5 Conclusions - 01/06/18

A regular look at gaming-related stories from the past week or so whereby conclusions are drawn from anything and everything. These may be incredibly well reasoned based on events from the week. Alternatively, they may be highly speculative, drawn from very little evidence. More likely, they will be somewhere in between.

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Conclusion One: The NES was nearly the original Street Fighter

So, Street Fighter II on the SNES was a massive hit, coming after the success of its original arcade version. Street Fighter games on a variety of platforms have been just as successful over the course of thirty-plus years, since the original Street Fighter was released in arcades in 1987.

What will really bake your noodle, though, is that we now know an NES version of the game was in production, though nobody outside Capcom knew about nor had seen anything from it. Until now, that is.

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Frank Cifaldi worked on the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection which was released this week. Frank is a computer game historian and was working on this collection with regards to the museum on disc where this, and various other cool bits of Street Fighter history from 1987 to 1999 can be found. Imagine though, Street Fighter on the NES back in the day? Those move inputs would have been wild...

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Conclusion Two: Oh Bayek, it’s a Greek tragedy!

Assassin’s Creed: Origins was a full-on reboot for the series. It went back further than we had ever been to before the Assassins had even formed. It was a brilliantly received game, one that learnt from all the other open world titles around and benefitted from the two-year gap afforded it. It might not have felt like a true Assassin game — disappointedly losing the fabulous set piece kills from Syndicate — but it was very good at what it chose to do.

Whilst we have now been to Ancient Egypt we haven’t done Greece yet. But if rumours are to be believed we will. Actually there’s an actual piece of merchandise in the wild, which can be seen here, that tells us that we’ll get to join Homer and Mario and go on our own Odyssey later this year:

Ubisoft tends to suffer from leaks, likely caused by the Templars or perhaps themselves. Regardless all will be officially unveiled (in our opinion) at E3 later this month.

Conclusion Three: Sumo Digital join Team Sonic

This week it was announced that in winter we’ll all get the chance to play Team Sonic Racing, a glorious offline and online kart racer where you can compete with or against friends. It even got a lovely reveal trailer:

We don’t know much about it yet except that it’s being developed by the UK’s Sumo Digital, a long-standing developer which has been around since 2003 and has pedigree in a variety of high-quality games, including various racing ones such as TOCA, Forza and Outrun.

Anything Sonic-related tends to create a buzz, and when high-speed kart racing is involved you’ve got all kinds of comparisons to stand up to, which we’re sure the team know about. Specifically Mario and Mario Kart. Still, it’s good to have a benchmark to aim for, right? We’ll see and hear much more at E3.

Conclusion Four: We’re gonna have some new opportunities to catch ‘em all

We mentioned a while back that we were expecting a Pokemon RPG for the Switch and this week we got official word that all kinds of different titles and offerings are headed to the home and portable console either later this year, or next, including an RPG.

In November we’ll get to see Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu! and Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! which are designed to ease new players into the world and are also familiar to the global mega-hit that is Pokemon Go! Of course, according to Nintendo, we’ll see all kinds of new functionality possible only with the Switch. These games, in addition to Pokemon Go! are where the also announced Poke Ball Plus come into play, peripheral sold separately.

In addition to these two, we got word of two new RPGs. One of them, Pokemon Quest is an action-RPG and available on the eshop RIGHT NOW. It’s ‘free to start’ which suggests some options down the line can be unlocked with cash, possibly when the title makes its way to mobiles as well as the Switch. Either way it’s not the big RPG we’ve been waiting for, oh no. That comes in the form of ANOTHER game announced, with a 2019 release. That one really will be worth catching.

Conclusion Five: The gaming world is an emptier place without TotalBiscuit

We couldn't end this week's post without mentioning the sad loss of John Bain, better known as TotalBiscuit and The Cynical Brit. After a long battle with bowel cancer, John unfortunately lost his fight last Friday, aged just 33. He was well regarded as a YouTuber and gaming commentator, and a huge supporter of the indie market. He also shone a spotlight on dubious ethical practices within the industry, and became known for his often divisive stands on big issues such as Gamergate.

With an instantly recognisable voice, a keen eye for reporting on emerging (and often unscrupulous) trends, and the kind of humour us fellow Brits are known for, John's passing at such an early age was a real loss for the community. Our thoughts go out to his family.