Anachronism

It's looking less likely as time goes on, but I really hope physical games last for as long as consoles do. I still prefer physical for anything with a large file size, or just anything that feels especially important. Having all my games tied to an account that could be shut down, stolen, or otherwise removed from my control just doesn't feel right. Plus, having to swap between multiple 1+ TB microSD cards by the end of the next generation sounds like a massive pain.

I'm pretty sure your daughter is the exact target audience for Princess Peach: Showtime!

If there is an actual story behind why these people are leaving Platinum, I wonder how long it'll be before we get it straight from one of them. There have to be some gears not meshing well with how much the quality between their games has varied, but it's hard to say where the actual problems are without insider knowledge.

I'd rather list games that do sidequests well in general than point out individual ones. Xenoblade sidequests are great for dropping interesting bits of lore or taking you to beautiful areas you otherwise might have completely missed. And I like a lot of the odd jobs you end up doing for people in Zelda games, especially Skyward Sword. There's something very endearing about the hero of prophecy using his mystical artifacts to sweep up dust or find a child's toy. And yeah, it's hard to beat the sheer production value of Witcher 3's sidequests. Meanwhile the ones in Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, and other games of that ilk can be near impossible to finish without a guide, and often end up feeling more depressing than fulfilling when you do, but they sure do stick with you. And older Pokemon games were never too heavy on proper quests, but wandering through some cave or ruin later in the game and coming across an awesome legendary pokemon you didn't know about was always cool. I feel like a broken record with this and Zelda, but I hope future games bring back more areas like that.

@ItsATM I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.These rules serve the dual purpose of making it harder for people to sell their cards and making sure people can't easily complete their collections without spending money while still trying to appease the people who would complain about a trading card game not having trading. As long as they don't get a ton of backlash, they won't have much reason to loosen the restrictions.

Once it was all but guaranteed to be a direct successor to the Switch, I was already pretty sure it'd be backwards compatible. I'll be much more interested to see if Switch 1 games are supported on their next console in 8 years or so, since they don't usually support more than one generation back. Also, even if we don't get proper updates or paid upgrades for existing games, I hope the extra power will at least let some choppier games finally run smoothly.

Darn, I was really hoping to trade my few 2* duplicates for something new. There are only a handful of Ex or 1* cards I don't already have.

There definitely seems to be a general feeling of "Is that it?" going around. Even without the leaks, we just haven't seen enough of what the console can actually do to get properly excited for it. I wasn't expecting a full first party sizzle reel with a "surprise" announcement like this, but it's a long wait for the April Direct. It kind of feels like they'd have rather put this trailer out in March, but the leaks forced their hand.

He looks like he'd make for a better plush toy, and a worse platforming protagonist. Mario's general style seems to be taking more inspiration from the earlier games' illustrations lately, so it's not terribly surprising, but it is an odd choice unless that character design is going to show up somewhere else as well.

It is...another Nintendo Switch. I like the design, but there's not much more to say. Now we just have to wait a couple months for the really exciting part.

The problem with comparing 9 to 8 is that 8 still looks fantastic. They'll probably smooth out the geometry a bit more, but unless every Nintendo studio suddenly gains Next Level's animation chops, it'll be hard for Mario games' visuals to improve dramatically.

This has been like one of those cartoon bits where Ubisoft ran through an absurd obstacle course to escape Vivendi only to jump right into Tencent's mouth. I can't say I'm terribly worried about Ubisoft's eventual fate, but it's always jarring to see one of an industry's big fish get eaten by an even bigger fish.

Nice of you to give a shoutout to your competition. I finally broke and started using Deku Deals a year or two ago, so I don't think I need to spread the unwieldy bulk of my wishlist across a third platform quite yet, but I'll try to keep you guys in mind if you keep updating it. My first worry doing this kind of thing would be an influx of fake user reviews now that you're treating yourselves like an actual storefront. I really don't know how you guard against that kind of thing without being able to verify purchases.

I refuse to believe you're all not intentionally making it look like somebody's died every time you do a birthday/anniversary page about them, so I'm just going to treat it like a running joke from now on.

Anyway, congratulations on the decade of jolly showmanship Alex. Hope you stick around for a few more.

Assassin's Creed is about the only Ubisoft series I've missed the last few years. Hope we can get some more bundles like the ones currently on Switch.

Nice, can't wait to listen to it. There are some other great soundtracks on there, but this is the first one I'm familiar with that I haven't heard in years.

People are really just begging Nintendo for a fight lately. Do they think their lawyers have gone soft or something?

@gcunit It's definitely the kind of game that opens up and challenges you a bit more once you get further in, though I'd still say most of its areas are more like wide pathways than full-on sandboxes. That just happens to be right up my alley, though. I like wide linear or semi-linear worlds more than fully open or fully linear ones, and it feels like those are a lot less common than they used to be.

@gcunit Nah, Sky is a platforming MMO from the makers of Journey. Really beautiful game with a short "main quest" and a still-growing pile of side content. I'd like to try No Man's Sky, but last I checked the Switch version is missing some key features. Maybe I'll get my chance next generation.

The game sitting at third place for my most played is Sky. I basically treated it like the digital equivalent of a daily walk for around a year, so that'll always be firmly attached to my memories of the Switch.

Beyond that, I feel like this list needs a jrpg rep aside from Pokemon. Unfortunately, the most popular ones generally ended up being my least favorite, so not really sure what to recommend there. Maybe Octopath Traveler? Having another big company show that a game doesn't have to be a high-end graphics showcase to be beautiful was a big vote of confidence for the Switch.

And yeah, you could throw Smash Ultimate on just because its "Everyone Is Here!" tagline proved as true for the Switch itself as for the game. Anything and everything that has any reason to be on Switch is there, whether we like it or not.

That'd be a worthy Skyrim substitute in the announcement trailer. Halo 3/Reach were a massive part of my teen years, and having them on a modern console without having to buy an Xbox for them like I did the first time would be great.

@Olliemar28 Much appreciated. I get a lot of my gaming enjoyment out of discovering or being surprised by things, and that experience only seems to become more uncommon the more games I play.

My Switch barely leaves the house, and when it does, it's in a case. I don't think the size will make much difference to me, aside from needing to get a new case.

Alright, think that's all the new content I need before actually playing the game. Still want my second time on Mira to feel fresh.

@Olliemar28 I realize this probably isn't your job, but I don't suppose we could get a block button for games we don't want to see? You guys always end up telling me too much about Xenoblade even just through titles and thumbnails, and I'd rather not cut out the whole site just to avoid spoilers for one game.

@tektite_captain I guess, but isn't it bad business to tick off the company your products are dependent on? Seems like they're tossing any chance of an official partnership or endorsement out the window.

@tektite_captain I did mention that as a possibility. It just seems odd they'd even go through the trouble of designing cases/covers/etc. for a product if they haven't gotten official confirmation of the dimensions for it, and I doubt they'd get those without an NDA.

This story's getting increasingly convoluted. If I've got this straight, the entire staff of one prominent indie publisher jumped ship over disagreements with their owner, then signed on to puppet the empty shell of another prominent indie publisher, at the same time pushing out more of whatever staff was left there after being nearly scraped clean of employees with repeated layoffs from THEIR previous owner and already being partially repopulated by their new one. After all that, I feel like I'd need a year or two just to get all the office politics settled, never mind getting any actual work done.

The anonymous leaks are one thing, but I have no idea what's going through the minds of the proper companies who presumably signed a massive stack of legal documents saying "we won't share this ahead of time." Unless they're just going for a "You can't sue all of us" strategy, the only possibilities I see are that there's some legal deadline Nintendo's fallen behind, that Nintendo's intentionally letting them get any potential hardware controversy out of the way before aiming to wow us with software, or that these companies never actually got the hardware specs from Nintendo, and are just going off leaked info themselves.

@Kestrel The Switch got a lot more of them than I would have expected, but many of the games still missing are the biggest, prettiest ones that tend to fill up game of the year lists. I certainly wouldn't mind getting those, and if they're feeling really generous, maybe some free/discounted upgrades on the ones we already have.

@Getagrip101 Pretty sure they later confirmed the final game didn't match that trailer graphically. Even before that, their actual consensus was more that it would be very hard to do on Switch. It was other outlets that took the quote and blew it out of proportion to farm ad revenue.

Pretty much what I'd expect. Nintendo's first party teams are miracle workers with their software, and I'm sure they'll be able to do great things even with the hardware limitations.

The question I still have is, even though matching something like the Series S is off the table, will it be close enough to squeak into the modern multiplatform bubble? If you cut out the ray tracing, cap the frame rate at 30, reduce the texture and model quality, crank the native resolution down, use the cheaper upscaling method they mention to hit 720p, and maybe do some actual optimization to the code, can anything that's skipping the last gen consoles this year run on it?

Even if not, there'll still be more than enough indies and last/cross-gen ports to fill the space between exclusives. It'd just be nice to see Nintendo's name pop up a bit more often at the annual gaming showcases that are cause for celebration on every other platform.

I'll be interested to see what he comes up with. To me, nothing they've added to Minecraft in recent years has felt quite as cohesive as the base game. I've tried to actually explore all its content a few times, but only the basic loop of getting materials to get better gear to get better materials has ever managed to hold my attention. Hopefully he'll be able to replicate that sense of growth and progression.

I played Kitaria Fables recently and had a good time with it. It has some cool magic and cosmetics, and the tougher enemies can be a decent challenge while you're underequipped for them. Only complaints are that the ending is pretty abrupt and farming is only really useful for making money and completing fetch quests. You can also use it to get healing/buff items, but in my experience they weren't worth the inventory slots they took up.

@Anachronism Ended up grabbing those two along with Burnout Paradise, Astalon, Axiom Verge 2, The Pathless, Virtua Racing, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Chasm, Civilization VI, Itorah, and Mario Kart 8's DLC. Of course, I've barely touched any of them because I've been too busy playing and deleting demos to clear enough space in my poor overloaded microSD.

We're lucky Nintendo was already partnered with Nvidia before AI upscaling really took off. DLSS is still the most reliable version of the technique as far as I'm aware.

I've never thought about it before, but it'd be cool to see a modern Ice Climbers. Maybe make it a co-op mountain climbing game with some combat mixed in.

Did he ever add a mode that takes out the requirement to sleep? That was the one thing that really kept me from loving Stardew. It always felt like I spent half my time just traveling back and forth from my house.

@FantasiaWHT Fun is only practical up to the point where you need it for your emotional health. We still have a lot of instincts built into us from before modern society existed, and likely from before our species even existed. A tendency to collect things likely served some proto-apes bumbling around scavenging in the forest a lot better than it serves us. In our world, it leads to overconsumption, clutter, and wealth inequality, to name a few, so even though it releases the happy chemicals in your brain when you satisfy it, that doesn't mean it's actually good for you. Fun is important to help de-stress and maintain a healthy state of mind, but it's not a good justification to compromise yourself in other ways, such as dumping your life savings for the chance to find a particulary shiny piece of paper. A lot of our instincts don't come with upper limits simply because it used to be near impossible to have too much of a good thing. We have to use our intelligence to set those limits even when our emotions don't want them.

I've been so busy digging through my backlog that I've barely played anything new, but on top of these, the games that made it onto my not-so-short list mainly by merit of their visuals include Another Code: Recollection, Grime, Ace Combat 7, El Shaddai, Gundam Breaker 4, Witchspring R, Plucky Squire, Fantasian Neo Dimension, Beyond Galaxyland, and Bloomtown. And an honorable mention to Arzette for nailing its intentionally cheesy retro visuals. I've also heard #Blud does a great imitation of 90's cartoons.

@TheBigK The animation is where it really shines. It's got that kind of stretchy cartoonishness that you don't get from the more rigid character models in most games. The only Nintendo game that might beat it there is Luigi's Mansion 3.

@dartmonkey I'd like to nominate Xenoblade X being rescued from the wreckage of the Wii U's library and Nintendo Music giving us a legitimate way to listen to their soundtracks for the 'It's About Bloody Time' Award.

As someone who still goes dumpster diving on the eshop every week, I'm in agreement with pretty much all of this. I feel like I see way more games and wishlist way less, with the majority seemingly being AI generated picture books, word salad knock-offs, and/or rererereleases of games that should never have been released in the first place. The featured/best sellers/great deals pages are at least decent starting points for casual consumers, but if you're trying to find anything more niche that didn't release yesterday, you might as well give up before even starting. Though I am actually surprised the upcoming page isn't more cluttered, and that most of the titles listed there seem to have at least some amount of effort put into them.

One thing they didn't touch on much is the complete lack of community curation. There's no way for users to review, share, or otherwise promote the games they like through the Switch itself aside from buying them and hoping their friends see them playing. I realize those kinds of features are just as vulnerable to manipulation and loopholes as the current ones, but just being able to search by "best sellers, 4 star+" seems to filter out 90% of the garbage on other online stores. Though I can also see how much damage that could do to a legitimate company that puts out consistent 7/10 games, so maybe things like that are more favorable to consumers than developers.

@IceClimbers The last time was in 2019, at least according to Deku Deals. I thought it might just be because Microsoft was trying to promote their own hardware, but Ori's had plenty of sales.

There are $300+ of discounted Switch games I'm tempted to buy right now, and almost none of them are on this list. Though to be fair, with about a quarter of these entries I'm either holding out for a better deal or own it already. From what is here, I'm thinking about grabbing Death's Door and Hellblade, and aside from Nintendo games, I'd highly recommend ABZU, Monster Hunter GU, and Shovel Knight.

@prw_88 No worries, I'm way too risk-averse for any kind of gambling. I just don't get how Nintendo's stock keeps blowing up before a console reveal and dropping off a cliff afterward when anyone looking at long-term trends should know they're overvaluing it.

I know very little about the stock market, but if there are other companies that match Nintendo's trend, I feel like you should be able to make a fortune just selling before a big announcement and buying back afterward. The stock traders' overinflated expectations seem to put even the most delusional superfans to shame.

The successor to the Switch performing well? What a crazy thought. Then again, I never put it past Nintendo to zig when you expect them to zag, for better or worse. As for the others, Sony can only really mess up by putting their next console out at an equal or greater price to the PS5 Pro, though releasing something more powerful at a lower price means waiting a while or selling at a big loss. Xbox seems to be pivoting more toward a digital platform over physical hardware, so I don't even know how long they'll keep putting out an actual box. Microsoft has enough money that they could probably "win" the console war just by severely undercutting Sony for a decade or so and promoting themselves as equal quality at a better price. After all they've spent on aquisitions though, I'm not sure how much more they're willing to put into getting ahead in what's ultimately just one of the many markets they're invested in. I'm also not exactly sure where the line is there for being brought to court over hostile business practices.

@shoeses I guess, but I'd still say Exeggutor is by far the most replaceable out of the three. Grass is full of tanky pokemon, and Serperior makes a lot of the more energy-hungry ones much more viable than they were before.

@-wc- Destropolis is my favorite from them. I even played enough to get on the leaderboard for a bit. It's just a simple arcadey shooter, but the variety of weapons and upgrades gives it plenty of replay value. The only real marks against it are that defensive builds get very grindy late game and there are some rare crashes.

I'd honestly put Starmie/Articuno above Pikachu/Zapdos even though it's a bad match-up for it. It's much easier to set up in the first two or three turns. I finally got a working version together before the last competitive event and got the gold medal with zero losses.

Also, Exeggutor absolutely does not deserve the title spot in that Celebi deck. Serperior is what elevates it from competent to flat out deadly.

@-wc- These guys actually do put out some decent games. Nothing that's going to break into my top 10, but the only one from this list I'd call a complete waste of time so far is Drag Racing Rivals. I also forgot about the giveaway on the second day, so I appreciate the reminder.

One of my all time favorites. Ballad of the Goddess, Fi's Theme, File Select (Fairy Fountain), the background tracks for nearly all the sky areas, and so many others are absolutely beautiful. I already imported it when the remaster released, but I still might use this just to get a clean loop of some of the background tracks.

Fun Fact: Groose's name appears in more track titles than any other character's.