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The Switch eShop has some questionable inclusions in its library; we have covered such lowlights as The Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival (a Last of Us 'clone', apparently) and the catchily titled Prison Life Simulator 2022: World FIGHT Battle GTA ULTIMATE, which speaks for itself. But it looks there's a new sheriff in town, one that makes these titles look almost like fully-fledged games. Introducing Courageous Reasoning Nori 4 Crossing Sea Street 4, whatever it is.
The above AI-generated image — which, yes, is actually from its North American eShop page — tells you all that you need to know about this upcoming 'game'. There's some onigiri and some, errm, guns? The AI makes a trademark slip rendering two gun-looking shapes, for sure, if those guns were multi-handled (or in one case, non-handled) and being held by distorted digits that vaguely resemble fingers. Or maybe toes.
Perhaps the game's eShop description, "Provided by the publisher", naturally, will shed a little more light on what CRN4CSS4 (as we assume everybody is calling it) has in store:
Finally he showed up
New friends join you, and the battle for courage begins.
That's a no, then.
Fortunately, the eShop screenshots make it abundantly clear what the game is all about. Uhhh, no again:
This tripe comes from publisher HERO GAME which has previously been behind such hit-sounding titles as inquiry for justice, Reasoning of Courage, and your future, all of which appear to come with the same brand of care and attention.
As we have said in the past, this least-possible-effort 'content' is hardly new on the eShop, but it is baffling that Nintendo doesn't seem to see the damage being done to its image. Switch is perhaps the most family-friendly consoles, but seeing waves of rubbish like this doesn't fill you with confidence that the eShop is safe for child browsing.
Nintendo evidently takes a hands-off policy when it comes to vetting submissions, at least until enough complaints are made (as we previously saw with The Last Hope). The process of vetting every single game would involve plenty of work — far easier to check it's got an age rating and has had the minimum required eShop information submitted, right? It's a process that is increasingly making a mockery of Switch's online store — you only need to check out the biggest discounts in any sale to see just how much doo doo is out there.
Is it likely to change any time soon? We can't see it happening, honestly, but it's an embarrassment. Expect to see more 'quality' like Courageous Reasoning Nori 4 Crossing Sea Street 4 in the future, we guess...
What do you make of the quality of the Switch eShop with games like this constantly popping up? Let us know in the comments.
Comments 70
Finally he showed up.
Well, i don't know about you but I'm hyped
Checkout also Reasoning Courage123, whose “cover” looks like a plate of grass pictures?
Damn, they missed The Game Awards. Maybe next year, HERO GAME.
Nintendo must definitely do something, this has been embarassing for a while already.
What? Something. Do something to stop this *****. It's not that I work for Nintendo, neither my uncle does.
Sold. Instant download. Thanks for making aware of this gem before it gets pulled for whatever reason.
Despite this game is very questionable, but I would rather get this game than the AAA games.
Viva underrated games !
Honestly, I am kind of intrigued.
While Nintendo should definitely do something about it, they should also just allow us to take matters into our own hands and permanently hide games.
It is especially egregious when browsing around the for sale lists, where I am always greeted first by Thief Simulator, along with a whole slew of other almost perpetually discounted games. If I could just hide those from sight, it would make browsing for deals a lot better. I have no intention of buying Hentai Girls 3, nor will I ever feel that inclination, so... Thanks, but no thanks.
Nintendo really needs to clean it up seriously 😐
Finally, the long awaited sequel to Reasoning of Courage Nori 3 Balanced Diet.
"The Switch eShop has some questionable inclusions in its library"
Also, some translation of the first picture from a Japanese beginner:
Oh, btw.
If you want to play this game just for sarcastic laughing purpose, just go ahead. Don't be shy.
Remember when the Nintendo Seal of Quali...door slams
That's not what it meant. The seal was there to assure the consumer the product was a legit copy and not a unauthorised game.
One of the reasons I'm looking forward to a new Nintendo console is hopefully a fresh start on an eshop not infested with titles not even pretending to be legitimate software/games and just hoping for accidental purchases.
As someone else has mentioned it's a real chore trying to scroll through tripe trying to find an actual game in the sales. Thankfully Dekudeals makes that easier.
Truly the reincarnation of the Xbox 360 Indie tab
I feel that changing the way submissions work could end up hurting also if not even more the genuine smaller games than stuff like this so I think the solution should be giving customers more tools to avoid it like what @Daniel36 suggested, bring back user ratings like on the 3DS etc.
@Princess_Lilly
"(confident) I am confident! I will speak with honor!"
Me : 🤣🤣🤣
I see this trash all over the app store. I never thought it would happen a nintendo store. I thought they were about quality.
Buying this ironically and having a laugh over it is my idea of a good time.
But at the same time, I don't want to encourage this to keep popping up on console store fronts.
I am conflicted!
Nindies in it's finest form. Unity, unreal made this possible and as consumers we should all be so pleased.
It is a freaking nightmare navigating the eShop thanks to the slop that drowns out all the good stuff. The next gen console or whatever it is NEEDS actual quality control.
@Princess_Lilly Nice translation of the first part - although I have to specify that the first tsuyoki is most certainly the character's name (so yes, their name is "Confident") - while you didn't get the second part quite right, the verb is in the imperative form so it's "Speak in keigo!", with 敬語 keigo being specifically the honorific language used in Japanese, not "honor" in general.
@Nuclearpineapple
Don't count on it. Remember the Wii days filled with low-effort, motion-control-infested garbage?
Shovelware isn't going anywhere. It's been around for a long time and I don't think it'll ever go away. As long as devs are out there able to make lazy asset flips, there will be shovelware. Just look at Steam.
we may have only 11 days left in the year but I think we have a new GOTY folks
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It really is a shame just how infested the eShop has become with shovelware honestly as, when the browsing experience is already as miserable as it is with the amount of lag you have to deal with, seeing all these low-effort, keyword-laden releases just makes you not want to bother with it whatsoever.
If you want to browse deals from the eShop, please just use DekuDeals: I might have just saved your sanity.
“As we have said in the past, this least-possible-effort 'content' is hardly new on the eShop, but it is baffling that Nintendo doesn't seem to see the damage being done to its image.”
Where is the evidence to substantiate this claim? How are we quantifying this damage? I dislike these trash titles just as much as the next person (especially all the fake GOTY/Marvelous/Complete “editions” showing up on the new or upcoming pages), but are they really doing any damage to Nintendo’s image? I imagine us Nintendo Life readers are more vocal about these issues, but is the greater public really bothered by this stuff? These types of titles were on the eShop years ago, and Nintendo’s image has seemed untouched.
I get that the shop is a mess full of junk, but personally I just use sites like this to discover games I might want to play and then PSPrices to monitor them for discounts. They email me when a game I have wishlisted goes on sale and I then open the eShop and search for it. Works for me and I never have to wade through any of the shovelware.
It's not AI generated, it's a submachine-pistol and a gunknife. Think a gunblade but much shorter
@BionicDodo once I started using Deku Deals I never opened the eshop to "browse" anymore. This is the way
@JR150 Shovelware had a higher bar to clear when a publisher had to at least take the risk on physical media. There's so much junk these days that it drowns out genuinely good micro-indie games.
I'll occasionally get tired of all the food I normally eat, and so I'll just start throwing ingredients together until I get something that ranges from nearly inedible to surprisingly tasty. My attitude towards games is pretty similar. Do I expect that $2 epic scifi adventure, or that 3D platformer where you play as a car, or that pseudo-horror game set in an abandoned idol theater to be a AAA experience? Not really. But it will be a unique experience, and sometimes that's more interesting.
I think back a lot to y'all's article if a Frankenconsole with some feature from each of Nintendo's consoles. I wouldn't mind the NES contribution being the deal of quality. In fact, perhaps it's best if the next console is 90% backwards compatible rather than 100%.
I also don't think the additional cost would be much for some more screening when it's pretty quick for me to find shovelware each week in the new releases.
Courageous Reasoning Nori 4 Crossing Sea Street needs to be reviewed. Could it possibly get the coveted 0/10?
Stop calling on Nintendo to "do something" about these trash games. Don't like them? Don't buy it! Simple.
If enough customers flag it, it'll get removed, like that TLoU clone did. Otherwise, I can appreciate just how open to all Nintendo's shop actually is
@FredsBodyDouble I agree with you. This deserves a review.
And tripe like this is why I don't even bother with browsing the eShop itself anymore and just use DekuDeals.
A reminder to nobody in particular that the Switch eShop HAD a game rating system, and they removed it from the eShop shortly after it was implemented because Nintendo didn't like 1-2-Switch getting negative reviews.
The solution to help people filter out shovelware in the eShop was not only there, but implemented. But a fair system also potentially puts Nintendo's own games under fire, which they apparently decided was bad for business.
Lets hope the game preservationists have logged this and the many similar gems out there. It's important we keep this for the future.
My stance is that they should allow anything on the store (within content guidelines)- one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and all that. However, not every game should be highlighted in new releases or coming soon sections. There absolutely should be curation there and only games of a high enough quality deemed by Nintendo should be highlighted.
If you want to develop crap and put it on the eShop, fine. But Nintendo shouldn’t be highlighting them alongside better releases. Make it so you have to go into search and have an option to view every game chronologically released listed there going back from new games, but have the main recent releases list be games that reach a certain level of quality. If you don’t want your game to buried and only discoverable by searching for it, make a better game.
It’s a nightmare to look at recent/coming soon games where so many good titles get buried amongst absolute rubbish. Same with sales. I get that Nintendo are treating every developer as equals and that’d be great in an ideal world but the way it’s done right now isn’t fair to other developers or good for people browsing the eShop.
Going by the description and screenshots, just another simple adventure VN game from the publisher, and not even the first from "Reasoning of Courage series" on eShop. And it's only now that they suddenly warrant a dose of fanbloid-running goofs worrying about child browsing and feeling "embarrassed" on the eShop staff's behalf? WTF is a useful tag but best reserved for many of the "leaks" NL tags to be news; this article is best tagged "SND" instead.
It’s weird. Y’all fall all over yourselves to protect games that steal from Nintendo but this is the travesty where the line is drawn? At least they made their own game. Don’t like it? Vote with your wallet. They got a dev kit, and submitted and passed lot check. This game has way more right to be published than the latest zelda rom hack that NL loves to advertise.
It's only going to get worse as more AI applications become available and being able to make an entire game with no knowledge of anything involved, besides prompting, becomes rampant and everyone tries to make a buck. I mean artists are already in shambles. With a setup as shown by the generated image below, someone could be making multiple shovelware games at once with AI to list on the shop in a year or two.
@TrixieSparkle dang, definitely sounds like nintendo to remove any negativity from their games even if it's a bad game
@JohnnyMind oh, thank you very much for the correction! I'm still learning and I gotta admit, I never saw "keigo" used in a sentence before, so I just chose what seemed most logical given no context.
Also, I'd never have guessed that the MC's name is Tsuyoki, that sounds like... a very interesting choice for a name, but then again, I think it's gonna be a very unique game
It's pretty shameful. So much for the Nintendo Seal of Quality! The easy workaround is to just buy physical games. They're generally at least real games!
Remember all the hoops devs had to jump through to get a game on the NES back in the 80s, all in the name of quality?
@Daniel36 WAIT!!!!! THREE IS ALREADY OUT!!?!?! How did I miss this??? I can finally complete the trilogy! I hope they added online co-op!
I got a kick out of the article, but: Dude. Rice balls (onigiri) are not sushi.
eShop starting to feel like a dusty old thriftstore these days
Bleh. This seems like something that even people who love terrible games would hate. Unless you have a bunch of friends and some alcohol then maybe you would have some fun.
Seems like even more evidence that Nintendo's internal focus has almost completely moved onto whatever's coming next.
@Anti-Matter I wasnt that far off and at least I tried
@HatesCheese
If you're curious about the exact details, here's an article that talked when, where, and for how long reviewing Switch games was available:
https://nintygamer.com/switch-eshop-reviews-system/
Short version is: the ability to review Switch games went live on February 23, 2018, and it got axed less than a week later. Allowed for 1-5 star ratings and the ability to provide additional details. Was only available on their web site's eShop listings, rather than the Switch itself.
Here was one of the PR responses on the removal of the feature:
"Nintendo.com recently offered a trial customer review feature to let users share feedback about Nintendo Switch games on our website. The response has been positive, and Nintendo appreciates the time and effort that reviewers put into their thoughtful commentary on the games. Nintendo has removed this feature as we evaluate the future of the ratings functionality on Nintendo.com. We have no estimate on when an update will be provided on the status of this initiative, but we appreciate the enthusiasm shown for the trial."
@Princess_Lilly @Anti-Matter did not laugh at your translation (at least I don't think so). He is from Indonesia and found the sentence geniually funny, is my honest guess. Kepp up the good work in learning Japanese! Something I would never be able to. Sajonara!
Yet while rampantly egregious bilge like this sullies our screens, should a user even dare to use all the eShop platform options available to you, along with a VPN for extra security, they’ll automatically soft-ban your ass for 30 days and claim there’s nothing they can do about it (my entire hairy cleft there ain’t, they could easy bypass it if they wanna - clue’s in the name: SOFT ban). I’m coming up on the end of my second such arbitrarily enforced hiatus since September right now, having missed a good chunk of the current sales.
Really not cool, Nintendo. Need to sort your %€#& out.
Of course Nintendo doesn’t care enough about their eShop. What even is this game?
Could be worse.
I noticed the PS4 store has a load of shovelware titled "stroke my "x" .....with x being replaced with all kind of animals like fish/snake/hamster/cow/dog etc
The one that got me chucking (id admit) is the "stroke my dik-dik" lol.......which actually a cute little deer
@Princess_Lilly Didn't expect it either, if it hadn't been outside of the dialogue to the left, i.e. where the name of the character speaking is (also with hiragana to show the pronunciation of their name) I wouldn't have guessed - even forgot to mention it in my first reply - that he was saying "I'm Confident" as in his name instead of "I'm confident" as in simply the adjective!
Don't let my corrections discourage you, you actually got pretty close for a beginner and best of luck with your Japanese studies - and don't hesitate to ask me for advice if you need it!
@JimNorman These are onigiri, not sushi.
@Rhaoulos Aha! Good spot - thank you 😄
Would love to see an indie developer make a satire game about this. Highlight both the shovelware industry and the lack of quality control.
I'm old enough to remember when the Nintendo Seal of Quality still meant something. Although it could be questioned whether that was ever true.
It's a shame that stuff like this keeps appearing on the e-Shop. It makes you wonder how easy it is to get your stuff on the shop. At the same time, you hear developers complain about getting stuff updated on the e-Shop. Quality control would be good. I'm not sure if PlayStation, Xbox and Steam suffer from this too. But at least on Steam the community reviews help a lot
This article is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to obscure shovelware like this.
@JohnnyMind Princess Lillyをよく手伝ってあげた。私もしたかったが遅かったの。日本語でゲームをよくする?
Ah yes.... for the uninitiated:
Reasoning of Courage
Reasoning of Courage123
Courageous Deduction Nori 2 Betrayed Nori
Reasoning of Courage Nori 3 Balanced Diet
Courageous Reasoning Nori 4 Crossing Sea Street 4
AI generated game and word salad at its finest.
@PrettyPatrick I mean, there is a game that is called "YEAH! YOU WANT 'THOSE GAMES,' RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET'S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!" which takes the piss on those fake mobile game ads. So....
Can't wait for other titles to follow suit.
Imagine if big studios used titles like this.
I can see them now......
Tekken: Fight the Cactus for courage don't lose hope in the Garden!
NFS: Truck of Strength on Highway of Brutal Love!
Zelda: The Kingdom of Battle Street Donkey - Leave no one Behind!
Mario and the Donut of loathing Battle Moon Flowers!
F Zero: Fun Fight Gun Battle Hover Street Racing Cloud Hoppers!
Can't wait.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Fight Ganon for Love and Justice Ultimate Open World Car and Truck Crafting Simulator Spectacular Awesome Edition 2023.
@TotalHenshin 最近あまりそれをしないけど、設定にあればいつも声を日本語にする。そのほうが好きだし、原作に比べて翻訳の差を見つけられるから。
Nowadays not particularly, but if it's available in the settings I always change the voices to Japanese. Because I prefer it that way and also I can spot the differences in the translation compared to the original.
Maybe this, being an original game, has more of a right to exist than a ROM hack of another game, but I would 100% rather have the ROM hack than whatever this is.
@JohnnyMind そうなの?それも面白いけどできれば両方を日本語に設定します。読書力と聞き取りのためにね。
日本へ行ったことがあるの?DMを送りたいけど Nintendo Lifeでできないの。
@TotalHenshin もちろん練習のためにそのほうがマシね。まだ日本へ行ったことがないけど、いつか絶対に行きたいなぁ!
Of course that's even better for practice. I haven't been to Japan yet, but I absolutely want to go at some point!
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