Let me start out by prefacing that I am not a fan of Nintendo’s sudden willingness to try out the Free to Start model of gaming. I think that’s a model more suited to cheap cash grab mobile games, and not games from a publisher as well established as Nintendo. This impression was only emphasized with the release of games like Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball, which interested me not in the least. Regardless of my feelings however, this model is still being utilized, sparingly I admit, by Nintendo, most recently with the game Nintendo Badge Arcade. This game let’s you start for free and then charges you for the right to play a crane game in order to get badges with which to decorate the Home screen of your 3DS. And I thought that was the end of the story, until it was announced that there are Mega Man badges coming to Nintendo Badge Arcade…
For a longtime Mega Man fan, that sort of news demands me to rethink my entire impression of the Free to Start model, at least with respect to Nintendo Badge Arcade. But at the very least I have some time to dwell on it, since the Mega Man badges hit Japan February 26th, and presumably we’ll have a bit of a lag time before they come over here. I will just have to hope Mega Man Legacy Collection will sate my need for Mega Man, and that I can be strong enough to resist the siren song of Nintendo Badge Arcade…
