Arms seemingly had everything it needed to be a hit. A unique gameplay conceit, a fun cast of characters, and a colorful world. Arms looked like it could be to the Switch what Splatoon was to the Wii U and Nintendo seemed to be banking on it, capitalizing on its prospective success by announcing a graphic novel based on the game published by Dark Horse comics. At first, Arms did become the success Nintendo was hoping it’d be, receiving positive reviews from most publications and eventually going on to sell over two million copies. This success wouldn’t last because as it turns out, the game was called Arms because it had no legs.
Unlike Splatoon, which retained a very dedicated fanbase, once the hype died down people just kinda stopped talking about Arms. It’s easy to understand why. It’s a fun game for the first few minutes you play it, but it’s far too gimmicky for hardcore fighting game players to have any interest and is too lacking in content to keep the attention of casual players, a problem which would go unsolved as the game would receive only a few content updates in the form of characters and stages before support stopped in December 2017, just 6 months after release. With that, the Arms franchise basically died before it got the chance to even become a franchise. The graphic novel went radio silent for years before being officially canceled in 2021, and there’s been no talks of any sort of proper sequel. The most Nintendo would acknowledge Arms after 2017 was putting Min-Min in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, a move which angered millions of people who believe Smash’s roster should be populated entirely by characters from video games they played when they were 6.
For all its faults, Arms had a ton of potential and it’s a shame that potential has gone unfulfilled. There are some crazy good character designs here and some really whacky lore that I could easily envision a sequel expanding on. On the other hand though, Arms will be lost to time and I can’t really say it doesn’t deserve to be.
Unlike Splatoon, which retained a very dedicated fanbase, once the hype died down people just kinda stopped talking about Arms. It’s easy to understand why. It’s a fun game for the first few minutes you play it, but it’s far too gimmicky for hardcore fighting game players to have any interest and is too lacking in content to keep the attention of casual players, a problem which would go unsolved as the game would receive only a few content updates in the form of characters and stages before support stopped in December 2017, just 6 months after release. With that, the Arms franchise basically died before it got the chance to even become a franchise. The graphic novel went radio silent for years before being officially canceled in 2021, and there’s been no talks of any sort of proper sequel. The most Nintendo would acknowledge Arms after 2017 was putting Min-Min in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, a move which angered millions of people who believe Smash’s roster should be populated entirely by characters from video games they played when they were 6.
For all its faults, Arms had a ton of potential and it’s a shame that potential has gone unfulfilled. There are some crazy good character designs here and some really whacky lore that I could easily envision a sequel expanding on. On the other hand though, Arms will be lost to time and I can’t really say it doesn’t deserve to be.