Hello there! This week on Press Any Button we're marking Disability Pride Month, revisiting the Toys to Life craze, playing some old arcade games at home and running through our hopes for this year's big basketball sim. And, of course, we have some recommendations for stuff to pick up this week.
Speaking of which, following the launch of the new PlayStation Plus last week, it's become clear that both Sony and Microsoft's subscription offerings have become a bit unweildy. Both offer the same simple sub they've had for years which allows you to play online and gives you a handful of games to keep each month (that's PlayStation Plus Essential and Xbox Live Gold). The Sony model expands on that with two higher tiers that add access to libraries, while Microsoft lets you ignore Gold and get the library via Game Pass, or get them both together with Game Pass Ultimate.
The result is that explaining to anybody how much each tier costs and what they get requires graphs and flowcharts, which really shouldn't be the case. To make the new subscription libraries as accessible as possible, I think those older "pay to play online" offerings should die, and "games to keep" could just become a part of the main subs. I don't think the companies share this view however, as just this morning Microsoft sent out an email informing subscribers that Xbox 360 games would no longer be included in Games with Gold come October (after almost 10 years!) but that the service would continue with newer titles.
There’s still life in the old toys yet
By Tim
Remember Toys to Life? In the mid-2010s it was all the rage; you collected physical figures and other plastic knick-knacks, which you could scan into a game as you played. It was the way of the future, but by 2020 it was completely over. The market was saturated, the doodads were expensive, successive generations of games had made things complicated, and throwing money at FIFA to spin a virtual roulette wheel from the comfort of your couch was more convenient.
But while pretty much all of Toys to Life games are unsupported these days, you can still play them. In fact, especially if you have kids, they're still a lot of fun. Here they are, in order of how cheaply you can bulk-grab the plastic stuff from eBay or Gumtree.
Skylanders was the innovator, and is the most complicated if you're trying to work them out in 2022. The easiest recommendation is to grab Skylanders Imaginators on PS4 or Xbox One (you need the game disc and the USB "portal"), because as the most recent game it works with every figure. It probably has the weakest gimmick of the lot though, so you could also opt to go with an older game (Superchargers, Trap Team or Swap Force) and just buy figures from that specific generation.
For some plastic doohickies you might actually care about, there's Disney Infinity 3.0, which takes in everything Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. The servers are off so you can't share stuff online, but the story-based 3.0 "play sets" still work, as do plastic figures from all three generations.
Lego Dimensions went for a similar idea with some really great story content for everyone from Sonic the Hedgehog and Doctor Who to Batman and The Simpsons. The main issue with this one is that every figure is made from tiny Lego blocks, which are very easily misplaced.
Finally there's Starlink: Battle for Atlas, an excellent space shooter which is still supported. There's no portal for this one, but you need a mount for the PS4, Xbox or Switch controller. Into that you plug starship bodies, pilots, wings and weapons that appear instantly in-game. Or you can forego the plastic entirely and buy digital parts in-game, but where's the fun in that?
What to play
Lapsed Cuphead fans have a great reason to come back, with the long-awaited arrival of additional content offering hours of masochistic fun for your $12. “The Delicious Last Course” (DLC, see what they did there?) adds a new island to explore with five huge boss stages, five smaller chess-themed challenge bosses, new weapons, new charms and a new playable character in Ms. Chalice, who operates quite differently from Cuphead and Mugman. If it’s been a while expect to get trampled as you shake the rust off, because the new bosses do not mess around. But from the fresh jazzy tracks to the more-stunning-than-ever hand animation (including a wonderful claymation miniature), there’s so much to love here.
This Friday will see the launch of Samorost 3+ Apple Arcade, where an adorable space gnome uses a magical flute to travel the galaxy. The art is done in a stop motion style and looks incredible. I (Alice) am already in love with this game. Even if it sucks, it’ll still be incredible.
PlayStation Plus’ monthly games are good quality for July, so make sure to add them to your library. You get the excellent series revival Crash Bandicoot 4, the maritime mystery of brilliant interactive horror movie Man of Medan, and new co-operative online shooter Arcadegeddon which makes me (Tim) feel old just looking at it.
On Xbox, Games with Gold is decidedly less exciting. You get photography adventure Beasts of Maravilla Island, plus ancient park sim Thrillville: Off the Rails. In a few weeks you’ll also get old but decent action RPG Torchlight. Game Pass subscribers can play new arrivals Matchpoint: Tennis Championships, House Flipper and Far Cry 5.
Over on Switch, Expansion Pack subscribers get four additional Mega Drive games added to what is now an excellent library: sought-after 16-bit remake collection Mega Man: The Wily Wars; clunky but beautiful platform brawler Comix Zone; mech shooter Target Earth, and; a great side-scrolling shoot-’em-up with an infamously bad English translation in Zero Wing.
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid owning The Sims 4, it is currently 75% off, so you can jump in before the new puberty simulator (High School Expansion) drops soon. The Sims 4 is the number 1 way to lose countless hours to characters trying to do the job you’re currently avoiding, so there’s that.
Not a game, but Big W currently has DualSense controllers for $79 online, which is a big saving if you’ve been looking for a second pad for your PS5.
What I Want To See In NBA 2K23
By Alice
With today’s announcement about the new cover star for the special editions of NBA 2K23 (Michael Jordan, for the cover of a basketball game, ground-breaking), I figure now might be a good time to give my wish list. I’ve been playing NBA 2K since 2K7, and while each year used to be an exciting treat to see how it had moved incrementally forward, I now get filled with a slight sense of anxiety, wondering which of my favourite parts will be monetized into a grind.
The first and biggest thing I want is something that’s never going to happen: take out the microtransactions. You have to spend so much VC to make your player skilled and therefore fun that it’s essentially turned this $110 game into a free-to-play title, wanting money on both ends. I’m totally fine with needing to pay for outfits if they really need to monetize, but having to either grind for multiple weeks, or spend an extra $50-$100 to make your player fun even in career mode is a bridge too far. Hopefully 2K has listened to player feedback and will balance this better for this year.
The second thing is a more fleshed out WNBA career mode. I love how the NBA 2K franchise has started scanning in female players (I even got to see the momentous fist mocap session in person back in 2019), but the female side of the game last year was largely locked to next-gen consoles. 2K has the power to elevate the women’s game to new levels, and I really want to see that.
And, lastly, kill The City until it is dead. “What if, instead of a menu that is easy to navigate, we had a large city that took a long time to get anywhere in?” No. This is bad. Not everything needs to be open world. I am here for basketball, not aimless wandering.
NBA 2K is the reason why I love basketball so much, and I hope the developers of NBA 2K23 took on some of the criticism from NBA 2K22 to make a better game.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
It’s Disability Pride Month, so let’s talk about some areas in video games where accessibility has been massively improved these last few years, and areas where there’s still a lot of room to grow.
To start with the good, colour blindness is extremely common, and for a long time some games would only use colour filters to make the game more accessible to players. However, it’s been known for a long time that those filters aren’t actually effective for many people. Thankfully developers have got the message, and now games like Fortnite, Doom Eternal, Gears 5, Forza Horizon 5 and The Last of Us Part 2 have included different forms of colour accessibility in their accessibility menus.
Earlier this year there was also an acknowledgement from Playground Games that subtitles aren’t as inclusive for profoundly deaf players as hearing players originally assumed. For people who are profoundly deaf, English and other written forms of language are often their second or third language. So, Forza Horizon 5 became the first game to translate cutscenes into ASL and British Sign Language.
I also need to acknowledge the enormous leap forward the Xbox Adaptive Controller was and the news that Xbox Series X|S was backwards compatible with all controllers made before, so people with disabilities could still use their expensive, personally modified controllers.
But there’s still a long way to go. PlayStation and Nintendo don’t have anything like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and modified DualShock controllers don’t work with the PS5, so players have to either forgo the new console or outlay even more money on top of it.
There’s also the lack of sign language support in basically every game that isn’t FH5, not to mention no Auslan anywhere outside small indie games; sign languages are quite regional, so deaf Australian players are still left out.
Plus, the myriad other things that can’t be explored in a short column in a newsletter.
The only certainty in life is that if we’re lucky enough to not die young and healthy, we will all have accessibility needs one day. But, more than that, everyone should be able to play no matter what their needs are. Games are fun, and denying people access to them just because companies don’t want to make the investment is plain mean.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
So many fun or important old games are inaccessible these days without breaking the law or throwing your wallet at the mercy of an inflated collector’s market, but things can get especially weird when it comes to arcade games. Almost nobody has the combination of space, money and restoration skills to own an old cabinet, digital re-releases are rare, and even illegal emulation is complicated given how many different kinds of hardware existed.
And that’s a shame, because playing old arcade games at home is wonderful. You’re probably familiar with early fare like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, but especially in Japan arcade culture extended right through the 2000s. Many games were made at the same time and by the same creative minds as our favourite console games, but feature more complex graphics and sound. And since you effectively have unlimited coins, most of them are breezy experiences of an hour or less.
As examples, here are a few arcade titles worth a look, which never made it to home consoles:
Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder Though the three Mega Drive games are great, this is secretly Sega’s finest Golden Axe. The extra definition and animation allows for some delightfully dumb fantasy violence, plus rideable fire-breathing mantises.
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs A three-player Capcom brawler that plays out like Final Fight meets Jurassic Park, this one’s based on a cartoon based on a comic, but you can completely ignore that.
Ninja Baseball Bat Man There are scores of arcade games filled with shallow goofy nonsense; it’s a great way to attract people over to the cabinet. But this one from Irem matches its visual spectacle with legitimately good superhero brawling.
The Outfoxies Long before it was making Smash Bros. with Nintendo, Namco put out its own madcap arena brawler. Characters range from the expected (a mercenary, a thief) to a martial arts scientist in a wheelchair or a suit-wearing monkey.
Dolphin Blue This late-era arcade effort fromSammy is transparently just Metal Slug but you’re friends with a dolphin, and I’m ok with that. With beautiful 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds and plenty of exploding, dolphin-riding action, it’s a brilliant shoot-em-up.