Topic: Nintendo Switch 2

@Joeynator3000
I promise I don't care what your voice is like! Come on, probably be good for you to socialize a bit.

I won't pressure you if you really don't want to, but... consider it, at least. It's just talking. Not like you've never spoken to other people in your life.

I'm downloading the game now.

@JaxonH I was just never a fan of voice chat in general...and I'm really quiet anyways, I just prefer typing. Never mind then, I guess. :c

@Joeynator3000
I have an idea.

Join a GameChat session, but you can leave your mic muted (it's muted by default anyways and you have to unmute before talking anwyays).

Then I can speak so I don't have to text, and I can just read any messages you send on my phone. I just don't wanna bother typing when gaming. So you can hear me, but I can't hear you. Essentially just saves me from the hassle of messaging back.

Same. Just makes gaming more stressful.

Eh...just forget it.

@FishyS
I hate chatting with randoms, but if it's someone I know on my friend's list? Nothing stressful about that. It's a private 1 on 1 session with someone you're familiar with.

I used to have this weird phobia of chat until MH3U on Wii U, and I started chatting with a co-worker I played with. That completely demolished that fear, and ever since I just can't go back to texting out messages when technology allows using voice to communicate while simultaneously playing.

It's not like when chatting you're awkwardly trying to stir up small talk. You're just naturally communicating as you strategize together. "I found the monster, he's over by me", or "heal me quick I'm about to faint!". Stuff like that you just can't easily communicate without the instantaneous nature of chat.

Most of the time I've spent in chats gaming we're quiet anyways, only really speaking up when needed. Too busy paying attention to the game for anything more.

But I do remember it feeling intimidating, until I actually partook in it and realized it adds soooo much to the experience. Again, not with 3 other random ppl you've never spoken to before, but with like 1 person you have on your friend list.

Feel like I grossly misjudged F-Zero 99. The game is incredibly in-depth, with way more content than I previously realized.

I'd only booted it up once to do the Training Practice mode, but yesterday I fired it up and competed online for a while, unlocking various decals, boosts, Badge ID frames, tracks to choose in Practice Mode, etc.

I placed #33, #13, #10, #9 and #3 in my first 5 races. I really love the super boost that jumps you to the sky track as a shortcut. And the mechanics are really well done, with L/R for sharp turns, ZL/ZR to spin attack and strategically letting off B to accelerate while turning sharp corners. And boosts consume so much HP you really have to be careful not over using them.

Was never the biggest fan of the SNES/GBA style F-Zero once I played F-Zero X on N64 and F-Zero GX on GC, but this game really nails it.

@JaxonH
Yea, I was never an F-Zero person. Probably because my parents never bought it for me lol

But 99 is a lot fun. I really wish they would just bring back Mario 35 or whatever. That would be such a cool way to start 2026.

Maybe they’ll do something with Zelda dungeons for the Zelda anniversary haha

@rallydefault
Ya, I hear ya. At the same time, I kinda get why they kept Super Mario Bros 99 a timed release, because there's a limited number of online players to allocate for each game. And with Pac-Man 99, SMB 99, F-Zero 99, compounded by the Fortnites and Apex Legends, the Mario Kart Worlds and Splatoon 3s, it may have spread the player counts a little too thin, resulting in each game suffering unfilled lobby matches and longer wait times.

And the Mario one, if I recall correctly, was a bit basic compared to F-Zero, right? Think it was just the original game's levels, but maybe I'm wrong on that. F-Zero 99 seems more fleshed out, designed for longevity. Though I am curious if they'll make an attempt with another franchise in the future.

F-Zero 99 has a LOT of bots nowadays. Tetris 99 seems to be the only one of those games remaining fully active so I agree that Nintendo probably doesn't think it's worthwhile juggling too many of those games.

As for Mario 35, they easily could have added more courses and types of events. However, I don't believe they ever actually added bots to the game. There was no single player version and it was time limited so was always super active but if it had continued forever they would have had to figure out how to make reasonable bots. Personally, Mario 35 was my favorite of those NSO games, although Tetris 99 is a close second. It's hard to make good multiplayer racing platformers but Mario 35 was a pretty good one. I'm still sad they killed it.

@JaxonH
From what I remember, the Mario one was certain levels from the first game, yea. There was a decent variety of levels from the first game, but I don't think they had all of them.

It was a bit weird because the really good players could just keep going almost infinitely. The "garbage" that other people could attack you with was just more goombas/koopas and stuff that could easily be avoided or even scrolled ahead of quickly. The setup didn't lend itself as naturally to finite endings like Tetris or PacMan can by speeding things up to the point of impossibility, sending huge amounts of blocks at you, etc.

shoutout to the dev team of f-zero 99 maintaining the game with new content after all this time despite nearly the entire playerbase being gone.

It had every level from smb-1. You had to unlock them though; I don't recall how well you had to do to unlock all of them but it was reasonably quick. Events often focused on various subsets of the levels.

They changed the physics of course so it wasn't quite literally smb.

...Yeah they could've easily kept Mario 35 going...or give us a paid option like some of the 99 games. I'd pay to have an offline version and play against CPUs or something. But yeah, they could've added Lost Levels or even go for the New games. (not a fan of most of those levels but yeah)

Hell, give us SMB levels from the Mario Maker games, lol

@Joeynator3000 It makes me wonder what type of racing they will do in super mario maker 3. They keep experimenting — smm2 had the scuffed versus multiplayer racing and the fun but less interactive official event speedrun levels. And then Wonder and mario 35 had very different types of racing from either of those.

Lost Levels levels in Mario 35 would have been hilarious; a few of those levels are evil even without enemy spam raining from the sky. I would have definitely paid for an offline version of that. smb3 probably could have been added pretty easily also. Well... except for all the autoscroll levels.

@FishyS
The online multiplayer modes in Mario maker 2 were lowkey amazing.

versus was hilarious but also super bad at the same time 😆 Everyone complaining about 30 fps should go experience a multiplayer race in like 2 fps.

Does F-Zero 99 have offline racing with bots outside of practice mode? Or does it just have online, and defaults to bots for however many slots are needed?

Gotta say, I think it's the best of the 99 games released thus far, though Tetris 99 remains a classic.

Anyways yeah I never liked the 99 games, but Mario 35 I flat-out loved. Loved how you had to look at some levels differently, go for that one level to spawn in Lakitus? Go for the late-game Bowser? Using a underground level again to basically "reroll" levels. xp

Mario 35 was a near masterpiece, and its still to this day, tragic that it never returned. Like they had a chance to at least do a return for the next Mario anniversary and we couldn't even get that type of temporary return. Between that and Pacman Championship Edition (and ironically not Pacman 99 so much), makes me think I should quit trying to get into half of the AAA games I still play and just play modern updates to classics that pull similar tricks instead.

F Zero has gotten close too. It's honestly the most I've gotten into an F Zero ever (though GX was close back in the day), and I've put more time into it, a technically free game, than I have a lot of games I paid full price for (maybe the vast majority if you go back to when full priced meant 50). I thought I was done but the latest updates/events got me playing it again.

Considering how they're used, they feel more than anything like continuations of when the Rayman Legends pre-release challenges practically saved the Wii U for me after launch. Just simple basic gameplay, for no additional cost, that's actually one of the better gaming experiences out there. (one of many reasons I think Rayman Legends was the unsung hero of the Wii U)