I can’t believe I’ve had to reach this far back into the archives for this, but anyone who was reading the site back in 2008 (!) might remember a game called Rose & Camellia, which was kinda like Punch-Out!, only if everyone was straight out of a Jane Austen novel.
Here is the pitch for the 2007 original, which makes it sound like a complex game of intricate social and political intrigue:
The day after Reiko marries into the patrician Tsubakikoji family her beloved husband dies, leaving her with nothing but a rose and the scorn of his family. Despite her low origins Reiko is determined, as wife of Shunsuke, eldest son of the Tsubakikoji house, to claim her title as mistress. But the mocking aristocrats that make up the female members of the main family branch deny her rightful position. Clutching the rose given her by Shunsuke on their wedding night she prepares to prove her case, by force if necessary, and put the wicked blue-bloods in their place.
The gameplay, however, involved slapping the shit out of everyone standing in your way. The game was great, leading to a sequel just a year later, then in 2013 a third entry in the series was released, this time a tie-in with La-Mulana. I have not even thought about this game in over a decade, though, and likely none of you have either, which is why it’s a wild surprise to see that a port of the first game is on its way to the Nintendo Switch.
Not only is this bringing the joys of the game to a whole new generation, but it’s also adding motion controls via the JoyCon controllers, and for the first time will allow for multiplayer so you can slap a friend instead of the CPU. There’s no release date or price listed, or word of a Western release (the original was a Japanese game, and this announcement was only made in Japanese), but you can (and should) check out the trailer below:
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