Cotillion

Headlines make this sound like they accomplished something.
This is like arresting a kid doing drugs on the sidewalk and claiming you brought down the entire cartel.
They wanted a big headline to try to scare people and that's all they got. This wasn't even a blip compared to whats out there and the ease of access we have to it. But congrats, I guess lol

I have no need for a PS5. What does it offer that I can't get better elsewhere? A few exclusive games? It's not enough.
The Switch brand has the dual nature and Nintendo exclusives, so it will always have a certain appeal.
The PS5 to me is just a non-upgradable PC with far less uses. Microsoft sees the writing on the wall and is adapting their model. Nintendo (re)invented) a hybrid system to stay relevant and its working for them, well enough its sparked numerous others to do the same (Steam, RoG, etc..). I'm all for it. Put the software out there, but let me decide what hardware to use based on what I want.
The last bit I take to mean they are paying to have games exclusive. Which I am over. Just feels like being strong-armed into buying a console because they didn't know how else to be enticing. The only exclusives you should have are the ones you make yourself or if the developers chooses to do so without monetary incentive. Sony just feels like a relic clinging to a console war that has long since faded away.

Consoles launches used to be fun times to look forward to.
Now, I feel like all I see are specs and numbers. And a list of acronyms for features that I can't even discern a difference.
The argument used to be that a console you could just plug it in and play. Now, you have incompatibilities with different specs of different hardware with different TVs. Does the system list of acronyms match the list of acronyms that my TV has?
People really seem to not know how to enjoy something and have fun anymore without some spec sheet with numbers telling them if it's 'fun and enjoyable' or not.

People have been going on about features the Switch needed, and Nintendo did add them and more into the Switch 2. This price point is exactly why the Switch wasn't as advanced as people wanted. Did people think these things were free?
Now that Switch 2 actually has mostly everything people wanted, they don't want to pay for it. They could have brought a Switch 2 that was at the $300 price point, but then it'd be endless complaining about how lackluster it was. There's literally no winning here.

The software on the other hand......

If you're like me, put the Skell off. I absolutely loved this game and still do, but I found it lost something once I was able to just fly everywhere. Like enabling a cheat code.

I like how the article acts like this 'third' emulator is lal there is, or that Yuzu/Ryujinx are dead. There's others, forks of the aforementioned, still going strong and work great.
Nintendo doesn't end anything, and anyone who thinks they do is kidding themselves. They killed Yuzu and several forks of it emerged.

NA, easy. The classic sword art and gold background and a cut out revealing the golden cart inside was so iconic that it still stands out in my mind from the first time I saw it.

NA/Euro is iconic, easy choice for me. Especially with the logo.

Japanese one is cool box art.....but it's not Double Dragon. Looks like some kind of sci-fi fighting game.

"reaffirmed the idea that the future of the series might not be an exclusively open-world, 3D affair."
Why does this keep popping up? Who thinks Zelda is going to be limited, ever? This is the franchise Nintendo seems to mess around with the most. Top-down, side scrolling, 3D, touch control, motion control, open world, 3rd party releases, time travel, multi-player, not to mention the wildly varying art styles.....
It has never once crossed my mind that Nintendo would put Zelda in a rut and stick with it. I fully expect at some point they will revisit side-scrolling more on top of whatever other different things they do with it in the future.

New 3DS XL
It's no contest and doesn't matter what the smaller models might have had, I needed that bigger model for comfortable gaming.

Dark Samus, Phazon and everything from the trilogy doesn't need to be in this. That was all wrapped up nicely.

I'm hoping Nintendo is using the 'Prime' name for the 1st person games going forward and just 'Metroid' for the 2D traditional ones.

North America.
It's Zelda, it doesn't need flash or an overly busy box art. Simplicity can say alot more.
The European one is alright, but still better than the Japanese one. Its just too busy and tries too hard.

@mlj11 Lets say Nintendo allowed people to use Mario and Peach in a fan made game that introduced different mechanics. Nothing bad, but lets say in the style of a Metroidvania, but same light, cartoony fun we expect from Mario. No one is making money off it, its not being used to advertise anything else, it's just there for people to play. All is good.
Now, lets have someone else follow that up and make a full-on porn game with Mario and Peach. Or one where Mario goes full Mortal Kombat or Doom-like violence. Non profit, no advertising, exact same as the aforementioned one. How does Nintendo shut down the porn or violent games while letting the Metroidvania one exist? They can't, or at least have a much harder time because they have allowed it before. The precedent was set that they allow their IP to be used unlicensed, so it's a much harder fight should the ones using it fight back.
They could try and govern it on a per-use basis, but now we're talking more costs than what they are doing currently.
So instead, they have set the precedent that they do not allow usage. At all. Its far easier for them to do it this way. They'll never stop it, they'll never catch it all, but they are protecting themselves and their IP by maintaining the precedent that they do not allow their IP to be used unlicensed.

Regardless, this isn't even a debate. Nintendo owns their IP and will do what they want with them.

@Samalik I know you're arguing against what I said, but actually just make the point. Just because they're not a small Indie means they should be giving up their rights to protect their IP as they see fit?
How exactly do they govern this? For every innocent fan art or game of Peach, there's likely 10x more of her in porno situations. They can't allow one and not the other, by your argument. People want fan art of their favourite characters...that extends well into the realm of sex & violence. Good luck taking that down when you have a precedent of allowing your characters to be used in any number of other ways.
People always assume its just about others making money off the IP, when there's other factors . Nintendo doesn't want Mario gun toting or in games of Mortal Kombat levels of violence or the roster of Smash Bros suddenly in an orgy arena instead of fighting. It's all about the precedent.

Edit - to be clear, I am not even on the Nintendo side of this, exactly. I play fan games, use fan art, play a lot of modded Nintendo games and whatnot. Hell, the best version of Zelda II is a fan mod. But, I can just see why Nintendo does the things it does and frankly, its ridiculous anyone thinks Nintendo should just allow people to do whatever they want with their IP.

It's funny to watch people argue over this as it's entirely dependant on who it is; in this case it's Nintendo.

Change Nintendo to a small indie studio trying to launch an IP and someone else starts using it. In this case most everyone would be on the side of the small Indie trying to keep and protect their IP. But because it's Nintendo, its wrong.

@mlj11 Protect goes beyond financial and property loss. If Nintendo allows the sweet and innocent, they also have to allow the degrading, violent, horrific and pornographic, because a precedent was set in allowing others and precedent is everything. They're not going to govern each piece, they're going to blanket cover themselves and their IP against all of it. They don't want their characters portrayed in any way except how they want.

Nostalgia for Dragon Warrior will always win me over!

First glance at the title and I thought how annoying that would be. No surprise, its a bit misleading, because reading further into it, it sounds more like Majora's Mask, which I'd be into. Except that weird angular art style is really hard for me to look at, so likely not.

Sounds like they're going full backward compatibility, and they're not worried about software sales because of it. Go ahead and buy Switch games now, they'll still work on the new one.

Its a canned response. Nothing more, nothing less.

Physical sales are still enough to warrant doing them, so they will. Until they aren't profitable enough to warrant doing them.

Bold claim since I'm already not happy about it
I'm likely not going to see this, just because I don't want to give Link a voice and personality.

And I do find it off-putting how much he's stressing he's a fan.

Yeah, I know I'm being awfully negative about a movie not even made yet, but I just don't think Zelda is something that's going to translate to the big screen very well at all.

@MK73DS I'm glad someone pointed this stuff out. Its too bad most will just jump on the Nintendo hate bandwagon instead of trying to see the whole picture.

Switch has already beaten PS2 as best selling game console.
PS2 was one of the best selling DVD players. Its well known it was the cheapest and best DVD player you could get at the time.

There was a poll in Japan and of those polled 60% used their PS2 primarily as a DVD player. Not that it wasn't a great console, but it's legacy is blown up due to this. I'd love to see a game console be top selling for the merit of being a game machine.

I honestly don't even know who some of these characters even are...
Iconic to me would be that people outside gaming would even recognize them.

Neither of these are great, but Japan wins just by having all 4 Turtles at least. The art still isn't great and why blur out the rest of the line up? I understand they're in the background....but it's supposed to be enticing, not photo accurate effects on a drawn picture of mutant turtles.

I love how paying customers have become beta-testers.

Some of these aren't a surprise at all.
Prime 4....development restarted during the Switch lifetime, no one should have realistically thought we were gonna see this anytime soon.
XBX....the devs stated this would be too time consuming and too much work to port over and that they'd rather work on new stuff. Somehow its surprising that they did what they said?
Prime 3.....that's a lot of work redoing those controls. Can be done, but not expecting it, since I feel like we're lucky we got Skyward Sword redone and that's in a much better selling franchise.

And so on....factor realism into this and you can shrink the list substantially.

No....I'm not.
I can't justify paying $70 CDN for a GBA game when I can get several other titles on sale for the same amount of money.
Sorry Nintendo, but these days, I gotta make the dollar go further.

People have been predicting Switch 2 since the Switch first came out.
Its years of rumours, "leaks" and whatnot that leads so many people to disappointment when the actual release and product aren't what these rumours have built them up to be over years.

Just rumours, people. Read and treat them as interesting, sure, but remember not one bit of it is real until Nintendo says it is.

Totally agree with this.
All CGI trailers with no gameplay have the opposite of the intended effect on me.
Why aren't they showing actual gameplay? It's either way too early and the game is years away or they aren't confident enough in it to show the actual thing they want to sell me. Either way, hype killed.

Y'all are gonna be lucky to have much physical media at all, let alone this kind of thing.
Besides, its not even something you see, so what's the point? The NES (left open or toploader), SNES, n64, Game Boy line....you saw those cartridges when they were in the system and they were a lot bigger, so the snazzy colours made sense. Seems pointless for a cart that is tiny and you never see except when swapping.

They're cool and all, but no way in hell at that price. Not sure how they justify that for a different paint job,

I'd never seen that European one before and it just got my vote. Combines the gray classic I know with art that reflects how Samus looks in this game.
The "Classic Series" one is nice and all, but thats Metroid II artwork and Samus didn't even have that suit in the original game (a point driven home by Zero Mission)

Onboard storage, I don't really care how much there is. It's other options that I want. Like an empty m.2 slot in conjunction with an SD card slot. Let me pick out the storage I need and want.

Its amazing how a small shift in context changes everything.
Have a collection game memorabilia? Chances are it gets viewed as childish and what a waste of money.
Have a collection of sports memorabilia? Fantastic, what a diehard fan, wow thats awesome!

This is what I run into all the time and its so stupid.

I really didn't enjoy the Wii. I get why it was a phenomenon, but it was just a gimmick and not a good control scheme. I skipped so many games during this era because I loathed the forced gimmick controls. I'm very glad the Switch moved away from it.

Nintendo, among many other devs, need to take a page from older tutorials like MMX and the OG Super Mario for their modern games.
They don't need to be a slog, take over the pacing or control from the player to force-feed an information dump. Games like MMX did it perfectly. Its a tutorial stage that doesn't feel at all like a tutorial stage and just part of the game. Doesn't stop everything to tell you buttons or whatever else (unfortunately, also usually told to you by some unnecessary and/or annoying NPC. HEY! LISTEN!). Instead puts you in a situation where you need to actually play the game (omg!) to learn it.

Wow, some people are very opposed to open world Zelda.
Ironic how they claim they want traditional Zelda instead, but TotK is essentially the OG Zelda in 3D modern form.
People really tend to forget that Zelda started as open world.

The only surprising thing here is how many people still get so upset over this, at this point. It's been years and nothing has changed. Except we now have companies like Limited Run preying on the situation with artificially scarce runs and inflated prices (and humorously people praise them for it).
Decided early in the Switch lifespan that this wasn't the hill I was gonna die on and definitely not worth it.
I'll just buy the game, slam it on an SD (behold, its now physical!) and just enjoy it, because that's the point of why I game....to enjoy the game, not bask in the glory of the media it's on.

The being said....putting a physical release out for a digital only game is very stupid and a waste of materials in this age when we're supposed to be cutting back on plastics and whatnot. Just put it in the eShop.

This game is actually pretty decent and it's reputation is worse than the game actually is. It would take very little to modernize it and rid the stigma.
Adjust the difficulty spike at Death Mountain, fix the translation and what the NPCs say to make sense and fix the respawn to the start to the start of dungeons/caves/last town visited.

Wow, you can easily look at these comments and pick out the people who have never even looked at Gamepass and just blindly rejecting the notion.

I voted "I guess" because I don't really care. There's like 12 devices in my house that can stream, so I don't really care if I have another one that can or not.

This wouldn't be a thing if they didn't make money off it. Companies continue to do this stuff because people buy it....and there will always be people who will.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles was always meant to be one game. It's stupid to list them separately, IMO.
The combined, true and intended form of the game is far superior than either separately.

What would have been truly great is if this one sale was the one to push the Wii U over some sort of milestone lol

It's been happening for many years, but never fails to amaze me how many people will buy a new console that is exactly the same, just in a different color scheme.
Do the people who do this keep the original/other colors and just use the newest or keep a collection of them?

Zelda has never been about consistent lore. The series changes what it needs to, when it needs to. As they've stated themselves, it's in the title - "Legend". They really don't care about maintaining a canon lore in this series and never has.
And IMO, the worst thing Nintendo can do is start adhering to a firm lore and timeline as it ties their hands.

I would, if consoles would catch up to how its been on PC.
Digital games tied to my account, not the system, that work on future systems.

Neither are great.....
The NA does look like an album cover, but I appreciate its simplicity over the crowded Japanese one. Japanese box art seems to want to cram everything they can onto it and I find them too busy a lot of the time.

This should surprise noone.
Props to them for trying to get this on Switch, but as expected the sacrifices made are just too much.
I find the Switch visuals hard to look at sometimes because it seems like it's out of focus.
Skipping this entirely on Switch. I would have rather a Klassic Kollection of the arcade and SNES trilogy for Switch.

They've effectively killed themselves. By removing the retroactive and saying this only applies going forward.....anyone with any common sense is going to look into other options going forward. They pulled this once, why risk more crap with them in the future.