All Games In The Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase for August 26, 2020

Today, Nintendo pulled one over on the entire community by randomly dropping a Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase. Perhaps they figured after last time, it would be best to not drum up any hype before the video aired on Youtube, but the reasoning behind the surprise launch hasn’t been officially stated. This is the next iteration in the Partner Showcase line of directs and is not part of Nintendo’s general direct schedule. The Partner Showcases are designed to shine a light on the smaller publishing partners that are creating games for the Nintendo Switch.

Today’s Partner Showcase Direct showed off 12 games that are coming to the Switch. Here is a list of all 12 games that were shown today in the direct:

• Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory
• Fuser
• Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack
• World of Tanks Blitz
• Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions
• Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend
• Just Dance 2021
• Puyo Puyo Tetris 2
• Minecraft Dungeons Creeping Winter DLC
• Jump Force Deluxe Edition
• Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions
• Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition

The like to dislike ration on today’s Partner Showcase Direct is not the greatest, with currently the video sitting at 18k upvotes and nearly 9k downvotes. Fans clearly want more information from Nintendo about first party titles and the comment section shows this. It has been over a year now since Nintendo last held a general direct. So far, the only word that we’ve gotten from Nintendo about a first party title yet to be released this year is Pikmin 3.

4 games in today’s Direct Mini Partner Showcase were music related games, those being Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, Fuser, Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack, and Just Dance 2021.

As someone who generally has little to no interest in music or dancing related games, those 4 didn’t do much for me in terms of excitement. Out of the remaining 8 titles shown, Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, and Minecraft Dungeons Creeping Winter DLC stood out to me the most.

Having already heard that Minecraft Dungeons would be receiving the Creeping Winter DLC previous to today’s Nintendo Direct, most of that excitement was already gone. However, it is very cool to see the Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend dropping onto the Nintendo Switch along with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition.

To wrap this up, today’s direct wasn’t anything extraordinary, but that’s not really the point of these Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase events anyway. They are to simply showcase titles that aren’t first party and that are coming to the Switch. One might argue that they are filler content to keep fans “happy” during gaps between General Nintendo Directs.