Coalescence

@OrtadragoonX well said. Weirdest thing with Romero is he already demonstrated he has no business running a studio in one of the most well known stories of spectacular crashing and burning.

I've been enjoying a slow burn replay of DK64 on the Wii U, it would be great to see it on the NSO app finally. The mistake people always make with this game is trying to play it straight through and burning out on the mass. It's a game best served in sips and with that it lasts forever and never feels stale.

And it'll be fun to hear the collective misery of a whole new crop of gamers gnashing their teeth over Beaver Bother, the second Lanky race, Diddy's jetpack, the Donkey Kong Arcade/Jetpac challenges, and that one room in the ice cavern cabin.

Japan is fine, but the NA/EU cover screams the fun of Star Wars, and the game lived up to that 100%. This was my first N64 game and it blew my socks off. Still have my copy CIB.

@Ganner no rant needed. I know exactly what you mean and agree wholeheartedly.

Pulling off a console launch which is more or less resting on laurels is pretty impressive. They pushed it out as far as possible so people would be itching for an upgrade and most would have worn out Switches. They didn't overshoot the goal by having another Breath of the Wild or jumping to a new Mario but leaned on the old reliable IP. Most early Switch adopters probably bought MK8 immediately and again, were itching for that new entry after so many years.

Going ahead with a launch on the tariff uncertainties probably helped them even. In stressful and uncertain times, people want distractions more than anything and here's a shiny new Nintendo with new Mario Kart and all your buddies from the Switch 1 with a pile of Super upgrades.

There's time when there's an unfortunate axing, but this isn't it. Not every studio deserves to stay open forever just because they make games. And as at least some people are pointing out, John's being his usual slippery self with how this is framed.

"Broken every milestone", yet haven't produced anything above mid at best. Romero hasn't been on a big hit since 2001 (and honestly Anachronox being a big hit is probably debatable), yet people act like with his pedigree he has some golden touch when it's more of a brown thumb at this point. Ion Storm should have proven he was only good when working under Carmack and didn't have a head ten sizes too big.

Only some kind of masochist buys a current generation Nintendo product to use in ways the company doesn't approve. Wait a generation and have fun with all the mods. Or don't and enjoy the agony, I guess. It's not like they haven't been doing this stuff since the NES, it should be expected when buying a Nintendo product.

Hopefully it cashes the potential a little better. Dredge had an incredible opening couple of hours but failed to do anything other than repeat the same template over and over. The endings were pretty great, but stuff like the Devil's Spine was such a slog that it negated a lot of the atmosphere and buildup. Reminded me of how PT's vaunted tension unravels wholly with how easy it was to get stuck in that one loop.

Adding an advanced option to uncheck games you don't want to have on the service would be great. Leave the app at the current default for novice users. I've no problem with picking and choosing like that and don't have the typical compulsion of keeping absolutely every game I can play accessible at all times.

Those of us who know 3 is the far superior game generally just keep quiet and let people be happy in their wrongness.

That's like the most bare minimum top list I've ever seen. They're all pretty decent games past Wind Waker which of course takes #1. I'll give that Fire Emblem another shot someday but will probably once again just be wishing they made more games like Gaiden/Echoes.

Metroidvania is way too bloated of a genre with games that can't resist the subtle handholding of appearing to be tough while having loads of helping hands to erase any real risk or challenge. But this interests me, shameless Castlevania DNA aside. I miss games that actually ask something of the players and don't pad their supposed challenge with instant unlimited respawns, too obvious breadcrumb trails, and overly generous fast travels. Hopefully the game isn't overly chatty because that crap also drives me up the wall when exploration and isolation has to be constantly interrupted with inane chatter.

Not a shocker, any time I've been at a company that was rapidly expanding I knew unless things reach unprecedented highs, a lot of these new faces were coming in on borrowed time. With acquisitions it's just as much to blame the owners who cashed out without caring who was buying because it was no longer their concern.

Also, I haven't kept up with Romero's work lately, and wow. Legendary guy who has been legendarily mid for decades. Homeboy hasn't had a good one since Anachronox in 2001. Definitely isn't making anyone his B word anymore.

Always love people who want to pretend the card doesn't enable piracy except for some extreme fringe. Yeah, just like homebrew, I'm sure 99.9% of people are only doing entirely legal things with this. Won't someone please think of the poor well to do definitely real legions of travelling businessmen who absolutely need to carry a collection of 100 carts and are so terribly inconvenienced by having to pack multiple tiny switch carts in their bags? At most I've taken the single Switch case with 8 carts with me on trips. Usually, it's just whatever is in the slot.

Maybe if people didn't get so hung up on hypothetical scenarios and Nintendo hate B's, the actual conversation could move forward which is regarding whether or not game makers as a whole should be able to dictate usage. Answer is they shouldn't, but Sony got away with wiping OtherOS and people can't play WoW outside of Blizz's servers so the precedent is never going to be on that side.

At most Nintendo will pay some pennies out on a class action lawsuit and they'll just find another way to squeeze people and their foolish need to fight the powah instead of just enjoying the games and waiting until the generation is over to do the homebrewing.

I'll always remember this game for when someone wrote into Nintendo Power so offended that a reviewer gave it the same score as Ocarina of Time.

Of course no one wants to get their hands dirty on this story, but obviously Nintendo is going to show Amazon occasionally that they don't hold all the cards and can't make Nintendo blink regardless of who is in the right, especially when the Big N is riding their highest times right now.

Still no info of what's on those soundtrack CDs. The Limited Run copy had a worthless selection on a single disc, but this one has 4 discs. That may not be enough space to cover all the games. These companies are lousy but I'm not above buying one of their products anyway to get a good copy of those soundtracks in their entirety on professionally pressed CDs. But y'know, who cares about posting details like that when a lot of their buyers will probably never unbox this thing.

I sure wish I had that sweet naivite in thinking objectivity or games "journalism" actually exists outside of that very brief period between the heydey of print magazines and the rise of big gaming sites. It's all Nintendo Power. Nothing wrong with that. The information is valid and some articles are fun, but it's all the same few big companies putting up the capital and protecting their investments to make money off people who play games, while doing their best to mimick those few days of the small independent gaming blog. Just ask zombie Destructoid over there.

Man, what the hell are people doing with their units to warrant such an ugly obtrusive case in the name of overkill protection? I guess I never take my Switch rock climbing or spelunking so this really isn't for me. My launch switch has only ever had a tempered glass protector, it has thousands of hours between me and my kids has traveled the country, and the only damage it has ever taken is a crack on that protector and losing one of the plastic pieces over the fan vent.

@Misima except when it comes to the game who shall not be named.

Article reads like the regular Anniversary Collection doesn't have the full collection of games, which presumably isn't the case since all those games are in the standard digital copy.

No note on the article or listing if it also includes the JP versions which were added in later. Also no details on what the soundtrack CDs include (or, singular CD as noted on the listing despite multiple showing in the concept image). Almost like they know their whales don't really care about minute details like what's in the box and what's on the cart and just want to buy the sealed box for their supposed investment.

That dpad for ants can take a hike. Otherwise it's an alright controller. Good for its own library and not much else while mostly replaceable by any modern pad. Highly doubt I'll get one.

Should have called it Wheels.
And had a story/quest mode. Someday the sports and sports adjacent games will learn we just need more ridiculous sports x Dragon Quest like World Court Tennis on the TG16. Give me that evil king Wheelchair Basketball monster who is stealing all the world's basketballs.

Good write up, even if I sit at odds with most of the sentiments. Chapter 1 definitely felt like doing things on autopilot, with zero progression in battles from start to finish. Rude Buster is the only thing that saves it from being a total slog. The whole mystery box and here comes something ultra dark and shocking following a lighthearted setup was also very tiring. That stuff was played out with Lost long ago (not that other media isn't still doing it all over the place). Like Undertale, I've played way worse games but Deltrarune also didn't hook me in any significant way. The characters just shout motivations and serve as vessels for fairly okay jokes which at times feel like a waiter doing their aspiring stand up routine for a captive audience. Funny these games get compared to Earthbound, which was a masterclass in brevity and something Toby Fox's writing style could never approach. Music is mostly solid though,I'll check out the music even if I don't play the later chapters. I'm also probably not the right player. I lived and loved the glory days of 8 & 16-bit RPGs. Playing games that are like when Porky made his Earthbound museum in Mother 3 just puts me off and makes me want to play the real deal. To that end, the music is probably only great to my ears because it's like chewed up repurposed material from Shimomura/Kikuta/Mitsuda/Ito/etc. But the guy clearly found his audience and good on him for that and his success.

Behaving exactly as I would expect from a Smash Bro at this point. And people get mad at Nintendo for not just letting fans run things lol.

Lazy store can't take five minutes to verify the console they're potentially taking in as fully functional, this is on them 100% and they should eat the cost. This means they probably aren't checking for other issues as well.

As for direct resell options, hell to the naw dawg. I'd just as soon not buy a console if I can't get it brand new with how squirrelly things have gotten since the offline home console days. There's no telling what chicanery might have happened now that most everything is softmods and there's no real barrier to entry.

More Final Fantasy? Bag that. Give us the Enix Quintet collection and Secret of Evermore port already. I'd rather have the red headed stepchild Seiken Densetsu collection like Heroes/Children/Dawn of Mana before yet another FF port particularly any of the braindead pretty hallway games.

Nintendo knew they could never abandon the handheld market. It will always be a massive component in their homeland. Sony was absolutely stupid to abandon their stake in handhelds, and with this launch they will have the most steep of uphill battles should they try to claw back into the game. Nintendo only has to compete with phone games now and clearly has shown the dedicated portable game console is far from dead. Kind of brilliant they dipped into the mobile game market with basically free tastes of the drug. It only has become more laughable that Zynga and King were at one time posturing about their stuff being the future of gaming.

Honestly it looks great. If I were ever in the mindset of wanting my chill time to be interrupted by talking and other people, this would be the way.

Neat, but no way am I taking the time and money to make more cases for games already in reliable containment and then having to hold on to a pile of empty cases. I just don't know why they didn't stick with a DS sized case. There's no need for them to be this tall unless they were including manuals again. Or just use the standard CD sized cases, like the Turbografx had for the Hu cards. Give me that storage efficiency.

Eh, he didn't work on this game and they own the property. I don't see the issue here. And as you noted, he's definitely not hurting for recognition and acclaim in the larger gaming world. It's nice we are in a world with automatic music databases and lastfm and such, because it wasn't so long ago we got things like the DK Jamz release which has zero credits in the j card outside of a Nintendo copyright.

I rather like that Nintendo just does whatever with their lore, especially with regards to all the Donkey Kong stuff. It's like the old days where we rolled with whatever came in the next NES game. Before everything had to be wiki'd, wrapped in tight package, and picked apart into dust. Not that their doing this will stop any of that, but it does make all that nitpicking and speculating absolutely pointless.

Looks awesome!

And I definitely can't take seriously the opinion of a person who willingly presents themselves as the most annoying Zelda character to come down the pike in a long while, lol

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.