^{Image: Nintendo}

This cosy summer-themed game will get a global English release this August. 

A videogame based on the Crayon Shin-chan manga and anime franchise is finally getting an English release outside of Japan on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 later this year. The game is called Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation – The Endless Seven-Day Journey, which is a bit of a mouthful, so let’s just call it Shin-chan for now. 

This cosy adventure game has actually been available in Japan since 2021, but hasn’t received a Western release until now. It’s also a crossover with the ‘My Summer Vacation’ games, created by the series’ developer Millennium Kitchen. The game will support English subtitles upon its release, but we’re not sure if we’ll get a full English dub as well. 

For now, check out the game’s 2021 reveal trailer:

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Think of Shin-chan as a combination of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, only with much less farming and more of a focus on familiar characters from the Crayon Shin-chan cartoons and manga. You play as Shin-chan, a five-year-old kid with an overactive imagination who runs around during summer vacation fishing in streams, snapping up bugs and taking pictures. 

Shin-chan also interacts with members of his family while he’s on vacation, which can be done through several of the available minigames, or in the storyline that unfolds as you go on exploring the sunny town. The game’s visuals look really pretty and fairly authentic to the source material too, probably because the anime series’ director Kazu Ayabe worked on the game. 

Here’s the game’s story, according to the official website:

Hiroshi has to go on a business trip to Kyushu, so now the entire Nohara family has decided to stay with a childhood friend of Misae’s in Assou, Kumamoto. But when they arrive at Kumamoto Station on their way to Assou, they meet a strange man who offers them an even stranger camera on the condition that they’ll act as his witnesses… With his new camera in hand, Shinnosuke can enjoy his summer vacation in the beautiful Assou fields and mountains to the fullest. The scenery is even crawling with creatures that he would never find in Kasukabe. And there are townspeople to help and new friends to make. That said… don’t these kids look an awful lot like the ones he knows from home?

It sounds like the story is a little more ominous than the cutesy trailer’s visuals might suggest. Personally, we’re just in it for the dinosaurs. This game launches on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in August, 2022. In case you missed it, Valve’s Portal games are also launching on the Switch this week.