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2019/01

Oniken And Odallus, Masculine 8-bit Games Get Limited Physical Release On Nintendo Switch, PS4

EastAsiaSoft announced that there will be a limited edition run of a physical combo pack for Oniken: Unstoppable Edition and Odallus: The Dark Call for the Nintendo Switch and PS4. The games will also both release in Asia and Japan during the second quarter of 2019, while digital versions of the game will be available in North America and Europe courtesy of Digerati Digital.

Only 5,000 physical copies of the game will be made available for the Nintendo Switch, which will contain region-free versions of both Oniken and Odallus, along with a full-color printed manual, and the original soundtracks for the game spread across two compact discs.

Oniken_Odallus_LimitedEdition

Both games are retrotastic, 8-bit throwbacks to the old-school era of gaming. And no, they aren’t hipster “retro” games with hideous pixelated sprites. These are classically made 8-bit retro games that look as if they come right off the Sega Master System or the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Odallus: The Dark Call is an action side-scroller where you take on the role of Haggis, a battle-worn warrior who must rescue his son from the evil known as The Darkness. He’ll have to journey into the very depths of evil itself to overcome the villainy of the old gods and save his son. The game sports eight levels with open-exploration, 50 different enemy types, and at least eight hours of gameplay.

Odallus is a Metroidvania with 8-bit trappings, such as old-school synth sounds and music, along with the limited 256-color dithering that was infamous in games made back during that time.

The actual gameplay is a mixture of projectile and melee combat.

Oniken: Unstoppable Edition is like an 8-bit version of Strider mixed with Contra. You’ll have plenty of platforming challenges to overcome while fighting against a variety of machine overlords across a ravaged future. You’ll battle through six different missions, encountering 18 bosses, along with having the option to play through the Hardcore Mode that sports permadeath.

You can check out the trailer for the game below.

Unlike Odallus, there’s a more straightforward approach to Oniken. You’re Zaku and your objective is to kill any and everything that gets in your way. Pretty simple, eh? It’s like an old-school tribute to when video game characters were allowed to be unashamedly masculine, something that is always undermined in nearly every single Western game made today.

You can look for both games to launch during the second quarter of 2019 for the Nintendo Switch and PS4.

You can actually look to get your hands on the physical collector’s edition from the Play-Asia store. Pre-orders open January 24th, 2019.

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