Category: Video Games

As the years go by, Nintendo Switch’s claim to having the greatest library of any system in Nintendo history solidifies. It’s been nothing short of a dream maker and a miracle worker, home to some of the best entries in long-running franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Smash Bros. But beyond genre-defining experiences and Game of the Year winners, I’ve been equally impressed by Nintendo’s commitment to reviving long-lost series and exposing them to contemporary audiences.

When Switch launched in 2017, I would have never guessed we’d see a 99-player F-Zero battle royale, a faithful remake of the beloved Super Mario RPG, the first Advance Wars in over a decade, a surprising return for the Another Code franchise, or that Metroid Dread would be real. It truly feels like anything can and will surface during a Nintendo Direct, and it happened again this week with Nintendo’s reveal of Endless Ocean: Luminous during the latest Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase. Along with the expected cadence of Mario games, Nintendo has added a scuba diving sequel to its publishing slate for 2024, and it just doesn’t get much more niche than that.

And it’s not just the fact that these unlikely games exist – some franchises are seeing better sales than ever before on Switch. The Nintendo Switch sales chart is littered with million-plus sellers, and more often than not when Nintendo puts out a game, it rapidly becomes the best-selling game in that franchise.

But as video game fans, of course, we always want more. Nintendo has brought back a ton of its smaller franchises, but there are still several obscure series I’d love to see make a comeback on Nintendo Switch, or its successor.

Kid Icarus

Kid Icarus was poised for a comeback when series protagonist Pit was an out-of-left-field addition to the Super Smash Bros. Brawl roster in 2008, followed up by a new game in Kid Icarus Uprising on Nintendo 3DS in 2012. But after a brief return to relevance, Nintendo quickly clipped Kid Icarus’ wings once more, and it’s been 12 years since the last entry. There are only three Kid Icarus games in total, even though the series dates all the way back to 1986 on NES. Time hasn’t been kind to the NES original and its Game Boy sequel, as the pair of brutally challenging 2D platformers aren’t much fun to return to in 2024.

Instead of taking inspiration from the series’ origins, I want the future direction of Kid Icarus to follow up on the groundwork laid in Uprising. Directed by legendary Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai, I firmly believe that Kid Icarus Uprising is one of the most underrated Nintendo games of all time, and it deserves to find a whole new audience with an HD remake on Nintendo Switch. Uprising is a complete departure from the series’ challenging 2D platforming roots. Instead, it’s a full-blown 3D action game, equal parts on-rails levels reminiscent of Star Fox (but better, in my opinion), ground missions where you take complete control of Pit in combat and light puzzle-solving scenarios, and some of the most creative, bombastic boss fights in Nintendo history.

If you can get over the infamous controls that became uncomfortable after a while (to the point Nintendo shipped Kid Icarus Uprising with its own custom peripheral), you’ll find what’s easily one of the most ambitious games Nintendo has ever shipped, with deep, satisfying gameplay, an impressive amount of customization and content, stunning visuals that still hold up to this day, and a genuinely fun story with charming dialogue and a fully voice-acted script. Not to mention, Uprising even touts a fleshed out online multiplayer mode with over a dozen maps to battle on. Over a decade later, I’m still blown away by what Sakurai and his team at Project Sora were able to squeeze out of the 3DS. Kid Icarus: Uprising is a beautiful example of what can happen when you let one of the industry’s greatest minds make exactly what they want to make.

I hope Nintendo takes a chance on Kid Icarus: Uprising and remakes it for Switch with a fresh coat of HD paint and a revamped twin stick control scheme with optional motion controls for aiming. If Nintendo fixes the controls – which is really the only big criticism most people lob at Uprising – it will give a huge opportunity for new players to experience one of my favorite Nintendo games ever.

Rhythm Heaven

Whether it’s desperately trying to fit in with a group of singing chorus kids, playing badminton against a cat while flying a single prop airplane, or taking control of a wrestling superstar during an interview and photoshoot, Rhythm Heaven is one of the weirdest (and best) Nintendo series around. We haven’t seen a new entry since 2016’s Rhythm Heaven Megamix, and although it’s fantastic, it launched as a digital-only release at a time when many players were ready to move on from the 3DS hardware. Rhythm Heaven deserves another chance in the spotlight, either through a simple port of Megamix or a brand new game.

I’m a fan of both WarioWare: Get It Together and WarioWare: Move It, but I was surprised and admittedly a little disappointed that WarioWare – which I consider to be Rhythm Heaven’s sister series – got two entries on Nintendo Switch while its foot-tapping, monkey-clapping, wing-flapping counterpart remains noticeably absent from the console’s library. Like WarioWare, Rhythm Heaven is a perfect showcase for some of the most bizarre ideas Nintendo can come up with that wouldn’t otherwise fit into any other game, and adding it to the Switch software lineup would provide an element of that trademark Nintendo zaniness that’s currently missing.

Punch-Out!!

There’s nothing else quite like Punch-Out – it’s a series that presents itself as a fighting game, but underneath the hood it’s actually a puzzle game. You could make a strange argument that it’s the closest comparison Nintendo has to boss fights in the soulslike genre: you’re a small, meek boxer who must read the patterns of your much more powerful, threatening foes and execute moves with the right timing and speed to eventually emerge victorious. There’s a lot of trial-and-error and sweaty palms involved in both Dark Souls and Punch-Out, and while Little Mac’s world lacks complex lore and intentionally obtuse exploration, you see what I’m getting at.

Punch-Out’s history is similar to Kid Icarus, where after its initial run in the 1980s and 1990s, the series went dormant until a revival a couple of decades later. Punch-Out on Wii was a welcome return for the series, and Little Mac has since joined the Super Smash Bros. roster, but there’s still no word on a proper Punch-Out comeback. For now, Punch-Out fans are latching onto Big Boy Boxing, an upcoming indie spiritual successor that has definitely captured the look and feel of Punch-Out. I played Big Boy Boxing at PAX West last year and loved it, but I’d still like to see Nintendo step back into the ring and schedule one more money match for Little Mac.

EarthBound

The EarthBound community was sent into a frenzy after Nintendo added Mother 3 to the Game Boy Advance Switch Online app in Japan, but I’m not even asking for Mother 3, because I’ve accepted that we’re probably never going to see that game get localized. Instead, I want something that is much more reasonable and likely: a full remake of EarthBound.

For years, EarthBound was on life support in the West. But in 2013, Nintendo finally dropped EarthBound on the Wii U virtual console, and the classic SNES RPG eventually made its way to New Nintendo 3DS and Switch as well. This opened up the world of Eagleland to more people than ever before, including me. I played EarthBound for the first time through the Wii U virtual console, instantly becoming absorbed by its heartfelt story and hilarious satirical depiction of the United States. I think EarthBound is required reading for any Nintendo or RPG fan, and it’d be much easier to recommend without its steep difficulty curve and archaic inventory management.

We just saw Nintendo remake Super Mario RPG – another beloved SNES RPG that most figured had been lost to time – so why not do the same with EarthBound? Turn-based RPGs are back in a big way right now – look no further than Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Persona 3 Reload for proof – and I think EarthBound could establish itself as another modern pillar of the genre. Would an EarthBound remake ever lead to a Mother 3 port or a brand new entry in the series? Maybe not, but it’d be a phenomenal place to start.

Hotel Dusk

In January, Nintendo published Another Code: Recollection, a dual remake of puzzle adventure games Another Code: Two Memories and Another Code R: Journey Into Lost Memories. It’s one of the most niche games Nintendo has put out in a long time, and it has me thinking about another pair of obscure puzzle adventure games: the Hotel Dusk series. Both Another Code and Hotel Dusk were originally developed by the now-defunct studio Cing, and now that one of their long-lost series has been modernized, I’d love to see Hotel Dusk get the same treatment.

Hotel Dusk got two entries on Nintendo DS: Hotel Dusk: Room 215 launched worldwide, while Last Window: The Secret of Cape West never made it to North America. The original stars Kyle Hyde, a former detective searching for his missing partner. Hotel Dusk has a really memorable cast of characters and a striking art style resembling sketchbook drawings, and it would be great for North American players to finally get the chance to see the sequel that didn’t come out here. I would have never thought of this as a remote possibility for Nintendo Switch, but now that Another Code is out in the wild, anything feels possible.

Those are just some options for Nintendo franchises that should make a comeback. There are plenty of other choices, like Star Fox, Ice Climbers, Duck Hunt, Wario Land, Golden Sun, Chibo-Robo… The list goes on. Let us know in the comments what obscure Nintendo franchises you want to see brought back.

Logan Plant is IGN’s Database Manager, Playlist Editor, occasional news writer, and frequent Super Ninfriendo on Nintendo Voice Chat. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Final Fantasy VII remains one of the most beloved chapters in the long-running Square Enix franchise. With Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second entry in the trilogy that kicked off with 2020’s FF7 Remake, the game returns to a format much more similar to the PlayStation original, most notably with huge open zones to explore. Today we’ll be looking at the game’s performance on PS5 across its multiple modes of play, taking into account a performance and visual quality patch that dropped just barely ahead of the review embargo.

High Performance Gaming

As a PlayStation 5 exclusive, for now at least, the game mirrors much of the Intergrade upgrade released for the PS5 in 2021. Like Integrade, this is an Unreal Engine 4 game, offering the choice between a Graphics or Performance mode, along with HDR on or off.

The game performed well both before the patch and after, with less than a handful of dropped frames in the 30fps capped Graphics mode even prior to the patch, while the Performance mode makes sacrifices to visuals in order to double frame rates to 60fps. In that mode we see small areas of hiccups in long view distance battles and certainly high bandwidth sections with any heavy particle and alpha effects, or in scenes that use expensive post effects. These are very infrequent, and never worse than 33ms frame time spikes, remaining inside the Variable Refresh Rate range of the PlayStation 5 output if you have a screen that supports it. The absolute worst case found was during a scripted battle attack that filled the screen with effects, during which the game held a locked 30fps in the Graphics mode and a low of 50fps in the Performance mode.

With the 1.01 Patch applied we do see minor boosts in stability from the worst-performing sections. Taking a fixed real-time cutscene that originally dipped to a low of 52fps, things improved to a 54 fps low, meaning we maintain more frames within the required 16ms refresh. This offers a small 4% increase over the previous version, which is all but invisible to the player, but it may have bigger improvements elsewhere in such a wide open and dynamic game. This patch also attempts to improve the image quality issues we covered in our demo performance review and that were noted by the community online.

Visual Quality and Modes

Playing across a wide selection of the game, its visual and technical make-up across both modes is largely identical. As was the case with FF7 Remake, the Graphics mode is the best of the bunch, delivering a full 3840x2160p output that can scale to a counted low of approximately 2880x1620p. The game uses a heavy TAA implementation, which appears to be Unreal Engine 4’s own TAA. Prior to the patch, this also appeared to use the spatial TAAU upscale across the entire frame at the end of the raster output. What this means is that the image, including UI, post effects, alpha etc, will all shift to a lower or higher resolution depending on load, and then the engine uses a bicubic or nearest-neighbour spatial upscale sample to bring the game back to a target 4K output.

This is also true for the Performance mode, which tries to – spatially at least – upscale back to 4K from a much lower base. Performance targets a counted approximate high of the same 2880x1620p level when in non-dense areas of the world with little or no trees, alpha, or post effects present. However, in denser sections or heavy battles, such as when out in the Grasslands or other foliage-heavy areas, it can drop to a counted low of 1920×1080 and remain here for extended periods. Like the Graphics mode, that same heavy TAA looks to use spatial upscale to 4K, though with fewer pixels it is often far softer. Comparing the modes side-by-side, differences come down to resolution and a minor reduction in object Level of Detail, which is likely related to resolution.

The patch seems to focus on Performance mode specifically, as I didn’t see any improvements in image quality or performance on the Graphics mode. What the team appear to have done is attempt a sharpening of the image, to aid the lack of pixel samples, in order to improve clarity and high frequency elements. It does look remarkably similar to FSR1; however, any spatial up-sample technique can look similar depending on the taps made. It could also be an update to the TAAU spatial upscale UE4 Engine to use nearest-neighbour, which creates a slightly sharper but more pixelated image. Either way, the results are certainly not transformative, and this largely comes down to the same reasons I noted in our demo review.

The sharpening does help increase detail and clarity on high-frequency textures and help define edges better. Resolution remains the same as before, as does the low-definition textures. The Temporal AA pass is extremely aggressive and can create lots of ghosting in the image, which does not help the game’s minute details. However, it does provide a largely stable and clean image throughout, giving the game a softer, more post-processed, offline CGI look. This is certainly by design and an artistic intention. Cutscenes are the best showcase of the visual quality in the game, as are the pyrotechnic-packed battles, again harkening back to the magic and effects design of the PlayStation original. Not all is positive with this though, as the game’s large scale seems to have made an even bigger impact on the production assets and variety, which affects the gameplay and real-time segments, although cinematics fare much better due to the fixed camera and asset control the teams have here.

Characters and World Details

The models of characters are easily the most impressive elements of the game. Depending on the sequence and areas in question, we have some strikingly beautiful effects in battle, with alpha flames mixed with extensive GPU-accelerated particles and physics-based destruction and interaction. Many sections have some well-placed spot, point, and area lights that cast high-quality shadows that stretch and dance. Outside, the shadow map cascade is noticeably short in both modes, but the game does mix shadow maps on characters to emulate a contact-hardening look for legs that occlude closer to the contact area of the ground and a more diffuse top half that is further away.

The cinematic sequences can be even more impressive, as the increased and improved lighting and shadows means that models can now be seen in the best light, literally. Material quality, self-shadowing, subsurface scattering, and bone rigging of faces and movement is dramatically better. Add in the cinematography of each, and the extensive use of expensive sprite sample bokeh depth of field, high quality per-pixel motion blur and no camera or radial blur offers, for the most part, the sharpest and most impressive visuals of the game. The Graphics mode is much better due to the significant pixel increase and thus sharper image, but both modes offer effects parity just at a lower precision.

That said, the high and lows are often enough to stand out. These come down to a few key aspects based on my analysis here. The TAA is strong, and although motion blur is off for camera motion, per-object blur on characters looks excellent but can add to the soft image. Texture filtering is still too low in both modes, although texture assets themselves as well as the MipMap bias in the performance mode do not compensate for the resolution shift. Screen space reflections can be good on some surfaces, but fall down with low sampling and little denoising from the TAA, causing artifacting – specifically on water bodies – even in cutscenes.

The biggest problem, though, is that the game is chock full of low-fidelity walls, rocks, pictures, fabrics, signs, and even characters. Compounding this is that some have very drab colours with blended browns, greys, and blues with little surface detail. As such we have a game that can both rise and fall on the visual rollercoaster. The lack of high-fidelity detail in the world as a whole makes it hard to pick out distinct objects or characters aside from when in battle or cinematics. It leaves many areas looking soupy in the Performance mode and soft in the Graphics mode. Using Cloud himself as an example, the lighting and material in some areas can leave his skin and details shiny and plastic looking, breaking physically based shading rules. In addition, his textures and detail can be soft, with hair cards causing fizzle. These issues extend across NPCs, teammates, and substantial portions of the game world.

Summary

Final Fantasy VII is a classic and Rebirth delivers on providing an incredible next chapter of the remake trilogy. This is a performance review though and on performance the team has delivered a near rock solid game that caters to both 30 and 60fps players. On a visual front though, it suffers from similar, and due to scale, more issues than Remake. This leaves a mixed impression, and though I hate to say it, it can look closer to a cross-generation game in some of the worst-case scenarios with regard to material details and quality.

The patch offers a small but noticeable increase to this, but more is required to aid the assets, and I feel this is beyond a simple patch. Asset quality and details can be muddy, even in the 4K mode, and even if other increases come in the form of improved Mip bias, adjusted TAA, or improved screen space shadow sampling, it would not resolve the lion’s share of the issues. That could only be improved with updated and higher quality assets and materials in the affected areas. Polygon count and textures would be the biggest focus for a later patch, which could transform the game’s look in those weaker areas. The team may be able to improve the game further, but at least you can play without any concerns on the performance side, and 30fps may have never looked so good.