Despite a rather limited budget and a low likelihood that I will be getting the Nintendo Switch any time soon, I have still made efforts to keep up with recent and upcoming games on Nintendo’s newest console, if only in a casual fashion.  Most of these games have either been met with excitement or simple disinterest on my part, as you might expect.  But it was a very recent game, released in August as a matter of fact, that caught my interest in a way quite unlike anything I had seen thus far.  My reaction: utter disbelief.

The game in question was Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and even though I had seen gameplay footage of it, it took me a long time to wrap my head around the fact that such a game could actually exist.  Was my brain deceiving me?  Had they really made a crossover with Nintendo’s famous, platforming plumber and…those weird, screaming rabbits, um, Rabbids from the Rayman universe?  In all honesty, I wasn’t sure if those crazy rabbits were even still popular.  I always got the feeling they were kind of like the Minions from Despicable Me.  They started out funny, and then…it kind of got old after a while.  Nevertheless, I was intrigued and set out to learn more.

I don’t totally understand the story behind it all.  I read the plot description on Wikipedia, and I’m still not sure what the game’s actually about.  All I can say with any certainty is that this game’s protagonists are comprised of not only the main characters from the Mario universe, but Rabbids dressed as these very same characters.  Do the Rabbids enjoy cosplay?  Maybe.  Stranger yet is the fact that Mario and allies use…wait for it…laser-firing guns to attack enemies!  Never in all my long years of gaming would I have ever expected to see Mario wielding a futuristic blaster.  Then again, never would I have thought the plumber would team up with a bunch of deranged bunnies, so what do I know?

Moving on…the game is a tactical RPG, where you take turns moving your characters across the battle field and form strategies and team up with your allies in order to defeat enemies.  I’m not terribly familiar with this kind of game, but I have delved a little bit into this genre in the Shining Force games in my Sega Genesis collection, and it was pretty darn fun.  When I watched some gameplay for Kingdom Battle on Youtube, I also noticed that your characters have a lot of freedom of movement, which is a really nice thing to have in a turn-based game, which can often feel very limiting if done incorrectly.  (Quest 64 was also kind of like this.  You could barely do anything during your turn, and it was pretty aggravating, to say the least.)

While my initial reaction was one of disbelief, coupled with the question of “how in the world are they going to make this work?”, what I have seen of the game thus far on Youtube has shown me that it’s perhaps not such an outlandish idea, after all.  And when you really think about it, why should it be?  This is certainly not the first time the Mario series has veered off from its classic platforming roots, an early example being Square’s Super Mario RPG.  With this in mind and the positive reactions of the gamers I have watched on Youtube, the idea of mixing Mario and Rabbids didn’t sound so wild, after all.

Oh, and guess what, the soundtrack was composed by Grant Kirkhope.  Remember him?  From Banjo-Kazooie?

Video from Youtube User: Arlo

Of course, I can’t make any definitive statements about the game, as I have yet to play it.  All I can say is that it looks to be a lot more fun than I had anticipated.  Just because an idea sounds crazy, that doesn’t mean it can’t work.  I mean, Luigi’s Mansion had Luigi sucking ghosts into a vacuum, and that was pretty entertaining, as well….  And now it’s your turn.  What were your initial thoughts, dear readers, on this rather odd combination of Mario and Rabbids?  Do you think it looks fun?  And for anyone who has played it, what did you think?

I Expect a Mario and Duck Crossover in 2018, Please

Image from Flickr User: pressakey.com