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Prior to the Tokyo Game Show last week, a fan poll was held to determine the most wanted SEGA Ages games for Switch. Jet Set Radio topped the list, but right behind it was Shenmue I & II. While both of these titles were just recently re-released on modern platforms, Switch was left out of the equation. Perhaps that could that change in the future.

4Gamer interviewed localization director Hiroji Noguchi and localization producer Eigo Kasahara around TGS. The site brought up the interest in seeing Shenmue on Switch, and neither of them shot down the possibility. In fact, bringing Shenmue to Switch is something Kasahara would like to consider.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the best-selling entry in the series. It’s already a million seller having sold 1.42 million copies as of June 2018.

One reason for Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s success is due to strong sales in the west. Speaking with USgamer, Monolith Soft executive director Tetsuya Takahashi revealed that the RPG exceeded the company’s expectations, especially in the west. The new Torna expansion is also exceeding expectations on the whole.

As many people know, Pokemon is an incredibly successful franchise today. But that wasn’t always the case. Before Pokemon exploded around the world, there was uncertainty as to how it would perform in the United States.

Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda mentioned to USgamer in an email interview that the team was told “that the Pokemon were too cute to be successful in the U.S. and that we should change the design of the characters.” He had also some concerns that Pokemon wouldn’t be accepted “for what it was” outside of Japan.

Polygon recently spoke to longtime Pokemon developer Junichi Masuda about the early days of the franchise’s development. During the interview, Masuda recalled one interesting story about how all work on the original games was nearly lost.

According to Masuda, a computer crash almost caused everything Game Freak had done on the project to vanish. The PC had all of the game data, Pokemon, and more. Masuda eventually figured out how to get back what was thought to be lost, but if he hadn’t, there could have been a massive setback that the team may not have been able to recover from.

Shadows of the Empire wasn’t always a Star Wars game. In an interview with Game Informer, co-project leader Jon Knoles revealed that after wanting to take a break from Star Wars, the team “started kicking around this idea of a western with this new machine we heard Nintendo was making.”

Everything changed after Nintendo reached out to LucasArts about making a Star Wars game for what would be the N64. The Big N was interested in something new with original characters.

Argonaut Games will always be remembered for its work on Star Fox and the Super FX tech for the SNES. But the company could have gained even more recognition had history gone down another way.

The Virtual Boy was Nintendo’s first crack at a VR-like experience, but Argonaut was developing its own system around the same time. Known as the Super Visor, the device would have been more powerful with full-color graphics and ‘head-tracking. It was ultimate scrapped in favor of the Virtual Boy.

Switch owners can begin to enjoy some SEGA classics at home or on the go with the SEGA Ages collection on Switch, starting with two titles released this week: “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Thunder Force IV”. Following this will be steady releases including “Phantasy Star”, “Alex Kidd in Miracle World”, “Gain Ground” and many more.

Last week’s issue of Famitsu has a mini-interview with Rieko Kodama, lead producer and director of SEGA AGES, to offer some insight on upcoming titles. Check out below for our translation.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Nintendo Life recently had the chance to speak with some of the developers behind Xenoblade Chronicles 2. These include Monolith Soft executive producer Tetsuya Takahashi, producer Koh Kojima, and Nintendo director Genki Yokota.

We have some excerpts below, which confirms that there won’t be any additional content for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, talk about designing Blades and the ending (spoilers of course), and more. You can read the full discussion here.

At the Tokyo Game Show, Game Informer caught up with Nippon Ichi president Sohei Niikawa. Niikawa had a few interesting things to say about supporting Switch and more.

During the interview, Niikawa mentioned that NIS “wants to continue to release more and more games” on Switch. He said the following about releasing games on the platform:

At the start of 2019, Travis Touchdown will finally be making a return with Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. But fans have also shown quite a bit of interest in having past entries in the series appear on Switch as well.

While director Suda51 has acknowledged interest in doing this previously, it appears he’s actually now taking a proactive approach. Speaking with Nintendeal at PAX West 2018, he mentioned that he’s in talks with Marvelous in hopes of bringing No More Heroes 1 and 2 to Switch.


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