CoastersPaul

It's so funny they made Pink Kirby angry by switching the angry Red Kirby to happy. Never change, NA box art. Except maybe do?

can we make it into a Mojo Dojo Casa House, or would that be against the whole point 🤔

I generally love SNES games and graphics but just found the original SMRPG too grating to push through, giving up getting stuck in the first real dungeon. I'm usually not too much of a stickler for graphics... but this could definitely use the refresh, IMO. Hope I can give it a fairer shake this way, because I could definitely already start to see what people loved so much about the original (and how much it paved the way for every Mario RPG that followed.)

I was crushed when 8 didn't have Diddy, my main from Wii, so I'm glad they've finally fixed that.

I'd much rather Death Race from F-Zero X be given this treatment, but at least it's... something?

Always did miss Diddy Kong, glad they finally fixed that. And Funky Kong for the other Wii heads!

This isn't just upgrading some models or uprezzing some textures, but going all-out with the Paper aesthetic. I think that brings it up from even a very good remaster to a proper remake, if a seemingly very faithful one.

Glad more and more companies seem to be doing this (though I am still mad at Square Enix, otherwise one of the best in the business for this specifically, not putting the Live-A-Live remake soundtrack somewhere where I can share it.) Gotta echo wishes that Nintendo catches up eventually.

I was thinking Shiver finally might not win. I saw a Frye mirror match in Tricolor, that never happens! And early results were almost close! But such is the way of things, I suppose.

Yeah, I'd like JP/EU way more if there was a little space between Mario and Luigi so their silhouettes read better. As it is, I think I gotta go NA.

I'm starting to feel like there's no Nintendo franchise that doesn't have a decent chance to hit it big on Switch, with the right game and given a proper marketing push. Great to see with Metroid, and now even Pikmin!
Still holding out hope for F-Zero

I feel bad about betraying my man Big Man, but hopefully defending Frye's honor means fewer mirror matches. Shiver, I'm sure, will outnumber us both.

I do think EarthBound has a certain charm from the "CAFE" that is still very clearly a bar, but it's definitely a good thing NoA has eased off the strict standards since.

Thought the demo was good, once it got going. Hopefully the real game's got a better intro to it, of course!

First I want to know if the game's good (not just looking and sounding great, which it got down from day one!) And then... how it performs on Switch.

Nice, that's almost a reasonable title compared to the past versions

yay, I got Seasick-!

@PessitheMystic Really, Splatoon 3 already added a dog-like companion (sniffs out treasure, attacks enemies on command), it just happened to be a salmon

I get why they never will but it's a shame the 13 games, probably the last ones that could run on the Switch, weren't put on there for kicks/bragging rights/completeness' sake.

I'd settle for more F-Zero Mario Kart tracks at this point since the first two were so good, shame there haven't been any in the expansion pass.

Hi-Fi Rush is easily my not-Switch GOTY, and given its look (extremely well stylized, yes, but it doesn't seem that demanding) and Microsoft getting more accustomed to taking Switch owners' money, I'm still hoping it'll get a Switch release eventually.

@FredsBodyDouble I'm not the biggest 12 fan by any stretch, but I mostly enjoyed my time with it after I finally got into it. It's a weird, huge, messy game, but it's hard for me to see it as where the series went off the rails.

Similar battle systems? That's 12's secret - for as different as it looks, especially with the ability to move since combat just happens in the world, it's still basically got an ATB system deep down. You're just able to automate your characters as much as you want, too.
I do miss the old-fashioned world maps.
Summons? Check. None of the traditional ones - whose names have been taken by airships - and only 13, and most of them don't do that much damage so I never actually used them, but I do like the designs.
Magic? Check. Basically unchanged.
Jobs? Added in the zodiac job system versions.
Chocobos? Check, although definitely not super useful for transport.
Moogles? They look pretty different - I know some people refuse to recognize them - but they're there!

I'd be willing to take 13 as where it went off the [or on?] rails, mostly because the series got stuck in that rut for a while... but that still had some of those things, I think it's actually really hard to come up with a definition of a "real" FF that includes specifically the ones someone likes and excludes the ones they don't with any objective criteria 😛

FF, for better and worse, has always been a series torn between referencing itself and reinventing itself as technology allowed. Sometimes that means a MMO. Sometimes that means the awkward "single-player MMO" structure of 12. I totally get not liking certain directions! But I think there's still a good amount of FF in there, if not your FF.

Anyway, that's why I'm also not too worried about 16 being the future of the series forever.

I hope Culex is still in this game AND not converted to a 3D model. Maybe they could get the Octopath sprite artists to give him an HD-2D treatment?

I just like turn-based/ATB games, and I'd personally want a 6 remake to stay turn-based. And I just don't see that happening if it went full AAA blockbuster 3D; these days, it feels like Square Enix only does turn-based for the somewhat smaller titles, your Bravely Defaults and all the HD‐2D games. The HD-2D games owe a lot of their aesthetic to FF6 anyway, seems like a nice natural fit! (As the Pixel Remaster proved with the opera scene already!)

So that's what I'd want most. But I couldn't complain too much if it got the full treatment newer players would probably like more.

@HeadPirate There’s certainly some cheating in favor of things "just working" or being believable enough over total accuracy, but isn't the whole point of the gliders that you can steer them a little by themselves? Normally only as they fall, but if you can give them speed or height by other means...

I know Square's had a good handful of their composers strike out on their own as freelancers but keep coming back on projects anyway. Has that happened before for Nintendo's in-house composers?

Messed up putting Golbez on there for the logo instead of Kain!

Back when 7 Remake came out and a lot of people started replaying OG 7, I started playing the SNES version of 6 just to be different. Since then, I've played 9, 12, and, more slowly, all of 14.

I don't get the argument that Link should have the same voice between games. Links (mostly) aren't the same character! There's definitely a Link archetype - and I for one think breaking from it and making him all talky would be a mistake - but mixing it up to suit the games is one of the cool things about the series.

When do we get buff Zelda though?

Movie's basically as I expected... better than I feared at first. Perfectly entertaining, doesn't overstay its welcome, was never gonna get held up by critics as high art or anything more than it is, but what it is is fine enough.
Don't really think it'll be re-evaluated or entirely forgotten years from now. It's a well-made kids' video-game movie, nothing more, nothing less, but I think it'll keep getting watched here and there. Could see the series having decent staying power if they do this right.

I just missed Banjo-Kazooie.

1 I couldn't get into at first, 2 was a lot more compelling to me from the get-go... but man, is the translation pretty rough in spots
Are any of these straight-up good?

wait, there was a third one already?

Kills me that Live-A-Live gets no recognition, but I've gotten more than used to that, I suppose.
Please. Someone. Play it. I need to rant more about it!

I like that Square Enix has gotten more consistent about having demos, I just wish all their demos were as good. Dragon Quest XI was excellent, but it probably got special treatment from being an older game. Neo TWEWY was just enough for me - nice simple introduction, no enforced time limit even if its chunk of gameplay wasn't that long, and then the full game really picks up right after. But Octopath 1's demo nearly put me off of it; Cyrus's dialogue took up so much of the limit I just barely had time to pick up a second character and start to see some of the appeal. Octopath 2 did what it needed to do to sell me, but I wouldn't have minded some more time or save slots so I felt less rushed and could've gone into the full game with more already done. (I ended up restarting because I wanted to check out other stories but then didn't want them locked into the party.)
Then Bravely Default 2, throwing me right in to something I had zero investment in, totally destroyed any interest I might've had in the game.

Breaking Free's a huge guilty pleasure of mine from NEO and World Is Yours rules, I can never decide which boss theme's my favorite ( mostly just ends up which ever one I listened to last ) but man is it a strong contender

Could not look any more like Jet Set Radio.
Which isn't a bad thing!

@Nanami_Ataraxia Still think the demo's worth a try if you ever want to!

Bowser is radiating Jack Black energy here to me, which to be clear I'm not against!

@RupeeClock It kills me every time I remember seeing the few high-res original backgrounds we have pictures of for FF9, and how even more beautiful they are, that the rest were lost and 9 is forever stuck with the PS1-compressed, pixel crushed versions they've still got
I appreciate the AI upscaling mod, but there's still information lost it can only guess at, which is a tragedy to me

Yeah, that's about what I expected. I've tried Partitio the Merchant and Ochette the Hunter's opening chapters in the demo, and there's a lot of improvements here and there I really like. If you like Octopath 1 at all, like I did, it's more of that, and better; seems like a worthy sequel! If you hated 1, though, I can't imagine 2 changing your mind.

Hope that means they finally give the next Sonic game enough budget and time. He's still a decently big mascot in spite of everything, and Sega should act like it.

@Coxula I mean, I know the HD-2D style isn't for everybody and even for me the depth-of-field can be a little much, but the difference is that these games are making a deliberate style, not just smearing old sprites. The actual sprites remain sharp when they're in focus!

Now I wonder how much of the support stuff is art - do they just have dozens of artists on standby after wrapping most of a Xenoblade and it's like "okay, sure, we can have them whip up some models for you while we're at it"

Scarlet/Violet's performance feels like the biggest proof I've seen that even Nintendo's second-party developers were maybe expecting a more powerful Switch by now.
Unfortunately not all developers have the time or ability to squeeze BotW-like performance out of old hardware, so a boost would be nice if they don't want everything but first-party titles falling behind.

Live A Live's about the only game I've actually played this year. It's good, though! Play it!
I've joked about it really being a 1994 game, which makes it even being up for 2022 game lists great. But I think the ending here, which wasn't fully present in the original, would make it a true GOTY contender on its own.

@BlackenedHalo I think a lot of the love for 6 comes down to the US only getting 1, 4, and 6. 6 ("3") must've seemed like a huge step forward from 4 ("2"), with just generally more.
Whereas if you play chronologically you'd know some of the "new" stuff in 6 actually came from 5, and if you liked the job system 6 would seem like a step back from 5, instead of just naturally expanding on 4.

I wonder if Live-A-Live's hit any milestones since the 500k sales back in September, because it absolutely deserves more eyes on it too

OCTOPATH 2 BABY GAME OF THE YEAR

okay, considering the first one I probably shouldn't get too hyped, but so far it seems to answer all my problems with the first (more character interaction! more unique abilities! world's so big you get to move a ship around yourself and there looks to be way more visual variety!) so I just can't control myself