Another Wii U classic is making its way to the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo will release an expanded version of Pikmin 3 called Pikmin 3 Deluxe on October 30th.

The most notable feature the company is adding for the $60 rerelease is co-operative play. You and a friend will be able to play through Pikmin 3‘s story together. Nintendo has also added new difficulty settings, enhanced targeting and a hints system to help players if they get stuck on a tricky puzzle. They’ll also be new side-story missions to play. Like the game’s story campaign, you’ll have the chance to work through those with a friend. 

Of course, the alternative-play industry didn’t start with Xbox or even Nintendo. The true granddaddy of second-screen gaming was the Visual Memory Unit for the Sega Dreamcast. Originally released in Japan in 1998, it was a Frankenstein monster mash-up of three things: a memory card, an auxiliary display and a tiny standalone console, complete with directional pad, action buttons and the ability to connect to other VMUs. The device augmented Dreamcast games, displaying useful stats and enabling mini-games in certain titles. For example, Sonic Adventure had Chao Adventure, a Tamagotchi-style experience played entirely on the VMU, while Quake III Arena had a maze game.

Sega dropped out of the console industry in 2001, discontinuing the Dreamcast and VMU. But for most people who got their hands on one, the VMU remains a bright, warm memory of gaming goodness. The most disappointing thing about it was that more games didn’t take advantage of its weird feature set.

This seems to be the sticking point with second-screen gaming: developers. Console manufacturers can release hardware with as many screens as they want, and there can be nearly 4.8 billion smartphones and tablets in the wild, but it’s up to studios to create software that pushes these devices to their full potential. There have been attempts at leveraging mobile devices in modern games, such as the Destiny 2 Companion App, Fallout Pip Boy tool, and Grand Theft Auto iFruit experience. These apps generally serve as hubs for tracking progress or expanding the game world, though they tend to be built for phones rather than tablets, and they appear as an afterthought of multimillion-dollar marketing budgets.

The divide between mobile and console gaming is shrinking as tablets and smartphones become powerful enough to support rich experiences, and developers attempt to tap into a market that’s billions of devices deep. In this environment, it feels like a good time to give second-screen game development another go. Nintendo alone demonstrated the allure of dual-screen gaming with the Wii U, though it unraveled that progress with the Switch, which technically uses two displays but doesn’t offer second-screen play. And now Nintendo is all about the Switch Lite, a cheaper console that doesn’t connect to a TV at all. After the failure of the Wii U, the studio has apparently ditched the idea of a built-in second screen altogether.

Luckily for Nintendo — and literally every other video game company — players nowadays come with their own screens.

PlatinumGames‘ colourful action adventure was originally released in 2013 for the Wii U. Now it’s getting the modern console treatment and will be coming to PS4, Switch and PC thanks to a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign that looks set to hit a whopping $1.5 million. Given the tight delivery timeframes — PlatinumGames says it’ll ship in April 2020 — it’s likely that development is already in the bag, and that this is more of a game sale than anything else.

That being said, there’s the opportunity to get your hands on some interesting rewards. Pledge more than 1,000 yen (about $9), for example, and you have the option to be blocked on Twitter by Platinum co-founder Hideki Kamiya, whose sensitive blocking trigger finger is well known among the gaming community.

Xbox gamers may well be disappointed to be left out of proceedings, but that’s not to say they won’t ever have the chance to play the remastered version. In the Kickstarter FAQs, Platinum says that getting the game to Switch, Steam and PS4 was already a “challenging endeavor” but if the campaign is successful enough they definitely plan on porting the game on additional platforms. Given the huge numbers the campaign has already seen in its short time online, then, an Xbox One version is not an impossibility.

The listing was first spotted by Kotaku, and is interesting for a couple of reasons. To start, Drop It: Block Paradise first came out in 2017. If that weren’t strange enough, it’s been available on the Wii U in Europe, but not North America, since that same year as well. For whatever reason, Drop It: Block Paradise is only now making its way to the US eShop.

According to Wikipedia, a couple of other games came out on the Wii U this year, but there’s nothing on the list that really stands out. You never want to say never, but it’s likely Drop It: Block Paradise will go down, at least in North America, as the Wii U’s final release.

Of course, as far as most people are concerned, the Wii U effectively died in 2017. That year, Nintendo stopped manufacturing the console and released The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, its last first-party title for the system. Everything that’s come afterward has been delaying the inevitable — but surprisingly enough, the Wii U appears to only be mostly dead.