Cuphead is the best-selling game on the Switch eShop in April 2019

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Numbers first: Cuphead came to the Nintendo Switch in April 2019 and ended the month as the eShop’s best-selling game, ahead of heavyweights like Super Mario Odyssey, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The result came from a game that had already been a hit on Xbox One and PC and was arriving on Nintendo’s platform a year and a half later.

April’s eShop ranking looked like this:

Cuphead
Super Mario Odyssey
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Enter the Gungeon
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Final Fantasy VII
Rocket League
Rayman Legends: Definitive Edition
Minecraft
FIFA 19
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Overcooked 2
Stardew Valley
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
Octopath Traveler

In practice, the podium showed two things: the strength of indie releases on the Switch store, with Cuphead, Enter the Gungeon, Overcooked 2 and Stardew Valley on the list, and the public’s appetite for portable versions of games already established on other platforms, as in the case of Skyrim, Final Fantasy VII and Dragon’s Dogma.

For those who don’t know: Cuphead is a run-and-gun shooter from Studio MDHR, originally released on September 29, 2017 for Windows and Xbox One. The art imitates the “rubber hose” animation style of the golden age of American cartoons, in the mold of the Fleischer studios, and every frame was hand-drawn, with deliberate imperfections. The soundtrack was recorded with a full big band. The difficulty, focused on boss battles, became a trademark. Translating the jargon: it’s beautiful to look at and hard to finish.

What came next

Cuphead passed 4 million copies in July 2019 and reached 6 million when it launched on PlayStation 4 in July 2020. Its soundtrack became the first from a video game to top Billboard’s jazz albums chart, in 2019. The animated series The Cuphead Show! premiered on Netflix in February 2022, and the expansion The Delicious Last Course passed 2 million sales by December 2022.