Nintendo Download: The Week Nobody Asked for Denshattack!

Let's talk about the Nintendo Download for July 16th. I know, I know — the headline is a mess. Denshattack! Culdcept Begins! Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator! It reads like someone slammed a keyboard on a list of Kickstarter projects. But buried in this week's eShop dump are a few things worth actually looking at.

Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is the headliner, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a game that will make you sore and then ask you to come back tomorrow. I've spent time with the previous entries, and they're honestly fine — they're not Ring Fit Adventure, which had that whole RPG progression system that made you want to keep going. Fitness Boxing is more like a personal trainer who doesn't care about your feelings. The new Advanced Scoring Mode tracks speed and timing, which means it's going to call you out for slacking. The CameraPlay feature lets you see yourself on screen, which is either motivating or horrifying depending on how you feel about watching yourself flail. If you already own the Switch version, there's an upgrade pack. That's the right call.

But let's talk about Culdcept Begins! because this is where things get interesting. Culdcept is one of those series that has always existed in the margins — a hybrid of Monopoly and a trading card game that somehow works. I remember playing the original on Dreamcast and thinking, "This is too weird to survive." And yet here it is, again, on a modern Nintendo console. The series has this strange magnetism for people who like systems that overlap. You move around a board, you play cards to summon creatures and cast spells, and you try to collect tolls from opponents. It's Monopoly if Monopoly had mana and fire elementals. The unexpected connection here is to Pokémon Trading Card Game on Game Boy Color. Both games take a physical card game and translate it into a single-player experience with a board game structure underneath. Culdcept just leans harder into the board game part. If you've ever wanted a game where you can drop a dragon on a property and charge rent, this is it.

Denshattack! is... a game about trains? The name suggests something frantic — "densha" is train in Japanese, and "attack" is attack. I'm guessing it's a tower defense or action game where you defend or attack with trains. I don't know much more, and honestly, that's fine. Some games are for the people who already know what they want.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is the name that made me stop scrolling. The title alone tells you this is either going to be brilliant or a complete mess. The premise appears to be: you are a space warlord who trades babies. I have no idea if this is satire, a commentary on labor markets, or just someone's weird dream. I'm not going to pretend I know. But I will say this: the indie space on Switch has become a museum of interesting failures and weird successes. Games like this exist because someone had a vision and didn't stop to ask if it made sense. I respect that.

Who is this week for? It's for people who already know they want Fitness Boxing 3 — you're either in or out on that series. It's for Culdcept fans who have been waiting for another entry. It's for the weirdos who see "Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator" and think, "Yes, that's the one." It's not a week for blockbusters, but it's a week for niches.

And that's fine. Not every week needs to be Tears of the Kingdom. Some weeks are just about finding the one weird thing that you didn't know you wanted. For me, that's Culdcept. For you, it might be the baby trading. No judgment.

Verdict: A weird, scrappy week that rewards curiosity — Fitness Boxing 3 is for the grinders, Culdcept is for the overlap enthusiasts, and Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is for anyone who needs to know what that title actually means.