CoastersPaul

I hope one of them's Bravely Default 2 so I can finally try the demo without having to wait forever if I end up liking it a lot (which I probably will, given how much I liked Octopath.)

Graphically, it doesn't really look that much worse to me than the rough spots in Sword & Shield.

@Bl4ckb100d I'll take that bet, given it explicitly won't be. Please send $10 at your leisure.

@fatleon5 Plot-wise (and slightly style-wise) it secretly ends up being a Persona/SMT game (whoops) but the battle system's pretty unique so it's hard to really compare it to anything else.

The Switch version has A New Day that teases a direct sequel, so surely TWEWY 2 is happening eventually, but RIP everyone who doesn't want a direct sequel.

Isabelle got done dirty in this one. She takes over right as the announcements start slowing to a crawl. :/

14/21. There's a running theme with the ones I missed:

Xeodrifter (never heard of it)
Hyper Light Drifter
Abzu
Everspace (never heard of it)
Velocity 2X (never heard of it)
Sky Rogue (never heard of it)
Tricky Towers (never heard of it)

Apparently in Japanese it has the normal name for Banzai Bills. Why they changed it to something else over here, I have no idea.

I like Japan's, but it's really playing down the fantasy parts of the setting that Europe's mostly showing.
NA has a nice balance, and it's nice and minimalist besides the very good logo.

I want to like Europe's, but Sonic just looks off. Mostly, he needs to be brighter... and that face needs to be totally redone.

NA it is, then.

FF7R will definitely see boosts if there's a PC release, when the PS5 comes out, after the PS4 version's price drops, and when the sequels come out. It was always going to have a long tail rather than being a mainstream success; I'm sure Squeenix is pretty happy with it as is.

Europe makes the ship's... unfortunate shape not stand out as much, which makes it the best IMO

@mystman12 Banjo-Kazooie had, e.g., underwater versions of level themes. Some levels had a few more versions.

I'd at least like to be warned about announcements. It absolutely sucks to be first introduced to the existence of a new Paper Mario by people complaining about it on social media.

Very surprised Konami decided to do a nice thing like this. Not to the extent Square Enix has, of course, but Nintendo could learn from both of them and put a bunch of soundtracks somewhere we can legally listen to them instead of just randomly taking down fan uploads of them with no replacement.

@TheFullAndy Ring Fit Adventure's been hard to get, and demand's also been driven up by people trying to stay inside. It'll probably tail off once things return to normal.
FFVII Remake will probably see bursts of sails for the PS5, when the sequels come out, and if there's ever the rumored PC port. But it's been selling decently in the rest of the world, too - it's sold over 3.5 million copies in three days, also according to Famitsu (compare Animal Crossing's 11.77 million in 11 days.)
Also, this chart's ignoring digital copies. Including those, it sold a million copies just in Japan in three days!
TL;DR: FFVII Remake's doing alright for itself and it's dumb to try to use it as evidence for a console war.

I'm desperately hoping that they're holding back EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings just so they can release a trilogy collection. They won't, but wouldn't it be nice?

@Octane I'd guess anything further away is at risk of being delayed, so they'd rather just do individual announcements of things they're sure of right now.

I think under normal circumstances, it'd have eventually passed this mark.
Current circumstances definitely sped things up.

@AtlanteanMan Bridges are the one thing that CAN be placed diagonally!

... Agreed on all the rest.

@Incoherent1 Zelda games have kind of been staggered across generations in modern times. The GameCube got Wind Waker and Twilight Princess along with the Wii, which also got Skyward Sword. The Wii U didn't get a unique Zelda to start off with (but Wii backwards compatibility, the HD remasters, and the virtual console still leave it as the console that can play the most Zeldas, I think), but it got Breath of the Wild along with the Switch.

BotW 2 could be getting a simultaneous release with a Switch successor if this pattern holds, but who can guess?

You could point to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, which on paper this is closer to, but I wouldn't be surprised if this one takes longer. Times have changed, and these games are huge now.

@duffmmann As I understand it, you've got it backwards. IIRC, Bravely Second is a direct sequel to Bravely Default, and Bravely Default II is a standalone game with new characters.

I hope someone reverse-engineers the pattern codes so we can edit patterns on a computer or something and scan them in from there.

Japan >> US > Europe IMO

My username here and everywhere is just two letters over the 10 character limit Nintendo seems to use everywhere and it hurts.
Currently going by CœstrsPaul on the Switch, and I hate it.

Final Fantasy forfeited their right to make movies after making The Spirits Within exist. I guess the VII movie wasn't entirely bad?

If they were ever going to try a Final Fantasy movie again, I think it'd be best to go for the earliest games, since the games didn't really have established main characters, they wouldn't have to cut out very much of the plot, and they could easily add in more plot if needed.

Mark me down for wanting to see Mario Kart and The Furious, though, if only to see how dumb it is.

The Spanish Flu in 1918 was also just a flu. That doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal.

So far the coronavirus has been better contained, but the death rate among people who have been infected is getting up there. On the order of 20 times more deadly than the normal seasonal flu is no small deal. (Also people are seriously underrating how much regular flu sucks, anyway.)

I'm betting more people like Gardevoir over Gengar for... art reasons.

I'll catch it if/when they upload it to YouTube. GDC's generally pretty good about that.

Sakurai's treated each Smash game as his last for a while now.

I'm apparently probably alone in this, but
Europe > North America > Japan.

Japan's even cheesier and it just doesn't work for me here. Europe manages to turn that into something cool. NA isn't GOOD, but it is very N64, and that has a certain charm to me.

Sometimes I wonder how differently things would've gone if EarthBound 64 had come out. Would it have done well enough to lure more RPGs to the system? How would it have held up against FFVII? Would Square have come back to Nintendo systems sooner? We'll never know - we don't even know how exactly different it would've been from the Mother 3 we actually got! - but it's fun to speculate.

I haven't played many of the other games, but Baba is You and LM3 absolutely deserve those awards.

Is Untitled Goose Game the best game of 2019? Probably not. Is it the most relevant game of 2019? I'd argue it is, and I'd argue that makes it a worthy GOTY contender. Death Stranding hype died down quickly after the actual game was revealed and released. People were honking about Untitled Goose Game forever. It was a meme because, deep down, it resonated with people; it was a very simple concept pulled off very well. It's short, yes, but more games could stand to be a bit shorter. I'd argue it's better for games to leave people wanting more than for them to overstay their welcome.

@Agramonte December is always the big month for buying games/systems, and the big games are released before then instead of after.

January 2019 had Smash Ultimate in mid-December to keep sales going, and NSMBUD did fairly well, so I'd bet it was above average for a January.

Can't wait for more oddly specific dating sims.

If this gets a fraction as big as Dream Daddy, maybe the big companies will start churning these out like they used to with generic FPS games.

Squeenix has been very generous with a lot of their demos - Octopath's the only one I've tried that was more restricted, and even that still let me get two characters and finish both their first chapters, which was just enough to sell me on the game.
Here's hoping this one's also good.

@LaytonPuzzle27 Fallen Order was actually made in Unreal, and there are already Unreal Engine games on the Switch. Yoshi, for one.

There was pretty major backlash from some "fans" when Terry was revealed. I'm sure everyone will forget this once they can start hating the next one.

Theory 3½: Pikmin 4 existed, but some of Miyamoto's earlier references to it or the next Pikmin game were misinterpreted and actually about Hey! Pikmin. So development didn't start on Pikmin 4 until much later than some people might think.

... Which still doesn't fully explain things, but I think it's likely that there was at least a bit of that.

@TheGameSquid Ultimately, I'd rather more companies do this than just avoid taking what might sound like a risk, but... yeah, this is basically just a glorified pre-order with a bit more riding on it at this point.
But the Wii U version being out for years means potential backers can make a more informed decision about this, at least.

@mother_brain_85 I don't think the problem is that Nintendo wouldn't have given them 50k for an exclusive Switch port - for all I know, Nintendo might've given them even more as an exclusive. But Nintendo definitely wouldn't have given them 700k+ and the freedom to bring it to an even larger audience.

@KBuckley27 Oops, it's already there.

@HardcoreDaBoss Personally, I won't settle for anything less than a Switch that can run 4K60 in portable mode, burns my hands and lasts thirty minutes on a single charge.

More consistent resolution and/or higher framerates docked would be quite nice, but a portable system has to make trade-offs that regular consoles don't.

I don't think Mario Kart 8's success means anywhere near that many would pick up a Mario Kart 9. Its sales go up whenever hardware sales go up - it may be The game to get with your Switch, with nearly a 50% attach rate, but I'm not sure how many of those people are a)still using their Switches, b)still buying games instead of being content with everything they picked up then, and c)interested in buying another Mario Kart in particular.

I was hoping they'd finally make it more stable!

Geno. Partnered with Waluigi. Totally confirmed.

@ralphdibny She had to stop partway through on the hardest difficulty - the linked article said "The fight that eventually does her in is the same fight she’d made it to at seven hours and 18 minutes when the game was set to its easiest difficulty."

@Grumblevolcano Mario Maker 2 multiplayer was absolutely terrible at launch, even when I moved somewhere with much faster internet, but I've found it's run way better after the playing with friends update.

The worst case for the Switch Pro is a Wii U repeat, not a New 3DS repeat. I doubt a Switch Pro would outpower an XB1 or PS4 (and if it did, RIP battery life), so sending it out right around the time the XBSX and PS5 are getting hyped up might be a bad look.
Let them play their cards first, let mobile technology advance a bit more, and THEN release a Switch follow-up.

"Assuming Nintendo hasn't hacked its own copy of the game (which it hasn't)"

But they probably aren't using the retail version. There's no guarantee anything in a development version will make it to a release.