WayForward is Working on a Bakugan Videogame for the Switch

Since Thursday’s announcement that Wayforward would be developing a game with an established intellectual property — later confirmed to not be a first party Nintendo title — the Internet has been freaking out over the possibilities of what property the Shantae and Bloodstained developer would get to be working with. I’ve seen countless guesses, but nobody I saw guessed what they’re actually working with: Bakugan.

For those unaware, Bakugan was a pretty big phenomenon among kids in Japan and even bigger in the west after the anime and toy series debuted here in 2008. As a kid from around that time, I and my friends wasted so much of our time and money watching and collecting these plastic balls that turned into fighting dragons, and played our fair share of tie-in videogames such as Bakugan Battle Brawlers and Bakugan: Defenders of the Core. I’d like to say these games were genuinely fun adaptations of the series that took the core concept of Pokémon and ran with it, but after revisiting Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, I’m hesitant to praise any game I haven’t played since childhood.