Hyper Issue 270

I spent my 1999 school holidays trying to pull all-nighters with friends. It was very important to us (‘us’ being the rotating group of me and Matt and Sam and Dan and the other Matt) that we play Mario Party, San Francisco Rush, and Goldeneye for as long as possible. Our goal was always to forego sleep entirely, and damn the consequences. We never quite made it – typically we’d be protesting that we weren’t tired at 3, and asleep by 3:30 – but the ambition to play multiplayer games for as long as we could manage was pure. Years later, when online services had expanded to the point where even Nintendo, somewhat begrudgingly, had to start offering them, the company was still focusing a lot of its energy on the…

Indies of all shapes, sizes, and orientations have found themselves a spiritual home on the Nintendo Switch. While you can often find these games on another system, on a commute there’s nothing like whipping the switch out of your backpack and waking it up from sleep mode to find that it is ready to go a second later, exactly where you left off. This feature shouldn’t be underestimated. I hear the modern gamer declaring that there are superior options on a gaming laptop; this may be true but they are expensive, heavy, hot, and not really practical on a peak hour train trip. In many cases you would also need to carry your choice of wireless controller as you can’t exactly mouse and keyboard comfortably on public transport without inconveniencing the…

Nintendo Switch Core Wired Controller – Zelda Nintendo • $49.99 www.mightyape.com.au/product/nintendo-switch-core-wired-controller-zelda-nintendoswitch/28048376 While the JoyCons are pretty great controllers out of the box, there’s no denying they’re a touch on the dinky side – especially if you’ve got giant hands, like some of us in the office. Thankfully, Nintendo has that covered, with the Switch Core Wired Controller. But what if that’s not… extra enough? Well, there’s a range of themed controllers out there, but we think the best looking one is easily the Zelda one. Black with gold highlights on the buttons, it not only looks super-elegant, but features some really neat art of Link and his bow, and of course the Tri-Force emblem. If Breath of the Wild is your constant jam, this is your constant controller. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate GameCube Controller Nintendo www.mightyape.com.au/product/nintendo-gamecube-controller-super-smash-brosultimate-nintendo-switch/28220552 Super Smash Bros. may…

I was a child before there was an Internet, in a time when word could still be ‘passed around the school ground’ organically. There were rumours that you could find the Triforce in Ocarina of Time (false); someone ran around telling everyone that Maggie would be revealed as Mr Burns’ killer (true – it had already aired in the US); one kid said that America got much scarier entries in R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, with kooky names like ‘Children Can Be Dangerous When Exposed To The Moon’ (a total lie, but one I remember believing). We were used to implausible ideas spreading and eventually being snuffed out, but MissingNo changed all that. In 1999, the Internet was just barely a thing for us. It was ubiquitous enough that we were starting…

In June, three significant things happened in the world of Splatoon. The Splatoon 2 World Championships took place alongside E3, where Japan’s GG BoyZ dominated the competition; Nintendo announced that Splatoon 2 would continue to be supported with new content drops through to the end of 2018; and the Octo Expansion, a major single-player DLC with a punishingly high difficulty level, released. Splatoon 2 has been a major success for Nintendo, both critically and commercially, and the Inklings have become Nintendo’s most significant new mascots in some time. Hisashi Nogami is a producer on Splatoon 2. He held the same title on the original game – it was his idea originally to make the playable characters squids. We had the opportunity to speak to Mr Nogami about his work on the…

Nobody’s perfect, and sometimes Nintendo misses the mark, even with its biggest franchises (you’ll notice that the much-maligned Super Smash Bros Brawl is not on this list, because it’s not great). But Nintendo games that aren’t at the absolute top of their series are sometimes written off as flat-out awful, which isn’t always fair. A few of its most-hated-on games deserve a second look, having achieved more, or presented more interesting ideas, than they’re given credit for. Super Mario Sunshine GameCube, 2002 Many Mario fans can’t settle on whether Sunshine is worth it or not. The FLUDD backpack, some argue, was an unnecessary addition – the game was at its best when it offered pure platforming challenges that did not involve spraying water about – and the camera, which really was awful,…