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by Josh Ge on 12/23/20 10:40:00 am    

  

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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A few months ago as I was planning out the rest of the year, naturally it was about time to start asking myself what kinds of special events we might have for Cogmind. The major Beta 10 was released in September, so there was once again an opportunity to spend some time playing with different ideas, and players have certainly come to expect some kind of event around various holidays given Cogmind’s history (see: Launchers, Pay2Buy, Holiday Mode, Abominations, RPGLIKE, Player 2…).

The next upcoming holiday was Halloween, but none of the specifically Halloween-themed gameplay concepts I had were particularly compelling, then one day I suddenly came up with the idea to do an ARG. I’m not really sure where this thought came from–it just popped in there xD

ARG refers to “alternate reality game,” which as a genre has a growing variety of possible forms and definitions, but among the primary uniting factors is that ARGs are created by mixing multiple types of interactive media, ideally with social aspects. (Wikipedia has lots more background info on ARGs.)

So what exactly would something of this nature work with Cogmind, and how would I build it? Having never done anything like this before, I had a ton of questions–well that’s what every special event planning session starts with, but this time it was especially acute. It really shows in my early notes, several pages of ideas bouncing all over the place, some of which aren’t even close to what the event became.

Early on I was clearly wrestling with trying to get myself into the ARG spirit by steering the concept outside the game itself as much as possible, against the grain of what I’m used to designing. I started out with REXPaint UI mockups (most Cogmind special events come with a special interactive UI component that appears in the bottom left corner, serving both as a useful reference and tool, and also providing extra info for screenshots), but in this case it didn’t seem necessary, and kinda worked against the ARG idea by concentrating more of the event inside Cogmind. Instead it would make more sense to move the primary form of interaction with this event outside the game itself.

So I built a little website.

The event banner for Cogmind’s ARG, more or less a screenshot of the website home page.

Players start from that page, on which there’s a single link to reach the next page, or “level,” but doing so requires a password. Getting a password is a multistep process:

• Read a hint on the web page which suggests a place in the game world to visit, or action to perform. The hint is just that, a hint, so doesn’t constitute specific instructions, and figuring it out is to some degree a small puzzle in itself (though in most cases not usually that difficult for players relatively familiar with Cogmind).
• Find the associated password clue indicated by the hint, somewhere in game.
• Use the clue to obtain the actual password, which is somewhere on the internet. This is often the more challenging part of the puzzle, at least for a single individual, since the possibilities cover a broader range of domain knowledge, and the clues are more cryptic.

So the goal for each level is to solve a pair of puzzles to get the password to continue advancing to subsequent levels. (If you’re wondering about more details and examples, there will be plenty of those in the walkthrough I’ll be sharing later.)

Each new level provides not only the next hint, but also comes with a reward: lore! This perhaps makes the Cogmind ARG more unique than some, helping keep players interested by offering an explicit reward at every step, rather than making the solving of puzzles the only reward in itself, with maybe a single reward at the end.

A lot of Cogmind players enjoy the lore behind the game world, and there’s plenty of unwritten pieces to that lore worth introducing or expanding upon. Some pieces are already hinted at in the game’s current lore, while others are just my own additional concepts behind some of the content that the game doesn’t (or hasn’t yet!) directly addressed.

At first I had no idea at all even what theme to use for the ARG (it is “Halloween” in color only :P), but I’m glad I settled on lore since this was a fun opportunity to share more information about potential future expansions. In most cases they’re not guaranteed, but are at least fun to read and think about–I’ve reread all the entries many times myself, just thinking about the possibilities ?

Design Options

Even with a theme nailed down, there were still some important general questions to answer, like whether the event should focus on individual participation or be more of a community event.

I did want it to bring the community together in solving a set of puzzles which would be relatively difficult for any one person to complete on their own, even planning to explicitly dub it a “Community ARG,” but decided that wasn’t really necessary and it could simply be a suggestion included as part of the announcement.

I also considered offering cash prizes, but changed my mind at the last minute since that might work against the idea of encouraging general cooperation across the community. Plus time zones, the fact that this event wasn’t pre-announced at all (I wanted to surprise everyone :D) nor designed with hardcore competition in mind meant it would be hard for a cash reward to be fair to everyone. And of course there’s already lore rewards at every level, anyway!

Another big question was whether to allow for multiple paths through the ARG, completing puzzles out of order (this was especially relevant to how the website would be built). It turns out there really wouldn’t be so much content that such an approach might become very desirable, and designing for a more controlled, linear progression would make it more enjoyable overall. In the rare cases when players might discover an in-game clue before they need it, they could simply write it down for later reference.

Time to Solve

I targeted 1~2 weeks for a decent individual player working hard at it, or a month if relatively slow, but based on the amount of ARG content I figured that a group of players working together could probably do it in just a day or two.

Sure enough the first team to assemble as soon as the event started managed to reach the end in about 22 hours.

The puzzles are ordered mostly by depth, thus the first clues are found early on, and so on, making it easier to find multiple clues in the same run without having to start over. Of course with branching and a lack of backtracking in Cogmind exploration, it’d be impossible to solve the entire ARG in a single run. Theoretically one could acquire every single clue in a minimum of two runs if they happen to have the right branches spawn in the proper order and choose to do certain things in each, although it’s highly unlikely someone would both get that opportunity and make the choices required, in some cases because the choices could be more dangerous and jeopardize some other clue they were aiming for at the time. More realistically it would at least take about 4~5 runs to complete (not counting potential deaths along the way).

Participation

70.5% of ARG release version (Beta 10.2) players were playing in ARG mode.

Note that Cogmind stat uploading is opt-in, so data only includes a subset of the community, and this event in particular had a higher run requirement threshold than previous events, at 10 runs instead of 3. What that means is that the event only auto-activates once a player has logged at least 10 prior Cogmind runs. Events normally exclude beginners like this in order to avoid confusing them (alternative rulesets and content are basically being added for experienced players to try out, or at least those already somewhat familiar with the base game). Players who hadn’t yet met that threshold could still manually activate it, but according to the data only one player chose to do that.

This event in particular, with its deep lore rewards and requirement that one already be pretty familiar with the world in order to make good progress, was very much aimed at long-time players, and the median historical run count among participants was 40.

9.7% of players who met the threshold to automatically activate ARG mode decided not to and forced the mode off in order to play the regular game. (Some other players and runs were also excluded from the 10.2 ARG because they had manually activated some different past special event.)

The median number of ARG runs per participant was 3, which isn’t really enough to solve it to the end, although in some cases where people were working together they might only do one run for the team.

Honestly the overall data here is not incredibly useful because it doesn’t offer a way to know who was actively playing the mode with the intent to participate, because again it activates automatically for most players. Unlike how I’ve handled most previous events, I didn’t include any mode-specific scoresheet data for analysis this time around.

But! We do happen to have another metric which will be somewhat more accurate, and also include anonymous players who didn’t opt in to data uploading. It just so happens that anyone who gets the first hint and is on their way to completing the first level of the ARG has to visit a particular Pastebin paste, and that page has a unique hit counter. The paste itself is unlisted, so it’s mostly going to be visited by players who are participating. Looking there (and subtracting my own test visits to that page with various browsers :P) I can see that we’ve got 185 unique hits. Still not likely 100% accurate, but it’s a decent gauge of participation.

Apparently several dozen people also visited the account page I set up to make that post, from a special someone in the game ?

Note the data for the above section was recorded a couple days before the end of the official ARG period (one month), so would be missing the last bit, plus some will still be playing past the end.

The website part of the project is quite simple, a good thing because I ain’t no web dev.

Like the front page, the content of each additional page/level is simply an image containing the entire page’s text and graphics (so I can work where I’m more comfortable, in Photoshop :P), plus a hint linking to the next page.

Each new level is protected by htpasswd authentication, where as the first page indicates the user name for each level is simply “cogmind” (for simplicity), while the password is what players have to discover, as described above.

While building the site I tested all the content and links numerous times in multiple browsers to make sure there were absolutely no mistakes, since I didn’t have anyone else helping me with prerelease testing this time as I wanted the nature of the event to be a surprise for everyone (even patrons). I did another complete round of testing once again shortly before launch, just in case.

On the game side there were a few new things to build, all of it pretty simple, though.

Naturally there’s new content included with this release, basically messages in various forms, and those needed to be stored somewhere. My inclination with this sort of thing is to store all related data in a single external file, for ease of editing and organization. Doing this for an ARG, however, would make it quite easy to identify and hack, so I decided to avoid centralizing the data and instead spread it around within the executable itself.

Even there I didn’t want the text to be that easy to scrape, so I also added a new system to encrypt strings within the executable. Despite these precautions I’m sure a dedicated individual could still hack it in less than a day, but that’s fine, and could be a challenge in itself if anyone with the appropriate skills wanted to take that route to “solving” the ARG ?

The other main game-side work involved display methods for clues. This was fairly easy since sharing clues in most cases just piggybacked on the existing message systems, although in some cases it was necessary to make it a bit more obvious that something was a clue, for example the on-map alert/notice pop-up system got a new Halloween color theme option I could use for messages prefixed with “FORBIDDEN NOTICE:”. There’ll be plenty of examples of this in the later walkthrough.

Early in development I considered going the usual special event route with a dedicated interface for recording hints, listing clues and whatnot, but decided it wasn’t necessary, and would even get in the way given how the event ended up being designed.

Mockup for an unused hint and clue interface.

Like raising levels during the RPGLIKE event in 2019, the mockup suggested there would a flashing popup whenever a clue was obtained, to make it extra obvious.

To come up with ideas for the puzzles, I first came up with two lists: one representing potential sources of clues within Cogmind, and another suggesting where I might want to hide passwords outside the game.

Most of the in-game options ended up being used, since an event like this should aim for maximum variety:

• NPC dialogue, for example on meeting them, or when they’re destroyed
• Hacking to parse an NPC (reading their mind)
• Scene text on witnessing an event
• ALERT-style global announcement
• Terminal query
• Some special cases used other more unique channels, as indicated in the walkthrough

For possible password locations I chose mostly bits of the internet over which I have some or complete control, in order to ensure the event would go according to plan, and also even continue to be accessible after the official event ended:

Not all of the above were actually used. Also note that some clues would likely require using a search engine like Google to find information relevant to uncovering a password. Passwords might also be directly provided within the game instead of via the internet, where that approach would be fun or made more sense.

As for the puzzle content itself, aside from being basically familiar with the world of Cogmind, much of it is tech-oriented. Obtaining passwords is easiest with some knowledge of very basic web page analysis, binary text, CPU hardware, a certain movie, multiple other roguelikes, specific Cogmind lore, and Cogmind achievements. Being good at using a search engine in general would definitely help a lot, and could mitigate much of the need to have these skills or knowledge prior to the event.

By the way, the terminology I’ve been using throughout this article, and that I stuck with throughout development to keep things organized, defines a “hint” as the piece of info given on the website for where the player can get more info to progress, and a “clue” being the info found in game that leads to the final answer/password which is usually found online, outside the game.

Reception was pretty good. Some players had never even heard of an ARG, others said they’d done a few before and loved them, and yet others said they didn’t really like them in general. Regardless of what kind of event is held not everyone is as open to a larger departure from a game’s normal format, but some players were really excited about it and enjoyed the process.

Not everyone was interested in the same part of the event, either–some were big on the puzzle solving, but didn’t necessarily want to go through and do the in-game clue-collecting part. Even some who did want to do the collecting themselves had trouble targeting a specific location in the game during their run, since that’s not normally how they would play (and it’s overall a more challenging way to play Cogmind). And some players simply had fun watching others do the ARG to share the lore afterward.

It definitely turned out to be a community event that helped give a singleplayer game more of a multiplayer feel, because even if not in a team, often times players would need additional hints from others to fill gaps in their knowledge, or because they maybe overlooked a clue.

I had fun listening to players in the voice channel on Discord working together to advance through the ARG.

I hung out in that channel for six hours, mostly as a silent observer, as 5~8 players at a time solved level after level. The group had some of its better players responsible for quickly playing to the relevant in-game areas, while others were thinking through puzzles or alternative approaches. Puzzles that would eventually stump a lone individual for a while, or even permanently without extra hints, were no match for a group of players working together bouncing ideas off one another, and that first group was the only known one to finish in a day.

One interesting thing about hosting an ARG partially inside the game is that people pay a lot more attention to the game’s details, to the point that players were asking others “wow, was this here before?” and “is this new?” or “did you know that???,” where in every case it was something common that had been a part of the game for years–some player just hadn’t noticed that particular detail before ?

So in that sense, ARGs are apparently a good way to force players to really notice details! (relevant or not…) Of course this effect also had players trying to find lots of meaning even where there is none, both inside and [especially] outside the game, leading to a variety of wild goose chases when searching for clues. One particular clue I’ll get to later in the walkthrough was especially funny because one of the websites players needed to visit (not mine) also had its own cryptic ARG-style content embedded in the page itself, unrelated to the Cogmind ARG ?

Most of the Cogmind community plays with the default Rogue difficulty setting, but several switched to easier difficulty modes specifically to collect clues more quickly and reliably.

Early chat about different player approaches to, and opinions on, the ARG.

Starting from the second day a dedicated chat channel was set up for the ARG (day 1 would’ve been best, but at the time most participants were hanging out in the voice channel for faster communication at the start anyway). Technically the default ARG period was for the entire month of November (and some will likely continue playing beyond that), so it’s been there and receiving a trickle of new comers as time goes on, more so because I keep pointing people there when they ask related questions on other forums or elsewhere.

The ARG channel is naturally filled with spoiler tags ?

As far as organization goes, and seeing how players advanced through the event, in the end I still think a linear design was the best approach, though I feel it would’ve been nice to have even more “side quests,” additional ARG content to discover along the way but that wasn’t required in order to progress to the end. There were a few such secrets, but not many–two of them were discovered, and to my knowledge the third has yet to be found.

So that’s it for the background and meta discussion. In my latest followup article on the blog I share a walkthrough for the ARG puzzles with lots of details and dev commentary:

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I tried to write this list without using “comfort game” in every other paragraph, but hey this year’s been a lot and repetitive language is the least of my worries. It’s been a stressful year, but I’m thankful that I’ve been able to retreat into both familiar and new worlds to find that feeling of comfort and stave off the mental burnout.

Many of those comfort games were old favorites: The Sims is an eternal presence in my life (and this year’s Snowy Escape expansion has been a blast to explore), Rimworld consumed my life for several months early into the pandemic and I’m still trying to get a grasp on that comforting chaos, and the familiar halls of Hitman‘s massive sandboxes are always a welcome retreat.

Turns out that several of those games were also 2020 releases, despite feeling like I’d been playing them for years. Turns out when a global pandemic skews your perception of time to the point where entire months fly by in what you swear was only a couple of weeks, it’s tricky to figure out which games came out when! Here’s an alphabetized collection of some of my favorites from this year, along with a smaller list of games way down below I’m planning on spending more time with at some point in the future.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a long time coming and, for many of us, exactly what we needed to make it through the pandemic’s early days in the United States. The latest in the nearly 20 year old series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the first mainline Animal Crossing game fans of the series have seen since 2012’s New Leaf and it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. 

New Horizons is excellent in its own right, but the serendipitous timing of its launch elevated the game into a cultural phenomenon. It was the first comfort game many of us fixated on to get through those initial weeks of lockdown. It was rare to turn on your Switch and not see an entire friends list of people playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Friends met up to enjoy a meteor shower together, group chats lit up when the illusive traveling shopkeeper Redd graced one islander’s shores, and Animal Crossing itself became the backdrop for social chats, general shenanigans, and birthday celebrations. 

That commotion has died down and given way to the relaxing, piecemeal gameplay the Animal Crossing series is known for, allowing its tedious but somehow still super charming mechanics to really shine. There’s less going on in New Horizons than, say, New Leaf but all in all it still makes for an incredible game that remains a cozy escape from everything this year has had to offer.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was a game made specifically for me. Thank you very much for that, Larian Studios.

The followup to BioWare’s decades-dormant Baldur’s Gate series, Baldur’s Gate 3 likewise brings lore, locations, magic, and mechanics from the expansive world of Dungeons & Dragons into the video game realm. Even in early access and with only its first arc out, it’s a game that captures much of the magic of an actual D&D session without the need for flipping through tomes of rule books or scheduling a weekly four hour block of time that somehow consistently works for five friends.

Skill checks and attacks are powered by digital dice rolls, infusing gameplay with a healthy amount of dice-driven misfortune along the way. Decisions and conversation found throughout the game offer plenty of opportunities interact to shape the world according to you character’s whims and personality, and there are different ways to approach situations based on the skills and knowledge your character or party has at its disposal.

The way Larian executed all of this may be rough around the edges at times (its early access!), but even so it presents a game built on the mechanics of a tabletop game that manages to appeal to both experienced players and those new to the D&D experience. (I was fortunate enough to chat with one of the game’s developers about that process earlier in the year!)

And I haven’t even touched on multiplayer and how amazing it can be to create characters with a handful of friends and try to meander our way through the game as our own party chaotic dumb tieflings, halflings, and elves. It’s an incredible game, and I cannot wait to see where the rest of early access leads it.

Dreams is so dang good. #MadeInDreams #PS4sharehttps://t.co/9yFhybO35F pic.twitter.com/qOrr3IXota

— Alissa McAloon (@Gliitchy) September 5, 2020

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Dreams. Media Molecule’s long-awaited creative engine technically launched this year (despite opening up a sort of early access in 2019) and, impressively, released an update with PSVR compatibility several months back. Dreams exists on user-created content; players can either roam from dream to dream and try out a wide array of games created within Dreams by other players, take a stab at creating their own assets for other players to use, or build their own playable creations.

I can’t speak to the creation tools because I haven’t quite dived that deeply into Dreams, but it’s impressive judging only by what players have managed to make thusfar! I’ve played remakes of Beat Saber and Guitar Hero within Dreams (with very little success because I’m trash at rhythm games), been completely enthralled by a deceptively complex puzzle game starring a little lightbulb robot friend (above), laughed to the point of tears in a Wallace and Gromit inspired(?) meme-laden adventure, and relaxed to an in-game recreation of Godot’s very good theme song from the Phoenix Wright games. (We won’t talk about the Sonic VR remake I played, but I will say that WIP VR experiences are a trip.)

There’s such depth in Dreams and you don’t have to look far to find it. The game shines both because of its community and because of the palpable love Media Molecule put into creating something powered by the purest creativity. If you’ve been on the fence about picking this one up, it’s well worth checking out.

This one’s not technically a video game and it didn’t technically come out this year but my list, my rules. I started getting pretty deep into D&D last year after having played a only few times since college before that. I’m incredibly lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to join a handful of groups all filled with wonderful people last year, and that those groups have continued meeting (mostly online now) in 2020. That lifeline and connection to so many friends has been an important piece of my life this year and allowed my frustratingly introverted self to keep in touch with friends despite being mostly confined to the apartment this year.

On the less sappy side of things, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the rules, complexities, and weird situations that come with a tabletop game like D&D. The storytelling that comes from it is the sort of experience I always wanted more of when playing similarly non-linear games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect way back when, and the collaborative nature of the game means that those twists and turns have a wonderful unpredictability, that victories feel like heroic moments shared among friends, and that losses carry surprising emotional heft.

Beyond the pages of WOTC-published books, there’s a robust community of creators, writers, and designers creating their own adventures, items, supplements, content, lore, and much more to improve and build on the framework of 5e itself. Plenty of actual play shows have sprung up over the years as well (Critical Role! Rivals of Waterdeep! Fantasy High! So many more!) where you can enjoy some of those same emotional highs from the comfort of a podcast or Twitch stream, or even find a community of fellow fans built around that wonderful collaborative storytelling.

i will never be able to do anything this impressive again #Spelunky #PS4share pic.twitter.com/lvgA3TEgKX

— Alissa McAloon (@Gliitchy) September 3, 2020

While we’re talking comfort games, have you heard of a little game called Spleunky? It’s not a comfort game in the same way that Animal Crossing is; Animal Crossing would never betray me like most of my Spelunky runs do. 

Spelunky 2, like its equally brutal predecessors, creates a feeling of comfort by offering up a compelling roguelike loop that’s constantly feeding you more information through horrible, horrible deaths. The goal here is to descend through a series of procedurally generated levels to claim treasure and escape a cycle of death and revival, nearly the same as how it was in Spelunky 1. You learn lessons about mechanics, obstacles, and enemies as you die from them along the way, and eventually start to feel like you almost know what you’re doing.

I wasn’t sold on Spelunky even needing a sequel until the moment I first played Spelunky 2. What’s interesting about Spelunky 2 is that it manages to take the formula behind the original, a game that seems it’s already perfect in its own right, and build upon that using new mechanics, worlds, and structural changes that seem like a natural progression of the original. It wouldn’t have been enough just to make another Spelunky; the sequel needed to keep the charm, neatness, and challenge of the original while still finding a way to stand out from earlier games and excel in its own right without adding too much, and somehow Spelunky 2 pulled this off.

I’m a sucker for moody vampire fiction. Though the Bloodlines sequel won’t see the light of day until 2021, this year still had a healthy infusion of Vampire: The Masquerade content to keep me in good spirits. Both Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York and Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York are visual novels created by Draw Distance, and a great introduction to the world and lore of the series. I think I beat both in one sitting each, purely because I couldn’t put them down once I’d started playing. 

There’re differences mechanically between the two; Coteries lets you step into the role of one of three protagonists while Shadows revolves around one character. Both, however, set you lose on the streets of New York to make decisions about which allies you join forces with and how you cope with your newly found undeath. Each builds an eerily comforting atmosphere through music and stylistically animated scenes, and shares an enthralling story powered by the history and politics of The World of Darkness’ vampire societies.

Honorable Mention – Games I started and will eventually go back to

Desperados III (Mimimi Games) – It’s a great mix of the two best genres–stealth and western–with a wonderful combat system that I unfortunately haven’t had the mental bandwidth to fully explore quite yet.

Dragon Age Inquisition (BioWare) – I swear to god I will beat this game before the next Dragon Age comes out, no matter how many attempts it takes me. Last month was my third attempt. Every time I start I just want to go back and replay Origins and DAII. 

Moon (Love-de-Lic)- Moon was introduced to me as one of the inspirations behind Undertale, and that definitely shines through. I’m still pretty early in the game and the PS1 nature of it was certainly a readjustment, but I’m looking forward to seeing how the anti-RPG-ness of it plays out down the line.

Persona 5 Royal (Atlus) – I decided not to finish Persona 5 and just restart on Royal after falling off of the game originally. I still plan to do that, I hear Royal is great, but boy long video games are a big ask right now.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore (Atlus)-  TMS#FE is the sole reason I stubbornly kept our Wii U around, and I was thrilled it made the jump to the Switch. It’s such a bright game and the way skills combo together is seriously addicting, but long video games are a big ask right now.

2020 is all but over (good riddance!) and it’s time to look back and survey the gaming battleground. Despite this year being a particularly ugly one for practically all of us, we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy some incredible games throughout the year which have helped to restore our spirits in our down time, enforced or otherwise.

Below you’ll find the Top 50 Switch games of 2020 as ranked by readers of Nintendo Life. The order is governed by the User Ratings associated with every Switch game released in 2020 on our games database. As with several of our reader-ranked Best Games round-ups, the ranking is totally fluid even after publication, which means it’s never too late to rate your collection and influence the list.

If you’ve yet to score your favourites, simply click your chosen games’ ratings below and score as you see fit. Can’t see your favourite? Head to our library of Switch games (click the Games tab at the top of the page) to find what you’re looking for. A game needs to have been rated by a minimum of thirty users to become eligible, so it’s entirely possible to influence this best Switch games of 2020 ranking and get your favourites on the list.

The best Switch games of 2017, 2018 or 2019 are available if you want to look back even further, but for now let’s dive into this selection of the best Switch games of 2020…

Publisher: Gearbox Publishing / Developer: 3D Realms

Release Date: 23rd Jun 2020 (USA) / 23rd Jun 2020 (UK/EU)

A masterpiece to this day, Duke Nukem 3D is done proud by this Switch conversion. It looks and runs briliantly, the online options are a welcome inclusion and it’s not compromised in any way from its earlier console release. It’s a shame that a handful of previously-available expansion packs are missing, but given the low price of World Tour Edition, it feels churlish to complain. In the words of the Duke himself, come get some.

Publisher: Devolver Digital / Developer: Phobia Game Studio

Release Date: 23rd Jul 2020 (USA) / 23rd Jul 2020 (UK/EU)

Carrion is a special thing in many ways–a game which puts you in the shoes (or slithering eldritchtentacles) of the game’s ‘boss’–but its actual meat and potatoes structure is as formulaic as the genre gets. Thankfully, its core gameplay of tearing room after room of people into wet chunks of corpse never, ever gets old, and sustains the experience throughout. It looks superb, sounds great and is plenty of fun to play, despite some minor issues which just hold Carrion back from the absolute upper echelons of the Switch library. Still, if you’re after a Metroidvania with a twist, this one is digustingly intriguing.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Paladin Studios

Release Date: 26th Mar 2020 (USA) / 26th Mar 2020 (UK/EU)

Good Job! Is a wonderful surprise that everyone should try out. Thanks to its hilarious physics, seemingly menial tasks have the potential to descend into utter carnage – whether intentional or not – and its grading system means there are plenty of opportunities to replay. Slight technical hiccups aside, Good Job! is absolutely guaranteed to have you in fits of laughter.

Publisher: Marvelous (XSEED) / Developer: Marvelous (XSEED)

Release Date: 14th Jul 2020 (USA) / 10th Jul 2020 (UK/EU)

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town offers up a perfectly satisfying and simple take on the farm sim genre. Heartwarming character interactions, easy to grasp farming mechanics, and a nice variety of side activities prove to make this release a potent and worthwhile entry in this long-running series. Though its roots as a handheld game occasionally resurface and there’s not a ton of new content added for this remake, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town more than stands enough on its own as a quality game that deserves a spot in your Switch library. If you’re looking for something to fill that post-Animal Crossing hole in your life, or are just simply a fan of the farm sim genre in general, don’t miss out on this one.

Publisher: Koch Media / Developer: Volition

Release Date: 27th Mar 2020 (USA) / 27th Mar 2020 (UK/EU)

Saints Row IV: Re-Elected fares far better than its predecessor on Switch, with better performance, minimal input lag and a refreshingly solid output in handheld mode. Its gunplay is always going to be messy and its unashamed sense of humour will undoubtedly offend some, but having such an activity-rich experience running so well on your handheld console isn’t to be sniffed at. And with so much extra content available in the Re-Elected package, Switch players have another long-term investment on their hands.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo

Release Date: 1st Oct 2020 (USA) / 1st Oct 2020 (UK/EU)

Super Mario Bros. 35 gives Nintendo’s most iconic game a jolt of life and it’s massively welcome. Its matches could do with being a little shorter and it’s difficult to see whether it’s actually going to have changed much a few months down the line, but it says a lot about the quality of the experience that the biggest problem we have with it is that come April 2021 it won’t exist anymore.

Publisher: SEGA / Developer: Studio Zero

Release Date: 7th Jul 2020 (USA) / 7th Jul 2020 (UK/EU)

Catherine: Full Body is a fantastic revamp of a bonafide cult classic. With an excellent new character and several new endings slickly inserted into an already highly entertaining narrative – not to mention a slew of fun new modes – this is the definitive version of an outstanding game. If you’ve never played Catherine before then you’re in for an absolute treat, and if you have, we’d say there’s enough new content here to make it worth diving in all over again.

Publisher: 2K / Developer: 2K

Release Date: 29th May 2020 (USA) / 29th May 2020 (UK/EU)

XCOM 2 Collection on Switch is the full-fat XCOM 2 and XCOM 2: War of the Chosen experience. Virtuous has had to knock the graphics right down to the lowest setting, there are plenty of framerate issues and bugs that we’ve already encountered on other platforms and the not-insignificant – but hopefully patchable – problem with the game’s character creation pool, but this is still a highly playable version of the game. If you can make peace with some stuttering and long loading times and aren’t too offended by pretty ugly textures here and there, you’ll be rewarded with one of the very best turn-based tactical titles currently available. XCOM 2 is nothing short of a masterpiece and now you can play it on the go, which we reckon is well worth any sacrifices made here.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: HAL Laboratory

Release Date: 23rd Sep 2020 (USA) / 23rd Sep 2020 (UK/EU)

Given that it arrived with practically zero fanfare, Kirby Fighters 2 is a surprisingly brilliant Smash Bros.-style spin-off that simplifies its big brother’s control system but still offers a healthy amount of depth with its 22-character roster. Its Story mode, in particular, is a clever and compelling way to make each battle feel important, and that mode alone lasts long enough to make it a worthwhile purchase for solo and co-op gamers.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo

Release Date: 5th Jun 2020 (USA) / 5th Jun 2020 (UK/EU)

Compilation games like Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics always have a variety of hits and misses depending on your own personal taste, but there’s a wide enough variety of board, card and action games here that you’re sure to find a number that will appeal to you. Everything’s presented with charm and warmth (terribly-written cutscenes aside) and there’s an enormous amount of content on offer, whether you plan on playing solo or with others. The perfect game for if you’re stuck indoors with the family? Quite possibly.

Never let the city down ?
Expert archer Green Arrow will join Fortnite Crew in January’s Pack featuring his iconic look. Get the Crew Pack on December 31 at 7 PM ET!
Learn more: https://t.co/IVmXWMtc6j pic.twitter.com/cDZvHnhdYh

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) December 23, 2020

© Nintendo Life

Over the holiday season we’ll be republishing a series of Nintendo Life articles, interviews and other features from the previous twelve months that we consider to be our Best of 2020. Hopefully, this will give you a chance to catch up on pieces you missed, or simply enjoy looking back on a year which did have some highlights — honest!

This feature was originally published in March 2020.

We recently we took a brief look at the history of Animal Crossing, from Japan’s Animal Forest for Nintendo 64 and its GameCube conversion up to and including the latest entry on Switch, Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Obviously there are many unsung heroes when it comes to the development of any video game, with various familiar names contributing to the series over the years in different capacities, as well as hundreds of Nintendo staff that aren’t so well-known or public-facing. Still, the people below are the principle players responsible for the series we know and love, from the initial entry up to the brand-spanking new Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

What’s that? You hadn’t heard there was a new Animal Crossing out on Switch? Sounds most unlikely, but you should probably read our review of the game, quick-smart! (SPOILERS: we quite like it.)

The principle people behind the Animal Crossing series

Katsuya Eguchi (Creator, Director, Producer)

As we said above, many people have contributed to make Animal Crossing what it is today, but the person perhaps most directly responsible is Katsuya Eguchi.

Euguchi joined Nintendo 1986 working as a designer on Super Mario Bros. 3 before moving on to direct Star Fox and Wave Race 64. He took on the role of Chief Designer for Yoshi’s Story before getting down to work on creating Animal Crossing based on his experiences of moving from his hometown of Chiba to Kyoto when he joined Nintendo over a decade earlier.

Co-directing the first Animal Crossing with Hisashi Nogami (below) with Takashi Tezuka on producing duties, Eguchi put down the foundation that the series has been building on for nearly two decades now. He would move on to producer roles on subsequent instalments (and on many other games besides), but he’ll forever be tied to this most delightful of Nintendo franchises.

Hisashi Nogami (Co-Director, Director, Producer)

Hisashi Nogami joined the company in 1994 and worked on character design for Yoshi’s Island. He directed the first three Animal Crossing entries (the first jointly with Katsuya Eguchi, Animal Crossing : Wild World solo and Animal Crossing: City Folk with Isao Moro) and acted as Producer on New Horizons.

He also produced Splatoon and its sequel, which we’ve spoken to him about. Thoroughly nice chap, and someone who has left an indelible mark on the series since the very beginning. Speaking with the late Satoru Iwata in an Iwata Asks interview for City Folk, Nogami recalled how Iwata’s approval during the development of the original game gave the team encouragement to persevere with an idea which wasn’t quite like anything else available at the time:

At that time, you were not yet President of Nintendo, but the fact that you had thought it was interesting really spurred us on in developing the title after that. Those of us working on it had thought it was interesting, but we were still at a point where we weren’t really sure about whether anyone would want to play a game that wasn’t quite a game…

It seems to have caught on, no?

Aya Kyogoku, (Co-Director, Director)

As noted last year in our look at the most important figures in Nintendo history, there’s a significant lack of women in higher profile developmental roles at the company, but Aya Kyogoku is certainly one of them. She began as a script writer on the Legend of Zelda series and was responsible for much of the dialogue in City Folk. After taking on the co-directing role with Animal Crossing: New Leaf (with Isoa Moro), she and producer Eguchi hired a large number of female staff to bring the gender balance of the development team to an even 50-50 split. This diversity contributed to the most successful series entry to date.

Over the years her prominence has continued to grow and she was the sole director helming the latest entry for Switch. Within the last year she’s been promoted to Manager of the production group responsible for both the Splatoon and Animal Crossing series and under her watchful eye we’d say the future of the series is in excellent hands.

Kazumi Totaka (Composer, Sound Designer)

One of several composers who has worked on the series, Totaka is without doubt the most prominent thanks to his beloved namesake character who has appeared in every iteration thus far: the guitar-toting canine and musical chameleon K.K. Slider. While it isn’t apparent from his English name, everyone’s favourite good boy performer is named Totakeke in Japan (in fact, he introduces himself as such in the first game saying that his more familiar moniker is his Saturday night stage name).

Totaka’s ‘appearance’ in the game tends to overshadow the work of multiple other Nintendo composers who have worked on the series including Manaka Kataoka, Asuka Hayazaki, Toru Minegishi, Shinobu Tanaka and plenty more of Nintendo’s audio department. Still, Totaka will forever be associated with this series, K.K. and the song he has sneakily inserted into dozens of Nintendo games over the years. The appearance of infamous Easter Egg Totaka’s Song in Animal Crossing is perhaps the most obvious of the lot. It’s called K.K. Song and Slider will usually play it on request.

Isao Moro, (System Director, Co-Director)

After acting as System Director on Wild World, Isao Moro graduated to subdirector on City Folk and co-director along with Aya Kyogoku on New Leaf. In collaboration with Kyogoku, it was Moro who fashioned the finest Animal Crossing experience to date (well, until New Horizons came along) and introduced the world to the wonders of mayoral duties, fan-favourite administrator Isabelle and the ability to customise not only the interior of your home, but also the town itself with bridges, fountains and a wide variety of public works projects.

The spin-off game Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, which debuted several quality of life features that would find their way back into New Leaf via the Welcome amiibo update, would be Moro’s last directing gig at Nintendo. He left the company in 2018 and relocated to the island of Okinawa where he teaches programming.

Ryuji Kobayashi (Design/Art Director)

Kobayashi began working on character animation for the first game and graduated to design director on Wild World for Nintendo DS, a role he returned to for the Wii entry. He took on the Art Director role for the gorgeous New Leaf and over the years has steered the series in a very specific direction in terms of look and feel. He has also worked extensively on the Legend of Zelda series, most recently doing animation work on the rather lovely Breath of the Wild.

Much like its systems, there’s an elegant simplicity and beauty to Animal Crossing’s visual presentation and Ryuji Kobayashi is one of the people responsible for that.

Koji Takahashi, (Character Design, Design Director)

Another veteran staff member with nebulous sounding credits on the series, Koji Takahashi has been responsible a broad number of things across several series entries, notably the design of characters in Wild World and coordinating design for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a role he also took on The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

One area Takahashi worked on was choosing the right characters for the right jobs in New Leaf, which introduced Cyrus and Reese the alpacas and Leif the sloth. According to the Iwata Asks interview on the game, finding the right fit wasn’t always easy:

Well, we weren’t indiscriminate in our search. We tried to find animals that fitted their in-game function and suited the shop where they would appear. That’s why we thought that an animal that lives in the forest would work well in the gardening center, so we settled on the sloth.

In the same interview Takahashi mentions the hard work that goes into the growing list of items available in each entry, and it’s clear that his efforts haven’t been in vain, with each game adding to the list of items and activities to enjoy in a way which makes returning a thrill, even if you’ve played every last game to death.

Makoto Wada, (Script Writer)

Makoto Wada is credited with script work on Animal Crossing, although given Nintendo’s habit of doling out director credits across the spectrum, we wouldn’t be surprised to find out he had one of them somewhere for this series, too.

He’s directed game like Super Punch-Out!! and Mario Kart DS, but he has worked on the script of multiple Animal Crossing games including the original and New Leaf. According to an Iwata Asks interview, he was responsible for the lines of Mr. Resetti, the gruff, curmudgeonly mole who would get’s most upset if you turn the game off without saving properly. Without him, we’d be without those fabulous rants.

Nintendo Treehouse

Okay, we’re cheating here by lumping Nintendo of America’s entire in-house localisation team into a single entry, but we couldn’t finish this list without doffing our collective caps to the sterling work the Treehouse has done with every single entry in the series. The easy-going nature of the games belies the colossal about of text and translation work required to bring an Animal Crossing game to the West and while the original writers obviously deserve recognition, the localisation team is equally deserving of thanks for capturing the spirit of the original script.

More than that, the Treehouse team has fed back into the series from the beginning when Nintendo of Japan ended up reincorporating holidays from original GameCube localisation of N64’s Animal Forest into an updated Japanese version. Since that time the teams across different sides of the globe have collaborated much more closely from the beginning of each new project.

If you can’t get enough Animal Crossing content to satisfy your insatiable thirst for all things Nook, our ranked rundown of the best Animal Crossing games puts every series entry and spin-off into best-to-worst list form, so feel free to check that out and let us know how you’d amend our picks in your own personal ranking.

As we’re often told, Christmas is a special time of year, a season of goodwill, generosity and gift-giving. For gamers, festive memories are often tied in with the excitement of receiving a brand new game, perhaps something that released months ago that we had been waiting for, and sliding that lovely cart or disc into our console for the very first time.

Sometimes it’s easy for one Christmas memory to blur into another — the same decorations, the same tree, the same people, music and post-meal drowsiness — but the first time you every played Ocarina of Time or that one when Grandad bowled you over in Wii Sports? Now that sticks in the memory!

Below we present to you twelve yuletide gaming memories from Nintendo Life staff and contributors, each one featuring a different game that holds a special, festive place in our hearts and minds.

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 23rd Nov 1998 (USA) / 11th Dec 1998 (UK/EU)

Christmas, 1998. I remember this game releasing earlier in December (in the UK) and for a while it was touch-and-go whether I’d be able to get a copy. I’d devoured every word of the preview and review (stretched across two issues of N64 Magazine) and was gagging to play my first ever Zelda game.

Fortunately, Ocarina of Time was sitting under the tree that year. I somehow managed to convince my parents to let me set up the N64 on the downstairs telly, too, so I took my first steps into the woods on a fittingly large screen in view of elderly relatives. “He’s an angry little chap, isn’t he?” they said as Link yelled and chopped through grass collecting rupees for the very first time.

I don’t remember if I got through the forest and out onto Hyrule Field that first day, but I’ll never forget the notes and floating fairy detritus in the air of Kokiri Forest that morning… *counts* twenty-two long years ago. — Gavin Lane

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Game Freak

Release Date: 30th Sep 1998 (USA) / 10th May 1999 (UK/EU)

I’ll never forget the moment I opened my presents on Christmas morning, 1999, and found a shiny new turquoise Game Boy Color along with a copy of Pokémon Blue. It was the start of my journey with Pokémon that, for better or worse, has lasted to this very day.

I spent so many hours with Pokémon Blue in the days and months following Christmas, and it’s still the only mainline game in which I completed the entire Pokédex! At the age of ten, it arrived at the perfect time, and the visuals, the music, and the story will be etched in my memory forever. What a great Christmas! — Ollie Reynolds

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 16th Nov 2008 (USA) / 5th Dec 2008 (UK/EU)

Animal Crossing and the holidays go together like Santa and cookies. Or reindeer and sleighs. Or new video game consoles and siblings fighting over them on Christmas morning. My ultimate Christmas gaming memory was waking up on December 25th, 2008 to find a brand new, shiny Nintendo Wii and a copy of Animal Crossing: City Folk wrapped under the Christmas tree.

Ever since playing on my friend’s GameCube, I had yearned to experience Toy Day for myself (and sadly, though I had Wild World on the DS, the devs had apparently decided holidays weren’t important for that entry in the series). It took two years of Nintendo’s marketing to finally convince my parents that a gaming console on the TV wasn’t the devil’s work (we’d only been allowed handheld consoles prior to that). My little brothers and I spent the entire day playing City Folk, marveling at the graphics and magic of the Wii Remote – and of celebrating a real-time holiday with NPCs… Ah, to be a kid again. — Austin Voight

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 19th Nov 2006 (USA) / 8th Dec 2006 (UK/EU)

Whenever I would talk about games with my family they would say “that’s nice kiddo” and continue to do whatever it is people who don’t play games do. That all changed on Christmas Day 2006 — for the very first time my parents not only took an interest in games but they actively wanted to play them with me.

In the morning my mum and sisters all bowled together and played Doubles in Tennis. After dinner my dad called me into the living room asking if we could play a round of Golf. It’s easy to look back on those Wii adverts and snort at the exaggerated motions and forced smiles, but honestly that’s exactly what it was like playing the Wii for the first time.

Even my Granddad took an interest when he came to visit on Boxing Day. He couldn’t play real Golf anymore due to problems with his legs and the joy on his face when he discovered you could play sitting down is a memory I’ll never forget. — Jon Cartwright

Publisher: Capcom / Developer: Capcom

Release Date: 15th Jul 1992 (USA) / 19th Jan 2007 (UK/EU)

T’was Christmas Day of the year Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Two when I received my most cherished Xmas present ever, a shiny new Super Nintendo console with a copy of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. After years of putting up with shoddy arcade ports, terrible controls and excruciating loading times on my dear old Commodore 64 here, for the first time ever I had in my own home what I considered to be a pixel perfect version of a game I’d previously spent months pumping coins into down the local arcade.

That entire Christmas holiday, as well as the weeks and months that followed, were a blur of street fighting action, myself and my brother playing incessantly through dinner times, study hours and homemade haircuts – for as everybody knows, the true measure of a warrior is their ability to best M. Bison while their mammy chops their locks. Looking back now, even after all the many games I’ve played and platforms I’ve owned since, nothing has ever really come close to matching the excitement of those heady days some twenty-eight years ago and I sincerely doubt anything ever will. It may have as much to do with warm reminders of my home and family as it does the game itself but Street Fighter II is absolutely my number one Christmas gaming memory. — PJ O’Reilly

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 26th Sep 1996 (USA) / 1st Mar 1997 (UK/EU)

I don’t remember much about Christmas 1997, because I was a tiny little prawn of a human back then and most of my time was spent mastering the alphabet and shoelaces. I do remember my dad getting a pristine Nintendo 64 console under the tree, which swiftly became the sole property of me and my brother as we sat under it for hours at a time. We had Lylat Wars, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart and GoldenEye; I never completed a single one of them, because I was a baby idiot, but I would spend days exploring Peach’s castle and the train tracks of Mario Kart’s Kalimari Desert. Winning isn’t the only way to have fun! — Kate Gray

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Rare

Release Date: 20th Nov 1995 (USA) / 14th Dec 1995 (UK/EU)

I was never bought Nintendo stuff for Christmas, as a rule. Mainly because I didn’t have a Nintendo until my desperation purchase of a GBA SP when the Nintendo DS was sold out at launch. A shocking revelation, I know. But I was kept in the loop by a somewhat disreputable Christmas gift from a family friend back in 2002 – two discs of SNES roms, encompassing the majority of the system’s noteworthy offerings. A big deal when you have no private internet access, and only 1.4mb will fit on a floppy disk.

It was this cheap, cheerful and extremely hooky gift that woke me up to the sheer quality of the Super Nintendo’s library, and almost directly responsible for my subsequent purchasing of almost every retro-tinged Nintendo offering. Without those CDs, I may never have got the Nintendo bug. Now I’m a devotee.

Most of my friends got GTA: Vice City for Christmas. I didn’t care, though. I had Donkey Kong Country 2. — Stuart Gipp

Publisher: SEGA / Developer: Sonic Team

Release Date: 21st Nov 1992 (USA) / 6th Jul 2007 (UK/EU)

Tuesday 24th November 1992 is remembered (by Sega fans, at least) as ‘Sonic 2sday’, the release date of one of the very finest 16-bit sequels ever made. Still, for many kids of the era (including yours truly) Christmas morning would be our first opportunity to dive into Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Mega Drive / Genesis.

I remember being able to unwrap one present before the rest, and there was no question that the game-box-shaped one would be first. Following the cursory thanks to mum and dad, I ran upstairs, opened the box and placed cart in the slot with all the ceremony an excited eight-year-old could muster. Everything looked so blue! The colours really popped and I remember playing for around an hour before the shooting arrows and water of Aquatic Ruin Zone sent me back to the beginning. I was soon called downstairs to re-join the festive collective and would spend the rest of the day poring through the manual.

I remember precisely nothing else of Christmas ’92, but that hour or so is burned into my memory: the matte black metal of my old TV stand, the dry texture of the carpet, and the first time I experienced the soundtrack and vibrant hues of Emerald Hill Zone on my little 14-inch Matsui CRT. — Gavin Lane

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 13th Apr 1992 (USA) / 24th Sep 1992 (UK/EU)

That satisfying “clank” when you push on the power button of a Super Nintendo control deck is always a privilege. In the distant year of 1992 I was the happiest kid on the block because in September I had managed to put enough money aside and (along with the generous help of my parents) for a PAL Super Nintendo with Super Mario World packed in, along with the revolutionary F-Zero. After mastering all 96 levels of the first game and completing all the cups on Master in the second, Pilotwings was my third game, having picked it up in October for my birthday. I eventually became a full fledged flight cadet after acing the game (except for the bonus rounds that I didn’t know existed — in 1992 there was no internet in my country!). Fast forward to December where I picked up my next two SNES video games: firstly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, a game I replayed over and over again, alone or with friends and one I could beat with Raphael in Hard mode just shy of eighteen minutes.

But then there was the fifth game. As a previous Spectrum, Amiga and Game Boy owner it might not come as a surprise that I had never really played any RPGs thus far, so this fifth game was something truly intriguing and mesmerising. It was also by far the best value for money at the time because I certainly could not complete this game in one sitting and without any sort of game guide. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was all about exploration along with trial and error.

Christmas Eve, 1992. As per tradition, my uncle, aunt and cousin would come over for dinner and other Christmas related activities. Once me and my cousin moved away from the dinner table, we took refuge in the kitchen with its small CRT TV over the fridge since there was no way we could hook up the SNES to the big living room TV. After we blasted all the way thought TMNT IV, I was excited to showcase Zelda to my cousin. I erased my previous game that had an hour of progress and started a fresh quest. Before midnight tolled we had rescued the princess, conquered the Eastern Palace, the Desert Palace, the tower of Hera, found our way through the Lost Woods to retrieve the Master Sword and stood up and defeated the mysterious wizard Agahnim. Surely this epic quest must be at an end?

Imagine me and my cousin’s face when, instead, we were teleported to the Dark World, a place we had glimpsed slightly at Death Mountain. There were now five new dungeons to tackle on the map. Sadly, not only had the clock struck midnight but I was stuck in rabbit form because in the innocence of my first-time blind playthrough I had skipped on retrieving the Moon Pearl back in Hera’s Tower.

We didn’t finish the game that Christmas Eve. Come Christmas morning and I distinctly remember being more eager to return to Hyrule than unwrapping my brand new gifts. That game turned me into a hardcore action-adventure/RPG and Zelda franchise fan for life. Eventually my cousin ‘grew out’ of video games — obviously, I didn’t. Still, what we shared that Christmas Eve was a magical, unparalleled bonding experience. Time to hook up the SNES Classic Mini for one more princess rescue. — Gonçalo Lopes

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo R&D1

Release Date: Nov 1991 (USA) / 21st May 1992 (UK/EU)

Worryingly recently (Christmas 2013 according to my Activity Log), my brother and I decided that a grand old way to spend a few festive hours was to replay Metroid II: Return of Samus on our own 3DS Virtual Console copies; it was on sale or something and we thought ‘why not?’, or words to that effect.

So we downloaded the bloomin’ game that had sparked our love for the series, and found both of ourselves glued to the systems. Neither of us had ever considered doing anything like a speedrun before (and to be fair, we weren’t all that speedy about it) but we were both shocked at just how much we remembered about the game, and indeed how uncomfortable those pitch black areas make me feel.

We blasted through everything, getting most if not all of the upgrades, and all in around five hours-a-piece. We had never sat down and played the game all the way through in a single sitting, and more to the point we’d never done anything like this together. It’s a simple memory and not all that exciting to recount (or read I’m sure), but it’s something a bit special to me, and something I still think about every so often. — Alex Olney

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD

Release Date: 10th Feb 1997 (USA) / 24th Jun 1997 (UK/EU)

I remember one Christmas when we were visiting family about three hours from home. On the big day, my parents gifted my brother and me a copy of Mario Kart 64. We were told we, unfortunately, had to wait until we got home to receive the other half of the present (the N64), so for the next five days or so, all we could do was look at the game cartridge.

I studied the game manual and additional papers that came with Nintendo’s games back then for the rest of the week. When we finally returned home, I was blown away by the ‘next generation’ of Nintendo. Racing through that tunnel on Luigi Raceway, with the fancy screen above it — what a moment!

Happy Holidays, everyone! — Liam Doolan

Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Rare

Release Date: 31st May 1998 (USA) / 16th Jul 1998 (UK/EU)

I don’t remember the exact time of year I first teleported into one of the most Christmas-y of all winter-themed levels in all video games — it was likely in one of the summer months. However, in the years that followed it became an annual ritual to blast through the first couple of hours of Banjo-Kazooie in the early weeks of December, just so I’d have the pleasure of rescuing the Twinklies, flying through the star on top of the tree, catching up with Wozza and racing Boggy around Freezeezy Peak on the morning of the 25th.

And in the years when I haven’t had time to get my save file to the appropriate spot? I’ve made do by adding Grant Kirkhope’s festive theme into the Xmas playlist of standards alongside Mike Oldfield, Phil Spector and the rest while knocking up some breakfast. — Gavin Lane

Well, there’s a selection of our favourite holiday gaming memories. We hope you’re having a fantastic time this holiday season — feel free to let us know your own treasured memories below.