We (Guitar Controllers) Are So Back
Plus Pokemon Presents, Azul Duel, and Kirby
Happy Monday Part 2, Button Buddies!
Yesterday I (Alice) spent all day at the Melbourne Toy Fair, checking out all the new Lego, board games and other toys coming out for the rest of the year. Oh boy, are we in for a treat. Also, it’s fun seeing all the video game-themed toys for kids, good to see them being raised to respect the classics (Sonic).
This week I’m really looking forward to brand new guitar controllers, and I checked out the new Azul Duel board game. Meanwhile, Tim is all Nintendo all the time, bringing us news from the latest Pokemon Presents and looking back at Kirby.
Guitar controllers are so back
By Alice
I’ve said before (and will say again) how much I enjoyed the age of weirdly shaped plastic controllers that are super specific. The PDP Riffmaster controller last year was a beautiful throwback to that time, but was missing one key ingredient: it wasn’t trying to look like any particular real guitar. It was just a vaguely guitar-shaped plastic controller. That’s great, but it’s not the dream. The dream is, of course, a Gibson Les Paul officially branded guitar controller to use with Fortnite Festival. I’m pleased to inform you that we are so back, baby.
“Premium” gaming accessories company CRKD (which I assume doesn’t stand for calorically restricted ketogenic diet, but you know what they say about assumptions) has just announced two new Gibson Les Paul branded guitar controllers, and from what I can see, they tick almost every box of what I wanted from a plastic controller. A gorgeous Les Paul design (available in Blueberry Burst or black), a hall effect strum bar, mechanical fret buttons, a 8-button navigation hub so you don’t have to guess when navigating around, upgrade options for the neck, an ergonomic D-Pad, and compatibility with all consoles, including mobile.
The only things it appears to be missing are a Star Power button (for times when you can’t tilt reliably) and the ability to take me back 16 years ago to when I was actually good at these kinds of games.
Retailing up to $234USD for the Blue Pro model for Xbox has me somewhat nervous that these are just going to be straight up unaffordable in Australia. Then again, don’t we all deserve a little treat in these trying times?
Either way, these CRKD Gibson Les Paul controllers won’t be hitting shelves until mid-June, so we have plenty of time to anticipate them.
What to play
It’s a new month, so that means new set of PlayStation Plus games to add to your personal library, and this time it’s bigger than most: Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the headliner. This is one of 2024’s biggest games and it’s still going for around $100, so that’s a huge value considering the yearly price of PS Plus is around that on the lowest tier. On the one hand this is a boon, because I (Tim) think it’s a lovely RPG and the best from Bioware in years, with meaningful choices, great combat and an excellent story. On the other hand, it’s more evidence the game is not living up to EA’s lofty sales expectations if the publisher was happy to take this kind of deal from Sony. It’s joined by two other very good options: Sonic Colours Ultimate, and TMNT Cowabunga Collection.
But to counter Dragon Age, Xbox also had a major 2024 game ready to go for Game Pass. An ACE UP ITS SLEEVE if you will! [Wiggling eyebrows about the pun expectantly until you turn to leave, disgusted.] It’s Balatro. Balatro is on Game Pass. Play it here if you haven’t played it for 200 hours already.
Free on Epic Games is Mages of Mystralia, which sounds like an outback drag show but is actually an indie Zelda-like from 2017.
Catch ‘em in sci-fi Paris
By Tim
Pokemon day was last week, which of course means we were treated to the annual Pokemon Presents. As a somewhat lapsed Pokemon fan I do always marvel at how many ongoing products there are now that need updates, and we saw brief trailers for new content in everything from Scarlet and Violet to Pokemon Sleep, and from new TV shows to new trading cards. But as usual I was hanging out for two things: new games, and the old games I love coming to Switch. The latter didn’t happen.
We got our first decent look at 2025’s big adventure: Pokemon Legends: Z-A. It’s an open-world Pokemon set in an alternate reality France, with a fairly active battle system and a terrifying immortal hotelier, and as with the last Legends it seems to be leaning into the cooked and complicated lore of the mainline games.
Call me cynical, but I think it looked a bit generic despite the manic happenings. The more Pokemon embraces full 3D design the more I think it’s moving into a genre that’s already packed with more boundary-pushing and visually interesting games. Also I’m sorry, but when you can pick any three Pokemon to be the starter choices, why would you go for chikorita, totodile and tepig? Wild. Still, I wouldn’t have called the big twist in Legends: Arceus from the first trailer, so the finished game could still surprise.
For something completely unexpected we also saw Pokemon Champions, which seems like a modern take on the old Stadium games. In those, you could take the Pokemon from your Game Boy adventures and send them to your Nintendo 64 to battle on the big screen. In Champions you can use your monsters from Pokemon Home (the paid cloud repository that connects many of the games) to battle challengers around the world either from your Switch or your smartphone. I’m sure there will also be a way to unlock and grow monsters without Home.
A standalone battling app could be a win if it can attract both Pokemon GO addicts and fans of the traditional RPGs, and might be a strong counterpart to the new TCG app that continues to gain hype. But a lot will depend on the limitations in play. The Pokemon Company has already said only a limited roster of Pokemon will be able to take part in Champions.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Regular Azul is one of those games that changes drastically depending on the number of players. Every extra person completely adjusts which strategies have a chance of doing well. It’s one of the things that keeps the game exciting. But the two-player experience of regular Azul can feel a little limited. Enter: Azul Duel. Duel is a purely two-player experience that adds a lot of little complications, and looks overly complicated until it clicks.
You play with five factories (four small, one big), and in addition to the usual tile drawing, there are little bonus tiles, as well as a need to draft game board tiles. What adds to the challenge is that when you take from a factory, instead of putting the rejected tiles in the middle for another player to have to take a bunch of unusable ones at the end of the round, they’re placed in a little reject spot on the factory to be taken individually. You can absolutely still screw over your opponent, but in more subtle ways.
There are also 8 different end of game bonus point conditions, and you’ll only select three per game, keeping the experience fresh on replays (similar to Wingspan).
The one thing I really hated about the game was the box. It’s just a box with absolutely no organisation other than ziplock bags. Given how many different elements are included in here, it’s ridiculous that there’s no nice way to store them all.
After the first game, I thought it was just a lot of fiddling about. Setting up the first game takes almost as long as playing it, and it’s not helped by how poorly written the rule book is. However, after the second and third games when we had gotten the hang of it, I can definitely see that this is the far superior two-player version of Azul. Two-player regular Azul has the benefit of simplicity, but can often feel a bit lopsided because of how the tiles fall. Azul Duel evens the playing field and makes it more a contest of skill and strategy than luck. It’s a game I look forward to playing a lot more of.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Kirby! He’s maybe the most unique of Nintendo’s main mascots, and potentially the least respected. But we love him, and he’s starred in more great games than bad, so all this month I’m looking back at his first 20 years, featuring a stunning 19 major games (not counting remakes, ports or cross-platform releases). This week: Kirby on the monochrome Game Boy.
Kirby is synonymous with a bright and candy-like pink, so it’s curious he began life here with 1992’s Dream World. In fact colour was of so little concern that outside of Japan he wasn’t even pink on the game’s cover. (Although that may have been because 90s marketers were worried the little boys they’d trained to hate pink would hate pink.) It’s a wonderful game, I think in part because it’s an original concept tuned for the Game Boy, rather than an adaptation of an existing NES property. It’s a breezy and experimental platformer that introduces Kirby’s trademark floating and inhaling (but not the ability-copying), plus it looks great and has killer music. Players today might deem it too easy, but they’re not playing on a Game Boy screen with no ability to save.
Developer HAL had previously made two great video pinball games, so it’s not surprising their new ball-shaped mascot was almost immediately shunted into a third. 1993’s Pinball Land is split between three tables and features returning enemies and bosses from the platformer. It’s video pinball, but really cute.
By 1995 Kirby had been in a few NES and SNES adventures, but he returned to black and white for Dream Land 2. I adore this game. It retains everything great about the original and not only adds the copy abilities but augments them with three adorable animal friends to ride: Rick the MVP hamster, Coo the grumpy owl and Kine the idiot fish. It also introduces the eldritch villain Dark Matter, establishing the series staple concept that each dream needs a nightmare counterpart. Later in 1995, Kirby became a ball again for Block Ball, a simple Breakout clone that incorporates some of Kirby’s copy abilities.
Finally, Kirby featured in 1997’s Star Stacker, which might be considered a very late Game Boy game if it wasn’t for the fact that Pokemon hit the West a year later and revitalised the platform. It’s a serviceable falling block puzzler featuring Rick, Coo and Kine, but nothing too special.
Next time: Kirby hits consoles!