DISPATCHES MAY
Give it a day
Had I written this letter earlier, we would have been in the longest drought between Nintendo Directs since they first began. As it stands, I write this with the longest drought being in recent memory.
The Nintendo Direct format has very much taken on a life of its own, to the extent that it has become a format for their signature E3 performances. Every Direct has been slickly produced with a number of game announcements, often with one being the standout or surprise.
As of the writing of this letter (February 27) Nintendo have not revealed their hand beyond Animal Crossing, which got an admittedly charming Direct.
This means that aside from nebulous comments around
Metroid, Bayonetta, and a couple of other games, Nintendo’s year looks, to be honest, barren.
I look back to 2017, and the absolute deluge of quality titles that propelled the Switch to success. Given Nintendo started so strongly, are they now doomed to end faintly as the respective studios are scrambling to put together similar sized titles for end of life – an area where the company has traditionally triumphed? I know BOTW2 is a reality but as of the writing of this email, no one knows actually what it is.
Is this another advent of Nintendo not courting serious thirdparty support, which could easily offer a cushion at this point? Was Nintendo guilty of frontloading? And will this affect them for the Switch 2 (or whatever it is)?
Martin Hollis
Box elder
I played my first Sega game when I was five years old. It was Sonic The Hedgehog on the Master System, and I played it at my neighbour’s house. I’d played a few games on an old BBC computer before that, but this was my introduction to the vibrant colours and sheer pleasure of Sega, and from that point on I was a dedicated Sega fanboy. I got my own Master System for my next birthday with Sonic built into it, and a life-long gaming habit was born.
Fast forward to the mid-’90s, and when the Saturn and PS1 were released, I eagerly traded in my Mega Drive and all the games I had for it, along with my saved-up pocket money and a loan from my mum, at Electronics Boutique (or was it still Future Zone back then?) to get my hands on a Saturn. I scorned PS1 and avidly championed Sega. All my friends, of course, ended up getting PlayStations. My loyalty would not waver.
That was until, in a certain issue of Edge magazine, you ran a feature-length article about Final Fantasy VII. One section described in detail the wonder of chocobo breeding and racing, along with wonderful pictures of the cutting-edge graphics, and I simply had to put aside my loyalty to Sega and buy a PS1 along with FFVII. I was hooked. I absolutely fell in love with the game, and I don’t mind admitting how I cried at a certain turn of events in the course of the story! I get shivers just thinking about that now. For my 18th birthday, I got a tattoo of Red XIII; a few years later this was followed by one of Sephiroth. I mean to expand on this and get Cloud at some point soon.
Anyway, it’s great how things come full circle. My gaming device of choice for the last few generations has been a PC, and the most recent console I owned was an Xbox 360. But with Final Fantasy VII Remake on the way, I have once again forked out for a PlayStation in order to play it.
Please, please make a massive feature on each part of the new remake as they are released. A dozen pages at least! Tell me
“I look back to 2017, and the absolute deluge of quality that propelled Switch to success”
everything, take me back to the excitement I felt reading your original article. Thank you for introducing me to the best singleplayer game of all time.
Jack Rowan
Obviously it’s your skin etc, but might we politely suggest an Edge tattoo instead?
Elevate me later
I’m a recent Edge reader. I came aboard for
E318, with an unknowing need for a more serious and curated videogame press. The blooming of digital press with a first-tothe-finish-line attitude can sometimes lead to an absence of passion.
I buy your magazine at (probably) the only shop in Barcelona that sells magazines from overseas, and what I enjoy the most from it is your editorials, in the mouthpiece size of Dispatches or in the Post Scripts from reviewed games. Those are the sections that get down to it on politics, social conduct, parenthood, ecological aspects, insides from the industry… Many aspects that are overlooked. It also adds a highbrow flavour to videogames. How I felt when Nathan jumped from the plank into the ocean – but this was just a mere preamble, because within a few months, Journey To The Savage Planet was being shipped, and Alex was orphaning me as well. No disrespect to Steven Poole, but I need more. I would be delighted if in the next issue, between those 130 pages of passion, the editorials have grown back again.
Adrià Navarro Báguena
We hope Sam Barlow’s arrival has sated your appetite. We intend to get the columnist roster back up to the magic number soon.
Silence kid
The release schedule for 2020 is looking increasingly busy: Doom: Eternal, Half-Life: Alyx, The Last Of Us: Part II, Ghost Of Tsushima, Cyberpunk 2077, not to mention the games that may or may not come out this year, like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Elden Ring. Parallel to giddy levels of excitement, which makes me question whether my mental age is really high enough to raise children, is a growing panic about how I will fit it all in before they come into existence.
The emergence of children – Emergence Day, to borrow a disturbingly apt Gears analogy – isn’t tied to concrete dates, but to an uncertain near-future where established patterns are obliterated by sleep deprivation, area-of-effect bowel movements, and inchoate demands for food. Nathan’s editorials about comfort-playing Destiny between feeding and changing, and countless letters about furtive Switch sessions and mobile gaming on the daily commute, have convinced me that this future is inevitable.
I guess it’s weird to lament the disruption caused by planning for children, rather than just the usual laments about disruption caused by children (weird and overly precious – I hate to think what it says about my psychology). But in my defence it’s one with the gamer mentality: if I’m going to progress my main story beyond a point of no return, I had better make sure all my sidequests are wrapped up first.
Leo Tarasov
We thought Edge was considered an authority figure, but you lot keep emailing us about having children. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Here
I started buying your magazine to fill the hole left behind by your sadly gone but not forgotten (by me, anyway) sister publication Arcade. I was instantly impressed by your more mature approach to videogame journalism. Although my subscription has occasionally lapsed I haven’t missed an issue since, nor will I for the foreseeable future.
Now I’m done with the gushing I do have one small (actually big) request. I’m a big fan of older games. Whether playing these games for the first time or revisiting them, I would love to know what your thoughts were on them. Now I enjoy your magazine digitally I have access to every issue released. What I’m asking is whether or not it would be possible to create a review index of every game you have ever critiqued and what issue I can find it in. Searching your ever-increasing back catalogue is like finding a needle in a haystack, assuming you even reviewed it in the first place. I know I would be grateful for such a list and I imagine it may also improve sales of older issues.
Phil Eggins
The wonderful Edge community has you covered. You can find it at bit.ly/edgedb2.
Fight this generation
At the time of writing, it has been over six months since the last general Nintendo Direct, and fans are getting desperate for one, just one big game announcement for 2020. I’ve seen many people on social media getting very annoyed because they apparently have no games to play. They’re missing out.
Talk to almost any gamer and they’ll tell you that there is at least one game they haven’t finished. Now is as good a time as ever to dive back into a game that you never got a chance to complete, or even a game you bought and then totally forgot about. It can be very interesting to go back and play a game from a few years ago and see how your opinions on it have changed: is it still a great game or was it simply a good game for its time? There can be some surprising results.
I’m part of an online community called Patient Gamers, which is made up of people who wait to play games. There are a number of reasons you can do this: to wait for a better price, to wait for bugs to be fixed, or just to wait until you have time to play them. This year I’ve started playing Wind Waker HD on Wii U (!) and it’s a lot of fun.
I have the forthcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons to keep me occupied all year and probably all of next year, but to other gamers waiting for that next big game announcement – why don’t you look to the past?
Ewan James
Yeah, Martin, why don’t you, hmm?