Coalescence

Give me a standalone Pauline and I'll buy that straight away. The duo? Meh. On that note, they really need to go back and make a Mayor Pauline amiibo from Odyssey.

Whoa, now I'm interested* War of the Lions was a bootstrapped mangled mess of a near perfect game.

*Interested, had I not long ago loaded the classic on my OLED Vita and therefore already have the ideal way to play this game.

Weirdly, the biggest detriment to me getting this is having the demo version on my 3DS loaded with street passes, and I still want to transfer that to the full game.

Having been around similar flubs in my professional life, this reeks of a hotshot inexperienced marketing coordinator who came to the table with a youthful idea to spin this one around and had no idea that you can't just lift an image like that or thought no one would notice/care.

Still a funny spin though and they get credit for embracing it rather than dropping some robotic corporate apology or acting like it didn't happen.

Whoever they pick, I'm sure the discourse to follow will be civil and level headed without any need for petty attacks or scrutinizing every detail of the actors' lives, and thus the perception of people enthusiastic about video games will remain unblemished.

"I don't even know if I wanna play anymore". Presumably this person is at least in their mid to late twenties. They need to get some resilience. Assuming any of this happened because, y'know, the highly dubious nature of any given reddit post.

Assuming it did, that's life. I once lost something in the area of 3500 hours in an online MUD over middle school and high school because an admin had a bad day & decided to dust the entire universe and start it over. I shrugged my shoulders and thought it was a good run. Video games are great but one shouldn't leave a part of themselves in there like an artifact in that series who shall not be named on NL.

It's a special kind of silly to mess with a current gen system right after launch when the maker has all their eyes on it. Wait until the updates are done and enjoy what is by then a super streamlined process. Like cfw'ing the Wii U and 3DS is unbelievably easy and bares no risk today. The weird compulsion these jokers have to willingly wade into misery.

Might as well just redact #3 with 'game who must not be named' at this point...

Wow. Everyone must really want to be in the ground floor for Switch 2, and Nintendo definitely knew the power they held in negotiations.

Nintendo is going to make a resounding case again that power & having all the trendy bells and whistles isn't everything. There was so much speculation that they'd be stuck behind the times without supercharging the Switch 2 because of all the superior powered Switch-likes that have come out in the last seven years. Nevermind that the Game Boy and both DS lines proved that point already, but hey maybe people will remember it this time.

Remember when people were slicing their fingers on the joy con rails? And breaking tvs with their Wiimotes? It's always something with these chuckleheads. They're either hugely disingenuous or probably shouldn't be handling a console without adult supervision. And it's definitely not Nintendo's first rodeo. They knew how to head this off.

Further evidence Charles is a classy dude and content creators are worthless muckrakers.

Hard to pick a favorite with so many, but this one definitely ranks high. I'll always love Satorl Marsh as you mentioned for how it absolutely floored me the first time night fell and that music kicked in. I knew the Wii could do beautiful things but I wasn't prepared for that. Amazing how much went into a largely inconsequential area.

But the most impactful for me is easily Alcamoth. I expected a hardened enemy stronghold and instead it was like finding out your worst bully lives in a broken dirty hovel. Again, not many big story beats but the unspoken stuff had a huge impact, like the quest giving bots sounding like order can be restored if you retrieve a few flowers or destroy a handful of rogue machines. And of course, that haunting music.

Did Genki pay for exclusive coverage here or something?

I like that they take Special Thanks seriously. Most people treat it like the award speech that goes on way too long, chucking in every person remotely related or unrelated to the project. There's either no need to thank him on this game or he declined, and either is just fine.

Mouse control might actually make this shoddy grift of a readily accessible rom worth the admission, but they'll probably still LRG it up.

Garbage company makes garbage accessories, big surprise. The multi cart carrier is good for travelling and Nintendo made a great one for the switch. These jokers flubbed what should be the easiest accessory to get right.

Nintendo won't care either way is absolutely right. Apple certainly didn't care and didn't take a hit with the iPod where one has to destroy the back case to do something basic like replace the battery or hard drive which absolutely will decay and fail over time. Things being made to deter self repair and just issuing a new one has only become more prevalent. And they can easily eat whatever piddly class action lawsuits come out of the Right to Repair.

Yeah I would have jumped at this if I hadn't gotten sick of waiting & loaded up my Vita with this and Square's classic PSX library. And it's definitely not the classic version if it only comes as War of the Lions. No thanks to a bunch of bootstrapped Ivalice alliance stuff and overcooked dialog.

It never bothered me, but the game is so easily borkable with a few echoes anyway so I really only used those for most of the game. Still a fun lighthearted game in the series though. Hopefully they use the concept again and develop it a little further.

@Zuljaras 100%. I had to be a late adopter as a kid but I've kept it up ever since trying to get a GameCube at launch. No thank you to any of that noise. A casual low stress pick up with a much bigger library to enjoy and any launch issues ironed out is the way to go every time.

This prospect somehow sounds even more boring than watching a stream of someone play Pokemon. Like, it's the game I played one handed in high school because school was boring as hell and it's the game I'll play while doing other stuff today similarly to pass the time. I can't imagine any circumstances where I'd willingly watch someone else, human or AI, play this.

Weird article when the biggest reason to not get a Switch 2 yet is owning an OLED Switch 1. Last time around we had a failed console and a newcomer that was iterating on said failed console's best concepts. Early adoption is especially for the birds this time around.

I was just going to say it would be funny if whoever they pick goes on some rants about damsel in distress trope, but it looks like that point is covered and also set on fire lol

Only thing I'm not looking forward to with this movie is the inevitable extreme reactions regardless of who is picked and how the movie turns out. I plan to put my head in the sand about any and all coverage in the lead up. I just want to enjoy the novelty of a Zelda movie, same as Mario.

@RupeeClock as if most every app and your phone itself isn't already tracking your every move, input, and ingesting every word you and anyone nearby speaks aloud.

reallllly scraping the barrel to find things for those morsels of clout since Nintendo anticipated these idiots and ate their lunch

Woomy. That soundtrack has been my jam for years. And just like the games themselves the music of the second and third entries never grabbed me the same way. Definitive beautiful Wii U days.

lol the pearl clutching, won't anyone please think of the person who dropped $500 on a console yet somehow can't get to a place with wifi for activation? Assuming this imaginary definitely imaginary person has no home internet / has no phone capable of making a hotspot, there's always options. I live in a single stoplight unincorporated area that has massive deadzones, rickety lowbar 4G in the few good spots and even our podunk tiny coffee place has good free wifi.

I dunno. These games look pretty but honestly I'd rather put in my Dragon Warrior carts for the hundredth time or load up the GBC remakes on the Analogue Pocket. Some modern remakes I can get into but these games I don't want any of the sensory overload of modern gaming. Just looking at the screenshots makes me tired.

"Walmart and Target buckling under the weight of unprecedented demand." Is it really unprecedented though? The Wii, the Switch, and even the NES classic edition had pretty similar frenzies. They should have known at this point what a big Nintendo launch can be like.

So which store will have the first fool to do something stupid for five minutes of Internet clout?

Big Nintendo, always stymieing the efforts of advertisement preservation. The Nintendo Today emulation scene will not go quietly into the night.

Same marketing speak as ever, teed up by some nice softballs. I'm sure he's grateful the whole mountain being made out of the molehill in game cards is a nice distraction from LRG's latest in a line of blunders from a company supposedly devoted to delivering quality physical editions.

Still need to load up 7 on my 3DS. I think my rage quit of mk wii lasted so long that I passed on 7. MK8 is an interesting one. I played it to death on the Wii U especially as a fix between tending to a newborn. I should have loved Deluxe and I did buy it on launch but it just never grabbed me the same. The expansion pack courses were a fun novelty though it just felt like the same content repackaged over and over. It's been a staple playing with the kids, but I'm definitely ready for something new.

Might explain why like the story, the world of Xenoblade 3 put me to sleep. Whereas previous games very much including X I couldn't get enough of the gargantuan worlds. But then again I also fully explored The Depths in ToTK and loved every bit of it, which was probably a similar design so maybe Xeno 3 is just a big fat Ambien for other reasons altogether.

Great games. I love Star Stacker. And for some reason it's a ridiculously expensive CIB. I'm glad I kept my old one in the box / kinda wish I would have bought the whole rack when it was a $5 closeout.

Lol where was all this bravado against code in a box? Nintendo is still doing carts for their games. They're offering game key cards as an option for companies who were doing code in a box. Code in a box is objectively worse than a game key card at full retail price. All these companies are only joining on now with their holy crusade for physical media forever because they want to capitalize on the outrage and probably want to get into LRG's whale cookie jar.

I did know about all that but it's only a weird contrast when focusing on the Iwata and Reggie days, really. Yamauchi and the rest didn't give much of a toss about gaming (and certainly wouldn't have cared about gaming culture) or being family friendly. They cared about making money and shifting the company as needed to maximize profits. Atari and gaming was dirty and unregulated, so Nintendo being family friendly with the marketing genius seal of quality swooped in opportunistically. Just like he didn't care about baseball and never attended a game yet bought the Mariners.

@IronMan30 apparently we still can't risk mentioning the game who shall not be named

Only explanation needed is that it's their character their IP. I never really liked looking at a big dumb gorilla in any game but DKC is fun, so whatever. He could be a big hunk of crap for all I care so long as the game is fun.

Had the chance to be part of the world's funniest tornadoes special. All the same it's fun to think how they'd have made more money working a real job than whatever meager profit they'll get from reselling.

A+ reference.

Also yeah, why not. Makes as much sense as anything in the increasingly wacky world of FFVII. Even when it was just vanilla VII, I mostly loved that game as a Nobuo music and cool set piece delivery system.

Thought the whole purpose of staying with melee and tournament legal stages was specifically to avoid this exact scenario which is always parroted: a player has 20Gs on the line or whatever and they lose it to a random element because in real sporting events random elements are never a factor.

Interesting to see how those stalwart pro union /anti big company stances crumble to kiss the feet of ai.

Shouldn't need a whole new console for that, but I'm glad it's happening. Having a Japanese account really clutters it up to where I don't even look at it.

Man I loved DS. Easily the best single player experience in a Mario Kart game with the missions and boss battles. The online gameplay was pretty solid too, and admittedly I did a lot of shameless Dry Bones in the tank snaking to obliterate the competition. Crazy to think I had to buy a little dongle for that because my house didn't have wifi yet.

Still haven't played Double Dash, but I have it loaded up on my Wii U to finally experience.

Wii can take a hike. I played it a lot at the time as it was the newest option but that rubber banding AI was so infuriating and the game in general just isn't nearly as tight or fun as what came after. I'm sure it was the first Mario Kart for a whole big swath of gamers and has huge nostalgic pull but I can't imagine ever playing again.

Lol the pearl clutching over this whole thing. It's a better option over code in a box for publishers who were very likely going to do code in a box. Nintendo is doing more for physical games preservation than any of the "forever physical!" grifty fomo companies with this move and their dedication to keeping their stuff in traditional carts - and they're the company that brought back game carts in the first place. Gamers lol.

Yeah but can it run Doom('s theme)?

Yeah, skeevy dating apps trying to use IP they don't own is not going to fly. Just a hunch but maybe it also has something to do with the whole Smash players not behaving themselves in this arena while at conventions.

Never been so glad to see UK only. My local McDonald's was a nightmare during this promotion when my kids just wanted to get their happy meals. Thank God they're not big into Pokemon and didn't care when the store ran out and used other stock for toys.