BulkSlash

I’ve not seen the trailer as I like to be surprised, but despite not liking Double Dash much, Daisy Cruiser was a lot of fun on that game so it should be really good in Mario Kart 8.

Thanks for the heads up! I nearly missed the last one (I spotted it on a Monday morning!) I've got all the themes so far so I'd be annoyed to miss one even though I don't play Tetris 99 as much as I used to.

The good news is it's not Virtuous doing the port. Their Arkham ports on PS4/Xbone were terrible. I'm sure the Switch will be able to handle Asylum and City without issue (it would be cool if we got the Wii U's enhanced port of City on the Switch, including gyro aiming).

I'm not to bothered if Arkham Knight doesn't run well as I didn't like that one anyway and won't be revisiting it. The world was too large and spread out to justify the inclusion of the Batmobile and the story was disappointing too.

I approve the large number of Ocarina of Time bosses in this list. I’d also say the showdown with Ganon in this one is the most epic- set in the ruins of his castle with rain lashing down and lightning bolts arcing through the pitch black sky. It’s genuinely climactic and exhilarating.

I definitely think it’s from the same lineage as the New games but after such a long break (and assuming it’s the same team) I think they’ve perhaps taken the criticisms of the previous games being too unadventurous to heart.

If this plays as well as Super Luigi U I’ll be extremely happy.

I love Sega, but this is just typical of them. They can’t help but make the stupidest decisions. The game looks great from the trailers so I’ll give it a chance, but that’s not a team with a particularly good pedigree.

The problem I think wasn’t necessarily with the drag and drop, it was there was no way to encapsulate parts of the game logic, so you just end up with an unmanageable spider’s web of components all over the place.

If it was possible to group parts of your game up into boxes that could be closed so you didn’t have so much clutter everywhere it would have made it much easier to work with.

Also, I think it needed much better texture and sprite tools. Animating sprites requires such a huge amount of manual work when all that should be needed is just to be able to load a sequence of drawn images.

An update or sequel with much better tools could be truly excellent, but I don’t think it sold well enough for Nintendo to try again sadly.

I don’t like the graphical style at all or the over-designed main character. I really like the idea of the game, but the execution doesn’t work for me.

It’s funny he says that when the first level they showed looked like Green Hill Zone to me! 😂 It doesn’t bother me anyway as I like Green Hill Zone.

I think either the original or DX is best. The remake could have been better but they padded it out too much and made it feel tedious to 100% the game. If they hadn’t done that the remake would probably have been better

Every review of the stick I've seen so far says it doesn't properly recreate the feel of the N64 stick. The range benchmark looks good but the response isn't right, which means things like GoldenEye and Wave Race won't play well.

It seems even Hall Effect sensors can't replicate the original optical sensors the N64 sticks used. I can't say I'm too surprised, I've not found a single replacement N64 stick that works like the original. They're all usually horrid to use. It's a pity there's no-one selling steel bowl replacements any more as those can be dropped in to an original stick and make them like new again.

I hope it's not too soon, I'm still trying to get good at the latest two cups they've added. 😅

The Japanese cover is the best. The European cover seems to have fallen into the ‘00s habit of making all posters/covers orange & teal.

Personally I think this is great, back in the Wii U days being able to carry on playing on the GamePad when the TV was in use was incredibly useful.

I'm probably going to finally get a PS5 this year for Stellar Blade and FFVII Rebirth and I'll definitely get one of these with it (or better yet maybe a deal where it's bundled in).

It should be 120fps on PS5/Series X and 60fps on the Switch. I don’t know what they’ve done to the graphics but looking at the trailer it’s the same stylistic flat shaded, low-poly, minimal texture look of the original so I can’t see why it needs to be 30fps.

I’ve still got all my G&Ws, I think my favourite is Zelda, it actually still smells brand new somehow! The crystal screen Super Mario Bros. is also very cool. Purely by accident I also have one of the rarest G&Ws- Mario the Juggler, which I bought without even realising it would be the last one they made.

While it’s not a G&W, I was working on the old LCD Grandstand game Star Force today. My original one was sadly thrown out, so I bought a cheap one off eBay. One of the battery contacts was corroded and snapped off. I dismantled the whole thing, cleaned it and replaced the spring on the contact and it’s now working good as new. Despite being just beeps, the music is actually quite cool.

Kururin Squash on the GameCube was awesome, I’d love to see that make a comeback, although the small analogue sticks on the Switch might make precision manoeuvres trickier.

The box art on Amazon doesn’t match the one in the article. I’d guess that’s Amazon’s mistake. That said, I want the Japanese cover but Amazon only have the PAL one. I guess this means I’ll have to preorder from Play-Asia.

The tricky thing with this is the early controllers are all on a continuum and all made me feel I was playing with something new and innovative.

The NES broke new ground with the precise d-pad, (the dog bone is also a marvel of simple elegance), the SNES pad found a way to give us six easy to reach buttons and the N64 brought us analogue, camera controls and rumble.

So I struggle to pick a favourite, but in the end it has to be the N64 controller because it a) gets the most unjust hate and b) it made so many innovations possible.

It's a pretty cool game (both in looks and gameplay) but as the review says, that last level is a bit of a chore. The story is totally incomprehensible too, but that just adds to the charm I think. 😆

Not surprising really, it had been on life support for quite a few years now. All the big platform holders were holding their own events and simulcasting them online and the big publishers were starting to follow suit.

The reach of those online events was much greater than just the people who can physically get to LA for the event. Then there's the cost of having a booth which was going through the roof. I've seen the same in the car industry, shows just don't generate the sales the way they used to and aren't worth what the organisers charge to attend.

Then there was the fact that your game could get lost in all the noise of all the big releases being announced at once and even small publishers were starting to see it as pointless.

Sounds great, the one item in the cons list is a pro for me! I'll definitely be grabbing this.

Four.

The original in blue, a white XL, the white New 3DS Ambassador Edition and finally a metallic blue New 3DS XL.

@Burning_Spear Yeah, I couldn’t get on with this theme at all. I’m not sure if it’s the background or all the busy symbols on the blocks. All I can say for sure is I won’t ever be using it after unlocking it! 😅

The Western art is iconic, but Mario is a bit off-spec and also looks like he has sunburn. The Japanese artwork is much better in every way.

Cool, I look forward to trying the original Triple Trouble as the recent fan remaster was fantastic, it will be great to see how the original plays.

I'm glad we got a reminder here, I've got all the themes so far so I'd be gutted if I missed one.

Still no Axelay. 😩

My most anticipated game of the year! I was rewatching the trailers for this the other day, I really hope it’s a good as it looks.

Crazy 8? Bullet Bill? What are these power-ups? All I ever seem to get are green shells and coins! 😅

I'm replaying all the tracks at the moment so this is good timing for them to add some more.

Colourful Game & Watch is my favourite.

Mario really seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to special edition Switches. Zelda, Pokemon and Splattoon have all had various special Joy-Cons, docks and backplates. Mario Odyssey got some red Joy-Cons and that was it, and they seem to be recycling those again here. 😢

Spot on. Ocarina does it best. Expansive enough to not feel constrained, but small enough not to be a tedious slog every time you want to cross it. It’s spooky and haunting at night and a relaxing countryside walk in the sun during the day.

That said, I always play the Redux patch now which makes young Link run very fast when he has the bunny ear mask equipped so he races across Hyrule Field in no time! 😅

I think if they were still doing the sci-fi COD games I’d be interested in COD on the Switch. But they’ve gone back to the more mundane terrestrial combat which doesn’t really excite me.

I don’t play online so I’d only be interested in the campaigns and being able to play them with gyro aim would actually be a bigger selling point for me that fancy graphics. I actually waited for Doom Eternal on the Switch because Doom 2016 played so well with gyro aim.

I don’t know the NES game but the GB game is great. It’s like a slightly more basic version of GB Donkey Kong, where you have to collect items in a level to open the exit.

It’s not going to set the world on fire or anything, but if you enjoy GB platform games then I think you’ll enjoy it. £9 is a pretty fair price for it.

The only problem with the SP is the lack of a headphone jack. So you’ve either got to cart the adaptor with you or play without sound.

I went with the GB Micro, while it is very small it’s very portable, has a headphone jack, a very bright and vibrant screen and is great for playing Mario World.

@FishyS I used to use LINK in Ocarina as it would annoy me watching the ending where Ganon is shouting in caps and says “CURSE YOU Link”. It always looked weird to me.

These days I’ve used the text editing tools available for Ocarina and changed his speech to lower case but made it red for Zelda, yellow when he curses the sages and green for Link. 😅

Easily Japan, it’s more colourful and dynamic.

Love this game, so I can't not go for the ultra expensive edition! 😩😅

@KBuckley27 I was thinking back to that forecast too. Nintendo are either being too optimistic or they think their line-up of games this year are so good that they'll be able to attract a lot of new buyers. Maybe they think the Mario movie will help shift consoles? A new Mario game might help with that too.

That's funny that it works in real life, I know if you try that in Daytona it just slows you down! Next time this guy will need to try shifting down into first to trigger a power slide like in Daytona. 😉

Gyro aim? I’m buying this game!

No big movie release is complete without some wildly random and unconnected licenced products! 😂

Just bought it and I’ve really enjoyed it. I suck at shooters so this being easy really helped. It took me a little while to fathom the power-up system, but by the end of the first loop I’d sussed it. I enjoyed the story too, especially the twist at the end of the tutorial and the whole idea behind the second loop.

This has to have some of the best 2D sprite work I’ve ever seen too, especially that first shot as the Drainus takes off and all the elements of it are moving around using parallax to simulate it being 3D. Awesome.

Quite why Nintendo didn't offer some custom control schemes or add a remap feature to the emulator I don't know. They put a custom scheme in for Sin & Punishment (by making the right analogue stick also work as the stick), so they can do it if they want to.

Perfect review and spot on. I just had a quick session on the N64 and had a great time. The N64 was obviously enjoying it too, as it decided to throw various random enemies at me. The game never gets old, there's always something different about every play through.

In terms of the start/stoppiness of the controls, you can still move and shoot without invoking the crosshairs, it's just less accurate. I tend to "stun" enemies using that method and then line up a quick headshot to follow. You barely need to slow down that way.

@CharlieGirl The controls are bad because Nintendo have mapped the c-buttons to the right analogue stick. It's basically the same control scheme as Resident Evil 4, so there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, it's just the terrible choices Nintendo made mapping N64 controls in their emulator (and the lack of remap options).

I basically gave up playing it after a few minutes and booted up the N64 instead.

Considering the visuals in Mario Kart 64’s end credits still finish before the music I won’t hold my breath that this will be fixed.

The silhouette of that Popeye drawing/sprite where he's pointing at the ground looks almost identical to the Mario sprite in the DK Game & Watch where he points at the ground in one of his frames. They must have used Miyamoto's drawings as a reference when making it.

Are we sure it wasn't Pitney Bowes? They handle eBay's international shipping and I've had things they've ripped open to inspect in the past.

Whatever the case, breaking open the sealed case isn't really the problem, it's destroying the contents that is the truly egregious part. There's no call to open it like that and they could have easily x-rayed it, which is standard procedure for suspect items, rather than destroy it.