Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

I've decided to take a long-term break from the forums, so I'm retiring from this thread. I've had a lot going on IRL for awhile and seriously need to rebalance a few things in my personal life; this is a personal decision and has nothing to do with any user or experience. I've enjoyed chatting with you all, but it's getting harder for me to find the time to fit in these long posts lol. I'll still comment under the occasional article and lurk around.

@MarioVillager92 Merry (late) Christmas to you! I hope you've had a great Christmas season - with plenty of trains.

@Sunsy I hope you had a great Christmas! Mune was ok. Haven't really felt the holidays this year tbh.

Open Office is functional and another good Microsoft Office alternative. But it isn't perfect.

That meatball recipe I mentioned gets broken out for reunions since they're large meatballs in a 9x13 pan. The sauce uses brown sugar, a lot of ketchup, some mustard, and a little chili powder. The meatballs are mostly the meat and oats with an egg and a couple othwr ingredients

@Pastellioli The N64 content is the sole reason I'd even consider the NSO expansion pack since I have little interest in Genesis games and have access to most of the GBA games I'd be interested in elsewhere. Nintendo needs to add more for it to be worth my while. I still have the standard sub and get some use out of it. Though I do feel like I'm coerced into it if I want a legal way for game backups since I don't NEED the other services. Backups wouldn't be such a big deal if my free time was infinite. I HATE losing save data for a game I've spent dozens to hundreds of hours on. I could be convinced with NSO ex+ if they add GameCube games.

I hope you have/had fun with Nuts and Bolts this time around. I understand the preference for many to not use guides, but IMO there really isn't anything wrong with them if someone needs a helping hand. Either because a game has archaic design and is too cryptic, or because it does a poor job of explaining its mechanics.

@Mariotag Cell reception is a bit better there this time of year since most of the trees dropped their leaves, though it still depends on the weather. Still, it isn't reliable and cell data plans can run high.

I think the Pokemon anime switched networks early in the Battle Frontier arc IIRC. I do remember Ash's VA switch bugged me the most. I did catch a few episodes after during the Diamond/Pearl Arc when I was at an aunt's, but this wasn't often or consistent. I finally quit watching completely when I realized how formulaic the episodes became. Though I'm told there were some improvements later.

I think I fully 100%ed Chamber of Secrets on PC; that's how much I enjoyed and replayed the game lol. But yeah, Goblet of Fire was meh. I think the drop in game quality was around the time EA started developing HP in-house and not just publishing. The first three games no matter what form I played them in ranged from good to great. Both The PC and DS versions of GoF were mid.

I think the Trails In The Sky games are only available digitally on PC. Though I'm told they were on PSP, that isn't what I'd call a modern platform. Most of the other arcs are available on other platforms - usually PC and PS - and Switch TECHNICALLY has them all except Cold Steel I/II never left Japan on the system.

Seems like I'm missing some good games in the KH series, though I don't think it's worth the investment for me at this time. Unless there's a full reboot or something similar.

@Mariotag I do forget about licensing sometimes being an issue with some games and media and how it can prevent a few from being re-released or remade, unless the developer and companies can work something out with it. I haven’t really heard of re-releases, remasters, or remakes that downgrade the original version instead of improving them. The only port I can really think of is Sonic Adventure DX, I heard a ton of people think that one didn’t fix the original game and people pointed out how the graphics apparently looked worse than the original and were flatter.

I do think the prices for some merchandise and plushes are kind of insane, but I think the quality, look of the merchandise, and the materials play a factor in the price, and possibly the size of it. I think the types of figures that are posable (like Figma and Nendoroid) are more expensive not because they are high quality but also because they are versatile. I wish plushes weren’t as expensive sometimes though…

So it sounds like the version of Hulu on PS5 is super unusable? That’s really not good, I don’t know how it is on the Xbox. Although not a streaming app, I similarly find the Xbox version of Microsoft Edge runs so poorly and is almost unusable compared to how it probably runs on a computer or phone. Crunchyroll tends to run fine besides the ads choosing to freeze during anime episodes and taking so long to continue so I can resume what I was watching. I never used Paramount+, but I think people have said it has a ton of issues when they used it, mainly from it freezing, glitching, or not functioning. Netflix ran well when I used to have it (even on old Tabs and older consoles like the Wii) but I don’t have it anymore.

I remember hearing about that kind of competition with Sonic 3 and Mufasa both releasing on the same day, but I have not really heard anything about Mufasa at all besides a few YouTube reviews, I didn’t even get many commercials for it compared to Sonic 3. I just really am not a huge fan of a lot of Disney’s live-action remakes, the only one I really thought was fine was the Jungle Book remake. I think my main issue is that they repeat the same films again for money and for nostalgia so people will see it. But in live-action, everything looks less lively compared to the animated films the remakes are based on, plus, the photorealistic animation on the animals in the Lion King remake and Mufasa kind of look stiff and make the characters less lively, when I am sure in real life animals can be expressive too. I saw some side-by-side comparison between the animated and live action version of Mufasa’s death and the remake’s animation and the facial expressions were noticeably more stiffer. I just wish Disney would try and be a bit more creative instead of trying to remake every classic animated film they have using live-action, but given that the remakes gross a lot (plus the remakes sometimes grossed more than their animated originals) I don’t think they’ll stop.

Oh, do a lot of people say 06’s failure was why they chose to stick to the same few characters for newer games instead of using the newer characters as playable characters instead? I think I did hear some of the gameplay for the main characters in 06 wasn’t done well and was hard to control, and it probably discouraged them from making the characters playable. I have heard of people requesting for more characters in newer games to accompany the same characters. I just wonder how they will handle an 06 remake if it happened, and if they would be able to make the other playable characters’ gameplay better.

Yeah, most of the conditions to win in the Spirit battles are either just KO the enemy or drain their Stamina and get it to 0. There were a few conditions like “defeat the main fighter to win” during these Spirit battles where the main enemy is assisted by a few minions that get in your way, but they didn’t feel special or that different. If they did have a special rule to win the battle (like the one you mentioned) then that would have been super fun, and would have referenced the Spirit characters way better in my opinion. If the Spirit battles had more variety, I think it really could have made World of Light and the special battles a bit more fun. However, I think it maybe could have taken a lot of time to give each individual Spirit more special conditions during their Spirit battles given Ultimate has 1528 spirits and the game still had a lot of them before the DLC and post-game updates were released and added more Spirits.

I think having to watch a lot of films to understand specific ones I want to watch (as well as how I’m not too into superhero stuff and films) is why I haven’t really gotten into the MCU besides a few films and WandaVision, plus with Disney+ having a lot more Marvel shows released alongside the films and some of the shows tying into the events and stories of a few other films. I’m not a big fan of movies that are super long, like 2 or 3 hours and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I sometimes get impatient when a movie goes on for really long, even ones that I like a lot. I did like Sonic 2, but I kind of felt like the film was a bit long, but mostly coming from the wedding subplot they put in that I think wasn’t necessary and made it feel like I was watching a completely different film midway through, since at one point the film went from an action comedy film starring Sonic to a random romcom film that didn’t have any relations to Sonic at all. Despite that, I did like 2 but I think 3 outdoes that and the first film, and so far I’d say 3 is the best out of the trilogy. They are pretty good adaptations of the games while still having some original content in them. I’d say 3 felt the most like Sonic because of the story being mostly taken from Adventure 2, the film focusing more on the Sonic characters, and some of the elements and references being taken from a couple of the other games too, namely the Shadow spin-off and Heroes. If you can’t see 3 again in theaters, do you plan on buying it when it gets a digital and physical release? I might buy it when it goes digital, I can’t stop thinking about it after seeing it and being so amazed. I remember seeing clips of the Adventure 2 fandub and the second they released a trailer of 3 leading up to its released and showed the moon getting damaged for a few seconds, I saw so many memes and references to the fandub of Eggman’s announcement in Adventure 2. That moment is one of the well-known moments from that dub.

I did hear the 360 version of 06 was better than the PS3 version with how it ran. I am hoping the new Xbox backwards compatibility thing they mentioned back in April will cover more games, and hopefully the next console after the Series X and S will also try to support the same games and a few more. I am a bit surprised looking at the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list for OG Xbox games and how that supported a ton of the games, and then the One and Series consoles only supported a couple of them instead.

I’m sorry. I hope things can get better. I really do hope that you’ll be fine.

@Sunsy Heh. Yup. I pretty much didn't get to participate in the rumors. At school, I was late to the party. I had forgotten about the Pokegods until relatively recently, but I do remember others. Bill's Secret Garden, where you could supposedly find Mew. The legendary truck one, which actually got a reference in, I think the Let's Go games, "Pikablu" and Togepi being findable, One about finding a hidden door in Cerulean Cave, which was another Mew thing, Pokemon Stadium 1 rewarding you with a Mew for finishing R2 Gym Leader Castle with a game built team, or something like that, and finally, the notion of reaching the Orange Islands ingame, which, tbh, was significant to me, as the main competitions in that part of the anime were significantly different, and I'd have liked to see them in a game.
And yeah. Ppl made up a 3d anthro Wolf Link render as a mod for some games.

@Tyranexx Ah. Hope your break goes well, and that I'll see you around!

Yeah, KH for DS isn't incredibly likely to get official remakes or anything, but there is a fan project.

That explains the HP games to me tbh. EA has such an awful reputation though.

Yeah, early Battle Frontier. Basically the switch between seasons 8 and 9. And yes, Ash's new voice grated on me a great deal. I stopped during Black and White, but I hear it's immediately afterward it gets better.

Nice that you get some decent cell reception at some times at least! I was surprised recently when my phone at least briefly worked in the back room.

For the Trails games, I definitely need some kind of guide. I've already forgotten what you said to start with.

Have a nice break! I'm hoping you can eventually get back to me!

@Pastellioli Yeah, licensing is a big issue. Like, Goldeneye was in licensing purgatory for decades.
I enjoyed SA1 DX, but never played the Dreamcast original. And Tales of Symphonia absolutely did downgrade over time.

Honestly, agreed with plushies and merch and the like.

Yeah, Hulu used to be great, now it's pretty non-functional on ps5. Crunchyroll doesn't ever exactly continue a video that freezes for me. I have to exit out, go back in, fast forward, and pray that doesn't cause it to crash again. Netflix is stable, but has gotten far too expensive. I don't recall the issues of Paramount +, but they were definitely issues. As for Microsoft Edge, honestly, I might've used it at some point, but then I heard that, at least on PC, it idly takes screenshots of whatever you happen to be doing at the time. Not even on the browser. Just, in general. I want it to be gone.

Yeah, the movies Disney made as animations simply do not work as live action. The big point here though, is that apparently, Disney has been making big budget, strong arm moves to try and keep Sonic 3 down. And they've been failing. They hide any replies on their social media that mention Sonic 3, buy off theaters so they can't have as many screens for Sonic 3, etc. (Like, after initial launch, Sonic 3 got 8 new screens nationwide. Not theaters, but screens.) I'm genuinely hoping Disney experiences enough failure that they're forced to stop.

Yeah. 06 is stated to be the reason they've just stuck to a few tried and tested characters. Idk if officially stated though. Cream used to be a mainstay. The main games notably had a number of playable characters up until 06. Recently, they did add Amy back in, finally, and we got Trip. But that's mostly it. I can imagine a remake greatly improving gameplay at the least. I got the nicer version of the game on 360, but it had glitches too. Some of the items you could get were practically begging to be exploited for such purposes, and the devs were absolutely rushed. There is so much potential with a remake for 06.

Yeah, giving each spirit a unique sort of scenario would have been too much. But they could absolutely have done something like, a genre by genre basis, or the like.

Yes. That meme of SA2 is immortal now. As for movies in general, trying to keep up is genuinely difficult. MCU is far too much to handle, and I dislike how it does things.
As for the Sonic movies, the first one was the one that impressed me the least, unless you count the Knuckles spinoff I was never able to finish. The second one was very lively, in spite of Jim Carrey deciding to throw in a stupid political reference at the climax. I liked the wedding subplot. Seeing that couple go kinda head to head was utterly hilarious. At the same time though, I didn't like the whole thing of Tails being injured, and the both of them trapped. I don't actually recall the Heroes or Shadow references.
I would like to get the whole trilogy sometime.

Yeah, backward compatibility is one of my big worries moving forward honestly. Along with DRM, and the practice Microsoft and Sony have taken of forcing you to download the full game, even if you have a physical copy. If Nintendo adopts that, no amount of storage space can save the next console. It's easily one of my biggest problems with the current market. Those two, with DRM maliciously hiding in the background.

Yeah, I'm hoping I can get better soon myself. It's gonna be tough though. In all honesty, I should be taking a break like Tyranexx. But I don't think I have enough of a life to do so.

@Anti-Matter Knowing your taste, you'd probably wouldn't like it. Sonic 3 is much darker than the previous two Sonic movies, and draws a lot of inspiration from both Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog, which the latter, is one of the darker Sonic series games.

It's a PG movie, so I'd say it's more for older kids than say. I don't know, I don't think of kids when I see movies, I usually think of whether I like it or not. Even if some of the animated stuff I watch is targeted to kids.

@Tyranexx Merry Christmas to you too. Mine was good, thanks for asking. Spent most of the day watching Christmas stuff with mom. Did get some Trolls stuff and Sonic X Shadow Generations. Also cracked top 10 in F-Zero 99 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I'm glad your's was ok.

Indeed it is, I use to use OpenOffice too. Having tried Linux in the past made me, introduced me to the world of free and open source software. Even though I'm back on Windows, I still use some of it. I also have GIMP installed.

That's cool, usually meatballs are great when you mix other ingredients into them.

@Mariotag Pikablu, there's a name I haven't heard of in quite some time. What fans called Marill before it ever had a name, mostly for looking similar to Pikachu. I remember the Bill's Secret Garden one too, apparently there was a way to access behind Bill's house, even though you couldn't. Though, the Pokemon Stadium one is new to me. People made up anything to make it seem like Mew was catchable. I remember another one where you had to talk to the Safari Zone guy 1000 times or something, then he says something about your mom, when you returned to Pallet Town, your mom left you a Pokedex of rare Pokemon.

There was so much mystery surrounding rumors back then. Now they're rare since everything could easily be fact checked online.

@Sunsy I know for sure speedrunners have to play through the game multiple times to get it all memorized and to prepare themselves for the actual speedrun. I think the fact that speedrunners play through games so many times to perfect their performance and skill for something that can sometimes be stressful is impressive and commendable, given I only play a specific game once and only replay it if I like the game a ton. The only game I can think of that I kinda have memorized and played more than once is Conker’s Bad Fur Day (two times, but technically three if the remake counts) but I think that even though I kind of memorized some parts of the game, I still think I’d do poorly on a speedrun, plus there are parts of the game that are so hard to play and require a lot of trial and error. I think the quickest speedrun I saw on a leaderboard for that was at around an hour, but I’m unsure of how people got that time fast when playing the game. I’d have to assume it could be glitches, given some speedruns utilize glitches and bugs in a game to speed through portions of it, plus I think the hardware can also play a factor in speedrunning time, since some consoles are slower than others and faster loading times reduce the time spent on a game. Speedrunning is just so impressive and seems like a fun hobby.

I can’t recall seeing the bad reception to the Boom games at the time of release since it was a decade ago. However, I am glad the tie-in show was good. It had so much great comedy and jokes, and I see quite a lot of clips of the show on Instagram pop up and some people quoting it in comment sections. Too bad the show won’t come back for another season though…

I am a big fan of fantasy, but I also do think sci-fi is cool, I especially liked it in the Perfect Dark games, paired with the spy theme they had to go with the sci-fi setting, since most of the time the spy games and media I see aren’t set in a futuristic time period or have any sci-fi elements. I think I have seen some of that Mario Party ad with Mario and the police. I have seen the Japanese Diddy Kong Racing ad in full in a couple of videos, this is a short version of it here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iaePT-jZHhU&list=PLATUCKmXK...

It’s a cute ad and I think that seeing the characters officially animated in 2D is cool to see, given I’ve only seen the characters in 3D form only. The Japanese N64 ads seem very different from how most American N64 ads looked and felt. I think most American N64 ads focused on being revolutionary (one that comes to my mind is this one Mario 64 ad that showed gameplay from the game and it sounded like the guy talking over the gameplay was delivering a serious speech) and depending on the ad, were animated more in 3D or used live-action. The Japan ads seemed to be focused more on fun and sometimes cuteness and had 2D animation instead. Some of the American N64 ads I did see online were sometimes crazy though. I remember a few months ago, I was watching a compilation of various American N64 ads and I recall seeing an ad for this game (unfortunately I can’t recall the name) but it had a talking teddy bear that I think intentionally resembled the Snuggle fabric softener mascot and it’s a calm ad until the room that the bear is in gets destroyed by military tanks if I recall. I saw an ad they had for Conker’s Bad Fur Day but I found that ad was more weird than crazy with what it implied.

I absolutely loved Sonic 3, I’d say it’s the best in the trilogy and I’m excited to see what they do next with it! I am wondering what game they are planning on taking inspiration from for the 4th movie, there are two that come to my mind already. I’m in a big Sonic mood now haha. Eating while watching a movie is fun, but I tend to eat a lot of my food before watching something, and then I’ll watch a bit of it before stopping, but I’d want to maybe do that again sometime at home if my family wants to, I just don’t know what movie though. Usually we eat pizza, Chinese food or Mexican food while watching something. I kind of had that feeling with spoilers too recently! I saw Sonic 3 a few days after it released in theaters, but I saw some PSAs on Reddit and on NL that people were already posting spoilers and leaking parts of the movie 1-2 days prior to the film releasing in theaters, mainly the post-credit scene. I think it was also because some people saw early screenings of it and if I remember, they had an event where I think some critics and reviewers saw the film early, but critics are super professional and wouldn’t spoil a movie. Avoiding spoilers was fairly easy for me leading up to the day I was going to see it, but a day prior to seeing Sonic 3, Instagram made the unfortunate choice to recommend me a reel of the post-credit scene that someone spoiled and I was so disappointed that it showed up but I think it was my fault I chose to scroll on Instagram, given social media is full of spoiler videos and photos of newly released films.

Disney Infinity was really fun, it’s a shame the toys-to-life concept died off after the eighth-generation of game console era ended. They had planned a fourth game, 4.0., but cancelled it but revealed some scrapped characters and concept art for it. I didn’t hear until now Disney Infinity had a Wii port! That’s super cool. I’d love to have some plushies again, I used to have some Mario, Sonic and Pokémon plushes, but I don’t have them anymore. Plushes are so nice though and I’d like to have at least three or two of them.

It’s strange the pages yellowed given they weren’t in light and were in darker areas. The brand of sketchbooks I use are a Japanese brand called Maruman. They are good quality for dry media a markers (though alcohol markers bleed a bit) and have a nice tooth texture. I usually got them on Amazon (but importing makes them a bit expensive) but some dollar stores called Daiso have the sketchbooks for cheaper. The old Maruman sketchbooks were the ones that yellowed the most, but some other ones I got from different stores (such as Five Below) also had some pretty bad yellowing on a few pages. Luckily the yellowing was with my old art, my new artwork is in good condition

@Sunsy
Ah, thanks.
I have no problem with sonic games but the movies... I already smelled the SEGA edginess that I don't like.
Even after I checked from Wikipedia for the quick summary of sonic 3 movie storyline, it didn't look like the movie I want to watch.

But I will wait for Paddington at Peru movie in February 2025.

@Tyranexx I think the N64 game library on NSO definitely looks better than how it was once it first started, but I still hear that it’s missing a few well-known games and titles, and of course there are people wanting some GameCube titles on there too. I am wondering when they will add the next retro console library on there, but I think it might be a while till they announce another significant NsO update. I’d only really want to get the Expansion Pack again if they added Diddy Kong Racing since they seem to have fixed licensing issues with Rare characters on Nintendo consoles, but I am still surprised they didn’t add any Donkey Kong N64 games after all those Game Boy Donkey Kong games they released a few weeks ago, but they’ll definitely do a game drop soon next year though. Losing game data is upsetting, I don’t really have any experiences with that but I did get kinda worried with NSO game data getting ruined and corrupted with the retro games, mainly because the retro games rely on save states rather than proper saves in-game and I think some people mentioned their retro game data got corrupted and they saw save states were unreliable on NSO. Luckily it worked fine for me, though I relied on save states a lot for the N64 games since there is no option to rewind time compared to the other game libraries like NES and SNES.

I think game guides and walkthroughs are necessary for a few old games, since some old games aren’t that thorough with explaining stuff compared to most newer games. I think it’ll definitely help me since I’m super confused over what to do next in Nuts and Bolts after I took a year long break from it.

@Mariotag It is good they worked out licensing with GoldenEye 007 and got it on both Switch and Xbox, though Rare was working on an upgraded XBLA version at one point in the 2000s that got scrapped because of the licensing issue and they never released it. I usually don’t see most older games having licensing issues, but I also think it can come from the companies involved. I think a lot of the games in Rare Replay, although using original IPs and characters, did have some licenses with the companies that published a few of the games (namely the NES and SNES games) and of course they couldn’t include the games using Nintendo characters at all.

Crunchyroll never crashed but the ads caused issues with how they froze and I either had to wait a few minutes for it to start or swipe the app out, log back in and go to the anime I was watching so I could have the ad properly play. Netflix worked the best, but I agree it seems to have gotten expensive with all the tiers they introduced and how they removed the Basic plan with no ads and instead had it replaced with a Standard plan, which is cheaper but comes with ads. The Microsoft Edge thing sounds so bad. The only times I used it was when I was achievement hunting on the Xbox, I’d go to TrueAchievements a ton when I was getting achievements for Rare Replay, but Edge was so slow and it made it such a pain to scroll down and read the achievement guides in full, plus the constant back and forth between going to back to the game and re-reading the guide was time-consuming. Now that I think about it I could have used my phone instead and used Google for the achievement list instead.

Wait, they’ve been actually doing that so their movie can make more? That’s actually insane and I can’t believe they have been apparently trying to boost the success of Mufasa so that Sonic 3 doesn’t make more money and sales than it. I knew there was going to be some competition between the two, people pointing out both films being released on the same day, as well as people making fun of this video Disney released that claimed Mufasa was currently the #1 film in the world (since there hasn’t been much talk about Mufasa as much as Sonic 3) but I wasn’t aware of the stuff Disney has been apparently doing so that Sonic 3 doesn’t surpass Mufasa in the box office. I wonder how the final box office grosses will look for the Mufasa and Sonic once their theatrical runs end. I do wish Disney would just stop with remaking their already good films, but I found it strange they are choosing to remake Moana already. I remember when they announced the remake, someone working at Disney said that they were unsure of remaking it since the film wasn’t super old compared to the other films that got remakes (Moana was from 2016, so 8 years ago) but they went with remaking it anyway. I just think the remakes fail to capture the magic and charm of the animated originals, and the worst part is how some of the movies look super dull in terms of colors, which was an issue everyone was pointing out a ton with the Peter Pan remake especially. Not to mention, some of the remakes seem way more serious than the originals and I just feel like that, on top of the liveliness of the animated films being gone in live-action and the colors being way more dull and gray just makes the remakes soulless.

Amy was a character requested for the games a ton from what I saw, so it was cool to see them bring her back again. I think an 06 remake could help the game a lot, and I do find it interesting that one of Sonic Team’s members wants to remake the game and fix it. Hopefully they do remake of 06 and a few of the old 3D Sonic games and fix a couple of flaws with them. I know for sure I would buy a Sonic remake if they did make a new one. I wonder what the next Sonic game will be…

If they did have specific conditions for the character maybe depending on the game genre or something like the game series they are from, that would have still been nice. I just wish the Spirit battles were a bit more fun and were more special, mainly from the concept of the Spirits supposed to be representing other characters and the fights supposed to be treated as fighting the Spirit character more than the actual fighter. I do wonder if the next game will bring Spirits back or bring back trophies, but given that trophies were time-consuming and difficult to make, I think Spirits or something similar could come back and replace trophies again. I just hope that they make the battles more interesting and fun to play if Spirits come back.

I’m just not into multiverse films or cinematic universes like the MCU, since that one has been running for a long time and has a bunch of media I need to watch and keep up with so I can understand the newer films. Out of all the Sonic films, the first one is the one I remember the least, and I can’t even recall a lot of the jokes from that one, but I think since the first movie is supposed to be setting up the world, stories and characters for the later films and the fact the film didn’t have much elements from the games, it’s probably why I can’t remember anything from it. I never watched the Knuckles spin-off though. It’s when it gets to the second film I think the films get better and the way the elements from the games are incorporated in the films with the original content work well. Although I didn’t find the wedding subplot necessary, I will say I did find parts of it funny, I just thought it felt like a different film when Tails was unconscious for a part of the movie and them both getting trapped and being missing in action for a part of it. I think because the wedding subplot took up a bit of the film’s later half and focused on the film characters more than Sonic and Tails, there were these arguments and debates people had regarding the humans taking up screentime in the film and people wanting the human characters to have less of a presence, but I never found the human characters like that, and I think characters like Agent Stone are likable and hilarious.

DRM is an issue. I do worry about the games I have on the Xbox being unusable at one point and how your rather buying a license to play the game than rather owning it. There was this issue that happened on the Xbox a few weeks ago that I can’t fully remember, but I think some games people owned went missing from their library and they couldn’t find or launch them, and some game pages were hidden from the Microsoft store. Some people had to contact Microsoft about it so they could play their games again and some showed proof of purchase and stuff like that but sometimes they’d get told the game doesn’t exist or it isn’t available and can’t play it. I think the issue was resolved, but I am hoping that DRM on that gets better as well as backwards compatibility on all consoles.

Hope you get better and remember to take it easy. You can take a break from online if you need to.

@Sunsy Yeah, pretty much. Honestly, I kinda miss those days. There was more hype. Big games weren't things you had to put on the backburner after getting them because they were too big. Or because you had too many... Part of it may also have been because I was younger, and saw friends more often. (As well as people in general)

@Pastellioli Yeah, though there was a Goldeneye remake that released. And yup. Rare couldn't touch those Nintendo characters.

Huh. So the big differences between us for CR were that, you were using a phone, while I was on console, and while you signed into an account, I decided to avoid using one. Worth considering. Also, surprisingly, I have yet to run into ads on Netflix. Though, I guess that means my mom decided on a plan that allowed both higher definition, and more devices using it...
Companies just love invading privacy these days, and I've been getting sick of it.

Wait, both Moana, and Peter Pan are getting remakes? Peter Pan makes a little sense. It's my understanding it was originally a stage play... And yeah. I've been seeing a bunch of videos of Disney throwing their weight around to get Sonic 3 fewer screenings. Also, the hilarity of them saying Mufasa was #1 in the world is compounded not only by Sonic 3 not yet being released fully worldwide, but also, apparently Disney saying that was in response to Paramount saying Sonic 3 was #1 in America.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure when her first playable appearance was, but the earliest I know of was Sonic Adventure 1. She was added into Sonic Origins, making her more officially one of the original main characters, albeit retroactively. Sonic 06 being remade could impact the series so much. I would genuinely love for them to see the success their older style brought them again, and decide, yeah, let's have more playable characters in significant roles again. Idk how much the other games could benefit from remakes though.

Honestly, yeah. The spirits needed variety at the very least. They shouldn't have just been "KO this character who vaguely resembles the spirit character to win". And as I'd said before, the spirits were a big deal in terms of smash on the whole. And idk what they'll bring back or do for another entry.

Honestly, a big universe series done right could actually be good. One anime series I have previously enjoyed, even if the third seasons were just too messed up, is the Toaru series. Originally just being A Certain Magical Index, it eventually gained a bunch of spinoffs focusing on other characters and groups. And yeah. That might be why Sonic 1 wasn't as good. Sonic 2, while it was weird seeing the human characters take center stage, it did have its merits. Like G.U.N. being introduced. Sonic X and Sonic 06 pretty much soured a lot of people on the presence of human characters in the franchise. 06 because of the romance plot, and X because the main Sonic cast legitimately could not do anything for the first two seasons without help, or approval from the humans. As for Knuckles, I only saw the first couple episodes. I would like to finish it sometime.

Oh, Xbox had that happen? Yikes. Yeah. That's the kind of thing I'm afraid of. While, to be fair, games have apparently only ever being you purchasing a license since at least Gamecube era, back then at least, it seemed more to appease the pretense of "you do not own this IP or product. However, you do own the right to use this product."
The fact our games could just vanish at any time is scary. Those things are expensive!

Eh, honestly, I don't think I can manage a full on break. I don't exactly have much I can do offline. And sometimes, I have pretty bad anxiety, and just need to wind down while staying comfy in my bed. Which is where I put my laptop when it's out. Honestly, if I take it easy, I might really lose out. Thanks though.

Typing short responses, but nothing for awhile after this one. If I drop a topic, that means my response would amount to "yep" or "cool" lol. This is fully a personal decision and has nothing to do with any issues with NL.

@Mariotag Thanks! Overall I'm trying to spend less time online lol. I did hear the Pokemon anime got better after BW. The Trails games definitely require some guidelines, though ultimately starting at the beginning of any arc should work for most.

@Sunsy Glad you had a great Christmas! And some productivity in the hobby department. Linux is fun to use and open source but is more technical for most people. Overall I prefer Windows out of familiarity even if DLLs can be a pain. I've used Linux for work before.

@Pastellioli I doubt we'll hear much on NSO updates for some time, at least anything meaningful. I'd love GameCube support though. I've never had issues with save states, though one has to be careful if there's an in-game save system since save states can supersede those.

@Tyranexx Well, if you ever feel like getting in touch, I could give you a few places?

WICKED movie is still in our local Cinema XXI schedule today.
If I have a chance, I will try to rewatch again for the eighth times.
Great movies are deserved for multiple watch while the other movies like Moana 2 and Mufasa are not quite impressive in my opinion.

Happy 2025, everyone! Hope you all have a lovely new year. Made a new profile picture, too! It shows my Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp villager... dressed up as a celestial train conductor.

@Pastellioli You're good, and thank you! I hope you had a good holiday as well, mine was lovely.

Nice, good to hear the English version is getting more songs. Yeah that would have been nice... good old region-exclusive content, lol. I remember liking the Super Mario Advance 4 e-Reader levels, though I remember that some of them were really difficult. Even as someone who's played Mario games since my childhood, those levels really pushed me to my limit!

Oh gotcha, yeah from what I've played of the King Salmonid fights, they are super difficult. At least for players like me. Maybe one day I'll fell a King Salmonid... when that happens, I'll be one happy boy. lol

The Steve reveal trailer broke Twitter, huh? Dang. So many people must have been hyped as heck! After all, Minecraft is one of the most popular games of all time. Yeah, Steve has a very complex moveset and I'm just not good at playing as him. That's cool that there are some really good Steve players. I'm pretty decent with Pyra and Mythra myself... Pyra has some crazy-powerful attacks and they're satisfying to KO opponents with. I remember being pretty OK with Terry and Min Min, though it's been a while since I played as them. Heck, I haven't touched Smash Ultimate for a good while.

That sounds like an interesting video. Would be cool to see all their progress work... but I don't have Rare Replay, let alone an Xbox. I also like their Smash Bros. design more, since they're just like how I remember Banjo and Kazooie.

@Tyranexx Thanks! My Christmas was lovely. Got to give my family a lot of nice presents and I got quite a few good ones too. A bit of everything I like - some Switch games, Disney films on blu-ray, and yep, train-related gifts... including an awesome Christmas-themed snow globe train! I even went ahead and turned on my Mickey Mouse Christmas train set when everyone was done unwrapping gifts.

That's cool. I know there's an Alolan Raichu, isn't that in Smash Ultimate? Been a while since I played that. Me too! It's such a good movie. Would love to see it again next December. I also rewatched Mickey's Once Upon A Christmas on Christmas Eve, and I still love it.

Anytime. Kinda wish I got all the stamps in Echoes of Wisdom... I do like the Stamp Guy quite a bit. Maybe when I play through the game a second time, but that won't be until later. It's been a long time since I played through Dream Team... I just looked it up on How Long To Beat, and oh my goodness, it looks like it's about as long as Brothership! I do vaguely remember DT being kind of a long game, now that I think of it. I do remember liking the game a long while back, I wonder what I would think of it now...? Kinda wanna play the games I got for Christmas this year though, haha. Thank you, I'm liking Battle Network 2 quite a lot. I wanna try to finish that game up, then I'll move on to BN3.

You're totally right on that haha. That's basically what I learned after that sour experience I had from a roller coaster many years ago.

@Sunsy Thanks! I'm glad you had a good Christmas. I enjoyed my Christmas too... I got Sonic X Shadow Generations as well! Though I started with Mario vs. Donkey Kong (another game I got for Christmas), but I'll definitely get to the Sonic game. Also got some Disney movies on blu-ray, and a really nice snow globe train decoration.

That's great you did something nice for the Christmas season by getting Dunkin' Donuts. I really should get back into F-Zero 99... thank you for the reminder. I don't wanna miss out on that special Grand Prix event. Haven't been playing online multiplayer games too often lately.

That's awesome. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to watch it again, things have been a bit busy on my end lately. Maybe next time. I remember you told me that Anna Kendrick has played both Poppy and Noelle. That's cool, I think I caught my mom seeing Elf, how did you like it?

I'm not super into scary stuff either, especially anything that's realistic. Similarly, my mom used to watch horror movies, but she doesn't nowadays. I think I played House of the Dead at an arcade once or twice, but that was a long time ago. Nice, one Halloween decoration we have is a stack of jack-o-lanterns that you could inflate. It has lights that glow different colors.

Yeah... there's a sort of manual built into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's main menu (and the controls inside MK8D's case), and Mario's moveset guide in Super Mario Odyssey, but I think that's it in terms of Switch games. About the power-ups in Trolls Remix Rescue. Does the game not explain what they do? That's what it seems like to me.

Nice, that's cool. That reminds me, I remember listening to other game music like the Smash Ultimate Big Blue remix while playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It is such a good version of that theme. I remember listening to other F-Zero music while playing MK8D, as well.

Nice, it does sound like that actually. I think one YouTuber I'm subscribed to, GameCube Galaxy, mentioned that in one of his videos too. It's been a long time since I tried out Sonic and the Secret Rings, I remember not liking it too much because of how difficult the controls were. I do like Sonic Colors though, I'd say that's the best Sonic game on the Wii.

Happy New Year everyone!

Wanna say Happy New Year to everyone! Can’t wait to see what this new year will hold

@Mariotag oh, is there an option to use Crunchyroll without an account? I didn’t even know that! All I know is that signing in with an account on Crunchyroll has more features, like having a view history of episodes and films and the now removed review sections and comment sections/forums on episodes and movies. With the experience I’ve had with ads on Crunchyroll, I’d hate to run into ads on other streaming services that constantly interrupt me while I’m getting into a show or film. I didn’t quite mind it when I used YouTube Movies a ton from October-November since the ads weren’t constant and I could skip them, but Crunchyroll has no option to skip ads and episodes were littered with at least 6-7 of them.

Yes, Peter Pan actually got a remake last year, and the Moana remake was announced months back but isn’t supposed to release until 2026. The decision to remake Moana when it’s not that old like the other animated films they remade in the past was crazy to me, and it just tells me they’ll remake newer animated films they made as well when they don’t have an original idea. I wonder how they are even going to do the Shiny musical-number in live-action, since I read there was a contract The Rock (who will be reprising his role as Maui in the remake) signed that said that any character he plays in any film cannot be shown being defeated or losing in a battle, and since Maui (his character in Moana) gets beat up during the Shiny sequence, I wonder if they’ll either change up how Maui fights Tamatoa or if they will have the musical number and Tamatoa completely cut out so they don’t show Maui getting hurt, because I think a few Disney remakes did cut out parts and characters. Coincidentally, I was on Threads and saw some posts with headlines that said Disney was trying to indirectly dispute the fact that Sonic 3 is currently considered the #1 movie in the world. Apparently there was these Community Notes that show up on some Twitter/X posts to fact-check and add context to posts that are inaccurate or misleading. On some of Disney’s Twitter posts that claimed Mufasa was #1 in the world, some users added a note saying that Sonic 3 is actually considered the #1 film in the world (as of right now) but the note mysteriously disappeared or wouldn’t load. I don’t think the notes disappearing are a coincidence at all.

They recently did comment on future Sonic outings, and while they didn’t say anything on what the next installment will be or any game remakes, they said that the next game “must be great” and that the next game will be “more challenging, quite exciting game we are working on.” I think those comments make me a bit excited about what they are working on, and I definitely wonder if one day they’ll go back to having multiple playable characters in a title. Only way I kind of see that happening is if they release modern remakes of either the Adventure games, Sonic 06, or Heroes and if a possible remake of one of those does well to convince them to include more playable characters besides the same 4-5 characters. I still am curious if that reported Heroes remake is real and if it’s actually being worked on.

Just thinking about it now, Spirits really did have a lot of potential but seemed kind of limited. Even though Spirits weren’t trophies, I think Spirits could have had way more stuff done with them besides the battle conditions being modified and in favor of the enemy Spirit and the small references with the fighter the Spirit controls and their fighting style, like favoring dash attacks or running away from the player to avoid confrontation. I found the conditions for 3-star and 4-star Spirits the most unfair (unless you used the heck out of items to weaken the enemy or had good Spirits to counteract the enemy), and I feel like some Spirit battles were unbalanced. I do feel like maybe they could bring Spirits back if Trophies are still time-consuming to make, but who knows what they’ll do with a Smash 6 and if it’ll be on the same levels of big as Ultimate. I really don’t want to see any roster or franchises being cut from the game but if licensing for a few of those characters is an issue, they potentially might go that route.

Usually the first installments in film series that are trying to set up the worlds and characters for later sequels often aren’t the strongest, but I know for sure there are exceptions to that. Sonic 1 just felt the weakest lot of the three when I watched it, mainly because it kind of deviated a lot from the source material and didn’t have much elements from the games. A lot of people are tired of the “animated animal or creature being sent/living in the real world with humans instead of staying in their own world” thing (especially since that trope was super common for films in the early to mid-2010s with franchises like The Smurfs), though I think the later Sonic movies using stories and elements from the games while still having the films set in the human world helps a lot; it makes the films feel more like Sonic despite not being set in the same worlds and locations as the games, and even despite some slight deviations in Sonic 2 and 3, they both still felt like the games way more than the first film. The wedding plot in 2 introducing G.U.N. was pretty significant since they had more of a role in 3 and were involved in Shadow’s story. Their introduction there with the wedding subplot and the post-credit scene did do a good job setting up the events of the 3rd film.

Yep, it was a pretty bad disaster. I think it got fixed but I feel like infuriating things always happen with Xbox. I can similarly remember this outage that happened, I think back in July or August where everyone was unable to log into Xbox and play their games because the servers were unexpectedly out (even if you did have good internet you couldn’t play). I am so afraid of my game account getting hacked and me never being able to get my game progress or data back, or suddenly getting my game licenses revoked and being unable to play some of my game again. It’s even worse with digital accounts, but I’d say even more with Xbox. That reminds me, but I recall reading this news PSA on Pure Xbox (NL’s sister site) and I remember they reported on this story where someone got their 15-year-old Xbox account hacked, and while Microsoft locked the hacker out of the account, the original user also got locked out and Microsoft couldn’t get the person back into their account since it had its password changed, so they had no choice but to permaban the account and it caused the person to lose access to their account, including their achievements and games and having to start all over again. You actually can’t transfer game data or achievements over to a new account even if you lose your original one or delete it, so you gotta be extra careful with your Xbox account to ensure you don’t lose game data forever. That’s a thought that scares me quite a bit. After reading that story I got super worried about digital game management and my game data, not for Xbox but just in general. That thought contributes to my anxiety quite a bit.

Oh, I see. I understand. Sometimes I do also resort to using digital devices if I’m bored or just not feeling good. I do hope your doing fine and have a good New Years!

@Tyranexx Hm, I’d assume maybe another NSO update will be in a February 2025 Direct, unless they do a random drop later this month, which I think will happen but I assume it’ll be a small release. I don’t really remember the timeframe or how long it takes to include support for retro consoles on NSO, but I think it’ll take a while for them to do it. Although not a retro game console, I remember there was a report or rumor they were trying to work out SNES mouse functionality for NSO (possibly to put games like Mario Paint on NSO) but nothing has come out of that so far.

There were a few couple of games on NSO that I think had their own save game system, but some of the N64 games I played actually didn’t have any save systems so I had to use save states because I don’t trust how some of those games handle save data. I think Banjo-Kazooie is sort of notable for not having a save system, since when you quit out the game during a level, I think when you go back to the game your put back into the hub world and some of the progress you made doesn’t get saved, so I always made NSO save states in the worlds I was playing through so I could pick up from where I left off when I went back to playing so I could finish the level later. Plus, the game doesn’t do a good job with keeping your collected note count, and if you run out of health your note count restarts to zero and you have to recollect again, so save states fixed that problem a lot.

@MarioVillager92 I am glad the game is getting way better with the song selection, but some other songs I like a lot are getting added to the JP version and I have to wait a bit till they add them to the EN version. That’s interesting about the levels, because I don’t usually hear about Mario levels being difficult. Usually, the harder Mario levels are these fanmade levels in Super Mario Maker 1 and 2 called kaizos that are intentionally supposed to be hard to play and unfair to the player. I’ve seen a few in clips and they look so hard to deal with.

I think I have beat some King Salmonids, but rarely before the time limit runs out if I recall. I’d love to play Splatoon 3 again since I wasn’t into it as much as the previous two games shockingly. By the time they announced 3 I surprisingly, wasn’t really excited? I don’t know why but I assume it’s because I didn’t play the games much around that time and I was way more into other games at that time. I still liked 3 and thought it was an improvement (besides the internet being sometimes off) but I really missed out on the game updated and the new Salmon Run, and especially the Grand Festival.

It did, before they made it a requirement to make an account to view accounts and tweets, I occasionally visited the web version of Twitter as a guest to look at game news, and I think the day they revealed Steve, Twitter had such a hard time loading and was super slow as I was looking for opinions and tweets reacting to his reveal! Steve was such an unexpected character for Smash, and for years people thought it was gonna be impossible, but they did it and it worked very well! I stink at playing him though haha. I am also fine with Pyra/Mythra, but their recovery moves are sometimes hard to use, since for Pyra, if you use her recovery offstage you plummet down and get an instant self-destruct, and it only works well when your nearby the stage. Mythra’s recovery is easier for me to use, but you also have to make sure you’re close to the stage so you don’t fall down. Some recovery moves only work once and then you just fall down and can’t use any other moves to get back up stage, so some recoveries have to be used wisely. I’m good using a handful of characters but I’m not very good at using heavyweight characters compared to lighter characters. I also haven’t played Smash in a while, last time I played was back in June or July. I’d like to get back into playing it.

Rare has released their Rare Revealed documentaries online on their YouTube channel for free, including some that weren’t included in Rare Replay, so you can watch them there instead. The ones I already unlocked in Rare Replay were super interesting to watch, but I haven’t seen them all. I also agree, their Smash design is maybe the best design of them I’ve seen and it does a good job bringing their original N64 designs into high-definition and still resembling the original designs. I would have liked if Nuts and Bolts did have designs and an art style that resembled the original while maybe having some new elements in there and not having the designs deviate a ton from the originals. The newer designs for Banjo & Kazooie in that one look off. The only characters I think looked fine in that art style were Bottles (who I think resembled his original design far more than the other characters) and Mumbo. If Banjo & Kazooie did also have designs that resembled their original designs more, then I think they would have looked better, but who knows what their original designs would have looked with the new Xbox graphics and rendering since they said the N64 designs lost their charm with the new graphics at the time.

@Pastellioli
Speaking about Moana live action movie, despite I haven't fully watched Moana (2016) animated movie but there was a scene when Moana got thrown by Maui to ocean easily and the ocean saved her and bring back her on a Kano. I don't think the live action of Moana will use the same wackiness like animated movie.
Maui in live action version will not throw Moana to ocean easily like Tom & Jerry cartoon logic in live action version. The only closer thing in my opinion is Maui kick out Moana to the ocean and the ocean will bring back her. 🤭

@Anti-Matter I also don’t expect the remake to keep the same wackiness like the original (also since the remake will be live-action), and I expect some of the moments like that to be changed, and I’m expecting a more serious tone given that the Disney remakes sometimes tend to do that way too often, as well as the film using duller colors instead of the same brighter colors in the animated original. I just wonder how they are going to do the Shiny musical number and the rest of the stuff in the remake, and if they’ll make any significant differences in it since some of Disney’s other remakes have done that.

Happy new year everyone!

I hope this iteration of going around the sun is gentle with you all.