Although Nintendo is not known for pampering its classics, from time to time it shows awareness of their value. That people want to play them. Even that many of its games that never left Japan generate interest beyond its borders. Therefore, while their business decisions are not always the most popular, that doesn’t mean they don’t make occasional small efforts in the right direction.
That has been the case with the new batch of titles available on Nintendo Switch Online. Introducing four new titles, two from NES, one from Game Boy Color, and one from SNES, only one of them was originally released in the West.
The Game Boy Color game, Quest for Camelot, is the one that was released outside of Japan. Based on the Warner Bros. animated film of the same name, it was an action-adventure game that, like the movie, passed by without much notice on the system. A curious but not particularly inspired clone of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, its main selling points were good use of color and the ability to use the Game Boy Printer with the game.
The two NES games are among those that were never released in the West. Joy Mech Fight is a 2D fighting game from Nintendo that aimed to compete with the popularity of Street Fighter 2. Its main merit was having a huge roster of 35 robots and serving as inspiration for the Super Smash Bros. series, although it didn’t make a big impact. More relevant was Downtown Nekketsu March: Super-Awesome Field Day!, a spin-off of the Kunio-kun beat’em up series where players had to participate in various sports mini-games. A translated version was released in the West in 2020 as part of the Double Dragon & Kunio-kun Retro Brawler Bundle.
The last game, the SNES one, also never left Japan, but with a little twist. Kirby’s Star Stacker is a remake of the Game Boy puzzle game that was released in Europe and North America. However, the console version never made it out of Japan.
All of these games are now available on Nintendo Switch Online. There’s one small catch though: all the games originally not released in the West are in perfect Japanese. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t be a particular problem as all three games are perfectly playable without knowing any Japanese. Even so, given the limited amount of text in these games, Nintendo could have shown a bit of love for their franchises and fans by translating them.
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