Nintendo Switch Online: Majora's Mask Icons

It's Majora's Mask Month. Okay, I just made that up, but the collectible cards in Nintendo Today weren't the only news related to the Nintendo 64 classic. The Nintendo Switch Online service is now featuring the game for its rewards and missions, replacing Pilotwings 64 a few days early. You can earn 50 Platinum Points by playing the game once and spend 100 Platinum Points on ten different icons.

Curiously, this was put under the 40th Anniversary banner, which may suggest that they will keep doing this for other Zelda games in the next months. The ones that didn't get any icons yet are Oracle of Ages & Seasons (GBC), A Link to the Past & Four Swords (GBA), The Minish Cap (GBA), and The Wind Waker (GCN), so mainly the Capcom titles. But they could also make more icons for the existing games, especially those that only got five so far.

In any case, Nintendo wants you to play Majora's Mask this month. And it's without a doubt the best Zelda game for the Halloween season, but you might also want to play this one last time before the Ocarina of Time remake gets released next month. Why? Well, the remake could make it very hard to return to these Nintendo 64 classics, once you've experienced its smoothness and modern visuals. Originally, my plan was to replay Majora's Mask afterwards, so I can take notes about what can and should be done with a similar remake by the same team, but I'm afraid that the new Ocarina of Time will spoil me so much that this won't be much fun.

Also, they should add Majora's Mask to Nintendo Music while they are add it... And I'm really expecting them to close some gaps here during the remainder of the 40th Anniversary, which includes making Four Swords Adventures and Twilight Princess playable at a later date.

Nintendo Today: Majora's Mask Collectible Cards (and more)

The Breath of the Wild set of digital collectible cards in the Nintendo Today app has been completed, and they've started with a second set, this time for Majora's Mask, with a card for Skull Kid to boot. The first set had 25 cards in total, where the new one now has 20, so the third set will start on October 24th.

Anyway, collecting these cards has been going quite well for me so far, despite the technical difficulties from Nintendo's end. It truly became a small ritual to open the Nintendo Today app every single day, where I have yet to miss a single card or medal. The questions are trivial for the most part, though there is the occasional one that is a bit more tricky than the rest. For example, there was a card for the Salmon Meunière, weirdly enough, and it was asking you about the ingredients... Well, you could make an educated guess here, but I double-checked nevertheless.

There also have been some issues... The question for the Bokoblin Mask had two correct answers, technically, but only one of them was counting. So, Nintendo rolled out an apology, promising that the people who have picked the alleged wrong answer will get compensated and have this fixed in the future. Ironically, this had caused even worse troubles afterwards. When you wanted to get the next card, it showed you this apology and you had to confirm this in order to proceed. But depending on your operating system and settings the OK-button was potentially obscured by your navigation bar, so you couldn't hit it.

This also happened to me, where I didn't even see the OK-button at first, thinking that they are simply skipping the card collecting for the day. But then I asked around on some Nintendo fansite and was told that you should be able to dismiss it, reported the problem in the app, and eventually found a solution: turn on gesture navigation on Android, which hides the usual navigation bar at the bottom. Then I was finally able to hit "OK" and move on.

Three days later Nintendo had to apologize again... for their apology. You can't make this up. At least they have learned and made this a separate message in the app. It remains unclear how they will deal with the people who have been blocked by this issue, where there isn't really a simple and fair solution here.

Nevertheless, Nintendo is getting what they wanted out of me: I'm using their Nintendo Today app on a daily basis now. And I'm starting to like it. The animated artworks for Zelda are very beautiful and are actually the true highlight here, not the collectible cards. The cards are just an incentive not to forget to open the thing. I also really enjoy reading or viewing the daily posts.

Like, they have this ongoing series for Echoes of Wisdom, where they let two monsters battle it out and you can place your mental bets beforehand. And even though I have played this game quite a lot, it's never exactly clear who might win, so they've made some good picks. It's fun to watch and some excellent advertisement for what's one of the most underrated Zelda games out there.

Donkey Kong Bananza: DK Island & Emerald Rush

After completing the main game of Donkey Kong Bananza, I couldn't resist to also get the DLC expansion, even though I had my reservations about it. And while my first impression wasn't a good one, I slowly grew to like what's effectively a whole new game within the game.

DK Island & Emerald Rush adds exactly what the name implies: you get DK Island as a new layer, which serves as a home for the new Emerald Rush mode. And this mode really turns everything on its head. Read more to find out more...

Donkey Kong Bananza: Emerald Rush Event Rotation

Well, I have been quite outspoken about the limited-time events for the Donkey Kong Bananza: DK Island & Emerald Rush DLC expansion, since they were first announced a year ago. They even made me hesitate whether I wanted to buy this (excellent) game and its DLC in the first place. I still did and haven't regretted it, but I was only able to participate in the final event, the "Bananza Antics".

These twelve events are an important part of the DLC, not only because you can obtain 24 exclusive statues, but also because they are removing the rogue-like nature of the game mode, so that all the skills and perks have fixed locations. This lets you go for certain strategies after learning all the important spots and mapping a path, which can make this a lot of fun.

So, today came the good news that these events get put on a monthly rotation, starting today. Even better, they now will run for the whole month, instead of a single week, so from now on there is always one event for you to play at any given time. This also gives you a lot more time to clear each one individually, so you can do them at your own pace.

Update: the events are now also synced to the internal clock of your Nintendo Switch 2, instead to some server, meaning that you can access each one whenever you want by changing the date. Just be careful with games that somehow rely on the system's clock and might be punish you for it.

Small Updates to the Ocarina of Time Remake Posts

Earlier this month Nintendo has shown us lots of footage from the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake and I talked quite a bit about some of it, but I was by no means doing a thorough analysis. Still, there were a couple more things that I found interesting and was meaning to discuss, where I didn't get to them until now. But since this already felt like old news, I added them to the week of the Direct, also because it makes more sense within the chronology of this blog.

Mainly, the post about the world alterations got updated a bit, but I also added two smaller posts – one about a new NPC and the other about Big Poes:

• Ocarina of Time Remake: Altered World
• Ocarina of Time Remake: New NPCs?
• Ocarina of Time Remake: Better Big Poes?

This should be it for now... Let's see if Nintendo will show more in October.

Ubisoft's Cancelled Zelda Spin-Off

According to Insider-Gaming.com, Ubisoft Milan, the Italian team behind the two Mario + Rabbids games, had an ambitious plan for a Zelda spin-off, code-named "Goliath". At first this game was supposed to have its own protagonist, but this later evolved into a playable Ganondorf, at the request of Nintendo.

After the launch of Sparks of Hope in October 2022, they have worked on a pitch over the winter, and then they had until the end of 2023 to develop a prototype. But this prototype ultimately got rejected by Nintendo and their collaboration cooled down afterwards, which led to the unfortunate disbanding of the development team.

This story reminds me of the various spin-off ideas that Retro Studio pitched to Nintendo over the years, like the Sheik game, or Heroes of Hyrule. And I'm sure Nintendo had their reasons to dismiss all of them, where I'm personally happy with how protective they have been with the IP for the past 30 years.

Of all the third party collaborations around Zelda, the partnership with Capcom still remains the best. It has produced four mainline Zelda titles, three of which are considered to be very good entries. Some of the developers from the dissolved Flagship team even still work on Zelda today, first and foremost Hidemaro Fujibayashi.

And even though Koei Tecmo means shady business, the Hyrule Warriors games have been fantastic, where this probably will continue to be a series of its own. The odd one out is Cadence of Hyrule, where Nintendo allowed a small indie studio, Brace Yourself Games, to work on the IP, but this has turned out pretty good as well.

Sadly, we don't really know any specifics about this prototype. A Ganondorf game sounds awesome on paper and can be found on many fan wish lists, but the same could be said about a Sheik game. And that turned out to be Wii Sports swordplay against wolves, making Link's Crossbow Training look sophisticated in comparison.

It doesn't mean we won't ever get a game where you primarily play as Ganondorf – Nintendo is clearly interested in the idea. It probably just won't be made by Ubisoft... And I'm okay with that.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Haul

Got the "Dagdan Collection" of Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave this Friday, eight days after the game's launch. And this wasn't some lucky, late find, or me buying from some scalper (which I would avoid). Instead, I had actually preordered this from the official Nintendo Store, where they notified me on the release day that they were facing technical difficulties, resulting in a delay of the order. They also gave me a 10€ discount for my next order, which was nice enough, but I doubt that I would have been content with that if this was Ocarina of Time or Metroid Ravenous.

Luckily, I was in no hurry to play this game (I haven't even started Three Houses yet), so I'm mainly getting this for my collection. And for this purpose this is a decent enough addition. It's similar to the Divine Edition that was released for Fire Emblem Engage three years ago in both size and offerings. The box is somewhat longer, but it also feels a tad cheaper / less sturdy, even though they have raised the prices quite a bit from last time.

And if I remember correctly, 2023 was truly the last time we got special editions like this, with Fire Emblem Engage and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It almost felt like Nintendo was done with these type of collector's items, but supposedly they just didn't release any games with the right "prestige" in the meantime. Though, it makes you wonder why they are skipping Ocarina of Time in this list, but with all the limited Zelda hardware coming next month, they probably didn't want to overdo it. You have to be fortunate in more than one way to pre-order these things...

But I have always liked collecting the different steelbooks and artbooks during the Nintendo Switch era. They are the main selling point for me, as well as getting the games with a clean cover for the normal cartridge case, without the huge age rating that you normally get in Germany. And this is all in here, as well as a collection of character cards (similar to the one that came with Engage) and a poster:

So, you get the obligatory Smash Bros. avatar character in both genders, the leaders of the different houses (if I'm not mistaken), as well as Sothis and the Goddess Fortuna. The map looks a bit dull, where I probably wouldn't want to put this on my wall. And it has the same issue as all the collectible maps (e.g. the ones for Zelda that came with the Prima guides): they have folds, and it's not so easy to smoothen this out. But it can't be helped with that size, unless they are selling these as actual posters that are rolled.

The artbook has a total of 152 pages and features mainly character designs for all the different factions. But there are some impressive illustrations of environments as well, which are probably the highlight.

In addition, I've got these little magnets for 500 Platinum Points from the Nintendo Store. There is one for each of the four main houses, where you can put them on your fridge after completing each route in the game (and only then). The above photo also shows the backside of the steelbook, which you can use as a size reference. So, these magnets are quite small.