Another gaming classic is about to disappear from digital shelves due to licensing issues. Hot on the heels (wheels?) of the fuss over the delisting of Forza Horizon 4 – a move that removed one of the best racing games in modern times away from ever being bought again, or more importantly preserved, comes news of another game being removed from availability. This time it is the more niche, but equally important for other reasons, Cave shoot ‘em-up Mushihimesama, which is about to be eradicated from history as far as the Nintendo Switch version goes.

The Switch has been a good home to many classic arcade shoot ‘em-ups from the likes of Cave. Some of the best shmups ever found a player base on Nintendo’s handheld so this is very annoying at best and shows scant regard for players at worst.

Mushihimesama is a Japanese shmup that is ludicrously difficult and expensive to get hold of in a physical form so the last hope for so many who wanted to play this bullet-hell classic was the Switch downloadable version. Yeah, that’s going now with the reasoning, “Due to the expiration of the license agreement for Nintendo Switch…will be delisted on August 10th, 2024”

So, it will still be available for a month and if you purchase it you will be able to keep it and even download it again in the future, but this again shows the fragility of digital products.

Once again, as with Forza, in a few weeks time the only way to get your hands on Mushihimesama will be to pirate it and play it through a Nintendo Switch emulator – remember those, you can’t readily get those easily now, or a modded early Switch.

Mushihimesama (or Bug Princess) is still available on Steam and there’s no mention of a delisting there as yet, but you have to wonder what the license is that is expiring to prevent it from continuing to be sold on the handheld format.

If you want to pick it up on the Switch before it vanishes forever, it will set you back $19.99 for this particular bit of gaming history.

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