path I chose not to take.

A Watery End

I also saw Avatar: The Way of Water this week. A sequel to a 2009 movie that probably got less critical damage than it should have in its initial release, certainly in regard to its oft-mocked story. It was a technical marvel at a time when computer generated graphics were still either uncanny valley inducing (see Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) or just a bit obviously computer generated.

It did get me thinking about how much we probably now take for granted, partially because of how graphics in cinema has evolved, but also the Call of Duty/Sony Exclusive effect. Video Game graphics when aiming for realism are now so good, and the set pieces and entertainment factor on a par (if not better in some cases) with Hollywood blockbusters that when a movie pulls out all the stops, it's difficult to be as impressed as we were 14 years ago. Even watching the recent Uncharted movie, the first scene of the boxes out of the plane actually felt worse than the video game's own take from Uncharted 3, especially when Drake is falling - some very rubbery skeleton physics going on in that scene.

For the time in 2009, Avatar was outstanding visually and that massively made up for a relatively by-the- numbers plot with some passable acting. And even in 2023, the visuals are even more stellar. In fact at times, because of the lack of any real human it felt like it was a massive animated film and the inclusion of human cast members created the immersion break.

I don't want my three hours back - yes the movie is actually three hours and 12 minutes long. But I would like maybe an hour? Hour and 15 minutes? That'd do me nicely. In the modern age of more complex plots and epics that can span days in long from television, the fact that this movie had the thinnest of plots hiding behind stellar cinematography and was still an hour too long to be completely entertaining... it made me happy I'd paid a bit extra for reclining seats.

I could give you a full review but to be honest, I think Mark Kermode has probably said it best in the below clip from the Kermode and Mayo's Take podcast.