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Issue #75: The Value of Replay – January/February 2025
🕑 Added 2024-12-20 19:04:06 +0000 UTCWe're heading into the beginning of NF’s 13th year of publishing!
The release of this issue coincides with the conclusion of a dozen years of Nintendo Force, and 12 years deep we again find ourselves on the verge of another major hardware reveal and release.
. . . But Switch 1 isn’t quite done yet, so we still have some old titles to look back over before charging fully ahead into the new generation. Yes, the Switch release slate is still awash in remakes and ports as its sun is setting, with Nintendo offering two big ones themselves in 2025’s opening months: Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.
Now, we’ve covered remakes, remasters and the like in the past. It was our topic of choice at this same time just one year ago, in fact! But there is one angle here that I feel we haven’t really explored yet, and that has become the title for this issue: “The Value of Replay.”
What motivates someone to go back and play a game again, after they’ve already played it at least once before? Sure, lots of these re-releases are trying to bring in brand-new players who never paid attention to the older versions previously, or perhaps were too young when they were first released. But I’m wondering now specifically about returning players — going back to the same games and giving them a second run. Or a third, a fourth, and so on! What is the experience of playing a video game like when you’ve already played it through in the past, and so you already know all the shocking reveals and plot twists and boss weaknesses?
And how does a game get to a point of being so beloved that it becomes a genuine comfort game that a player might return to dozens of times over the years? I know some players have games that they make a point to replay at least once a year. Appointment nostalgia.
Keep those questions in mind as you page through this issue and peruse our previews of games like Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope DX that are trying to reach out to that returning player audience; our interview with Gavin Price from Playtonic, the team currently working on Yooka-Replayee; and our reviews of titles like Tetris Forever (a celebration of arguably the most replayable game of all time) and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket (which hopes that you’ll fire it up to play over and over again, every single day). Finally, don’t miss our central feature, in which the NF team shares with you our personal comfort games that we just can’t stop going back to year after year.
We’ve done our best to make another great magazine issue for you! Who knows, maybe you’ll like it so much that you’ll come back to re-read it years from now?
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Print version patrons, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed out within the next week. They should start showing up in most subscribers' mailboxes in the early days of January.
Digital version supporters, normally I would send your PDF download links to you just a few days after making this Patreon post . . . but we need to hold back on releasing it for a little while longer. There's an exclusive reveal of a new product inside this one – which is going to be the focus of our next big Kickstarter campaign – and we're not quite supposed to say exactly what it is just yet.
You all will still be the first to hear about it, as our longtime patrons and biggest supporters! But you'll just have to be a bit more patient before we can drop the big news bomb. (We'll drop it sometime shortly after the New Year's Eve ball drops, OK!)
Thank you all, as always, for your faithful fandom! We couldn't do what we do without you!
~ Lucas M. Thomas
