Game Save #10 | Dispatch Release on the Switch, 8BitDo Controller Review, Community Spotlight, and More!
Taking a look at the latest on the Dispatch and Nintendo fiasco, a review of the 8BitDo SN30 Pro+ Controller, fantastic articles for the Community Spotlight, and more!
Letâs Jump In
Welcome to this Game Save!
I hope that you all are having a fantastic week so far!
For todayâs Game Save article, I want to take a look at the latest on the release of Dispatch for the Switch. I pre-ordered this game, and have felt like itâs been all over the place for the past couple of weeks. So, I wanted to write out the latest with the censorship, some details about CERO, and what all happened with its release that I know of so far.
Afterwards, I have a controller thatâs been on my mind to review! Itâs the 8BitDo SN30 Pro+ controller, and Iâve got some thoughts on it â especially when I compare it to my other 8BitDo controller, and seeing if itâs still worth buying nowadays.
Lastly, thereâs some fantastic write-ups from the community I want to give a special spotlight to over the past couple of weeks! These have been awesome, and theyâre ones you should absolutely check out!
Letâs dive into it!
Welcome to The Saved Game
First off though, I want to extend my warmest welcome!
My name is Joe, and Game Save articles go over some of the latest gaming news you may have missed along with some thoughts I have on them, reviews of games or accessories, as well as a Community Spotlight for articles that I loved! Read more here about my Substack page and content!
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đž Check out my previous Game Save write-up
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If you would like to support my work and creative content, then please take a look at my Ko-fi page using the button below! Thanks!
My Thoughts from Recent Gaming News
The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy with gaming news!
The latest season of Fallout has ended on Amazon Prime Video, Nintendo has been having their Directs to convince everyone to buy a Switch 2, Highguard came out and has seemingly faded back out of the spotlight, Riot Games made unfortunate reductions in their team due to lackluster support for 2XKO, and Sony is having their latest State of Play that starts later today!
For today though, I want to dive into just one topic that I hope will catch up people on all thatâs happened with it: Dispatchâs release on the Nintendo Switch!
Letâs get started!
Dispatch on the Nintendo Switch
Iâve been a fan of AdHoc Studio, the developers behind the hit game Dispatch, ever since it came out late last year!
As I mentioned in a previous article, I loved the TellTale games â especially The Walking Dead. So, when I heard about Dispatch, and more so the good reviews for it, I knew it was a game I wanted to pick up at some point. Since itâs been reported that this title was coming out for the Nintendo Switch platforms back in December of 2025, I figured it would be a great way to play it! I loved The Walking Dead on my PlayStation Vita years ago, so I looked forward to playing Dispatch on a handheld. Likewise, I kept myself from seeing or reading about any spoilers for months now.
For the first time in over a decade, I also pre-ordered it. The last game I pre-ordered was Dark Souls II for the PlayStation 3 many years ago, but I figured that Dispatch would be fine to order ahead of time because of the great reviews, the 10% off discount, and the positive feedback that AdHoc has received since last year.
The Reports Ahead of Time
Before Dispatch came out, there were reports of censorship already taking place.
I wrote about this in a previous Game Save article, but the quick recap is that the art cover for the Dispatch Art and Comics Pack on the Nintendo eShop had some changes made compared to the PlayStation 5 or PC releases. From what Nintendo Life shared in their reporting (which includes the examples), it didnât look like much and I personally didnât think a lot about it. The odd thing was that AdHoc Studio seemed purposefully quiet about it. Before the game came out, AdHoc said that they could not comment when asked about possible censorship in the actual game itself, based on an interview from a publication called GoNintendo.
A report from EuroGamer showed that AdHoc also released a statement, apparently just prior to release, that mentioned the censorship. But, that statement encouraged future players, saying: ââŚthe core narrative and gameplay experience remains identical to the original release.â
Likewise, I do not remember seeing anything in the description on the eShop about there being any changes compared to the other versions. Once I started playing the game though, I quickly found that it was not limited to the extra art and comics pack.
Censorship Upon Release
When I downloaded and played the Switch version of Dispatch on the 28th of January, all of the censorship moments in the gameplay itself were laughably bad. The large censor blocks they used to hide content took up a lot of screen space in some cases, and on the face of it, it just seemed like a very odd attempt to create a cleaner version of this game. I honestly thought it was pretty hilarious with how it looked, but I could understand why people might not be too happy. Come to find out, the toggle available to PS5 and PC gamers to turn on/off the visual censorship apparently did not exist on the Switch release.
More so though, as far as I am aware, there was no major disclosure about this on the eShop or from AdHoc prior to the day it was released for those that pre-ordered.
So, where does that leave us? And why exactly did AdHoc do this?
The Immediate Fallout and CERO Ratings
It seemed that I was not the only one that felt a bit misled by the pre-order for Dispatch on the Switch.
Right after the game released, many reports, comments, and articles flooded my feeds about peopleâs complaints regarding the censorship, as well as the description on the eShop not being clear enough about what was changed or if there would be any censorship at all. I also read various posts about people just getting their pre-orders refunded from Nintendo, as described in this GameSpot article. Likewise, people were quick to point out that other games on the Switch platforms (in North America) have explicit content without being censored, such as Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and others â but thereâs a bit of an asterisk next to that, that weâll jump into next.
There were a lot of rumors about AdHoc seemingly making just one global version of Dispatch that aligned with the Japanese CERO rating system compared to others.
Letâs chat about CERO for a moment, especially because I only became more aware of it after all of this came out.
CERO (Computer Entertainment Rating Organization) is the non-profit rating organization in Japan â similar to the ESRB in North America or PEGI in most European countries. For a quick example, the ratings look something like this compared to the ESRB rating system:
However, there have been numerous reports that CERO is a lot stricter when it comes to certain content, often requiring the developer to make changes to their games. GameRant covered changes the developers made to The Last of Us Part 2, where a scene with explicit content was cut in the Japanese release, despite the game getting a CERO Z (18+ only) rating. Likewise, Kotaku wrote about some of the differences that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had in the Japanese release, again with the game receiving a CERO Z rating. PC Gamer had an article that went over some of the changes that Cyberpunk 2077 had to make in its Japanese release with a CERO Z rating. The Callisto Protocol was also never released in Japan due to the developers announcing that the game had been refused classification by the CERO rating system, resulting in them refusing to change its content, as reported by Push Square back in 2022.
A Japanese website that publishes video game-related content called AUTOMATON had an article back in 2024 that piqued my interest on this topic. In this article, they wrote about some of the financial burdens and the various fees that are placed on developers to release a game in Japan with a CERO age rating.
With all of this, it makes sense as to why people would wonder if Dispatch made just one version of the game for the Switch platforms â one that would allow it to be released without issue in Japan while having a CERO D rating.
The Statements and Current Status
At first, there was silence from AdHoc Studio and Nintendo. However, in response, Nintendo came out with a statement on the 30th of January in a GoNintendo report and tried to clear it up from their side.
Nintendo requires all games on its platforms to receive ratings from independent organizations and to meet our established content and platform guidelines. While we inform partners when their titles donât meet our guidelines, Nintendo does not make changes to partner content. We also do not discuss specific content or the criteria used in making these determinations.
â Nintendo Statement, GoNintendo (January 30th 2026)
Shortly afterwards, it seemed that all eyes were on AdHoc, who released their own statements and other information since then.
According to EuroGamer on the 31st of January, AdHoc seemed to want to wait a few days before addressing anything. Their statement though seemed to throw the majority of the weight back over to Nintendo, but also taking ownership over the placement of the disclaimer.
We initially assumed, like some of you, that because games like Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are on the platform with similar types of uncensored mature content, Dispatch would be allowed to do the same. During the porting process it became clear that was not the case.
âŚ
It was our intent to go out of our way to tell people looking to buy the game that the content was censored. Wires got crossed and we put the disclaimer in the field literally titled 'Disclaimer', instead of the 'About The Game' section. We didn't catch this until after the launch when we saw people saying we should have called out the changes on the store page, and we went to go make sure it was there. It technically has been the entire time, just in the absolute worst spot that makes it look like we were trying to hide it.
This is 100 percent our mistake and it was fixed in the Americas store pages a few hours after launch to give more visibility.
â Excerpt from the AdHoc Studio Statement, EuroGamer (January 31st 2026)
Likewise, and more importantly to me, AdHoc mentioned at the end of their statement that while they "can't make any specific promises just yet", they are looking at ways in the future to push an update to address some of the censored content â though it may take some time.
A few days after this though, the fallout continued when AdHoc commented to GoNintendo on February 2nd about a physical release and the rumors spreading that they had released just one version of Dispatch. In regard to a physical copy that could feature uncut content, they said there was: ââŚno possibility for a physical version to be released without the adjusted content.â When asked about the version of Dispatch that came out, and if it had to do with the different regional SKUs, they were told that: âAdHoc is legally unable to provide further comment on why separate SKUs were not possible for different regions.â
Why AdHoc was unable to answer that last question is a bit of a mystery to me, and I havenât found any more information after this. Again, AdHocâs statements before and after the release of Dispatch on the Switch have just been a bit odd. Why they werenât able to release both a Japanese Switch version that complied with the CERO rating and another other version for different regions also leaves a question mark over this all as well.
My Thoughts on this Version of Dispatch
As I mentioned, Iâve been wanting to jump into this game ever since it came out, so I was excited when it arrived on the Switch. If AdHoc Studio needed to censor Dispatch to be compliant on the Switch or if they just wanted to make one universal version for whatever reason, then thatâs their choice to do so. I truly want to root for AdHoc to do good into the future, so that theyâd be able to continue this genre with future games down the road.
But, my concern with all of this was the apparent lack of transparency and terrible communication from the start with AdHoc. All of the statements before the game came out, even when asked directly about it (such as the GoNintendo article on it prior to release), made it seem like they were avoiding this topic and hoping people would somehow not notice any changes. But, their statement from EuroGamer made it sound like they apparently went out of their way to make sure people knew about the changes, but I do not remembering seeing anything about that before the game came out. I wish they had clearly put in the description on the eShop that it would be a censored edition, and I would have preferred that they publicly posted about any changes like this for the Switch platforms â especially for pre-orders.
My hope is that there will be some sort of update that comes out in the next few weeks as AdHoc suggested. At this point, Iâm just waiting to continue with my playthrough after we hear if there will be an update in the near future. Besides the censorship and lack of clarity, I have had fun so far, and really enjoyed the characters, story, and gameplay. So, I plan to continue it soon and see whatâs next.
Would I recommend that you pick it up for the Switch if you are still on the fence? Probably not yet, at least not until thereâs either an update or something more concrete from AdHoc. But, itâs up to you if you care more about the censorship being present or if you would rather just focus on the story.
I also plan to pick up a PlayStation 5 this year. So, Iâll likely just grab a copy of it on that platform so I can play the original version in the futureâŚ
âŚall while being wary of pre-ordering again!
What are Your Thoughts on This Topic?
Do you think AdHoc Studio should have been more transparent upfront with how they handled the censorship on the Switch platforms?
Does any of this news change your feelings toward AdHoc or Nintendo?
If youâve played Dispatch, do you think itâs worth playing even if itâs censored?
Retrospective Review of the 8BitDo SN30 Pro+
Itâs been a bit since Iâve had this controller from 8BitDo, several years in fact, but I figured it was worth sharing some thoughts on it! Itâs one Iâve used quite a bit for my Nintendo Switch, and some of them can be found for a pretty inexpensive price nowadays!
First off, the price on this controller can be pretty good nowadays if you find one in used condition, especially if you are looking for something that is reminiscent of the old SNES/Nintendo-style of controller. Iâve seen them under $30, and for a controller thatâs been out for a while, thatâs the most I would want to pay for this one.
Iâm a sucker for the color design and overall shape of this controller. I used to have an old SNES, and it reminded me of that! The buttons feel good, the analog sticks work great, and the USB-C charging port is accessible with a battery that has lasted for years now. My biggest gripe about the overall functionality is the L2 and R2 triggers, just because they donât offer a lot of resistance, and I do not like the way they feel when pressing down on them.
The build on it, similar to other 8BitDo controllers, feels really nice. The hard casing on it is solid, and it feels pretty good in the hands. It is a bit wider than I normally like, but that could be a plus for some people. Everyone else that has used it for Mario Kart 8 or other games have really enjoyed it, and have had nothing but good things to say about it!
Does this controller hold up to the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C, or even the Nintendo Pro Controller? Probably not, in my experience with it. In 2026, this would be a controller to grab if you find it for under $30 and really like the aesthetics of it, or would like a backup/share controller. The triggers on it are a bit of an issue for me and the overall shape of it is a little too wide of my personal preference, but thatâs also more of a subjective issue.
Anything over $30 though would be the time to look at something like the Ultimate 2C controller or something else!
Community Spotlight
There was a lot of awesome articles that have come out in the past few weeks that have meant a lot! One of the ones I wanted to spotlight today is a fantastic resource with a lot of work put into it for the gaming community here on Substack, and the other article was an incredible retrospective of a game Iâm dying to get now!
Letâs jump in!
Fantastic Resource for All-Things Gaming
Brian Schneider created what is likely the best single resource here on Substack for all-things gaming:
The Substack Gaming Yellow Pages!
This is a fantastic resource/directory on Brianâs publication, Alternate Worlds, that goes over the many people that are associated with the gaming world on Substack! It was a wonderful idea, and itâs already been a great way to find new publications that Iâm interested in.
What I really love and appreciate is that Brian has gone out of the way to make sure so many people are included. Likewise, Brian has been incredibly welcoming, and itâs amazing to see the different categories that are represented here, including Tabletop & TCG & TTRPG, Chess, Video Games (with multiple language publications), Games Industry & Analysis, and Game Music! I also think that the descriptions/blurbs for each of the people are a great idea, and itâs easy to see who everyone is and what it is that they write about! Magnvs, a masterful writer/researcher for RPG gaming that Iâve followed for many months, has also been contributing, adding, and improving it as well!
If you have somehow missed this on Substack, then I implore you to take a look for yourself and check it out! A huge thank-you as well to both Brian and Magnvs for your work on this!
A Deeper Look at Dusk
Chris Mumola wrote up a fascinating article on a game Iâve briefly heard about, but am now very much interested in playing: Dusk!
In this article on their publication, Game Sense, Chris talked about the history of âboomer shootersâ, (fast-paced FPS games inspired by classics such as Doom or Quake). More so, Chris really went all in to review a unique game in this genre that came out in 2018 called Dusk! Iâve heard about this game in the past, but brushed it off for the most part. While Iâve played Doom and similar games before, they were never something I deeply cared for. In this retrospective look on Dusk though, Chris did such an incredible job at explaining what this game was about and why the reader should care for it!
Chris hit on all the notes Iâd be wanting from an article like this. But, they went beyond and really sold me on this game with their masterful way of describing this game! As soon as I finished reading it, I had a new tab opened up to see where I could buy this title from. Chris really highlighted the experience someone would get from playing Dusk â whether it was the detail of the droning hissing noises, the visuals of mind-bending landscapes and horror elements, or just the way the gameplay moves along â it was all wonderfully written!
Chris swayed me to keep an eye out for Dusk, and I plan on picking it up soon. Once you read Chrisâ article on this modern-classic game, and I highly encourage you to do so, then Iâm certain that youâll feel the same!
What's Next & Closing
Thanks all for reading, I appreciate it!
Tomorrow is the LAST DAY to submit a contribution for my upcoming Collaboration Article!
My question for you with this collaborative write-up is this:
What is one of the most nostalgic parts of your video gaming life, and how did it inspire the person you became today?
Iâve received quite a few responses so far, and itâs been amazing to read them! I do have a few more slots open up though, so if you are interested and are a subscriber, then please take a look at this Note below for all the information/guidelines and submit a response to me before the end of the day tomorrow! Thanks!
Beyond that, I plan to take a week off later this month to catch up on some stuff and take care of some admin tasks, but I will be back with a new article shortly afterwards!
Unless something pops up, the finalized Collaboration Article will be coming out next week on Thursday the 19th, and I canât wait for you all to see it!
If this article meant something to you and you enjoyed it, then please drop some love on it down below, share it with some friends or foes, and let me know your thoughts! I always appreciate the feedback đ
See you all next time,
Joe
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Wow I hadnât followed the dispatch censorship issue. What a mess. It really makes no sense to me. And the solution of those big black boxes seems nonsensical.