Killer Queen isn’t singlehandedly responsible for the resurgence of arcades across America; its release is far too limited for that. But, it does draw throngs of people and eyeballs at Barcades and Arcades across the country, generating excitement in every establishment that houses one of these machines. Now, six years after its debut, Bumble Bear Games is making a play for the home-console space with the release of Killer Queen Black exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
The physical setup of a Killer Queen machine consists of two arcade cabinets side by side, each with five joysticks and buttons. Each player assumes one of the joysticks and the accompanying buttons for that character. Matches last until one of the teams has secured one of three victory conditions: Economic, War, or Snail. After one of the teams has won three times, by any victory condition, the game is over.
If this all sounds like a lot of very confusing information, you’re not alone. After hearing about Killer Queen for years, my first introduction to the game was at the Emerald city classic in Seattle. I watched two teams of five play their hearts out on a livestream for about an hour and at the end of it I was more excited to play KQ than I’d ever been, but still had no idea where to start. Then I heard Killer Queen Black was coming to the Switch this month and I had to give it a go.
Within the first ten minutes of booting up the game players are directed to the tutorial which is expedient and effective. The game teaches you each part of the rules in bite-sized portions allowing players to execute each win condition and play each role in a pressure-free environment. In a little under a half-hour I’d completed the entire tutorial and was ready to take the last tutorial which is a match with and against bots.
The bots gave me a bit of trouble till I got the hang of how matches with three separate and equally viable win conditions flow, but in no time I was wiping the floor with them. Of course, the next step was to hop online and face real opponents. Unfortunately, the servers were pretty dead due to this being pre-release, but when I was finally able to get into a match I found it much more exciting to coordinate and strategize with actual humans rather than AI.
From a gameplay perspective, Killer Queen Black is nearly identical to the cabinet setup of the typical KQ cabinet. The notable differences are: it’s played with a Switch controller and its four folks on a team instead of five. It can be played online, with everyone gathered around the TV, or, god forbid, in tabletop mode. But, the most interesting addition to KQ Black is that instead of only the gold and blue teams that normally compete there’s a third, dreaded, “Black Team”. This designation is given to the team that manages to go undefeated online and will surely be in the rest of the community’s sights. It’s unclear how it will work in practice, but a very interesting idea nonetheless.
For the pros, it’s the Killer Queen you know and love but at home or on the go. For the uninitiated, it has a fantastic tutorial to catapult you directly into the action. Sure, there are some gripes. If I had it my way, there’d be an option for more advanced bots so games on the go or otherwise offline were more engaging. I wouldn’t mind seeing traditional five-player matches online where the number of joycon you can connect to a single switch isn’t a limitation. Lastly, I’d be great if there was an official joystick/button pad that I could buy to get the full arcade experience at home. But, those are all nitpicky things really. For me, I’m just happy to finally be able to see what all the fuss is about and with the addition of the Black Team the home console release of Killer Queen is going to keep me entertained for months to come.
A very special thanks to the publisher for the review code.