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The Switch launched last Friday with a small — but excellent! — batch of games. Nintendo will continue to expand the console’s selection of titles with weekly eShop updates, with today bringing the first batch of downloadable games.
There are now eight more games to choose from on the Switch, spanning both the old and the new. Blaster Master Zero leads the charge; it’s an homage to the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, with an 8-bit aesthetic and retro gameplay.
The action game, inspired by the original NES Blaster Master from 1988, costs $9.99 and supports up to two players with a co-op mode. It also sets the tone for the rest of the releases this week, which are mostly old-school NeoGeo games. Six NeoGeo titles are now playable on the Switch: Nam-1975, The King of Fighters ‘98, Waku Waku 7, Metal Slug 3, World Heroes Perfect and Shock Troopers.
Each one costs $7.99 and belongs to the “ACA NEOGEO” series, which is composed of ports of classic NeoGeo games.
Bucking the trend is the final new Switch game, VOEZ, which is a rhythm game. For $25, players get more than 100 songs that comprise a story about high school students.
VOEZ gained some notoriety right before the Switch launched, as it’s the rare game that is unplayable in TV mode. Gameplay is centered around the touchscreen — so if the Switch is sitting in the dock, there’s no way to hit the notes for each song.
The game’s focus on the touchscreen also makes it unlike other Switch titles, which rarely use that part of the system thus far. The reason for that is likely due to the Switch’s three different modes, two of which make the touchscreen hard to access.
Many of these titles were available on the Japanese eShop last week, but now it’s possible to buy them without messing with making foreign transactions. None of these games have the clout of, say, Breath of the Wild, but considering that the new Zelda is so big, having smaller titles like these to supplement a Switch owner’s collection for now seems perfect.
