Buizel

@Olliemar28 Doesn't work for the Switch does it?

@EarthboundBenjy Yeah...I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of gaming on mobile (although honestly I'd always prefer to use a dedicated gaming device, i.e. my Switch), but after a few attempts I've been completely put off by the pushing of microtransaction and game-as-a-service-type models.

The best games, IMO, are timeless, and it's just sad to see these titles amount to nothing within a time span shorter than even a single console generation.

Mine evolved with no problem? Like maybe a level or two after it evolved into Pawmo. Didn't realise this was an issue for most people.

It was actually very useful to have a fully evolved Pokemon so early in the game.

Persona 5 on sale already?

As someone who grew up with the PS1 and N64, and later played quite a bit of DS, I still find it strange that people target this sort of low-res, low-poly art style. Sprite art is quite timeless IMO, but I find this kinda art style pretty jarring tbh.

That said, I'm always up for a new cool 3D platformer so I might consider it at some point.

Agree with most of the criticisms tbh, but also somewhat surprised this scored so low. Personally I would give this a 7, but I'm maybe early enough in the game that the gameplay hasn't got tiresome. Most of my issues with the game are on a technical level rather than on a design level, although I think they dropped the ball with the Cyber Space stages.

I will admit this game looked downright ugly when I first started it up on Switch, but I soon got used to it and think of it more as an early 7th gen title. That said, am I the only one not bothered by the pop-in? I've not really noticed it tbh...maybe my eyes just get used to this sorta thing.

insert "Why not both?" meme

After a decade of not really liking Roger Craig Smith as Sonic, I think he's really come into his own in this game. Really nice to see him going from snarky one-liners to a more mature Sonic - it's made me realise that I never really disliked the VA himself, but moreso the script and direction at the time.

While I'm not surprised by the overall trend of the Switch being most popular in young adults, that spike at 22 does seem suspect. I'd expect maybe a bit more overlap with the 21 and 23 age groups.

I think @Rambler is on to something...how do we know this isn't just people defaulting to 2000 as their birth year?

Surprising given the runaway success of the Switch, even in the UK. But I guess proportionally Xbox One found a lot more success in the UK that it did elsewhere in the world?

Not quite sure I understand this interpretation though: "It’s a small country so portable gaming isn’t as big."

What does the size of our country have to do with portable gaming?

Everything in Tomb Raider 2 and 3. The general tone of the games freaks me out to this day.

I was too young to be playing that series.

These are great. Pity I'm not female or Australian or I'd totally go for these.

Mario Party 4 for me.

People talk of the N64 classics, but I feel like 4 really took what made the first 3 great and ran with it to produce the all-round best Mario Party game.

5-8 were good in their own right but got caught up in other gimmicks after the series was beginning to get criticism for becoming "stale".

I've not played 9, but 10 is just horrendous.

Superstars is a step in the right direction but doesn't quite capture the magic of the first 4 games. I'm hopeful for the future of the series though.

Up until Friday, this has been my favourite game unavailable on a Nintendo system. Overall it's second only to the Pokemon series as my favourite game of all time.

So excited to play this again on Switch.

Agree, this looks beautiful. A contender for the best-looking anime-inspired game on Switch, IMO.

It's either "tears (cry)" or purposefully ambiguous to evoke both, IMO.

Using "tears (torn)" as a noun and then following it with "of the Kingdom" is technically valid, but feels very awkward in English IMO. In this case I think most people would use a synonym for "tears" to evoke the idea of a kingdom being in ruins.

Then again, this is a Japanese company, and "Breath of the Wild" took some getting used to.

Interesting article. The main thing it has told me is to turn my damn PS5 off...I don't use it enough to justify the 14p per week I spend keeping it on standby Dx

They...barely changed anything?

@KilloWertz funny you mention that as, as much as I love Rift Apart, no other game has managed to quolite get my attention like it since I got my Ps5 :/

Dammit, take my money.

I'm running out of reasons to play consoles other than Switch.

As much as I'll defend 3D Sonic in general, I think there are only 2 Sonic games worth playing on the Switch: Sonic Mania and Sonic Origins.

The former is arguably the best 2D Sonic of all times, whereas the latter is a decent (albeit flawed) compilation of some classics.

Team Sonic Racing is okay but underwhelming compared to other Sonic racers as well as the competition (Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing). Colours is an overrated 2D game masquerading as a 3D one (but without the excellent controls and mechanics of the actual 2D games IMO). And Forces is...Forces.

@BulkSlash Very good point.

Although that shouldn't really affect handheld games. Nor should it really affect PAL games of the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation as 60hz support was becoming standard then (that said, I'm not in the know as to how well these games supported 60hz...it might still be more beneficial to have an NTSC copy in any case).

I'll also say that US copies have nicer boxes a lot of the time. The European DS cases in particular are chunky and ugly compared to the much sleeker grey cases of the US. Plus I quite like that the PS1 had the slimmer jewel cases in the US.

Not yet watched the video (will pick up this evening), but one thing I've noticed in the discourse about retro game collecting is that games generally seem to be a lot more expensive in USA than Europe.

I find that quite strange considering a lot of the cult classics talked about online probably had a very limited print run in Europe. Some weren't even released here!

But then you have games like Futurama on the PS2 which are apparently rare enough to go for $150+ in the USA, but commonly sell for around £15 (< $20) here in the UK.

If I were to take a guess I'd say some of this is cultural. Maybe with everything generally being a bit smaller in Europe, people are less likely to hold on to bulky physical game collections?

Damn Square Enix, slow down.

Or, better yet, could Nintendo and SEGA start having this much interest in their back catalogues?

I never realised how much I wanted all of these games (incl. the Persona 3 demake, etc., in the following post) until now.

I remember when it was first revealed...yeah, I definitely thought it was ugly. There was a lot of sentiment around the time that Pokemon had started looking like Digimon.

But it grew on me when I finally played the game. It helps that Blaziken is quite the badass and is far and away the best fire type in Hoenn.

Still not a fan of the overly humanoid designs of the last few gens though.

@Rayquaza2510 this is useful to know. Tbh this is not far from my impression as someone who barely touched the PC version.

Surprised this has been released on Switch as a "full game". I have this on Steam and always thought it had been marketed as a tech demo / beta of sorts (i.e. a taster before a more complete game is released).

@tseliot Fantastic series, but never reaches the pure platforming bliss of Mario Odyssey IMO.

I'll defend Mario Sunshine to the death, but personally I think it's far from the best 3D Mario.

That award goes to Odyssey IMO (which may itself be the best 3D platformer of all time).

Tbh I think this collection gets too much hate. Sure, there is a lot to complain about if you're a hardcore fan (myself included), but this is still the best official way to play all of these games imo. It is certainly better than the originals and my only complaint would be that they've not done enough when remastering and repackaging them.

That said, at over £30, and this being a collection of 4/(5) 90s games without a somewhat archaic save system...is it appealing to anyone who isn't already a hardcore Sonic fan?

Coming from someone with little experience of the series, do people actually like GTA4?

Despite being ranked as one of the best games of all time in metacritic, I don't think I've ever heard a single person say a positive thing about it.

@Fizza Yeah, as much as I thought this looked like an improvement... Green Hill again, really?

Yes, give us Persona please.

Not sure why the disappointment here. Nintendo has a pretty stacked second half of 2022. Plus, they have every opportunity to announce, say, a Zelda WW + TP double-pack through other means / in a later direct.

Samus using the Phantom Cloak: "You can't see me"

As a Brit who largely grew up during the Gamecube era, this is amazing.

Nintendo has historically had a rockier time in the UK compared to other markets - it's still strange to me that their games are topping the charts so frequently, but I guess that's the power of the Switch.

Fire Emblem also had a notoriously rocky start in the West in general.

To see a Fire Emblem spin-off of all things top the charts in the UK is fantastic.

As a consumer, I'm a little disappointed with how this game is packaged. Despite the games being rebuilt from the ground up, it still feels like a bunch of roms wrapped in a shared main menu.

I can totally see Sonic Team having outsourced the development of the individual titles before stitching everything together. There isn't much cohesion here.

In particular the saving system just feels a little archaic. Although a save feature on all games is welcome, why is this limited to a linear "one and done" playthrough of the games? Why no level select? Why different save files for characters, being unable to switch characters at will? Why unable to share emeralds between characters and playthroughs? The Sonic Advance series had a better save system than this game, and it came out 20 years ago!

This looks great. The level of care they seem to be putting in looks promising.

They really didn't have to include the Story Mode / animated cutscenes.

Maybe I'm getting old, but 15 years actually does seem closer to the actual age of the game than 25 years...

Games were 8-bit 25 years ago weren't they?

Almost 5 years after Forces and 6 months before launch, and we're seeing an "early build"? Doesn't seem right.

That said, my issues with the game are more than skin-deep anyway. I couldn't care less about the animations and the draw distance or w/e. I'm just not sold on the concept.

This did catch my eye though: "use portal gears to unlock linear Sonic levels > complete linear Sonic levels to unlock chaos emeralds". Why aren't they showing off the "linear" Sonic levels? Are these more like what we've seen in other 3D Sonic games? By the sounds of it these are making up the minority of the experience.

Could this be another 3D Sonic game where the core Sonic gameplay is diluted by some mediocre gimmick?

It's still far better than the Xbox and Playstation online stores IMO.

The browser version of the latter is abysmal.

This looks amazing as a proof of concept.

I think it would get very tiresome as a full game though.

I would, however, love to see a full colour manga/comic in this style.

Not sure if that's just the poor quality of the 3DS recording, or if that's what music sounds like these days o_o

But why do you need blockchain to "own" and sell digital items within games?

Surely this can be done with current technology (i.e. "ownership" tied to a user account on a server), but game developers/publishers are vehemently against selling "owned" data in this context.

What is the difference?

Thought this already had quite a beefy demo? I feel like I played a few hours of this before taking the plunge in 2019.

For the named series? No way. I've been gaming for ~25 years, but I never would've got into Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda had I started with their NES games.

For most series with a loose (or non-existent) continuity, usually the latest game is the most accessible way to get into the series. If you like the latest game, then you're free to go back to the beginning to see how things were. But I think it's far too risky to start with the first game - it might put you off a series that has otherwise evolved into something you may enjoy.

I'm happy they changed the colour at least. The fushia speech bubble in the old logo made it look like they were a mobile network rather than a video game company.

Sony really need to show me a convincing library of games to get me on board with £99 a year.

NSO is a no-brainer for me as Switch is my primary console, the only one I play online, and I enjoy having legacy Nintendo content on the go.

Xbox Game Pass offers tremendous value with a wide selection of indies and third party titles, as well as day-one releases of first party titles.

With these two services, why would I go PlayStation?

Amazing performance. I don't believe Kirby has ever had much presence in the UK...could this be the first time the series has topped the charts?

8 (Deluxe) is the best for multiplayer, DS best for single player IMO.

And I'd put Double Dash!! right behind those two. The two drivers mechanic still feels great today, and the game has a great roster and set of tracks. That said, while it excels in quality, I think it's missing out a bit in quantity compared to more recent Mario Kart games.