Developer Cing, Arc System Works

Publisher Nintendo

Format Switch

Release Out now

No better subtitle could have been chosen for a duology so sincerely invested in acts of remembrance. Nintendo is well practised in the art of repackaging nostalgia, but there is something especially fitting about this particular Recollection. It brings together 2005’s Another Code: Two Memories and 2009’s Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories in more ways than one, with both overhauled and given a consistent visual makeover – such that they now feel less like separate tales that share characters and thematic similarities and more two halves of a cohesive whole. For better and worse, they conjure fond reminiscences of the originals and the developer that made them. And those changes prove fascinating to consider in the context of a narrative about revisiting the past – one that explores the unreliability of human memory and the idea that it might one day be rewritten.

Each game traces a significant day in the life of teenager Ashley Mizuki Robins (we’re sure it used to be two ‘b’s; another false memory, perhaps), whose ice-white hair and large anime eyes speak to her half-Japanese heritage. In Two Memories, she’s called to the ominously named Blood Edward Island on the cusp of her 14th birthday to meet her scientist father Richard, who she hasn’t seen since her mother Sayoko was killed a decade ago. Its successor takes place two years later, as Richard invites Ashley to Lake Juliet, ostensibly to bond during a camping trip but also to tie up the mysteries surrounding the work that led to Sayoko’s death.