If you’re paying for access to Nintendo’s Switch Online package, you too are probably perennially wondering whether you’re actually getting anything out of it, but then remembering it’s only $20 a year and it stores all your saves in the cloud. Thankfully, every so often a few more prehistoric games get added to assuage any remaining feelings of wastage. Today it’s Super R-Type, Wrecking Crew ‘98, and, er, Sugoi Hebereke.
Obviously, only madness awaits those who try to fathom the workings within Nintendo, but it still bemuses me that these online libraries of decades-old games have been so slowly drip-fed. Right now, after almost six years of existence, Nintendo Switch Online—with today’s addition of Wrecking Crew—finally includes almost all of Nintendo’s in-house developed, US-released SNES games, conspicuously lacking its last, Wario’s Woods.
Alongside Sugoi Hebereke (Amazing Hebereke—a Sunsoft fighting game that no one cared about at the time, getting its first U.S. release), the game anyone’s going to care about in this collection is Super R-Type, essentially a souped-up port of the wonderful arcade/Amiga side-scrolling shooter game, R-Type II.
Stunningly hard, it was—amusingly—somewhat easier on SNES thanks to its atrocious slow-down that would occasionally bring the game to a total slideshow. Whether or not that will be replicated when playing it on Switch, we’re not sure.
I still find it a struggle to get too excited about Switch Online’s offerings. Things like online access and cloud saves seem like they’d be right and proper to just offer as part of paying for a console, and while 63 SNES games, 21 Game Boy games, and 71 NES games seems like a bumper library to play through, the fact that you can’t just download them to the system makes them a hassle to play, and most of them are obviously extraordinarily dated and tough to stick with.
The more expensive ($50 per year) and clumsily named Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack option improves things with 30 N64 games, 14 Sega Genesis titles, and a paltry 15 (admittedly excellent) Game Boy Advance games, which are a lot more tempting to get stuck into today. However, the lack of first-party GBA games on there is very disappointing, and only becomes more so with every announcement like this, that seems to prioritize unwanted SNES bargain bin guff. Where’s Wario Land 4? Where’s Rhythm Tengoku? F-Zero Climax, Pokémon, and more than anything else, Mario Golf: Advance Tour? Whine moan complain.
Anyway, it’s a big news day for all you Wrecking Crew ‘98 fans, and god bless you.