Alienfanatic

I have a feeling this has been said elsewhere, but does anyone else feel a twinge of irony that a game, completely revolving around trading, will not have a physical release anywhere in the world?

@Charlirnie

And most of the "upgrades" are very slight, mostly relegated to resolution bumps and performance increases that are largely the result of a more powerful console.

Read @Tabris95's post and the reddit link. It seems very likely that AdHoc's decision to release one binary across all realms on Switch meant that it had to alter the game for the strictest standards, in this case CERO. CERO does not allow nipples or genitalia to be displayed, no matter how strict the rating. For it to be allowed, as it is with Cyberpunk, they would have had to release a different binary file specifically for overseas markets, which they did not do. If true, it also explains how Cyberpunk could have much more adult content than this game if the developer release a different version for overseas markets.

Also, Nintendo's statement isn't misleading, if this is the case. Nintendo has content standards but does not tell companies to censor their games. Some titles, as we all know, are age-restricted but still allowed on Nintendo's platforms. AdHoc may, in order to release a single binary--saving themselves money--have accepted that the strict Japanese rating would dictate the level of censorship and altered their title to simplify their distribution. Unless AdHoc explains further, it's just as valid an assumption as assuming Nintendo "forced" them into the choice.

He'll be just as invisible there as he was at Nintendo.

@Danrenfroe2016

Yeah, but the regular Switch customers got the 3.0 update as well. The S2 owners got a res bump which, to me, is like paying $5 to let you toggle the resolution on a PC game. Ridiculous. S2 owners should have gotten SOMETHING that says, "This could never have been done on the Switch."

30FPS for a game that looks like this while using DLSS to upscale? Where Is the massive power increase the Switch 2 promised?

I bought S2 close to its release, but it's largely sat unused. Week after week we get these tepid "upgrades" that involve a resolution boost and, occasionally, slightly better textures. Ninety percent of the releases on the S2, to me at least, feel phoned in; projects that were already in progress on the OG Switch and have been tweaked to — somewhat — use the extra oomph of the S2 to get ...something slightly better.

I had DK but I gave it to my son after it bored the snot out of me. Stopped playing MK about a week after I got the console. And returned Metroid to Costco, unopened, after reading all of the negatives, realizing that the game didn't sound like it was worth waiting seven years for a significantly expensive new title.

Nintendo and its 3rd parties need to get a handle on the hardware. The OG Switch proved itself early on, with visuals and gameplay defying the modest hardware. Nothing about the games released so far, unless you think a few solid ports like Cyperpunk are enough, have proven the S2 worthy of the massive price hikes on hardware and software.

I hope Nintendo stops shoveling stuff like this and announces something, anything, that really pushes the hardware and reminds the early adopters (and fence-sitters) why this system is worth the hefty price.

Metroid Prime's Menu Select music--not the Title Screen music--is one of my favorite instrumental themes of all time. I don't even qualify that it's a video game, only that it's an instrumental. It gets the blood rushing and you're PRIMED for the game. I still think it should be Samus' theme music when a movie is inevitably made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLLE_PvJ5mY

God almighty I love that theme!

@Dom_31

I'd disagree about that. Red Alarm was a lot of fun. Virtual Tennis wasn't bad. It's just that for a 32-bit system, with limited colors and mostly low-res, sprite-based games it didn't really show. Nester's Funky Bowling was pretty good and Golf was solid. The games weren't "terrible" but nobody really wanted the console and 3rd party support wasn't there at all.

@X68000

Well, the original controller was wired to the unit so using, say, a Switch Pro 2 Controller would be a major upgrade.

@Warioware
The hardware was very restrictive and wasn't recommended for very young players due to their developing eyes. Yes, it was a 32-bit console, but being limited to one color, the restricted view, and limited library ultimately killed adoption. Nintendo really came out of left field with a product that few wanted.

I can't say the trailer is compelling. It seems to share the LOOK of those old cartoons, but there seems to be very few frames of animation between states on the enemies. The environments seem relatively sparse as well. Might be good for those that are interested, but the extremely fast cuts in the trailer make me feel as though the developer is hiding how little gameplay there is/will be.

So little of what appears on the S2 list seems to require the hardware in any way. As is typical for a new system, most of the first year is usually filled with port-ins of titles that were already in the works for the last generation and the devs add a few upgrades where code isn't complete.

I look forward to 2026, when ACTUAL S2 titles arrive. Perhaps the whole brouhaha over Game Keys will subside, though I think most devs aren't going to backpedal as I'm virtually certain that the price for a game on card is more favorable to Nintendo than to the dev.

Paid $75 at Costco. Worth it.

@Hwatt

I suppose that's fine, and I like Alex and his sense of humor which is what he tends to lean on when writing these, but I can't really view it as a review. It's more akin to to what you say, which is a light overview. I'm used to reading tech aggregators (Ars, Verge, etc.) where they go more in-depth.

It just seems that, for the price--even in canvas or ballistic materials--it's extremely expensive. It's three to four times the price of the official case and even the "cheapie" version costs as much as a fully-loaded Killswitch that comes with screen protectors, case carriers, etc.

It's nice, but I suppose I've always been more about practical use than fashion so it's not really designed for me. I'd just like the article to have justified the 9/10 a bit more. It's hardly 9/10 as a carrying case unless your only criteria were stylishness, build quality, and a unique, cool closure mechanism.

It seems it provides minimal protection, though. Better than carrying the S2 unprotected, but I'm afraid the review is a bit light on testing to be helpful. Did you test for water-fastness? (You could put a sheet of paper in it and then sprinkle the outside with water to see if the magnet is able to prevent water from intrusion, for instance.)

Obviously, it's not great for drops as a soft-case wouldn't absorb much of anything. It doesn't even sound particularly good for carrying more than one or two games, and even those would have to be carried without their cases.

Stylish, but only that. Compared to many options, it seems to be more of a fashion statement than a practical case.

@turmeric16

I'm really social media ignorant, but if he didn't want it quoted or otherwise reproduced he shouldn't have put it on social media. Perhaps he wanted to share it with friends and associates, but that could have been done via other means.

A good rule of thumb is that if you don't want blow-back for ideas that you hold, don't post it.

Since this is Nintendolife, I'd rather focus on how you almost never hear about mass layoffs at Nintendo or, for that matter, Sony. They only acquire other companies very rarely, but when they do it's usually small-scale teams that are just the right fit to work with Nintendo devs. Nintendo doesn't make hyper-realistic, extremely expensive AAA games, though I've never had one complaint about the visuals. (I'm still blown away by the graphics on Wind Waker for Switch, for example.)

I've never cared for Microsoft. It's always felt to me that they strong-armed their way into the industry with money and, with the exception of a very few titles like Halo (from a company they subsequently gutted) not once have they shown vision or ability when it comes to developing new, interesting IP's.

While these layoffs suck, it's just a reminder to me to spend my money on games by companies that have always wanted to make good games first knowing that the money will follow.

@Don

The problem is that there's not really that much demand for either game these days. B-K's spiritual successor, Yooka Laylee, didn't do all that well despite the fact that it tried to resurrect the collect-a-thon that B-K was. Folks have moved on.

As for shooters, IMO P-D was't all that to begin with. Rare made it into something significant on N64 but even its sequel didn't sell very well (~1M units) and wasn't all that well received. It was a novelty, and expectations were high after 007, but a lot of the original's charm was just how well Rare was able to get it to perform on the system.

It just feels like these IP's are pretty dead and, even though a stellar developer might be able to resurrect them, it's almost better that they invent a new IP without the baggage that each of these carry from years of disappointment.