The Fammies 2018 - Group A - The Best Group

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Group A - The Best Group

Online Game of the Year

Nintendo Online service started on September 18th, 2018 with a whole bunch of NES / Famicom games, which we are no longer allowed to call a Virtual Console. They are almost all exclusively bad, with the odd exception, which made the idea of playing any of them again very unappealing. However, Nintendo have smartly incorporated online play into all the games on the service as standard, which opens up a whole new world of fun. This realisation birthed a brand new (and still ongoing) video series on our YouTube channel starring James and Danny, where they play every single game on the service. Which  surprisingly makes Famicom Online our very first online game of the year (new category). The runner up is the world's most popular online game, Fortnite! We had a great time streaming this with one of our Patrons back in July 2018, as well as at other times during the year. The best part of Fortnite is that it proves Nintendo wrong in many regards. Yes you can do 100 players online on Switch. No you don't need a smartphone app to do voice chat, and no you don't need to pay for an online subscription to do any of that!

Pleasant Surprise of the Year

With the console horsepower of Sony's PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, it's not surprising that many bigger third party games miss out on Switch releases. In 2018, this wasn't the case for one of the biggest third party games of the year - Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Coming to the Switch via a cloud based solution provided by Ubitus (you can read more about that in our review here and our second look here), Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Cloud Version runs surprisingly well on Nintendo's system and offers everything that the game does on other platforms (with a little less visual fidelity). The only real issue that most English speaking gamers will have here is that in order to play the game, you need to be in Japan. You've gotta love geo-locking, right? Regardless, the vast world, interesting characters and stable cloud functionality make it one of the best games on the Switch in 2018.

TGS 2018 Hype of the Year

Tokyo Game Show 2018 was a lot of fun, and collectively the guys must have played about 50 games on Switch, a new world record for a Nintendo website going to TGS, an event that Nintendo traditionally does not attend! However there are very few, like less than a handful, of games that all four members of the Famicrew love without exception. One of those is Shovel Knight, the game that keeps on giving! In the latest update, Shovel Knight and his frenemies are teaming up for a Smash Bros style fighting game called Shovel Knight Showdown. If he's not going to be playable in Smash, I guess the best thing to do is just make your own game. Either way, hype is get! The runner up is another game that has the interest of everyone on the crew, and has been for an increasingly long time - Fight Knight! Ty played it at TGS in 2017, and it's still not out! The hype must be strong to hold on for this long!

Indie Game of the Year

A hotly contested award this year, with so many great games coming out on Switch, but the winner goes to Celeste - a wonderful platform game with a great story and a lot of heart. [Celeste chat] The same could also be said about the runner up, Undertale, which redefines the RPG genre and has proven very popular here in Japan despite it not being developed here! Both games are a perfect fit for the Switch, as is being proven by their great sales on the system all over the world. Congratulations to both games! [Undertale video hub]