Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

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.

https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/other_gaming/your_favorit...

I try not to do this for anything else I post, but I just want to tell people about my end of year thread. I like these way more than most end of year favorites listings because I don't play many games when they're brand new anymore, and neither do plenty of people so I think its very fun and cool every year to just round up the best games we played rather than purely define the year by what came out instead of what we actually played.

@Pastellioli Happy New Year!

Yeah. Crunchyroll has that option. Though, I don't think it used to.
The ads are a massive pain.
My big reason for not subbing to CR was originally because they screwed me over when I tried to start a free trial. These days though, their app is effectively non-functional for me, for the most part.
I miss the early streaming service days. They weren't all paid. You could just look up a Sonic X episode, if not on Youtube's special service, then on 4kids. Hulu was free, with Plus being a paid addon that simply allowed you to view the newest episode sooner, and watch on TV without as much hassle. Netflix was still affordable, and you could actually get the discs themselves sent to you.

Oh woooow. So, remakes of new stuff. Cutting parts out. Yikes. And uh, the community notes Disney didn't like just mysteriously vanished? Well, that's ominous.

Yeah. I saw that comment about their next game! Sadly, for both the games and movies, apparently, Disney has gotten so butthurt over Sonic 3 beating Mufasa, they're now aiming to purchase Sega outright. I genuinely despise Disney at this point, so uh, what tier comes after that?

Yeah. I mean, manifestations of characters throughout the gaming multiverse? How did they screw that up so badly? It's actually an outright boring mechanic to me!
And yeah. The next game certainly won't have as large a roster. Might not even be done by Sakurai himself. I am rather concerned with how it might turn out.

Yeah. That makes sense. I don't always notice it with movies though. Sonic 1 at least, did not have that feel of Sonic X, with the human characters completely dominating for so long.
As for 2 and 3, yeah. The elements introduced was part of what made them great. The foreshadowing has the fanbase going nuts. I don't inherently hate the human characters. And weirdly enough, in the case of Sonic 06, while that kind of romance plot is heavily frowned upon in most of the world, in Japan, it's a kind of thing in mythology that frequently comes up when referring to "yokai".

Huh. Yeah. There's plenty of disasters lately. I have heard that Xbox has an option you can toggle to set it so you can play games while offline at least. But the fact that has to be set up to begin with is a major issue. Also, WOW, people completely lost everything on their system? If there were ever a reason to fear DRM, that's one of them... Speaking of incidents, remember that time Sony got hacked, then said they improved security features, and were unhackable, only to be hacked again? Yeahhhh. Hubris at its finest.

Yup. Anxiety is too much in general. Things can just randomly happen too. I find the combination keeps me from straying too far from home, as well as limiting how long I can be out.
Anyway, this new year genuinely had better not be 2020 part 6. If it goes that far, we might see the Jojo apocalypse arc.

Welcome to 2025! Short replies, but I am dropping responses in here for awhile after this.

@Mariotag I'm still around here, just relaxing on forum use for a period of time.

@MarioVillager92 Glad you had a great Christmas! A good haul too. Stamp Guy is fun in EoW and may low-key be a Tingle replacement, at least temporarily. Supposedly Dream Team gets long in the tutorial department. Hope you continue to enjoy your MMBN Collection playthrough!

@Pastellioli I'm sure there will be new NSO announcements soon. Personally, I don't mind using save states for longer games since they help maintain my sanity. Or games that don't have a proper save system and can't be completed in one session.

@Tyranexx Alright. Just wanted the possibility. Tbh, I'm getting a bit worn out with the many places I frequent to check on and give replies myself. But I'm most prominently on discord.
Anyway, I'll try to see if I can spot you on the site every so often.

This is super quick mockup I made but I am curious, would you guys like it if Nintendo rebranded to a more maroon color? Personally, if they make joycon in this color I will die happy.

@MetaCrystal Thanks! I will check it out!!

@Mariotag late reply! Sorry! Happy new year to you too

The ads really ruined a couple of binge-watching sessions I had. I remember I was binge-watching the first season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure back in September and the ads were the WORST there compared to previous months when I watched on Crunchyroll. The ads were okay back when I was watching anime in January-March (episodes were still littered with them but they’d actually start), but with JoJo, the ads on that would either just not play and take minutes to start, replay the same ads over again, and I’d always have to keep leaving the app and going back to the show to fix it. It didn’t help a lot given I did most of the binge-watching late at night at the end of the day since I was busy earlier, so it would sometimes go on for long and I’d get sleepy before starting the next episode. I was usually only able to finish one episode a night because the ads went on for too long and never started.

It gave you trouble when you did a free trial? Was it because they charged you even though your trial ended? I hear issues like that sometimes happening with free trials on streaming services that are not the greatest quality. I was considering subbing to a higher sub so I could watch a few more episodes and seasons of anime I saw for free on Crunchyroll, but I’m not really sure I would actually use it actively. I feel like I’d only use it for the following seasons of JoJo, but the fifth and most recent season of JoJo isn’t even on there and is locked on Netflix, and Crunchyroll only has four of five seasons, so I don’t think it would be worth it for me to get it, plus I wouldn’t be able to see all JoJo episodes in time with a 7-day trial.

I don’t actually remember Hulu originally being free since it’s been so long ago, but I remember Netflix used to be at a much better price, had none of those tiers and didn’t have shows being locked and unwatchable on lower and cheaper tiers, plus it had all your favorite shows and movies in one place and you didn’t need to get multiple services to watch what stuff you like. Physical media was also far more popular than digital. Although I am all-digital with most of my stuff now, I still would hate for physical to go away, I just want everyone to have options and being able to pick what game format they would want instead of being forced to pick a single one.

Yeah, with them already remaking Moana, it tells me that they’ll probably remake newer movies too even though I feel like live-action remakes are unnecessary, kind of surprises me they haven’t gotten onto remaking Frozen yet. I just wonder if they are going to change parts of Moana (like the Shiny musical number) or keep everything the same. Either the remakes will add in new characters and scenes or remove stuff from them completely. I heard the Mulan remake had a lot of that, like notably removing Mushu and Cri-kee and Li Shang and having the matter’s role split into two characters and I think Shan Yu’s hawk was replaced by a shapeshifting witch that takes the form of a hawk. I think a lot of those changes came from them wanting to make the story more realistic so a few of the fantasy elements from the original were removed, but people pointed out how they added that shapeshifting witch in the story and didn’t make the story realistic like they were aiming for. I just wonder how they are going to handle the Moana remake and if it’ll have a lot of changes like a few of the other Disney remakes.

Wait, is it true Disney is planning or aiming to buy Sega? I tried to look up stuff about it but I saw nothing and people are saying it’s likely fake. If it is true, that’s just bad, and I definitely think Sega will say no to them if Disney is actually attempting that. I just think some game companies should be left alone and should stay away from gigantic companies like that. I know once I read that there were rumors and people wanting Microsoft to buy Sega, but they said they weren’t open to acquisitions at the time. I think Microsoft is not good at managing some of the subsidiaries they currently have, so I don’t think they should buy Sega at all.

I really think that cool concept could have been handled and used better just by making the battles themselves a bit more fun and making the Adventure mode exciting by having the fighters interact more besides the opening cutscene, have varied Spirit battles and making the cool map of mishmashed gaming worlds not act as a virtual board game map. I still think they could have saved a board game map if they brought back Smash Tour from Smash for WiiU. I am expecting a roster cut in the next game, but I don’t think it’ll be a super significant one. Only characters I can think of that’ll get cut are the ones that might have licensing issues tied to them and could be hard to work out again, but who knows what direction the next game will go in. I wouldn’t really want a reboot that kind of undoes all the stuff that Smash has done over the years and significantly makes the roster smaller akin to earlier games. I don’t think that direction would be a popular choice at all and I feel like Nintendo probably wouldn’t do that for the next game.

The later films do a good job setting events up by introducing game characters in the films, since just by seeing what characters are introduced during the movies and what characters are revealed in post-credit scenes of the movies, it can kind of tell you what game(s) the next film will draw inspiration from and semi-adapt. Tails being revealed in Sonic 1 and Knuckles being introduced in Sonic 2 had the film take elements and storylines from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles, and G.U.N. being introduced during Sonic 2 and Shadow debuting in the post-credit scenes told everyone Sonic 3 was going to semi-adapt Adventure 2. I’m unsure what game Sonic 4 is going to semi-adapt and take inspiration from, and I’m stuck between CD and Heroes in terms of what game Sonic 4 will be inspired from. With them revealing Shadow survived the explosion, I do feel like they’d want to use him in another film ASAP, and given the characters they revealed in the post-credits, I am leaning a bit more on Heroes. The films get exciting each time, and get way better. 3 is the best so far in my opinion.

That’s surprising with the whole romance thing in 06, I guess it’s received differently because of cultures. The reception with the romance makes sense given Japanese mythology isn’t popular in the West and a couple of the Japanese myths and stories are considered niche in America compared to other myths like Greek and Norse, so some people wouldn’t know certain Japanese myths.

That whole thing with the person getting hacked and losing their Xbox games and then getting completely ruined by the Xbox’s poor DRM is just scary. It makes me wish most consoles nowadays didn’t require having to make digital accounts just to play the console, since any kind of digital account is open to being hacked, even if the account was made on a secure site. Although not related to hacking, I recall reading this forum on Push Square that got a bit of attention, but I think this user said he was trying to log into his PSN account and play his games, and he lost access to his account and games thanks to an age-verification system that unexpectedly locked him out and didn’t function correctly, even though he wasn’t even young and was older, and I remember he couldn’t fix it. I didn’t know that Sony tried to improve security once and got hacked again! That stinks. It sucks that no matter how much companies and people improve and strengthen security, they can unfortunately still be subject to hackers and cybersecurity breaches.

I am trying to be more positive (also since a new year started) but I do still feel a bit nervous and sometimes anxious at moments. Luckily it’s not super bad or out of control, and my days have been going well so far. By the way, are you doing well? I hope your New Years went good

@Tyranexx Me too! Definitely happy with everything I got. Won't mind seeing Stamp Guy again in future Zelda games, he is a fun character for sure. I still remember how long Dream Team's tutorials were. As somebody who has had prior experience with the previous Mario & Luigi games, those sucked to deal with haha. I'm still liking MMBN2, though after I finish it, I might take a break from the series, I can see myself getting Mega Man'd out, lol. Hope you have a lovely 2025.

@Pastellioli Yeah, the ads were always a problem for me though. And it's okay if you're a bit late!
As for my issues with the free trial, back in 2014, I tried using a PS3 promotion that was advertised on the app so I could watch the new at the time Fairy Tail season. But, it didn't give me a free trial. The offer was expired. On top of not getting the free trial, simply clicking the offer counted as my free trial, meaning we had to pay for a month subscription, and at the end of the month, it charged us again automatically, so we just gave up on crunchyroll entirely.

I despise the idea of physical going away, or even getting downgraded. In that older era, you had more free streaming sites. Hulu just happened to have a plus option that was paid, allowing you to see the newest episode a week earlier, and letting you run it directly on TV/console. Netflix was paid to begin with, and originally wasn't even streaming! Rather, you'd get physical discs shipped to your house via the mail. You'd watch them, and send them back.

Eh, I remember the Mulan remake being mentioned as part of a described stance Disney was taking at the time that, while anything goes for male characters, a female character who was a hero was not allowed to have flaws, and a female character who was a villain had to be sympathetic, with characters such as Cruella De Vil and Maleficent being given backstories to make them seem as though they were just reacting to having been greatly wronged themselves. I genuinely dislike current Disney. They ruin whatever they touch.

Eh. I saw two different videos on it. It's very possible that trying to purchase Sega is Disney's next move on the warpath against Sonic 3, which, I don't think big corporations like Disney and Microsoft who can't respect smaller companies or their wishes and intentions should be buying out anybody. Apparently, Disney once wanted to purchase Nintendo too.

Honestly, agreed about WoL. I would have to add though, why stop at the fighters interacting with each other? Integrate the spirits more in that sense! Yeah, the board map was boring at times, but had its perks, such as the Lost Woods part. Any new smash would have the roster cut. Characters would be replaced too. Can't say I like the idea though.

Yeah. The movies keep getting better! Foreshadowing is great! I can't be sure what'll come next tbh.

Yeah, the whole romance thing was very much a Japanese mythology type move. Considering Sonic and crew sorta resemble Japanese yokai in some respects, it would make sense they went with the mindset that they're more mythical creatures who can indeed end up together with humans if it turns out that way. Which is not popular in the west, as you stated.

Yeah. DRM is terrifying in general! You can just lose everything you purchased for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars! Steam is something close to a monopoly on PC, given how massive its userbase is, and the reality is, if for any reason Steam is unable to keep those games for people, people lose all of it. And yeah. Sony showed quite a bit of arrogance in saying they were unhackable. I can sorta appreciate someone going outta their way to hack them again after seeing that, just to make a point.

New years went okay here. But I am still reeling from my realization over the holidays. I'm still effectively non-functional, and that needs to change.

So who's left here? I can see like 5 people