Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

I’m not expecting anything Metroid Prime related this year. I think anything related to the trilogy to be 2021 with Retro’s Prime 4 to be 2022.

@sixrings While it is true that Nintendo has problem with bundling remasters that would be bundled by any other company (WWHD and TPHD come to mind), Metroid Prime Trilogy is not a fantasy, but actually a product already released on the Wii U. It would make absolutely no sense for Nintendo to turn around and start releasing it in pieces when the whole thing was complete on the previous system.

@Octane

Sorry I still haven't played a Pikmin game, so I just don't think about it. I'll try Pikmin 3 at some point, cos it's super cheap.

@FragRed

Well quite a few of their ports have added new stuff, so I'm just being optimistic. It was one of the best-selling games on the Wii U, so a lot of people have already played it.
Adding new stuff would make people like me consider rebuying it. Otherwise, there's no way I'd bother. I'm fine with the Wii U version.

If they actually redid the textures and improved the graphics, I think that would be fine. But if they're just straight upscaled ports, then I think they'll sell all 3 together because they wouldn't justify a full price retail sale otherwise. The fact that Prime Trilogy was already a thing on the Wii is why I assumed it'd be done as a trilogy.

@Dezzy True, MK8 Deluxe did change the battle mode and add all the DLC as part of the package. And Treasure Tracker had some new stages. I was thinking of how little they did with New Super Mario Bros U DX or whatever it’s called. There really seemed bare bones changes and it still sold well. I just assumed because it’s Mario, it’s an easy sell no matter what.

I personally just want a new Odyssey to release this year. It’ll have been 3 years so plenty of time now they have an engine with assets they can build off.

@Dezzy Blasphemy! Get on it real quick!

@FragRed

They did add the Super Luigi U to the game don't forget. Which was frankly the best part of it. Only about half of the people had bought that on the Wii U.

@Dezzy Oh God I totally forgot about that. They desperately need to go back to the drawing board with 2D Mario. But I doubt they will. The New series sells too well.

Looking at the Wii U ports, we got in terms of extra and changed contents:

• BotW - Labo VR support
• MK8 Deluxe - Extra characters and vehicle parts, battle arenas, 1 item changed to 2 items
• Pokken DX - Extra character, new content added later as DLC
• Bayonetta 1+2 - Same as Wii U
• DKC Tropical Freeze - Easy mode in the form of Funky Kong
• Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition - Added the extra content and balancing from 3DS version, 2 new outfits
• Captain Toad Treasure Tracker - Replaced 3D World levels with Odyssey levels, new content added later as DLC, Labo VR support
• NSMBU Deluxe - Easy mode in the form of Toadette/Peachette
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore - Extra Side Story
• Wonderful 101 Remastered - Luka's First and Second Missions available as DLC (Kickstarter succeeded with those 2 DLC goals)

So the general approach with Wii U ports is have everything available that was in the Wii U version including DLC and either add an easy mode or extra content. So I think for future Wii U ports if we get them we'll get this content:

• 3D World - Add in Toadette/Peachette as an easy mode, also 3D World save file unlocking the 3D World courses from the Wii U version of Captain Toad in the Switch version of Captain Toad.
• Pikmin 3 - DLC stages from the Wii U version in the base game, maybe some extra stages too.
• XCX - Similar to Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition so any cut content restored and I'd guess also adding in the simulator that allows Elma to travel to the Land of Challenge from XC2 and an extra story segment that continues on from the Wii U version's ending.
• Yoshi's Woolly World - Adds the extra content from the 3DS version
• Zelda HD remasters - Identical to Wii U versions
• Kirby and the Rainbow Curse - Easy mode added
• Paper Mario Color Splash - Pit of 100 trials type challenge added
• Star Fox Zero + Guard - Adds planets from 64 that weren't in Zero (e.g. Macbeth)

@Grumblevolcano

Star Fox Zero required 2 screens to play remember. Almost no chance they'll port it. They'd have to completely remake the game to adjust to 1 screen.

@Dezzy Well I did say if they got ported. 3D World, Pikmin 3, Zelda HD remasters and XCX feel like the main likely ones with Zelda HD remasters dependent on BotW 2's release date and XCX is probably a few years out because of XC Definitive Edition.

@Dezzy After the mixed reviews and terrible sales, I don’t think for a moment Nintendo wants anything to do with Star Fox Zero. Probably won’t see anything from that franchise for a good while knowing Nintendo.

@Dezzy This is a good point. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen “just port Star For Zero with normal controls”, and it slightly annoys me how many people think SF0 was just a standard Star Fox game with outlandish ‘controls’ and nothing more. Practically the entire game was built about the two screen setup, and reworking it to be Switch-friendly would take an awful amount of work, which would unlikely be lavished on a game which didn’t sell particularly well, in the hopes of re-re-reviving franchise that isn’t super popular to begin with. I don’t think SF as a franchise is dead, but I don’t personally expect to see a SF0 port/revamp announced in the next Direct.

I don’t think a SM3DW port is absolutely guaranteed either, but if it is announced, I imagine it will feature some amount of extra content to differentiate it from the original.

And if Metroid Prime games get announced, pre-4, then I expect an HD trilogy rather than the games to be released separately. Back peddling from a trilogy having already released one just looks... bad.

@DannyBoi For the record, as a programmer I work from home all the time. Most solutions are cloud based these days, allowing people from around the globe to cooperate.

@Maxz Well there's one exception. We got the Mana trilogy and the a full blown modern remake of Trials of Mana and no one complained. So it is technically possible we could see a full out modern take on the original Prime. Unlikely, but possible.

@FragRed Nintendo did go on record saying they planned on adding something new to all their Wii U ports to help inspire people to want to buy them who'd already had them way back in 2018 too. And considering how that has been working out for them so far with the game's selling like they're brand new, I doubt we'll get any Wii U ports that don't have upgrades.

@Maxz

The thing that actually could work (although I doubt they'll do it), is if they made it so holding a button (like left-trigger) switched to the gun-view, and then letting go switched back to the regular view.

The most annoying thing about Zero was the fact that you had to keep switching between different screens. That really stopped it being an enjoyable experience.

@link3710 It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, but the distance from the SNES to current gen systems is clearly a fair bit greater than from the GameCube. With Mana 3, they’re taking a top-down, pixelated, sprite-based game and re-inventing as a current-gen 3D adventure. Even if Prime was re-done, it’d be making the much smaller jump from 3D first-person shooter to... slightly more modern 3D first-person shooter.

Having said that, FF7 is getting its own full priced remake, and that was at least a 3D game to begin with, but even that started a generation back on the original PlayStation, allowing plenty of scope for improvements.

I just can’t envisage a redone Prime to feel significantly different to an HD upgrade. Not to mention that if the purpose of releasing the old Prime games is partly to feed players into Prime 4, then releasing the trilogy as separate full price entries would be counterproductive and muddy the sales pitch for the new game.

By releasing a trilogy, you allow the players to experience the series’ history in a single purchase, and ready them for the next title. Releasing them individually would just result in four fully priced Prime games on the system meaning the player would have to for our $240 for the lot if they wanted to experience them all, and would likely result in the games cannibalising each other’s sales. And if Nintendo didn’t release all three previous games, the whole notion of building hype for the fourth would be lost, and there’d be this weird discontinuity where you could play, say, Prime 1 and Prime 4 on the system but would have no idea what happened between them.

I think it’ll either be all or nothing for Prime releases before 4. Either they’ll port the trilogy (maybe with a few more bells and whistles), or they just won’t release anything until 4 hits. Remaking Prime 1 from scratch to the point they could charge a ‘new game’ price for it alone would be a big project, and we already have a big Metroid Prime project in the form of Metroid Prime 4.

It's not like you switched across different screens very frequently, though. You know how in 3D platformers, it's sometimes difficult to see where you're jumping to (especially if you're jumping on a platform that is.. say, moving or thin, due to the camera angle and the limited perception of depth? In Zero, that's kinda what happens when you're trying to shoot in TV mode. Sometimes you land your shots, sometimes the depth perception and camera perspective, combined with the fast paced action of the gameplay, means that it's difficult to land those vital shots when looking at the TV, especially during a boss battle. That's where the GamePad came in - giving you a view that allows you to make more accurate shots. So you'd ideally be playing the game by primarily using TV mode and then looking down on the GamePad for more precise shooting... that worked waay more times than it didn't, admittedly. It's like looking down on the GamePad if you wanted to Super Jump in Splatoon.. except, of course, you had way more stuff going on in Zero.

Anyway, I do think a port of Zero could work on the Switch even though a total rehaul of the controls and whatnot would be in order. To get players back in to a new system, Nintendo could easily throw in a robust online mode, add in amiibo support, add customization options for the Arwing, and put in one or two new planets for the single player mode. Heck, maybe throw in online leaderboards (I forget if it had one already or not). You'd still have the arcade-y gameplay that's a classic for games of the series, but you'll also experience a modern polish that Nintendo would be most likely rewarded for, seeing as the Switch is selling quite well and players will buy a polished game when it's available. Besides, I do think Zero deserves a second chance and the recognition it deserves.

Oh, call it something creative like Star Fox Zero: Point One rather than something boring and generic like Star Fox Zero DX and I'm pretty much getting the day game one. But that's just me, hahaha...

That was entirely determined by your playstyle, more than by the actual game.

Yes, you could play it in a way where you only look at the gamepad occasionally, and that's mostly how I played it. But that did feel like it wasn't entirely what the game wanted. That was why it felt like an awkward game to me, that didn't live up to its potential.

One thing that I feel often goes unmentioned regarding Zero is the degree to which players’ mileage would vary depending on their TV setup. I mean, this is true for any Wii U game, but especially for games like Zero which requires switching between screens with relative frequency and in fast paced situations.

With the DS systems, you eyes never really had to refocus because the two screens were right next to each other; you could basically think of it like one giant smartphone-like screen with a small gap in the middle. With the Wii U though, the two screens could be practically any distance away from each other, meaning than for games that involved frequent screen switching, the strain of your eyes having to refocus between near and mid-distance perspectives could become a factor. For those sitting reasonably far away from their TVs or with eyes that strained easily, I think this became a source of discomfort that really put them off the game.

I know for something like Splatoon that I actually preferred the sequel’s more pedestrian way of displaying the map because so could keep my perspective on the same layer (although I must admit I did enjoy jabbing the screen to launch an Ink Strike).

Oh yeah I forgot Splatoon 1 required 2 screens. That was dumb and pointless.

Problem is, I'm very rarely in the mood for slow-paced games. And when I am, I tend to spend that time playing open-world RPG type thingies, because I love those.
And I still have both Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead 2 on my shelf waiting to be played. Then we have FF7 remake and Xenoblade up and coming.
So I can't imagine I'll have time for anything like Pikmin any time soon. I'm just far more likely to play something with faster pace, because I can play it while I cycle on my exercise bike.

There is maintenance tommorow. All for the Eshop. It's weird because Japan is getting four sets of maintence, and UK is only getting two.https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/network/en_na/network_status.jsp. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/netinfo/en_GB/index.html