Nintendo Switch among the platforms
Nintendo’s ability to specifically design software for its hardware has been a contributing factor to its decades-long success. Over the years, form has frequently defined function. Examples of this include the original Game Boy’s portability, the Wii’s simple motion controls, the Switch’s hybrid home/handheld design, and the adaptable Joy-Con controllers. Although that’s great for gamers today, it presents a significant challenge for the preservation of games as Nintendo progresses through each of its incredibly unique console generations.
This leads us to the next code: memory. Recollection is a remaster of two critically acclaimed point-and-click puzzle adventures: Another Code: Two Memories, which debuted on the Nintendo DS in 2005, and Another Code: R – A Journey into Lost Memories, which debuted on the Wii in 2009. The two games are combined into a single, longer story that makes sense.
Ashley Mizuki Robins is the protagonist of both games. In the first, she explores a remote island after accepting an invitation to meet her father, who is purportedly dead, on her 14th birthday. Two years later, in the second, the story resumes and delves deeper into her bond with her equally absent mother. Both are masterfully written tales that combine heartbreaking explorations of loneliness and abandonment with mildly magical adventures (Amy is joined by the amnesiac ghost “D” and, later, a mystery runaway child named Matthew Crusoe).
Ashley’s narrative is still compelling and thought-provoking.
A remaster like Recollection would be a huge deal on virtually any other platform, bringing two overlooked gem classics to the forefront for both new players and devoted fans to enjoy again. In fact, despite the switch from top-down view (on DS) and fixed movement between predetermined regions (on Wii) to 3D exploration here, producer Arc System Works—which succeeded the now-defunct original studio Cing—does a commendable job of preserving the overall design and tone of the originals. The games are brought into 2024 with the addition of full voice acting, updated character models, and an improved puzzle hint system. Additionally, additional trinkets are strewn around the game to enhance world-building and assist tell the tale.
The issue is that, in both of its original iterations, the Another Code games mostly depended on launch platform hardware elements, such as the DS’s twin screens, which are frequently impossible to duplicate on the Switch. One notorious challenge in the first game, for example, required you to close the DS in order for a “stamp” on the top screen to press against the bottom screen. In another, to clear dust from an item they had been ignoring for a while, players had to blow into the handheld microphone. Players were viscerally drawn into the environment and Ashley’s travels by this clever physicality. Recollection, however, lacks much of that cleverness. Perhaps because it’s unclear if players are playing handheld or on TVs, puzzles that could have substituted the Wii Remote’s motion controls for the Joy-Cons or the DS touchscreen for the Switch’s have been completely redesigned, usually in a negative way.
Rather than relying solely on button instructions to complete puzzles, Recollection now uses tilt controls sparingly, which function both when in handheld mode and when using a Switch Pro controller on the TV. If the mysteries of _Another Code were actually brainteasers, this wouldn’t be such a horrible thing, but even in their current merged form, these games are still very much adventure games for novices. All that’s left is a glorified visual novel when the clever use of the original hardware for puzzles is removed, and very nothing is done to adapt them for the unique capabilities of the Switch. This is further supported by how terribly slow everything is from the start, including Ashley’s movements and the camera’s rotation speed (believe us, go into settings and crank that up to roughly 70). Everything seems at once simplistic and spartan.
Fortunately, Ashley’s tale is still captivating and thought-provoking, and for that reason alone, Another Code: Recollection is still worthwhile to read. Regretfully, in the process of bringing the saga up to par visually, this remaster erases nearly everything else that made the originals so exceptional.