Okay, since I’m 夢中 about Xenoblade Chronicles X and I have ordered myself a copy of Nintendo Dream ２０２５年４月号, I’ll post some pictures of this issue and show you cool stuff about this magazine!
This time, taking pics with a bit of a better camera so that you can pretend you’re reading the text like I do ^^
NintendoDREAM２０２５年４月号 - Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
This magazine is significantly more accessible for people that don’t speak Japanese as well compared to Weekly Famitsu, most of the writing inside of it comes with Furigana: though the easiness is deceiving for two reasons:
a) you look at Furigana even if you know the kanji, and you don’t study the kanji that much
b) if there is a word you don’t know, knowing that 銃撃戦 is written like じゅうげきせん doesn’t help you much, and you probably have to infer the meaning from the context regardless ^^
Although it’s the April issue of this year, the publication date of it is February 20th, 2025 - accurate as always xddd
The issue is ￥1280 (€7.86), so a bit more expensive than ファミ通, but makes up for it with free gifts with the magazine: sometimes NintendoDREAM comes with CDs of mostly-indie music to come out in a given time period, this issue came with a paper folder (A5-sized) and two B2-sized posters, from Xenoblade X and おかゆにゅ〜〜む, I would call the contents of this game sliightly questionable, but whatever floats your boat xdd
Here’s some of the things I’ll be covering in this post!
ページ４： Nintendo Switch ２ あらわれ
ページ６：ゼノブレイドクロス ディフィニティブエディション (I’m sorry, of course I have to do it to you xddd)
ページ２４：都市伝説解体センター (Officially localized as Urban Myth Dissolution Center)
ページ５４：Nintendo Switchで遊ぶ過去の名作 (Retro section, thought it was cool ^^)
ページ６０：キャラクターダービー (A fan character popularity poll that has a different prompt each time!)
ページ６２：ピクミンxJR九州 現地レポIN鹿児島 (special event collaboration between Pikmin and JR Kyūshū
ページ６６：あつまれどうぶつの森みんなのフォトじまん (post your Animal Crossing pictures!)
ページ８０：ファンランド (Fan Land: upload your own artworks!)
I do realize I’m not bringing justice to this magazine by bringing only those topics, but I thought even this much would be fun to cover!
Nintendo Switch ２ あらわれ
You’ve gotta love it when journalists have the same level of knowledge as general public, but they decide to engage in conjecture regardless xdd
This is what this article is!
“If the screen is bigger, will the resolution also be bigger as well?”
“See, the old Switch had a 1280x720 display, it would be really cool if Switch 2 had a 1920x1080 display!!! Also, since people have 4k displays right now, they COULD increase the resolution output to 4K in the TV mode!!! That would be a really neat display!”
Yeah, not seeing it happen on both of those, but I might be proven wrong in two weeks xddd
“The game card for Switch 2 will look similar, but would it differ a bitttt?”
“The size of the cartridges will be about the same so that you can use the Switch games inside of it, but thERE IS A POSSIBILITYYY they will differ slightly compared to Switch 1 games, similar to how DS and 3DS cartridges differed just slightly. But, there is also a POSSIBILITYYY that the cartridges will be the same, we haven’t been shown them yet, but the front label would say ‘made for Switch 2’ instead. IT WOULD BE COOL if the read speeds from the new cartridges were faster. IT WOULD ALSO ROCK if the load times were shortened down.”
For some reason I have a genuine sweet spot for articles like this xdddd
一番気になる？コントローラー, and this is where the article gets a little bit more interesting xd
And paraphrasing,
”A big button in the main frame to disconnect the magnetic controllers!"
“On the official website you can see that the both sides of the console there are crevices where the controllers can be connected. They stay fixed until a button gets pressed, the new button has gotten a little bigger [than Switch 1’s]”
No surprises either, but it’s fun to see sentences be constructed based on the knowledge you already have.
記事質の評価: adorable journalism/10 xddd
ゼノブレイドクロス ディフィニティブエディション
ALL OF MY LIIIIIIIIIFE’S BEGUUUUN TO CHANGE YOU
UNTIL THE EEEND
SOMEONE’S DEATH MEANS AN INDICATION
OF THE NEW WORLD
THEY HOPE WON’T BE THE SAAAAAME…
…sorry, of course I’m picking favorites in terms of video games xddd
Xenoblade X is one of my favorite games of all time and I’m getting all fuzzy thinking about the Definitive Edition. I’m playing it in German with Japanese voice acting right now, practicing both languages at the same time.
ファミ通 is owned by Kadokawa, so it doesn’t always cover a ton of Nintendo things in it, they skipped on an article on Xenoblade Chronicles X, so we needed to resort to Nintendo-centric publications.
The coverage starts with a piece describing the Wii U’s release, and that the story continues on the Nintendo Switch right now. The story section describes the premise of the game (mostly covered by the intro cutscene within the game) and serves as a table of contents towards the next section.
The Field section mentions Mira continents, New Los Angeles locations and has a small tidbit on the new location (that I haven’t gotten to yet!)
Battle section tries to explain some mechanics, including “Soul Links”, a mechanic that only made sense on Wii U after like 200 hours of pretending you understand what was going on, so that’s a worthy addition, there’s a note on the fact that hints have been added inside of the interface to make it easier for people to understand the battle mechanics (thank Lord xddd)
There is a section on something called "Dool ドール”, romanized as “Dolls” in western territories and called “Skells” in the western releases in the game. They mention a cockpit fighting mode and three different types of skells, from the light ones, to heavy ones. Also, how they transform from flying ones to mobility ones! And, there might be a new shape of a skell! I wonder what that one is~
In the “Quest” section, there is a mention of a navigation ball that flies off and can be used to simplify navigation to the quest objectives, and as much as I’d love to be an elitist jerk and go like “BACK IN OUR DAYS”, this is a great quality of life improvement too ^^
Current quest objectives also appear in the bottom-right part of the screen and you can do quests with other people too.
And then, a final section, characters, and artworks for all of the characters in the game. Hope used to be my bestie in the original game and her quests were the coolest to me, so I thought I’d take a closeup of her, there she is ^^
都市伝説解体センター
Urban Myth Dissolution Center, comes with a demo on Steam!
I don’t know if I should be tagging @Shannon-8 to this one, because it seems like a really cool mystery game, but aside from the article I know absolutely nothing about it ^^
Apparently the investigating part of this game starts on the crime scene, then takes place over social media and there are some rumors that have to be eradicated. After second-thinking through the evidence, you get to see the truth of the mystery, which isn’t that unheard of for a storyline, but it’s in print, so it makes me go like “uUuUuUu” xdd
There are three characters in the story, 福来あざみ, a new girl in the squad, 廻屋歩, Azami’s boss who smiles in a scary way and ジャスミン, Azami’s senpai that has a unique bun hairstyle, way to learn about her character. If I got it correct, her character is described as “dull”, so you go girl xddddd
Either way, looks cool, try at least the demo out!
Nintendo Switchで遊ぶ過去の名作
Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch retro Virtual Console replacement has a really limited library, so there won’t be any must-plays here, but there’s a mention of an otome game called アンジェリーク, a 1994 SNES game, romanized to us as a game series called “Angelique”, never released in the West.
For some reason, I have a weak spot for the PC-98ish anime artstyle, especially if it’s supposed to be drawn pretty (it’s an otome game) ^^
According to the article, it’s the first game of a “Neo Romance” series, and the article tries to reassure us that it’s not just an otome game! It’s a “fully-fledged simulation”, of living on a continent, you can take people for dates in the parks, participate in people’s lives, and there’s a full rant that “it’s not just a game for girls!”, no need to sell that premise to me though xdd
Aaand a few handsome boys, thanks for the highlights!
キャラクターダービー
A popularity contest, this month’s poll was about who’s the most popular character with an axe, the axiest axe user.
And it turns out that the winner for this month is プレセア・コンバティール from Tales of Symphonia! …I’ve never played Symphonia though, so please excuse me not knowing who Presea Combatir is ^^
The next places go to むらびと, Villager from Animal Crossing, obligatory murder face; エーデルガルド, Edelgard from Three Houses, we support Women’s Rights and Women’s Wrongs, and to highlight position 10: Susie from Deltarune! Toby Fox did it again!
ピクミンxJR九州 現地レポIN鹿児島
Okay, that`s a cool story and I wanted to cover this! JR九州 has a collab with Pikmin going on right now, where a few trains have been painted Pikmin and you can jump on them! There is a pop-up going on right now, and on April 19th and 20th in front of Miyazaki Station western entrance there will be an “amusement plaza” that’s themed after Pikmin: if anyone had the interest, could be a good time to see it!
Of course, there is special limited merchandise connected to the event that you can buy with your hard-earned 100 yen coins, 400 yen per toy!
If you’re a train otaku or simply love the Pikmin brand, it might be a really cool thing to get involved with!
あつまれどうぶつの森みんなのフォトじまん
Yep, what it says on the tin, journaling the daily lives of your Animal Crossing villagers ^^
Happy birthday! That one is wearing glasses! There’s a sakura garden inside of someone’s house!
Are you down for some hot cake? Maybe with this, I’ll be able to reach your heart~ Luxurious aquatic hotel! Taking a walk under the aurora borealis!
Damn, I’m always impressed how much people squeeze the lack of content out of this game, I wish I were 20% as creative xddd
The next issue will contain a celebration of 5 years of New Horizons, might be fun to look at!
ファンランド
Okay, confession time, I am not a great artist, but I’ve always envied the fan submitted illustration sections of the magazines, thinking that the other people have made it big by having their illustrations featured there ;_;
And would you look at that: a club of lovers of Nintendo, Rant Territory flower garden, Dragon Quest Plaza, February being a season for the sweets, the more hardcore game section and Pokemon plaza: if I could draw and wanted to submit something into a magazine as cool as that, I wonder what I would draw. Would Xenoblade X be up for competition? I could draw a girls’ outing in the city with me and Hope from Xenoblade X, and Murderess just barely peeking from the side, would be fun!
But yeah, turbo envious and I’m always so inspired by those sections.
There are a lot of other articles inside of this magazine: interviews with developers, fan letter sections, coverage of weird games you’ve never heard of, a retrospective on Mother 2’s 30th anniversary, I just wanted to give you a taste of the magazine, and I hope you found it as fun as I did!
Japanese magazines are great, get yourselves a few of those: seeing this stuff in print simply hits different ^^
Was it fun? Wasn’t it fun? Is it better with the better camera quality now? xddd
I hope you liked it this time around too!
