I'll never understand why people can't just enjoy emulation without being a smug braggart idiot. Emulationbros may as well be working for Nintendo's legal team for how much damage they do to this really fun thing most of us have the good sense to enjoy discreetly.
Well yeah. The one and currently only time Nintendo was giving free stuff and digging into their vault was when the Wii U was floundering. Now that the Switch lineage is all but set in stone, there's no chance of those days returning any time soon.
I still have on my wall the poster from the final issue with all the covers. Surprised they haven't ever brought that out as a my Nintendo shop item. Most of the content is kind of pointless with guides for everything online and all the marketing material disguised as games journalism, but the art of Nintendo Power should be preserved. I would buy a collection of that. They went all out with stuff like the Days of Mana special sections.
@AmplifyMJ 100%. Just throw a bunch of files up are words definitely said by someone who has no idea how any of this works, and just figures it's easy to play streaming music so it must be easy to set it up.
Hugely overrated game due to its ridiculous value. It's average at best. So, perfect product for LRG to sink their hooks into. I'm sure it'll be a good edition to those portfolios of grailzzz
Since day 1? I was there when Gen 1 launched and my feeling along with everyone else I knew was that the game was notably janky (like Final Fantasy 1 levels of jank) and the addictive nature and charm made it worth the while. We can and I'm sure will argue which generation was better than the other but they've been selling split content and jank in varying degrees from the start and it's all been good enough to be the vessel for the gameplay hooks.
While I definitely think DQ1 needed a little help in that massive grind required before taking down the final boss, it is otherwise still a great little game and increasingly enjoyable with its basic quaintness. Jamming in other adventurers to what was a serene solitary quest kind of makes me not want to play it, despite the graphical overhaul.
I'm definitely good with my first run copy of the CD soundtrack which included that cool little field music player. Game music on CD always makes more sense to me than vinyl. These look like nice packages though, and I really dig the arrangement they did on the deluxe edition. Kind of like how Xenoblade's OST partitions the discs between field music and event music. I wish more OST releases did that rather than just the linear match to the game.
I'm usually okay with the prospect of getting old and such, but it's really weirding me out that my kids will be pretty old when that 100th anniversary rolls around and it's a roll of the dice if I'll be there, and Miyamoto will probably look exactly the same.
Pokemon Z-A is the biggest physical launch since Tears of the Kingdom, but what does that really mean for the future of Pokemon, Zelda, video game voice acting, and game key cards? Have we been misled? In this video I essay I will
Lol. Xbox fails at exclusives and branding, so they try to spin the whole game as antiquated. They can't flip the board or take their ball and go home so they try to yuck the other guy's yum. Mike's comment goes without saying but good on him for calling out such a silly remark. Consoles aren't much more than easy to use underpowered computers. The two things they always have over just get a PC is the plug & play aspect and branding/exclusives. Amazing that the two companies who have survived generation after generation are the two who understand that best.
I'm so in for how much they're doing with Galaxy Mario right now. I know people my age are always about either the cape or racoon tail, but for me Galaxy is the ultimate Mario game and it even trumps the childhood nostalgia for the classics.
Looking forward to expert commentators showing up on every post about EA to smugly point out which parts are clearly AI. Those are the real heroes of the current day.
Credit where due, they did an excellent job on one of the best PC games of all time. I liked the Bioshocks well enough but System Shock is leagues above them.
Man, I really miss those bygone days of being at the grocery store and picking up a random amiibo for $12.99. The whole appeal of them to me was the great price point for good quality basic miniatures of Nintendo characters, when the options tend to be cheap crap or high-priced enthusiast stuff. Easy to blame the current state of things but those prices were already creeping up years ago. Amiibo have become just another premium priced video game toy line.
It'd be really cool if those characters were all in an actual Castlevania game. Castlevania Judgement was way too long ago and I'm exhausted of almost-Castlevanias and novelties.
But on the flip side they gave a good base for a game that takes place in Lavender Town. Just make them occasionally swivel dead eyed towards the player or do a little arm movement. Kind of like that part in Wandavision at the outskirts of town.
I ordered the Super Mario Bros one a month or so ago just to use up some points that were expiring. It's a surprisingly nice desk display piece. The colors are a lot more vibrant than the pictures show. I like these a lot more than the acrylic art panels they did a few years ago. I'll probably grab this, I love that Metroid box art.
The sales period makes sense to me, if only because I deal with periods that don't fit perfectly into calendar months at my job all the time. September never means 9/1 through 9/30.
Nintendo really makes a strong case for their evergreen product model with these. Pretty wild how much time has passed and they're still as vibrant and fun as ever, and every bit worth the price of admission.
Eh. That's just a daydreaming remark. And unless a leak comes out, there's really no way of knowing. Nintendo being Nintendo, they could very well have a remaster or remake sitting on the shelf right now just waiting for when it would be most advantageous to release it with a tiny lead up or a shadowdrop.
My kids still watch those previous shorts all the time. I hope they continue these and make a full on web series of just Pikmin doing stuff and getting into mischief. Expand that to other Nintendo properties too. No big stories or development, just short episodes of Nintendo characters doing things. I'd buy another tier of NSO for that.
Underrated soundtrack (and game, since it's popular to hate on the first two Metroid games now). Ryoji Yoshitomi was a sound engineer first, tasked with making the music and creatively pieced together a lot of the music from SFX. It's like the game sampling itself. And it's a perfect fit to the mood of the quest. As with a majority of Nintendo Music app drops I already had this streaming on my own server many years ago, but it's really cool they're highlighting a lesser praised and more unusual OST.
They did it three times and every time people said $5 was NES $8 for SNES, etc. was too expensive and it should be like netflix for retro games. People voted with their wallets and this is what we got. If this ever does come back it'll be a similar or more expensive price structure and we'll see once more why it wasn't continued. As far as packages go, you all know it would something like $30 for the NES and SNES Mario games and everyone would be whining about the price.
NSO runs on a subscription through an app, and they don't have to manage individual purchases. The ease of copying that ecosystem and recurring revenue to the Switch 2 compared to the Wii to Wii U was probably enough for them to never again consider the a la carte option. They'll never have to decommission a storefront for the NSO apps because they'll just keep migrating it. And if they did for whatever reason shutter the service, it could be done with a switch to put the apps in an offline mode and play whatever games are in the package rather than having to worry about keeping individual past purchases redownloadable. Or they could end subscription renewals and let them all die out with no obligation to continue once service for the remaining purchases has concluded.
I liked VC, I bought a ton of games for it. But what they're doing now makes infinitely more business sense.
Game is absolutely brilliant on a modern set with the Super NT. It's like the grand cap after ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Illusion of Gaia taking elements from all three and delivering such an outstanding package. Illusion is probably my favorite of them all though, it has the tightest design and most compelling story and best OST (weirdly, by a guy who didn't do much else and has accounts of not remembering how he made this soundtrack). There just isn't the weirdness and jank you get from those games anymore. A compilation package of the games would be cool but probably won't happen because they would never do the numbers Squeenix wants and supposedly there's licensing issues.
Interesting facts but one region's one week sales doesn't mean much for the big picture especially when it's the smaller of the big 3. Probably won't do anything close to mainline series numbers but it will still sell better than most Switch games despite what Nintendo hating echo chamber dwellers are going run with based on this early indicator. I don't have any interest in this but it does weirdly give me a want to check out Arceus.
RetroUSB AVS for nes & famicom carts with the old trusty NES Max. Sometimes I'll get the old top loader out but I really prefer playing on a modern set. On the go I'll use the Analogue Pocket though that dpad is pretty horrendous for anything requiring dexterity. But it's good for docked play on anything I don't have a cart for. The OLED Vita is also a pretty darn good portable solution. But the AVS is where it's at for me.
Despite controversies, more like despite desperate attempts to torpedo the Switch 2 from Internet echo chambers. You can cry and stomp your feet about game key cards til the cows come home, the vast majority of the world doesn't care and anyone with their head on straight can recognize that Nintendo provided a decent alternative to code in a box which is what the third-party companies would be using otherwise.
I just care if the game is good. For all I care it could be about a crazy lady who doesn't get her limited edition honey mustard sauce at the burger stand so she picks up a tray, beats the crap out of everyone and then journies to every store in the region to fight big burger and restore the sauce. Sadly the creativity and brevity needed to make a solid game in this style has been long missing. The games are mostly bland, bloated, or both. Maybe this won't be, but being a vessel for meme jokes doesn't bode well.
People on reddit already speculating they'll be seeing Metroid Dread DS and Mother 64 leaked out lol. These are extorting parasites, they're not going to be the Robin Hood of cancelled game assets. And yeah that screenshot means nothing while looking like a directory of a website. Oooooh, not the My Nintendo files.
My kids loved this movie, and they loved the Mario and Sonic movies. Great time to be a kid into video games, watching the movies that were y'know, made for kids. I'm sure we'll be seeing this one in theaters too. As an adult and not a kid, I enjoy all these movies through the joy they bring the intended audience.
What's with the weird responses to this, people are acting smug like they somehow stuck it to Squeenix by buying the import a while back. The company still gets the money. And this is good for normies who aren't down to do an import especially in a time where that is a costly venture. Gamers gotta find that superiority over others in everything I guess.
I just want more of this. I miss the days of random Nintendo Videos on the 3DS and the Nintendo Show 3D. None of it was mindblowing or even entirely necessary but it had that focus on charm which has been ebbing away the last couple generations as everything homogenizes into this sameface experience with gaming. It's the same with them not continuing the little music on the eshop. I couldn't give a toss if it has whatever efficiency feature everyone carps about, and I don't care about all the shovelware so long as I have a cute occasionally seasonal tune to go with my browsing.
Stated before but I'll state it again. I vote with my wallet for Nintendo to keep being Nintendo, for better and worse.
Yeah I don't think I'd call anything in Galaxy inefficient. Those games should be studied for how to absolutely maximize hardware potential while consistently delivering a buttery smooth experience. So much of everything has weird stuff like this under the covers that won't make sense to outsiders but probably solved a problem at the time or was the quickest way to make everything work. There's a good many times I've left some variant of the comment 'this is bad/awkward code, replace later' in stuff that is still in production and working just fine.
@whmchrish There's money to be had and selling NES titles for $5 a pop didn't pan out so well when everyone balked at the price and asked why it wasn't just Netflix for games. The subscription removes the need to manage individual purchases over console generations and support future downloads. I was one of the people buying up virtual consoles games and I'd prefer that especially because I hate decision fatigue when opening what is now a fairly large selection, but business wise there's no way they're going back to that model. Who knows with Pokemon but it's probably some combination of wanting to keep players on the current ecosystem which regularly releases new games + not wanting to create & support a transfer system out of the NSO app. Far as piracy goes, they chase the idiots stupid enough to hock the newest stuff and/or take money for roms & mods. Nintendo isn't going to hassle you for picking up a Anbernic or whatever and loading it with every retro title.
This is the kind of stuff I 1000% vote for with my wallet when I buy Nintendo products. You only become more aware of the sad and dreadful things as you age, Nintendo isn't perfect by any stretch but they bring the whimsy in spades where other game companies bring only scraps.
9/10. They can almost make it out from the Wii control scheme flawlessly and exist in the modern camera control expectations, but not quite. Still the best 3D Mario games and if anyone disagrees then their opinion is different than mine and I respect that.
I was pretty ambivalent about AI until I had to spend days at work helping a branch of my team train one to generate the body for dynamic emails sent with personalized sales stats. And by help, I had to point out all the robotic phrases, endless hyphens, and repeating salad it was pushing out, and gently remind that we could and already did generate dynamic emails by writing real text laced with database queries to pull the personalized fields. But no, we had to justify all the money someone spent on this toy and then spend weeks of paid time to fix said toy just so it could be a slightly worse version of what we already had, while relinquishing control over the text being generated. It can be a useful tool, but that usefulness is being vastly overexaggerated and could easily create more work in the long term by taking shortcuts today.
More on topic, I'm sure Nintendo will use some form of AI here or there but if they're smart as they've shown to be in preserving the quality of their content, it'll be minor and they will probably lead the charge in smacking down the abuse of their property which could ignite some actual standards being made for AI use.
They're all good but the original trilogy is in a league of its own. I feel bad for anyone who hasn't discovered Metroid II's phenomenal piece of music tucked into that title screen. Should be noted that it isn't the only place that sfx are sampled in the OST. The game was uniquely scored by the sound engineer and he was quite clever in plundering his own source material for music. Heck, the Queen Metroid theme is like a sound collage piece.
People are usually up in arms over AI swiping original content, but it alarms me way more how much these massive installations affect the environment and people who live near them, and this is almost never part of the discourse. Potentially taking bread out of an artist's mouth is bad but damaging the environment and poisoning people over time is way worse. There's this conception everyone has that everything is "in the cloud", never really stopping to think about what sort of rapidly expanding infrastructure has to exist all over the planet to support the modern always-on bottomless accessibility of Internet services - and all these stupid AI services are at the forefront.
But yeah, I'm so mad fake Pikachus are being made to do things.
Such a pleasant surprise to see an SD3 article today. The classes are a huge reason I've played this game so many times between the fan translation, official release, and remake. I get overwhelmed and exhausted with games that allow constant class changes so I appreciate more and more that this game has you make those choices and stick with it. And it helps that every class is a blast to play with. I've tried so many combinations and never had a dud in the bunch. They're all so stacked. Hawk/Lise/Kevin will forever be my favorite though. Attacks out the wazoo, debuffs galore, and a werewolf healer.
The only drag is farming those last class change items. In most cases you're grinding an enemy that only spawns as a summoned mob from another, and you're hoping the rare drop is for the class you actually want. Multiple layers of grind. Such a pain, but those last class changes are so spectacular.
They're worth the price and probably the best case against the notion that games should be devalued solely based on age. They're still premium top tier entries in 3D platformers and I'll go to bat any day that 2 is the best 3D Mario game (even if I prefer the Observatory so much more than the world maps).
That said, I'm probably holding off on pulling the trigger. The evergreen beauty of these games is such that I can and do still play them on the Wii U while wanting for nothing. Portability is cool but these are some of the few games I only ever want to play on a big screen.
Eh. I lost interest when the ridiculous 'twist' story was spoiled all over the place on the Internet which is like the most annoying trope of storytelling to me lately. Then I got a copy half off for PS4 and gave it a shot. They completely bungled the mystery of Sephiroth by having him show up every beat to taunt Cloud in some way and the game is unbelievably padded out now. Midgar was such a thrilling sequence in the original because it constantly kept you on your toes before the game opens up for the overworld reveal and you realize that was all just one big intro. All I felt on the remake was drag, drag, and more drag. But that's finely in line with a lot of excessively chatty and bloated games now, so they did bring the game forward for sure. I definitely wouldn't say they did right by the original, not that I'd ever say FFVII had a perfectly balanced sensible story to begin with or that the game wasn't so readily borkable (enemy materia + matra magic & big guard = easy mode forever).
But Square is doing what they wanted way back with garbage like Dirge of Cerberus which was to spin this into a big sub franchise, so good on them I suppose.
This is really interesting to me. I usually have rumble off because I got tired of it way back in the N64/PS1 generation and it still does nothing for me regardless of the impressive improvements. I did check out Silksong's use of it and I agree they put a ton of thought into it. But having my controller shake is still a big nah. Even if I liked the rumble, the thought of having it on in a plane where other passengers would hear the trembling makes me so self-conscious. No headphones on a long flight though, that is a nightmare scenario and I'm glad you found a way to navigate it.
I'm sure the responses and expectations will be totally reasonable oh wait we're already being weird in various ways because it's a woman. Gamers lol.
NoA has pretty much been on autopilot since Reggie left so any shakeup could be interesting. Or it might be more of the exact same which is honestly not that bad.
Dreaded game key cards. Because the code in a box this would be otherwise is so much better. I guess gamers are going to forever struggle with the fact that this hobby is built on toys with limited shelf life. Once the shelf life (ability to make reliable money) expires the support falls away. They don't care about your preseving of games, they care about selling you the next toy. That's how it will always be until y'know, someone sidles up with coffers and corporate force the size of Nintendo or Sony.
Comments 1,623
Re: Nintendo Wins Lawsuit Against 'Pirate' Streamer Who Taunted Company Online
Couldn't have happened to a nicer emulationbro.
I'll never understand why people can't just enjoy emulation without being a smug braggart idiot. Emulationbros may as well be working for Nintendo's legal team for how much damage they do to this really fun thing most of us have the good sense to enjoy discreetly.
Re: PSA: Don't Expect Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition To Include The DLC
Well yeah. The one and currently only time Nintendo was giving free stuff and digging into their vault was when the Wii U was floundering. Now that the Switch lineage is all but set in stone, there's no chance of those days returning any time soon.
Re: Nintendo Seems To Be Uploading Old Nintendo Power Covers To Nintendo Today!
I still have on my wall the poster from the final issue with all the covers. Surprised they haven't ever brought that out as a my Nintendo shop item. Most of the content is kind of pointless with guides for everything online and all the marketing material disguised as games journalism, but the art of Nintendo Power should be preserved. I would buy a collection of that. They went all out with stuff like the Days of Mana special sections.
Re: Nintendo On Why The Mario Kart World Album Isn't Available For Nintendo Music
@AmplifyMJ 100%. Just throw a bunch of files up are words definitely said by someone who has no idea how any of this works, and just figures it's easy to play streaming music so it must be easy to set it up.
Re: Rare NES Platformer 'Little Samson' Is Coming To Switch In 2026
Hugely overrated game due to its ridiculous value. It's average at best. So, perfect product for LRG to sink their hooks into. I'm sure it'll be a good edition to those portfolios of grailzzz
Re: Talking Point: When Did 'Good Enough' Become Good Enough For Pokémon?
Since day 1? I was there when Gen 1 launched and my feeling along with everyone else I knew was that the game was notably janky (like Final Fantasy 1 levels of jank) and the addictive nature and charm made it worth the while. We can and I'm sure will argue which generation was better than the other but they've been selling split content and jank in varying degrees from the start and it's all been good enough to be the vessel for the gameplay hooks.
Re: Review: Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake (Switch 2) - Rounds Out The Erdrick Trilogy In Style
While I definitely think DQ1 needed a little help in that massive grind required before taking down the final boss, it is otherwise still a great little game and increasingly enjoyable with its basic quaintness. Jamming in other adventurers to what was a serene solitary quest kind of makes me not want to play it, despite the graphical overhaul.
Re: Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Soundtrack Is Scoring A Gorgeous Vinyl Release Next Year
I'm definitely good with my first run copy of the CD soundtrack which included that cool little field music player. Game music on CD always makes more sense to me than vinyl. These look like nice packages though, and I really dig the arrangement they did on the deluxe edition. Kind of like how Xenoblade's OST partitions the discs between field music and event music. I wish more OST releases did that rather than just the linear match to the game.
Re: PSA: You Might Need To Free Up Some Space For Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment
Always buy physical with Nintendo stuff.
Re: Shigeru Miyamoto Is Confident Mario Will Be Around For "A Long Time To Come"
I'm usually okay with the prospect of getting old and such, but it's really weirding me out that my kids will be pretty old when that 100th anniversary rolls around and it's a roll of the dice if I'll be there, and Miyamoto will probably look exactly the same.
Re: Pokémon Legends: Z-A Scored US' Biggest Physical Game Launch Since TOTK
Pokemon Z-A is the biggest physical launch since Tears of the Kingdom, but what does that really mean for the future of Pokemon, Zelda, video game voice acting, and game key cards? Have we been misled? In this video I essay I will
Re: "Go Tell Nintendo" - Ex-Blizzard President Responds After Xbox Calls Exclusives "Antiquated"
Lol. Xbox fails at exclusives and branding, so they try to spin the whole game as antiquated. They can't flip the board or take their ball and go home so they try to yuck the other guy's yum. Mike's comment goes without saying but good on him for calling out such a silly remark. Consoles aren't much more than easy to use underpowered computers. The two things they always have over just get a PC is the plug & play aspect and branding/exclusives. Amazing that the two companies who have survived generation after generation are the two who understand that best.
Re: Mario Is Getting His Own Balloon At The 99th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
I'm so in for how much they're doing with Galaxy Mario right now. I know people my age are always about either the cape or racoon tail, but for me Galaxy is the ultimate Mario game and it even trumps the childhood nostalgia for the classics.
Re: EA Is Diving Headfirst Into Generative AI With New Partnership
Looking forward to expert commentators showing up on every post about EA to smugly point out which parts are clearly AI. Those are the real heroes of the current day.
Re: Nightdive's Excellent 'System Shock' Remake Is Getting A Switch 1 & 2 Port
Credit where due, they did an excellent job on one of the best PC games of all time. I liked the Bioshocks well enough but System Shock is leagues above them.
Re: Three More Kirby Air Riders amiibo Have Been Announced
Man, I really miss those bygone days of being at the grocery store and picking up a random amiibo for $12.99. The whole appeal of them to me was the great price point for good quality basic miniatures of Nintendo characters, when the options tend to be cheap crap or high-priced enthusiast stuff. Easy to blame the current state of things but those prices were already creeping up years ago. Amiibo have become just another premium priced video game toy line.
Re: Vampire Survivors Goes Full "Everyone Is Here" In New 'Ode To Castlevania' Update
It'd be really cool if those characters were all in an actual Castlevania game. Castlevania Judgement was way too long ago and I'm exhausted of almost-Castlevanias and novelties.
Re: Opinion: Pokémon Legends Z-A Is The Creepiest Entry Yet, Not In A Good Way
Great comment section guys lol
But on the flip side they gave a good base for a game that takes place in Lavender Town. Just make them occasionally swivel dead eyed towards the player or do a little arm movement. Kind of like that part in Wandavision at the outskirts of town.
Re: My Nintendo Store Adds A New Metroid Reward For Switch Online Members (US)
I ordered the Super Mario Bros one a month or so ago just to use up some points that were expiring. It's a surprisingly nice desk display piece. The colors are a lot more vibrant than the pictures show. I like these a lot more than the acrylic art panels they did a few years ago. I'll probably grab this, I love that Metroid box art.
Re: Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 Topped The Best-Selling Switch Games... In September?
The sales period makes sense to me, if only because I deal with periods that don't fit perfectly into calendar months at my job all the time. September never means 9/1 through 9/30.
Nintendo really makes a strong case for their evergreen product model with these. Pretty wild how much time has passed and they're still as vibrant and fun as ever, and every bit worth the price of admission.
Re: Metroid Prime 1-3 Art Book Somehow Teases And Debunks An Echoes Remake
Eh. That's just a daydreaming remark. And unless a leak comes out, there's really no way of knowing. Nintendo being Nintendo, they could very well have a remaster or remake sitting on the shelf right now just waiting for when it would be most advantageous to release it with a tiny lead up or a shadowdrop.
Re: Nintendo's Excellent Pikmin Short Is Finally Available On YouTube
My kids still watch those previous shorts all the time. I hope they continue these and make a full on web series of just Pikmin doing stuff and getting into mischief. Expand that to other Nintendo properties too. No big stories or development, just short episodes of Nintendo characters doing things. I'd buy another tier of NSO for that.
Re: Samus' Game Boy Outing Metroid II Returns In Latest Nintendo Music Update
Underrated soundtrack (and game, since it's popular to hate on the first two Metroid games now). Ryoji Yoshitomi was a sound engineer first, tasked with making the music and creatively pieced together a lot of the music from SFX. It's like the game sampling itself. And it's a perfect fit to the mood of the quest. As with a majority of Nintendo Music app drops I already had this streaming on my own server many years ago, but it's really cool they're highlighting a lesser praised and more unusual OST.
Re: Nintendo's Trademarking 'Virtual Console' Again, But Don't Get Your Hopes Up
They did it three times and every time people said $5 was NES $8 for SNES, etc. was too expensive and it should be like netflix for retro games. People voted with their wallets and this is what we got. If this ever does come back it'll be a similar or more expensive price structure and we'll see once more why it wasn't continued. As far as packages go, you all know it would something like $30 for the NES and SNES Mario games and everyone would be whining about the price.
NSO runs on a subscription through an app, and they don't have to manage individual purchases. The ease of copying that ecosystem and recurring revenue to the Switch 2 compared to the Wii to Wii U was probably enough for them to never again consider the a la carte option. They'll never have to decommission a storefront for the NSO apps because they'll just keep migrating it. And if they did for whatever reason shutter the service, it could be done with a switch to put the apps in an offline mode and play whatever games are in the package rather than having to worry about keeping individual past purchases redownloadable. Or they could end subscription renewals and let them all die out with no obligation to continue once service for the remaining purchases has concluded.
I liked VC, I bought a ton of games for it. But what they're doing now makes infinitely more business sense.
Re: Anniversary: SNES Action RPG 'Terranigma' Is 30 Years Old Today, And It's Still A 10/10 In Our Book
Game is absolutely brilliant on a modern set with the Super NT. It's like the grand cap after ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Illusion of Gaia taking elements from all three and delivering such an outstanding package. Illusion is probably my favorite of them all though, it has the tightest design and most compelling story and best OST (weirdly, by a guy who didn't do much else and has accounts of not remembering how he made this soundtrack). There just isn't the weirdness and jank you get from those games anymore. A compilation package of the games would be cool but probably won't happen because they would never do the numbers Squeenix wants and supposedly there's licensing issues.
Re: UK Charts: Pokémon Legends: Z-A Sales Almost 50/50 Across Switch And Switch 2
Interesting facts but one region's one week sales doesn't mean much for the big picture especially when it's the smaller of the big 3. Probably won't do anything close to mainline series numbers but it will still sell better than most Switch games despite what Nintendo hating echo chamber dwellers are going run with based on this early indicator. I don't have any interest in this but it does weirdly give me a want to check out Arceus.
Re: Talking Point: How Do You Play NES Games These Days?
RetroUSB AVS for nes & famicom carts with the old trusty NES Max. Sometimes I'll get the old top loader out but I really prefer playing on a modern set. On the go I'll use the Analogue Pocket though that dpad is pretty horrendous for anything requiring dexterity. But it's good for docked play on anything I don't have a cart for. The OLED Vita is also a pretty darn good portable solution. But the AVS is where it's at for me.
Re: Nintendo Reportedly Increases Switch 2 Production To 25 Million Units For Year 1
Despite controversies, more like despite desperate attempts to torpedo the Switch 2 from Internet echo chambers. You can cry and stomp your feet about game key cards til the cows come home, the vast majority of the world doesn't care and anyone with their head on straight can recognize that Nintendo provided a decent alternative to code in a box which is what the third-party companies would be using otherwise.
Re: Even Memes Are Getting The Metroidvania Treatment Now
I just care if the game is good. For all I care it could be about a crazy lady who doesn't get her limited edition honey mustard sauce at the burger stand so she picks up a tray, beats the crap out of everyone and then journies to every store in the region to fight big burger and restore the sauce. Sadly the creativity and brevity needed to make a solid game in this style has been long missing. The games are mostly bland, bloated, or both. Maybe this won't be, but being a vessel for meme jokes doesn't bode well.
Re: Notorious Group 'Crimson Collective' Claims To Have Hacked Nintendo
People on reddit already speculating they'll be seeing Metroid Dread DS and Mother 64 leaked out lol. These are extorting parasites, they're not going to be the Robin Hood of cancelled game assets. And yeah that screenshot means nothing while looking like a directory of a website. Oooooh, not the My Nintendo files.
Re: It's Official, Minecraft Is Getting A Second Live-Action Movie
My kids loved this movie, and they loved the Mario and Sonic movies. Great time to be a kid into video games, watching the movies that were y'know, made for kids. I'm sure we'll be seeing this one in theaters too. As an adult and not a kid, I enjoy all these movies through the joy they bring the intended audience.
Re: Final Fantasy VII / VIII Remastered Twin Pack And IX Switch Physical Releases Confirmed For North America
What's with the weird responses to this, people are acting smug like they somehow stuck it to Squeenix by buying the import a while back. The company still gets the money. And this is good for normies who aren't down to do an import especially in a time where that is a costly venture. Gamers gotta find that superiority over others in everything I guess.
Re: Sorry, Nintendo's Recent Pikmin Videos Aren't Hinting At Something More
I just want more of this. I miss the days of random Nintendo Videos on the 3DS and the Nintendo Show 3D. None of it was mindblowing or even entirely necessary but it had that focus on charm which has been ebbing away the last couple generations as everything homogenizes into this sameface experience with gaming. It's the same with them not continuing the little music on the eshop. I couldn't give a toss if it has whatever efficiency feature everyone carps about, and I don't care about all the shovelware so long as I have a cute occasionally seasonal tune to go with my browsing.
Stated before but I'll state it again. I vote with my wallet for Nintendo to keep being Nintendo, for better and worse.
Re: Random: The Super Mario Galaxy Games Are Full Of Secrets, And This One Is "Horribly Inefficient"
Yeah I don't think I'd call anything in Galaxy inefficient. Those games should be studied for how to absolutely maximize hardware potential while consistently delivering a buttery smooth experience. So much of everything has weird stuff like this under the covers that won't make sense to outsiders but probably solved a problem at the time or was the quickest way to make everything work. There's a good many times I've left some variant of the comment 'this is bad/awkward code, replace later' in stuff that is still in production and working just fine.
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch Online's SNES Library With Three More Titles
@whmchrish There's money to be had and selling NES titles for $5 a pop didn't pan out so well when everyone balked at the price and asked why it wasn't just Netflix for games. The subscription removes the need to manage individual purchases over console generations and support future downloads. I was one of the people buying up virtual consoles games and I'd prefer that especially because I hate decision fatigue when opening what is now a fairly large selection, but business wise there's no way they're going back to that model. Who knows with Pokemon but it's probably some combination of wanting to keep players on the current ecosystem which regularly releases new games + not wanting to create & support a transfer system out of the NSO app. Far as piracy goes, they chase the idiots stupid enough to hock the newest stuff and/or take money for roms & mods. Nintendo isn't going to hassle you for picking up a Anbernic or whatever and loading it with every retro title.
Re: Nintendo Updates Animated Short Film 'Close To You' With Some Familiar Faces
This is the kind of stuff I 1000% vote for with my wallet when I buy Nintendo products. You only become more aware of the sad and dreadful things as you age, Nintendo isn't perfect by any stretch but they bring the whimsy in spades where other game companies bring only scraps.
Re: Review: Yooka-Replaylee (Switch 2) - Feels Like The Game It Was Meant To Be, Finally
I heard you can also use a cheat code to restore Jontron's voice.
Re: Nintendo's Out To Get $4,500,000 In Damages From Ongoing Switch Piracy Case
Removed
Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Super Mario Galaxy + Galaxy 2?
9/10. They can almost make it out from the Wii control scheme flawlessly and exist in the modern camera control expectations, but not quite. Still the best 3D Mario games and if anyone disagrees then their opinion is different than mine and I respect that.
Re: Nintendo Denies Lobbying Japanese Government Over AI, Will "Take Necessary Actions" Over IP Rights
I was pretty ambivalent about AI until I had to spend days at work helping a branch of my team train one to generate the body for dynamic emails sent with personalized sales stats. And by help, I had to point out all the robotic phrases, endless hyphens, and repeating salad it was pushing out, and gently remind that we could and already did generate dynamic emails by writing real text laced with database queries to pull the personalized fields. But no, we had to justify all the money someone spent on this toy and then spend weeks of paid time to fix said toy just so it could be a slightly worse version of what we already had, while relinquishing control over the text being generated. It can be a useful tool, but that usefulness is being vastly overexaggerated and could easily create more work in the long term by taking shortcuts today.
More on topic, I'm sure Nintendo will use some form of AI here or there but if they're smart as they've shown to be in preserving the quality of their content, it'll be minor and they will probably lead the charge in smacking down the abuse of their property which could ignite some actual standards being made for AI use.
Re: Talking Point: Can Metroid Prime 4's Title Screen Go As Hard As The Others?
They're all good but the original trilogy is in a league of its own. I feel bad for anyone who hasn't discovered Metroid II's phenomenal piece of music tucked into that title screen. Should be noted that it isn't the only place that sfx are sampled in the OST. The game was uniquely scored by the sound engineer and he was quite clever in plundering his own source material for music. Heck, the Queen Metroid theme is like a sound collage piece.
Re: Atlus Rules Out Persona 3 Reload Switch Port
This is a supposedly beloved company lol.
Re: "OpenAI Is Trying To Get Sued" - Nintendo IP Floods Sora 2 Video Generation App
People are usually up in arms over AI swiping original content, but it alarms me way more how much these massive installations affect the environment and people who live near them, and this is almost never part of the discourse. Potentially taking bread out of an artist's mouth is bad but damaging the environment and poisoning people over time is way worse. There's this conception everyone has that everything is "in the cloud", never really stopping to think about what sort of rapidly expanding infrastructure has to exist all over the planet to support the modern always-on bottomless accessibility of Internet services - and all these stupid AI services are at the forefront.
But yeah, I'm so mad fake Pikachus are being made to do things.
Re: Feature: Get A Job - 30 Years On, Seiken Densetsu 3's Class System Is Still One Of The Best
Such a pleasant surprise to see an SD3 article today. The classes are a huge reason I've played this game so many times between the fan translation, official release, and remake. I get overwhelmed and exhausted with games that allow constant class changes so I appreciate more and more that this game has you make those choices and stick with it. And it helps that every class is a blast to play with. I've tried so many combinations and never had a dud in the bunch. They're all so stacked. Hawk/Lise/Kevin will forever be my favorite though. Attacks out the wazoo, debuffs galore, and a werewolf healer.
The only drag is farming those last class change items. In most cases you're grinding an enemy that only spawns as a summoned mob from another, and you're hoping the rare drop is for the class you actually want. Multiple layers of grind. Such a pain, but those last class changes are so spectacular.
Re: Review: Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Switch) - Still Out Of This World
They're worth the price and probably the best case against the notion that games should be devalued solely based on age. They're still premium top tier entries in 3D platformers and I'll go to bat any day that 2 is the best 3D Mario game (even if I prefer the Observatory so much more than the world maps).
That said, I'm probably holding off on pulling the trigger. The evergreen beauty of these games is such that I can and do still play them on the Wii U while wanting for nothing. Portability is cool but these are some of the few games I only ever want to play on a big screen.
Re: "I Feel A Great Responsibility To Get It Right" - Naoki Hamaguchi On The Pressure Of Remaking Final Fantasy VII
Eh. I lost interest when the ridiculous 'twist' story was spoiled all over the place on the Internet which is like the most annoying trope of storytelling to me lately. Then I got a copy half off for PS4 and gave it a shot. They completely bungled the mystery of Sephiroth by having him show up every beat to taunt Cloud in some way and the game is unbelievably padded out now. Midgar was such a thrilling sequence in the original because it constantly kept you on your toes before the game opens up for the overworld reveal and you realize that was all just one big intro. All I felt on the remake was drag, drag, and more drag. But that's finely in line with a lot of excessively chatty and bloated games now, so they did bring the game forward for sure. I definitely wouldn't say they did right by the original, not that I'd ever say FFVII had a perfectly balanced sensible story to begin with or that the game wasn't so readily borkable (enemy materia + matra magic & big guard = easy mode forever).
But Square is doing what they wanted way back with garbage like Dirge of Cerberus which was to spin this into a big sub franchise, so good on them I suppose.
Re: Opinion: Silksong's Soundtrack Rules, But You Should Turn It Off
This is really interesting to me. I usually have rumble off because I got tired of it way back in the N64/PS1 generation and it still does nothing for me regardless of the impressive improvements. I did check out Silksong's use of it and I agree they put a ton of thought into it. But having my controller shake is still a big nah. Even if I liked the rumble, the thought of having it on in a plane where other passengers would hear the trembling makes me so self-conscious. No headphones on a long flight though, that is a nightmare scenario and I'm glad you found a way to navigate it.
Re: Nintendo Of America President Doug Bowser Announces Retirement
I'm sure the responses and expectations will be totally reasonable oh wait we're already being weird in various ways because it's a woman. Gamers lol.
NoA has pretty much been on autopilot since Reggie left so any shakeup could be interesting. Or it might be more of the exact same which is honestly not that bad.
Re: Pokémon TCG Pocket's Next Expansion Guarantees Rare Pulls In Every Pack
Hooray everyone's a winner
Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade Director Highlights The Speed Problem With Switch 2 Game Cards
Dreaded game key cards. Because the code in a box this would be otherwise is so much better. I guess gamers are going to forever struggle with the fact that this hobby is built on toys with limited shelf life. Once the shelf life (ability to make reliable money) expires the support falls away. They don't care about your preseving of games, they care about selling you the next toy. That's how it will always be until y'know, someone sidles up with coffers and corporate force the size of Nintendo or Sony.