This Week in Games

Maidragon Spirit

Good day, my lovely ANN audience! As I write this, we are but a few hours away from Nintendo Direct happening, but a mixture of deadlines and my obligations to run an event for Vortex Gallery means that we won't be discussing that stuff until next week. Which is fine, because there's still some news worth discussing even without the usual barrage of Nintendo information. But I'll pretend I saw it already anyway. Man, I can't believe Kenshiro got into Smash!

Though, in seriousness, it looks like some Direct news has already leaked: Bayonetta 3 is slated for Q4 2022 and a new mainline Kirby game is in the works. Sounds pretty good already!

Anyhow, let's look at this week's Direct-less news, starting with… *massive sigh* Activision-Blizzard yet again

ACTIVISION-BLIZZARD UPDATE: RATS FLEE THE SINKING SHIP

Things have just gone from really bad to extremely worse over at the ongoing dumpster fire that is Activision-Blizzard corporate. Having the California government on your ass for a miserable work culture is one thing – and a very big thing, given that it's the most powerful state in the US – but having the United States Securities and Exchange Commission breathing down your neck? Oh boy, you are deep in it now.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the SEC is now investigating Activision about “employment matters and related issues,” and has issued subpoenas to several of the company's top executives – including one Bobby Kotick. And, as if on cue, more high-profile company resignations have emerged immediately following this news. Shocker, I know!

First to bail is Overwatch 2 Executive Producer Chacko Sonny. Is he leaving because he's afraid of being implicated in the ongoing scandal, or is he just tired of being in a company mired in awfulness and known for an increasingly toxic work culture? Unfortunately, given the records of bad behavior from people in power at Blizzard, it's difficult not to assume the former until proven otherwise. This weekend's Overwatch League is supposed to reveal some details about Overwatch 2, but speculation is running rampant that the game's development has been troubled for a long time, and the recent scandal has only made things worse.

More telling is the abrupt departure of Claire Hart, Blizzard's Chief Legal Officer, which is absolutely not a job anyone would want right now. At this point, with multiple lawsuits and government agencies circling overhead, a reckoning is bound to happen, and no amount of legalese will stop it.

But… wait, what's that? Hey, look over there! Blizzard removed some cleavage from World of Warcraft! Wow, what a great company devoted to making strides in female representation that's totally not trying to distract us from all the gross shit they perpetuated!

Yeah, no.

MISS KOBAYASHI'S DRAGON MAID IS SHOOTING UP A STORM

Surprise! The ever-popular anime and manga Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is getting a game launching early next year on PS4 and Switch… and an English version is already confirmed! Nice!

So, what kind of game is it? An adventure game? An RPG? A visual novel? All of those could work pretty well with the source material. But here's the twist: Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Burst Forth! Choro-gon Breath is going to be a hardcore arcade-style scrolling shoot ‘em up. The developer, Kaminari Games, formerly went under the name MOSS and developed a bunch of modern scrolling shooters, including Raiden III, IV and V and Caladrius. (They also developed the oft-forgotten, utterly bizarre spinoffs King of Fighters Sky Stage and Neo Geo Heroes Ultimate Shooting). In fact, shooting games is almost entirely what they do.

So yeah, time to learn about things like rank and bullet herding, Maidragon faithful!

Alas, there is no footage of Maidragon yet, but with Tokyo Game Show just around the corner (and publisher Bushiroad usually having a presence there) I suspect we'll be seeing more soon. I also wouldn't be surprised if the game focuses a lot more on the draconic forms of the show's characters, given Japan's long tradition of dragon-themed shooters like Namco's beloved Dragon Spirit.

There are still a couple of things worth touching on, though, like… why no Steam release? Seems like a good fit for the platform, given the international reach of the series. It could happen, but I feel it might be unlikely, as arcade shooters tend to focus on short-but-replayable experiences… but Steam's generous refund policy means that a lot of folks tend to buy and return short games. I've heard this is why Cave arcade ports stopped coming to the platform, though that's mostly anecdotal… but it's hard to deny it's a tough market there for compact experiences.

I'm also wondering if Bushiroad themselves will be releasing the game outside of Japan. Seems likely, as a lot of quick-and-dirty localizations have materialized on the US and European Nintendo eShops from Japanese publishers. (I hope they don't opt for machine translation on this one.) A physical edition… is probably likely as well, since fans will want Kanna and Lucoa merch. Overall, I'm very intrigued by the direction this one is going, and I hope Bushiroad will stick the landing on the international release.

NEWSBITS

• Notorious developer Quantic Dream is heavily rumored to be making a Star Wars game. I thought about making this its own section, but it would have consisted of three paragraphs of me phrasing “who the hell thought this was a good idea” in different ways. I mean, after all the Activision-Blizzard BS going on, somebody thought it was a good idea to give the keys to Star Wars to a developer with their own sex pest scandals? Seriously? But, given the current hellish state of the Star Wars franchise and its fandom, it makes sense… in a really terrible way.
• So when exactly is Fortnite coming back to the App Store? Probably not for years. Apple denied Epic's request for reinstatement with a letter, saying that “Apple will not consider any requests for reinstatement until the district court's judgment becomes final and non-appealable.” Which means Fortnite isn't coming back until all appeals are exhausted. With how slowly the US legal system moves, that isn't likely anytime soon.
• We could use more fluffy Cotton in our lives, right? ININ Games was pleased as punch with the reception to Cotton Reboot's release, so they're going to be re-releasing more of the hungry witch's adventures physically and digitally. The Cotton 2/Cotton Boomerang/Guardian Force collection is headed westward, as are re-releases on modern consoles of 16-bit outings Cotton 100% and Panorama Cotton. Panorama Cotton in particular is noteworthy, as it's a late Sega Genesis/MegaDrive game with some very technically impressive scaling and effects (It's also absurdly rare and pricey). No word yet on whether these two games will be getting 16-bit cartridge reprints to go along with their modern resissues, but with the market for fancy collectors editions booming, I wouldn't rule it out.

• Taiwan's rating board has detailed a Castlevania Advance collection, containing Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow… and also the really lousy SNES port of Dracula X for some reason. Guess they want to add “value” to the set, or something.

And so ends this week's column, which I'd like to wrap up with a sad farewell to Sega Ikebukuro GIGO, a legendary Tokyo arcade that was crucial in testing and developing numerous Sega titles from the early 90s up until today. There's a great Twitter thread here on this arcade's lengthy history and importance. It shut down earlier this week – not due to COVID, but due to the building's owner kicking Sega out to re-do the whole structure. Somehow that's even more tragic: an iconic arcade doing fine in adverse conditions that still got screwed in the end. Alas.

Got any thoughts on this week's topics? You know the drill – visit the forums below to sound off. Thanks again for reading, and I'll see you next week for Nintendo and everything else!