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It may surprise you what game I’ve been playing the most over half a year on since the Nintendo Switch 2 launched. It isn’t Mario Kart World, though I’ve been getting decent mileage (pun intended) out of it. It isn’t the system’s current killer app Donkey Kong Bananza either because I have a backlog of the great ape’s other games to get through. Ditto for Metroid Prime 4 as I’m still at the beginning of that series. My long-standing backlog gaps are what I intend to address this year instead of playing most new releases, but that’s easier said than done considering how little else currently interests me.

Instead of anything Nintendo themselves has actually made, I’ve recently sunk most of my gaming hours into Rockstar’s updated port of the original Red Dead Redemption. I breezed through John Marston’s Wild West adventure back in high school, but never really stopped to smell the roses, er, cacti of its open world. Thanks to this brand new Switch 2 version released late last year, however, I’ve been doing all the side missions, all the challenges, and all the collectibles that RDR has to offer in glorious 60 frames per second at 1080p in the palm of my hand. I achieved 100% completion last week and am currently playing through its excellent DLC expansion Undead Nightmare with the same goal in mind.

But why Red Dead Redemption specifically? I already had it for my older Switch OLED model when it hit the platform in 2023. I got about 60 percent through before putting it down to play other games. It was a perfectly serviceable port back then, but being able to experience it on upgraded hardware was enough motivation for me to get back in. Truth be told though, my original Switch is still getting considerable mileage. I dedicated most of last summer and fall to finally beating Super Mario Sunshine to 100% completion on that stupidly out-of-print Super Mario 3D-Stars collection. With the Switch 2 having returned to an LCD screen, many games still look more visually stunning on Nintendo’s older system with its vibrant OLED panel.

Red Dead Redemption on the Switch 2, however, offers noticeable technical improvements so I was willing to deal with the trade-offs. In the absence of many exclusive Switch 2 games, my choice of which platform to play really comes down to if there are any real upgrades with older Switch titles. If it’s something with retro pixel art or a lot of dark colors, then the previous Switch is still a no-brainer for me because OLED panels are more capable of displaying true blacks. There’s also the whole controversy around Nintendo’s frustrating approach to physical media, but put a pin in that because I’ll get to that whole can of worms later.

My greater point here is that the Switch 2 currently doesn’t have many games it can truly call its own. I’m sure that will inevitably change as the system isn’t even a year old yet, but this is the first time I’m playing a new Nintendo console without that feeling of magic around launch. Similar to how the PlayStation 5 is memed to eternity for having “no games” due to its lack of true exclusives, Nintendo’s latest is more or less just an incremental upgrade of what came before. Of course, it’s in the name itself. Nintendo has long resisted the Sony route of simply adding a number, but not this time. No Super Switch, no brand new name, and thankfully no Switch U. It’s just the Nintendo Switch 2, exactly what it is says on the tin.

On the actual hardware, I don’t have much to say. It’s what you’d expect from a Switch successor. The device is sturdily built like any Nintendo handheld should be, the ergonomics are a bit better (though I always use rubber grips so my hands don’t cramp), and the screen is noticeably bigger. As I mentioned already, it’s also unfortunately an LCD panel instead of an OLED one. The display is capable of running at 120 frames per second and HDR, though to what degree games utilize these features will vary. Sadly, the battery life has taken a considerable cut due to the increased energy consumption. After just two hours with Red Dead Redemption, I had to reach for the charger.

The detachable Joy-Con controllers use an improved locking mechanism, but teardown reports show that they’re more difficult to repair. Joystick drift was a notorious problem with the previous Switch, so I expect to run into similar issues down the road. The video games industry stubbornly refuses to use the more reliable Hall Effect joysticks and Nintendo is no exception. On a more positive note, the new Joy-Cons introduce mouse controls. Slide them across a flat surface and you get an experience quite similar to being on a PC. This comes in handy for simulation games like Civilization VII and first-person action titles like Cyberpunk 2077, but whether or not such features will be used is once again all down to the devs. While it’s certainly a nice thing to have, I wouldn’t buy a Switch 2 purely on the expectation that you’ll always have a PC-like experience with your favorite games.

If the lifespan of the original Switch is any indication, we can expect the Switch 2 to also last for another eight years. I’m sure in the interim we’ll inevitably see a Switch 2 Lite (the current model is indeed a bit of a unit) and a souped up OLED Switch 2 which addresses everyone’s issues with the screen, but those are just minor mid-generation upgrades. The Switch 2 itself isn’t particularly innovative or showing us anything we haven’t seen before. By the time 2033 rolls around, what’s Nintendo going to do then? The Switch 3? Will my grandchildren one day be playing with the Nintendo Switch 10?

I know I’m being glib, but the very concept of the Switch 2 as Nintendo’s next big thing moving forward is more or less a sign that they’ve innovated themselves into a corner. To varying degrees of success, the Big N has always tried to be different from their competition. Whether that was introducing two screens with the Nintendo DS or blurring the line between home consoles and handhelds with the original Switch being a hybrid system, each hardware announcement was a surprise in some way. For better or worse, there are no surprises with the Switch 2.

Naturally, the ace up Nintendo’s sleeve has always been their IP. There will no doubt be a new Legend of Zelda, a new Super Mario, and a new Super Smash Brothers over the next few years. Hell has seemingly frozen over with Microsoft bringing Halo to PlayStation and Sony slowly trickling out their premiere titles to PC, but unless the planets align on a celestial equinox, you won’t be exploring Hyrule on another console anytime soon. That will be the biggest motivation for buying a Nintendo Switch 2 even if it’s a rather boring piece of kit compared to what the company has done in the past. Regarding third party titles, it may not be as powerful as a Steam Deck or handheld PC, but it is objectively more portable and can generally run most games around base PS4 performance.

Buying a Switch 2 is also thankfully not a Sisyphean task like the original Switch was during its first year on the market. Most places worldwide have it in stock, so scalpers can’t pay off their mortgages through hoarded consoles this time. Things in Japan, however, are a bit different. Due to how weak the yen is compared to other currencies, Nintendo faced a serious dilemma around what to charge their domestic consumers. The Switch 2 as of this writing costs $450 in the United States, but that would be over ¥68,000 in Japan when converted directly. Charging closer to ¥45,000 yen would make it easy for foreign scalpers to simply buy and resell all the Japanese systems.

To address this problem, Nintendo released two versions of the Switch 2 in Japan. The model widely available to everyone here costs ¥49,980, but the catch is that it’s only compatible with the Japanese language and Japanese eShop accounts. The other model without these restrictions costs ¥69,980, but isn’t sold in general retail stores and can only be bought from Nintendo’s website if you fulfill certain qualifications such as over 50 hours of playtime connected to your account. As an American living in Japan with two eShop accounts, this put me in a bind. Do I go for the cheaper system and lose access to all the Switch games I’ve bought from my U.S. account over the years or bite the bullet and pay what is essentially a tax for foreign Nintendo gamers?

Luckily, I didn’t have to choose. A Foreign Perspectives subscriber who shall remain nameless, but goes by the handle Shadow of a Doubt on X, took the considerable time and money to ship me a Nintendo Switch 2 all the way from Canada. The process to get the package to Japan was long and convoluted, with it even being sent back by customs at one point due to containing lithium ion batteries. After a few weeks of back and forth, it arrived with a kind letter expressing appreciation for my writing. I repaid Mr. Doubt’s kindness by giving him a lifetime subscription to this Substack, which was the least I could do. This was undoubtedly the greatest gift from someone online I’ve ever received, so I thank him for his extreme generosity.

While digitally region locked consoles shouldn’t have to exist in this decade, it’s the result of economic factors outside of anyone’s control. Sony is currently producing a Japan-only PlayStation 5 model with the same mentality in mind. I was fortunate enough to have someone send me a region free Switch 2 from overseas, but I can’t begin to imagine the difficulties other foreigners in Japan will face if they want one. Not to mention that if Nintendo decides to do an upgraded OLED model eventually, or even the Switch 3, chances are high that I’ll find myself in a similar situation yet again if the weak yen doesn’t improve. Either way, I’m definitely not selling any of my old Nintendo consoles even with the promises of backward compatibility.

Less excusable is how Nintendo is approaching physical media with this generation. In contrast to the previous Switch, the vast majority of Switch 2 games are being released on “Game-Key Cards.” These are cartridges that contain no data, but instead interact with online servers to download the entire game to your system. You need the cartridge every time you want to play these games, acting as a “check” of sorts. This is problematic for two reasons: 1). You don’t actually own the game and 2). The huge size of most major titles means your Switch 2 will quickly run out of storage space. Only Nintendo’s first-party games and a handful of others have been released on actual cartridges, but this may change this year if recent industry rumors are to be believed.

This once again brings me back to my main complaint of the Switch 2 currently having few games worth playing. If the majority of these titles can be found on PS5 or PC for far cheaper and you can exercise greater ownership control over them, why would I want to pay the Nintendo Switch 2 tax? Portability is perhaps the one legitimate reason, but the trade-offs don’t compel me to shill out more money for games that are already in my library or can be found heavily discounted elsewhere. With subscriptions galore and the “you’ll own nothing and be happy” mentality becoming increasingly widespread in the tech industry, Game-Key Cards are complete anathema to my belief in media preservation. It’s currently very easy to curate what I play on this system when there is a paucity of games you can own for real.

Let me be clear, the Nintendo Switch 2 is not a bad console. It’s the natural evolution of what Nintendo started in 2017 and will probably come out as a more worthwhile platform than whatever Sony and Microsoft do over the next decade. With AI having shot RAM prices through the roof, you won’t be seeing the PlayStation 6 or the next Xbox for quite some time. I was able to snag a pretty decent mid-level gaming laptop before all this happened, but my return to playing games on PC is a topic for another day. That leaves Nintendo as having the newest and cheapest console compared to the competition. If for some reason you never got on the Switch train until now, you also have thousands of backwards compatible games. Not a bad prospect for Nintendo neophytes, all things considered.

Still, you really don’t need a Switch 2 now if money is tight and you have a backlog of existing games for consoles you already own. Playing Red Dead Redemption on the go at 60 FPS or Super Mario Galaxy docked in 4K resolution is cool, but these are gaming luxuries and not at all necessary to have a good time. The stuff that’s available on the system isn’t much of a justification for a purchase unless you’re either a dedicated Big N acolyte or potentially concerned about future price hikes due to AI and tariffs. I’m confident that Nintendo will eventually deliver the goods with more interesting games from their well of IP. Until that happens though, your old Switch should be sufficient for at least another year or two.

Games or no games, my biggest takeaway from the Switch 2 as it currently stands is that we’ve potentially reached an inevitable plateau for video game innovation. Apart from graphical updates like ray tracing and smoother frame rates, there isn’t much anyone can really do to knock our socks off anymore. Not even Nintendo, it seems. The company under its more conservative leadership with President Shuntaro Furukawa is sticking to what saved them from the failure of the Wii U days and no one can really blame them. With the original Switch having sold over 155 million units, there’s little incentive to fix what isn’t broken. If you’re Nintendo, you can afford to rest on your laurels.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

The last time I can remember being truly excited for a new video game was nearly ten years ago. It was Sept. 1, 2015 and my first week at the University of Pittsburgh had just started. A GameStop nearby which no longer exists soon became my go-to place to pick up the latest releases before heading home. On this occasion, I walked out with something I was anticipating for years — Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

As I didn’t yet own a PlayStation 4 at the time, it was the inferior PlayStation 3 port which ran at a pretty terrible frame rate and resolution. But it was $10 cheaper and it was still Metal Gear Solid V. As Hideo Kojima’s final (for real this time) mainline entry in his long-running stealth game franchise which started back in 1987, anticipation was unfathomably high.

Even now I continue to associate the first weeks of my college career with MGSV. As I was commuting back and forth between campus and home, my head was full of thoughts of what work I had to do for my courses and the next opportunity I would get to see the next part of Big Boss’ story before his final transformation into the series’ main antagonist. In retrospect, the game had its share of storytelling issues and the feeling that too much had been cut before final release. These quibbles aside, I ended up sinking close to 100 hours into MGSV’s vast open world depiction of Afghanistan.

There have of course been other high profile video game releases since MGSV, but none ever really came close to capturing the same level of my attention. I have a pretty bad habit of starting games and taking forever to finish them, but Hideo Kojima’s work was always different. Whenever I fired up something made by him, it was practically guaranteed I would see it to the end. The worlds he creates consistently have this alluring pull with their strangeness, and you don’t want to stop once he finally lets you take control.

Well, until I got to Death Stranding. Now before you get out your torches and pitchforks, let me preface by saying I don’t hate the game. In fact, I can’t really say I have a strong opinion on it either way as of this writing. That’s because I haven’t finished it. To be more accurate, I’ve only played a few hours of it. Believe me, I’ve tried to do more. After this column goes live, I’ll be embarking on what’s by now probably my fourth serious attempt to get through Death Stranding and give it an honest assessment.

The game has been out since the end of 2019 and the sequel, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach hit store shelves on June 26. That was ample time to get through the first one, but for the life of me I just haven’t been able to. As someone who once considered himself a devoted Kojima acolyte (Kojimacolyte?), such a notion would have been blasphemy to the gamer ten years ago who stayed up until 3 a.m. to get through one more mission in Metal Gear Solid V instead of being well-rested for his morning commute. In sharp contrast to all of that, Death Stranding never clicked with me and its successor is the first new Hideo Kojima game I’m not immediately rushing out to play.

For whatever reason, the story didn’t grab me. Obviously some game narratives take longer to get going than others, but I don’t really find this to be a problem with the first few hours of Kojima’s other games. I wanted to learn more about Gillian Seed’s mysterious past in Snatcher and see Jonathan Ingram adjust to his unfamiliar surroundings in Policenauts. I wanted to infiltrate Shadow Moses Island to rescue the hostages in the first Metal Gear Solid and explore the jungle of Metal Gear Solid 3. The characters of Death Stranding may have similarly ridiculous names to Metal Gear bosses, but I didn’t find myself really caring about them. I’m sure that will gradually change when I eventually try to play it seriously once and for all, but I can already tell that the narrative isn’t going to resonate with me like Kojima’s previous work.

So have I changed or has Hideo Kojima changed? Truthfully, the answer is both. After I wrapped up my time with MGSV, I was genuinely excited for whatever the man would do next. When the first teaser trailer for Death Stranding dropped in 2016, like many I was confused, intrigued, and very much hyped. I had no idea what this game would turn out as, but I regularly followed updates around its development. Yet throughout that time, my own life went through many important milestones.

I moved to Japan for the first time in 2017 for an internship and university study abroad program. In 2018, I moved back to the United States to finish my fourth year at the University of Pittsburgh. In September 2019, two months before Death Stranding was set to release, I once again returned to Japan to begin grad school. Long-time readers of Foreign Perspectives will know the rest, but my father passed away, I finished a master’s, I got married, and I’m currently in the late stages of my doctorate.

I bought Death Stranding at launch, but that coincided with the start of everything I’ve experienced over the last six years. Something else always seemed to come up and my attention was held by other video games. The biggest one for me was Shenmue III, the long-awaited third entry to Yu Suzuki’s epic saga that most believed would never come out. Death Stranding happened to come out at roughly the same period in 2019, but I was always going to prioritize Ryo Hazuki’s quest to avenge his father over anything else. The game had considerable shortcomings and Shenmue IV is looking very unlikely, but that’s a topic for another day.

Even when Death Stranding was re-released on PlayStation 5 in 2021 via its “director’s cut,” I still couldn’t get into the game. I once again tried and failed to make much progress beyond a few hours. I was baffled. What didn’t I like? It wasn’t necessarily the slow-paced package delivery gameplay that was bothering me. I generally like methodical games, as evidenced by my passion for Shenmue and other adventure titles. Even now I’m confident that if I gave Death Stranding a few more hours, I’d probably come around to its gameplay and have a better time than before. But a Hideo Kojima game without a compelling story is like going from a robust sandwich to one with much of the meat removed. Edible, but not fully satisfying. It was around this time that I finally realized something shocking — I had fallen out of love with Hideo Kojima.

Yes, the same gamer who has replayed the Metal Gear series countless times, wrote a novelization of the MSX2 games in high school, has spent hundreds on rare Snatcher memorabilia, and was even part of the fan translation group which brought Policenauts to English-speaking audiences is no longer excited by a new Kojima game. I’m like a Catholic who once regularly attended Mass or a Jew observing kosher suddenly becoming a lapsed believer, only in this case I’m an atheist that has become a lapsed Hideo Kojima fan. So what happened? Well for starters, Death Stranding is not the sole cause, but the culmination of how much his output has moved outside of my personal interests.

Kojima’s best years to me span from the mid-1980s when he began his career at Konami to roughly 2004 with the release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Between all the Metal Gear games, he either directed, wrote, designed, or produced diverse titles from the cyberpunk adventure Snatcher to the anime-inspired robot action game Zone of the Enders. Whether it was the bait-and-switch routine with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’s protagonist or Boktai requiring the use of a special cartridge to literally take advantage of outdoor solar power, Kojima was always pushing the envelop in what video games could do. Some never liked his style to begin with, but few could call him boring.

What I’m about to say may be an unpopular opinion, but I truly believe that Kojima always worked best when he had others around him to reign in his excesses. Back when the original PC-88 version of Snatcher was in development, the man seriously intended to coat the floppy disk in special paint that would smell like blood when activated by the heat of the computer to mimic the feel of the game’s crime scenes. When conceptualizing Metal Gear Solid 3, he at one point wanted the Japanese cast to phonetically record all their lines in Russian to reflect the Soviet setting, but that was obviously not going to happen. Some of his ideas are great, but others rightfully were left on the cutting room floor.

Like George Lucas or Francis Ford Coppola with too many resources at their disposal, Kojima needs other writers, designers, or even company executives to tell him when to dial it down. Even the great Stanley Kubrick who was notorious for his perfectionism and exacting demands worked with dozens of other screenwriters for his stories or relied on the advice of others when he wasn’t sure about something. To make another analogy, I consider Kojima during his time at Konami essentially the lead vocalist of a band. The guitar, bass, and drums are just as important as what immediately catches the listener’s ear. Collaborations of course don’t always lead to success, but I personally subscribe to the belief that Kojima’s stories became less focused after Tomokazu Fukushima stopped being credited as co-writer on his scripts.

All bands eventually break up, but it was a long time coming between Kojima and Konami. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots always felt like a reluctant chronological conclusion to the Metal Gear series since the man never wanted to make it in the first place. He only took on the project as director after immense fan pressure and while it certainly has its moments, both the gameplay and story pale in comparison to the preceding trilogy. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was a considerable improvement due to its smaller and more intimate scale, something that I wish Kojima would explore more. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, however, went in the opposite direction by going bigger than ever before. This is reflected with its stellar open-world gameplay, but the bare bones story which ended in a whimper was likely due to Kojima’s clear fatigue with the franchise.

Inevitably, Kojima was always going to move on and form his own studio to make the games he truly wanted without the demands of gray suit executives. It was clear from all the drama around Metal Gear Solid V’s development that his time at Konami had run its course. I suspect that the game was getting too ambitious and expensive, but NDAs prevent us from knowing the full truth of what happened. Either way, I don’t blame Kojima for wanting to leave if he felt creatively constrained. With that said, Metal Gear will forever be tied to him as his greatest contribution to the world. Do most people really prefer Sting’s solo work to what he did with The Police? “Russians” is a good song, but his legacy is always going to be “Every Breath You Take” and “Message in a Bottle.”

I admit that this is entirely a personal problem, but what Kojima does these days simply doesn’t interest me. It’s not like I want him to go back to Metal Gear either. I’d very much like to see him do another adventure game like Policenauts or an RPG like Boktai, though I know it’s probably never going to happen. Kojima instead seems more content to pal around with Hollywood celebrities and have them feature in his games. As a well-known cinephile, I’m sure this was always his dream short of making a movie himself. Again, good for him and I’m happy that he’s living the life. After nearly 40 years in the video game industry, the man deserves to rest on his laurels with the level of fame he has reached. It’s just that the games he’s making now don’t seem to have the magic of what came before.

I’m not sure what to make of OD, an upcoming horror title announced for Xbox nearly two years ago that’s supposed to use cloud technology. Given my strong advocacy for media that actually lasts, this alone raises several red flags apart from its pretentious teaser trailer that can barely be called a preview. Physint is set to be his return to the stealth game genre, but it’s literally years away and I hope it’ll be more than just a callback to Metal Gear. Kojima’s focus for the time being is OD and the upcoming film adaptation of Death Stranding, which doesn’t exactly inspire much enthusiasm within me.

It gives me no pleasure to write such a pessimistic column about an artist whose work I was once so enamored with. If there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this though, it’s that neither creators nor consumers stay in the same place forever. Tastes and interests inevitably change over time. Those on the producing side especially will move on to greener pastures if that’s where their inspiration lies. I hope that one day I’ll be able to appreciate Death Stranding more and relight my passion for Hideo Kojima’s work, but it’s also perfectly fine if that never happens. I’m content with the years of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of his other games, and I only wish the man himself continued success producing the art he sees fit.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Oh Nintendo, why must you torment me so? With a week having passed since details around the Switch 2 and its launch were officially revealed to the world, I’ve had considerable time to digest all the information. My initial response was one of pleasant surprise, then apprehension around the increased costs in several areas, then even more trepidation over what appears to be yet another attack on the concept of physical media. And that just scratches the surface. How do I feel now? I’m both excited and frustrated toward what Nintendo will be doing for potentially the next decade.

While the original Switch is getting long in the tooth, its success is well-deserved and for my money has certainly proven itself to be more interesting compared to the competition. Don’t get me wrong, I get regular use out of my PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Yet for a multitude of reasons ranging from global pandemics to pretty much everything in daily life getting more expensive, it has been an odd generation for video games. Technically, we’re actually in the middle of two. The Nintendo Switch having come out in 2017 before the PS5 and Xbox Series X launched in 2020 places it in the eight generation, while those latter two consoles are in the ninth.

The Switch 2 will finally “catch up” with Sony and Microsoft when it launches on June 5 of this year, but at this point Nintendo is, pardon the pun, playing a different game entirely. Having long decided to stop trying to be the cutting edge of technology, the Big N is far more interested in crafting unique experiences that emphasize innovation over sheer horsepower. The PS5 and Xbox Series X have few titles that are true exclusives and they’re basically mid-range PCs for your living room. The Switch is arguably the only one that still feels first and foremost like a traditional games console. With over 150 million lifetime units sold, Nintendo is clearly doing something right despite the weaker hardware.

The games shown last week suggest that Nintendo will continue its entertainment strategy with the Switch 2. When it comes to the first party titles, I’m pretty impressed. Mario Kart World with its huge courses and upgraded presentation make it genuinely feel like something which would not be possible on the original model. The same goes for Donkey Kong Bananza, a new 3D platformer that is long overdue for everyone’s beloved simian and appears to have destruction physics which also require upgraded hardware. Details are currently scarce for Kirby Air Riders, but I’m sure Masahiro Sakurai and his team will deliver. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond easily looks the best of the bunch with its support for 4K resolution and 60 frames per second.

The third party lineup has some good selections too, though there is less of interest here if you’ve already played these games. If I can get the system at launch, probably the only major third party title I’ll immediately check out is Civilization VII because the idea of using the upgraded Joy Con controllers like a mouse intrigues me, especially for a portable system. This is one area that can definitely make the Switch 2 stand out from the PS5 and Xbox Series X even if it isn’t on the same level of tech specs. It’s no small feat that Cyberpunk 2077 was shown running on the handheld at what looks like to be a consistent 30 FPS, but the announcement only convinced me to dig up the superior PS5 copy I already own and finally get to the game properly after putting it off for years. I’ll probably end up doing the same for Hogwarts Legacy instead of spending what will inevitably be the Nintendo Switch 2 tax for the new port, but that leads me to the biggest elephant in the room: the cost.

The internet is currently in an uproar after the revelation that Mario Kart World will cost $80 USD and even more if one is converting from other currencies like euros. With most already finding the idea of paying $70 a difficult pill to swallow, the sticker shock is palpable to say the least. With that said, this was inevitably going to happen at some point. The video game industry has largely ignored inflation for years and if you go far back enough, you can find games costing around $70 in the 1990s. That’s around $160 in today’s money, which makes the increase to $80 seem less of a radical notion on paper.

When all is said and done, $80 for a game like Mario Kart World which will last years and provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment isn’t the most unreasonable ask. What will be unreasonable is when companies like EA and Ubisoft who are infamous for shipping broken games at launch and assaulting consumers with seemingly infinite microtransactions begin charging $80 or more at launch on top of that. Downloadable content in theory should be a substantial expansion of an existing game, but many companies simply split up an entire game piecemeal under the guise of DLC so they can make a bigger profit.

Apart from the cost, what bothers me the most is the format these games are going to be sold on. The original Switch was a haven for physical media collectors like yours truly. Just check out the r/NSCollectors subreddit to see how fanatical some of us can be. Yet all of that is likely to change now that the Switch 2 will be introducing a new form of distribution called “Game-Key Cards” which contain no actual data. Requiring an internet connection, these useless pieces of plastic more or less serve as a “check” to download the game off the eShop. These are not real physical games; they only serve the purpose of facilitating a digital download with extra steps.

Once downloaded, you still need the Game-Key Card to boot up the software every time. That would make sense if the game was actually on the card (i.e. a real physical game), but all you are doing is pretending you own the game on your shelf when you actually don’t. Yes, there will still be true physical games released for the Nintendo Switch 2. Yet it is already obvious that tons of devs will choose the stingy route. It makes no sense why all of Cyberpunk 2077 is on an actual Switch 2 cartridge, but the Bravely Default remaster is only a Game-Key Card. Actually never mind, it does. Some companies like Square Enix have no issue with screwing over consumers. I’ve already decided to boycott it and stick to the 3DS copy I actually own.

At this stage, it appears that Game-Key Card games will not be as expensive as true physical games, but you can bet that the greediest of publishers will still try to nickel and dime the consumer down the road. Some argue that the one benefit with this format is that you can always resell or give away the Game-Key Card, which is an improvement over previous Switch games being only a download code in a box. Yet that’s under the assumption that the digital servers for these games will still be around in the long-term future. You can still play Famicom games from 30 years ago, but does anyone honestly expect the same from these game cards? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

All of this is intentional because the entertainment industry as a whole wants you to own as little as possible. Everything has to be a paid monthly subscription. Forget an individual product you actually possess and can take off your shelf anytime. Companies intend to resell you the same things over and over again. Rights inevitably expire, which leads to games, movies, and music being pulled from streaming sites and digital storefronts. With there now being greater emphasis on digital downloads and physical releases that aren’t actually physical releases, the Switch 2 is heading into this “you own nothing” direction far more than its predecessor. I don’t like it one bit.

That’s why I can’t get too excited over GameCube games being made available on the Switch 2 because they will only be playable via the Nintendo Switch Online paid service. I’m glad that the likes of F-Zero GX and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker will be made more accessible to more people amid horribly scalped prices on eBay, but all that content is ephemeral. It only exists to the masses for as long as Nintendo sees fit, while all the GameCube titles I own either on my shelf or via ISO files accumulated over many years will never go away.

I’m sure that some will say that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but this debate of physical vs. digital on the Switch 2 has a direct impact on me. Specifically, because I live in Japan. Likely due to the weak yen, Nintendo is releasing a separate model of the console aimed exclusively for the Japanese market at ¥49,980 or about $343 USD. That is substantially cheaper than the $450 price tag it will go for overseas, but this specific SKU is only compatible with Japanese Nintendo accounts and offers no language options other than Japanese. I previously speculated in February on how Nintendo would price the Switch 2 here and I thought that ¥50,000 would be too high. Ironically, that’s the cheaper price because a separate “multi-language” model with no account restrictions will also be sold here for ¥69,980 or about $475 USD. Confused yet?

It gets even worse for people in my unique position. As I’m originally from the United States, the majority of my digital eShop purchases have largely been tied to my North American Nintendo account. While I’m primarily a physical collector, some games only have digital versions and there’s nothing that can be done about that. I also have a Japanese account which I also regularly use for similar reasons. While most of my friends and gameplay hours are on that Japanese account, almost all the games I’ve downloaded over the years are on that North American account. The Japanese model of the Switch 2, however, is only compatible with Japanese accounts. Do you see the problem?

There are many other foreigners like me who live in Japan, but have primarily relied on accounts tied to different countries. The solution initially seems to be “buy the multi-language model,” but there are several problems with this. First, it costs ¥20,000 more and essentially amounts to a foreigner tax. I understand that Nintendo had to price the Switch 2 for their domestic audience at a drastically lower cost because otherwise no one here could afford a ¥70,000 console. If they priced a region-free Switch 2 at ¥50,000, then the inevitable result would be foreign visitors clearing shelves and scalping them, again due to the weak yen. Nintendo was caught between a rock and a hard place, so they needed to find some kind of balance.

The next problem is that it’s going to be nearly impossible for people to get the multi-language Switch 2 even if they wanted one. While the Japan-region console will be sold in retailers nationwide, this far more niche model will only be sold on Nintendo’s official website. As of this writing, Nintendo is currently holding a lottery for pre-orders, but to qualify you need over 50 hours of playtime on a Japanese Nintendo account by late February and an active NSO subscription. To add insult to injury, Nintendo earlier this year ceased support for foreign credit cards and PayPal accounts. Given the high cost of this Switch 2 model and that many foreigners struggle to get credit cards in Japan, you can pretty much forget it.

As of this writing, Nintendo of Japan’s website is being swamped with requests to enter the pre-order lottery. I was able to finally get one in for the Japanese-language model, but there’s obviously no guarantee I’ll get one. Even if I do get selected, I have to deal with the headache of figuring out if the game data on my old Switch is transferrable. I’ve heard that changing the country/region on a Nintendo account will effectively turn it into a Japanese one and purchase history is left intact, but given the region locking that will be put in place on digital content, I have no idea if some of my North America-exclusive eShop games will transfer. It’s also unclear if physical games, both actual ones and Game-Key Card software, will be region locked or not.

Either way, I will definitely not be selling the OLED model Switch I currently own. There’s an additional level of disappointment that the Switch 2 will be returning to an LCD panel, which only means that Nintendo will inevitably introduce an upgraded (and more expensive) OLED version a few years down the line. I can only hope that by that point the yen will have recovered enough for Nintendo to not need to do two separately-priced models, but there’s no way to know. I anticipate this year’s Switch 2 to be hard to find for at least a year and that people will still attempt to scalp the hell out of it despite Nintendo’s best efforts.

Friends who live overseas have offered to send me an international Switch 2 if they can get one. That’s all well and good, but I shouldn’t have to jump through all these hoops just to play Nintendo’s latest console. And while the cheaper domestic model being Japanese-language only doesn’t bother me, it will be a problem for many foreigners who live here. Sadly, it seems that a decent chunk of people may be locked out from entering this ecosystem. While retailers will do their best to warn that the domestic Switch 2 is only be compatible with Japanese accounts, I can easily see tourists still mistakenly buying them. When you add to the fact that only a certain type of MicroSD card is compatible, the new Pro Controller is even more expensive than before, and Nintendo continues to be mum over whether the horrible drifting in the JoyCons has been fixed, I’m anticipating many problems at launch.

My current prediction is that the Switch 2 will be a respectable success, but it won’t come close to being the globally massive hit its predecessor was. For every promising aspect the new console has, there are twice as many bothersome things which have seriously curbed my enthusiasm. Especially in this current economy with Trump tariffs and rising costs of living, I’m not convinced that the average “normie” consumer who isn’t a hardcore Nintendo enthusiast will immediately rush out to get the next iteration of hardware even with the “2” in the name. For better or worse though, what Nintendo has shown this month is what they will be doing for the foreseeable future. Whether they will still be playing with power years from now is another question.

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If you are a dedicated consumer of video games like me, Nintendo Direct presentations which show off the company’s upcoming titles are some of the most anticipated events of the year. While not all of them are guaranteed to be interesting, Nintendo’s showcase this week arguably marked one of its strongest software lineups seen in years.

Considering that the Switch is now entering its twilight years as Nintendo prepares to unveil the next iteration of the hybrid hardware, it’s perhaps not a surprise that the company is aiming to have a robust library of new games to maintain interest. If you do not own a Switch yet, I would personally hold off on buying one now as what will be revealed later this fiscal year is practically guaranteed to be backwards compatible.

While Nintendo did not reveal anything new about the “Switch 2” or whatever it will eventually be called, it certainly delivered on the games. I’ve never written about Nintendo Directs before, but this presentation was so full of interesting content that I felt compelled to do an article summarizing my thoughts on what I’m most excited for. Based on this theme, I’ve assembled a list of ten games shown arranged in the order of my own level of interest.

It goes without saying that this is my own personal selection of what spoke to me and that it likely won’t match everything that interests you, dear reader. For a full list of all software that was shown, I recommend checking out Nintendo Life’s comprehensive article. This piece offers musings on each selected game, an explanation of why I think they’re important, some potential concerns, and if I think it will ultimately be worth checking out. Feel free to chime in with your own anticipated games in the comments section.

All titles listed are for Nintendo Switch with other platforms noted if applicable. Without further delay, let’s dive into the Nintendo Direct for June 2024.

10. New Games for the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack

With the death of the Virtual Console for 3DS and Wii U, the only place to legally play some of Nintendo’s library of retro games is through its Nintendo Switch Online and Expansion Pack service. Fan response to what’s essentially the company’s version of Netflix was initially very mixed and while the emulation quality has since improved, there are still concerns over the service’s pricing and release schedule of new games.

But those problems aside, the announcement that The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Four Swords and Metroid: Zero Mission are now part of the library of playable GBA games on Switch is legitimately big news. These are two of the most sought-after and expensive games on their original handheld, but now the masses will have easy access to them. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Perfect Dark are also very welcome additions to the service’s paltry offering of Nintendo 64 games, with the latter having previously been tied up in legal issues since Microsoft now owns the rights to titles developed by Rare.

Release date: Out now!

Will I play it? Likely not. I’m an original hardware guy and have little interest in playing games I don’t actually own. I’m not really a Nintendo 64 guy, but I thankfully already have both of the GBA cartridges. For the average consumer with access to the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack service though, I can wholeheartedly recommend them.

9. Fantasian Neo Dimension

Here’s one that completely slipped my radar. Fantasian was initially an RPG released exclusive through Apple Arcade for iOS devices in 2021. As I’m not subscribed to that service, I wasn’t aware of it until Nintendo unveiled the updated Neo Dimension this week for Switch, and it’s also planned for Windows, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles. The original game was divided into two parts, but notably featured no microtransactions and already had full controller support. Everything being included here should make this the definitive version.

As his first narrative-driven game in years, Fantasian boasts an impressive pedigree of having been written and produced by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Longtime collaborator Nobuo Uematsu also contributed the music. While the overall gameplay and story appear to be typical JRPG fare that the duo is known for, they haven’t really done anything like it since 2011’s The Last Story, so the familiar territory isn’t unwelcome. It’s great that this game is going to be released from its mobile phone shackles and will get the full console treatment it deserves.

Release date: Q4 2024. Will also be available on PS4, PS5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.

Will I play it? I already have a considerable backlog of RPGs to get through, but I’ll keep an eye on this one. There is no physical release currently announced, so I’ll either wait or hold off for an eShop sale.

8. Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics

This one was a surprise. Nintendo somehow managed to get even the fighting game crowd excited with Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. When I first saw it, I assumed that this was going to be a dual-pack of Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, which would have been exciting on its own. Nope. In addition to those games, X-Men Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and The Punisher will also be included in what could become one of the greatest game compilations ever made.

The original arcade versions for many of these games have never been given a proper home release, while their Sega Saturn and PlayStation ports are often some of the most expensive titles available on their respective systems. Even if this ends up costing $60, that will be a steal considering the sheer amount of content present. It remains to be seen how good things like the emulation quality, controller lag, and online features will be, but this is exciting stuff indeed.

Release date: 2024. Will also be released on PS4 and Steam. Oddly enough, no announced native PS5 release or port to Xbox consoles. Perhaps later down the line.

Will I play it? Hell yeah! While I’m not the best at fighting games, I’ve always been fascinated by these crossover titles. The bonus features which will highlight their gorgeous artwork and music are of particular interest to me. Japan at least is getting a physical edition, so I’ll be happy to add it to my collection.

7. Donkey Kong Country Returns HD

Another out of left field announcement, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder why it’s taken this long for Donkey Kong Country Returns to get ported to Switch. Originally released in 2010 for the Wii, by the time DKCR comes back it will already have been 15 years (!) since then. Man do I feel old.

But why an early 2025 release date when Nintendo could probably release this one next week? Simple, this is what I like to call a “stopgap game.” You know, those quick and dirty titles major publishers put out when they have nothing else during a rather barren window or are otherwise busy with more important projects. Come January 2025, you can bet dollars to donuts that Nintendo is going to be firing on all cylinders preparing for the Switch successor. The holidays will be over and I strongly believe we’ll see the new console around March 2025 similar to the original Switch’s release date of March 3, 2017. Eight years will have passed. Again, man do I feel old.

As for Donkey Kong Country Returns itself, what can you really say? It’s Donkey Kong Country Returns! It did everything a proper platformer reboot should do and then some. The biggest issue with the Wii release was the shoehorned motion controls which made the tougher levels a headache to play, but the 2013 3DS port thankfully got rid of them and even added eight new levels. Unfortunately, the buttery smooth 60fps framerate was cut in half to 30. The Switch port looks to be combining the best of both worlds. No bad motion controls, all the levels, and the original 60fps restored. What more could you ask for?

Release date: January 16, 2025.

Will I play it? For sure. I never actually finished the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy, so the long wait will give me an excuse to boot up my Super Famicom and properly go through them. My biggest concern is that Nintendo will likely try to get away with pricing Donkey Kong Country Returns HD at $60 when I really think $40 would be more appropriate. But that’s the Nintendo tax for you.

6. Mario & Luigi: Brothership

Mario and Luigi are back! In fact they’ve been gone so long, it’s been nearly ten years since the last one. The series got its start back in 2003 with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, a nostalgic classic for the GBA and one of the first video games yours truly ever played as a child. From there, the series was followed up on the DS with Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story to strong reviews, making it a rather tight trilogy of accessible RPGs. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team was a serviceable fourth game on the 3DS, but the fifth entry Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam failed to make much of an impression.

A now-defunct Japanese company called AlphaDream developed all of these titles, but filed for bankruptcy in 2019, which probably accounts for their unfortunate decline in quality. Bringing us to the present, is Mario & Luigi: Brothership — the sixth entry in the series and the first to be made without AlphaDream’s involvement. It appears that Nintendo themselves are developing this game, and the engine has been transitioned fully into 3D with brand new artwork.

It’s rather surprising that this one is just around the corner, but the animation and moves seen in the trailer look incredible. I initially thought that it was going to be a 3D remake of a previous Mario & Luigi, but I’m glad that Nintendo has decided to do an original game instead. Superstar Saga already got a 3DS remake and the one for Bowser’s Inside Story was completely unnecessary. This is the logical step forward, but hopefully we’ll see some of the same quirky magic we saw all those years ago from that original RPG trilogy with Brothership.

Release date: November 7, 2024.

Will I play it? Yes, eventually. As I mentioned already, I have a pretty big backlog of RPGs to get through and have only played a handful of the ones from this series. October and November are already looking to be a pretty packed month with new game releases so I’m not sure if I’ll have time for this one, but I’ll certainly get to it one day.

5. Kamaitachi no Yoru Triple

This one requires a bit of extra context to explain, so bear with me for a minute. I’m assuming that most people reading this article watched the English language stream of the Nintendo Direct which was aimed at overseas audiences. Living in Japan, however, I always watch the Japanese ones, and some of the games shown are released for this country only. Kamaitachi no Yoru Triple was one such announcement you wouldn’t have seen outside of Japan and probably would know nothing about even if you did.

Back in 1994, Chunsoft (long before it merged with Spike to become Spike Chunsoft as we know it today) released a video game exclusively for the Japanese market called Kamaitachi no Yoru or “Night of the Kamaitachi” on Super Famicom. A kamaitachi is a fictional Japanese yokai which roughly translates as “sickle weasel.” There’s a lot of lore behind it which we won’t get into, but from the name itself you can probably gather that it’s a very culturally specific thing to Japanese folklore.

Back to the game though, Kamaitachi no Yoru was the second entry in Chunsoft’s line of “Sound Novels.” This was the company’s trademarked name for visual novels — games that are entirely story-based with little actual gameplay apart from making text-based choices that often result in multiple endings. There isn’t much real practical difference between a “Sound Novel” and a normal visual novel, but Chunsoft claims that theirs rely heavily on music, sound effects, and overall aural ambience to tell a compelling narrative. The company’s first Sound Novel was Otogirisou in 1992, also for Super Famicom.

Otogirisou and Kamaitachi no Yoru were horror-themed and pioneers in video game storytelling, giving Japanese players stories on par with novels or films. The latter was especially notable for utilizing digitized artwork of real-world locations in Nagano Prefecture, which made the game’s intimate mountain lodge setting unlike anything else that had come before it. Neither were released outside of Japan, likely because there was no market for visual novels in the West and due to Nintendo of America’s strict censorship rules on mature content.

Kamaitachi no Yoru did receive one limited English release on iOS in 2014 under the localized title Banshee’s Last Cry. My friend Jeremy Blaustein was behind the English translation, but he controversially removed the Japanese setting and changed all the character names into Western ones. While I disagree with that decision, it’s somewhat understandable given that Spike Chunsoft was trying to market an extremely niche game to international audiences. Jeremy told me that he’s still proud of the work he did, but if asked to do it today, he would probably keep the Japanese setting. In any case, Banshee’s Last Cry was delisted from the iOS Apple Store years ago and its announced Android port never even came out.

This brings us to today with Kamaitachi no Yoru Triple, which will be released later this year in honor of the franchise’s 30th anniversary. To make a complicated backstory even more complicated, this appears to be a remaster of the series’ third game originally released for PlayStation 2 in 2006. The official website mentions that the “main story” of the first two games will also be included, but that suggests that their dozens of alternate endings won’t, which I think is a shame.

At this point, Kamaitachi no Yoru has multiple mainline entries and ports that add or remove story elements, with the second game being particularly infamous for its meta-narrative and references to other Chunsoft titles. This new version of Kamaitachi no Yoru Triple appears to have the objective of telling one streamlined story across the entire trilogy while having less focus on the odder endings, such as the protagonists playing their own game within the game. It gets very weird, trust me.

Unfortunately like the rest of the franchise, this one appears to be intended for Japan only and it seems very unlikely that the West will ever get it. This would have been the perfect opportunity to finally bring Kamaitachi no Yoru outside of Japan, but even in 2024 with a ton of visual novels and dating sims available on Steam, some games are still too niche to be commercially viable. Chunsoft’s other major Sound Novel, 428: Shibuya Scramble, did get an English release, but available data suggests it sold very poorly in relation to the amount of time it must have taken to localize such a massively long text-heavy game.

That was a very long explanation for a game that most reading this will probably never be able to play, but I do hope to explore the history of such niche Japanese video games and visual novels in future articles. Titles like Kamaitachi no Yoru, while having considerable cultural resonance in Japan, are all but unknown outside of it and I think that information is at least worth preserving in English.

Release date: September 19, 2024. Also will be available on PS4 and Steam. Japan only though, I’m afraid.

Will I play it? Yes, and my wife is especially a huge fan of this series as a horror aficionado. I got most of the endings on the PS1 port of Kaimaitachi no Yoru a few years ago when we both played it, but will probably go back to get the rest before this one comes out. I also want to play the original full version of Kaimaitachi no Yoru 2 on PS2 to get the weird endings that likely won’t be present in the upcoming Triple release.

4. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

Ok, here’s a visual novel you can actually play. The remaining two games in the Ace Attorney series previous locked to the original Nintendo DS and mobile phones are finally coming to modern platforms with the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. This is less of a surprise announcement and more of a “finally” announcement. Now all the games in the series are easily accessible.

While the Ace Attorney series usually puts players in the shoes of defense attorneys, the Investigations spin-off games revolve around fan-favorite prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. Like the title implies, the gameplay focuses more on crime scene investigations, making the overall experience closer to a traditional point-and-click adventure game. This collection is notable, however, for including the second Miles Edgeworth game in English. Released as Gyakuten Kenji 2 for the Nintendo DS in 2011, sales of the first localized Investigations game were deemed too low by Capcom to justify the translation costs for the sequel.

That was a shame too, because having played the excellent fan translation of Gyakuten Kenji 2 back in 2014 when it was known as Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth: Prosecutor’s Path, I think it ranks among one of the best stories in the entire series. Capcom has changed the subtitle to Prosecutor’s Gambit and the character names are likely going to be different, but better late than never either way.

For those to Ace Attorney, I would recommend at least playing the original trilogy since it provides crucial backstory for who Miles Edgeworth is and begins his complex character arc. After that, you’re all good to go to the other side of the courtroom and become the prosecution.

Release date: September 6, 2024. Also will be available for PS4, Xbox One, and Steam.

Will I play it? Yes. I’m still currently playing the prequel game The Great Ace Attorney and then intend on going through the entire series in chronological order in Japanese since until now I’ve only experienced the English localization, which changes things considerably. But after replaying the original trilogy, I will move onto the Miles Edgeworth games which come next in the series timeline. I’ll be curious to see how Capcom localizes that second title.

3. Dragon Quest Trilogy HD-2D Remake

Another “finally” announcement. We first learned of the existence of a full Dragon Quest III remake back *in 2021* and until this week heard nothing new, leading some to speculate that perhaps the entire project had been cancelled. Thankfully not so. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake looks better than ever and not only that, the first two games in the series will also receive the same gorgeous treatment next year!

Dragon Quest is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, to the point where it’s arguably more popular than Mario or Final Fantasy over here. The West has been slower to embrace the series, but the positive overseas sales and reception to Dragon Quest XI have shown Square Enix that there is newfound demand outside of Japan for these games. Until XI took things back even further, Dragon Quest III was chronologically the earliest point in the series’ timeline and told the origin story of the legendary hero Roto (Erdrick in the localized North American version) who is constantly alluded to in the first two games.

While III has always been highly acclaimed in Japan, it was never as popular overseas as some of the other games in the series, so this is the perfect opportunity for it to be properly revisited. The updated graphics, which look like they’ve taken a page from Ocotopath Traveller, look fantastic, and the symphonic suite arrangements of the late Koichi Sugiyama’s legendary score are as beautiful as ever. Full remakes of the first two Dragon Quest games are planned for 2025, but they lack a precise release date.

I’m a bit apprehensive of new players starting with III due to the considerable gameplay evolutions that the previous two games lack. Additionally while the third game is a prequel, I’ve always been of the belief that one should play or watch everything in chronological order, as some story references will only be apparent if you know the full context behind them. Still, Square Enix believes that III is a good place to begin, so I’m sure it will be for many. It certainly beats those awful eShop ports of the Dragon Quest mobile games, which is currently the only way to play this original trilogy on Switch. Don’t. Be patient and play the remakes instead.

Release date: November 14, 2024. Also will be available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam. Interestingly there appears to be no PS4 version, which I hope Square Enix won’t skip on. There’s no reason why this game couldn’t run on that system and there are still plenty of PS4-only consumers who have not upgraded to PS5 yet. Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake will follow for the same systems sometime in 2025.

Will I play it? This one is tough because I just beat Dragon Quest III on iOS last month and am currently making my way through Dragon Quest IV on DS. I have a horrible habit of starting games, putting them down, and not coming back to them for years. I originally beat the first Dragon Quest game back in high school, meaning that it’s taken me over 13 years to finish the first trilogy alone. While I don’t plan on taking nearly as much time in playing the other games in the series, that would still mean the remake of III would be years away for me.

I might not be able to finish it right away, but I’ll still support this release and at least play through the first few hours before deciding what path to take. If I find the overall experience considerably different from the original, I’ll continue with it. If not, I’ll enjoy my time soaking in the new presentation before returning to the Dragon Quest games I haven’t played. I’m also planning on writing an article that will cover my experiences with the first Dragon Quest trilogy around the time the remake comes out, so stay tuned for that.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

You’d forgive me for thinking that Nintendo was remaking the The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages Game Boy games from the first 45 seconds of this trailer. After all, it appears to be using the exact same art style and game engine as 2019’s remake of Link’s Awakening. But no, this is a completely new title called The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and not only that, you actually play as Zelda herself!

It’s a bit of a running gag that non-gamers unfamiliar with The Legend of Zelda series automatically assume that the protagonist’s name is Zelda, despite the hero being almost exclusively our elf-eared hero Link since 1986. Sure, you could sort of play as Zelda in Spirit Tracks for the DS, and yes, Zelda was the protagonist in two of the series’ games for the Philips CDi. But you already know how awful those were, so I’ll let the Angry Video Game Nerd do the rest.

This is the first proper game in the series where the protagonist is Zelda and by all accounts it seems to be exactly the kind of game you’d expect from the series. I was a bit disappointed to see the reuse of the elements seen in that Link’s Awakening remake, but remember what I said about stopgap games with Nintendo. It’s very likely that the company wanted to put out some kind of Legend of Zelda game in 2024 while they’re busy with bigger titles, so using what’s already available makes sense.

Despite using the same engine as Link’s Awakening, I’m optimistic that the new gameplay elements with Zelda herself will keep Echoes of Wisdom fresh and that the world map will be far bigger. Link’s Awakening was originally a Game Boy game and the remake’s staff likely did not want to stray too far from its roots, but those restrictions are no longer here. Also, let’s hope the performance issues are fixed this time around.

Release date: September 26, 2024.

Will I play it? As I said, I’m absolutely horrible with starting games and finishing them. This will anger many, but I never got very far into Breath of the Wild and I haven’t even touched Tears of the Kingdom. I have played most of the series, but I’m missing some notable ones like Majora’s Mask and the Oracle Game Boy games. Oh, and remember Link’s Awakening? Yeah, I never finished that either, the original or remake.

So before I get to Echoes of Wisdom, I still have a considerable Zelda backlog to get through. I know, I know, it’s my own fault for not being consistent. But that’s what you get when you’re a busy graduate student who also works part-time and tries to deliver regular written content to you lovely people. I’ll get back on the Zelda train soon.

1. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Come on, was there really any other game that could take the top slot? It’s the featured image of this article and Nintendo intentionally saved it for last in their presentation fully knowing that the hype was immeasurable. Yes dear readers, Metroid Prime 4 is still happening, and now with the subtitle Beyond.

It’s hard to believe that Metroid Prime 4 was announced all the way back at E3 2017. Apart from Nintendo revealing that Retro Studios would not be involved in the project, few other details were known at the time. To give you an idea of how different things were, the Switch was brand new and E3 was still a thing. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were three years away. With that in consideration, it’s all the more impressive that the Nintendo Switch is still the more successful console despite the weaker hardware and rapid advancements the video games industry has seen.

But something had to have gone catastrophically wrong with Metroid Prime 4 because not only did Nintendo reveal in 2019 that Retro Studios would in fact develop the game, the entire project was being restarted from scratch. We can only assume that Nintendo realized the error of their ways in not initially working with the team behind the original Metroid Prime trilogy. So despite the long development time, I doubt the wait will have been in vain.

I personally think that Metroid Prime 4 is going to be a launch title for the Nintendo Switch successor. The game has been in production for far too long for the company not to have considered moving it to better hardware. The current footage shown in the trailer looks very impressive, but whether the current Switch will be able to handle it remains to be seen. We may end up having a Breath of the Wild situation where the older hardware does get a port of the game, but the real focus is on the newer, shinier version.

Release date: Sometime in 2025. Very likely at or around the launch of Nintendo’s next console.

Will I play it? I’d be foolish not to. With that said, I’m currently making my way through the entire Metroid series and playing most of them for the first time. I beat the Famicom Disk System version of the original game last year on actual hardware and since the games aren’t that long, I should be able to clear the rest in time for the release of Metroid Prime 4.

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Video games are the largest entertainment industry at the world, being valued at nearly $400 billion. They are a permanent fixture of modern culture, with many younger generations increasingly shifting away from interest in movies and television toward this medium of interactive entertainment.

While many lament the general decline of Hollywood and the continual failure of once great media franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 2023 was a generally strong year for video games with some of the best titles coming out of Japan. It’s abundantly clear by now that Western players strongly resonate with the likes of Dark Souls, Yakuza, and Persona, but for whatever reason, some Japanese developers appear to be in a crisis.

On Jan. 25, The Japan Times ran an article that took social media by storm. While ostensibly about the translation of Japanese video games into other languages, the real controversy arose from Western localizers being quoted as stating that they influenced the decisions made by the original developers.

Yakuza series executive producer Masayoshi Yokoyama additionally said that “We ask our teams in the United States and Europe to read the game's script, and they tell us if they see things that wouldn't be acceptable in their country.” The replies to the original tweet which posted the article give a good idea of how negatively these statements were received by fans. The general consensus is clear: Japanese developers shouldn’t change what they have already been doing for years.

Western fans additionally have little desire to see Japanese video games pandering to the political or social issues which are afflicting discourse in countries like the United States. There’s already enough domestic media that covers those topics, while Japanese media has often been viewed as a form of escapism away from all of that. As someone who has long loathed this current era of overcorrection and oversensitivity we live in, it’s a sentiment I’m fully on board with.

But is all hope lost and are Japanese video games really “going woke?” While it’s easy to fall into doomerism around this topic, I aim to be the one optimistic voice arguing for why things aren’t actually as bad as they seem with a little history lesson. There may be a brief period of some video games from major Japanese studios attempting to cater to what they (mistakenly) view as Western tastes, but past precedent shows this strategy doesn’t work.

Japanese Developers Have Tried Pandering Before

Let me take you back to the seventh generation of video game consoles. It’s the late 2000s going into the early 2010s and the big kids on the block are the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii. A nostalgic time for most of my gamer readers I’m sure, but fond memories aside, there were plenty of problems behind the scenes for Japanese developers.

The Xbox 360 is notorious for having sold poorly in Japan, but its early years in the country resulted in RPGs like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope which remain beloved cult classics to this day. Why? Because the Japanese devs behind them continued the same mentality which made their projects in previous eras so well-received. While this brief period showed promise, Japanese support for the Xbox 360 essentially ended when Microsoft began promoting the console as a machine for U.S.-centric games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.

There is more crossover now in what gamers worldwide play, but consumer tastes between East and West back then were noticeably distinct. Japanese gamers generally preferred RPGs and anime aesthetics, while Western gamers were greater fans of first-person shooter games and more realistic graphics. This is of course a broad generalization, but the sales data of what sold in each region respectively tended to reflect that.

On the other hand, there was always a small, but vocal demographic of Western gamers that sought out Japanese titles because they were so culturally and aesthetically distinct from everything else they were playing. Series such as Xenoblade and Ys especially became popular during this period, with overseas fans even starting massive online petitions demanding that Japan-exclusive titles be given official North American releases. Such campaigns are less necessary today given that most games leave Japan, but the landscape of what could be commercially viable was not always so clear then.

Unfortunately, this caused some Japanese developers to essentially panic and make what in retrospect were the wrong decisions. As reported by the BBC, Japanese video games accounted for 50% of the global market in 2002, only to shrink to 10% by 2010. The most notable person to comment on this trend was Keiji Inafune, one of the creators behind the Mega Man series and the then Global Head of Production at Capcom. Quoted as saying that Japanese games were “at least five years behind,” he also stated:

“I don't think that Japanese games can't ever be popular overseas again. But they won't be popular any more in their pure state. It's like sushi. Everyone loves sushi in the West, but you can't just serve sushi over there like it is in Japan.”

The benefit of hindsight has proven Inafune wrong, but it’s somewhat understandable why he and other developers would feel that way. Even Fez creator Phil Fish infamously told a Japanese game designer to his face, “Your games just suck” around this time. This lead to international headlines, and while Fish would later apologize for his untactful remark, such sentiments influenced Japanese creators to think more about what could appeal to global audiences. Sound familiar?

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The publication of the King James Bible in 1611 forever changed the Western world in bringing the Old and New Testaments to a wider English-speaking audience than ever before.

Whether you’re religious or not, chances are high that you’ve used phrases like “at my wit’s end” and “the skin of my teeth,” all of which come from the most famous edition of the Bible. But while it’s the go-to version of the text for many today, religious scholars at the time intensely debated the quality and accuracy of the translation.

If you want to read Wu Cheng’en’s epic Chinese novel Journey to the West, there’s a translation by Anthony C. Yu and another one by William John Francis Jenner, which is personally more nostalgic for me since it’s what I grew up with. On the other side of the world, there are dozens of different translations for the epic Spanish novel Don Quixote and I doubt they will ever stop.

This gives you the idea that people have been arguing over how to interpret works from one language into another ever since humans started putting things down on paper in the Mesopotamian era thousands of years ago. This has not changed today, and a current topic that is dominating translation discourse is the English releases of Japanese media.

Japanese video games, anime, and manga are more popular than ever now worldwide, and passionate fan communities have loyally supported their favorite franchises for years. We’ve come a long way from American television networks like 4Kids TV infamously removing all references to Japanese culture from shows like Pokémon and Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, with fans demanding far higher standards for how these properties get released overseas.

Yet in the last few years, some translations of Japanese properties into English are coming under fire for everything from censorship to the unsubtle insertion of political statements that were nowhere to be found in the original native script. Like many things in the West these days, much of this has become fodder for culture wars that often devolve into unproductive online mudslinging thanks to a minority of translators and localizers who think it’s their business to do things like this.

The announcement that the manga series The Ancient Magus’ Bride would be relying on AI technology to translate the original Japanese text to English only poured more gasoline onto the fire. The replies to this tweet have many claiming that the era of “woke” localizers is over, while yours truly was caught in the crossfire after I weighed in with my own thoughts. Namely, that I don’t think artificial intelligence will pan out as a viable solution to existing problems around localization of Japanese media.

The result of this was many days of angry people in my mentions claiming that I had sold out and taken the side of the woke, despite other posts of mine explicitly criticizing such people and their views. Alas, that is the nature of social media where nuance goes to die, but I doubt readers of this Substack care about such petty drama. Regardless, I do think this is a subject which deserves a full write-up, hence why you are reading this article now.

This piece took far longer to write than I initially planned, but its length reflects how translation really is a complicated topic that requires a lot of nuance when discussing. I still feel that I’ve only scratched the surface, but there are few points that I wanted to make sure were included in this piece. As someone who has studied Japanese for over a decade and lives in Japan full time, translation is something that I’m well acquainted with even if it isn’t my profession.

Additionally, I have grown increasingly troubled by this gung-ho embrace of AI when we are just beginning to understand the implications of the technology. I personally believe that artificial intelligence is largely a creative dead end when it comes to artistic fields such as translation, and it won’t bring the results that some seem to think it will in combating poor localizations. Those who do not speak Japanese underestimate just how difficult it is to translate the language into English, while those who translate as their job shouldn’t be making excuses for poor work.

Translation vs. Localization

It’s first important to properly define the difference between “translation” and “localization.” While the two terms are often used interchangeably, they actually do mean different things and carry important distinctions.

Translation in a basic sense is the direct conversion of one language into another. If you want to get even more specific, “translation” is rewriting one language into another, while “interpretation” is for spoken language. Many tend to call interpreters translators, though they are technically separate roles.

Localization is the offspring of translation and requires significant consideration of the culture and intended audience of the target language. For example, the Japanese phrase itadakimasu (いただきます) which is said before meals means “I humbly receive” if literally translated into English. Most translations, however, would render this phrase as something like “Bon appétit!” or “Let’s eat!” as those are more natural and carry essentially the same meaning.

That’s a very simple example of basic localization of Japanese to English, but it can get significantly more complicated. If a video game script has a character speaking in Japanese haiku, should the translated English text aim to get the original meaning or preserve the original 5-7-5 syllable structure? A good localization would attempt to do both, but this is where considerable creativity and imagination are necessary. It’s also important to note that translation and localization are sometimes handled by the same person, and sometimes they are not.

Japanese animation, or anime, began to infiltrate the United States in the 1960s, but in heavily modified form. If you’re in your 20s like me, anime such as Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Kimba: The White Lion are probably what your parents grew up watching, but many were none the wiser that these shows were from Japan because of how much their English dubbing catered to American tastes. These are clear examples of localization. It wouldn’t be until the 1990s when more translations of anime began focusing on keeping the “Japanese-ness” intact, since by that point there was more interest in Asian culture among Westerners.

The same held true for other media like manga (Japanese comics) and video games. When Nintendo hit the scene in the 1980s with their NES console, many Japanese games were heavily censored or modified for their overseas release. This topic alone is enough for its own article, but I highly recommend checking the website Legends of Localization for a fascinating breakdown of this process. These practices are why the original Dragon Quest ended up having a famous (or infamous depending on who you ask) pseudo-Elizabethan English localization, and the invented localized line “You spoony bard!" from Final Fantasy IV is the stuff of early internet meme legends alongside “All your base are belong to us.”

As is to be expected, there are things between Japanese and English that do not smoothly translate between one another. Some translations aim to be as literal as possible, but often end up stiff and dry. Others take on a more liberal interpretation of the original text which improves readability, but the risk is higher of important meanings or nuances being lost. Localization attempts to bridge this gap between languages by creating a cultural equivalent that conveys a similar meaning, but as we will soon see, this can result in creative decisions that range from clever to awful.

Localization: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Localization has become a highly contentious topic in recent years, with many hardcore fans of Japanese media decrying the practice as censorship, cultural erasure, and/or dumbing down foreign content for Western audiences. And sometimes, that’s certainly true.

While some localizations began adhering more to the original Japanese source material from the 1990s onward, many rights holders in foreign countries were adamant that things had to be changed. What is considered appropriate for children’s media in Japan is often much looser than in the United States, which is why the network 4Kids TV notoriously watered down shows like Pokémon and One Piece for their American broadcasts in the early 2000s. While some of these changes were aimed at reducing violence or bloodshed, other bizarre alterations resulted in things like onigiri rice balls being changed to jelly donuts, despite the animation clearly showing the former.

The United States is famous for its moral panics toward seemingly everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Harry Potter, so in some sense one can sympathize with a television executive having the thankless task of selling foreign media to millions of households that probably have more than a few couch-fainting moral busybody parents. Children’s television programming standards in the U.S. are particularly strict, meaning that rights holders like 4Kids had little choice but to engage in censorship. We seem to have mostly moved on from this era when it comes to overly zealous localizations in this manner, but context is necessary in understanding why these changes occurred in the first place.

Indeed, sometimes localization is unavoidable. A notable example with this is Capcom’s Ace Attorney series of adventure games. Originally released in 2001 for the Game Boy Advance as Gyakuten Saiban or “Turnabout Trial,” it did not hit stateside until 2005 when the series began getting ports for the Nintendo DS. This franchise can essentially be summarized as a visual novel courtroom drama, but the landscape for such text-heavy games was very different outside of Japan nearly 20 years ago. For the uninitiated, a visual novel relies mostly or entirely on text and contains little to no gameplay in the traditional sense of video games, with story being the main focus.

Previous visual novels such as Snatcher and Ever 17: The Out of Infinity were commercial failures in the United States, which made Capcom cautious of releasing Gyakuten Saiban overseas. But considering that the DS attracted a wider audience of gamers of all ages, it decided to take a chance with the first game. Thus, Gyakuten Saiban was rechristened as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney with the Japanese setting and names heavily modified for Western audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith faced issues with adapting Japanese puns and wordplay, so English alternatives were provided instead of literal translations.

While it is easy to take issue with the heavy changes Gyakuten Saiban underwent today in retrospect, such measures were necessary to market what was otherwise a very niche game to Western players in 2005. But the game proved to be a sleeper hit, which resulted in the rest of the series being localized, and in turn the beginning of visual novels finding an audience outside of Japan. Ace Attorney protagonist Phoenix Wright is now one of the most popular video game characters, yet he arguably would not have gotten there without localization that was aimed at a wide audience. On the other hand, the shift in game setting from Japan to California created storyline issues with later titles in the series, something that is the subject of many jokes among the fanbase.

Similar visual novels like Zero Escape and Danganronpa would later be released with more faithful translations, but by then acceptance of distinctly Japanese media had become widespread. Indeed, that is now largely the appeal of Japanese video games and anime. Western audiences are increasingly desiring media that provide them with cultural experiences that are distinct from their own, which is why series like Persona and Yakuza (now called Like a Dragon to reflect the original Japanese name) are very popular. If Gyakuten Saiban were released today, it likely would have kept the Japanese setting and have less reason for drastic changes.

This brings us to current debates around “how much” localization is needed, and that question is largely going to come down to what media is being discussed. Pokémon is going to have a far different kind of localization than Persona because the former is aimed at kids, while the later is aimed at adults. Some countries have strict regulations regarding what content is allowed in media, which means that changes are necessary by law. Many are often unaware that Japanese localizations of Western games are often heavily censored, meaning that this is hardly just a one-way issue.

Recent criticisms of English localizations, however, stem from accusations that the people in charge of them are inserting political statements often related to U.S. culture wars which are a stark departure from the original Japanese scripts. If we look at some of the most egregious examples of this practice over the last few years, the evidence does appear to be damning.

The above photo with the anime Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is often cited in these discussions as a notable example of “woke” localization. While these kinds of shows are not my cup of tea and I’ve never listened to the Japanese audio, it’s pretty obvious to even monolingual viewers that “pesky patriarchal societal demands” is not something the original author wrote. At best, we can call it a very liberal interpretation of the translated line in the subtitled version, but I think most would call it a bad creative choice.

Well, the localizer Jamie Marchi doesn’t seem to think so. During a 2018 convention appearance, she blamed fans’ dislike of the line on misogyny and bluntly told her critics, “I have a vagina. Deal with it.” She has since continued to double down on Twitter as seen below with some points that are worth noting.

It should be noted that Marchi is NOT a translator and her comments on the Japanese language carry little weight. Her job at Funimation is to adapt a script which has already been translated into English from Japanese and rewrite it for dubbing, which in fairness does require some changes. This holds true no matter what language a show is being dubbed into. But as an outside observer, I find most of Marchi’s points to be rather weak defenses of what’s a pretty terrible interpretation of the original script.

Another example of “woke” localization that also gets commonly cited is the English script for the video game Ghostwire: Tokyo in which the line “All property is theft” appears despite no such socialist message being in the Japanese script. Having listened to the spoken Japanese dialogue (さあ、どうだろうな, lit. “Huh, I wonder.”), I have no idea how whoever was behind the localization came to that interpretation. The Chinese translation appears to be based off the English line because it too is inaccurate.

The backlash was so severe from fans that the offending line was actually removed in a later patch, which suggests that even the publisher Bethesda probably realized that they had screwed up, which raises the question around what other problems Ghostwire’s English localization may have.

In another controversy, translator Katrina Leonoudakis (who in this case is also responsible for subtitle localization choices) rendered the phrase “Nii-Nii” in the anime Higurashi When They Cry: Gou as “Big Brudder.”

To provide some context, “Nii-Nii” is essentially a childish nickname a small child would give to an older brother. In Japanese, children often refer to their siblings with forms of address like “big brother” or “little sister,” which can pose a challenge for translators. Does one literally translate “onii-chan” as “big brother” or leave it be? Leonoudakis’ translation of “Nii-Nii” as “Big Brudder” is in my opinion a rather unnatural-sounding middle ground between both, and fans of Higurashi certainly took note.

Translators from a different school of thought will often keep names like “onii-chan” and honorifics like -san or -sama intact both for subtitling and dubbing to preserve the intricate Japanese system of social roles, while others believe none of it should be included in an English script. The problem here is that Higurashi fans have long associated the character Satoko with saying “Nii-Nii” in previous translations of the franchise’s games, anime, and manga. Yet when asked about it, Leonoudakis defended her writing choice and is known for being dismissive of critical fans just like Jamie Marchi.

In the end, however, the fans won out. Ironically, the dub of the show still has Sadako saying “Nii-Nii” and the following season would remove “Big Brudder” from the subtitles entirely. Like Ghostwire: Tokyo, I can only speculate that this happened because of fan backlash. Leonoudakis is now rather infamous among anime watchers for her translations, and her behavior on social media has only contributed to the recent stereotype that all translators/localizers are woke social justice warriors. Yours truly is also blocked by her despite never having a single interaction.

These above examples and more are pretty clear examples to me of bad localizations, but I must emphasize that they ultimately represent the minority of English translations of Japanese media. I can personally vouch for translators like Jeremy Blaustein (Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid) and Jake Jung (Made in Abyss, Future Boy Conan), who are friends of mine and do excellent work which has been widely lauded by critics and fans alike.

Privately, some translators have expressed their dislike of the above localization examples to me and take issue with their colleagues being so hostile toward fans. To blindly generalize all translators and localizers as bad people with a political agenda is unfair and not reflective of the majority who are respectful toward the Japanese source material. The problem is that the worst examples of localization stick out and are not easily forgotten by passionate audiences who have the right to demand better quality of work overall.

Is Artificial Intelligence the Future?

The controversy over poor localizations has only been ignited even further with The Ancient Magus Bride, a manga that will now receive a simultaneous English release via artificial intelligence. The official Twitter account for the series stated that their system “combines unique machine translation technology with editing and proofreading by professional translators.” The replies showed a mixture of responses ranging from praise to criticism, while the subreddit appears to be generally displeased with the decision. But how does the translation actually read? Here are some comparisons.

While this is ultimately subjective, I still feel that the translation done by a human being feels more natural and reads smoother than the AI version, which comes across as rather stiff and (unsurprisingly) robotic. But even the AI translation is being proofread by a human editor, which means that there is still the possibility of changes being implemented. Some seem to be under the impression that Japanese publishers are becoming aware of woke localizers heavily changing their products, but I don’t think that’s the case here.

The simple reason for this use of AI is that the manga’s publishers are trying to cut corners to release a quick English version without having to pay for translators. Whether true or not, the previously-linked Twitter post cited damages from piracy as the main justification for turning to AI. While this may become a practice for more niche series, it’s highly unlikely that a company like Nintendo or Atlus will use AI anytime soon due to their greater budgets and overall quality standards.

To give credit where it’s due, machine translation from Japanese to English has made leaps and bounds from the days of early 2000s Google Translate and Yahoo Babel Fish. New technology like DeepL can provide some impressive results when it comes to straightforward texts like news articles or medical journals which require little creative interpretation. When it comes to works of fiction like manga or video games, however, the results are more mixed.

Combining AI translation service ZTranslate with the retro video game emulator application RetroArch allows users to play Japanese games in English, but I’m frankly not very satisfied with the final output as it currently is. ZTranslate relies on optical character recognition (OCR) technology to convert images into translatable text, but it’s notoriously finicky with Japanese. For example, I’ve taken Japanese subtitle files from DVDs and Blu-rays in an attempt to apply them to higher quality video sources taken from 4K UHD rips, but available OCR applications do a poor job in reading the Japanese text from the PGS files, which contain hiragana, katakana, and kanji as image files.

Of course, I’m sure this technology will eventually get better and something like ZTranslate is presumably using an upgraded version, but we still have the problem of the resulting translations feeling unnatural or lacking things such as character speech patterns, gendered pronouns, and regional dialects that were inherent to the original Japanese text. English-speaking fans of visual novels have used machine and AI translations for certain niche titles for quite some time already, though a look at online forums will illustrate that there are still numerous problems to overcome.

These AI translations are serviceable for online communities who simply want the basic gist of a story in English, but a professional company like Nintendo, which is selling its products to millions of consumers worldwide, is going to have far higher standards and would never resort to a machine translation. If AI translation reaches the point where most of these imperfections are ironed out, bigger companies may adopt them as a partial tool, but there will always be a human being at the end of the line to make sure nothing goes out the door before a final check.

Nintendo’s division Treehouse doesn’t just translate its games either; it also makes sure that they’re being localized with the culture of the target region in mind. The Fire Emblem series is particularly notorious for having content cut or censored for its overseas releases, but this isn’t just because of some overzealous woke localizer. Rather, it’s official company policy for Nintendo to make these changes, and those practices will remain the same regardless if AI translation is being used or not.

I understand the frustration many English fans of Japanese media have toward these alterations, and I myself have a strong dislike of any form of censorship, especially when it comes to media that is aimed at mature adult audiences. I have previously written of my opposition toward this patronizing hand-holding many media companies are practicing these days, but I don’t think AI translation is going to make these problems go away.

What Can Be Done

When a localization is bad, what are fans to do? While it may seem that consumers have little power over these changes, this does not necessarily have to be the case, especially now when the internet and social media allows more transparency around development than ever. There are no perfect solutions, but there are a few things that I think can push things in a better direction.

As I mentioned previously, the bad localization choices seen in games like Ghostwire: Tokyo were eventually removed altogether. This suggests that the negative response was loud enough to not go unnoticed by Bethesda, resulting in a later patch changing the text. This to me is the most direct way for fans to express their displeasure around poor localizations of video games. If enough people are loud enough, companies are likely to be more willing to listen and act accordingly.

The same also holds true for manga and anime. Like Ghostwire, fan dislike over the translation of one season of Higurashi: When They Cry seemed to lead to changes in the following season. Moves like these will happen if it’s clear that a sizable amount of consumers are dissatisfied with a certain product. The downside is that this may not be possible in every situation and some companies like Nintendo will likely be more stubborn.

Another solution, which I think is the best course, is for fans to take matters in their own hands when official releases fall short or don’t even exist at all. Fan translations of video games, anime, and manga have been around for decades at this point, and yours truly even played a small part in bringing Hideo Kojima’s Policenauts to the Sega Saturn in English as a playtester back in 2016. The release has been positively received with many comparing it to an official localization, and I can guarantee you that such work would have not been possible through the use of AI. The same can be said about translation patches for other Japan-only games like Mother 3 and Shin Megami Tensei if..., which have also been strongly praised for their quality.

Of course, fan translations have their drawbacks. While PC modding is usually relatively straightforward, changing console video games requires hacked hardware, which can be a hurdle for some. Many projects get started, but don’t see the finish line. Some companies threaten legal action against fan groups, which leads to them shutting down for good. And of course, one has to keep in mind that fan translators, like official paid translators, may have interpretations of Japanese text that differ from other fans.

As English writer George Borrow once put it, “Translation is at best an echo.” All translation is someone’s individual interpretation, which leads to another possible solution, though it’s obviously the most difficult one: learn Japanese from scratch. Whether it’s a human being translating something from Japanese or AI software utilizing deep learning, the resulting text is always going to be one “opinion” over how something should read in another language. This gets into a deep philosophical debate that’s beyond the scope of this article, but I can attest that being truly bilingual opens doors in a way one never would experience if they were only monolingual.

In the future I plan to write a piece outlining how I learned Japanese over the past decade, but in my many years of studying the language, I’ve used text-heavy games like RPGs and visual novels as a supplementary learning tool. While I don’t think one can become fluent in spoken Japanese without spending an extended amount of time in the country at some point, one can actually get to a decently high level in reading Japanese without ever stepping foot in Japan. It’s a long process and those who are not committed to daily studying shouldn’t even start, but the rewards are worth it. With that in mind, someone whose job it is to professionally translate shouldn’t be suggesting that one learn Japanese as a retort to criticism of their work.

It is all too understandable why fans of certain series would be hostile toward localizers who display the above attitude. Without resorting to harassment, I believe that these people should be called out for their laziness and agenda-pushing when appropriate. Musicians who perform poorly don’t tell fans to “play their own music,” nor should a translator or localizer tell fans to “learn Japanese” if they’re bad at their job. I will admit that it does feel satisfying knowing that I no longer have to rely on someone else’s translation when I know Japanese myself, but that shouldn’t be a prerequisite when most want to enjoy media in their own native language.

Don’t Throw the Translator Out with the Bath Water

As someone who has been studying Japanese for nearly half of his life, linguistic differences and how to bridge them have always interested me. One inspiration for learning the language was indeed media like Japanese films and video games, but never did I think that translation would be yet another talking point in these tiresome American culture wars.

I’m no fan of the woke localizers and the backlash against them is warranted, but at the same time, these controversies have lead to some people saying some very silly things. My friend Jeremy Blaustein is the man responsible for the localizations of games like Snatcher and the first Metal Gear Solid, work that has generally been well-regarded by fans for years. Yet upon my praise of his contributions, I was met with some unnecessarily rude comments that took me off guard.

This doesn’t even include some of the more vile and antisemitic stuff sent Jeremy’s way which I don’t feel like reposting here. But apart from these kinds of replies being completely uncalled for, they’re also engaging in odd revisionist history. I distinctly remember Metal Gear fans constantly praising Jeremy’s translation even with the liberties that he took. I know this, because upon the release of MGS1’s GameCube remake, The Twin Snakes, fans criticized the new English script (which Jeremy did not write) as being inferior to the PlayStation original. While The Twin Snakes had a more literal translation, the majority of fan memories around the game come from Jeremy’s localization and dialogue choices, as well as him writing terms like “codec” for the wireless radio and “OSP (on-site procurement)” which were not in the Japanese original, but are now staples of the series.

If MGS1 were localized today, there likely would be less changes, but remember that Jeremy handled all of the game’s English script from translation to editing completely on his own over just six months. With casting director Kris Zimmerman, he even played a significant role in how the English dub voice actors should perform his script. Game localization resources in 1998 were a fraction of what they were today and most English voice acting was terrible. The original Metal Gear Solid was one of the first games to work past those limitations and strive for something closer to Hollywood films, resulting in a final product that remains a classic to this day. I highly recommend reading his own thoughts around working on the ambitious project. As he puts it, “translation is not a science; it is an art.”

Another odd take that I’ve recently been seeing is the proposal that Japanese studios will dub their own media with AI instead of relying on English voice actors. Again, I don’t see this as something that will be done other than by low-budget companies trying to save money. Studio Ghibli for example takes a hands-on role with how their films are translated overseas and would certainly not settle for anything less than actual voice actors. Some fans have tried their hand at showing AI dubbing in action and while it sounds ok, there’s still a feeling of unnaturalness that takes me out of the experience.

AI voice acting is certainly advancing in quality and I have no doubt that it will be used in the future for things like audio cleanup and ADR, but I don’t want to live in a media landscape where literally every aspect from the script to the voice acting of a film or show is created by machines. If you think that Hollywood movies and mainstream popular media are terrible now, imagine what things would be like where there is literally no human creativity involved at all. Publishers and studio executives will cut every corner possible to save money, which is why such practices need to be spoken out against now.

AI is not the solution to bad localizations because an artificial intelligence module is at the end of the day highly dependent on those who’ve programmed it and what results they wish to see. And if you think that arguments over translation and localization are just a Western thing, there is a long history of video games with bad translations into Japanese and criticism of some of the biggest names in the Japanese subtitling industry like Natsuko Toda. Fans on both sides of the Pacific are unsurprisingly very passionate and they can spot a bad translation a mile away.

And to repeat myself yet again, there is always going to be a human editor that will make the final decisions and change the outputted script if they view it as necessary. Localizations don’t happen in a vacuum, rather they’re done with a specific audience in mind. The schadenfreude of seeing woke localizers unhappy is understandable, but consumers shouldn’t be cutting their noses off to spite their faces. Instead of pushing for AI which will degrade the overall quality of media, we should instead be praising those who do a genuinely good job of localizing Japanese media and pushing for them to continue their work. As Miguel Sanz once said, “If the translator does his job as he should, he is a benefactor of humanity; otherwise he is a veritable public enemy.”

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If you asked me what my favorite video game series was, the answer would be Metal Gear Solid without question.

From each entry’s evolving stealth gameplay to their complex storylines which delve into everything from nuclear geopolitics to the human cost of war with enough cardboard boxes to shake a stick at, Hideo Kojima’s epic saga is one unlike any other.

I was introduced to Metal Gear far later than its 1987 MSX2 debut because of my age, but I’ve played every major entry and consider myself to be well-versed with the games’ lore and characters. For the longest time, much of the series was unfortunately stranded to older hardware, but that is set to change later this year when the first volume of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection hits shelves for PC and modern consoles.

The announcement has been cause for both celebration and concern among MGS fans. On one hand, the games being available on current platforms mean that they will be more accessible than ever both to players new and old. There is also a plethora of extensive bonuses, much of which is content previously never seen outside of Japan. Yet revelations that most of the content would not be on the physical cartridge of the Nintendo Switch port and that it would have a lower frame rate than the other versions are already leading to controversy.

To pour further gasoline onto the fire, Konami has done something which I view to be even more egregious from the standpoint of creative expression and integrity. All copies of the collection will ship with an advisory message warning that some content “may be considered outdated,” but adding that nothing has been changed in order to preserve “the creator’s original vision” without mentioning Hideo Kojima by name.

Some, perhaps even the majority of players, will view this added text as a minor trifle and nothing to be up in arms over. Yet I believe that its presence both contradicts the spirit of what Metal Gear stands for with its themes and signifies the troubling times we live in when it comes to viewing media from the past. One does not even have to be a gamer to see why this matters.

In the final hours of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the player is confronted with a long series of in-game conversations about censorship, digital information, artificial intelligence, and the evolving nature of truth, among other philosophical themes. This dialogue was a gut-punch in 2001, especially considering that few video games dove into such material at the time. One can see why MGS2 has only grown more prescient in the two decades since its release, but how to interpret Kojima’s often convoluted writing typically becomes a Rorschach test depending on one’s own political opinions.

Regardless, what is most relevant here is a piece of dialogue spoken by the game’s true villains who have been misleading protagonist Raiden the entire time and are revealed to be a shadowy organization controlling the United States known as the Patriots. I’m hugely oversimplifying a very complicated narrative, but bear with me.

“The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you,” the Patriots’ A.I. system says.

Raiden accuses the Patriots of manipulating information and creating a censorious society, but the A.I. system retorts that their goal is to “create context” in a line that has aged like fine wine:

“Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations?”

Whether Konami is aware of it or not, they have become the very thing Hideo Kojima warned about back in 2001 with their re-release of his games in 2023. By framing that some of Metal Gear’s content “may be considered outdated,” they are already attempting to “create context” before the player has even pressed the start button. Veteran fans who understand MGS2’s complex themes in particular will undoubtedly see the irony of this needless message, but those new to the series will have their prior impressions of Metal Gear wrongly colored because of Konami’s patronizing hand-holding.

Those who still don’t see what the big deal is will point out that no storyline content (as far as we currently know of) has been changed. Yet I would argue that the inclusion of a warning implies that Konami views the old Metal Gear games to have content they view as shameful or something they need to apologize for. I’m honestly struggling to understand what these supposedly outdated “expressions and themes” could even be, as other games from its era such as the Grand Theft Auto PS2 trilogy and Manhunt series contain far more sexual and violent content, but their subsequent re-releases on other platforms contain no such warnings.

Metal Gear is known for having some degree of sexual themes, from using adult magazines to lure soldiers away from their patrol routes to a female spy modeled after Lupin III character Fujiko Mine who uses her buxom assets to her advantage. It was also one of the earliest series that I know of to have openly bisexual characters with the villains Vamp and Colonel Volgin, the latter of whom gropes the protagonist’s groin in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater before painfully torturing him. Could any of this be what Konami is concerned with? If so, I find such fears to be laughably misguided. Hideo Kojima is always equal opportunity with showing sexy female *and* male characters, while bad guys doing bad things shouldn’t be viewed as anything controversial.

I shouldn’t have to point out the obvious, but Metal Gear is rated M for Mature by the ESRB or the equivalent in other regions. These are games intended for adult audiences, and yet we unfortunately seem to now live in an era where grown men and women need to be coddled like children. I half-jokingly wonder sometimes if future versions of Schindler’s List will need to have a disclaimer before the film explicitly denouncing Nazis as evil or if one day we’ll need to be directly told that slavery is bad in 12 Years a Slave by some quivering distributor.

But then again, we’re essentially at that point already, such as with Lionsgate stupidly pointing out that the 1960s were racist in their latest airings of Mad Men and U.K. television network Sky warning that The Last Samurai and Aladdin also contain “outdated attitudes.” Much of this was in response to the 2020 protests over the death of George Floyd when seemingly all companies across the world felt the need to issue a strongly-worded message showing how not racist and not bigoted they were. What we are seeing now with Metal Gear is undoubtedly a result of this irrational era of overcorrection.

Am I the only here who thinks these content advisories are all rather silly? While racism certainly exists to a degree in the U.S. and other countries, I fail to see how Tom Cruise’s role in The Last Samurai (which Japanese people actually love) or a bisexual villain named Vamp in Metal Gear Solid 2 contributes to greater levels of bigotry and discrimination. More often than not, these warnings completely miss the mark with their dismissal of historical content. The air of superiority people today have toward the past is always done with the luxury of hindsight, and what we do today will no doubt be judged with the same finger-wagging from those who live decades from now.

There is of course the question of when content advisories are appropriate. Some have pointed out that even PS1 horror games back in the day such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill warned of their violent material. While I personally think that such a message on top of an already M-rated horror game is unnecessary, I think there is a clear difference between an advisory about explicit gore and a patronizing warning about content being “outdated.” But can media actually be outdated? The most obvious example that comes to mind is how Warner Brothers handled their vintage cartoons in subsequent home video releases decades after the fact as famously shown here.

It’s no secret that WWII-era animations like Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips and Tokio Jokio contained unflattering racist depictions of Japanese people, which were common sentiments in the West during wartime. The Japanese did the same to Westerners as well. Providing a message explaining this background does make sense here because it’s a clear-cut instance of actual racist content which would not be accepted in modern polite society. Yet I think any rational person can see that there is a considerable difference between bigoted cartoons released decades ago and Metal Gear, which contains nothing of the sort.

Applying a label such as “outdated” to Hideo Kojima’s work is downright laughable considering how much prescience it holds in our modern world. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and issues like nuclear proliferation being driving geopolitical issues, the themes that Metal Gear has explored throughout its long run seem more relevant than ever. Many new players will be experiencing this series for the first time upon the release of the collection in October, but Konami has made a mistake in framing these games as containing material that is inappropriate for today’s age.

Content advisory aside, I will be buying this collection because I’ve been demanding a re-release of Metal Gear for years. Konami, however, cannot in good faith claim that it is completely celebrating the legacy of Hideo Kojima’s work when it feels the need to warn audiences about past content it appears to be ashamed of. There would be no controversy over any of this if those in charge had stuck to their guns and not pandered to a minority of potentially offended people which may not even exist and are certainly not the audience that would play Metal Gear in the first place.

Media companies should have more faith in their target audiences and this infantilization needs to stop. There is nothing about these games that Konami needs to apologize for because Metal Gear never did anything wrong. I hope that those who play this series for the first time understand that such a content advisory message is completely unnecessary and that Hideo Kojima’s themes have only continued to age well with time.

As Solid Snake tells Raiden at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, “Building the future and keeping the past alive are one in the same thing.”

Yes, it’s real. If you’re a veteran fan of the Metal Gear series like me, you likely came into the most recent PlayStation Showcase with a healthy dose of skepticism toward the new round of rumors that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater would be getting a full remake with a collection of the original games released in tandem. We’ve heard it all for years with nothing to show for it — and yet that’s exactly what we got.

The first teaser did a decent job of introducing the remake’s new visual style, but it ultimately only created more questions than answers. While presumably in-engine or at least a close approximation to what we’ll likely get, the preview showed no actual gameplay and the lack of even a release window implies we probably won’t see this one until next year at the earliest, possibly as a tie-in to the 20th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 3.

For me, the more important announcement was the reveal of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection, which is advertised as collecting the original versions of the first three MGS games set for an autumn 2023 release. The presence of a “Vol. 1” tacked on at the end suggests that more classic titles from the series are also on the way.

This is huge news because the vast majority of the franchise has been stranded on older console hardware with no practical way of playing them outside of dusting off your PS3. While hatred for Konami is rather droll at this point, I’m thrilled that Metal Gear is finally back and will soon be available for a new generation of players to experience.

Yet the elephant in the room is still that remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, which is a greater cause for concern. The original game ranks as the default favorite for many fans of the series with its memorable James Bond-esque narrative and innovative stealth gameplay which took Metal Gear out of urban environments and into a dynamic jungle-based setting. It revealed the narrative origins of the entire series as one of the most effective prequels ever written, and of course, that opening theme song is the stuff of video game music legends.

I could go on, but we all know what a high pedigree MGS3 has, which only makes the idea of a remake all the more daunting. Watching the available material, I can’t help but feel that we’ve been through this before. What first comes to mind is Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, the GameCube remake of the first Metal Gear Solid that is highly controversial among fans. It upgraded MGS1 to the visuals and engine of MGS2, adding elements like first-person gameplay and the ability to hang off ledges.

Many felt that these tweaks broke the fundamental design of the original MGS1. Arguably even more divisive were the highly stylized “bullet time” cutscenes directed by Ryuhei Kitamura that felt closer to something out of The Matrix than anything seen in Metal Gear Solid at the time. The voice acting also changed with some characters no longer having certain accents, and the script was overhauled to be closer to the Japanese original compared to the more liberal localization written by Jeremy Blaustein.

As someone who grew up with The Twin Snakes and not MGS1, the remake personally holds a special place in my heart. I prefer the gameplay continuity between it and MGS2, while the more ridiculous aspects were less jarring for me since I was already aware of Raiden’s antics that would later be seen in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Naturally, I’m aware that I’m in the minority of fans with this opinion and completely understand why those who began the series with the original would prefer the original.

This inevitably brings us back to Metal Gear Solid 3 and the problems that a remake is likely to encounter. For starters, the new title is Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and not Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which suggests that we’re probably in for a considerably different kind of game. Understandably, the industry has had 20 years to evolve and the remake will be made to reflect modern trends. The difficult question, however, is what direction to take things in.

Will the remake be similar to the 3DS port of MGS3, which adapted the Monster Hunter-esque shooting controls of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker? Or will it try to be closer to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain? The original maps for MGS3 are quite small by today’s standards, so will the developers aim for a direct recreation or something more akin to MGSV’s open world? We know that the Fox Engine is out, which makes sense given that it’s ten years old and has been surpassed by far better options.

The press release by Konami states that the remake aims to be a “faithful recreation of the original story and game design, while evolving the gameplay with stunning visuals and a seamless user experience,” yet at this stage those are only idealistic promises without any gameplay footage to show for them. It also says that the original voice actors are returning, but it’s unclear if that refers to a brand-new recording or the reuse of existing audio. David Hayter was famously axed from MGSV and replaced by Kiefer Sutherland, but is currently playing coy with his role in the remake.

Then there’s the man himself, Hideo Kojima. We know that he isn’t involved, and he didn’t tweet anything following the announcement. While it’s true that Metal Gear games without Kojima have been made, he always had some kind of producing or supervising role which ensured a degree of oversight. This time we don’t have that, which alone might be a red flag for some. It also isn’t entirely clear if this remake is being developed in-house at Konami or being outsourced to another company, nor do we know how much of the original team is involved.

I have mixed feelings on this point. While Kojima’s involvement would have undoubtedly helped the remake, it’s pretty clear that he was burnt out with the series by the end. He has famously said that each Metal Gear game would be his last one, and in an alternative universe, MGS2’s ending would’ve concluded the entire series on an ambiguous note up to player interpretation. Every subsequent Metal Gear entry was more or less a reluctant sequel, and Kojima likely has no desire to return to the series both due to lack of interest and his falling out with Konami. His intention was always to hand off things to the next generation of designers, so perhaps that time has finally come.

To expand things further, one may wonder what the purpose of video game remakes should be as a whole. The most successful example in recent times is likely Capcom’s revitalization of the Resident Evil series where the remakes actually feel like substantial upgrades and an appropriate evolution of where modern gameplay should be. Fans generally like the remake of Shadow of the Colossus and the Kiwami entries of the Yakuza series are better than the PS2 originals. 2018’s Secret of Mana, however, dropped the ball completely and was little more than a pointless cashgrab. GoldenEye 007 purists often don’t even want to acknowledge the existence of the 2010 version, which is far closer to a reimagining than a remake.

A more apt comparison to MGS3 is Konami’s other long-neglected franchise, Silent Hill. Fans are currently very divided on the remake of Silent Hill 2 announced last year, but Metal Gear is at least getting a collection that aims to preserve MGS 1-3 in their unaltered forms. This to me seems like the best course of action, as it guarantees that the originals won’t be lost and those with no interest in remakes have an option of playing what they want on modern hardware.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has the thankless task of needing to appeal to fans of the original, but also be a modern AAA game that can hold its own against comparable action titles. The latter, however, is where it has the most potential. In 2023, the stealth genre is in dire straights and in much need of revitalization. With low competition, the MGS3 remake has the opportunity to take the throne and breathe new life into this long-neglected industry area.

Furthermore, if the remake proves successful, it could pave the way for other entries in the series to receive the same treatment. I’ve always wanted for there to be full remakes of the oft-forgotten MSX2 games which serve as the bridge between Big Boss and Solid Snake’s respective story arcs. There would undoubtedly be a lot to figure out, such as if David Hayter would return or how the stories would be rewritten to better fit the canon of the later games, but such projects are entirely dependent on how well the MGS3 remake turns out.

There is overall both reason to be skeptical and justification for cautious optimism with Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. I would be far more apprehensive if it wasn’t for the existence of the Master Collection, but luckily players both new and old will be able to soon play this series in its original form on modern platforms. It’s now finally a good time to be a Metal Gear fan again, and the future looks far more positive than anything we’ve seen from the franchise in nearly a decade. What a thrill indeed.