Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Wow I completely forgot it's out today. I'll fire it up tonight

@JaxonH Its a game designed for arrow keys. Before mice were cool. Before WASD was cool. Space bar to fire.

This stuff is the reason we used to build gaming rigs... Even if it did require an entire 256kb video memory. It was worth it. It may have poisoned the well for later though.

Welcome to the best of DOS!

Trails of Cold Steel IV is coming October 27th, and there's a new Fallen Legion as well. Seems NIS America's had a busy day of announcements.

when will apex legends be out?

@link3710
Switch and PC version is 2021, not October. Both YS IX: Monstrum Nox and Trails of Cold Steel IV are 2021 for PC/Switch, which btw, are more and more being grouped together like PS/Xbox typically are. I think that’s cool. Switch has earned its spot at the table, which is quite the feat given Nintendo hasn’t had a truly viable home console since... arguably the SNES (GC got a fair few titles but few RPGs, and Wii was mostly bespoke waggle nonsense).

Not that that’s a big deal though. As long as the game is coming, and even better, we know in advance it’s coming (not that silence is fooling anyone into double dipping anymore- we all know Crash 4 will hit PC/Switch in 2021 as well, so Switch/PC gamers will calmly wait).

Fallen Legion, I have the collector edition for the original on Switch. It felt like a high-quality B-rate niche title. It was lower budget but it was really well polished and had decent visuals for the tier of game it was. Already ordered the collector edition for the new one.

@NEStalgia
Our family couldn’t afford a computer when I was growing up. Aside from keyboard class in kindergarten around 1990, I never touched one. Well, my friend showed me windows 95 when I would spend the night at his house in 6th grade. He had an N64 and we would play Wave Race, one of the wrestling games and Killer Instinct all night.

I missed out on all of that. In fact, since I only got back into gaming with 3DS (owned a PS2 but only played EA Sports hockey and shadow of the Colossus) and PS3 (but only played Metal Gear Solid 4), and GameCube (but only played Metroid Prime 1/2 and FZero GX) and a Wii (but only played Zelda Twilight Princess, DKC Returns and Metroid Prime 3), I had never really played FPS... at all, until I tried Killzone Mercenary on Vita. And it really didn’t impress me. Tried Killzone Shadowfall on PS4, also didn’t impress me. I liked the graphics at the time though. The first FPS I actually got into was Call of Duty Black Ops 2 on Wii U, believe it or not. And I played through and beat the entire campaign using the motion controls. I’ve been a motion FPS fan from the very beginning.

So I find it very interesting playing these older FPS classics. DOOM, DOOM 2, DOOM 64, Duke Nukem, Turok, Turok 2, Wolfenstein 3D (hey, why haven’t they released that yet?)... I’m playing with gyro now but, I can imagine playing them with keyboard and mouse. What a great genre and time period for gaming. I see now that PC really helped drive the FPS genre forward. That’s fantastic.

SO MANY CLASSICS or games that call back to the classics on Switch... it’s like a treasure trove from all the genres and time periods I missed out on. Just playing an hour or two of each and getting a taste is enough for me to broaden my appreciation for games. I failed to mention Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Planescape Torment, A Bard’s Tale... lots of classic PC rpgs too.

Can anyone tell me how to get the motion controls to work in Star Wars Ep. 1 Racer?

Not in options. Just "Racer" and "Classic" and "Sideways Joycon" options. None of them show or use motion.

I've tried everything, looked everywhere (I think?). I dont get it.

@JaxonH You must first pledge your loyalty to Chancellor Palpatine and embrace the Dark Side. Only then will you have the power you seek.

@Heavyarms55
Ya they advertised them in the newest trailer shown on Nintendo’s YT channel.

@JaxonH Huh, I wonder if that's a mistake. How hard could it be to find the option if it is indeed in the game? Maybe they're planning on patching it in?

https://nintendoeverything.com/strategy-rpg-the-war-of-genesi...

The strategy RPG The War of Genesis: Remnants of Gray is in the works for Switch, Korean publisher LINE Games and developer Studio ReG have announced. A release is slated for sometime in 2022.

Is this REALLY a Switch game? I know our little hybrid system is quite capable, but this, sorry, looks too good for something running on Switch hardware. I'm just going to assume this is what the game looks like running on a PC and that the final version won't look nearly as impressive.

Either way, it looks awesome.

Since it's Ep1, I was going to make a Jar Jar joke, be meesa just couldn't stomach it. Maybe it's a midichloriean problem.

@JaxonH Yeah, I can relate...though that timeline makes me feel old....kindergarten in 1990......1990 feels like yesterday. I was the kid without a computer when everyone else had one. I had my 2600, NES, SNES, and Genesis though. Priorities, you know?

N64 was too expensive, Saturn seemed sucky, I got burned on Virtual Boy, and I really had barely a clue what a Playstation was or why anybody would buy a Sony-branded knock-off console after the failure of Maganvox and Philips and so forth instead of the real thing a Nintendo or Sega. I mean EVERYBODY knows VCR company consoles aren't real consoles. Duh!

My gaming TV was shot, and I needed a computer at that point for real.....so I gave up the gaming, and got a computer. Cobbled from scraps. It was supposed to be a 486DX2. But I managed to get a steal (I'll never know if that means literally or figuratively....) on an early 586. Turns out it was one of the Pentiums with the FDIV bug. Oh well. But gaming was done, productivity was on. Then someone loaned me a copy of shareware DOS games and a joystick.....I had no idea computers could game....(evillly rubbing palms together) That was that.

So PC gaming came about, for me because I couldn't afford consoles AND PCs, and NEEDED PCs....so it became a BOGO. OTOH that was before video cards started costing more than consoles.....don't remind me.

Duke was on that shareware floppy (yes...shareware floppy....) though....

Keyboards and....and....mouse? MOUSE?
Kids these days......with their fancy peripherals.....pfft.....

You didn't play Duke Nukem with a mouse. Oh no. +mouselook was for DOOM 3D. We weren't there yet. You play Duke with a keyboard. The only peripheral there is. Just a keyboard. Arrow keys to move for tank controls. No vertical motion, just forward, backward, rotate...I can't remember how strafe was handled. Space to shoot. 1-0 for weapon switching. Livin' the dream, baby.

But yeah, PC didn't just help develop the FPS genre. PC was the FPS genre. Seeing it arrive on console at all was.....weird. It was a genre made on PC for PC that took advantage of the PC's inputs....never really felt right on stick. It's PC's genre through and through. Console borrowed it. When I first started trying to play shooters on a controller.....it went bad. I had to buy one of those PS3 mouse/keyboard adapters that almost worked ok. Splatoon was a revelation. An airmouse.....perfect (I know Wii did it, but those games weren't really the "full" experience.)

Duke was the first of those early shooters that felt like a "full" game....DOOM is great, it's classic, but it's primitive. Wolf3D.....it's okay-ish. It's not a great game at all, it was very early and it's main selling point was just that it was in quasi-3D at all. A revelation at the time, but it's a pretty minimal affair compared to what came after. It would be forgotten were it not the first and thus classic. That was the era when "generations" meant "id released a new shooter." id determined what the next generation was, and the generation was built around whatever engine id was on. id determined what hardware you were going to buy. "Colored lighting" was a buzz word when QII used 3dfx cards. Before that lighting didn't come in colors. Then Epic (real Epic, not modern Tencent garbage Epic) doubled down with Unreal Engine....actually it was a loathed engine at the time. The colored lighting was grotesque, it looked like a carnival. But mappers hated it. It's claim to fame was huge maps. But where Quake Engine (id) used additive "brushes" where you draw brushes into a void, Unreal Engine used subtractive brushes. The world was a block and you carved pieces out of it. Mappers hated it. The scripting was a menace.

Back then imagining a world where UE ruled the gaming world and id engines were almost entirely unused would have been unfathomable. UE was an awful clone, and the universal engines came from id. I still think of UE as "the inferior also-ran" out of habit despite that nobody's really used id's engines since the colossal failure that was DOOM 3 where Carmack jumped the shark and went all in on requiring only bleeding edge $500 video cards.

Speaking of.....there's a few games of classic shooters still missing. I want to see Bethesda/id do something with that. It would set Switch on fire among the classic PC cult. Doom's ok and all. But Quake is where the real love is. If you've never played Quake 1 you're missing the very best retro shooter around. Quake 2 was good....it was a better campaign. Quake 3 was just an online shooter and marked the beginning of the end. Quake 1 is just special though. Nothing else is quite like it. Both Quake 1 and 2 were on N64, so it's already been on Nintendo. But not "wholly" since a single stick wasn't quite going to cut it. Those are probably the first "modern" shooters, ever. Q1 didn't become "modern" until GLQuake was added later. QII was born in GL. QII is space marines....cool, unique world and vibe. But Q1 is just so different from.....anything. It was born of a directional split between the devs. Carmack, Romero, and McGee couldn't agree on a theme. Sci-fi, occult/Lovecraftian, or dark medieval. So the game ended up being a mix of all 3. And it's beautiful. With a soundtrack by Trent Reznor (and nailguns with ammo crates with the NiN logo....for the 90's folk...)

Give me Quake, Bethesda. Motion, you know already. Take my money now and make it happen next year. Just do it!! I wonder if they have the rights to the mission packs from Rogue. Those were awesome. DoE added the grappling.

Also, two classic retro Q1 engine early FPSs that punched well above their age are games that may or may not be lost forever. Hexen and Heretic. Raven made them, but id published Hexen (does Bethesda still own it?), Activision published Heretic (wonder what mess the rights are), and John Romero produced them directly. Those felt like the future's games. Raven was a very good studio. Then they lost a lot of money on the mediocre Wolfenstein remake. Then Activision bought them and uses them to crank out endless CoD. It's about as Raven as Bioware is still Bioware.

I still haven't bought the CRPGs yet......BG, BGII, PS: Torment, IwD are such classics...the best of the best. I can't imagine not playing them with a mouse....I don't know how that can really work. But such amazing games I need to re-buy for posterity.

And Duke 3D is indeed a fantastic port/update on Switch. Last I played the games they didn't even play with mice....so this is like an all new game set to me. It's dated. It's ancient, but it's still special. And it at least looks way better than it used to, simple geometry or not. Between Duke, a series that opens in a porn theater, and Saint's Row, the game that opens with f-bombs. It's a whole new Nintendo.... For $5 it really was a steal. For $10 it's not so bad either. It's pretty ancient but high speed run & gun never gets too stale.

@Ralizah The actual gameplay sections look very Switch-level. I'm assuming most of the rest of that stuff is pre-rendered FMV.

So do we have any hint at the next big game reveal? I would've guessed it would happen about now. A month from Xenoblade release. A month before Paper Mario.

Hoping they announce that 3D Mario collection about now, and it releases around September time.

@Dezzy - I imagine Camelot is going to unveil Mario Golf for Switch fairly soon.

Mario Tennis Aces is more than a couple years old now.

@Dezzy I did wonder, while watching the Min Min 4 Smash video, when it was said she'd be available later this month, whether they were going to run a Direct at the end of the month with Min Min available straight after. But then they put a date on her... and I deflated.

@Dezzy I'd guess either something gets announced tomorrow for release in late August (the investor meeting is on Friday) or Bravely Default II ends up being the August game with no new reveals other than Animal Crossing updates until after Paper Mario launches. I could see a setup where the demo with save data transfer gets released in July and then the full game comes in August similar to how things went with Octopath in 2018.

When was the last time Nintendo announced a console game at an investors meeting? I can't think of anything during the Switch era or Wii U/3DS era. Only games I can really think of are just announcements of mobile games.

@Toy_Link Technically not at a meeting, but they've announced games on Twitter right before the meeting before. I think it was January 2019 that had a ton of release dates and a couple small game announcements drop right before the Q3 investor's meeting.

@Toy_Link Well in past years there was E3 always happening a few weeks before the June meeting.

One thing that stood out to me yesterday regarding Nintendo Directs while watching NGPX was......it....was a Nintendo Direct.

I mean the format was the same. The transitions were the same. The narrator was the same. It was literally the modern post-Iwata direct, except not for Nintendo.

This is interesting and informative. There were a number of Nintendo reveals prefixed with the "Switch" logo screen like on a Direct. Maybe Nintendo played a role in NGPX and that has consumed their presentation time.

More likely, though, that means that the post-Iwata Nintendo Direct is not a Nintendo production at all...the "slick presentation" version after the fun quirky-version is not an in-house product but something they buy as a prefab out of the box packages from some video PR studio. Which explains why it has no soul. This time someone else bought the package and it's just a clone almost verbatim from Nintendo's current format.

That makes me wonder if part of the lack of ND's has been a falling out with said production company. Either because they were working on NGPX instead and it was too difficult under current conditions to handle both accounts, or if they ended up taking the NGPX job because the Nintendo jobs fell through, possibly permanently as they shop for a new production partner or take it back in house.