Modern Gaming: A Robot Named Fight! (Nintendo Switch) Review · 12:54pm May 19th, 2021
A new edition of Modern Gaming Reviews is up, and we check out a Metroidvania style game on the Nintendo Switch. The game is called A Robot Named Fight! as it is Metroid inspired in many ways. If you didn’t know, the term Metroidvania was coined due to Metroid and Castlevania implementing similar ideas during the last 25 years. Even though Nintendo’s sci-fi themed game was the series that used this the most, Castlevania was no slouch either. It is true CV was mostly an action platformer, but CVII on the NES and Symphony of the Night on the PS1 also used such concepts. That is the reason for the coined term because both series popularized the genre. MV has gone through its own evolution over the years especially in these retro style releases. However, they not only keep things faithful but push the original ideas further with improvements.
A Robot Named Fight! was made by a sole developer named Matt Bitner in 2017 when it originally released. Even since it came out Matt has updated the software that greatly improved the game. The updates served to give more content and features to increase the value of ARNF. However, unlike Outbuddies and Axiom Verge that strived for an 8-bit MV experience, ARNF goes more for Super Metroid. Nintendo’s 16-bit classic is still the gold standard in the genre as many for years tried to emulate its style and level design. There is a difference as Matt made a randomizer rogue MV to the likes we haven’t seen before. The only other time I played a randomizer was both the Modern and Super Randomizers from Zelda Classic based on the first game. ARNF does this too but also with each room throughout a seed which Modern and Super Randomizer of LOZ1 did not do.
