BulkSlash

I love this game, they’re right when they say it’s designed to be replayed a lot, I’ve already beaten it 6 times. Finding all the upgrades was a lot of fun in itself.

The only criticism I have is they didn’t get an awesome music track like Kristine’s The Danger for the end credits like they had on Blazing Chrome. 😅

They probably cancelled the next three Splinter Cell games even though they haven’t started them just to make sure they don’t accidentally make something people want to play.

That's really cool, if they could do an N64 version with six face buttons I'd be all over it.

I was going to buy the game anyway as it’s a decent Strider follow-up (I’d be interested to know how the CPS-1 hardware compared to whatever Mitchell were using at the time). I’m even more keen to support it after hearing about how EA cloned Mitchell’s Puzz Loop game and made a fortune doing it.

My vote goes to the OG Zelda Game & Watch. I’ve still got mine, it’s a lovely bit of old Nintendo.

It wasn’t a great year for me on Switch, there wasn’t really much that I really wanted to play (even though there were a lot of games released this year).

That said, nothing annoys me more than people (especially that one new guy on Digital Foundry) talking as if the Switch’s hardware is old and therefore can’t do the job any more. I just don’t get that. The hardware hasn’t somehow become less able to perform over time, it’s just as capable as it was on launch day. So saying it’s long in the tooth just doesn’t make sense.

Sure, it can’t match the graphics of the PS5 or Series X but that doesn’t mean games being made today should be graphically inferior with worse performance than games that came out at launch. That’s a programming issue, not a hardware issue.

I’d love another Curse of the Moon as well (I’m replaying 2 at the moment), I think Grim Guardians will be scratching that itch in February based on the trailers.

I wasn’t that big of a fan of Ritual of the Night, much like Symphony of the Night I found it too difficult. I prefer my Metroidvanias like Super Metroid with plenty of health around.

I’d forgotten about Vengeful Guardian Moonrider. That’s definitely one of my most wanted, along with Bombfunk and Grim Guardians.

@SaturnHero Tell me about it. Sega have so many classic games locked away on old systems but virtually all they ever give us are the same old Mega Drive ROMs over and over again.

I’ve got both and for the most part I’m only playing on the Steam Deck at the moment, mostly because there’s lots of games on there that aren’t on the Switch or games that are on the Switch but haven’t included gyro aiming like RE4 (the options for control remapping on the Steam Deck are pretty vast, including adding gyro to games).

The main drawback of the Steam Deck is you still get a lot of the faff you have on PC like external configuration apps, tweaking settings to get it to run right or doing a lot of config to get emulators running properly all of which can be extra fiddly without a keyboard and mouse.

I haven’t stopped playing the Switch entirely but there’s just not much coming out at the moment which I want to play. In terms of size, I find the joycons too small for my hands, so with a set of Binbok controllers on my Switch it’s actually not that much smaller than a Steam Deck! 😅

I just had a look at this one Steam, there's something like £70 worth of DLC costumes for this game! 😂

That's pretty cool, although I hope it doesn't mean cloud versions!

If Daniel Craig really is there to announce GoldenEye's release I hope they make something out of how he's not even in the game.

There’s some cool ideas there, and an open world platformer is something I’ve always thought could work well (I haven’t got Sonic Frontiers yet). This does look quite easy though with very long floaty jumps, it’s like someone took Princess Peach from Super Mario USA and made her the main character! 😅

It does remind me a bit of Balan Wonderworld though with costume changes giving different powers. Hopefully it’s not going to be as easy as that game too.

@ozwally I got a Steam Deck for much the same reasons, I don't want cloud games. Plus it has my favourite thing: gyro aim! You can even add that to games that don't have it, unlike on Switch where you're reliant on the developer remembering to include it.

Definitely the Japanese version, because Vampire Killer is a way more bad ass title than Bloodlines or New Generation.

How long until Squeenix announce it undersold their unrealistic expectations by 20M copies?

I wouldn't mind trying this, although Tetris 99 is pretty much the only Tetris game I need.

Excellent. I was ready for more tracks quite quickly after the first pack, but the novelty of the second pack hasn't actually worn off yet. I'll be looking forward to booting up the Switch to play them.

I’ve got pretty much everything I’d want on the list already. £2.24 for the Panzer Dragoon Remake is good value even though it was a bit disappointing.

Ten quid for Doom Eternal is great value too. There’s no way I’d pay even that much for the GTA Trilogy though after the way they launched it.

I went for Arkham City and Mario U, although the latter only got really good with the awesome Luigi U DLC.

I’d played the originals a fair bit, but the first one I actually got into and finished was X. I think I beat Ultra Sapphire and Let’s Go Pikachu but I’ve never completed a Pokédex (too much work) and most of the other ones I’ve bought I’ve not finished.

I keep saying I’ll go back to Arceus but too many side quests involved completing Pokédex entries and it kind of put me off.

I actually own the gold edition so I went with that, but really the US one is probably the best as it represents the game in its truest form.

It’s a pity this didn’t come out on the N64, much like the article states, sandwiched between REmake and RE4, this just felt past its time on the GC and would probably have been better coming out earlier while the franchise format felt fresher.

I’d be interested to know how the sales break down for most Sonic games. I’d have thought more Sonic players would be on Switch than the other platforms, so Sega’s lack of care for the Switch version seems odd (unless of course Sonic doesn’t sell well on Switch?)

This game desperately needs a demo. The reviews are all over the place so I really need to be able to play it myself to judge if it’s worth it.

I’ve never liked the 3D Sonic games, they always seem rushed and unpolished and that goes right back to the first one on the Dreamcast. The new direction is enough to intrigue me to give 3D Sonic another chance, but after all the middling reviews it needs a demo.

Nintendo must surely have the resources to focus on both new games and delivering a great way to experience their old games.

I also really think there's room for more games like NES Remix that let us experience chunks of the classics without having to git gud at the whole game. A 16-bit "SNES Remix" would be awesome.

Looks like a very respectable turn out for a tiny handheld device compared to the gargantuan slab of power that is the PS5.

Japanese box art for me. The NA/Europe one seems to have cut out the Japanese logo and left the planet visible in the background that is part of the background of the Japanese cover.

Nice to see the years of getting games late during the ‘90s getting some acknowledgement. I just imported throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s until they got a grip on it.

The weird thing is, the school I went to, loads of kids had a NES but I didn’t know anyone with a Master System! 😅

That said, I didn’t realise that Nintendo’s neglect was still overshadowing the market, I’d have thought the Switch would have sold well, the Wii was certainly ubiquitous and sold well for most of its lifespan here.

Unless DC plan to use Superman in a movie every year (surely they can’t do that many stand-alone and crossover movies?) I think Netflix would have been much better off just delaying season 4 for a year. This seems like a sure fire way to kill off any audience The Witcher has.

Maybe Cavill was asking for too much money? Netflix are having to make quite serious cut backs at the moment, so maybe this was a good opportunity to replace the star with someone cheaper.

Either way, this is good news for Superman movies and bad news for The Witcher.

I’m sure they’ll carry on shipping boxes to shops… with a download code inside.

I don't know how many times I've 100%'d Odyssey now, but I know I've overwritten every save slot at least twice. While I'd be happy with something new, I'd really like at least one more Odyssey.

I suspect they are working on an Odyssey 2, I think they were doing DLC for the first game and much like Galaxy 2 I think it has ballooned into a full-blown sequel. I wouldn't be surprised if it hits the Switch in time to cash in on Mario-mania from the movie.

All I would hope for in the sequel is cheaper costume prices (grinding Luigi's Balloon Hunt to buy everything is a chore) and that you also don't need to grind Luigi's Balloon Hunt to get the Odyssey to 999 moons. Ideally I'd like there to be 999 moons to find in the game, I'm sure the only reason it's like that in Odyssey is because there originally were meant to be DLC kingdoms.

Three separate statues in identical poses? It would have been better to just make one and allow you to snap different armours on and off.

Makes sense. It stops verified accounts changing their name and impersonating another channel while still bearing the YouTube verification mark.

@Woodyshoe It does if you have a Mac and can build Provenance from source as it supports N64 now. I'll be giving this a try this evening.

The one downer to Nintendo's N64 emulation is there's no patched versions of games. The Redux patch for Ocarina of Time adds so many awesome quality of life things that it's hard to go back to the vanilla version now.

It was an OK game, I quite enjoyed it but I didn’t like the death mechanic. They actually patched it at some point as it was quite annoying, but I’d already beaten it by then (and probably got the bad ending) so I haven’t tried it again since. Maybe this article will give me the reason to try it again.

Oh no, why’d they hire Brian Tyler? He did one amazing score on Children of Dune years ago, but everything since has been utterly forgettable and mediocre. They had to bring in Danny Elfman on Avengers Age of Ultron to actually add in Silvestri’s Avengers theme and pep up the action music.

At this point it seems like The Pokémon Company needs a team of Satoru Iwatas to come in and fix their engine, much like Iwata-san did when he worked on the original Pokémon.

LuigiBlood is correct, Nintendo's N64 emulator isn't very good at matching the bottlenecks of the N64 hardware and often runs at the wrong speed.

This is why Mario starts talking before the music finishes in the credits to Mario Kart 64, because there's no slowdown in certain parts where the camera is zoomed right out like there is on real hardware.

I'd be willing to bet it's the same for the end credits to Ocarina of Time, there's probably no slow down when all the NPCs are dancing around the fire meaning the visuals end before the music.

@HammerGalladeBro I wish they'd make remapping and connecting Bluetooth headphones quicker to access too, it's a pain having to dig through the options screen for them every time.

I'm hoping Nintendo will copy Valve and add per-game control remaps, accessible directly when you're playing the game like on the Steam Deck.

At least Nintendo have moved Bluetooth up the Settings menu a bit, they're outpacing Valve on that count at least where it's buried right near the bottom.

Here’s an idea for the filmmakers: how about getting Charles to perform Mario as an alternate audio track on the Blu-Ray? That way, the people who wanted him to play Mario in the movie still get to hear his version.

It’s pretty depressing to see games heading in this direction. I’ll naturally never be playing this game, but there are too many who will to stop this sort of business practice from being profitable.

It’s practically criminal that we never got a Devastation 2 from Platinum. I’m actually replaying it on Steamdeck at the moment and it’s just as awesome as I remember. It’s a 360-era game so there’s no reason the Switch couldn’t handle it easily.

For me it’s probably Final Fight Guy. Sure it’s missing two player mode, Cody, the factory level, area transitions and only has three enemies on-screen at once but the graphics are nicely colourful, the music sounds less scratchy than the arcade version and it was a much easier way to play the game in the ‘90s than trying to find an arcade with the game AND convincing my parents to give me money to play it.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed Nintendo will release an updated version of the game with all the DLC tracks at some point (obviously that’s a while off yet). I like the game so much I’d like to own a physical copy (rather than just the digital one I currently have) but I’d like to have all the new tracks included with it.

@progx Very interesting! 👍 Maybe now that Craig has finished his stint as Bond, Barbara Broccoli’s objections over confusing people who Bond is are over?

I’d definitely love a remaster from Nightdive including gyro aiming. All their FPS remasters have been perfect, so they would have been ideal for this one too. Now if only they could do Dark Forces I and II…

I’m surprised there’s nothing about the vsync issues, I’ve noticed quite obvious tearing at the top of the screen in places and the backdrops have a strange wobbling at times.

It’s a great game, but there’s no way I’d want to dedicate the time needed to get genuinely good at it. I’ll just play it enough to unlock enough lives to bulldoze through story mode. If only we could get Axelay on the Switch…

@Serpenterror RS is a 4:3 game, it doesn’t have a TATE mode because of that. Ikaruga was a vertical game, but I think Treasure made RS 4:3 because it was an STV cartridge game and had to be compatible with existing STV arcade cabinets.