ori and the will of the wisps – Trekking with Dennis

Ten non-Nintendo characters who (probably won’t) appear in Mario Kart 9!

A few days ago I had a lot of fun putting together a short list of (mostly) Nintendo characters who I think should appear in Mario Kart 9 – whenever that game may come! As a follow-up, I thought it could be interesting to consider a few characters from outside of Nintendo’s walled garden who could also join the fun. If you’d like to check out the original list, you can find it by clicking or tapping here.

Mario Kart 8 and later Mario Kart 8 Deluxe pushed the boat out as far as the roster of drivers is concerned, including characters from outside of the Super Mario series for the first time, including Link from The Legend of Zelda series, Isabelle from Animal Crossing, and two characters from the Splatoon games. However, it would be a first for the series to include non-Nintendo characters!

Isabelle, from the Animal Crossing series, is a driver in *Mario Kart 8 Deluxe*.

Although the Mario Kart games haven’t done so yet, Nintendo has proved itself willing to open up to other companies’ franchises and characters in recent years. We’ve seen Minecraft Steve, for example, as well as characters from the Castlevania, Persona, and Dragon Quest series appear in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Switch, so I think that demonstrates a willingness on Nintendo’s part to think outside the box when it comes to characters in popular titles.

Whether it will happen, though, is completely unknown! And to reiterate what I always say: this is pure guesswork and a wishlist from a fan, nothing more. I’m not claiming to know for a fact that any characters listed below will appear in Mario Kart 9 – or even if such a game is currently in development. With the 30th anniversary of the Mario Kart series coming up in 2022 I think it’s possible that we might see a new game, but even that’s just a guess on my part!

With that out of the way, let’s jump into the list!

Number 1: Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega)

Sonic as he appears in *Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020*.

Of all the characters on this list, Sonic is arguably the most likely to crop up in Mario Kart 9. Not only is he a character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but there have been a number of Nintendo games over the last decade or more in which he’s been prominently featured. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games in 2007 marked his debut alongside Mario, and since then the duo have appeared together in five more Olympic-themed titles.

It would’ve seemed unthinkable in the ’90s for Mario and Sonic to appear together; they were the mascots of competing companies! It was only when Sega retired from manufacturing their own consoles shortly after the millennium that Sonic appearing on Nintendo hardware was even a possibility, but he’s since become a mainstay. He’d make for a fantastic character, and having already featured in his own kart racer, he definitely knows a thing or two about driving!

Number 2: Pac-Man (Bandai Namco)

A 3D rendering of Pac-Man from 1999’s *Pac-Man World*.

Another character who appeared in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Pac-Man is a gaming icon from the medium’s early days. Originally an arcade game created in 1980, Pac-Man spawned a whole host of titles in a series that continues to this day. Though the games have no real story or plot, Pac-Man was arguably one of the first video game characters, and was, for a time, symbolic of the games industry as a whole. His simple design became iconic, and even today Pac-Man is instantly recognisable.

As with Sonic above, even a few years ago the idea of a collaboration between Nintendo and Pac-Man (short of licensing one of the games to their consoles) wouldn’t have seemed possible. But as companies continue to pool their resources and work together, it could make a lot of sense for both Nintendo and Bandai Namco (or should that be Bando Namcai?) to bring Pac-Man to Mario Kart 9.

Number 3: Fall Guy (Epic Games/Mediatonic)

Three Fall Guys seen in a recent Nintendo Direct.

If I’d been in charge of the development of cute obstacle course/battle royale title Fall Guys, I would have prioritised a Nintendo Switch release. Regardless, the title is finally going to be released on Nintendo’s console, months after it’s PC and PlayStation 4 debut. The Fall Guys themselves are adorable little jelly bean characters with a huge variety of costumes, and their cartoon aesthetic would fit perfectly with Nintendo’s long-running kart racing series.

The recent Epic Games buyout may complicate matters, but with Fall Guys coming to Switch I really feel it has a shot at being successful on that platform – especially if Mediatonic can get cross-platform play up and running. If the game is a hit, bringing a Fall Guy to Mario Kart 9 would be fantastic, and something Nintendo could absolutely consider doing. It would arguably benefit Fall Guys more, with the character’s inclusion serving almost as advertising, but that should just be an incentive for Epic Games to allow this crossover to go ahead!

Number 4: Master Chief (Microsoft)

The Master Chief in *Halo: The Master Chief Collection* concept art.

The inclusion of Minecraft Steve in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate shows that Microsoft is quite happy to work with Nintendo, and a number of their recent moves – like their partnership with EA – have opened up the possibility of further collaborations and crossovers with big games companies. With that in mind, could the Halo series’ iconic protagonist end up as a racer?

Halo games, as first-person shooters, are quite violent, so perhaps Nintendo would opt not to include such characters for the sake of keeping the game family-friendly. But Master Chief’s design isn’t aggressive or scary, and I think he could be made to fit. It would be a fun collaboration between two of modern gaming’s big powerhouses.

Number 5: Doom Guy (Bethesda/Microsoft)

*Doom Eternal* promotional artwork featuring the character known as Doom Guy.

Though visually similar in some respects to the Master Chief, Doom Guy has a surprising history with Nintendo. Not only was Doom 64 a Nintendo 64 exclusive in 1997, but last year saw a bizarre yet strangely wholesome internet-inspired team-up with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. In short, Doom Eternal shared a release date with New Horizons, and because of the polar opposite nature of the games, fans began ironically pairing up Doom Guy with Animal Crossing characters – notably Isabelle.

Nintendo could take advantage of the memes and jokes by bringing Doom Guy into Mario Kart 9. On the surface, maybe he isn’t a great fit for the series. But there’s nothing offensive about his character design, and if last year’s fan art showed us one thing, it’s that Doom Guy can be made to look adorable and cartoonified!

Number 6: Two Point Hospital Doctor or Nurse (Sega)

Two Point Hospital is a spiritual successor to 1997’s Theme Hospital, a classic of the “tycoon” genre. It was ported to the Nintendo Switch last year after releasing for PC in 2018, and has gone on to be a surprising success on the platform. As with many tycoon games there isn’t really one principal character to pick out, but a generic doctor and/or nurse could be a fun addition to Mario Kart 9.

One of the great things about Two Point Hospital is its cartoon aesthetic; a deliberate choice that mimics the title’s origins in tycoon games of the 1990s. That look just happens to be perfect for the Mario Kart series, which means a Two Point Hospital character would be a natural fit.

Number 7: A Palico (Capcom)

A Palico as seen in the trailer for *Monster Hunter Rise*.

I’ll let you in on a secret: the Monster Hunter series has never seemed like my thing. The latest title in the series, Monster Hunter Rise, is available for Nintendo Switch, but despite loving the visual style, the core gameplay of hunting and killing so-called “monsters” – which seem to be docile animals living their own lives not troubling anybody – holds absolutely no appeal to me!

Regardless, the latest title is a big hit on Switch, and Palicoes are cute little felines or cat-like characters that accompany the player character during the game. It seems like this kind of cute critter would be a perfect fit for Mario Kart 9 – even if I don’t personally care for the game they originate from!

Number 8: Zagreus (Supergiant Games)

Promotional art for *Hades* featuring Zagreus.

Hades has to be one of the best indie games I’ve played in recent years, and was recently featured in a Nintendo Direct presentation as the game is getting a full physical release (i.e. on a game cartridge) for Switch. It’s an absolute blast, and if you haven’t tried it I can’t recommend it enough – if you’re okay with a game in which you die over and over again!

Zagreus, son of Hades, is the game’s protagonist, adapted from the character present in Ancient Greek mythology. His anime-inspired style is… well let’s just say I’m not an anime fan. But as a character he’s interesting and fun to root for in Hades, and with some minor adaptations I’m sure he could fit in with the rest of the racers!

Number 9: Ori and Sein (Microsoft/Moon Studios)

Ori and Sein in *Ori and the Blind Forest*.

I’d almost forgotten that both Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps had been ported to the Nintendo Switch, but both games were a good fit for Nintendo’s platform and seem to have sold reasonably well. This entry is technically two characters, but they could be rolled into a single racer as Sein’s design might not lend itself to being an independent driver!

The Ori games are surprisingly sweet but also challenging in places, and Ori would certainly fit right in with the Mario Kart series from an aesthetic point of view. It would be great to see the Ori series, which already has a Switch presence, join up with Nintendo for an additional collaboration!

Number 10: Geralt of Rivia (CD Projekt Red)

Geralt as he appears on the box art of *The Witcher 3*.

Though I still haven’t played The Witcher 3 – or the prior two entries in the series, come to that – it’s held up as one of the best games of the last ten years, and protagonist Geralt of Rivia has since cropped up in a couple of unexpected places! Perhaps his next adventure could be joining Mario and friends for a go-kart race?

The Witcher 3 was one of the most ambitious titles to bring to the Nintendo Switch, considering the size and complexity of the game, but by all accounts it’s a solid port. A lot of folks have been enjoying taking Geralt with them to play on the go, and his recent appearance in Soul Calibur VI shows that CD Projekt Red are clearly amenable to collaborating with other companies. He would be a strange choice, perhaps, but a lot of fun nevertheless!

Bonus: Battle-Cars (Epic Games)

Promotional art for *Rocket League* showing two Battle-Cars.

One of the most surprising things in Mario Kart 8 was the inclusion of Mercedes-Benz car parts, as part of a deal Nintendo struck with the famous car manufacturer! We could absolutely consider other manufacturers or vehicles that would be cute to see in the next Mario Kart game, but for now I thought it could be fun if Nintendo could team up with one of the other top car games out there – Rocket League!

I’m atrocious at Rocket League and have been since the first time I played, but the game is a lot of fun. A buyout by Epic Games saw the title move to a free-to-play model, which has been good in some ways. There are a number of different vehicle styles, and any could be adapted to make a fun kart in Mario Kart 9. Perhaps three or four different styles would be enough so as not to overwhelm the title!

So that’s it. Ten characters – and one bonus set of vehicles – that Mario Kart 9 should – but most likely won’t – include!

If I’m right that Nintendo plans to do something next year to mark the series’ 30th anniversary, a new game would be top of the list. And in the spirit of celebration, bringing a whole roster of characters from across gaming to join one big Mario Kart party would be a great thing for Nintendo to do. Some characters that Nintendo has worked with in the past, like Sonic the Hedgehog, seem far more likely than others, but it would benefit practically every company involved in the games industry to allow Nintendo to license one or two of their characters. After all, it’s a fantastic advertisement for the game they’re originally from!

I’ve been a huge Mario Kart fan since I first sat down to play Super Mario Kart in 1993 or 1994, back when I owned a SNES. That title only had eight racers to choose from, and the series has come a long way since then – while managing to retain the fun. As games got better and I played the likes of Shenmue and Knights of the Old Republic I began to favour titles with a strong focus on story; there are few titles I considered fun for their gameplay alone. The Mario Kart series has always been one of them! Whatever happens next year, and whenever Mario Kart 9 may come, I hope Nintendo try to bring in some new and different faces.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is out now for Nintendo Switch, and is the copyright of Nintendo. All characters mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promo art courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Length isn’t everything… but it IS important.

Fri 03.04.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Resident Evil 3 is the latest game to release to mixed reviews, with one source of criticism being the game’s length. It’s primarily a single-player experience, but the main campaign takes less than six hours to finish. Any time a video game receives criticism for its length the same group of people come out, proclaiming that “it doesn’t matter how long it is as long as it’s good!” The discussion around some titles thus descends into arguments between people who feel that there is such a thing as “too short” and people who feel that length makes no difference.

I can summarise my position on the issue quite succinctly: I don’t care how long a game is, provided it is priced accordingly. Article over, stay tuned for more – wait, it isn’t over? Hmm.

Let’s take a step back and look at why game length does actually matter. The way I usually explain it is like this: most people have a budget for gaming, and if there are two games for the same price, one which lasts three hours and another which lasts sixty, then one title is clearly better value than another. Next, if someone can only afford one new game a month or every few months, then they are absolutely right to consider how long the experience they are paying for will last. If a game is over in an afternoon and it’ll be weeks or months before they can get another one, that’s absolutely a fair consideration. This applies to many people, but folks on fixed or low incomes will feel this even more acutely.

*Resident Evil 3* (2020) has released to mixed reviews.

Different games appeal to different people. So a game like Overwatch could be argued to have hundreds of hours of potential gameplay – it’s a multiplayer shooter, and there’s no campaign to beat. Players can play as many matches as they like. But for someone who dislikes multiplayer games, Overwatch would be a waste of money because they wouldn’t enjoy the experience. Thus it doesn’t really fit the model outlined above, and I’d say for the most part, multiplayer-only games don’t really fit in the same way. When I talk about game length I’m primarily considering single-player experiences.

There are also questions regarding at what point one considers a game to be “complete”, and again this will vary from person to person. Someone may consider a title finished if they beat the main campaign once, others may want to play it twice. Some people might want to unlock achievements or trophies, and still others may be completionists who want to unlock everything, explore every area, and discover every hidden item. So a game which may have a six-hour campaign on the surface can potentially be a thirty-hour experience for some people – and the question of value will depend on how a person chooses to play their games and enjoy their experiences.

A game like Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga has a number of levels to complete across its story mode, but it also offers great replay value by having a large roster of unlockable characters, many of whom can do different things on those same levels. There are also tons of hidden collectables and coins across every level, such that the game has – for some gamers, at least – many more hours of enjoyment than just the “basic” story.

So where does this leave Resident Evil 3? The problem with it, and why I feel it’s been criticised in this area, is that it’s a full-price game – that is, it retails for £50-55 ($60 USD). That’s the same price as Red Dead Redemption 2, which offers a story roughly fifty hours long. And it’s more than twice the price of the recently-released Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which offers a story that’s around eight to ten hours long.

Some people are already uncomfortable by the comparisons, getting ready to bash their keyboards in anger and say that “length doesn’t matter!” But it does to a lot of gamers, especially at this price point. It’s not a question of raw length. A game can be short yet still feel like an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Short games are not inherently bad games, and I don’t think anyone’s trying to say that they are. I’m certainly not making that case. But if a game is primarily a single-player experience, as Resident Evil 3 is, it needs to factor its length into its price in order for people to feel that they got a good deal and weren’t ripped off. If I paid £55 for a game and it lasted less than six hours, I’d be disappointed, especially considering that there are better options out there for me to have spent my money on.

*Ori and the Will of the Wisps* is a short game that has received critical acclaim.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps never pretends to be a long game. The first entry in its series, Ori and the Blind Forest, was even shorter, and both are considered amazing games. Stay tuned, by the way, for my own thoughts on Ori and the Blind Forest, as I have an article in the pipeline about it. But the producers behind the Ori series recognise that its comparatively short length means it needs to be priced accordingly, and they factored that in when the games were released. If they’d both been full-price titles they wouldn’t have been so well-received, and at the very least, their reviews would have come with caveats.

By comparison, The Order: 1886 was roundly criticised upon release for being too short for its price. This PlayStation 4 exclusive was one that many people were anticipating, but upon release it ended up being a disappointment. Many reviews at the time made note of the game’s length, and while it wasn’t the only source of criticism, the fact that it was a full-priced game that lasted around five hours was something that left many players and reviewers feeling let down and ripped off.

This principle is something which can apply to other forms of entertainment as well. If you’ve been a reader since last year, you may remember my top ten television series of the 2010s – you can find the list by clicking or tapping here. In that list, I explained why I preferred Elementary to Sherlock – two television shows about Sherlock Holmes in a modern-day setting. Sherlock has thirteen episodes, Elementary has 154. That isn’t the only consideration, but if there’s more to enjoy I’ll always want more of it. While not all of Elementary’s episodes were good, enough were to make it a more rounded, enjoyable experience. And not every Sherlock episode was good either, especially in its fourth “season”.

To my mind, Resident Evil 3 should fall into the same bracket as the Ori series mentioned above. If it were priced at, say, £30 instead of £55, people wouldn’t be giving it a hard time over its length – because it would be priced somewhat more fairly. And to return to my explanation as to why, the hypothetical low-income or budget gamer could pick up Resident Evil 3 and still have money left over for something else to play when they’d beaten it.

2015’s *The Order: 1886* was criticised for its length.

Length is inherently tied to the value of a game, and while it isn’t the only determining factor in making purchase decisions and review scores, it is undeniably a factor for many people. If someone is in a position where they can waste all the money in the world on the latest games because they can afford it, well good for them. But many people can’t, and therefore how long they’ll be able to enjoy a purchased game is important – even more so in the days of digital distribution, as there’s no chance of trading in completed titles.

Quantity over quality is not a sound argument. But that isn’t the argument that I’m making, nor is anyone who criticised Resident Evil 3 or any other game that seems too short. What I’m saying is that length is tied to value, especially at higher prices and when considering people on lower incomes who can’t afford to get every new title that they might want to.

While I haven’t played Resident Evil 3 for myself, it serves as a good example – the latest in a long line – of why games publishers need to consider adjusting their pricing to fit a game’s length and value. By charging full price for a short game, people will feel that the money they invested was not worth it, which will hurt the game’s reputation and ultimately result in fewer sales. There is a balance which publishers need to hit, and in the case of Resident Evil 3 it seems that, at least for some gamers, they missed the mark.

All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Images courtesy of Press Kits sourced via IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.