Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Quick question. Due to some personal stuff, I will be flying out to see my family (the flight is about four hours) on Monday in a completely unplanned trip. I planned to take my first proper trip with my Switch later in the year, but now this has come up, so my prep goes out of the window. Are there any good, cheap, games that are good for short bursts for these sorts of circumstances that I can load my Switch up with?

@Pizzamorg
Short burst = Overcooked All You Can Eat, Moving Out, ARMS, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Penguin Wars

@Pizzamorg
Honestly, because Switch can be put into sleep mode in an instant and resumed in an instant, virtually all games are great for handheld mode.

I still think there’s something to be said for pick up and play games though. I myself am going down to Richmond, Indiana next week because my job is sending me to help with our newly acquired plant down there, and I’ll be taking my Switch as well (obviously).

Here are some ideas…

Cruis’n Blast (which you already own)
Hot Wheels (it’s fun)
Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania (it’s fun)
Monster Hunter Rise (quick 15 minute quests work great for handheld)
Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (low commitment, save any time)
Club House Games (51 games, there’s gotta be at least half a dozen games you like)
DKC Tropical Freeze (super fun, 5-10 min stages lend well to handheld)
Super Mario 3D World (same reason)
Trials Rising (incredible game, analog stick works for Switch very well)
Tony Hawk PS1/2 (THE pick up and play game of our generation)
Warioware Get It Together (self explanatory)
Doom Eternal (quick and fast paced reaction based gameplay)

There’s plenty more. I didn’t even mention Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Rocket League, Smash, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, etc. but that can at least get your brain spinning.

Then again I’ve played engrossing, complex games in handheld and tabletop portably and they’ve worked basically just as well. Games like Sniper Elite 4 (though I’m not sure how the gyroscope and accelerometer would react to being in a plane going hundreds of mph?)

Pokemon, Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, Piczle Lines, Stardew Valley, Breath of the Wild, Puzzle & Watch, Farming Simulator, Namco Museum, Uno.

The list goes on.

And yes, with sleep mode, basically any game is "pick up and play"!

Thanks for the recommendations all, time to head over to the eshop and do some loading up.

So, remember when the OLED was announced and the internet collectively declared that it "for sure WILL be an inferior pentile display pattern"?

Turns out, it's not. But of course, anyone who even dared to suggest it may be otherwise was mocked to scorn.

RGB OLED Display

Switch OLED Display

You can see the pattern is very similar, and seems to match the S-stripe RGB layout of the Galaxy Note 2. Definitely not Pentile, which only uses 2 subpixels per pixel instead of 3. Not that I think it would have made much of a visible difference either way. The whole pentile thing was blown way out of proportion anyways. At the end of the day, what matters is, "does it look better".

Still, nice to know that not only is this an OLED Display, it's a top of the line OLED display. And particularly nice considering most Samsung OLEDs have adopted pentile matrix.

@JaxonH I'd love to get my hands on Banana Mania sometime, glad to hear you think it's really good. I never played the first game or Deluxe, but I played SMB2 a ton when I was a child. Really wanna get Cruis'n Blast too.

@MarioLover92
It’s stuffed to the brim with content. All kinds. First two games included, Plus you can unlock the extra DX mode with the added Deluxe stages, you can unlock Reverse Mode, Dark Banana mode, Golden Banana mode, 23 original stages with unchanged difficulty, challenge mode with rankings, party mode with 12 mini games, and each mini game has multiple modes… plus tons of characters, outfits, balls, accessories… it’s chock full of content.

And the stages are so original and creative. I love it. You can also purchase the ability to optionally turn on jump, which really helps with a few stages that I was right at the end, but lost momentum and couldn’t get through the goal, but by going in the options and turning on jump, I was able to quickly finish the stage instead of having to restart. It doesn’t store your completed time if you use jump but, if you’re having trouble beating the stage that’s a fair trade off. You can also enable helper mode, which doubles the allotted time and gives you a slow motion feature when holding R, which makes the brutally painful stages actually possible to beat. They are still challenging as heck even with the slow motion, but these are stages that I would never be in a million years otherwise. Yet suddenly they become a fun challenge that’s not impossible.

One thing I will say though, is I have a deeper appreciation for Banana Blitz after playing this. That game had a much better difficulty curve. To the point where you didn’t need any helper mode to get through stages. It had the jump ability by default but the stages were designed with that in mind. I found banana blitz to be just the right difficulty. It got really hard in the last few worlds and to this day I don’t think I’ve been in the 9th world which was a bonus unlock, but it’s about as perfect as you could ask for in terms of a difficulty curve. It also had the catchiest theme song of the entire series. This game’s new music is lame as heck. I turned original music on because it was so mediocre.

Still, thanks to this game including the helper mode it also has a pretty good difficulty curve.

@JaxonH That sounds like a really good package, thanks for your thoughts. You literally have to buy the jump, though? Or is that done with in-game currency? I did see the DLC for the game and it shows stuff like the classic soundtrack and the Sega consoles.

@MarioLover92
In game currency. Collecting bananas, beating stages gives a few hundred bananas, beating missions can give 300-1000 bananas and there's tons of missions.

There's some DLC too but I bought the deluxe package because I love these games and want all of it. But it's just the original models, original music, and some characters. Can easily skip. Still, I think it's cool having those characters and music and stuff.

@JaxonH octobre 8th can't come sooner enough, i can't wait to finaly play Metroid Dread in my extended battery Switch.

@Giancarlothomaz
It’s gonna be a big day… for a lot of ppl.

So hyped! This is quite the moment given how long we've been waiting.

Edit: It's actually hard to start playing, I had the same thing with FFVIIR since that was also so eagerly anticipated. 🤯

@Matroska You're quite lucky! My copy hasn't even shipped yet. I think I have to wait until launch day like everyone else.

@Matroska You got this way early, holy crud.

Oh man... the Metroid hype is hitting hard now. I've been waiting for this day since I bought a 3DS and Wii U 10 years ago and got into gaming as a hobby.

Didn't play many games as a teenager or young adult (so many other things going on at that time), but one game I did play was Metroid Prime 2. Loved it so much, played Metroid Prime after. When the Wii launched, I didn't know who this Zelda character was with a green elf hat- my hype was focused on Metroid Prime 3 (though I did also play Twilight Princess as my first Zelda, loved it a ton also).

From the day I got that Wii U, I dreamed of the next Metroid game in the HD era. Surely it would be announced at the next e3 Direct. Right? e3s came and went. But never any HD Metroid.

And yet, the year is 2021. We've fast forwarded through the Dark Age of Nintendo and have arrived safely 3 days before the launch of the first ever HD Metroid. We're there

I keep strolling into Walmart to see if they have a copy available lol

I keep mashing the A button for the game icon on the main menu.

Just... let... me... IN already!!!!

Ooh, btw, guess what we're getting this weekend? A Monster Hunter Rise theme for Tetris 99 via the Maximus Cup!! And it has multiple songs, and busts out the epic and climactic "Proof of a Hero" when you make it down to the final 10 or so.

Hype!

Damn, between Tetris Effect and the start of that Monster Hunter Rise event, Oct. 8th is looking mighty fine for Nintendo fans who love Tetris. I also love the little symbols on the tetriminoes. That might become my go-to theme for a while.

I don't get how Tetris Effect is out on Friday but we still have no price on the eShop or even any footage since the announcement trailer...