Nintendo held a rare event yesterday: a unique “Indie World/Partner Showcase” combined presentation, featuring 40 minutes of game reveals. Going by the title alone, it was obvious no “first party” Nintendo games were going to be on display (no new Mario, Zelda, Kirby, etc). But there was some notable takeaways from the presentation:
First, the highlight of the event was the number of collections, remasters and re-releases of older games that were announced, which is great for retro collectors, but also signals publishers are possibly beginning to save their “new” material for the next Nintendo Switch generation.
Second, the other big takeaway was: the Nintendo Switch 2 is about to be revealed soon, right?……RIGHT?!? The fact that Nintendo squeezed in an Indie World AND a Partner Showcase into late August (which is earlier than normal for a Direct), that means they’re getting set up for a big presentation in September or October, to reveal the new system….RIGHT?!?
While we ponder about what the next few months will reveal, in the meantime, there’s a lot of great collections that were announced:
Capcom Fighting Collection 2:
A great collection of somewhat lesser known (but still excellent) fighting games, including the “Capcom vs SNK” and “Power Stone” series of games! Strangely enough, they just re-released the 2003 “SNK vs Capcom: SVS Chaos” last month separately (as a stand alone release), though that likely has to do with SNK doing most of the work on that release, whereas the games included here were done by Capcom studios.
Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics:
This one has been announced previously, but now we finally have a release date: A digital version will be released September 12th, while a physical version will be released November 22nd. This was Capcom at the height of it’s fighting arcade games. Many people consider “Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes” (which is in this collection) to be one of the greatest fighting games of all time.
Castlevania Dominus Collection:
This collection features all 3 Castlevania game made for the Nintendo DS! On top of all of that, they also threw into this collection a reimagined version of “Haunted Castle”, a rare Castlevania arcade game from the late 80’s.
Tetris Forever:
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Tetris, this is a retro collection that includes numerous versions of the classic puzzle game (several of which I’ve never heard of before). The main highlight is perhaps the inclusion of the version of Tetris from the original Famicom (Japan’s version of the NES), however they also revealed the North American version of Tetris (from the original NES) is going to be added to “Nintendo Switch Online” this winter.
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster:
Here’s something for the JRPG fans! This one has also been announced previously, but we now finally have a release date: March 6th, 2025. These two games were some of the most beloved RPG games (besides the Final Fantasy games) on the original PlayStation console.
There was also an Indie World presentation, which featured a number of curiosities that will appeal to Indie fans, but the main focus still seemed to be the collections revealed, and the intriguing question of “what comes next for Nintendo?”.
Stay tuned for further updates on the Nintendo Switch’s successor in the weeks or months ahead.
