Whirlwound

Classy move to let the mistake stand for those who already got it.

Still getting the physical version though.

Think I might’a just found my main, y’all.

Nintendo of America may be seeking to maintain a more family-friendly image.

Horsecrap. They wouldn’t allow all these Hentai, Ecchi & Oppai “games” through if that was the case. Like people can’t find out what those words mean.

Case Tetris.

Ten days to go. Nine if you count the hotel up at Newcastle Airport.

Also got to play Lawson Ticket a little for the Ghibli museum, JR•com for a rail pass and Saily for an e-SIM.

@syrupdash And yet so many devs do. Props to AdHoc/CR for bucking that BS with such a huge title.

So hold up a mo.

Someone’s just swiped CloverPit, name, look and all, stuck the word Gamble on the title and that’s IT?!

Probably banking on it being not worth suing over - either for the cost or any returns from it.

Come o-o-o-o-o-o-nnnnn-AH!

This bodes well for CR’s own planned game with AdHoc coming our way too then.

Also from what I’ve been reading, it could possibly be their next big venture, with a second season, actual animation series and TTRPG setting. It would work well with Daggerheart, given the whole hope/fear basis of any hero/villain themed works.

On iOS/'droid as well, so even when I don't have a Switch on me (sooooo many thieves around here) it's gonna nom on my time like it's a jugular.

Welp, that's my life done I guess.

@Vyacheslav333 Or R•Type LEO. They’re almost physically allergic to doing that.

£67 for functional access to 14 games. Eventually.

Not even including the eight .jp-exclusive releases.

And it's in the Expansion Pack, so you got to pay more for it there an'all.

Yeah, how about nope.

Although if they can make that cardboard headset NS2-friendly, they can do it for Nintendo Labo stuff.

Right?

And that's with barely any (functional) (non-flubbed) real world marketing at all.

Imagine what they could have done with a game we've been waiting 18 years plus for if they'd, y'know, tried.

So stable. So, so very stable.

I can live with that though. Last thing I want is my gear falling to bits on the plane at New Years.

Retail checking in. People are 🫏🕳️s.

My gaff was stupid enough to put £50 boxes of PTCG on shelves without tags or alarms. They weren’t there long.

Still, that’s always what’ll happen when you plant a site slap-ass-bang in the middle of two notoriously thief-infested areas. Seven 4K TVs nicked inside of a week not so long ago…

Eastern box art shows more of the table, but Western puts our grrl - y’know, the actual focal point/protagonist of the whole darn series - squarely in place as the primary focus.

Because of that, EU/NA takes it for me.

Well, I was planning to make a few dents in my backlog, rebuild my Ouendan 1+2 saves after re-acquiring the cartridges, maybe a little Devil May Cry 3...

...oh, who the hell am I kidding. Eighteen years plus is way too long.

PRIME. FREAKING. 4.

Great. Wondrous. I’ve already been unable to play some stuff on iOS/iPadOS because it gets locked behind a Netflix sub, and I don’t have, need or want one - I can only envision that getting worse.

Too many things leaving a sour tang, as The Draw Play might put it on the old Chaos Report there.

The whole GKC bassline to the console rumbles on apace (what's the current percentage of True Physicals vs GKCs again - and 93 gigs for FF7RI?!), and it feels like we're still being left behind on some of the AAA darlings of the current scene - Blue Prince, Clair Obscur Ex33, Dispatch, Pure Pool Pro - same way we were on the OG. Not much word on devkits getting out there either.

It's decent enough in and of itself, but if I knew things surrounding were going to be like this, I might not have Day-1'ed it. Probably would have waited until I got back from Japan. 7/10.

[Prime 4 drops through the letterbox as I type]

...

7.5.

OG cartridge preordered, NS2 update.

Eventually for the latter.

BECAUSE THE GIANT STEAMING DIPS**TS HAVE ONLY GONE AND BLOCKED MY DEBIT CARD AND PAYPAL ON THE ESHOP. AND ONLY THE ESHOP. AGAIN.

How many times have we got to do this sodding dance? I don’t have multiple debit cards or Paypals. Nintendo does NOT get to dictate how I use my data or money - they just have a problem with people using a VPN port or switching to a different WiFi hotspot if one falls over.

I’ve just been in London the past two days caning the damn thing! Woodall Services going down and coming back! Corner shop twice! Sainsbury’s twice! Five Guys! Two merch stalls in Wembley Arena at Monday night’s gig! I got Raiden Nova & Cipheur Trivia fine while in my hotel; I even ordered an Animal Crossing tote and a pair of pin badges using some platinum points - how d’you think I covered the two quid shipping?

But then I saw Air Twister - remember, Not-Space-Harrier-Honest-Guv? - and up pops those familiar old error messages.

This 30-day arbitrary softlock officially knackers me for doing anything with my card or PayPal on the eShop for the rest of the year. Ironically it might do me a bit of good with the Japan trip less than four weeks off.

But here’s the coda: I can get around it. Buy an eShop voucher code.

Which I can do on Amazon.

USING THE EXACT SAME DEBIT CARD THEY’VE BLOCKED. BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT.

Question that keeps going through my noggin, though: Why the actual blue arse should I have to?

@dartmonkey Huh. I didn’t know that was an across-the-board thing when there’s versions available for both. Hades II I knew about, but I thought that was as far as it went.

Even in the week of Metroid Prime 4 getting released - two days away, no less - they just can’t be arsed with any Samus-flavoured stuff.

It’s not so much games I’m looking at. I was hoping for micro SD-EX cards to get a bit more off them than has been shown, but I might be able to spread it out a little - £32 a month doesn’t sting nearly as much as £169 all in one go.

Plus, I’ve been good enough to squeeze in Hades 2 just before payday - my very first physical NS2 card.

Needs the GB Light as well. Going to be hunting for one of them in a little over a month.

Never got on with the US SNES look. Too boxy, and Parma Violet buttons. Glad we got the Super Famicom look here - but even back then the JP packaging rocked.

@SegaDude113 Even if it wasn't small, you can't tell me it isn't possible to have a split physical-download game on NS2.

All this talk before about how the cards aren't fast enough for audio streaming. Fine. Have the card hold the actual game, and download the audio to the internal storage or any micro-SD-EX you might have.

Let's say that could happen with FF7 Intergrade. If the card can hold 64GB, it would go from a 93GB minimum download to under 30. Yes, I know, janky maths, it assumes much, but they know something like that would be possible. How long have we been running games off of discs with a download after first use and/or installation?

I was going to head into work today, make up the time I missed thanks to a whole swathe of buses being late.

But, y'know, since they tried to make out like that was entirely my fault... screw'em. In the eye. With a rocket-propelled chainsaw.

I just landed the two Ouendan DS games again after my original copies got nicked — strangely, they didn't bother with Elite Beat Agents... Just a shade over £31 for the pair unboxed, and they're working perfectly; methinks someone didn't know what they had. They're that good, I have no issues double-dipping - plus, my saves will have gone, I get to go through them from scratch again. And now I have a New 2DS, bigger screen, less hand cramp. Woohoo!

Yes, I know, tiny stylus - I use an automatic pencil, far more comfortable. Novotel Southampton replenishes my stock every MinamiCon without even knowing it 😈

Also, Once Upon A Katamari dropped yesterday, so that's on the menu too. Always a fun time with the Prince.

First three episides of The Mighty Nein to go through first though. OH MY STARS IS IT GOOD.

Then Wicked For Good tomorrow, and Dark Heresy after that.

They can do it when they wanna.

Gonna be my first red card once payday drops. Shocking it’s taken this long to break my duck.

Having thaaaaaaaaaat~~~~~♪

@DennyCrane When I was at college all them moons ago in the late '80s, I could get as far as Level 5 of the original on one credit. So technically, I completed the first PC Engine release

Dobkeratops, the orange Giger-esque alien who is almost R•Type's answer to Ridley (he gets a kicking almost every game in the series) is an iconic boss, but Level 3's dreadnought is still a Hall of Fame stage in my book — and Level 2's boss is severely WTF-esque.

Delta's always been great, but there's still the one everyone forgets - R•Type LEO. Completely changes things up - no Force, no Wave Cannon, just the homing side pods and mostly new powerups.

Nope, I’m good for stuff turning up the rest of the year: Once Upon A Katamari, R-Type Delta Remastered, Hades 2 True Physical when it drops and Prime 4.

Please. Bananza has about as much chance of taking this as I do of being named starting quarterback for Miami. It’s just there to make up the numbers.

Ironic that Elite Beat Agents is the only one of the Ouendan games to make it (at least beyond the header image), despite having the weakest narrative and tracks of all three titles.

I mean sure, it’s the only one most of us will have played, but the hype over the Japanese games was huge back at release. Same went for Jump Super/Ultimate Stars. And the music? Come on. Hotei Tomoyasu. Orange Range. L’arc~en~ciel (classics like Monkey Magic & Ready Steady Go for crying out loud). The Anthem and Sk8er Boi don’t really cut it in comparison.

Y’know, it’s probably just as well if we don’t get an MP4 Direct. The bike was a really big reveal that I don’t think needed to happen; would have been a hell of a laugh to just trip over it and see the reactions.

Not going near the sparkles on the logo, then.

Once is a one-off. Twice, a coincidence. Thrice? At the very least, it’s the emergence of a pattern. Especially given that it’s still happening 20 years on too.

Considering a physical NS1 buy, hoping for an upgrade route.

Look at Sega. They’re doing it right. Mostly.

Doshin on NSO GC when?

[Glares in Chozo]

Quality assurance? Ha.

Ai can’t even answer the basic questions I ask it.

Who was the female singer of Roxette? Per Gessle. [That’s the bloke. It was Marie Fredriksson, who died in 2019.] Who did Don Shula coach before the Miami Dolphins? The Baltimore Ravens. [The Ravens didn’t exist until the 90s, when the Cleveland Browns relocated there - it was the then-still-in-Baltimore Colts.)

Is there a Switch 2-specific demo coming?

Dunno. Doubt it. Dropped off New Leaf ages back; I dread to think what state the isle of Nekomi is in by now - and I probably wouldn’t sink the same hours into New Horizons.

The market rate for the physical NS1 version is probably going to spike now anyway, that’ll cancel it out.

Easy enough to find if you know where to look.

Or you know who could do the looking for you.

@TheDragonDAFan Is that so they can have something that’s physical - ‘cos it ain’t gonna be the game itself?

Nice! Progress!

I hope Dogubomb & Raw Fury are watching…

I was going to go for this, but then I saw a playthrough on Twitch and thought [snrk] NOPE. No way I’m beating THAT.

Still more than three weeks before my physical copy drops.

The fact this book even exists should mean that Echoes & Corruption remasters have to be coming sometime soon. With the new one right around the corner, it makes no sense for them not to be all available on one platform, where the current fanbase can appreciate what they were, are, will be - and can be.

Metroid has always been a little too much in certain other IPs’ shadow. Samus and her games helped define a whole genre. You don’t see people referring to Marioformers. Final Ragers. Fatal Street Kombat…

…but everyone knows Metroidvania. Billing shared with Konami, sure, but the name stands on its own.

Everything else bearing the name Metroid that can be played on the Switch is there - only the DS games couldn’t be because that NSO Classics set hasn’t happened (and even then they’re remakes already). The remaining Primes deserve that self same courtesy. If this was Mario games we were talking about, they would get it.

The Metroid franchise is as much of a pillar, a flagship of what Nintendo is today as them plumber chaps. They would do well to remember that.

Oh. They don’t want my money anymore then.

@Pj1 I'm up in Durham, with not much time off left to burn - I want to keep hold of that should I be able to make it to MinamiCon 31 next March after all. Meanwhile I'll definitely be in Tokyo & Kyoto in the new year.