ChibiNinja

Honestly? I don't want them to touch FFIX, OR Chrono Trigger for that matter. I don't trust the company at all

Oh, there's another remake of the original? It's a pretty significant franchise...none of which has ever been localized.

Yeah, it would be nice if people focused a little less on release dates and a little more on finishing their games, but that's straight-up not the point here? I'm seeing people talk like they think the game itself was rejected/delayed because it was unfinished, but Nintendo did NOT reject the game itself, just the patch. Yeah, it sucks that day 1 patches are basically an industry standard now, but Nintendo isn't innocent of that either, the dev's patched game was clearly finished well before release, and Nintendo is somewhat notorious for their long approval process, especially for small/indie devs.

The real issue seems to be that whoever was managing the Nintendo approval side of things seemingly didn't understand that 'breaking old saves' was completely irrelevant with the patch, which - if not rejected - would have gone live with the game. (This is your reminder that the patch was apparently submitted well before launch date, and was rejected multiple times for breaking saves even after signing the waiver specifically for that, which itself shouldn't have mattered because no saves would exist to break.)

Now, maybe it'll come out that the dev did something wrong in communications, or there was something genuinely wrong with the patch itself, and in that case sure, it'd be all on the dev. But we don't have any evidence suggesting that here, nor is it implied with the wording, nor is the dev particularly aggressive or insulting in their video. So based on this article alone it doesn't make any sense to act like the dev doesn't 'get' to be frustrated or deserves to be harassed. That's just absurd.

Ehhhhh...pass. I've never liked the 'slap godrays and bloom on everything' design attitude, and it kind of makes things look a bit plasticy here.

Of course, it doesn't really affect me anyways - I don't really play anymore. I don't have it on PC - and since they won't let me buy java separately from bedrock edition, I don't see that changing - and on the switch...well. I have it, but it runs...rather poorly, let's say. Also the marketplace is an awful microtransactional mess, so screw that.

Considering this is the company that insists Sonic CD has to be before Sonic 2 simply because Tails isn't in it, as if they were joined at the hip and didn't both have games set after 2 where they weren't together, I'm not really putting much stock in this.

My first reaction was 'blegh' - then I saw a bunch of people gushing about Uncharted Waters and was confused. Took a second look and realized oh, wait, that's New Horizons - that one's actually alright. Maybe not as incredible as people are making it out to be, some of the mechanics are a bit wonky, but it's not bad. For a second I thought it was the first one, which...isn't so good. Mediocre game with an even worse port, the first one.

Not a surprise in the least, but still disappointing. Pay attention to the prices they put on these sorts of things trying to resell, and it only gets worse.

Champions is a little interesting, though the heavy focus on PvP it seems to have worries me about what singleplayer it will really have. ZA looks...rough. I don't love the look of the new battle style. Also, this isn't important really, but that Onix was tiny.

3D is really good, but they did make some changes I'm not a big fan of.
...though it feels weird to vote N64, because I have never played it on N64. I played it on Gamecube and loved it, bugs and all.

While it's nice to see them doing actually worthwhile distributions that aren't locked to a newsletter that doesn't actually function for a lot of major email, I really don't like the way they count these. No, I'm not going to spend hours playing through these games (especially BDSP, I'm touching those things) to get local copies of some Pokemon I've already collected more than once over the years just because they've decided to put in arbitrary origin restrictions to exclude living dex efforts even though those are the people probably MOST interested in getting these mons.

I still definitely prefer the previous design, but I will grant you that these little art pieces look a heck of a lot better than the MK9 model preview. It's not so bad here, while the preview we got of MK9 makes him look a bit...like someone stole his brain. There's nothing up there. Look out, he's driving straight off the road-!

Hopefully the MK9 model isn't finished, and the final version looks more like this art and less like he's been put through a dozen bloody wars and simultaneously isn't bothered by it.

Oh right, the Japanese version of 'American Kirby is Hardcore'

voted NA on this one

Hm. This is an odd one. Normally a matchup like this would be an easy Japan vote for me, as I like the oldschool anime look and it matches the actual game much better, but...there's something weirdly bland about it this time. It's just a little off, and the colors and character jumble just aren't working for me.

Meanwhile the silly western cover is doing a better job than the usual 'sloppily colored over photo style' with some interesting colors. It doesn't look quite like a photo traced over, it doesn't look super sloppy and wiggly in the proportions. It doesn't represent the game super well but it doesn't look bad, it has kind of a dramatic comic book look and honestly only Ryu looks that far off.

I might put it on the side or something, see if there's a fun trailer or worthwhile giveaway, but I definitely won't be giving my full attention to this - especially not for multiple hours.

The game is kind of fun (decidedly NOT standard TCG though), but the coin flips are really going from 'man I've had some bad luck on the RNG' to 'I'm raising an eyebrow suspiciously' and bordering dangerously on 'I've had less awful runs of coin flips on gameboy games that are genuinely, provably rigged and I've already heard of several people having even worse flips, which shouldn't be common'

The gacha pack rates are about normal and what I expect from this kind of thing, but these coin flips man.

...you're going to make an entirely separate post every time there's a music update for this thing, aren't you?

I went with Japan but I don't really love any of these.

I've only played a few - a translation of the first on NES, I think the DS game (but I can't remember if I finished them), watched someone play the pc version I think, played Wanderers, and I played VI on PS2.

...I dunno, I think I liked Wanderers despite the tedium of it. VI was alright but I think these games might not be for me.

It's not a huge difference, but I think I like the Japan cover a little better? Bit of a lousy image of it though.

The instability is pretty dumb regardless of what the overall framerate is, but I'd much rather vote on how awful and intense the blur and bloom effects are. The blur especially doesn't feel like it adds anything but minor headaches.

Oh, they skipped making a gamecube controller cushion? Rude.

Wow. I don't really love any of these.

They're fairly similar...I kinda like Europe's but went with NA because I really don't like the logos encroaching on the upper half.

I've got the games and have been meaning to try them. It's too bad the dev has seemingly abandoned the earlier games though. I tried the first one and simply changing a basic window size multiplier in the the options froze the visuals (though the game was still functioning in the background) and nothing seemed to fix it. There are apparently other problems too, you basically have to use a well-known fan-mod to make it functional.

@Uncle_Franklin No. No they did not. Some minor stuff was fixed over time, but it still runs like garbage.

Scrolling down to the Japanese one froze me in my tracks for a good second or two. I'm not even afraid of clowns!
So had to vote for Europe this time. (Although the off-style soft look of the NA box has a certain charm to it, I gotta say.)

@cmbaum Yeah it's a bit strange. Like I don't mind really, I don't really care about the sweepstakes part myself, but it just seems a little odd that it extends to Canada but not the US - I feel like I don't see that too often, outside stuff that's much more Canada-specific to begin with of course.

Voted for Japan because it actually matches the characters and the game better, though I do think the NA cover is pretty neat, if messy.

Although it looks like disparate quality scans strike again! The Japan cover looks a smidge washed out, and seems to have been blown up from a smaller image...

@ChromaticDracula Hence the phrase 'mongame' common amongst fans of the genre. Pokemon-like doesn't sound great and gives the connotation of games actually being structurally/mechanically similar to Pokemon, which many slapped with the label are not. It's really only adequate when a game is actually a near-clone.

If you wanna get more specific than mongame but it's not a Pokemon clone with similar structure and mechanics, Pokemon-like isn't actually helpful anyways, so might as well at least use the one that doesn't imply a specific style that the game is question doesn't actually have. It's not like Pokemon actually started it anyways, and I've never really agreed with naming a whole genre based on one or two specific games. (Metroidvania also isn't very good, though it's a least a little more broad and less dismissive of a label, as a result of combining two instead of just one. The most similar of those two series are still pretty different in play and exploration styles.)

Have you ever perhaps considered NOT labelling every mongame a Pokemon-like? Maybe I should start calling this site an IGN-like, see how you like it.

PSA: If you're clicking 'vote' and nothing's happening, vote for a game you didn't vote for last round and then remove it - suddenly you'll be able to vote for what you actually want. Apparently it's a bug (that also happened to some people last year, because of course it did) where voting for the same thing as the previous round gets stuck, somehow.

Fun fact, the first result I got that helped me fix this was the Genshin subreddit. Some of 'em actually think this was rigged against them, disturbingly enough. (As someone who never ever voted Genshin for anything but still had to deal with the bug, this is just blatantly untrue.)

I'd be super interested, having loved the original...if only Paradox hadn't so thoroughly butchered said original after acquiring it. Major mechanics just plain don't work anymore, and this is not a recent problem, nor does it show any signs of getting fixed.

Considering what they did with Cities: Skylines and its new, somewhat maligned sequel, I'm not expecting much from this.

I wouldn't mind having them properly available again as a port, but I don't want them touching them otherwise. The Pokemon Company and Game Freak alike need a lot of changes and personal improvement before I'd consider trusting them with much of anything again.

For a second there as I was scrolling by without paying close attention (on the timeline page), I thought Pauline was unsheathing a katana.

NA. Japan's isn't great to me, and while I love the European artwork, and alllllmost picked that one...I've seen this game. The NA one is high-energy and condenses down what you WILL be doing this game - it's all shakin' and gold.

I might be more interested in anything they say about timeline if they weren't insistent that CD takes place BEFORE Sonic 2 just because Tails isn't in it. Besides thinking that the mecha/metal progression makes a little more sense going from the clunky boss in 2 to metal to mk.III and then deciding to stick with metal instead of jumping to metal then the sonic 2 boss, both Sonic AND Tails had solo adventures without the other that were set after Sonic 2 (not to be confused with the Tails solo adventure set before they met, that's a different game), so they weren't totally fused at the hip.

While it has problems for sure, I prefer the GBA version. It doesn't screw up the sound as bad as FFVI's advance version, and the bonus content is better, plus some other improvements - even if the atb is whack. Not sure about PSP version, as I never had much chance to play it. Of the limited choices given here, though, definitely SNES. I've played DS, and it feels like an ugly, awkward chore. Has its moments, but I'm not a big fan of it or its redesigns.

Wish I could pick more than one, haha. I picked F-Zero but Chibi Robo was close, that game was great and then they basically flushed it with lackluster entries before murdering it live on stage and then dumping the body in a back alley with Zip Lash.

...so why does most of the article insist this is Game Boy "Color" specifically? The advertising doesn't really mention that, and the very sparse gameplay we see is just shades of Game Boy green, so where's that even coming from?

It's already been six years since the switch came out? Man, time sure fl- turns to dust

I'd much rather they kept their mitts off of the pre-ps2 era games, thanks. Don't trust them at all.

Well, maybe FFVIII. I'm not real fond of the original game as-is, and it's got so many early signs of the change to modern blood that FFX continued that it might work.

17 - been used to this for a while. Minor beef though - that Link to the Past art isn't her SNES art, it's the redrawn version made around the time of the GBA release.

Normally I wouldn't care that much, but since this quiz makes a point to list different rerelease versions of art separately, that one stands out to me for not being given the same treatment.

For anybody having trouble: pause your adblocker. For some reason the actual sign-up gets blocked.

Japanese and NA covers both pretty good for different reasons. I went with Japan this time but it was a veeeery close call.

That scan of the NA cover is pretty poor quality compared to the other two, though. I'm glad to see it isn't affecting the polls too much.

Went with Japan because the orange and the colors on the bottom labels of the Europe cover take it down a notch for me.

I actually quite like the NA cover itself, but that IGN quote plastered on the top ruins it.

Good, it's been quite a while. That said, I really need to get back to finishing the last couple. DQ has always been really bad about letting go of that old-school time-wasting grind, and the monsters games are no exception.

Well if armor sets a player can choose not to wear count, I'd say Skyward Sword Link is pretty stinky on the grounds that birds actually poop on him in that game.

I tried the DS game. It...wasn't very engaging.

I think this really is a case of 'too little, too late' for Sonic Origins in my eyes.

On the one had, this review doesn't seem very good, kind of biased and doesn't seem to recognize the value of games in niche circles or genres that aren't to the reviewer's personal taste, which isn't super professional.

On the other hand, I don't think Next Order is very good. Not even just narrowing it down to 'Digimon games' (which are often a bit of...let's say an acquired taste) but to 'vpet Digimon games' specifcally. It has a few nice features from being a newer game but there are so many missteps that I consider it inferior to Re:Digitize in many, many ways. I do wish they would take the Decode port, upgrade it, and release that instead. Or make something new, but that's not super likely with the World (vpet) style being so much more niche than the Story style of games.

From what I've seen it looks like too much time, effort, and money was put towards pandering when the game was originally made, promising big interesting things and then stopping at the bare minimum in the delivery, ESPECIALLY in pretty much every single part of the story. And the two-digimon system might sound cool at first, but it quickly makes things more bothersome because they'll inevitable desync their eat-sleep patterns.