Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Tyranexx Yeah, I do think I have heard of Rare's management being the point of discussion for a long time, and the quality of the management too.

I have also heard of how good Sea of Thieves is, but I sadly don't have much of an interest in it or an interest in Yooka-Laylee too, mostly from the reviews saying its ok, but what struck out to me the most was I watched a video on it and there was a game show segment that repeated a total of 3 TIMES, and although I love Banjo, I hate the game show segments they put in at the end, and a game having it repeat more than once sounds like torture lol, but I did hear that they are working on a remake or rework for Yooka that may be interesting, sounds like they are going to iron out some issues with it, but I wonder if there will be attempts to make the game feel less repetitive and outdated gameplay-wise. Hopefully, they do so, but realistically, I would expect updates and fixes to a few small issues.

Yep, been playing Yokai Watch for a few days, and I've been enjoying it. I was a pretty huge fan back when they first localized it in 2015, and I've been in a pretty big Yokai Watch mood as of late since they showed a concept trailer on a new entry called Holy Horror Mansion, and I did find that one interesting since they seem to be replacing a lot of concepts and elements from the previous games with new ideas, plus they are using a new protagonist but I genuinely hope they don't use AI art in the final product since the game has kind of started controversy on that aspect and discussion on AI being used in game development.

My siblings liked Yokai Watch like me and we watched the dubbed anime, and I remember the catchy as heck theme song for it too. I have completed Fleshy Souls, but I made a new save file to replay it, cuz I revisited my completed file and I have no idea what to do since it has been maybe 2 or 4 years since I beat it lol. As I replay it, I am getting good memories of playing it for the first time back in 2016 and being obsessed with Yokai Watch a ton. I made the same mistake of not buying Yokai Watch 3, and I now deeply regret not buying it since I only found out recently that physical copies are expensive, and with the eShop closed, I have no way to play it.

I think why I didn't buy 3 when they released it was probably because I didn't have an interest in Yokai Watch anymore at the time it came out in America since 3 was released in 2019 and it had been three years ever since they released the second game at that point, and I had been playing the Switch instead of my 3DS, but I did have occasional play sessions with my 3DS. When they announced the eShop was closing, I initially didn't care since I was occupied with my Xbox (which was new at the time) and while I did feel a bit sad when the eShop closed, I thought I was fine with having not bought anything before it shut down, but now I don't feel happy that I didn't purchase it before it closed, cuz there were so many good games on there that have never seen updated ports on current-gen consoles and handhelds and now can't be played anymore.

I think why Yokai Watch did poorly in America was how long it took to localize them and the somewhat long waits between entries, by the time the third game came to America, the 3DS was nearing the end of its lifespan and the Switch was super popular. Although a lot of people dismissed Yokai Watch as being a Pokemon rip-off, I think it was a pretty creative and great series of role-playing games, and I love its absurd and comedic themes a ton cuz I don't see a lot of RPG games act super silly. On top of that, me being someone who loves art and drawing animals, I enjoy the character designs and artwork of the yokai a lot, with Jibanyan and Usapyon probably being my favorites right now in terms of design. I am sad the series isn't as popular as it was back when it started a decade ago (time flies) and the fact they never localized the fourth entry or the series' many spin-offs, but with how Level-5 did eventually come back to international markets despite the closure of their North American division, I am hoping they do get around to localizing Yokai Watch 4 (even if its just English text and not a full English dub) but I am a bit doubtful they will, given that game did the worst out of the four mainline entries in Japan and they probably wouldn't want to repeat the same result in America. But, there was a Yokai Watch-related hashtag that actually got on the trending boards on Twitter/X a few years ago, which does make me happy knowing that it has some popularity in America and fans still want to see English localizations, but I don't think that it's enough to convince Level-5 to bring older entires to America.

@Sunsy Subway Surfers was so fun when I used to play it, it's everywhere nowadays, mostly in memes I come across online. I did play a lot of random mobile games back then alongside a few of the most iconic ones, but I can't remember the names of those...I know I used to play Minion Rush, Subway Surfers, a ton of Talking Tom and Friends games and another one called Pou. I loved Sonic CD a lot. Nowadays, I really just play a Vocaloid rhythm game on my phone and maybe some Fire Emblem Heroes.

Hm, I don't think there are any games I have liked and played that have become unplayable, maybe there are, but I'm just not thinking enough. I could say the first Splatoon game on the Wii U since the servers have been shut down and you can only play the offline modes now, but I have played the two bigger and better sequels on Switch, but I feel bad for the people who only had the first game and the Wii U since they can't play it anymore at this point.

I remember getting ads for Dragalia Lost a ton of times on some other apps I used, but I didn't know much about it besides the fact that the characters transformed into dragons, there were collaborations with Persona and Mega Man, and the main character going on a quest to save his sister I believe. I did think the art style and overall look of it looked nice, I can recognize the guy who drew the art for it since I have come across some of his YouTube videos on drawing. I think it could have been fun if I had tried it, but it's too late now. It seems like Nintendo is slowing down a bit on releasing and making mobile games since a lot of them have closed down and it is been a bit since they last released a new game.

I have also watched some "iceberg" videos on people documenting and finding canceled or lost media of early versions of games and it's interesting. Still on the topic of Conker, I have seen some footage of the original version of Bad Fur Day when it was still known as Twelve Tales and some of the iceberg videos have mentioned this and how some people are actively looking for a playable version of it but haven't had any luck so far. But, I remember just last year one of Rare's founders showed a picture and a one-minute video online showing off the logo sequence of Twelve Tales. People believe that it's a fully playable prototype, but he did not specify whether or not that was the case. Despite that, I still found it interesting that he had a still functioning cartridge showing an early version of the game after all these years and how it was implied from old Rare employees that the tech and computers they used to do work on Twelve Tales were completely wiped and gone after it was turned into Bad Fur Day. I don't know, just hearing about early versions of games and getting to see it is so interesting, and it's fun imagining how some games could have been different in the final product.

@Tyranexx
Yokai Watch 3 is having way more contents than Yokai Watch 2, from new locations, new Merican Yokai, Forbidden fruit item for 100% chance getting other Yokai, more bigger number chance of Gatcha machine, Blaster T mode, etc.
I personally after once played Yokai Watch 3, I became less engaged with previous Yokai Watch games. You still able to get the Wicked Yokai creatures from Yokai Watch 2 Psychic Specters in Yokai Watch 3.

My Yokai Watch obsession is taking hold! Time for a new avatar now lol, anyway, how is everyone doing?

I made a couple of fanarts that I plan on sharing tomorrow, pretty excited, I got a lot of art done thanks to drawing on smaller paper! Drawing on bigger paper is super time consuming, but the best part of drawing small is being able to draw faster. Trying to fill up a sketchbook I bought back in March and trying not to get the urge to rip pages out. Usually, I don’t finish sketchbooks and tend to rip pages out when I don’t like how they look. The sketchbook I have is missing a few pages, but I plan on keeping the majority of them inside. I love all the drawings, but one of them has such an eyesore of a background lol but I think that was my intention. I was inspired by some art project I came across online when I was searching pose references and thought I’d copy it, but eh, I don’t think it looks amazing.

On the gaming side, I haven’t touched Yokai Watch in a few days, but I plan on going back to it. I downloaded a big update for my rhythm game, and the new visuals and UI are so clean and nice, and they introduced a new note type in newer songs. I played a few matches online with people; however, some of the people on there have a huge issue with disbanding and causing everyone to disconnect when a game is found, so I only got three online games in. Playing rhythm games online is pretty stressful, especially since you need to pay close attention to what is happening on screen, but luckily, I did pretty well with them, so I’m satisfied with that. going to play more of it later, though, I only played for a few minutes.

EDIT: Ok, about the fanart thing, I’m now looking at reference images for one of the characters I drew and wow, I got a bit of things really wrong with the design lol. Gotta draw something up real quick to make up for it!

They finally did it!!

Yeeesh, I thought GameStop would come in and save me but it didn’t! I saw the two other Yo-Kai Watch games priced reasonably, but they literally have a copy of Yo-Kai Watch 3 at nearly $100 dollars! I’ll never be able to play the game now…Why do the people selling this game hate happiness (´༎ຶོρ༎ຶོ`)

@MarioVillager92 I hope you are enjoying Zelda, it’s been a while since I last played a Zelda game, the only ones I can remember playing in recent times was Breath of the Wild and that Tri-Force Heroes spin-off on the 3DS, but I returned that one years ago. I find that smaller games fit more into my schedule. Just yesterday I downloaded a big update for my rhythm game and got the chance to play online with people again. The game sometimes has these events where you can vote for one of two groups, and then you play with four other people that chose your group and fight against the opposing team when playing a song. All you really need to do to win is get a higher score than the other side. It’s kind of like Splatfests in Splatoon, except you duke it out by hitting notes and timing your taps to the beat!

It’s really fun, but a lot of people kept disconnecting and disbanding game rooms I was in just before the song started. Sometimes they disconnect when a song they don’t like is selected, or if it’s ridiculously hard. I don’t disconnect at all since it be a bad move, but I remember once that after they chose a song I really liked in a room I was in once, I accidentally swiped the tab of my phone down and it disconnected me, so they had one less player because of a mistake I made.

Everyone is so nice here, I wanna interact with them all I have never had any bad interactions with people online, but I have seen how rude they can sometimes act with others.

Still love changing avatar pictures, I just changed mine to an anime screenshot of a character from an RPG video game series called Yo-kai Watch. I am pretty obsessed with it right now and I am replaying the second game on my 3DS. A bunch of people in America dismissed it as a Pokémon rip-off, but I was really into Yo-kai Watch alongside Splatoon back then. I eventually lost interest in the former, but I got back into it and I really remember what I liked about it, mostly from how it’s a modern twist on Japanese folklore and mythology mixed with some absurd and lighthearted humor and situations. I watched the anime based on it (which coincidentally, was animated by the same studio that does the Pokémon anime) but I only saw the dubbed first season and the first anime film. Netflix never streamed the other anime films or the remaining two seasons for the series, so I didn’t get onto the season where they introduced the little bunny guy in my profile picture. I have been wanting to watch the anime again, but Netflix no longer has it and it’s on more than one streaming service, so I don’t know if I will go back to watching it.

Still on topic of avatar pictures, I set the Viva Piñata one on my Xbox account, but I am already thinking of changing it to another Yo-Kai Watch character. I don’t know, I really love the way a lot of the yokai in that series look.

Oh gosh I just discovered the Pokedance! Adding that to my wind down dance rotation at night. (Usually includes Nanchu soran bushi and whatever Perfume dance is in my rotation).

@Pastellioli Thanks, I'm definitely liking the game. I'm decently far in it, maybe like halfway through as of this post? For me, I finished Tears of the Kingdom before getting Echoes of Wisdom, I played a pretty good amount of Zelda over the last year and this one. Last year, I finished Breath of the Wild before TotK came out, so that felt good. I've never played Tri Force Heroes, I wasn't too interested in a multiplayer-centric Zelda game at the time and I didn't know anybody who had the game anyway. I'm starting to prefer shorter games overall actually, with the occasional long game if I can get into that. That's cool you're enjoying that update, it's for that Hatsune Miku game I'm guessing? It does sound a lot like Splatoon's Splatfests, lol. That sucks about the players disconnecting. I never disconnect on purpose when I play an online game, either. If I do disconnect, it's because I got the dreaded "a communication error has occurred" message, haha.

Yeah, I find the boards at Nintendo Life are generally pretty chill. Although the comment sections in articles in NL can be a bit toxic a lot of the time. Except for the "what are you playing this weekend?" articles, those comments tend to be OK.

That's cool, I've heard of Yo-Kai Watch but I've not played or watched it. Glad you're enjoying it. In terms of Pokemon clones, I used to watch quite a bit of Digimon way back when I was younger, and had a few VHS tapes of the show. I think I saw a little bit of Monster Rancher back in that time too, but not much.

@Tyranexx I saw one of your other posts. Happy belated birthday! I hope you had a lovely day.

Thank you, I've been having fun with both that game and making my passion project. Ah gotcha, that's understandable, I did put a decent amount of progress into Echoes of Wisdom, but things have also been a bit busy for me as well haha.

OK, will do. I think that's the best course of action for me anyway, when I'm actually up for it. Thanks again. Good to know that it might help if I didn't eat too much for a while, too. Ah gotcha, that would've sucked if your cookies actually dropped, haha.

That's cool, my mom's side of the family grew up on a farm as well, if I recall correctly. My great grandparents used to have a lot of cats as well. On a slightly related note, one of their wall clocks was shaped like a cat as well, with the moving tail as the pendulum. It's so cute!

Yeah, the Luigi playthrough is a bit more difficult thanks to his slippery traction. I remember the Cosmic Luigi races being pretty dang hard too, and I already found the Cosmic Mario races being hard to begin with when I first played Super Mario Galaxy. lol

That's cool, sweet potatoes are pretty good. I agree, I think they're sweet enough as they are. They don't call them sweet potatoes for nothing, lol. Boos are indeed fun pranksters, haha! I remember a long time ago, I gifted my brother a Boo amiibo. If I recall correctly, it was a birthday present. On a somewhat related note, I have a Bob-omb plush that I got from Nintendo's New York store long ago.

@Pastellioli Definitely don't force yourself to play a game if you aren't up for it! I'm sure you'll be back into 3D collect-a-thons when the time is right.

I liked what I did see of the Yo-Kai Watch anime and found the theme song (Both the original and localized versions) very catchy. Komasan and Jibanyan are my favorite characters. I like the series's humor too, even if some of it does come across as a bit juvenile sometimes - but this makes sense considering the audience. I do know a few bits of the anime were censored overseas however. My knowledge of Japanese mythology isn't very expansive, but I do know some of the more popular stories and of yokai. My curiosity was piqued when I first played Okami on the Wii over a decade ago and became interested in Japanese mythology, particularly its Shinto influences.

I like Holy Horror Mansion as a concept and think it could do well if Level-5 has learned from their Yo-Kai Watch missteps. The camera concept reminds me of the Fatal Frame series, just way toned down lol. I'm out if they use AI art in products they actually intend to sell however. I'm fine with AI use if nobody intends to profit off of it or pass it off as their own original work - though I do admit this is a gray area. Unfortunately, since Yo-Kai Watch 3 had a very limited release, even secondhand cartridges are ridiculously expensive. I kind of doubt I'll ever buy the game physical unless I locate it in a very out of the way place where an individual or store is selling it way below its value.

You've listed almost all the reasons I suspect why Yo-Kai Watch 4 will never be localized. In addition, since the Yo-Kai Watch ship has sailed even in its native Japan, I don't see Level-5 putting more effort into the original series in general. Regarding the earlier games' combat, I didn't mind the auto-attacking, I just wish the AI was better even if you issue certain attack commands. I didn't like how finicky the purification and Soultimate mini games could be too. Along with what I mentioned before, I'm a huge advocate of the 3DS family's 3D effect - when applied correctly by developers and set at a lower setting, not full blast - and think the Yo-Kai Watch games are among the best examples not made by Nintendo.

@MarioVillager92 Thanks! My bday was one reason of several why I've been pretty occupied IRL lately lol. Thankfully things are settling down a little now.

I hope your passion project continues to go well. I've barely played Echoed of Wisdom over the past week sadly, between general craziness, going to see the new Beetlejuice movie, and trying to progress more in Ys Seven. I shouldn't have started Zelda until I finished Ys.

Regarding rides: no prob! Yeah, don't overeat before doing much of anything thrilling. I have a pretty strong stomach - if some of the disaster and medical drama videos I sometimes watch while eating are why indication - but even I have limits lol.

I've seen one of those cat wall clocks before! They can be pretty cool, but there are some dated designs I've seen online that are a bit cringe lol. I love cats. Heck, we had a stray kitten (spring, so medium-sized; not tiny) show up at work earlier this week. Nobody claimed it, so a coworker took it home. It was very tame, so my guess is it was either a stray who got out or a very lucky one who hitched a ride. My job is along a very busy road.

Cosmic Mario and Cosmic Luigi...I will always be haunted by those freaky laughs lol.

Sweet potatoes are also very versatile and have a lot of culinary uses. I've even had them in pie form! Boos are amazing pranksters! I might try using King Boo in MK8D sometime. That Bob-Omb plush sounds pretty neat. I've had to take a break on plush collecting, but I pick up a smaller one now and then for my car or work desk.

@Tyranexx Indeed, it would be cool to see in person knowing my state still has one. I've been good, aside from a cold I had a few weeks ago. But I'm all better from that. I've mainly doing chores, errands, and playing a few games. As someone who read up on the Statellaview, I'm glad those tracks made it to F-Zero 99, and played that a bit.

Hope things are going good with you and your family.

@Pastellioli Funnily enough, the first time I saw Subway Surfers this year was a reference to a meme video. I did play a few mobile games since getting my smartphone, first one was Trolls Pop and Sonic Dash, then sometime after Trolls Pop ended, I downloaded Minion Rush remembering I tried it once at an in-store iPad display. I remember Talking Tom, I remember watching cartoons on YouTube about that cat on my Wii U (wow, that long ago), I didn't have a smartphone then. I still used a flip phone.

Yeah, I remember playing Splatoon the last week it was online too. To be fair Splatoon has offline modes and could still be played. I was thinking more of games you can't play anymore. It does make me miss community run servers that use to be common in PC games. I could still play a game like Wolfenstein Enemy Territory online 21 years after release, mostly because the game allows players to host their own servers.

Cool, I didn't even know they did a collaboration with Mega Man and Persona. Kinda cool knowing a Nintendo mobile game had different crossovers.

Oh wow, I need to look into this. Some footage of an early version of Conker before it became the M-rated one is something I'd like to see. I still remember one of the old magazines I use to look at had screenshots of Twelve Tales, but were using the new Bad Fur Day name (I think it was Electronic Gaming Monthly IIRC). That's something about old print media, they often had a goldmine of screenshots and info on early versions of games. Even manuals too. In December, I got a PC game called Jagged Alliance from GOG, the quick reference card had a slightly different map than the final game. I also recall the Sonic 2 manual had a different title screen in the manual than the final game.

@MarioVillager92 That's fine, things do happen. I find myself stopping by at least once a week because I get busy with other things. Yes, I saw the F-Zero 99 update. I love the Satellaview tracks are in the game.

I'm glad my cold got better, honestly it lasted shorter than I thought it would have so I got over it quickly. I spent one day in bed and had on a livestream of someone playing Mario Party that day.

SNES Online, the only place to play Puyo Puyo and Kirby's Avalanche on a Nintendo console. I don't think I unlocked Pac-Attack when I played Pac-Man World 2, I did have it on Game Boy. It's a good game, if you're familiar with Pac-Attack, you may like Cosmo Gang The Puzzle.

Hope you enjoy Trolls if you ever watch it, if you have Netflix the first and third movie is on the service. It should be coming really soon to NSO's expansion pack. I don't need to worry too much, I can play F-Zero GP Legend on Wii U, I still have my Wii U hooked up and will play games on it too.

I've played both of those. I always liked the games id Software did, actually working through Return to Castle Wolfenstein, albeit using the RealRTCW mod. I also played Half-Life and Halo as well, I have two of the Master Chief Collection games on PC, and an original Halo PC disc. I can imagine, the M-rated RPG I've played are a few Shin Megami Tensei games on 3DS and Switch (actually have the steelbook edition of SMT V). Indeed, still sucked because I got bullied for liking a cartoon that literally everybody was watching when I was a kid. I can't think of one person who did not watch Rugrats, I'll still put on the cartoon from time to time.

Would be fun, I'd just worry if it takes up too much time since I know Mario Party is a board game.

@Miss_Moon the Nintendo museum opened, Zelda Echoes of Wisdom came out, and my tamagotchi died of old age.

I just realized something I've seen no one else talk about yet: with NDCube's rebranding to Nintendo Cube came a new logo...one that's in the exact same format of 1-UP Studio's logo. Both are colored rectangles with an identical font inside; Nintendo Cube is just using blue.

I hope this isn't a sign of a trend where Nintendo's going to sterilize the logos of their subsidiaries to fit a consistent, extremely bland format...

@Sunsy I'm glad you're better from your cold! Can't say there are many times in my life where I enjoyed being sick, but I had a bout of Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease when I was in HS that was, on the whole, enjoyable. I didn't feel that bad and pretty much got to hang out at home on my own. The only thing that stank about it was the slight fever and makeup homework.

Things are going well with me and my family, thanks. I'd like to say I'm less busy than usual with no haunted house work this year - we're not permanently done, just not open since the owners are going through a lot right now, including a baby due anytime now - but that wasn't the case the last couple of weeks. Things should be slower the rest of the month however.

@Pastellioli That would be Gera Gera Po, correct? At least that's what I know the song as. I really like the dance too! Komasan was one of the main Yo-Kai; he and his brother Komajiro's mini-segments were pretty wholesome - but the former is borderline oblivious sometimes lol. Magical beings disguising themselves as humans using leaves is pretty common in Japanese folklore. It was neat to see how some Yo-Kai actually looked disguised as humans when we know what they actually look like. The Manjimutt segments were...weird. I kind of felt bad for him, but also...sort of indifferent? It was a running gag that I think outstayed its welcome IMO. I need to watch the anime again sometime, but I'm gradually working my way through another subbed anime and am about halfway through...with 24 episodes left. I usually watch one a day, sometimes two, and sometimes go a bit without watching it depending on my schedule.

There are a few censorship examples depending on the region/country. The first one that comes to mind involved a TV program when Nate went to a sleepover with his friends, and they were trying to catch a Next HarrMeowny segment. But the channel kept flipping from them to some muscular dudes instead. In the censored version, the main girl's swimsuit is less revealing, and the TV flips to a cooking show instead of the muscular guys. It's of little consequence, and I can see why it was changed (especially the swimsuit part), but the cooking show change makes little sense IMO.

I still plan to keep an eye on Holy Horror Mansion to see how things pan out. I'm out if they're committed to using AI in the final product though. I hope I can find a reasonably priced copy of Yo-Kai Watch 3 as well. It's to the point where I wish I could just download the Japanese language straight to my brain so I could import the much cheaper Japanese version lol. Yo-Kai Watch does still have some presence in Japan, but I'd consider it a fading fad by now. Especially with how bad 4 did as you mentioned. I do think Holy Horror Mansion is their attempt to reboot the concept and try to capture a wider audience again, especially since the concept of ghosts (not necessarily yokai) is more universal. The main reason I'm not a big fan of the purify/Soultimate mini-games is I'm not one who likes using my 3/DS systems' touch screens much since that means more wear and tear. I learned this the hard way with my OG phat DS a long time ago. What ultimately killed it was an accidental drop due to my mom trying to avoid rear-ending some moron that cut right in front of us, but the touch screen had seen much better days even before that. I think the biggest contributors were Nintendogs, WarioWare: Touched, and the various Guitar Hero: On Tour games.

Scale of 1-10, how insane am I for wanting to watch this all the way through?

@CaleBoi25 10. Insanity. Was it worth it?