Mighty Switch Force Collection
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : WayForward
Published By : WayForward
Category : Puzzle, Platformer, Arcade
Release Date : July 25, 2019

One of the things that I have come to love about the Switch is it’s extensive puzzle/platformer library, complete with games both new and old. On top of that, numerous times I’ve seen releases come as compilations of things. Some of these compilations are simply multiple titles from the same developer or publisher, while other times the games are more closely related coming from the same franchise. Such is the case with Mighty Switch Force Collection on the Nintendo Switch. Buckle up and get ready for three games in this series, with an HD remaster of one on top to boot.

Story wise, everything gets started in the very first MSF. You are Patricia Wagon, and the five Hooligan Sisters have escaped, and it is up to you to wrangle them all in, restoring peace to Planet Land. Once you recapture them all, its off to Tangent City in MSF 2 where you’re a part of the Galactic Fire Brigade. The Sisters have joined together again to cause chaos in a new city on fire. Finally, wrap things up with MSF Academy with some new wide-angle levels where you can battle it out with other cadets looking to join the force. If that’s not enough, the original MSF has a Hyper Drive Edition that is an HD upscale with twice as many levels.

Each game comes with about twenty levels that all operate under the same mechanic. There are five Hooligan Sisters that escape, and all five must be recaptured. They will be scattered around the entire level and it’s up to you to figure out how to get them back.

You’ll have a small and simple arsenal of moves available to you while hunting the sisters down. These are simply running around (at one speed) and jumping. You have a gun which can shoot forward, and your helmet gives you the ability to transfer some objects between the foreground and background.

It’s the last ability that you’ll be using the most while you play. Populating every level are a plethora of yellow blocks. Some will be vibrant and able to be jumped on top of, while others will be more faded and almost invisible. By pressing the A button, you’ll be able to switch these yellow blocks. Each level is filled with tons of puzzles created by the platforming, but you’ll need to be careful. If you are standing in front of one of the background pieces, and bring it forward, you’ll end up being squashed between the block and the screen. It’s a cool visual that makes taking out enemies this way pretty fun.

Enemies only come in a few forms, and all are quite easy to deal with. Some hover in the air and move towards you once you’re close enough, there are ones running on the ground that can explode, and a couple of different ones that are armored and will need to be taken out with more…creative approaches. The non-armored enemies will go down with a single shot, while the tougher ones just might need to be pinched between a block and the screen.

All four games play relatively the same, with just some minor differences between them. Between the first two games, all that changes is you go from shooting rounds from your gun in the original, to using a fire hose in the second (complete with actual fires to put out at various points!). Academy goes back to the gun mechanic, but instead of having levels that you the camera follows you around through, these ones fill the entire screen leaving you with a minuscule sized sprite to use. And again, Hyper Drive is just an upscale of the original with extra levels.

Out of the titles that come with this collection, I thoroughly enjoyed three of them. Or I guess technically two of them, since one of the ones I did enjoy was the upscale of the original game. The first two Mighty Switch Forces‘s are a ton of fun. The controls were extremely simple, and being as limited as they were it definitely fell into a “easy to pick up, hard to master” mindset, but not that tough to master.

My only gripe with Academy was the change in visual presentation. I absolutely hated having the entire level spread out to fit the screen, and my character shrunk down to a speck in comparison. It’s obvious that it was done to invite the option of 2-4 person multiplayer matches, but I felt that the levels themselves could have been made a bit smaller and still served the same purpose.

Otherwise, these games in this collection were so much fun. The difficulty of navigating the levels increased at a nice pace that felt like you were being congratulated on what you’d learned, and offered the next step of the challenge. Eventually things hit a point where the helmet malfunctions and the “switch” ability is triggered on it’s own, and you have to time your movements to be in a safe place at the right times. They are short games individually, but put together like this it makes a perfect package, and one that is worth adding to your collection. Go grab Mighty Switch Force Collection from the eShop today!