I’m a simple man. Give me some rhythmic, monotonous task to carry out and I’ll be content. I think that’s why I found the loading screens in the original No More Heroes so engrossing, and why I’m now so bothered to find the recent Switch port screwed them up.
I love games that give you something to do on the loading screen. While No More Heroes wasn’t such a powerhouse that you spent a lot of time waiting for the next area or cutscene to load up, the developers at Grasshopper Manufacture made sure to give players a tiny distraction during these brief interludes.
By pressing the B button, you were able to make a little No More Heroes logo located in the bottom corner of the screen fly to the top. If you pressed it enough, the logo would then wrap around to the bottom in a different color and continue climbing. Once you stopped tapping, it would lose speed and eventually fall, traveling back downwards until it reached the bottom.
On Wii, I liked to see how many times I could get the logo to change colors. I would climb as high as possible before letting the logo drop to get the biggest bounce. It’s not like I was constantly stuck in lengthy loading screens while playing No More Heroes, but every time a mission took just a few more seconds to load, it was an opportunity to best my previous attempts.
I bought No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2 on Switch as soon as I woke up yesterday, excited to play two of my favorite games on a modern console. I guided Travis through the first game’s tutorial level and bested its boss. But when I got to the open world section of the game, I was frustrated to find the loading screens didn’t work as they did in the original. You can still play with the logo, but something is… different.
No More Heroes on Switch, however, has a notable stutter during the loading screens The game itself runs wonderfully otherwise, but the stutter ruins the little mini-game I created for myself in the original. At first, I thought it was because the game was loading faster on Switch than it did on Wii, but after messing around with the original release, I realized that’s not the case. In fact, the Switch loads the game slightly slower than the Wii.
This is a tiny thing, even in terms of No More Heroes. Other than this, I’m having so much fun exploring its world after many years away. Even the side missions aren’t as annoying as I remember. If compromises had to be made to get No More Heroes running on Switch, I’m guessing this was low priority on the developers’ checklist, and I get that. This is a personal problem, and I’ll do my best to cope with this minor disappointment.