BoilerBroJoe

@ModdedInkling Nooooooooo 😭

Final Fantasy VII Remake for Switch Pro in 2022 confirmed!

@Duboiss I've never owned a Call of Duty either, but I assume a movie would be based on Modern Warfare, which is a fictional future war. It will most likely be dumb nationalist trash, but I wouldn't mind a complete tone-reversal and make it like Jumanji where a CoD-playing kid gets sucked into the game and suddenly has to live up to his trash talking in a "real" war.

@Larry_Nightdive Haha, well if Nightdive is your “real name”, then I’m very happy to hear it’s in your thoughts. I’ve just been eager ever since Nightdive started releasing ports on the Switch; Forsaken sounded like a fantastic port on PC and I have fond memories of the N64 version. I’m definitely intrigued by this PowerSlave though!

That’s great and all, but where’s Forsaken?

My biggest concern at the time was definitely that there was no Virtual Console at launch. I had become a huge fan of the service (not to mention spent a small fortune on it) and honestly was more excited to play Nintendo's back catalog on a handheld/console hybrid than I was to play most new games. On top of that, people started agitating for a "Netflix of games" - a service that would lock their back catalog behind a paywall/subscription fee - which I thought was an absolutely terrible idea.

Thankfully, Nintendo did indeed bring Virtual Console to the Switch and didn't make us pay every month for a drip feed of their important, historic game library. The End.

Wow, lots of bad blood here. What good is any leisure activity? Why are we all on a website dedicated to sitting in front of computer programs that produce nothing of tangible value? If the guy wants to do it, then it's no different from playing any other game. Not only do I "get" it, I don't even think it's that odd.

@Tandy255 That's a totally fair question. I dropped a pretty penny on Wii U VC games assuming that we'd be able to carry them over to the Switch for free or a very low fee (remember when we all signed up for the Nintendo Network ID, the successor to Club Nintendo that was supposed to keep track of all our purchases across systems?). That said, I don't think it's impossible the next system may maintain our purchases, especially if it's an upgrade. And in my view the possibility of paying again down the line is still better than the certainty of paying again via a subscription service. But as I've said before, I don't want to get rid of options for anybody: give us both!

Either way, it's just nice to see such frequent and regular offerings. If Nintendo came close to that with their online services, I'd be WAY more likely to relent to a subscription.

Can we all just take a minute to appreciate that, with maybe a few exceptions, Hamster has been releasing a retro game port to the Switch every week for almost five years?

I agree this is a bit absurd for portable play. However it actually seems like the perfect size for tabletop play. I recently tried tabletop mode with a friend when the TV was occupied and it was really just too small. This could be kind of awesome, if a bit obnoxious, for airplanes as well.

"Princeless Bride Of The Crown", "F-Zero F: Mirror Of Destiny X" and "Super Mario All Dogs" could 100% be real game titles.

"Mario's traditional, Italian-inspired accent..."

Mario is from Brooklyn! Donkey Kong takes place in New York! Mario was based on an Italian-American warehouse landlord! All respect to Charles Martinet, but his accent never made sense in my opinion. Maybe you could really stretch it by saying that Donkey Kong was inspired by King Kong which took place in 1930s NY, which had a higher proportion of native Italian residents than today... but even by then an "Italian from Brooklyn" had a very defined accent. The man is a cartoon character living in a mushroom land, so whatever, but I'm just saying that "singing Venetian gondolier" isn't the predetermined voice for the guy.

Mario's will always be Lou Albano, as far as I'm concerned.

“Unfortunately, unlike Xbox's backwards compatibility program, you can't purchase these titles separately”

Where were statements like this in 2016? Instead we would get “I can’t believe we need to BUY games individually! Nintendo is so behind the times!”

Moving forward, can we all just agree that we should all advocate for more options as consumers? Why subscribe OR buy when you can do BOTH? I’d be happy to buy some games and pay to temporarily access others based on how I value them; the choice would make me feel confident in both options. As it stands now, I’m doing neither.

As someone who thinks there should be no comments on 99% of internet content (except when I'm commenting, of course) I have no problem with this.

35 IS young!! * sob *

@oconnoclast Ah that makes sense too. I guess that makes us all boomers now! On the bright side, my old fear that I would never see a pixel art game again seems to have been wildly unfounded. It’s good to see the young’uns taking classic game history and aesthetics seriously.

@Gwynbleidd Ah that definitely sounds plausible. Thanks! And @Edwirichuu I did see that comment but wasn’t sure how it related to the word. Though I guess things go boom more and faster when you’re frantically shooting and not taking cover!

Is it “Boomer” Shooter because the developers that made them were Boomers? Or just because things go boom (kinda standard across FPSs I would think). I’m thinking the original developers were more Gen X but I don’t have their ages right in front of me.

I'm digging the chip tune remixes. Synthesized orchestral sounds on the other hand, I rarely can get behind. Hopefully one day Grant Kirkhope can get the resources to put together another album with real, live instrumentation (not a full blown orchestra necessarily, but majority live-recordings). Until then the closest we'll have is the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

@LunarFlame17 For the record, I never complained about Virtual Console. I thought it was an awesome service, and when people (this site included, sorry editors!) kept saying "Netflix of games! Netflix of games! Where's our Netflix of games! Everyone wants a Netflix of games!" I felt alone in my terrified screams of "No!"

Here's a thought. Put an FPGA board in the next Switch and Nintendo can develop their own cores to make the systems run as accurately as possible. Analogue is showing that it can be done portably (we hope, at least).

That said, perfect accuracy is not what bothers me, although adding options like increased/reduced fog, lower/higher frame rates would always be nice. As other people have said, and I'll continue to reiterate, I just want the option to buy these games and play them as long as my Switch runs. By all means, keep the subscription model for those who want it, but offer the additional option of purchasing - you will get more of my money that way, trust me. Until then, I feel like I'm paying $250 for a five year rental. It may just be psychological, but it makes me feel like I can't/shouldn't dedicate much time to the games.

@OrangeSoda I'm also a Nintendo gamer who's been waiting 20 years for this, and unfortunately I'll have to keep waiting. I agree with you it's not worth getting angry over, but that just means I'll have to calmly pass it up. I totally get it if cloud gaming works for you, but for me, I see it as a rental that will lapse in a few years and be taken away. I play games very slowly, and so it's entirely realistic to think that I won't actually finish much of it before that point. Not to mention the fact that I won't be able to play it on commutes or in countless other situations. It would have taken two years to make the port; Switch owners have been asking for this for more than two years. We'll see if it saves them money, but they won't be getting mine.

This went from being the most exciting announcement of the day to the most infuriating.

Never played The Jungle Book on any platform. Is it any good?

Why not Gameboy Advahahahaaance..... (ToT)

How about Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD as normal damn purchases. Please and thank you.

You realize, now that you've mocked the rumor, it's certain to come true. Unless... unless your plan was to reverse-psychology the universe into making it true and then... KATE, YOU'RE BRILLIANT!

Space Station Silicon Valley remake, or bust.

@Beep_Beep @Tempestryke I don't want to be too much of a Japanophile/essentialist here, but I've personally found the Japanese orchestral soundtracks and arrangements to be consistently better than American and European ones. The "Western" composers and arrangers often go for a wall of sound, more is more approach, and their Japanese counterparts feel more melodic and motif-oriented to me, in a way that better complements a story. Though it's a matter of personal taste of course, and I do still love a great number of American/European works, like Skyrim or anything by Kirkhope.

I remember discovering one of the "Orchestral Game Music Concerts" on Napster (ahem, elder Millenna-who?) and having my mind blown that Japan had done orchestral re-arrangements of video game music, in the early 1990s, no less. Through subsequent avenues and websites, I realized that commercially sold game soundtracks and their arrangements wasn't just a niche, it had been a major industry in Japan since the 1980s. It's been twenty plus years and I'm still collecting albums from across the decades.

Play the Bob-omb Battlefield music on constant loop and I'll pay twice that amount to walk up your hill, London.

Jaws, the "deep sea" level. A bit of a cheat since it's a level that repeats over and over, but even if you just count it by play sessions, I'm pretty sure Jaws beats every other game.

Runners up are probably Castlevania Level 1 and Ninja Gaiden Level 1.

The guy who made this is my friend's cousin! And I'm seriously impressed that he made it pretty much by himself. I'll totally be buying it.

@Crono1973 Not all stakes are the same for every group. You're absolutely right about sentencing disparities between men and women. And when is the last time you heard a feminist complain that too many women are being portrayed as criminals? The stakes for women aren't in law enforcement, they are in other aspects of society. And to your point, I absolutely agree that the stakes are higher for how men are portrayed in the media with regards to violence. I think the constant association of masculinity with violence is a big problem.

@BloodNinja Come on, my man. Really?
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-differences-sentencing

As for the importance some people place on representation, to me it just comes down to the question of stakes. For people who belong to a majority in their country (or specifically their legal/political framework) the way they are represented in the media is a low stakes affair. This is why it's seen as "okay", or at least less generally condemned, to make a joke or stereotype about Italian Americans (I'm speaking as one) in the U.S., because Italian Americans are treated almost identically by the justice system, the economy and on an individual level as the European ethnic groups that have long dominated economic and political life in America. The question of stakes can also explain why Indians living in India are less likely to object to a caricature like Apu (a trend often pointed to by Apu's defenders) - because for Indians living in a country where they are the political and economic majority, the stakes of an overseas portrayal are relatively low. That's not to say that stakes for Italian Americans/Indian nationals and others are non-existent, and it's certainly not to say that there aren't members of those groups who will be outraged by stereotypes. It's also not to say that stereotypes are fine in some instances and deplorable in others - it's just a way of explaining the trends in people's points of view and reactions.

So for a black person living in America, where sentencing for the same crimes are higher and where redlining policies continue to exist, not to mention the generational entrenchment of poverty resulting from past racism, the stakes of a stereotype in the media are much higher. That one millionth portrayal of a black man as a criminal may be in the back of the mind of the job interviewer you have an appointment with, or the banker you want a loan from. And those stakes are further raised by the LACK of portrayals in the media, which amplify negative portrayals and put tremendous, often impossible pressure on the positive ones.

In other words, the stakes for how someone is portrayed by the media will only decline when their political and economic vulnerability decline. I actually happen to think that eventuality is inevitable. We will reach a point, perhaps in our lifetimes, where systemic racism against currently marginalized groups will decline to the point that many of the stereotypes people condemn today will feel quaint and amusing, in the way that a racist portrayal of an Italian from the 1920s will make me laugh rather than angry. For those who are unhappy with the current "focus" on identity in media, the best thing they can do is accelerate the end of racial disparities in wealth, politics and law enforcement. Then the stakes for all will be equally low and the way identity is treated in the media will be simultaneously more irreverent, more nuanced and more realistic.

One of the responses I see most often to this kind of article is something along the lines of "why does a player need to play as their own "race"?" What's ironic about that question though, is that it then shouldn't bother the people asking it when a game asks them to play as characters who are dark-skinned, etc. And for some reason, it often does. It's one thing to object when someone places importance on that that you don't (a whole other issue I'll get in to below), but I often see anytime a game is described as having a black main character, or a woman, or a queer character, etc., people will say it's being political and that it shouldn't matter what the identity of the main character is. Well if it shouldn't matter, then why say anything about it?

1) Chipset nears end of production.
2) Release new model with better screen to quickly dump remaining chips you've acquired.
3) Release new model with new chipset after maxing out profit on old chips.

I'm not saying this is definitely what's happening, but unless the "nearing end of production" bit is completely false, I actually find a Switch Pro coming shortly after this OLED to not just be possible, but likely. That said, what do I have to lose if I'm wrong? I'm not buying the OLED model, so I suppose a slightly bigger screen and hardline connection, which I wouldn't use anyway.

If your society needs to police kilobytes of data in order to safeguard an artist's financial security, maybe it's time to rethink the concepts of IP and compensation.

NO! 100 characters or bust! Unacceptable, Sakurai!

I LIKE royalty free tracks!

Obviously the rumor cycle has been very disappointing, but there is one reason I still think an upgraded Switch could come soon despite the fact that the current model is selling so well:

It was recently reported that 20% of Switch sales are now coming from households that already own one. Now, if you've been planning a mid-cycle refresh for the Switch, would it make sense to start selling it before that percentage gets too high, or to wait until a bunch of households own two or more Switches, thus cutting into sales of the newer/more expensive device that they might have bought instead. In other words, it may be easier to sell an upgraded Switch to people who just bought their first (or none) than to people who just bought their second. Families can justify a couple Switches, but larger numbers will certainly see diminishing returns. So Nintendo may want their upgrade to optimally come at a time when most households are looking for their second Switch.

Now my take could be way off base, and even if it isn't, doing what "makes sense" has never been Nintendo's thing. But it's just a thought I had as to why the "Switch is already selling like hotcakes" argument doesn't necessary put the rumors to bed for me.

Wait. Is this an official translation, as in it's getting an official release? Or just a fan translation. I can't tell.

Also, how's the music? The music totally made Attack of the Friday Monsters for me. I think I had to figure out a way on to Japanese iTunes to download it back when it came out.

At this point, if there's a hardware announcement, I doubt it will be before the end of next week. That way Nintendo bookends both sides of E3 and makes it about them, letting third parties announce software in between. And they probably won't even "announce the announcement" until next Wed. I'd love to be wrong and still see something in the next few days though, and that's assuming any of this happens in June at all.

I don't know what's left to say about this topic. When the Switch was announced as a portable/console hybrid, the thing I was most excited about was the potential to have all of Nintendo's Virtual Console offerings in one place, rather than split between two systems. I even thought those of us who had bought dozens or hundreds of dollars worth might be able to re-download them on the Switch at a discount, as a loyalty reward for sticking with the Wii U during its lack of popularity. Boy was I an idiot.

Nice to see SEGA going back to their yakuza roots!

I don't want any more classic editions.

I don't want a subscription paywall.

I just want the Virtual Console.

If Nintendo wants to do those other things too, go crazy! I'm all for options for those who prefer to pay a monthly fee or to own a physical device. But just give us the option to pay for those games individually, at a reasonable price, like God intended!

The only new feature I want is the ability to buy individual games.

After the pandemic is over, Paul Rudd should host a charity event where people get to play SNES games with him on an abandoned drive-in theater screen.

Coincidentally, "AA" is also a rough translation of Naruhodo.