Comments 2,637

Re: Rumour: Nintendo's 2026 Plans Include New Star Fox & Zelda Remake, No 3D Mario

Bolt_Strike

@Nintoz So no Pokemon Winds/Waves, no 3D Mario, and no Luigi's Mansion 4 for 2026? Okay that is just a freaking disaster, that's a worst case scenario that I didn't even think was possible, I thought for sure we'd get at least one of those this year, maybe two. I'm sorry, but as good as OoT is, a remake does NOT anchor a holiday season. The "no games" narrative for Switch 2 still going to be alive and well for another year, Nintendo losing the war against increasing dev times. BADLY.

Re: Rumour: Nintendo's 2026 Plans Include New Star Fox & Zelda Remake, No 3D Mario

Bolt_Strike

Yuck to pretty much all of this. I'd be intrigued by Star Fox... but only a Starlink style Star Fox, not a classic, on rails shooter Star Fox. 3D Mario being 2027 is also a huge miss, 10 years since the last 3D Mario and the first console without a new Mario game by the second holiday season. It better be the best damn Mario game of all time for it to take this freaking long. The OoT remake could be good... but only if they do a FFVII-esque reimagining. If it's just a graphics bump, that's also going to suck. Unfortunately given Nintendo's track record, I have little hope that it is anything more than a graphics bump. So no, this is probably not going to do the trick for the Switch 2's lack of games.

Re: Review: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup In Bellabel Park - Inessential Bells & Whistles

Bolt_Strike

@PikaPhantom I think you've hit the nail on the head. If you look at the comments about Wonder S2E, the main complaint is "I wanted more single player levels" while this upgrade offers pretty much everything BUT that. There is a certain expectation with DLC I think where they want an extension of the core content. New levels/worlds/etc., some kind of addition to the main campaign. Throwing in these little diversions that have little to do with the core gameplay doesn't seem very appealing, especially for the high cost they're charging.

And actually I disagree with Bananza's being one of the good ones, I think Bananza is in a similar situation to Wonder. Throwing in a roguelike mode for Bananza felt like the wrong direction for Bananza DLC as well, I was expecting something more like simply adding more Banandium Gems to DK Isle or something to make it truly like an extra layer rather than the basis for the roguelike mode with nothing else to it.

Honestly I feel like the only recent DLC/S2E to get this right has been Star-Crossed World. It just adds more levels (they're remixed levels, but there's enough different for them to feel new). All they needed to do with these upgrades is basically that, but no, they keep cramming in these diversions that are different genres from the original experience and that limits their appeal since you would need to like both styles to be interested.

There is another aspect to this you missed though and that's cost/value. Some of these upgrades are fairly steep and offer very little. Not having new levels and having little in the way of extra content and modes is poor value. Granted some of these modes I don't think people would pay for at all due to complete lack of interest, but they might get a few more interested customers at cheaper prices than they are. I'd probably be more likely to consider these upgrades for Wonder if they were closer to $5 than $20 for example.

Re: Feature: Nintendo May Win Its Case Against The US Government, But Tariffs Are Here To Stay

Bolt_Strike

@JayJ @DanijoEX As was said earlier, the political situation is unavoidable. Even if you don't want anything to do with the current political situation, the current political situation wants to worm its way into your everyday life. In this case, politics is blatantly affecting how much you pay for your video games, so it's relevant to discuss the issue in terms of how it affects video games on a gaming site.

Re: Feature: Nintendo May Win Its Case Against The US Government, But Tariffs Are Here To Stay

Bolt_Strike

@AstroTheGamosian I'm well aware. I've read exceprts of the Communist Manifesto in college, I'm well aware of what Marx was pushing for. I will say parts of Marx's solution are wildly idealistic and it's not surprising that communism was corrupted the way it was (he literally was pushing for not having a government, which is laughable), but in general I don't see any way around adopting some form of socialism at this point, the economic and technological climate basically demands it at this point (primarily because of computers and A.I.'s disruption towards traditional labor). Cold War-era communist countries definitely provide a cautionary tale here, but Scandinavia is definitely the model that should be adopted worldwide.

Re: Feature: Nintendo May Win Its Case Against The US Government, But Tariffs Are Here To Stay

Bolt_Strike

@Runex2121 The job situation is the real issue here, as jobs have been decreasing due to automation from computers and now A.I., employers have been unwilling to train anyone so I've been unable to get the experience I need, and I flat out just do not trust employers anymore because I've seen how much the profit motive has ruined everything it touches. It's hard enough to get a job in this country, finding one elsewhere will be even harder.

Re: Feature: Nintendo May Win Its Case Against The US Government, But Tariffs Are Here To Stay

Bolt_Strike

@Misima Fair. I don't see the MAGA movement being ended by fellow Americans (or at least not by Americans alone, perhaps a combination of more rational Americans and other countries that still follow the rule of law will stop this) and probably not in time to prevent a LOT more suffering here. The rot simply runs too deep in this country and the atrocities too far along in their planning that just waiting for Americans to get things together before things get even WORSE is unrealistic. I don't think many non-Americans really understand just how much this system favors MAGA and how difficult it will be to build an effective counter-movement against them, I've seen videos on the topic that say this will take literal years, maybe even decades to build the kind of power needed. Unfortunately I think WWIII may be inevitable at this point (some think it's actually already started and it just hasn't escalated to the extent that it would be universally recognized as a world war) and that's what it's going to take to uproot Trump and MAGA. Sadly too many failed to learn from history (really I would say the world as a whole learned the wrong lesson from WWII which is why we seem to be going through all of this again) and now we're doomed to repeat it.

Re: Feature: Nintendo May Win Its Case Against The US Government, But Tariffs Are Here To Stay

Bolt_Strike

@AstroTheGamosian Nah it goes deeper than that. The crux of the issue is that the current economic system, which originates from and is most heavily pushed in the U.S., has a serious problem with lack of accountability to economic elites. Trump was raised in this environment, because he was born wealthy and inherited a company, he's never really had someone to tell him "no" and thinks he's entitled to do whatever he wants without consequences, so he flaunts whatever rule he can, throws whatever money he can to make the problem go away, and lies and gaslights people into believing absurd ideas that blatantly defy reality.

But it's more than just him, it's basically everyone in the CEO/investor/billionaire class, anyone that makes their money based on ownership of assets rather than actually performing labor, they only make decisions for themselves in terms of how to extract the most wealth from the system as they can while leaving the rest to pay the price. We've reached a point where this economic model is not sustainable, it's beginning to cannibalize itself and result in the worst economic inequality in at least a century, maybe more.

We clearly need serious political and economic reforms to hold people like this to account (the U.S. certainly needs the most of these reforms, but to my knowledge there isn't anything in other countries that would prevent a similar movement like MAGA from arising and in fact many countries do have similar factions brewing). Stricter checks and balances, especially over issues such as financial corruption of political systems and the way the courts operate, are desperately needed. Economically, the working class needs to reject traditional businesses and shift towards more democratically owned businesses (i.e. away from businesses owned and run by a CEO, board of directors, corporate executives, private investors and towards business that are either collectively ran by the workers or by a president elected by its workers/customers) and the government should be facilitating this transfer with taxes against traditionally owned businesses and subsidies and economic support for the more democratically run businesses.

Re: Feature: Nintendo May Win Its Case Against The US Government, But Tariffs Are Here To Stay

Bolt_Strike

@Game_n_Watch_it_pal They won't. The ugly truth is a lot of these businesses, particularly the executives running them, want fascism and authoritarianism because they're the ones that benefit from it. If you have a dictatorship with a rigid economic hierarchy, those below you aren't allowed to question why you're nickel and diming them and taking a larger and larger piece of the economic pie. The rich are always the ones that instigate this by attempting to exploit technological innovations to consolidate more money and power, and then when people start to catch on that their actions are hurting their pocket book, they back fascists and authoritarians to distract them and find a scapegoat. The source of all of this mess lies in the boardroom.

Re: PSA: Switch 2's "GameChat Welcome Offer" Ends This Month, Try It Out For Free While You Still Can

Bolt_Strike

@8bit-Man I mean they have, but that's not the only issue here. Look at some of the comments, there's multiple people here saying they have no need for it because they play offline single player games (and I am in this boat myself). This is a feature that is only useful for certain types of gamers and not others, for this to be one of the main differences in your new console certainly limits its appeal.

Re: Investor Who Urged Nintendo To Monetise Mario's Jumps Acquires Shares In Kadokawa

Bolt_Strike

@Hwatt Is it really necessary? A lot of these corporate sleazeballs made their money either by exploiting institutional injustices that existed in a different era or by receiving an inheritance from an ancestor that did. A lot of this "investment" basically amounts to kissing the ring and most of said investment doesn't actually go to the talented people actually making the products that generate income, it goes to other executives who are only out to squeeze everything they can out of the system. It's a very parasitic relationship and benefits neither the vast majority of people involved in this system nor the most talented people responsible for making these products as good as they are. I see no reason why this system needs to continue existing, the corporate hierarchy very clearly needs to be flattened and that money needs to be better distributed.

Re: Opinion: Is Winds & Waves Just 'Pokémon: Tears Of The Kingdom'?

Bolt_Strike

I would like to see a similar physics system to BotW, that could be fun. Imagine if you could cut down any tree, burn it, or ram into it to knock it over. What if you could break a rock or push it out of the way? How about if you don't have a Water type for surfing, you could use a Grass type's Vine Whip to cross a river, a flying type to fly over it, or an Ice type to create an ice bridge? They could also take a page from Bananza and let you dig through rock walls. So much potential to use Pokemon abilities to navigate the overworld in creative and interesting ways and tackle obstacles in very flexible ways depending on what Pokemon you have on hand. IDK if that's a realistic expectation for this game, but it is something I would eventually like to see Pokemon do.

Re: Nintendo Expands Switch 2's GameCube Library This Week

Bolt_Strike

@kkslider5552000 The Zelda game that puts the exploration (the most important element of any Zelda) on a timer that hinders you from really exploring is the better of the two? Yeah no.

To your overall point yeah, releasing a sequel first is always weird but I contest the idea of MM being better than OoT.

Re: Yoshi And The Mysterious Book Lands Switch 2 Release Date

Bolt_Strike

@N8tiveT3ch The bubble gimmick isn't the gimmick for the game, just that level. The gimmick for the entire game is you experiment with the environment and enemies to document different behaviors. They probably could've done a better job of showing this off by showing another enemy.

Re: Yoshi And The Mysterious Book Lands Switch 2 Release Date

Bolt_Strike

IDK what to feel about this game. The focus on documenting behaviors of enemies in this game is an interesting one, but will that be enough for a $70 game? I'm really not sure. I'm waiting to hear more.

EDIT: So it may in fact be $60? I certainly hope so, I would better consider it at that price. But I still need to know if there's anything else to do in this game besides mess around with enemy behavior and typical collection elements.

Re: Talking Point: After 30 Years, Is It Time To Reset The Pokédex?

Bolt_Strike

No, this is one of the worst takes I've ever seen. There's always someone that's way too attached to a Pokemon that you can't just remove one without it causing a big stink. Look at what happened when BW tried to force you to only use new Pokemon or when they started with Dexit, the fanbase went ballistic both times. Not to mention that going back to 150 Pokemon causes variety issues similar to what we saw in DP, RBY and BW have similar issues that are only hidden from the player because of smarter choices in Gym Leader/Elite 4 typings. There's just no way to make this work, what they're doing now has to stay.

Re: Review: Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen (Switch) - Red-Hot Nostalgia In A So-So Wrapper

Bolt_Strike

@Erigen Same. Not only is it the "caveman" way but as the article mentions you may not have the option to trade with friends. What if I live in a rural area where no one else plays Pokemon. This is true in my case, I live in southern Delaware, which is basically a glorified retirement community in the middle of nowhere. Good luck finding Pokemon fans out here. So I basically have to either buy a second Switch and a copy of the opposite version or else I'm locked out of the opposite version's Pokemon and trade evolutions like Alakazam or Gengar? Yeah no, that's a non-starter in the year 2026. Not supporting this lazy, cash-grabby slop unless they backpedal on no online (which seems unlikely).

Re: Poll: So, Will You Be Getting Mario Tennis Fever For Switch 2?

Bolt_Strike

@Member_the_game Tennis and Golf are the niche sports, we haven't seen Baseball and Basketball in years. Soccer is fine, but we haven't gotten it consistently because there's been a long gap between Strikers Charged and Strikers Battle League, further releases with shorter gaps can alleviate that. Tennis and Golf just feel like weird sports to highlight.

Re: Metroid Prime 4's "Combined Sales" Have Surpassed One Million, Nintendo Confirms

Bolt_Strike

@Novuscourvous The type of "isolation" fans seem to want is gameplay-oriented. The feeling that Samus is on her own throughout the game and there's hostiles all around. That doesn't necessarily mean eliminating all characters and storyline from the game. But it does mean they don't want things like forced escort missions with NPCs that don't shut up.

I personally would be more amenable to doing things like another "home base" sort of area with friendly NPCs (this is more the kind of role where someone like MacKenzie would shine, being someone you can return to to reload, restock, upgrade, etc. rather than someone constantly interjecting in the normal flow of gameplay) or the random encounters with Tokabi in the desert, but that's about the extent that I think NPCs would be tolerated in a Metroid game. They definitely went too far with it in Prime 4.

Re: Metroid Prime 4's "Combined Sales" Have Surpassed One Million, Nintendo Confirms

Bolt_Strike

@Gaymer90 As for the reason BotW succeeded, it's because they had a deep understanding of what Zelda was, what the fans wanted, and how to translate that appeal to an open world. Zelda fans like exploration, adventure, quests, experimenting with dungeon items, etc., they just took all of that and broadened the ambition, that's why it succeeded. The only thing BotW didn't quite nail was the dungeons, but other than that pretty much everything that fans liked out of Zelda was here. The same can't be said for Metroid. Metroid fans tend to like isolation and mazelike design. Prime 4's design defies practically all of this. That's why it's a failure. If they can come up with a concept that takes that isolation and mazelike design and similarly expand the ambition, then Metroid might see a similar payoff. But until they do that I think Metroid's chances of seeing major growth are slim. Metroid also has a fairly unique challenge because Japanese gamers are largely averse to some of Metroid's core elements, namely the isolation and guns. That's been a large part of the reason Metroid's remained niche and that may be a tricky problem to overcome. But they'll certainly have no shot of doing so if they just throw away everything that Western fans love about Metroid and make it something it's not, then it'll be a game without an audience, an IP this niche can't afford to abandon its core audience to expand, that's way too risky.

Re: Metroid Prime 4's "Combined Sales" Have Surpassed One Million, Nintendo Confirms

Bolt_Strike

@Gaymer90 While it is tricky to innovate and reinvent an IP, there are some qualities that define which ones are successful and which ones aren't. One of those qualities is an understanding of the core appeal of your IP, that helps guide you on which gameplay elements should be kept and which should be changed. That's part of the issue, Tanabe's comments imply that he doesn't really understand the Prime fanbase because his vision for this game was a design philosophy that is almost the polar opposite of what Metroid fans tend to want. He noticed open world was getting popular but said it needed to be balanced because open world doesn't really work with Metroidvanias. I'll give him credit on this one, this was the correct assessment and if this was the only issue I'd give him a pass. But it goes deeper than that and pretty much everything else he said about the design philosophy for Prime 4 is out of touch with the audience.

First he says that in the open world he didn't want players to be overwhelmed with options so he designed the desert in a way that you would focus on one objective at a time. But that's not how people tend to play open world games, they tend to hate empty fields with nothing to do because it feels like fluff and a waste of their time. The correct solution to that should be proper tracking so they know what they missed (something Prime 4 already does to a degree with the Green Crystal radar and Scout Bots).

He also seems to be inspired by film and wanted to push NPC interactions, especially with the Federation. This does not resonate with the fanbase because many Metroid fans specifically say isolation is one of the most important elements to them. Trying to shoehorn in Federation soldiers through most of the game (especially like they did with MacKenzie) is just out of touch.

And then he wanted to make the games linear to try and shoehorn in the story. Fans generally do not like a linear, story based approach to Metroid, they tend to like it when the game is mazelike and puzzling and explore the story in the form of optional lore. So again, doesn't seem to get what the fans want.

I think what Prime 4 really shows is that Tanabe is not the right person for the job. His vision doesn't really resonate. So it may be a good thing for the series that he's retiring. Let's see what Tabata has in mind. Maybe she has a better idea of how to take what the fans want, carry that vision further with her own ideas, and make it more appealing to Japanese audiences (which is the main sticking point as to why Metroid doesn't sell, it's one of the most popular Nintendo IPs in the West but it doesn't resonate with Japanese culture). That may be a tall task, but it's a tightrope that needs to be walked to make Metroid successful and Tanabe clearly isn't up for it.

Re: Metroid Prime 4's "Combined Sales" Have Surpassed One Million, Nintendo Confirms

Bolt_Strike

@FullMetalWesker The kind of experience you're describing is something that, to my knowledge, has never been done before. Especially not on the scale that a Metroidvania would require. I'm not entirely sure why, but I've never seen a game like that before, and certainly Nintendo's never done one. If I had to guess, this is too ambitious for them because they seem to have trouble filling open worlds with detailed terrain which is why open world games tend to be big empty fields, but IDK enough about game development to answer why we haven't gotten a game like this. It would certainly be interesting if they could pull it off, but I'm not expecting it. Until they prove otherwise, the best we could really get out of a 3D Metroidvania is probably just typical Prime map design, maybe with a few larger rooms sprinkled in.

Re: Metroid Prime 4's "Combined Sales" Have Surpassed One Million, Nintendo Confirms

Bolt_Strike

@FullMetalWesker No, open world specifically means you can go in any direction. So it'd be more like if the whole game was like Sol Valley. That's the antithesis to Metroid because open world games are generally designed in a way that you can progress in any order, whereas Metroidvanias are designed so you have to explore the world and find new abilities that can open up new areas to explore. The two gameplay styles conflict with each other and have polar opposite design philosophies, it'd be extremely difficult if not totally impossible to make the two of them work together.

Re: Metroid Prime 4's "Combined Sales" Have Surpassed One Million, Nintendo Confirms

Bolt_Strike

@Pillowpants In theory they could create a smaller campaign to fiddle around with ideas they might work with in a future Prime game (either Prime 5 or another spinoff if they want to try multiplayer again). I'd especially love a side story where you play as Sylux.

Now will that happen? Probably not. I think if Prime 4 is getting anything it'll just be QoL features and other small stuff (such as perhaps giving in and offering a way to unlock the radio without the Amiibo or optimizations to the Green Crystal radar to make it more useful, stuff like that). But the chances are nonzero.

Re: Nintendo Reconfirms Release Windows For Major Upcoming Switch 2 Games

Bolt_Strike

Wonder S2E, Yoshi, and Splatoon Raiders are solid maybes. Nothing on here that actually feels like a must have. Definitely lacking that killer app, a lot of B and C tier fare that appeal to various niche fanbases but nothing that's a big showstopper. We desperately need a big 3D Mario, a Luigi's Mansion 4, a Smash 6, something of that caliber (and no, Switch 2 Editions of Luigi's Mansion 3 or Smash Ultimate do not count).

Re: Poll: So, Will You Be Getting Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream For Switch?

Bolt_Strike

@Anti-Matter That would be great if it weren't the generic designing of small towns and such. I'd be on board for a sim game, but something more exotic, something more like an amusement park management sim or a larger city designing sim (something more like Cities Skyline). This is too dull.

I'm not really feeling the "whimsy" either. I can't explain why, I just don't.