BulkSlash

I remember being really disappointed by this, it just wasn't as good as DK '94. Before it released on the GBA the early footage showed something much closer to DK '94 and there was even going to be a level editor, but it all changed at some point.

That said, it's been so long since I last played it I can't actually remember what I didn't like about it. The Minis games were terrible too. Maybe I'll give this a try if there's a demo.

While a bigger screen is nice, it possibly also implies Nvidia and Nintendo have struggled to make something more powerful without needing a bigger case to house a bigger battery. That would probably explain why the rumours say it's something in the region of the PS4's power.

Transistor density just isn't increasing fast enough or getting cheap enough to allow for huge leaps in power. This is why the Steam Deck is quite large and why its more powerful competitors have hardly any battery life when running a recent AAA game at full speed.

I’ve beaten the recent Quake II remaster 5 times since I got it; so another game in that vein would go down very well with me.

@ferryb001 Same, I can’t see how that new control scheme could mesh with the grid based platforming either, it will be very interesting to see how it works.

Japan by a mile. The game is visually based on the cartoon, which this cover matches and there aren’t actually any Triceratons in the game, so why is one on the cover? They’ve just nicked one of the covers to the comics for this.

Unless your iPhone X is broken, it does support wireless charging, it was one of the first iPhones to do so. I’d probably be more worried about OLED screen burn leaving the screen on all the time on a (presumably) static image. If the screen changes then it shouldn’t be an issue.

I don't know anyone in the UK that says S-ness, most say either snez or super nez.

Whatever name Nintendo picks, they need to really make it clear to consumers it's a new system with games that (probably!) won't run on the old console. Otherwise it will just be another Wii U situation where people think it's just a new variant or peripheral that they don't need to buy.

I'm starting to get GTA Trilogy vibes from this. Might be best to wait for the reviews before buying.

Interestingly he's worked on many Zelda games I didn't really care for! 😅 Who directed A Link Between Worlds? I'd like to see them do the next Zelda game.

Kudos to the devs for ensuring we get a decent frame rate on Switch for once. 30fps just isn't acceptable except when doing "impossible ports" like Doom Eternal.

It's weird to think egg throwing is somehow too complicated when there are quite a few badges in the game that make the game play quite differently. It's probably more likely that throwing eggs broke the way most levels worked and they didn't want a single character to play differently from the rest so they dropped it.

Saying it was too complicated is probably just an excuse for not including it.

Perhaps they could sell off some more winning studios so they can go all in on AI, just like they did with NFTs? Just make good games Squeenix, stop trying to chase the latest buzzwords.

I just hope it has an auto-fire option, having to hammer the fire button was the one shortcoming of Contra 4. I like how they’ve snuck in references to things like Probotector too.

It’s funny that Operation Galuga shortens to OG, as this is a remake of the “OG Contra” I wonder if the choice was deliberate?

@whitespy12 Thank you. It’s nice someone recognises that the GB game was actually pretty good instead of just parroting the AVGN’s review of it. It might not be the best game ever on the GB, but it’s a fun little game in the same vein as Donkey Kong ‘94.

Too late Nintendo, I’m just about to start the Face Shrine on my Steam Deck. I like this better than the remake, not least because it hasn’t been drawn out with bloat and has a steady framerate.

Why not work with creators to make things like this available on the Switch? I know you can’t condone or turn a blind eye to copyright infringement as it can weaken your claims over the IP in future legal actions. But when things as good as this and AM2R come along you’re leaving money on the table by not working with the creator. Yes, you have your own (inferior) remakes to sell, but there’s nothing wrong with having both versions (and the originals!) available.

City is my favourite of the set too, the Wii U version was pretty good and the GamePad extras were great. I must have replayed that one 10 times when the Wii U was my main system.

It’s weird how Asylum has worse performance yet isn’t as big as City!

Arkham Knight struggled even on the PS4, they’d have been much better off trying to port Origins I think.

@ozwally Ah right, the article says it matches the 2016 versions that Virtuos did, so I assumed they'd based it on those. That's even worse then if they can't get 360 era games to run well on the Switch! 😩

They should have ported the original Unreal Engine 3 versions, not the shoddy Unreal Engine 4 versions released on Xbox One and PS4. They never ran well even on the Xbox One X (which was capped at 40fps for some reason).

Aha, it's WayForward, I wondered why it looked good. I love that they've kept the hookshot from Contra 4, I just hope they include auto-fire this time, hammering the fire button in Contra 4 was exhausting! 😂

It looks like they've kept the weapon upgrade system from Contra 4 as well, which is excellent. This looks like it will be a return to form after the disappointing Rogue Corps.

I always made my Scarecrow song the Konami code (well as much of it as will fit anyway).

If Ninty want to sell me another Switch they should do a nice Mario Wonder special edition, I'd be down for that. I don't get why Zelda, Smash, Pokemon and even Animal Crossing all got special Switches yet Mario Odyssey and Wonder didn't. 😢

A shame it’s not great, but I’ll definitely be buying to support Yu Suzuki.

I suspect WarioWare isn't doing huge numbers because it's mostly multi-player and mostly motion controls (and it's a busy time of year).

Maybe it will find legs over Christmas as people look for something the family can play together?

I think Miyazaki would pitch a fit if he saw those 3D backgrounds, he gets so grumpy about CGI. 😂

I wish that Booster Course pack was a physical copy, I’d buy it in a heartbeat if it was. The hated “NO GAME INCLUDED” makes it worthless. 😢

I think we need to discuss if it’s a problem that the prince of the Flower Kingdom is a caterpillar and all the Poplins are plants…

Bigger Joy-Cons would be nice. The buttons are too small and they’re too close to the analogue stick on the right Joy-Con which means I often move it when I’m trying to press the buttons.

It still amazes me we never got any special Joy-Cons for specific games, like a fishing rod reel or a Guitar Hero controller.

In terms of other stuff, I’d like to see being able to remap controls on a per game basis, rather than having to go into the settings app to load a different preset all the time. Being able to enable gyro in any game when developers forget to include support would be nice too (the Steam Deck allows you to do this).

I think the difficulty is just right. Mario games don't need to have me pulling out my hair to be fun (in fact I don't think any game should be like that). That said, the "Final-Final Test Badge Marathon" level was very hard and almost did have me pulling my hair out, mainly due to having to re-do earlier sections just to get back to the bit I was trying to practice. A checkpoint every two sections would have been ideal I think.

I did love the addition of badges. At first I thought the game was a bit lacking on power-ups, but I kind of think of the badges as power-ups and they add a lot of variety to the game. I particularly like the Piranha Plant one.

Overall it was a lot of fun and probably just edges Luigi U as the best 2D Mario since World for me. I need to replay it a few times to decide if it really is better or not, but I'm definitely going to start a new game soon I think!

@WaffleRaptor01 I think it's mostly so people can check the game hasn't been too badly compromised when squeezed onto the Switch. Sometimes not enough time or care has been taken, e.g. Mortal Kombat 1, to get the game running acceptably.

Japan. It gives us the best view of that lovely artwork.

Looks very low budget sadly. The characters are very well realised but we only really see two fighting areas (a courtyard and a forest clearing) and it's just the characters fighting each other.

I'd much rather something where you're fighting actual curses like the anime instead of this.

I never properly appreciated the fact that by making a system digital-only it helps to kill the second hand market. That’s really quite devious. That might be a genuine reason for Nintendo to actually sell a digital-only console.

I had initially thought a digital-only Switch 2 to be extremely unlikely purely because the cartridge module on the Switch is a very simple component and it wouldn’t save Nintendo much money by removing it. It’s not like a Blu-Ray drive with lots of moving parts and security chips to prevent piracy. The cost of manufacturing different casings, maintaining separate production lines and having separate packaging would eat into any savings too.

So I don’t think Nintendo would do it to make a cheaper console, but maybe they would to trap people into buying more expensive digital releases.

Japanese version hands down, it includes so many elements from the game. The US one is almost Phalanx-esque in its lack of detail on what the game is about. That said, maybe it’s supposed to be a hint to use lightning on the pyramid to get the hidden item? 😉

I remember quite enjoying the GameBoy game, I think I beat it too, although I'm not sure if there was a better ending or something as I think there was treasure you were supposed to retrieve before rescuing the princess.

I remember it was pretty cryptic working out which jelly bean to use and where too. I think there was a rocket one that seemed to be completely useless.

If they wanted to added modern quality of life enhancements I think a map would probably have helped a lot.

I'm trying to decide what my favourite port is. It might be Turtles in Time as while it's graphically a little bit downgraded from the arcade, they added lots of cool extra features that makes it the better game IMHO.

Or possibly Time Crisis on the PS1, that basically played 1:1 with the arcade with just reduced textures and frame rate.

I can't believe this won't be cloud, it ran so badly on PS5 and Series X at launch. That said, this was originally a cross-gen game so maybe they were doing it old-school and the cancelled PS4/Xbox One versions were a completely separate game/engine and it's that version they've down-ported to the Switch?

Being able to use the y-axis on the right analogue stick when gyro is enabled. Every other game with gyro allows it, the dev team are just being obstinate now that their reasoning for doing it has been disproven.

I'd be very interested in trying the Hall Effect stick but I suspect it won't be any good. I've tried 4 different N64 replacement sticks (and the NSO one) and none of them match the accuracy and sensitivity of the original.

It seems to be a characteristic of the early analogue stick era that the sticks were much easier to move and had no dead zones. It was like that on Saturn, early PS1 and Dreamcast too. I think the manufacturers started stiffening the sticks to compensate for drift on badly worn controllers. They also started putting huge dead zones in around that time too. 😞

The best solution I've found is to buy a replacement bowl for an original N64 analogue stick. That fixes the loss of range you get when the bowl wears down and you get to keep the smoothness and accuracy.

I’ve been playing this non-stop since it came out, I’ve unlocked pretty much everything now (my one criticism is it doesn’t make it easy to tell what is left to find) and I’ve had a real blast.

I’ve not noticed any “jank” in the gameplay, if anything I worry going back to Jet Set Radio will be very hard because of all the tweaks they’ve made to make things easier (double jump, boost, manuals to preserve combos, right stick for camera).

It’s quite funny how at the start of the game it’s tricky to rack up even a small combo but by the end it has taught you so many tricks (like holding R when jumping off a rail) that you can be chaining all sorts of different techniques together to easily rack up combo scores in the millions.

Unless Mario Wonder or Sonic is amazing I think this will be my GOTY.

I'll be giving these a wide berth if they don't make it 60fps. MGS1 I can understand as I'd expect that's emulation rather than a port, but they're re-using the PS3/360 ports which were updated to use modern rendering APIs. There's absolutely no way this should be 720p30 on the Switch or even more ridiculously only 720p on the PS5 and Series X!

Been playing it (almost) non-stop since it launched, and it’s really great. If anything, having good camera controls and other little QoL features like the double jump mean going back to vanilla Jet Set Radio on the Dreamcast will be quite hard! My progress has been quite slow as I’ve been determined to find all the hidden items in a level along with completing the cat chain challenges I’ve found.

I’d like to see it happen, but short of another unexpected game that gives the current hardware a massive shot in the arm (like Pokémon did for the original GB and Animal Crossing did for the Switch) I can’t see it happening sadly.

Also, if it did happen, I’d expect a lot of people saying it doesn’t count because the Switch is a “handheld”. I wouldn’t agree with that, but I’m sure it would happen.

@Mauzuri That's cool, I didn't know they'd done that for Origins. It was possible to retry the bonus levels on the iPhone by swiping out of the app and when you went back it would be on a pause screen with a retry button! 😂

The fan remake of Triple Trouble let you sacrifice a life to retry the bonus stages which I thought worked well, although the levels had plenty of bonus level entrances so it never felt as frantic as it did on the other 2D Sonic games.

I think this sounds really good, I like that these abilities give you new ways to traverse a level but I do worry how it will work in practice.

What if you haven't got the Cyan Emerald before reaching the water level? You're basically missing out on something to help on those levels. Or maybe you can't reach a bonus area if you haven't got the Green Emerald making it harder to actually get all of them.

I think I'm just worried it will be like the old 2D Sonics (and Mania) which were quite unforgiving with the Chaos Emerald bonus levels. There was no way to go back to a previous level to try and get missed Emeralds again so once you're at the end of the game if you've not got them all there's no way to get the good ending. I just hope this game isn't like that.

Excellent, I hadn't heard anything for a while so I was worried they were going to delay it again. I really hope this lives up to the old Jet Set Radio!

I had a lot of fun playing the demo on my Steam Deck, so I’ll definitely be getting this. Plus it’s Nightdive so it should have gyro aiming. I only ever played the demo back in the ‘90s on a 486 so it will cool to finally play the full game.

I’ve tried a couple of times but I wasn’t able to get through the wall, I’m actually not that bothered about locking myself into a looping underwater level to be honest! 😅

I’ve not managed to jump over the flag pole either (I think it’s only 3-3 where that can be done).

The best I can do is beat both loops of the game and get 100+ lives jumping on the Koopa Trooper/Buzzy Beetle in 3-1.

I prefer the NES versions. The music in All Stars has that tinny reverberation that many later SNES games seemed to have, which I don’t like.

Plus there’s that glitch with the way Mario gets pushed downwards when he hits blocks from underneath which is backwards to how the NES versions work.

I really like these new tracks, Moonview Highway is interesting in that the arrangement of the boost pads seems to change with each CC class. I’ve only played through on each class once to get three stars, so I’m not sure if the pads are random per race or just different depending on CC yet. But I do like that you have to look ahead and plan your route to get all the boosts.

The Squeaky Clean track is excellent too, there’s so many things to see, all the fun details like the things that have been washed down the drain and the three routes at the end of the track are great too.

All in all, I really enjoyed the new tracks and I’m looking forward to the last set. I hope when they’re all out Nintendo will sell a new cartridge with all the tracks on the card so I can have something not dependent on Nintendo keeping the DLC servers running.

I’ve had three sticks start to drift, and I’ve always stuck the replacements Amazon sell in them and so far they’ve been fine. It’s a shame the Gulikits are so stiff as that’s probably the thing I dislike most in a joystick.

I do wonder if putting a tall joystick cap on would make these easier to use as the moment of force would be lower when pushing from further away. I tend to use joystick caps anyway as I find it allows for more precision.

I’m almost tempted to buy some of these just to see how bad they are! 😂