One of the biggest news stories of the past few weeks was undoubtedly Nintendo announcing some phenomenal sales figures for the Switch. But it was interesting to read that the UK sales weren’t quite so astronomical…
Why isn’t Nintendo Switch breaking records in the UK? (GamesIndustry.biz)
Well this is an eye-opening statistic. Nintendo has been rightfully showing off the phenomenal sales of the Switch in the US and Japan, but sales are relatively sluggish in the UK. Switch sold 700,000 units in 48 weeks: certainly healthy figures, but quite some way off the PS4’s one million sales in the first 42 weeks after launch. Certainly, I’ve noticed that Switch displays are relatively small in shops over here, and the PS4 is utterly dominant – shown by the fact that 50% of boxed software sales in the UK were PS4 games in 2017. And recently, an indie store retailer told me that in their shop, PS4 games outsold Xbox One titles by about ten to one. Lucius P. Merriweather
Celeste was a rewarding journey through my own mental health struggles (Cheap Boss Attack)
“Not only is Celeste a masterclass in 2D platforming, nor does it simply provide a magical, pixelated world accompanied by a wonderful soundtrack, but it piles these tried-and-true mechanics atop a beautifully endearing story of overcoming self-struggles.” A wonderful, personal article on how a difficult game can also be encouraging. L.P.M.
Sleep Is Death was ahead of its time (Eurogamer)
I’d never heard of Sleep Is Death until I read this article, but it sounds like a fantastic idea. One player takes on the role of storyteller, reacting to the lines fed to him or her by the other player, and the storyteller can generate scenes using assets provided by the game (they can also construct their own in-game furniture). A remake could be perfect fodder for the Twitch generation. L.P.M.
TFW a Twitter bot solves a video game mystery (Video Game History Foundation)
This is quite a remarkable story. The Video Game History Foundation had been searching for information on a ‘lost’ game called StarTribes, which was never released – and no one seemed to know much about it. But then a Twitter bot ended up firing out images from the game – and a bit of digging found a whole stash of never-before-seen screenshots. I also love that it was a game based on claymation – you don’t see many of those these days. Or at all. L.P.M.
Cheat codes: the old currency of cool (Later Levels)
Cheat codes were big back in the nineties. Huge sections of gaming magazines were given over to them – although I was far too much of a goody-two-shoes to use them. This is a fun look back at the lost culture of cheat codes, and why we’ll never see the like again. L.P.M.
Finally, it’s not strictly a ‘read’ but this Monster Hunter poster is utterly fantastic. You can buy it from Etsy.
Spiffing Reads is a regular feature where we pick out the best gaming articles of the week. If you’ve read anything interesting, please let us know in the comments.
[amazon_link asins=’B071WPKD5P,B071QY1WLY,B078Y4FLCL,B0721325R7,B071JRMKBH,B01N1037CV,B01MY7GHKJ’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’mostagreeable-21′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’5eed84ab-1322-11e8-a771-2769a739578f’]
A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME 