I was playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and I spotted a spirit in the Spirit Board based on one of the main characters from Takt of Magic from Taito. I was like "huh, I forgot this even existed!".
Well Nintendo sadly has as well besides the spirit nod. This game alongside some others sort of defined Nintendo's REALLY neat but brief trend on working with 3rd-parties in Japan on all new Nintendo-owned IPs.
Examples from the top of my head:
Flingsmash by Artoon
Takt of Magic by Taito
Zangeki no REGINLEIV by Sandlot
The Last Story by Mistwalker
Line Attack Heroes by Grezzo
There was also the sadly canned Cosmic Walker by Gaia, formed by the creator of Shin Megami Tensei. Gaia themselves shutdown not long after as well, so there's little hope of it ever resurfacing.
And there was that utterly bizarre search engine game by Shift (the OG God Eater team) called And-Kensaku. It's Shift's only Nintendo project to date (God Eater 3 was instead by 1st Studio FYI).
Line Attack Heroes was originally a larger retail release, and was even shown in English at E3 2009 alongside Flingsmash (then known as Span Smasher), but after delays it resurfaced as a 1000 point WiiWare game and never localized. :(
Xenoblade was by Monolithsoft who were bought by Nintendo in May 2007, but apparently the game was pitched by Honne himself in 2006 which predates said buyout (apparently that's why Monolith's name is in the copyright someone said?). But because it's 1st-party it technically doesn't fit here, plus it's the only one to get follow-ups.
We still see a LITTLE of this, like with Astral Chain (and Ever Oasis on 3DS), but that's kind of it. Octopath Traveler and Daemon X Machina are owned by their creators, not by Nintendo (though apparently Nintendo having any ownership of the latter may be up for debate).
Who else fondly remembers this era? Sad a few never made it outside Japan. :( I hope we see a second shot at this from Nintendo on Switch with numerous more fresh, fully-backed by Nintendo ideas by notable 3rd-parties.
Well Nintendo sadly has as well besides the spirit nod. This game alongside some others sort of defined Nintendo's REALLY neat but brief trend on working with 3rd-parties in Japan on all new Nintendo-owned IPs.
Examples from the top of my head:
Flingsmash by Artoon
Takt of Magic by Taito
Zangeki no REGINLEIV by Sandlot
The Last Story by Mistwalker
Line Attack Heroes by Grezzo
There was also the sadly canned Cosmic Walker by Gaia, formed by the creator of Shin Megami Tensei. Gaia themselves shutdown not long after as well, so there's little hope of it ever resurfacing.
And there was that utterly bizarre search engine game by Shift (the OG God Eater team) called And-Kensaku. It's Shift's only Nintendo project to date (God Eater 3 was instead by 1st Studio FYI).
Line Attack Heroes was originally a larger retail release, and was even shown in English at E3 2009 alongside Flingsmash (then known as Span Smasher), but after delays it resurfaced as a 1000 point WiiWare game and never localized. :(
Xenoblade was by Monolithsoft who were bought by Nintendo in May 2007, but apparently the game was pitched by Honne himself in 2006 which predates said buyout (apparently that's why Monolith's name is in the copyright someone said?). But because it's 1st-party it technically doesn't fit here, plus it's the only one to get follow-ups.
We still see a LITTLE of this, like with Astral Chain (and Ever Oasis on 3DS), but that's kind of it. Octopath Traveler and Daemon X Machina are owned by their creators, not by Nintendo (though apparently Nintendo having any ownership of the latter may be up for debate).
Who else fondly remembers this era? Sad a few never made it outside Japan. :( I hope we see a second shot at this from Nintendo on Switch with numerous more fresh, fully-backed by Nintendo ideas by notable 3rd-parties.