Jotari Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 The most recent Nintendo direct has finally brought the second Ace Attorney Investigations to the west by being rereleased on switch as a remaster together with the first game. A few years earlier we unexpectedly got the Great Ace Attorney trilogy localized similarly as a bundled remaster. It makes me think, why not do this for Fire Emblem? An Archanea remaster bundling Shadow Dragon and New Mystery? Surely the cost to localize New Mystery in that way would be far lower than a full visual novel length adventure game that the Ace Attorney games are. I suppose the immediate counter to that would be that the Archanea remakes didn't sell hugely as titles, but, is that just as much a reason to release them? Fire Emblem is a much bigger name now in the gaming industry and the fact that people haven't played these titles means there's probably a sizeable number of people who haven't played it yet would be interested in getting it if it were available, Heroes has been advertising Archanea for the last few years as well. Besides TMS barely sold anything either and they were still willing to gamble on that by releasing it in Switch (where it probably still sold poorly considering they haven't acknowledged it since). Well, maybe I'm being dillusional, but it just feels like a New Mystery localization doesn't seem as far fetched as it once did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acacia Sgt Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 It's definitely doable, but it all boils down if Nintendo/IS want to. I don't doubt that next remake/remaster of New Mystery will come overseas. Whether they want to do a bundle of both Archanea games is not so certain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted July 5 Author Share Posted July 5 1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said: It's definitely doable, but it all boils down if Nintendo/IS want to. I don't doubt that next remake/remaster of New Mystery will come overseas. Whether they want to do a bundle of both Archanea games is not so certain. Surprisingly, one of the most difficult things about it would be the UI itself. Shadow Dragon doesn't do anything significant with touch controls that would make a lot of DS games hard to port, but it does cram a lot of info into the second screen for the sake of a streamlined UI. I'm not sure how that could easily be ported short of somewhat contrivedly having a button to pull up the map/unit info, which would work, but wouldn't be quite as streamlined as the game was originally designed for, a standard which modern Fire Emblem games have largely stuck to even when it left dual screens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowFire Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 TMS, as a modern-ish game, was a more reasonable gamble IMO. Maybe it finds a new audience when it isn't a late-era Wii U game, even if scuttlebutt suggests it still didn't sell well. My suspicion is that Nintendo thinks the following way: Nintendo wants to encourage new games made by new developers so that their system isn't just some "retrogames to be emulated" platform. They also think that past a certain point, throwing more games up for sale stops expanding the playerbase or deepening the number of games bought (the hardcore already have stuff sitting unplayed in their backlog), it just dilutes where the existing money spend is going. The developers making the Dark Deities of the world don't really want to compete with Nintendo full-dumping their entire back catalog for cheap prices. Further, just pure NSO library style ports don't tend to attract much hype anyway - Nintendo insiders have said before that the hardcore routinely value retrogames & emulation far more than the average customer. Basically that leaves three options: A) Be one of the lucky games thrown up on NSO anyway as a cheap port, bearing in mind that Nintendo paces themselves so that they always have 2-3 new games to throw out every few months. B) Be a way to build hype for an upcoming remake - see the Trials of Mana / SaGa retro releases. C) Actually put effort in, and do something between a port and a full remake, adding in new stuff. This is closer to what AAI and AAI2 are doing - voice acting, new graphics, etc. But it's also the riskiest, because now you're actually spending real developer time & money on this product, so you probably need to advertise it more and verify it'll sell, too. Note that if you do this, you may also weaken the ability to do a full remake later, as people may be annoyed that you're releasing the "same game" over and over again. (I guess it worked for Skyrim, but that's not a common case!) Don't get me wrong, I think Nintendo should trot these out, especially if they know that more Fire Emblem games weren't coming out in 2024 anyway so there's no risk of cannibalization (this speculation made more sense when we thought a FE4 remake might be imminent). But the above logic isn't totally crazy. I'd also call up whoever did the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, and ask about how expensive it was, how well it sold, etc. If it turns out FF PR did more poorly financially than expected, that might also explain the hesitance here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zapp Branniglenn Posted July 5 Share Posted July 5 It works for Ace Attorney because Capcom doesn't publish their games exclusively on their own proprietary hardware. In Nintendo's eyes, re-releasing a game that was exclusive to one system devalues that system. Even if it's a game that was never released outside of Japan. This is my read on why they don't do remakes or remasters and instead favor emulation-based ports. Especially when it's not a mega popular brand like Mario or Zelda that fans will happily drop 60 dollars on a (bad) visual upgrade. The FE1 release on Switch was a a big shift in that strategy, but it also feels a little moot to talk about as an example since you had just a year-long opportunity to buy it. I don't think that project was greenlit for any reason other than their brief experiment in Digital Scarcity Releases. Measuring how well that works for Mario, and how well it works for releases that are definitely not Mario. And since it's been three years and no project has come out with the same concept, it's probably Not a viable project model in their eyes. You know what else they've tried since FE1? Mario's Super Picross on NSO. An untranslated Super Famicom game. Someone looked at it and said "Hey, you can navigate these menus if you don't know japanese. And it's Picross, a puzzle game that's universal to any language. The tutorial's still in Japanese...but we could hire someone to make an English translation of it in video form" A Trailer House company was probably paid hundreds of dollars for that two minute video and I guess that's cheaper than hiring someone with enough rom hacking experience to alter some text. And Nintendo just expects you to know this video exists with no mention in the game's description! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acacia Sgt Posted July 6 Share Posted July 6 Honestly, it baffles me why the English version of the first game had to be limited edition. The original Japanese one can be played on the NSO to this day. They could've just put the English one there too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted July 7 Author Share Posted July 7 4 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said: Honestly, it baffles me why the English version of the first game had to be limited edition. The original Japanese one can be played on the NSO to this day. They could've just put the English one there too. Just plain scummy business practice. Make it limited edition and more people will FOMO buy it. At least, that's the theory, but I find it highly questionable whether it actually works for digital only releases of games. Usually limited edition cons are for physical merchandise you can buy and proudly display somewhere with the knowledge that you're special. For a game your experience with the purchase is largely going to end when you stop playing it, especially for Shadow Dragon NES, which, let's face it, nobody is going to replay once they're done with it (okay, not literally nobody, I've played Shadow Dragon NES more than once, but I, and anyone reasonably posting on Serenes, are on the more enthusiastic side of the spectrum for these games). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lenticular Posted July 7 Share Posted July 7 13 hours ago, Jotari said: Just plain scummy business practice. Make it limited edition and more people will FOMO buy it. At least, that's the theory, but I find it highly questionable whether it actually works for digital only releases of games. Usually limited edition cons are for physical merchandise you can buy and proudly display somewhere with the knowledge that you're special. For a game your experience with the purchase is largely going to end when you stop playing it, especially for Shadow Dragon NES, which, let's face it, nobody is going to replay once they're done with it (okay, not literally nobody, I've played Shadow Dragon NES more than once, but I, and anyone reasonably posting on Serenes, are on the more enthusiastic side of the spectrum for these games). FOMO definitely does work for digital stuff. It's a big part of the monetisation strategy for a lot of freemium games, with flash sales, limited time skins, battle passes, and other such nonsense. And it's why people still flock to Steam sales despite us having a collective $19 billion worth of unplayed games in our libraries. And why 3D All Stars sales spiked just before it was delisted. Whether it worked in this particular case is more of a question, though. I suspect that there just isn't enough interest in SDatBoL for it to really move the needle in any meaningful way when you're looking at things on Nintendo scales. They probably gained a few sales from FOMO and lost a few sales from people who disliked the false scarcity and din't buy it on principle (like me) or who didn't learn about it until too late, but regardless of whether that ended up slightly in their favour or slightly to their detriment, they aren't going to lose sleep over it either way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gyges Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 On 7/6/2024 at 2:06 PM, Acacia Sgt said: Honestly, it baffles me why the English version of the first game had to be limited edition. The original Japanese one can be played on the NSO to this day. They could've just put the English one there too. It's just artificial scarcity to make people buy it ASAP and have the limited run of physical prices get scalped more, unfortunately. Even I bought it years ago just so I wouldn't "miss out", but it's still a garbage marketing decision. A part of me wishes FE3 was localized instead, but it unfortunately would've gotten the limited run treatment too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zapp Branniglenn Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 The Starfy announcement is another nail in the coffin for localized Kaga FE. Just dumping more japanese ROMs on English NSO. This is worse than Mario Picross because a lot of story and in-game tutorials are delivered through that text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.