Annapurna announces a collector's edition containing 12 of their best games, but should you buy it?
When something costs $200, it's worth breaking down its value for money.
Two months from today it'll be Christmas Day, which is a terrifying realisation. But merch company iam8bit are hoping they have you covered if there's a big Annapurna fan in your life. They've just announced the Annapurna Interactive Deluxe Limited Edition Collection for the Nintendo Switch, which is such a mouthful that the title alone feels like it justifies a $200 price tag.
Yes, the Annapurna Interactive Deluxe Limited Edition Collection for the Nintendo Switch will set you back $200 — equivalent to roughly £165 if you live in the UK, and that's not counting some potentially hefty international shipping fees if you live outside of the USA. Alright, that's not actually out of the ordinary for Limited-Special-Collector's-Ultimate-Editions these days, but I suspect it still feels quite steep to most of us.
I'm not here to be snarky; I love Annapurna's curation of excellent indie games, and 12 of the greatest hits from the publisher's back-catalogue are included on the cartridge that's the centrepiece of this collection. With hindsight I think it's to their credit that my first response upon seeing the list of games was to question some big omissions: seriously, no Stray, no Gone Home, what gives? (OK, so Stray isn't actually out on Switch and iam8bit isn't a porting studio, but Gone Home is legitimately an odd one to miss out.)
It's hard to pick fault with what is included, though, since the games in this collection are pretty much wall-to-wall bangers, including at least two widely-agreed upon GOTYs in the form of What Remains Of Edith Finch and Kentucky Route Zero. There are also four games in there that have never received a physical Switch release before, so if you've ever wanted a cartridge containing If Found…, I Am Dead, Solar Ash, or Hindsight, this is currently your only option.
Rounding out the collection with a bit of something for everyone we have Gorogoa, Donut County, Sayonara Wild Hearts, The Pathless, The Artful Escape, and Neon White. This collection is genre-agnostic enough that even most ardent Annapurna supporters likely won't have played everything in it, which could be good or bad depending on how you assess the value of something like this.
Buying each of these games individually from the Nintendo eShop would cost $259 from the US store or £213 from the UK store. So while the bundle discount is fairly decent if you're based in the States, actually getting it physically to you if you live elsewhere will likely wipe out any savings you might make — to say nothing of the fact that if you're interested at all then you likely already own several of these games, might not be particularly interested in all of the ones you don't already own, could probably pick most of them up supercheap in a Steam sale if you also game on PC, etc. etc.
But of course, access to the games themselves is only one part of why people buy collector's editions. In addition to the satisfaction of owning a physical cartridge containing all of these games, the collection comes with an exclusive Annapurna-branded Switch case with cartridge storage, and an art book including a two-page spread with developer notes on each game plus a foreword by Annapurna's founder Nathan Gary.
You can preorder the Annapurna Interactive Deluxe Limited Edition Collection for the Nintendo Switch from the iam8bit website, and it's expected to ship in Q4 of this year (i.e. just in time for Christmas, hopefully).
As a limited special edition there will be only 2,500 copies printed, so if you simply must have this, then it's worth putting in your order sooner rather than later. iam8bit products ship from the USA and do incur additional fees and taxes for international buyers; but on the plus side for the dozens of people worldwide who live in a country that's not America, the cartridge included in this collection is region free.