Those who lived through that era remember: some games only existed on the neighbor’s console, and we dreamed of the day they would show up on the rental store shelf for our own system. The February 13, 2019 Nintendo Direct was a bit of that, with a batch of games from other platforms, some with more than twenty years of history, confirmed for the Nintendo Switch.
The highlight was Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. The game from Ninja Theory, the studio behind Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and DmC: Devil May Cry, had come out in August 2017 on PS4 and PC and won five awards at the 2018 BAFTA Games Awards, including the performer award for Melina Juergens, Senua’s actress. The detail that gave the announcement weight: Ninja Theory had been bought by Microsoft in June 2018, so this was a game from an Xbox studio arriving on Nintendo’s console. The port was handled by QLOC.
In the same presentation came two Square Enix classics. Final Fantasy IX, released on PlayStation in 2000, came out on the Switch on the same day as the announcement, and Final Fantasy VII, from 1997, got a date of March 26, 2019. They were not remakes, but ports of the classic games, to play anywhere. Ubisoft, for its part, confirmed Assassin’s Creed III Remastered for May 21, with the improved campaign and all the single-player content released at the time.
What came next
Hellblade came out on Switch on April 11, 2019. Final Fantasy VII arrived on March 26, 2019, in a port by DotEmu, and Assassin’s Creed III Remastered on May 21, 2019, but with a weaker reception on Switch (60 on Metacritic) than on the other consoles. Hellblade’s sequel, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, came out on May 21, 2024 on PC and Xbox Series, and Final Fantasy VII got a remake in 2020. For those who used to blow into cartridges, seeing Cloud and Zidane on Nintendo’s hybrid still feels special.
Where to buy
Source: Nintendo.
Zé Cartucho
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