Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

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@Mariotag Did like the games included in the Expansion Pack at the time, but I mean, locking the games away in a higher tier and having it be $50 or $80 for a couple of N64 games (at the time, the NSO N64 library wasn’t as big as it is compared to now) is just a bad move and it didn’t have a ton at the time to justify it for others. I didn’t quite mind it because I didn’t play a lot of the games included in the sub before and despite the small library, the games included were so great, though Banjo-Kazooie was what made me want the Expansion Pack the most and was kind of my main reason for getting an Xbox, since Rare’s game library is limited on the Switch and all their games are only available if you have an active NSO sub.

It stinks they are limiting seasons because there were a ton of shows I watched on Free that I liked a lot that I want to continue watching, that being Jujutsu Kaisen and JoJo, but I assume them only having the first seasons of those anime available in Free is probably a way to try and convince me to get to a higher sub to watch the rest if I really liked the anime, kind of like a trial. I should have also said that some anime they have available on Free sometimes get locked behind the higher tiers later on, so a couple of anime I put on my watchlist were unwatchable because they locked them away, but they make the more iconic and popular anime free to watch. They do these monthly sampler things that allow you to watch a few episodes of Premium anime for free for a limited time, but I haven’t done so because the shows they offer don’t really interest me. Sounds like Crunchyroll was way better back then, if only I had tried it sooner then I probably would have been able to watch more. I never watched the dubs of the shows because they limited a ton of the episodes in English, only having three available and then locking the rest, though not saying I have an issue with watching anime with Japanese audio or English audio.

So it sounds like after they bought Funimation they took off a ton of anime on Hulu and put them on Crunchyroll. That’s interesting, but what I find interesting is that there are a few series on Crunchyroll that are streamed on other services. An example that comes to mind for me is JoJo, because Crunchyroll airs 4 seasons of the show, but Hulu (if I can remember) aired 3 seasons of it and Netflix airs all 5 seasons, with season 5 being exclusive to Netflix though I think they aired the 5th season on Japanese TV channels and they release the anime on disc. I’d assume the companies with the right to JoJo and the anime licensed the show out to multiple streamers, but it is interesting that the show is on multiple platforms.

I’ll admit that not all live-action remakes can be bad, but with how Disney does it and the intentions with them, being an easier way to make money, it just tells you they don’t really have a bunch of new ideas. The only one I thought was fine was their remake of the Jungle Book, but I remember that film was a bit more darker than the original.

It would be so cool to see some of the characters that had licensing issues to come back in another game, but who knows if Disney will be up to having Sora in Smash again for another time. I know the Smash 4 polls requested a ton of characters that were, at the time, hard and somewhat impossible to get into the game because of licensing issues but were added in Ultimate. I remember I read that Banjo and Kazooie were also highly requested during the Smash 4 polls, but of course they had issues with Microsoft owning all of Rare’s characters and IP, and at the time Microsoft was against having them appear on a Nintendo console again because of exclusivity, but Microsoft have become more lenient over their games and characters appearing on other consoles, especially after those reports saying there isn’t any restrictions for their games appearing on other consoles and that whole “This is an Xbox” campaign they did late last year.

If they do want the films to feel like Avengers-level events, I do expect them to maybe do a couple more spin-offs introducing a few more characters in-between film releases (like how they released Knuckles earlier in 2024 and then released Sonic 3 at the end of 2024) but I am fine with them not doing so. I do kind of get some Avengers and MCU vibes with the universe they have for the films and stuff. Yeah, I do think they would have to avoid having more of the characters they introduce living in the same house, but I wonder how they’ll do it when there are more films.

The similarities they have to mythological creatures is cool to think about, especially since I read a lot about Japanese mythology and spirits a few years ago and some of the stories that had mythological creatures and spirits interacting with humans and the Earth. I do wonder if the later Sonic films will explore a bit of other planets and extraterrestrial places since the Sonic characters there originate from other places, since I remember that the first film showed a bit of Sonic’s home planet (which I remember they called Mobius, and I remember the film and the first trailer with the redesigned Sonic showed bits of the original Green Hill from the games) and there was that mushroom planet at the end of the first film and in the beginning parts of Sonic 2, but I expect the films to stick to Earth as the setting. Maybe they could go over a bit of the extraterrestrial planets in a spin-off of some sort and kind of delve a bit into the alien-like aspects of the characters since they come from different places. I think that would be cool.

I heard about that while Xbox One announcement fiasco with the whole sharing games thing (which, PlayStation did a funny short video indirectly taking a jab at that feature) and the Kinect being necessary in order to use the Xbox but they had to change it because it did so much damage to the brand, plus in that infamous reveal video from E3 where they showcased stuff like movies and other features with little to no games is insane, I think the main highlights of that reveal was because the Xbox is a game console first and foremost and I think other entertainment (movies, streaming services and television) from a game console comes second when you are a console manufacturer, and if you don’t show the public what games you have in store for your console, then your probably going to make them lose interest in your console fast. It’s also what probably contributed to the “Xbox has no exclusives/games” thing people have said for maybe a decade now after the 360-era ended and they moved on to the Xbox One. I even think they said themselves that they haven’t recovered from the Xbox One announcement since the One had significantly lower sales than the 360, and so far the Series X and S has even lower sales but that could hopefully change in the future. I do think Xbox has some good exclusives (even if it’s too little unfortunately), but there are other things Microsoft could do better, of course the DRM and Microsoft account connection to the Xbox (especially after reading that story with the person losing their Xbox account since it’s tied to a Microsoft account) and obviously managing their studios better, because they really do a bad job at doing it. The DRM thing seems like a constant issue for Xbox, especially with that fiasco that happened a few weeks ago where games disappeared from people’s libraries and they couldn’t find them or get good customer support to fix it and they had to wait.

I see. Again, I do hope things get better. If some days don’t go well, remember that there are a hundred more days ahead that will be filled with joy and happiness.

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@Mariotag The only N64 NSO games I actually do own are the Rare games on the Xbox. I think the games in the Expansion Pack are a good deal for people who haven’t played the games before or don’t own a ton, but if you do actually own most of them or specific ones you wanted the most, it makes owning the Expansion Pack a bit redundant. I wanted to play the Rare games the most (both in the SNES and N64 libraries) and now that I own Rare Replay and that includes most of Rare’s iconic and high quality games, as well as the games I wanted to play for a while, there wouldn’t really be a point in me getting the Expansion I’ll admit. Though, it would be nice if they did put the remaining N64 Donkey Kong games on NSO (DK64 and DKR) and I think it would be cool to see Conker on another modern console since the original N64 version and the remake are currently Xbox exclusives, though thinking about it, I wouldn’t have a reason to play it on Switch since I already own the game on Xbox and played through it in full twice and have the improved (but still slightly flawed) remake. I think the Mature 17+ N64 app is for games that are more gory and violent. While Conker is pretty gory (though some of the violence is exaggerated and unrealistic), it has other content in it like the strong crude and impertinent humor and pretty crazy suggestive content that I think would likely cause that app to get more content descriptors, and I wonder if Nintendo would want more unsuitable content besides violence on there. I know they probably wouldn’t mind some cursing, alcohol and smoking, but I don’t know how they would feel about allowing games with more crass and suggestive humor on the 17+ app.

I watched plenty of other anime on Crunchyroll, but JoJo and Jujutsu Kaisen were my favorites out of them all. I liked what I saw in the first season of JoJo. The show is really good with its battles and making them absolutely insane and creative (the second half adapting Battle Tendency has some of the most creative battles I’ve seen by far) and I definitely found Jonathan and Joseph to be likable. Joseph was the one I liked the most, he’s goofy but in a good way. I do think the show and the original manga’s premise having there being a new protagonist and cast of characters (while also sometimes having some old character return) with each season/manga story arc is super interesting and something I haven’t really seen before, and I also LOVE the art style and the way the show handles colors during fight scenes. I have also seen some of the 90s OVA adaptation for Stardust Crusaders, but I heard the OVA and the TV anime adaptation were kinda different from each other because the OVA adapted the later half and ending of the arc’s story and they didn’t adapt the first half until later. I initially didn’t understand that, but if I can remember what we had in the conversation, the same user that talked to me about Crunchyroll said that the OVA jumped ahead in the story because it was made more for hardcore fans and those who read the manga (which I didn’t), so the OVA assumes that the viewer has seen the manga. The jump does make a bit of sense to me, especially given how the anime OVA format is on home video and the way the anime is released and the episode runtime are significantly different than TV anime; usually OVA episodes run usually at around 30 minutes and they can consist of a single episode that runs longer than the usual TV anime runtime. However, despite seeing the OVA, I’d still like to see the TV anime adaptation since again, I heard both the TV anime and OVA adapted Stardust Crusaders in different ways, also because those two adaptations were done by different studios.

Although I’ve only seen the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen, it was pretty fantastic. It’s a nice blend of action with supernatural elements mixed in with a slight bit of horror elements (namely with this race of enemies called Curses) and the final battle of that season was really exciting and cool to watch. The story is pretty serious and there were these couple few episodes that focused on this specific character, which I won’t say anything about to avoid spoilers, but I’ll just say that it was really sad to watch. I also found some of the comedy in it to be hilarious despite how action-filled and very serious the show is. The manga already wrapped up its story, but the anime is currently ongoing. So far the anime has a prequel film and a second season, plus they are working on a third season, but I haven’t seen season 2 or the film yet, but I thought what season 1 had was great and I’d love to continue watching the rest of the show. I have heard of Shield Hero, but I don’t know much about it.

Seems like a ton of anime is getting taken off of Hulu. I did hear a lot about the anime episodes after they sold streaming rights of the 5th season to Netflix, because the episodes not being released weekly was a big complaint I heard a lot, since there was this thing that people in the West call “JoJo Fridays,” since whenever they started a new season of JoJo, every episode was released weekly on a Friday on Japanese TV, but I think I heard the 5th season did away with that because Netflix is sort of known for being used for binge-watching and continuously watching long shows for hours until there are no more episodes left to watch. But, the show was released on Blu-Ray and I remember looking at the Microsoft Store listings for various anime series and the 5th season was available to purchase on there. I also heard that the first four seasons of JoJo aired on Toonami (via Adult Swim) but they used English dubs for the shows instead, so I do think they licensed the show out to multiple streaming services and TV channels if it aired almost everywhere in America.

I feel that way too with remakes by Disney, but moreso with money, because they know how many people love their animated films and think they can get more money out of their audience if they redo the films again but in live-action because it’s the same animated classics, but live-action this time.

James Bond being considered at one point sounded interesting! I heard that in a video about scrapped Smash fighters and I remember someone said in the comments that him getting added would have opened a huge can of worms regarding fighter candidates. Him being considered makes sense since GoldenEye 007 was a huge hit (plus it was one of the most influential and iconic games on a Nintendo console) but he’d be next to impossible to get in, also because he doesn’t originate from a game. I remember Masahiro Sakurai said something about Smash characters, and I think this was for Ultimate, but he said the rule is that if a character debuted in a game first, then they are eligible for Smash, but if the character debuted in another piece of media that isn’t a video game (e.g., a comic book, movie, or show) then they can’t be added because they aren’t a video game character, even if the non-video game character might appear in a licensed game based on the media they are from. I can imagine that there are plenty of official rules they have for Smash, but there are a few that I think the community made up that are wrong, like saying that characters from newer games can’t be added because they aren’t older or iconic, and I saw that brought up a bunch when they added characters like Min Min, since the games some characters first appeared in weren’t very old at the time, and to be frank, it’s a kind of dumb rule and doesn’t make sense, though I also think some people said that because they didn’t like some specific character choices they added in, though I’m not saying people can’t and shouldn’t be disappointed over their favorite characters not making the cut, because I can understand that and having to wait for the next game so their character has a chance again. I’m just looking so forward to the next Smash and what new characters they’ll add. I’d love to see some of my favorites show up, but I’m fine with anything they add.

I heard a lot of Sonic fans online pitching a Shadow spin-off and Keanu Reeves said himself that he would be interested in starring one. I definitely can see them making more spin-offs to expand the film universe a lot, and I feel like they’d definitely want to do something with Shadow ASAP since he’s new to the films and extremely popular. I would expect the newer characters to also be living in other places and maybe some of them traveling around the place, kind of giving the all something to do during the films.

Them maybe exploring a bit more of the extraterrestrial and yokai origins for a few of the characters would be cool to see. Yes, the planet he lived on in the films is named Mobius, but I think it was claimed that they were told to not give Sonic’s home planet a name. People know it’s named Mobius because it came from an official novelization they made for Sonic 2, but an early storyboard from the second film was also supposed to mention the Mobius name.

I think they did talk about how the next CoD game at the time was going to be realistic, and they also put some focus on this dog that appeared in the game. I recall they talked about a Halo game, but that’s all I can remember, and then they said “Xbox will be the next water cooler.” It was just a terrible way to talk about an upcoming console and it pretty much caused a lot of people to not care at the time, and probably contributed to the lower sales compared to the 360. I like the Series S a lot and luckily they are still going to make a follow-up console to the Series consoles, plus there is talk about them making a handheld, but there are some that really want the Xbox to fail and be discontinued completely, which is so strange to want, but I’m sure that comes from console wars discourse, which is really dumb and I don’t get it. I do want them to do online and DRM more. There are a lot more exclusives releasing soon and they seem to be picking up the pace with releasing those, but my issue is how they reveal them early and don’t say anything else until many years later. I’m sure no one remembers Rare’s new game Everwild because they announced that 6 or so years ago, rebooted development, and it’s been a no-show for years, hopefully the eventual June Xbox presentation later this year will have something on it, but I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t show up, plus game development is longer. The one Xbox exclusive I do wanna try is the Perfect Dark reboot, but that doesn’t have a release date yet. Reports said it was either going to release in 2025-2026, but I’ll wait for official confirmation for that.

Sometimes I do feel like it’s hard to know what days will be good quality for me, because sometimes my day may go well and something takes an unexpected turn and ruins my day. It happens a ton, but I try to forget it later. I just hope your doing well.

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@MarioVillager92 Ooh, i do remember Lost Levels because I was playing Super Mario All-Stars on NSO this one time, but I don’t remember if I ever played Lost Levels. I got kind of far with some games in All-Stars, but I never completed the collection. I think I have played some sort of hard levels in Super Mario Maker, but I was kind of bad at playing some levels as well as making my own. I it’s been so many years since I last touched it, but it’s kind of useless to play now since online services were shut off. A lot of the levels I saw though were very creative. There are these ones that are music-based and I think you need to run around and they play covers of specific songs and they use a ton of music blocks to play the song. They weren’t hard to play, but I remember those were very fun.

I remember when they announced 3, but I think I wasn’t super excited because I wasn’t really playing the Switch a lot at the time or any shooter games in general. I remember when they announced it there was this debate on here about whether or not they should make the games live-service because people thought a second Splatoon game on Switch was unnecessary because a lot of people thought 3 didn’t really look different and the fact 2 had a lot of data and progress on it already. I didn’t have an actual NL account at the time so I saw it as a Guest user. I am happy the game turned out to be way better than the previous games and it was fun and did a good job keeping the same stuff that makes the game Splatoon while adding in some new content, but I wish I played it way more before major updates stopped. I only got to maybe level 20, finished the story mode, played a lot of ranked and a bit of Salmon Run and that was it. I got to maybe somewhere near Level 60-70 in the second game as a comparison. Looks like I might have to wait for a 4th game and make sure I actually play it a lot like I did with 2.

I like to use characters that have easy to use up specials when getting to the stage, sometimes I use the up specials around the place to make it hard for enemies to hit me. I’m not a fan of some up specials where you can’t really move around and control where you are going. I probably already talked about it, but some up specials I’m bad at using are Kirby’s and Pyra/Mythra’s because you need to do it near the end of the stage to not fall off since their up specials are very sudden and go fast, but there might be an enemy there waiting for you to do it so they can keep knocking you off the stage. You could play it sometime, I really played Smash a lot for getting content like Spirits and completing World of Light though since I was really into Smash back in 2022 and played it almost daily. Fighting with some human players online was way better than fighting CPUs, but the internet the game has was very unbearable sometimes, it really ruined a ton of matches I was playing and the worst part is, if one person has bad internet and lags a lot, it results in the battle ending and it affects everyone that is playing.

Yep, you just have to find their official YouTube channel or search up “Rare Revealed” and you’ll find some. The interviews/documentaries are fairly old but they are really nice and interesting watches. Their channel has way more of those documentaries than Rare Replay. The ones I got on Rare Replay that I like the most are their making-of documentaries on some of their older games, the ones discussing cancelled games, but my absolute favorite was this video where they had several Rare veterans and other voice actors/actresses re-enact their character(s) voice lines and voices years later.

@Mariotag I haven’t actually touched Rare Replay in a while, I think it’s been since August. I was achievement hunting a ton at that time and it was pretty fun and worth it. The earlier parts of Conker don’t really have any gore besides a few small instances (I wanna say maybe 2-3 instances), but some of the later parts are far more gorier and suggestive. The ones I can remember having a ton of blood and violence was the second to last level in the game (if you see what the level is about it makes sense) and a mansion level. There was also this prehistoric level that had a moderate amount of gore, but that’s mainly during the boss battle and the parts leading up to it. However, I also found that one and the first level of the game is full of a ton of suggestive content that actually surprised me and caught me off guard, but the prehistoric level by far is the most suggestive one the game has. The poo boss and the really weird scene with the sunflower and bee are the most talked about parts of the game, but I think when it comes to modern discussion of the game, those two parts are the only things people talk about. I do wonder if that stuff is going to prevent it from getting added to NSO, given it’s a super old game and I think Nintendo could maybe have an issue with how some of the stuff aged in that one.

Nintendo was rather lenient with the game back when it was being developed for the N64, but they were initially concerned about people mistaking it for a kids game (which did happen quite a lot, even resulted in some parents and grandparents accidentally buying the game for their kids/grandkids without knowing it was for adults) and they interfered a few times in development to have Rare remove a reference to Pokémon and a few offensive jokes and references, but Nintendo wasn’t really involved with the game’s development besides those few times. In fact, Nintendo in general never had much involvement with Rare’s game or management besides giving them the money and funding to make their games and requesting them to change stuff at times and some instances like Dinosaur Planet becoming Star Fox Adventures. Nowadays Nintendo does allow more mature games on Switch and is more open to them (moreso the super violent and suggestive kind) but I’m unsure how they feel about super crass and intentionally offensive humor in those kinds of games.

I didn’t mind some of the violent stuff in the first season, but it sounds like the later seasons are more violent, though I’m sure I can handle it if I do get around to watching the later seasons. I think I did hear about the 90s OVA cutting content out and kind of skipping around, but again, I would still like to watch the TV anime adaptation of Part 3 since I heard that one adapts the source material far more closely with minimal changes, so there’s stuff I missed and do not know about. Joseph is probably my favorite lead in the show so far.

I did hear a bit about the manga’s ending from people who read it and they said it was bad and poorly-written, but I can’t say anything on that since I have never read it, but I can say that the first season of the anime was pretty good since I’ve seen it. Cool, I’ll look up a bit on Shield Hero. I haven’t really seen any isekai anime yet. The only one I can think of that I have seen was this anime movie called The Wonderland. I thought that one was okay and not really all that memorable, but the world the characters are in was really fantastical and whimsical and the animation was great. I can actually recognize the person who designed the character and art style for the film.

Similarly, there were some shows I was gonna watch for free on Crunchyroll but they got removed and added to the higher tiers. Netflix releases with anime do sound kind of back and forth with the releases it seems. I can remember looking at some listings for ongoing anime on Netflix’s website and I can remember some shows were being simulcast and having episodes added weekly, but it’s strange that they couldn’t do that for anime like JoJo, but probably because they purchased streaming rights to that and could release it however they wanted and the other shows they have were just licensed series that they don’t have full streaming rights over.

It’s good they stuck to that rule for a while now, because I know that trying to get film characters in the game would be hard, but they would maybe feel out of place since they aren’t from games! I need to remember where Sakurai talked about that specific rule. Curious, what characters do you really want for the next Smash game? Mine is just a few Rare characters unsurprisingly, but I also wouldn’t really care if they didn’t add any of them, just as long as Banjo doesn’t get axed in the next game!

A Shadow spin-off film or series of some sort has a lot of potential and would be perfect if they want to develop him a bit more before later films. I wonder what the cast of characters would be if he did appear in his own show or movie, if they’ll have more characters from the games or more original human characters like the Knuckles spin-off. I feel like they would probably save the newer Sonic characters for the films, given those are supposed to be big cinematic events and they’d likely want to save those characters for the films instead.

I can remember Mobius being used more in western Sonic media (I think it was the DiC cartoons and some of the Archie comics?) but I think now they don’t really discuss Mobius or mention it, probably because newer Sonic media doesn’t have much of a connection with the 90s cartoons and Archie comics. Although I haven’t read the Archie comics (and I sometimes hear a few stories in those aren’t well-written) I remember that some characters, locations and stuff from the cartoons appeared in those, but modern Sonic media doesn’t reference those or have any connections to them besides the fact that the Sonic 2 novelization mentioned that movie Sonic’s home planet is Mobius.

I don’t really know why they’d call it “the next water cooler.” I can still remember they said a bunch of other things about the Xbox One that made it look bad and uninteresting, besides how they talked more about TV and movies than actual games or their game studios. I am hoping the Perfect Dark reboot is good, but I am worried that it won’t deliver or be mediocre, because games looking promising upon reveal and then turning out to be okay seems way too common nowadays. I’m not really into Rare’s modern games like Sea of Thieves, but I do want to know what Everwild is about, but they unfortunately haven’t said anything about that in years. I should have said better DRM, since some of the Xbox’s current DRM is slightly poor, with the stuff I mentioned about that account getting hacked and no one having a way to save it and give ownership back to the original user and the games vanishing from people’s libraries. That reasoning does make sense but I think it’s a mix of that and vitriol, also because they didn’t do a good job responding to those initial reports that said they were making four of their exclusives multi platform and it instilled a lot of worry and fear about the Xbox no longer having exclusives and that there wouldn’t be a point in owning an Xbox if all the games were everywhere, and by the time they got to officially confirming that report, the damage was sorta already done. I don’t really feel any way toward some of the games going multi-platform, but they just did a poor job with instantly confirming whether or not it was true or false.

I do feel like it happens a bit too much to me. I want it to stop happening so frequently, but I just think I need to do more and do other things to get my mind off of the unexpected things that happen with my days sometimes.

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@Mariotag although I do think Conker is way more gorier than Rare’s other games with moderate violence (e.g, Jet Force Gemini and Perfect Dark, which got an M-rating like Bad Fur Day but PD deserved a T-rating honestly) I still do think that the kind of violence in that game won’t really prevent it from getting added to the 17+ NSO, since that app is reserved more for games that have more violent and bloody content, but I think the strong suggestive content, the humor and maybe some of the language could hinder its chances of getting added since the 17+ NSO doesn’t have any content descriptors pertaining to those. The suggestive jokes and this gigantic double-entendre they put during the boss battle in the prehistoric level (as well as the cutscene that plays after you win the battle) sort of shocked me since it made me think “Nintendo allowed this on their console?” Not in a negative way, more in a shocked way since they often avoided being closely associated with games that were for older audiences back then. When you do pick the game up again, the game gets increasingly more violent and bloody compared to the opening parts. I was able to handle it, but it’s just mainly because of the game’s more cartoony art style and the graphics and some of the violence being over-the-top. The second to last level especially, given its premise is about a war and it’s based on the Normandy Invasion and references the film Saving Private Ryan.

There was a Pokémon reference they wanted to put in (they even finished the cutscene) but it was scrapped because Nintendo likely didn’t want a more kid-friendly IP they publish referenced and associated with an M-rated game. There was a video where someone did semi-restore the original scene complete with the reference, and there was a Pikachu tail in the scene too!

I see, if I do watch the anime I’ll take note of it. The OVA was kinda violent too from what I watched as well. Regarding the anime, I read that they are having an event in April and the event is apparently going to be about the past and future of the anime, and people think they’ll announce the next season there since I read that the last event they held back in 2021 announced season 5. I think by the time they do get to animating the rest of the story arcs, there will be a ton of episodes I need to watch if I choose to see the rest of the anime. I actually was interested in JoJo for a while before I saw the anime, I remember listening to the opening songs from the anime (seasons 1-4) and the art and designs of the characters are awesome and so unique. I think Hirohiko Araki is a master with character design since the designs are memorable but also unique, and the artwork I saw from the manga, as well as his art style, was translated well in the anime, plus the opening animation for season 1 has splendid CGI. I should have also added that I have played a JoJo fighting game called All-Star Battle R on the Xbox, and I liked that a lot (although I stink at traditional fighter games).

It could, but I still haven’t read the manga to judge its ending, but the general consensus was that people thought the ending was bad, but I’m sure some people thought it was good. I did hear similar things about My Hero Academia (another popular manga I haven’t read) but I think the reception to its ending was more mixed. I do hear about that kind of reception and infamy isekai anime and manga has, but I think some complaints come from its overly long titles and some think it’s generic? I remember every time an anime forum shows off a key visual and summary of an isekai anime’s premise, the comment section always expects it to be generic and bad quality, but I haven’t watched much isekai or just isekai in general besides that anime movie I mentioned, so I’m more open to watching isekai or any genre really. I just checked that Crunchyroll has the first season of Shield Hero for free, so I could check that out soon! I do have a few anime on a CR watchlist I have been meaning to get to.

I checked, and it does sound like Hulu has some stuff locked behind tiers, but it sounds like it’s only a few shows because of licensing. I’m not sure since I haven’t used it in a few years.

Those are some nice picks! I don’t exactly have any besides a few Rare characters, but I don’t really mind whoever they add in Smash, just seeing new faces in the roster and seeing the roster expand is cool. Still hoping the next game’s roster doesn’t get significantly smaller or has minimal character cuts. I wouldn’t be a huge fan of a new Smash game or reboot that restarts the roster back to square one and is smaller akin to Smash 64.

Heard about how they want to explore more plantes in the films, it’s a coincidence that news came out when I was talking about lot about how they could explore more planets lol. I am excited to see what they might do with Sonic 4. Yeah, I do think they should take their time with a Shadow spin-off and maybe release it when they eventually introduce more characters tied to him and his story. I just wonder what they do actually have planned for him after 3, but it’ll be a few years till we actually know. I know that they said for a films they have been trying to put Rouge in the films but they said they have been unsuccessful in doing so each time, but I think introducing that character early wouldn’t have been a good choice since Shadow wasn’t present in the first film and not in the second (besides the mid-credits scene)) but now that he is in the Sonic film universe, now I think that they can introduce characters with strong ties to him.

I have actually watched almost all the main three DIC Western Sonic cartoons (AoStH and Sonic Underground) but never saw Sonic SatAM, but I know everyone liked that show and say it’s one of the best written Sonic shows ever. I also think Sonic being apart of a freedom resistance group and movement was from SatAM and I’m sure I’ve heard of that being apart of some of the Archie comics. I think Sonic Underground had something a bit similar to that since in Underground, Mobius was already taken over by Robotnik (who overthrew Queen Aleena, the original ruler of Mobius and Sonic’s mother) and the whole plot was about Sonic and his siblings trying to find their mother while fighting against Dr. Robotnik’s forces, so Sonic and his siblings were kind of a resistance group, and the Freedom Fighters were in that show, but consisted of different members and Sonic was not apart of them. I remember liking that show a ton, but it ended on a cliffhanger and the show never got a proper ending and everyone thinks Underground was the worst out of the three DIC Sonic shows in terms of writing and animation (there was this scene with Sonic and Knuckles that is very infamous from its many animation errors in just a short timespan), but at least the theme song was catchy and iconic. In that show Dr. Robotnik was far more intimidating and threatening compared to his game incarnation.

They are just doing a bad job at managing their gaming division to the point it’s making others not want to get another Xbox or continue playing it, plus with the bad DRM and the outages that occasionally occur. It still is good that they are marketing the Xbox as being a game console and not an entertainment console like what they did from the Xbone reveal, so they have learned what not to do again, but it’s crazy how much that presentation affected the Xbox in the long run. I just hope the Xbox doesn’t go away ever, and some of those responses about the Xbox being discontinued seem to be out of fear. I have heard a bit of the CDi actually having games but never being intended for that purpose. It was the one with the infamous Hotel Mario and those three poorly-made Zelda games, right?

Oh, I’m sorry, that sounds very hard to deal with. I sometimes do have obsessive thoughts and I do worry a bit about stuff that might happen. Is there anything you sometimes do to make yourself feel better and having those worrying thoughts go away? I like to draw and play games to make those feelings go away and it works, but sometimes only for a little.