Cinaclov

I imagine it's probably just optimised for New 3DS, the way Smash 4, Pokemon Sun and Moon were.

@thesilverbrick If there's any Switch game where a game card is permissable it's this one. If you have to set up the spaceship in the controller each time you play (which restricts portability to an extent anyway) what's one more extra physical step?

@LegendOfPokemon Including the decapitated Arbok?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjA4MGI657cAhUEzxQKHWR7CzUQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ranker.com%2Flist%2Fdark-moments-from-the-pokemon-manga%2Fhannah-collins&psig=AOvVaw3b56eJyDQUh7T4gAq_lVjg&ust=1531666106279920

Whilst I've often found toys to life products to be too expensive to be worth shelling out on new I've been collecting the Star Wars Disney Infinity recently because they are stupidly cheap now and it's actually really good fun.

I got all three level packs, about half the figures and some power up discs for about £26 and it kind of feels like playing the Lego games but more RPG like. You're finding and leveling up those characters across all three games then bringing in the guys who benefit you in whatever situation you're in at that point. Not sure its worth the £100 or so it would've cost for that set up from new but I'm really enjoying it as is.

On that understanding, I'm interested in this but it's all going to hinge on the pricing.

If it's anything like the websites where I used to work they have one database that every countries website comes from. Wouldn't be that tricky to accidentally click to have content intended for one language show on another.

I would hope they can see how many times it's been played on different consoles and could make a guess from that. It's unlikely that a legitimate copy of the cart would get played on more than 10 Switch consoles in its life, surely? Or maybe if they are online from different consoles at the samme time? There must be ways around blocking all pre-owned games as the article suggests.

@Aerona I think Vesperia is the best all around game in the series. Individual games have parts that are better but Vesperia is, in my opinion, the one that has everything working best across the board.

So, as an example, imo Symphonia has the best story in the series. As much as I love the game though viewed without nostalgia everything else is a little creaky -the combat doesn't compare favorably to more modern games, the graphics are... actually the graphics themselves are fine, it's the animation of them that's clunky.

Most of the Tales games have parts that don't quite work for me (I miss overworlds in the new games so, so badly ) but Vesperia, and to an extent The Abyss, seems to straddle everything the best. Would definitely reccomend.

"which originally mentioned "shocking Pokémon news"' - Zeraora revealed? Did that already happen? It'd fit the pun there

That coat must be heavy

I was considering one or two of them, but then remembered that you have to have bought lots of stuff online first at full price to be eligible for the discounts. I could get Earthbound again on 3DS I suppose?

"My personal goal is to continue hacking Pokemon games on the Switch (adding support for save editing via PKHeX, enable custom ROM hack content, etc)."

Good to know people out there are thinking of the competitive players

Contrary to what a lot of people have stated, the battle system is the best part. Making it less luck focused would be the only thing I'd change (outside of Z moves. I really don't think it's healthy for a competitive game to hinge on predicting a turn 1 nuke).

Other things have irritated me for a while but so long as the core RPG battle system is consistent enough to maintain a healthy competitive tournament scene I'll keep buying the new games regardless. There genuinely isn't any other competitive RPG like Pokémon and it would be awful to lose that.

Interesting to see if this happens with lots of other games as well; they release a heavily compressed version on cart to avoid physical costs then 'patch' it with a download to rectify the compression issues. Doesn't seem like a terrible way around it all things considered, though it would suck for anyone without reliable internet.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE As a Wii U player I genuinely had no idea what this article was going on about XD

I think Amiibo would do better if it were actually possible to buy any of the damn things. All of the Zelda BotW ones look really cool but I've never seen them in stock anywhere, in shops or online.

@NEStalgia " It doesn't really add anything, and I don't think Americans that have played Zelda for 30 years (and lets face it, nobody in Britain seemed to have cared about Nintendo most of those years in numbers that count) ever imagined the princess sounding British even once."

Ooopfh. One sentence with about four levels of (unintentional?) insult. Nicely done, cheers for that

Topic on hand, I found the voice acting for Zelda (and Mipha but you're exposed to her much less) generally acceptable but really flat and unnatural in a lot of places. Which is a shame because there's some good scenes in terms of character development through BotW.

There's one memory where she's stood in a pond, having a minor mental breakdown aimed at a goddess statue. That scene really stood out for two reasons to me;

• There's probably more character development in that minute than throughout the whole of most other Zelda games (possibly bar Windwaker if Tetra's character counts toward Zelda? I feel Tetra is a great character but the development of her as a caracter cliff-edged when she reaches Zelda)
  • The scene would have been so much better if I wasn't distracted by the accent so much.

The iconic part of the GC controller is the shape. It's one of the best shaped controllers I've ever used. The colour scheme on the other hand...

Wolf is amazing. Though you're absolutely right, he definitely lacks 'better judgement' when it comes to engaging enemies that are waaay too strong for you. That said it did end up forcing a battle with a guardian on me right at the start of the game, we beat it by me distracting it with arrows as the wolf did damage. Really cool.

When I first heard about Amiibo cross game bonuses were exactly what I'd assumed would happen so to see the wolf that you've 'raised' in TP become so awesome in BotW, that's fantastic. More like this please and you can have all my rupees

I wasn't going to get the SSB Link as the yellow stand looks awful but then, Epona...

I'd like to point out that launch games are always expensive (360 games were about £60 at launch), and then on top of that Zelda BotW is the same price at most places on WiiU as it is on Switch. Not sure that manufacturing costs are that inhibitive for WiiU games but whatever...

There’s no estimated delivery date at all for the physical release of BotW on WiiU from Amazon. However they did give me a £5 voucher as an apology and offered to give me a digital download at the price I would have paid for the original; all in all means I got a digital copy of BotW for £27. Not bad when Game is selling it for £60.

Only downside is I ordered Arts and Artifacts at the same time. As that arrived weeks ago I can’t cancel the physical version. Still, I’m confident I can re-sell a factory sealed WiiU version for more than £32

@MrGawain I think the implication is that this is more for the competitive scene than a small group of friends, and for that purpose this is ideal. I'm really excited about the possibilities for Pokémon and Smash Bros with this. The spectator mode in particular will be fantastic, even grassroot tournaments can display the finals on a large TV/stream with that capability.

I can tell you from experience that it's not much fun crowding around two small-screened original 3DS's (with their brightness on lowest settings to preserve battery) to try and follow a Pokémon tournament final.

Oh. That's very, very underwhelming. I (perhaps naively?) assumed it'd be like other escape rooms I've tried, where they try and fit the puzzles to the theme and tone of the overall narrative.

For example the last one I tried was where some inmates had taken over an asylum and you had to escape that. You had a series of small rooms and had to decipher a mix of doctors notes, computer files, graffiti and devices they'd made. Sure, you have to suspend disbelief to an extent and roll with it but there's a definite attempt to build atmosphere that's a big part of it.

Sitting in a packed, brightly lit community hall filling out themed questionnaires doesn't really convey 'Zelda dungeon' to me on any level.

That sucks, I use it all the time. I guess it's only a minor inconvenience for me having to boot up the PS3 instead but it's nice having access to everything I use (YouTube, Netflix and iPlayer) in one place.

@Fandabidozi Did you know they also have a three time world champion doing the official VGC commentary? Apparently he's also been involved in some of the other commentary videos for the last few years. You'd never know that Ray's a three time world champion though, it's hardly ever mentioned at all.

The email also stated "Additionally, attendees should be advised that there will not be unique Pokémon GO events or special Pokémon GO spawnings at the venue hosting the 2016 Pokémon World Championships."

Fair enough, but still disappointing, it could've been perfect. Release the trading feature the Friday along with one of the unavailable Pokémon to the competitors, forcing people to trade to get it in the Pokédex. Ah well, maybe next year

I've been saying this since Go's launch. Despite all the negativity toward the idea here I really think it's the logical move. Have a small sentence explaining that new Pokémon from Alola have turned up (with the release date) and suddenly awareness is huge amongst people who otherwise wouldn't have been aware of the 3DS gae in the slightest.

It'd be roughly 6 months after Go's launch, providing a big boost to content at a time when the game would arguably need it. Then have the other gens released on a 6 month basis, tie-ing into big releases when you can (don't tell me there won't be a D/P/Pt remake, definitely tie that into Go).

Nostalgia worked well for the first batch and raising awareness of Go but long term what's the advantages of just continuing that route? As someone stated here relying on that would mean diminishing returns as players reach the point where they 'dropped' and their nostalgia ends, whilst you miss out on the huge marketing potential both at the time and if they return to the app later once 'their gen' has actually been released. If someone was realy going to play Go purely because they could get an Umbreon they will still go back to it when Umbreon is released, even if that's a year or so later. If there's been some newer 'mon released on there in the meantime there's always a chance they'll end up with some new favourites and thus motivation to get S/M

It all depends on how updates and improvements they make, but probably (gotta use my data on something ).

If they don't release the new gen 7 'mon in Go early November they will have seriously missed a marketing opportunity there.

@Trinexx I was just about to say, R/B/Y are still on sale at the moment, go for one of those

I'm hoping there will be some announcement at the World Championships. It's in San Francisco, where Niantic is based, all the stars are aligned...

"Other UK papers have picked up on the negative angle to this story, leaving The Mirror as one of the sole positive voices".

Both the Independent and Guardian seem to be quite positive about it, The Guardian's review especially so (interestingly the only actual review of this game I've seen and it's from a non-gaming publication XD). Summary was it's not a great game by a long shot but is fantastic for what it's achieved.

@JaxonH Like Pokemon Channel (feel free to substitute with a movie tie-in or other poor game of your choice here though). It barely qualifies as a game from a gameplay perspective yet I've had some hilarious gaming nights playing it with friends. The purpose of videogames is to entertain. Does that make this a successful game, if not a good one?

I'd really appreciate future amiibo being poseable, personally...

Pokémon VGC coverage pls

I don't think it's quite 1:1, there's a fair few liberties that've been taken, the truck's location and Cinnabar being the big outstanding ones to me. Still, it's easy to criticise something and there's definitely a hell of a lot of work gone into it. Regardless of 'authenticity' it's nice to get an idea of what HG/SS'd be like to explore as a 3D world.

"From Tuesday, 12 January at 10pm UK / 11pm CET to Tuesday, 12 January 11am UK / 12pm CET."

Took me a while to work out why that didn't make sense. You've listed it as going backwards by 11 hours :/

@AshFoxX The Japanese collectors editions of the games come with a download code for both the VC releases and the 6th gen games so I doubt that. As for fixing the glitches, I kind of hope not.

I remember trying to play the '360 demo for FF13 on a CRT and entirely giving up on it for the reason raised here; you literally could not read it. That's not a 'I couldn't read it from the sofa', it was that the text was small enough that when fed through a standard def TV it became a white blur. It's not the only example but that's the one that really sticks out to me.

That figurine looks a billion times better than the abomination that shipped with the original special edition. But then that looked good in the promo shots as well... :/

£16 is cheaper than I could find Icarus anywhere else, plus it's a high score/collectable based game, the kind of thing that's perfect to have permanently installed on your 3DS for when you have 10 mins spare. Go for it.

I have a few issues with it on a technical level but my main gripe was the quantity of snow. Ok, include some on distant mountain tops, that'd be a nice touch, but there shouldn't be any near the village whatsoever.

Unless that was all bloom lighting making the mountains look like that. Which is a whole seperate issue. Otherwise I kind of enjoyed it.

My favourite Mario platformer

I traded it in at Gamestation for £3 along with the SNES. I don't regret the SNES, all the best games had been ported or remade on later consoles (primarily on the GBA or Wii) by that point, but in retrospect that was a silly trade in on my part.

Maybe it's different outside Europe but I found Lucina for £11 at Argos recently (which was cheap enough for me to make the purchase) and yesterday GAME had loads of 'rare' Amiibo, including Rosalina, Olimar, Dr Mario and SIX Shulk figures. That's more than they had Pikachu and Mario combined.

I love that the Libre Pikachu is female XD

@IceClimbers I agree, apart from the slightly terrifying notion of how unbeatable Afro would be if Samus were a good character

Hopefully the videogame characters are utalised more and the moral is better than 'don't try to rise above the social station you're born into' this time around.

"While the story is clearly not Star Fox's strongest suit, fans may find it more interesting after Shigeru Miyamoto's comments around the series being initially inspired by puppet drama Thunderbirds."

...

..Whuuh!? No one told me about this!

Does this mean it doesn't include any of the X-men but will include Agents of Shield/Daredevil stuff?

Hmm... don't suppose any of those are 250 stars or less? It's annoying me that I have those left, but all I can buy is ringtones and wallpapers...

Oh, had no idea Chandra was still working with Nintendo post ONM. Nice to see that