NIS America is delisting and Mad Gear Games’ Kemono Heroes after a meager four years on the Nintendo eShop. Billed as a 4-player hack-and-slash romp, this title faced middling reception, but regardless has only lasted four years on the market. It’s disappointing as this pixel art stylized game never got a physical release so come next month, this game will be unavailable to the people who haven’t picked it up already.
NIS America confirmed the delisting on X where they say it will remain available for purchase for $14.99 until March 30 and March 31 in the the NA and EU regions respectively.
Important notice: Kemono Heroes will be removed from the Nintendo eShop (US) on March 30, 2024 at 11:59 PM PDT, and the Nintendo eShop (Europe) on March 31, 2024 at 7:59 AM GMT/8:59 AM CET. If you have purchased the game, you will retain access to it from your downloads.
— NISAmerica (@NISAmerica) March 15, 2024
It launched in February 2020 exclusively on the Switch before making its way to the now-dead Google Stadia a year later. It’s worth pointing out, Japanese translator and news source Gematsu says this delisting is solely due to the game’s publishing duties changing hands to Spain-based JanduSoft, which plans on returning the game to not just the Switch, but also all other platforms (Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox) later in the year — supposedly Q3.
We should feel lucky that this is just a temporary delisting, as while Kemono Heroes was very mixed in its reception, game development takes time, effort, and human resources, and with a digital-only future, it sucks to see just how easily games can be pulled from shelves only to never return again. Hopefully, JanduSoft does release this and doesn’t scrap it after realizing the polarizing feelings toward the 2020 hack-and-slash romp. Perhaps if the publisher really cared, it would move to doing small batches of physicals.
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GWare is a gaming industry reporter with over five years of experience and a massive supporter of ethical game preservation efforts.