DanElectrode

It's kind of a genius move to run "snapshot mode" at 30fps and crank up the visual settings, it means that all the pictures shared by the press and on social media will make the game look just a teensy bit better than it does in practice (which usually goes the other way, as anybody will tell you that Mario Kart, for example, looks better in person than in stills or on Youtube because the high framerate makes everything look so smooth and vibrant in person).

@BlueOcean Yeah — I mean, that was my point originally, I would've rather spent the money I spent on Arms on Yooka-Laylee instead, but it wasn't out.

If there's another prolonged dead space between Mario Odyssey and when Nintendo's other platformers (Yoshi and Kirby) start coming out in 2018, I might wind up picking it up anyway.

@BlueOcean It's not that it's the "hit of the week," it's that based on the middling critical reaction that Yooka-Laylee got, it would've been passable as a hold-over until the AAA titles started coming out, but it kind of missed that window and now there's going to be a steady stream of higher-rated games coming out, and I only have a certain amount of dollars to spend on video games.

It's more just the combination of these factors — if Yooka-Laylee had received better reviews, I'd probably get it anyway. If it had come out at a time when there were less options, I would have gotten it. But now that it's going to come out after Mario Odyssey, the highly-anticipated first-party game in the same genre that is receiving nothing but glowing early press, it makes it harder to justify the purchase of Yooka-Laylee as well.

@thesilverbrick It's a shame, because it would have fit perfectly into that dry spell and I would up buying a couple things that I regret now and probably would've enjoyed this more than (mainly ARMS... it's not bad, I'm just not a fighting game guy and $60 was a lot for a game that I lost interest in after about an hour).

@thesilverbrick Yeah, I was originally planning to buy this to tide me over between finishing BoTW and the release of Mario Odyssey, but it seems unlikely that it'll even come out before Mario Odyssey at this point and therefore I'll probably never get it (unless maybe there's another big Switch game dry spell after I've played Mario Odyssey to death).

@bluedogrulez The difference between "classic" and "modern" appears to be just that with "classic," when fielding you hit the direction of the base you want to throw to and the "throw" button, but with "modern," when fielding each button is mapped to a base, so you just hit the button corresponding to the base you want to throw to.

I have to say that, for $20, this game is pretty much exactly what I wanted for a baseball game on the Switch. I'm not interested in a super complex, in-depth "career mode," just wanted something I can pick up and play a few games in during the off-season when I've got the baseball itch, and I like that it has up-to-date rosters and the players license so you can play as your favorite team and not just a bunch of made-up goons like in the old Ken Griffey SNES games (which this is pretty similar to, gameplay-wise).

I will say that fielding is awkward and it's a lot more fun if you just enable the "fielding assist" mode. But pitching and batting are both implemented pretty perfectly, and that's the heart of any baseball game.

Batting in particular is refreshingly challenging, meaning you usually end up with a "realistic" final score, versus most baseball games where hitting is so unrealistically easy that you can put up double-digits in pretty much every inning.

I don't know if I buy the idea that they'll all have at least 60 just because one of them has 60+. Some of the "kingdoms" could be quite small and have only a couple, potentially.

Kind of like how in the video, just as Alex talks about how "every stage in Super Mario 64 has the same number of Power Stars," it shows a clip of Peach's Slide, which has only 2 (which I assume was done on purpose as a joke?).

@GamerZack87 It really bothers me in games where they forget the Koopalings exist and just have Bowser Jr. and Bowser co-existing. Bowser Jr. first appeared as "Baby Bowser" in Super Mario World 2: Yoshis Island, which of course is a prequel and Baby Bowser is just Bowser at an earlier stage in his life.

It's fine that they appear together in party and sports games, since Mario and Baby Mario also co-exist in those, but it's super weird in actual plot-based games like Mario Sunshine and the Galaxy games when Bowser and Bowser Jr. are just chilling together with no explanation.

@Tsurii The "Dragon Coins" in Super Mario World have Yoshi on them, so that would imply he's a dragon.

Although the fact that he lives in "Dinosaur Land" (the non-mushroom kingdom world Mario & co. visit in Super Mario World) would seem to imply that he is a dinosaur. Many of the other "dinosaurs" in Dinosaur Land spit fire too (Dino Rhinos, Reznors, etc), so the fact that Yoshi can spit fire wouldn't necessarily rule out that he's a dinosaur (or at least the closest equivalent in the Mario-verse).

I think the most likely explanation is that Yoshi is supposed to be a dinosaur, and that "Dragon Coin" was a result of an inaccurate translation, and probably should've been "Dino Coin" to begin with.

If I'm being completely honest, I probably wouldn't have bought Arms, Fast RMX or Splatoon 2 if it weren't for the dearth of new games in the eShop. I've been pleasantly surprised by Splatoon 2's hero mode, but I sort of regret the other two. I'm mostly just impatient for the Virtual Console to make it's way to the Switch (and Mario Odyssey, of course).

I believe they've made voice chat a pain on purpose because it's a nightmare for moderation and abuse. They're making the barrier intentionally high so only people who really want it will do it, and if people just use Discord or whatever, it's not their problem.

Personally I have no interest in listening to 12 year olds shout slurs at each other so it's not exactly something I will miss.

Looking forward to this! Hasn't been a decent MLB game on a Nintendo console in several generations

@DiscoDriver44 It's not even "modern" Mario games. If you simply play through Super Mario World and have even a modicum of skill you will quickly have dozens of extra lives.

Having a lot of lives, or removing the concept of "lives" altogether, doesn't really have any bearing on whether the game is difficult, so it's not really fair to jump to the conclusion that this means Super Mario Odyssey will be too easy.

The whole concept of "Game Over" is a holdover from arcade cabinets that were designed to relieve you of as many quarters as possible anyway (since generally "Game Over" implied "unless you insert more quarters to continue").

I'm guessing they never released it because it's probably not that great, but it makes sense now as an exclusive for the SNES mini to entice people into buying it who've already bought the other titles several times over.

I have giant hands and the Joy Con are pretty uncomfortable when playing in handheld mode, BUT — if you just disconnect them and play in "tabletop" mode it's much more comfortable.

The Pro Controller can't really be beat, obviously, but I'd just play in tabletop mode with the Joy Con disconnected way before I ever tried to attempt a mod like this.

If you're that serious about fighting games or whatever, I would think you'd just want to use the Pro Controller anyway. Even if you're playing in portable mode, it's a lot more pleasant to just prop the Switch up on a table and play with the Pro Controller if you're playing something that requires a lot of precision IMHO.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Yeah, I remember feeling a little swindled by that because I was a huge GBC/GBA fan. They repeatedly reiterated that the DS was not a replacement for the GBA, and yet here we are 13 years later and there's never been another GameBoy.

I never really got on board with the DS's touch controls. I played Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks and eventually wound up selling it to an in-law. I didn't like the stylus that you could use, and the cartridges were so small I was afraid to take them out of the house.

The GBA SP was my favorite handheld of all time.

Turns out you can't just appropriate copyrighted characters and intellectual property!

I might have to do "The Challenge of the Sword," although I'll probably never bother with any other weapon once I have the always-on Master Sword, so I get why they didn't include that in the initial game.

Don't know that I will bother much with the extra hats or whatever. The Hero's Path and Travel Medallion would've been nice to have while starting out and feeling lost all the time.

To people claiming this is proof that BoTW has "crappy quests and crappy rewards": this chest isn't supposed to be hard to get, it's only hard because of a glitch. It's not a reward for doing some difficult task. It was likely intended to just be a random, slightly out-of-the-way chest that would nab you a few rupees. It seems like the kind of thing that could very conceivably be fixed by a minor update to the game.

As for "all the good content being locked behind amiibo," I don't think that's true either. Most of the exclusives the amiibo get you are subtle variations on the "classic link" outfit (one of which you can get by completing all the shrines anyway).

I wonder if you could reach it on the console by using the "Link gets damaged backward into the water" glitch featured elsewhere. Maybe they fixed that with an update?

I'd be really interested in a comparison of the different 3rd party wheel accessories that are available.

A quick perusal of Amazon shows that there are quite a few and all with subtly different designs, but it's basically impossible to tell from a few pictures how well they each perform in this capacity.

Knowing the Zelda series, Nintendo will have no problem directly contradicting this in future games (which is as it should be as they all have a distinct "canon" and attempting to tie them all together is a fools errand).

@Kayfios Which is also silly as Bowser Jr. was really just Baby Bowser in Yoshi's Island (where Mario and Luigi were also babies), through some temporal parodox Bowser is essentially now hanging out with his younger self.

Which doesn't really bother me when it's just a goof-around game like Mario Party or Mario Kart or Smash Bros. or whatever, but is always slightly distracting when they appear together in an actual Mario game, like Mario Sunshine and the Galaxy games.

Seems pretty obvious to me from a business perspective: they'd rather sell you a Switch so you can buy those games on the Virtual Console and also buy AAA titles and subscribe to their online service versus selling you a NES Classic, which is a one-time sale.

As @NateM94 said above, this is probably a good indicator that the Virtual Console is about to be announced for the Switch.

Games I plan to buy, in order of excitement:

1. Mario Odyssey
2. RiME
3. Sonic Mania
4. Yooka-Laylee
5. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

(Mario kart would be higher but I already owned it on Wii U.)

@Dezzy Hell yes, I would buy Skyward Sword HD in a second. All they need to do is turn on anti-aliasing. That game was jaggy as heck.

While I feel like I got my money's worth out of most of these on the Wii U, it'd be really hard to resist re-buying Super Mario Maker if they made a Switch version (since I sold my Wii U before I bought the Switch).

@PlywoodStick Haha, yeah, although you never actually catch fish in Wind Waker, so I don't know if that qualifies as "fishing." It's more like one of those crane games where you try to retrieve a plush toy.

@EternalDragonX Unless I'm forgetting one, OoT and TP are the only games in the series that have fishing, so to act like it's an integral part of any Zelda game that BotW is missing seems silly to me.

@Slim1999 The size of the screen doesn't really matter, just the resolution it runs at.

But yeah, I've been playing mine at at 1080p also on a 55" TV, and while I have noticed a few choppy bits, the framerate issues haven't really bothered me at all.

I was just pointing out that all these videos keep saying to play in handheld mode if you want to alleviate the framerate issues, but even if the framerate was a big deal to me I'd still rather play on my big TV with the system set to 720p rather than on the 6" screen if I'm at home anyway.

@EternalDragonX Isn't most of the amiibo stuff just slight variations on the classic "hero's tunic" armor set? It seems pretty safe to ignore the amiibo stuff entirely unless you're just a completely OCD completionist.

It's weird that none of these videos mention that you can set the Switch to 720p (or even 480p) in the system settings if you really want completely smooth framerate on the big screen.

@cleveland124 I wasn't ripping it, just saying there's a lot more going on in Zelda's massive overworld to consume the consoles resources versus Wave Race, where rendering the water is a much more central concern (and I own both Wave Race games, FWIW).

@RedMageLanakyn Yeah I'll definitely get Revali's Gale first on any future playthroughs.

@PlywoodStick The advantage Wave Race has, of course, is that there's literally nothing else going on in any of those scenes. It's easy to make the water look good when it's the only thing in the game.

@RedMageLanakyn Yeah that's one of my only major complaints, too. I got stuck in two separate rainstorms while in the middle of doing one of the hardest towers in the game (in Akkala Citadel Ruins), and there's not really much you can do other than just kind of stand around for ten minutes (or abandon what you're doing, which is super lame after spending 20 minutes getting halfway up some high precipice).

I live in "the dairy state" and have milked a cow personally and can attest that the cow does NOT show any outward signs of agony or distress when it is being milked, especially by hand.

You can argue that milking machines and such constitute cruelty, but to assert that Nintendo should show the cow being in pain or something due to being milked is absurd. It also does not hurt the mother cow when the calf nurses, which is effectively what you are simulating when the cow is being milked.

I'm thinking this is going to be the game to tide me over from The time I finish Zelda until Mario Odyssey is out. I kind of doubt I'll play it much once Mario is out though.

@Nik-Davies I'm guessing because otherwise, people who didn't play will vote for the negative option and skew the results.

@GrailUK Probably a safe bet, but it'll also be a standard "more of the same" sequel, while Nintendo will likely go completely back to the drawing board for the next AAA Zelda title.

To argue that this isn't taking money out of Nintendo's pocket is absurd. it's one thing to use emulators for out-of-print games and abandonware (or games that you actually own a physical copy of), but this game is obviously still in print, it's a flagship AAA game that was released less than a month ago and is definitely a huge tentpole in Nintendo's revenue for the year.

@bolt05 Some people don't actually have a wired broadband connection and only use Wifi when they tether to their cellular connection, so that might be what he's doing.

So far I dig it, though 1-2-Switch really should have just been a pack-in, I probably wouldn't buy it if I could go back in time. It's fun, but just not worth $50.

I'm currently fine with just playing Zelda and Snipperclips, but I'll be glad when the Virtual Console is made available, as I sold all my previous systems to go all-in on the Switch.

I had a Wii and a Wii U, one on each of my TVs, so I'm getting a second dock so the Switch effectively replaces both, but that means I have a real paucity of games to choose from as I can no longer play any of my Wii or Wii U games or virtual console games from either system.

Once the Virtual Console is available I think it'll feel more like a "real" console and not just a glorified Zelda box.

@Frosty_09 They could make a keyboard like that which had the ability to slide the joy-cons on the side!

@G-Boy No, it just means that your save data is stored on the console and not on the game cartridge. The actual game itself is not saved on the console (if you have a physical copy).

IIRC, both the Wii and Wii U launched with the same situation — saves were stored in system memory and could not be copied anywhere, but both later added the ability to store saves on SD cards or external HDDs with system updates. It could be that this capability is simply coming in a future system update.

@Jamotello If you put a second screen on the bottom half of the clamshell you'd have... a 3DS!

It'd be nice if they at least gave some sort of guarantee that a digital purchase would stay in your "Nintendo Account" library and be playable on future platforms to offset the loss of being able to resell or trade-in a physical copy.

I guess my thought would be that I don't think streaming apps are really necessary.

I mean, I don't think it would hurt anything to have them, but if the system doesn't have a cellular connection anyway I don't know what purpose it would serve to have a Netflix app that only works when you're at home (where you almost certainly already have a means of watching Netflix if you're a subscriber).

I suppose you could always tether to your phone to get access while on the go, but that seems like a hassle compared to just using the web browser/streaming app that's already on your phone.