Impressions: StreetPass Mii Plaza Update and the latest StreetPass games
When Nintendo released the last batch of StreetPass games it re-ignited the fun of StreetPass. Now several years later we’ve got five more games to check out and they’re probably the best ones yet. Nintendo didn’t just add five new games though, they’ve changed the way the StreetPass Plaza works as well for VIP users.
We’re going to look at the five games and the Plaza upgrades. Let’s break it down.
StreetPass Trader
Developed by: Good-Feel
This game involves working the stock market to buy and sell stock. Fun right? Miis you have StreetPassed will become your Analysts and project a profit/loss margin which is more accurate the more Miis you acquire. The game’s simple; buy low, sell high, dethrone William O’Naire’s 10 Billion G.
The actual gameplay for this lasts about 30 seconds, and the fictitious companies are based off the other StreetPass games, which is a nice touch. You can earn medals, and buy the products they release (like stuffed animals of the ghosts from StreetPass Quest) which also enhances the company’s profit. Best yet, you start with a small loan of 1,000,000G to help you off your feet.
StreetPass Slot Racer
Developed by: Good-Feel
This one is really self explanatory, you race slot cars, while also completing two objectives per race. The gameplay is really simple, Press A to get to top speed, but you’ll need to let go with good timing to avoid crashing on corners. Having played about 30 races, I still don’t exactly get the timing, so I don’t know if it’s lenient or i’m just horrible at it.
You race your Miis that you StreetPass, and the more you race the better booster chip you can create to give you a better chance in the next race. Weirdly, placing first isn’t really a requirement, however you can clone somebody’s car if you fancy it. The car creation tool is really amazing, it’s very in-depth and you could pretty much create any car you like. Mario Kart recreations are bound to be plentiful.
Out of the two games, Trader is the one I had more fun with, but the choice is yours, and you can always buy the other game separately.
StreetPass Ninja
Developed by: Prope
This is probably the weirdest StreetPass game of them all. You are a ninja and have to fight demons… by shooting yourself naked out of a cannon – your clothes would just burn up, duh.
So to have a fighting chance at slaying demons, the most logical thing is to apply scrolls to kites and have Miis you have StreetPassed fly them at various heights. Obviously. The more Mii’s you have, the more defense and power you will have to slay the demon, and more time to arrange your Miis. You can fire a test shot out of the cannon to get a rough idea of the trajectory it will take, but at best you only have 40 seconds to arrange up.
If you manage to hit the scroll in the centre of the kite, you will get a ‘splendid’ bonus, which gives you more points and better stats if you stack them together. Some enemies will have attacking birds which you’ll need a sword mid-flight to take care of, or a helmet/armour to reflect their vertical and horizontal attacks. If you don’t have any of these, you will teleport away to safety and not inflict any damage. While it’s random what scrolls you get, I personally never had an instance where I didn’t get what I needed. Also like StreetPass Quest, the damage you deal stays with the enemy, but they can heal.
This is for sure the fastest game of them all, and it’s stupidly fun. Once you clear out all the levels you can complete a harder version similar to StreetPass Quest II.
StreetPass Chef
Developed by: Prope
All heroes need a good feast before battle, and after the King was kidnapped all the Chefs in the area have fled. It’s up to you to provide a meal for your StreetPassed Miis, and the better you do, the better they do in battle! It’s nice to get an alternative view on StreetPass Quest.
The Miis will provide raw ingredients for you to create a dish from out of 12 types of food. The recipes however? That’s up to you. Now I’m an awful cook, but even I picked up this game pretty fast. You will get the name of a dish, e.g. Pork Dumplings, and select from up to 15 ingredients to create the dish. Once you select an ingredient, your sous-chef will advise you how many ingredients the dish is made up from, in this case Pork & Flour.
If you make the dish perfectly, you will get four points for every Mii you have eating. However if you don’t know the correct ingredients, you can usually get away with two or three stars per dish and the game will track what you have used and the correct ingredients will glow. As long as you don’t add pork to a chicken dish, you shouldn’t end up with a failed meal. After you have fed your Miis, you can use the leftover ingredients to research recipes.
This is fairly different to what I was expecting, but once you know what ingredients are correct, it gets rather boring just going through the motions. This is definitely a short-term game.
StreetPass Explorers
Developed by: Arzest
This one’s a little weird. The actual game is simple, you gather Miis via StreetPass and explore a long, randomly-generated map to find a treasure. Along the way you will run into dead ends, traps, killer animals and all other Indiana Jones type scenarios (so much so you find a crystal skull…). You can run into a few different markers: Camera, where you can take pictures of wild animals native to the area; Bags, that give you random items such as tranquilizers to deal with pesky crocodiles; finally and most obviously, X Marks the spot – however, there are multiple treasure locations with only one being real.
How the actual StreetPass mechanic works? I have no idea. While I played the game mostly using play coins and gathered 10 random troops with various step counters totalling 5,000 – 15,000, my Japanese 3DS Mii only gave me 500 steps (hardly anything) so I don’t quite understand how it pulled that data. Every map seems to require (if you complete it perfectly with the help of a hidden compass that guides you to the treasure) around 30,000ish steps.
Having no way to see how the step counter is actually determined on StreetPassed Miis, I don’t know about this game. While it is fun, it’s honestly random chance if you get anything good or hit a dead end. If you want replayability, collecting all the photos will require multiple runs of areas.
StreetPass Premium Upgrades
Mii Queue
While this came out in the previous update allowing you to save VIP Miis, Collect Birthdays for tickets, and advanced filtering options, if that wasn’t enough for you now you can save 100 extra Miis to sweeten the deal.
If you’re like me and go to a convention, you either forget about your 3DS, or check it every 4 and half seconds to clear out that 10 Mii limit. If you have premium, you can now hold 10 in your regular queue, and 100 extra in a secondary queue. This should mean you could hold 10 + 100 while playing with your active 10, to a massive 120).
New Swiftplay Plaza
You’re a busy person, you don’t have time for all those fan-dangled “loading screens”; in the new Swiftplay Plaza you can launch directly into games without having to go through two screens. This is part of a free update, so everyone gets it, but the choice to use it or not is up to you.
Puzzle Swap Update
Do you have all 1500ish puzzle pieces? No? Well Nintendo (about 5 years too late) has you covered! FINALLY you can get bonus tiles from people, this seems to be random but can give you around 8 or more pieces at a time, making puzzles a lot easier to complete.
So that’s all the new StreetPass features. We all know StreetPass isn’t really used a lot in Australia, but with upcoming conventions like OzComicCon, EB Expo & PAX AUS, I’ll be sure to get my monies’ worth out of all these games, especially as I already have all those damn puzzle pieces!
Each of the StreetPass games costs AU$3.90/NZ$5.10 each. Everyone who downloads the StreetPass Mii Plaza update can get either StreetPass Slot Racer or StreetPass Trader for free, while the four other new games will be available in a special discounted bundle for just AU$11.70/NZ$15.30.
