Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition (Switch)
With the rise of CD-based game systems like the Sega CD and Saturn came a curious view for what the future of video games could be. The expanded storage space compared to cartridges meant live action footage by way of full motion video could be implemented, and some ambitious developers tried to find a way to integrate it with the gameplay despite the inherent inflexibility. While there are success stories as people learned to better work around the limitations, the 1990s end up having a slew of infamous FMV games, entries like Night Trap and Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties able to ride that reputation to rereleases almost twenty years later for people curious about that part of history. Double Switch though managed to get a 25th Anniversary Edition despite not being as well known, it actually made by the same team as the more famous Night Trap and utilizing a similar gameplay style in trying to activate traps based on live action footage you need to watch like a hawk. Perhaps because they knew it was a harder sell that appeals mostly to a handful of enthusiasts, Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition doesn’t try to do too much besides make the game available years after its original release on Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and home computers.
Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition has to stretch pretty hard to try and justify the setup for its trap-based gameplay. The Edwards Arms is an apartment building where the eccentric owner was so enamored with Egypt after visiting it that he constructed his New York mansion in its cultural image. After his passing, the extravagant decor and dwindling Edwards fortune meant it was turned into an apartment complex and despite people having to live with gaudy sarcophagus props and other strange decor, it managed to get a few tenants partially off the backbone of a rumor about a hidden treasure being somewhere in the building. One of the Edwards family, Eddie, has taken it upon himself to create defenses to repel the frequent opportunists and intruders, placing traps and cameras all about, but he ends up the one trapped at the start of Double Switch, having to call on the player to assume the controls and watch the video feeds so they can help Eddie escape, stop a truly absurd number of thieves, and get to the bottom of the mystery behind the Edwards Arms.
As the trap operator, your main purpose in Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition is helping the story reach its true conclusion, the tenants of the Edwards Arms frequently in danger thanks to just how many people have decided today was the day to break in and possibly murder people who get in the way of their treasure seeking. Gun-wielding thugs and acrobatic martial artists will frequently lurk around the seven rooms of interest, each one with dedicated traps you can activate to take them out. Since every bit of footage you watch was filmed in real life with no real after effects, seeing the traps activate can be an impressive and initially satisfying sight. Making the ground drop out near the fireplace as it turns into a chute to send a thug sliding away or having a column spring open and smack a goon away does have some initial appeal, and there are some more creative tricks to use like the pop out coffin that swallows its targets and pulls them into the wall or the circular patch of ground that starts to totter beneath an invader’s feet when you trigger it. For the most part though, trapping thugs is technically optional on an individual basis but required to some degree to avoid instant game overs. Some of them make sense, an invader that turns off the power makes your traps useless so catching them is mandatory, but there are almost 150 people who will enter the Edwards Arms and while some just walk around before leaving, you need to catch a good deal of them to also avoid a loss.
There’s a few problems with having to catch so many invaders beyond how silly it starts to feel that so many thugs are all sneaking in windows and climbing down from the ceiling over and over. Since this is all represented with live action footage, very quickly it begins repeating the same few clips, most rooms just having one or two clips assigned to the trap type you are meant to use on them. This does help in a way, you learn to identify such clips and will easily be able to trigger the relevant trap and then zip over to look at other rooms where action might be happening. However, it also makes the trap triggering rather obnoxious and tedious, the player having to keep turning away from areas where something new or important to the story is happening to keep their thug capturing numbers up. It is fortunate you aren’t expected to capture a great deal of them, meaning when there are make or break moments elsewhere you can just ignore the other rooms, and the map display will always be quick to alert you when something’s going on so you can pop over swiftly and usually identify if it’s something meaningful or just that same clip you’ve seen tens of times in possible need of a trap activation. You can alter how the map is displayed if you like, one having miniature footage of what is going on elsewhere if you feel the reference might help, but having the simple dots option for each person in a room also makes it easier to quickly assess the true areas of interest.
One major problem with having to constantly take care of the fairly meaningless invaders is how often they can distract from not just vital tasks, but the story being told. Admittedly, Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition doesn’t tell the most exciting of plots even when you do piece it together, the treasure hunt not exactly full of captivating scenes you’ll be glued to. The footage is clearly meant to set up traps first and tell a narrative second, but the plot is split into three acts and there is a legitimately interesting turn unveiled in Act II that adds a memorable element to what is otherwise people running around trying not to die or trying to find the treasure. The acting is usually handled well by its major characters, Corey Haim putting in a performance as Eddie while R. Lee Ermey portrays a handyman Eddie has a grudge against. Some side characters like the mobster Brutus have some awkward but memorable acting, and since this is the 25th Anniversary Edition, all the footage that would have been harder to make out on Sega CD and the like is portrayed in high quality, the traps and all definitely easier to appreciate when you can see their inner workings and decorative elements. However, while you might not begrudge being pulled away from the plot scenes often once you realize it’s not usually that interesting, it’s not a good thing that the story is so plain you won’t feel too bad flipping over to see the same repeated thug invasions again and again.
When it comes to actually triggering the traps, the interface is fairly simple but not as straightforward as you might think. All the rooms have specific spots on the floor or elements like the columns that serve as triggers. When someone stands on it or touches it as you’re looking at the room, you’ll hear a little chirping sound so you know you can trigger it, but doing so actually takes a few button presses. It takes four presses of A, B, or R to activate the relevant assigned trap in the room, the first three essentially priming the trap and the last one launching it. You can prime a trap a bit as you anticipate the moment it needs activation, but you only have so much power so priming multiple traps will cause a fuse to trip if you go overboard. The main reason this system might be in place though involves trap timing. If you trigger them early, mashing the button to launch it again does take a bit, and sometimes someone standing on a trigger won’t be there but for a second or less. Where this can feel quite annoying is when you are first viewing a new scene and are uncertain where a character might step. Trying to deduce the relevant trap should be a challenge, yes, but when your window for action is potentially small or the movement of the character you’re trying to snag deliberately tricky, it can all too easily lead to a miss, and a game over in Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition can be rather aggravating and dull to recover from.
If you trap everyone perfectly in Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition, it would probably be a little over a half hour long. However, the learning process to even just do the mandatory ones will take many hours and many replays, especially because of the game’s poor checkpointing. The game features three acts, and if you fail at any point, you’ll be forced to restart the act you’re on. Waiting ten minutes for another chance at the scene you slipped up on already feels like a drag, but getting there will also require you to keep catching regular baddies and repeating other mandatory actions that could be instant game overs if you get the timing off or forget where you need to be looking at precise times. A great deal of important moments will probably be learned when they go off and catch you unaware, the game over a surprise but at least you know where to be looking next time. However, many of the acts also have an extra complication. Act 1 for example has you needing to spot the digits in a passcode that the regular looking invaders gradually reveal, it difficult to glean who might even provide the info and when you should be elsewhere. Act 2 is perhaps rougher, this act letting you unlock additional traps in every room so long as you watch at the right time, but these traps are all mandatory as well and have the tightest activation requirements, meaning you’ll likely keep retrying as you need to watch the same scenes again and again to expand your arsenal and figure out how they’re meant to be timed. There is no wiggle room for failure since all the live action footage is bound to set times, and while you can start figuring out an action schedule to do what is necessary, it is basically a trial and error learning process with a lot of required rewatching of the same old scenes just to get back to where you were before.
This is where you think a 25th anniversary rerelease would try to make the experience more accessible and less annoying so it has a chance with players outside those intrigued by curious old games. However, there are no new features to make the memorization process a more convenient or enjoyable one. No way to speed up footage or rewind it, no mid-act save points, and in a particularly mean approach, the extras like behind the scenes info on the game are locked behind you needing to earn an A rank in the story. An A rank basically requires you to not fail at all from start to finish on a run and catch most of the apartment invaders, the task tall for a batch of extras that aren’t really worth the trouble. A theater at least unlocks for just clearing the game once and shows you full scenes you’ve already witnessed but without any need to interrupt them to go trigger traps elsewhere, but considering Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition also elects to represent the game’s original manual not as a scan but as a wall of white text placed over a background that can make it hard to read, this doesn’t feel like it’s celebrating the game so much as repackaging it without much thought. It’s a bit commendable they want to preserve that original experience of having to learn where you need to be at the right time rather than letting you breeze through the process with helpful options, but keeping such irritating flaws intact just means Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition is about as flawed as the original releases, just with a bit of a nicer look to it this go around.
THE VERDICT: Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition is a pretty barebones release of an obnoxious old game. While the live action footage is crisp, you’re watching a ho-hum plot about people bumbling around an Egyptian themed apartment building looking for treasure that mostly manifests as needing to trap around 100 random thugs with the same traps after watching the same clips repeatedly. The trap setting does start off a bit thrilling as learning what they entail is neat and there are some fun touches from the cast, but with game overs so easy to trigger as you will often be made to learn what’s necessary through failure, it becomes a chore to actually figure out the right path through a game that’s already fairly boring because you are forced to pay attention to repeat footage even within the course of just one attempt to clear the story.
And so, I give Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition for Nintendo Switch…
A TERRIBLE rating. While the actual narrative of Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition can have its fun or cheesy moments as it earnestly tells its plain story and makes good use of its trap-riddled sets, its plot seems to understand on one level you can’t pay much attention to it but ends up sacrificing a game worth paying attention to as the result. There are bits and pieces worth seeing and that Act 2 turn is intriguing, but since you’re required to view only fractions of them you can miss a great deal just trying to stay in the game and the punishment for being a little off is another slog through minutes of the same footage you’ve long since gotten tired of. It’s not even an opportunity to watch some of those scenes you missed necessarily since you still have to manage so many of the invaders on top of the required actions, but it’s at least easy to see where the game went wrong in having so many thugs sneaking around the Edward Arms. If there were no distractions and some extra element to manage, you’d just be popping the traps at the set points as needed, there still a little difficulty in getting the timing right and later you even have to disarm some traps with the Y, X, or L buttons to prevent them hitting people you don’t want getting hurt. Perhaps more meaningful or convincing distractions would work better, where you have to figure out what actually matters or do a bit more than just wait for your target to reach the designated activation spots.
More complicated decision making would come with more retries in the games current form though, but that’s where the Double Switch – 25th Anniversary Edition could have helped. Even in its current unaltered state, Double Switch could have its intended learning process made much more tolerable if there were ways to more quickly get back to where you left off. Saving whenever you like could harm the experience potentially, but even just a few checkpoints per Act could do a lot if there aren’t going to be any extra conveniences. Instead, this anniversary edition keeps most of its extra goodies locked up tight and mostly serves as a rerelease of the game with better FMV quality, a player able to get an authentic Double Switch experience which is unfortunately a drag thanks to its harsh punishments and inherently repetitive format.