Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for March 26, 2024. In today’s article, I’ve got a couple more reviews for you to enjoy. First up is Princess Peach: Showtime!, which I enjoyed almost exactly as much as I expected to, if not for the exact reasons. Then, I take a look at the Castlevania-like Crypt Stalker, which is one big flaw away from being pretty cool. After that, we have a few new releases to check out. Not quite as Bin Bunch-filled as yesterday, thankfully. After that, it’s sales time. Let’s get to work!
Reviews & Mini-Views
Princess Peach: Showtime! ($59.99)
Princess Peach: Showtime! was developed by Good-Feel, and it’s such a Good-Feel game that I think I probably would have been able to guess the developer even if I wasn’t informed ahead of time. The Hyogo-based company, founded by a number of ex-Konami employees, has worked with Nintendo off and on since its inception in 2005. In that time, it has developed several games featuring Nintendo’s characters. Wario Land: Shake It!, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Yoshi’s Woolly World, and Yoshi’s Crafted World. Like those games, Princess Peach: Showtime! is a fairly chill game that is relatively easy to reach the end of, but loaded with enough collectibles to keep you replaying stages if you seek completion.
Peach goes to a theater to see a show, as one does, and is trapped inside when some sour grapes decide to crash the scene. In order to save the day, she has to venture into each play and strike back at the baddies contained within. She’ll adopt a special persona for each play, and while the basic gameplay here is tried-and-true platforming, you’ll often be asked to do a number of other things. Maybe you have to decorate a cake, or perform a figure skating routine in time to the music. You never quite know what is coming next, and it’s one of the strengths of the game.
Generally speaking, everything the game asks you to do is fun. It’s over a bit too quickly if you just decide to rush through, but I think it’s not far off from its ideal length for the ideas it contains. Collecting all of the Sparklas in each stage and finding all the hidden secrets is a bigger task, sometimes requiring some careful searching and other times demanding a fair bit of skill at the mini-games. I felt like this was a satisfying reason to replay levels, but the inability to skip the cutscenes on repeated plays is a bit annoying.
In terms of presentation, Princess Peach: Showtime! looks and sounds quite good. It’s not the smoothest or prettiest game on the console, but it’s vibrant and runs well enough. Peach’s various costumes all look really sharp, and the original characters made for the game have a decent amount of charm. Having the game set in a theater with the stages being on literal stages gives the game a distinctive personality, and the boss battles and set pieces are impactful. Peach makes for a fun heroine, and it’s cool to see so many new sides of her.
Princess Peach: Showtime! sometimes feels a little too scattered for its own good, but the gameplay variety and usual Good-Feel relaxed atmosphere make this a nice game to chill out with over the course of a weekend or two. If you’re not interested in replaying stages to find hidden goodies, this might be a bit too brief and breezy a game. The game also sorely needs an option to skip the lengthy cutscenes when going back into previously-cleared plays. Overall, this is a solid outing for gaming’s most famous princess, one that easily out-does her Nintendo DS star debut. Here’s hoping it’s just the start of her adventures.
SwitchArcade Score: 4/5
Crypt Stalker ($6.99)
When a game is as affordable as this one, I’m generally less picky about whether or not it gets every little thing right. And Crypt Stalker actually doesn’t have a ton of serious flaws outside of being perhaps too enthusiastic in its homage of Castlevania. The basic gameplay is fun, you get a nice variety of level themes, the boss battles are relatively well-done, and the presentation more or less hits what it’s going for. You even get an extra version of the game that is modeled more after the dreadful first Game Boy Castlevania adventure.
There’s one thing I can’t let slide though, even if I can guess how it happened. This is a challenging side-scrolling platformer that requires a fair bit of precise timing, particularly with regards to alternating your jumps and attacks. Unfortunately, it decides to map its controls in the opposite manner of conventions, with jump assigned to B and attack assigned to A. If you have any Castlevania (or NES) muscle memory built up, this is an incredibly vexing situation. You can’t remap it in-game either, so you’ll have to use the system-level remap function if you want to change it. I suspect what happened here is that on PC it was mapped according to the usual layout, but the reversed positions of B and A on the Switch controller left us with this.
Crypt Stalker offers up some decent, cheap, Castlevania-like thrills. You get a solid bang for your gaming buck, with plenty of stages to fight through and a few interesting extra modes to enjoy. Sadly, the lack of in-game button mapping coupled with a reversed default layout for jumping and attacking can make this game very hard to enjoy if you’re a few decades invested into the usual button assignments. Hopefully the publisher sees fit to update this with an option to reassign the controls.
SwitchArcade Score: 3/5
New Releases
Farming Simulator Kids ($29.99)
Take the concept of Farming Simulator and make it approachable to kids, and that’s this. The presentation is aimed directly at the younger set, and with more than ten crops to plant and harvest, a handful of locations to explore, and a nice variety of things to do, this might just hit its target. I’m sure the tots will also appreciate that the game features fully-licensed tools and vehicles from John Deere, too.
South Park: Snow Day! ($29.99)
I remember at some point the South Park dudes said something about not wanting more terrible South Park games, which is why they were more hands-on with The Stick of Truth. Well… I suppose it was nice while it lasted, because this is definitely a terrible South Park game. This buggy, poorly-conceived, multiplayer action game isn’t worth thirty bucks, isn’t worth 10GB of space on your SD Card, and it certainly isn’t worth any of your time. A shameful torching of hard-earned goodwill.
Shockman Collection Vol. 1 ($10.99)
This is technically just a bundle of the two already-released reissues of Shockman from Ratalaika Games. I’m not sure why it isn’t just, you know, a bundle of those two existing apps, but I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. It’s a cheaper way to get both games, if that’s a thing you want to do.
The Bin Bunch
Restaurant Health Inspection Simulator: Sanitary Service ($12.99)
Sales
(North American eShop, US Prices)
Some good games in the list today, with some new low prices on titles like Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. There’s a bit over in the outbox too, so check both of those lists and see what’s what.
Select New Sales
DRAINUS ($13.99 from $19.99 until 4/7)
Record of Lodoss War: Wonder Labyrinth ($14.99 from $24.99 until 4/7)
The Good Life ($19.99 from $39.99 until 4/7)
Mighty Goose ($7.99 from $19.99 until 4/7)
Gnosia ($17.49 from $24.99 until 4/7)
Touhou Luna Nights ($12.59 from $17.99 until 4/7)
Kero Blaster ($2.99 from $9.99 until 4/7)
Astebreed ($3.99 from $19.99 until 4/7)
Orangeblood ($5.99 from $19.99 until 4/7)
Buggy Racer ($2.49 from $4.99 until 4/8)
Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star ($34.99 from $49.99 until 4/8)
Let’s Play Curling ($27.99 from $39.99 until 4/8)
Promenade ($19.99 from $24.99 until 4/8)
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap ($5.99 from $19.99 until 4/8)
Don’t Starve ($4.99 from $19.99 until 4/8)
Mark of the Ninja Remastered ($4.99 from $19.99 until 4/8)
Alwa’s Awakening ($4.49 from $9.99 until 4/8)
Alwa’s Legacy ($8.09 from $17.99 until 4/8)
Cathedral ($6.74 from $14.99 until 4/8)
Kraino Origins ($7.19 from $11.99 until 4/8)
Lost Dream Stars ($1.99 from $4.99 until 4/8)
Vengeful Guardian Moonrider ($11.04 from $16.99 until 4/8)
Terraria ($14.99 from $29.99 until 4/8)
Streets of Rage 4 ($12.49 from $24.99 until 4/8)
TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge ($16.74 from $24.99 until 4/8)
TMNT: SR Dimension Shellshock DLC ($6.79 from $7.99 until 4/8)
Lumote: The Mastermote Chronicles ($4.99 from $19.99 until 4/8)
Young Souls ($11.24 from $24.99 until 4/8)
Might & Magic Clash of Heroes ($12.59 from $17.99 until 4/8)
For The Warp ($2.69 from $17.99 until 4/8)
Infernax ($13.39 from $19.99 until 4/8)
Kunai ($5.09 from $16.99 until 4/8)
Ys Origin ($5.99 from $19.99 until 4/8)
Blazing Chrome ($6.79 from $16.99 until 4/8)
Horace ($5.99 from $14.99 until 4/8)
Pang Adventures ($2.99 from $9.99 until 4/8)
R-Type Dimensions EX ($7.49 from $14.99 until 4/8)
Windjammers ($5.99 from $14.99 until 4/8)
Windjammers 2 ($9.99 from $19.99 until 4/8)
The Falconeer: Warrior Edition ($7.49 from $29.99 until 4/8)
Bloodstained: RotN ($11.99 from $39.99 until 4/9)
It Takes Two ($19.99 from $39.99 until 4/9)
Super Mega Baseball 4 ($19.99 from $49.99 until 4/9)
LIMBO ($1.99 from $9.99 until 4/15)
Figment 2: Creed Valley ($8.74 from $24.99 until 4/15)
Xiaomei & the Flame Dragon’s Fist ($8.99 from $14.99 until 4/16)
Sales Ending Tomorrow, March 27th
Cake Bash 8$6.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Cloud Gardens ($4.49 from $17.99 until 3/27)
Crowns & Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit ($12.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Curious Expedition ($2.99 from $14.99 until 3/27)
Curious Expedition 2 ($6.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Cursed to Golf ($7.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Firegirl: Hack ‘n Splash Rescue DX ($3.59 from $17.99 until 3/27)
Get Packed: Couch Chaos ($3.74 from $14.99 until 3/27)
Giga Wrecker Alt ($1.99 from $24.99 until 3/27)
Hello Kitty Kruisers ($1.99 from $29.95 until 3/27)
HunterX ($8.99 from $14.99 until 3/27)
LEGO Bricktales ($13.49 from $29.99 until 3/27)
Lonely Mountains: Downhill ($6.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Paper Cut Mansion ($6.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
RICO ($1.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Say No! More ($2.99 from $14.99 until 3/27)
SteamWorld Build ($22.49 from $29.99 until 3/27)
SteamWorld Dig 2 ($3.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
SteamWorld Heist: Ultimate ($1.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Swordship ($7.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Togges ($7.99 from $19.99 until 3/27)
Vengeful Heart ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/27)
Wavetale ($11.99 from $29.99 until 3/27)
That’s all for today, friends. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new releases, more sales, and perhaps some news if we’re lucky. I went to a friend’s birthday party today, so I actually arrived in my office quite late. Not a whole ton of time to do what I want to get done, but I’ll do my best. I hope you all have a terrific Tuesday, and as always, thanks for reading!