K.O.

Nintendo strikes a blow for accessiblity in one of the toughest genres in games.

- Nathan Brown

Do they even have genres at Nintendo? Pick any game from the most enviable back catalogue in all of videogames, then try to neatly categorise it. Chances are, you’ll be doing it a disservice. Pikmin is no RTS, and Splatoon hardly a shooter. Pilotwings deserves better than the fusty label of flight sim, and who would dare call Mario Kart a driving game? Across most of its time in the videogame business, the only moments a first party Nintendo game has slotted neatly into a single genre is because one has had to be invented to accommodate it. Nintendo simply doesn’t think that way – which is why, when introducing us to Arms, the company’s first internally developed versus-fighting game since 1984’s Urban Champion, producer Kosuke Yabuki is talking not only about fists and feet, but guns and ammo, too.

“Arms,” he says, “is a fighting-sports game that makes use of characters with extendible arms. It’s similar to boxing, where you trade blows with an opponent at close range, as well as shooting, where you aim at an opponent some distance away. I love fighting games and shooters; I feel Arms isn’t either of those genres, even though it includes elements of both.”

It’s a bold claim – though not exactly an original one, since no game developer likes the idea of being put in a pigeon-hole. But he’s right.