Dipso

If anyone remember the patents that everyone thought were images of the what the Switch would look like. (before it was named switch)

(A pill shaped portable, people even made a fake video of it)

Its pretty safe to say that the shape and design in these images have nothing to do with whatever final product this could potentially turn into.

As others have mentioned, the actual documents seem very focused on the battery compartment and battery swelling, so i am pretty sure that is where the actual interesting part is hidden. The rest is just fluff or context.

You youngsters dismissing this duebto the visuals.

This is Indie before indie was a term, this indie when that meant a guy or a couple of dudes in their basement making games.

It was simple, fun, small (ie easy to copy onto a floppy and bring to a friend or run on the school computer lab)

There is lots of nostalgia here, but this is from a time where these graphics signaled indie game, not shovelware.

@Jawessome The new dock seems to have some rubber bumpers at the bottom and overall a smoother internal finish then the original dock, so it seems likely to be safer in this regard.

That being said i have two original docs and have not experienced any pinching or scratching from either. I think the issues that showed up early where either manufacturing errors or docks bent during transportation. (or something else)

@Noid I agree with the principal of preservation. This guy however was selling roms and generally trying to earn profit on the emulation scene. He has constantly shown an attitude that is counter too the general mentality of the game preservation community.

@Dragonslacker1 I struggled a lot in the beginning, but now I have gotten the basic finish of the game several times.

As you play through the game and put cells into unlocks and upgrades different strategies unlock together with your skills improving. You eventually find combos that work with your playstyle and some times luck out on what items you find on your way through.

It's important to enjoy the experience as a potentially short run where you only get minor progress, but slowly get better. Exploring the game and finding different strategies and secrets with each run.

Working on unlocks that help you stay alive is great in the beginning, and also using the tactics items/traps and boosting their damage can work as a good approach as you are starting out.

I feel I'm only avarage at the game, but I still enjoy throwing in a few runs at it from time to time, because the combat and movement is so fun and flows so nice.

EDIT: Also to those who gave out in the early days, i think they have done a lot of tweaks to the difficulty curve since then, so its worth giving it another go, if you felt like the game suddenly spiked to much for you. (i know it did for me in the beginning, but i struggled through)

@technotreegrass In many cases the law requires you "protect your IP" to avoid loosing the rights to said IP. Companies (read lawyers at those companies) interpret this in different ways.

(And at some companies said lawyers seem to be really eager to push towards a very agressive stance (probably to show they are needed and to earn more money... ))

@belfastgonzo Great find. Why are people, let alone gaming sites giving Pachter any attention at this point?

Might as well have posts about grandmas "psychic" dog that predicts stock outcomes by eating from a red or blue bowl....

(Hint: at current rate Pachter is less then 50% correct (45% success-rate), so give a dog a 50/50 choice and it will be more successful....)

@Bunkerneath The hitboxes on the plants are actually more narrow then the sprites. (Still requires a lot of precition to hit the sides of the pipes correctly.

This video explains a lot what happens in these speed runs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FQJEzJ_cQw

Its a great breakdown of all the tiny details and tricks that make a world record run possible.

I might consider them if the bluetooth drivers that lets you use the pro controller with your pc works on these.

But honestly I agree with others that have said: Buy the 8bitdo controllers. Cheaper, and works with a lot of devices, both wireless and over USB.

SNES controllers are great and pretty damn close to the original SNes controllers.

Yes its a bad sign. Signs work best when they are complete.
When they replace the N, it will be a good sign again.

@brimat Exactly. I've read a few variations of this developers complaints on various sites now. And the general consensus among the comments is that these guys did almost nothing with regards to marketing. Most comments were "never heard of the game"

The fact that they have a low number of reviews on metacritic backs this up. They did too little to engage with the community on their own, too little to make people discover their game.

Don't expect the storefront to do all your marketing for you, because hey! you are going to loose out to those people who actually do marketing in addition to being on the storefront.

Sounds to me like the devs need a proper publisher that actually understands marketing and competition.

@Ooyah

They probably would be fine if the statement was "this warranty will not cover damages caused by third-party products"

As it stands its voided whether the third-party product used was the cause of the issue or not, and that sounds really unfair.

These idiots are either trying to scam people with a rejection letter to some sort of promotional partnership program, or they are delusional enough (or have so poor language skills) that they think the letter is a go-ahead-letter.

Victor Vran is a good solid game and one of my really positive surprice impulse buys on steam. (Bought it cause i wanted a new controller friendly game to play on my TV) Will definately get this again to play it on my switch

Gotta say, the idea of pulling out my switch for a game of worms with my brother wherever we might be is really appealing.

As others have stated the tricky navigation of the worms has always been a part of the game. Its supposed to be a part of the risk/reward part of the game. Do you make a tricky long distance shot, or try to move closer with the risk of messing up?

@manu0 I suspect it had 720p as its output even when docked before.

Now it probably tuns 720p in handheld (native res of the display) and 1080p on TV. Should give a slightly sharper image on TV, and no change in handheld.

@manu0 Maybe they have the connection issue on the dev-kit joy-cons

Or they might have bought a separate pair for a number of random reasons

Or it could be close to launch and they are able to download it on a retail unit via a hidden e-shop code? :S (just wildly speculating at this point)

@manu0 Good spot, though i assume the dev kit can use retail joycons just as well as the black dev-kit joy-cons.

@ieatdragonz Iawata-san was apparently deeply involved in the core concepts of the then NX.

Rumour has it that after his passing, meetings at Nintendo regarding the NX/Switch concluded with "for Iawata-san!"

So I like to think that the Switch is his final Hoorah. It's just sad that he won't see how that system gets received.

Is there any way to transfer my save? Its so good i want to buy it again (And don't have to find the disk every time i wish to play)

Norwegian board of language had a statement about how Pokémon is supposed to be written in Norway. (Capitalized as it's a trademark, the é remains for the same reason... shocking development I know. )

It seems the amount of free advertisement this game can get has no limits, everyone wants to be in on the craze.

Meanwhile those of us whom have played Ingress for several years feel our turf is being invaded.

Don't get me wrong i thing the game is nifty, better then ingress in some respects, but sorely lacking in depth, especially when it comes to strategy and planning in the competition between the teams, compared to the other game. If you ever feel like you want a similar game but with more ways to compete for control with the other team and where the every POI in the game plays a role, give ingress a try.

The thing is; so far this guy is only using this to show of his skills in unreal engine, and has only released videos of projects he has done while learning the tool.

He has not released any assets or working code.

If he suddenly announces that its a fan remake and makes moves to release any working code or gives indication that this is his intent, i think it will be shut down.

Until that happens, its closer to a art project or "fan-art" then anything else.

But as someone pointed out, lets comment on the video it self:

Very cool. I can see he is slowly improving on the movement of link in each of these and see some of his skills in lighting and modeling improving as well. I think he stated on his youtube channel that these video's are of projects he is doing to teach him self unreal engine, and he is definitely learning.

They need to send wiiU consoles to war-zones to stabilize them.

@shaneoh This would probably have been a debate had it not been for the fact that there seems to be nobody making efforts in organizing the devs.

Devs should unionize as there are numerous examples of exploiting the workforce in this business, especially in the "crunch" right before deadlines, with people working extremely long hours without any extra pay.

In a lot of game media this strike seems to have the angle of "well payed actors want more" but for most of them it seems the working conditions are more important, and also, voice acting is miles away from screen time when it comes to salaries, so its unfair to compare the two.

@FargusPelagius The GBA and DS where not Region Locked.
The 3DS was the first handheld to have region lock.

I live in EU and decided to pick up some DS games i have been wanting to play when i went to the US, cause i knew those would run on my 3DS, unlike US 3DS games.

@JeffreyG
Definately.
Comming from kb-mouse, gyro controls is a far superior control method to just plain old sticks.

Anyone complaining can't have tried the splatoon controls for more than a minute or two. It just works. Its that simple.

I find it surprising that they never see the pattern of too few launch titles and problematic sales. Same happened to the 3ds.

They need to have at least one of their big hitters there on launch, and they need to have another one coming up within the first 6 months of launch.

"Here, have a simple mario game that is very similar to what we did last year" with the promise of mario kart or zelda in a year or two, ain't gonna sell consoles.

That being said, i bought my WiiU at launch and love it

@MrRaven1972 the graphics need to be scaled down compared to i.e xenoblade, in order for it to be able to achieve 60fps on both TV and gamepad. Its rendering two viewports. So its 2x more power required right there. I'd take fluid 60fps, esp in a game like this over flashy visuals any day. But then again, I'm as old as Mario

@Reznor52
A huge part in dropping online on the Wii was the closing of gamespy, that provided services to the online componen on the Wii. This is not an issue on the WiiU because all that stuff is handled inhouse by ninty for the U

@IceClimbers Actually I know one of the Devs on Alien:Isolation, and although it has underperformed, its still selling about 100k copies each week, so it might be to early to write it off as a flop. He seems to be pretty happy with sales, at least.

I'm loving S.T.E.A.M and I'm hoping to get some quality time with it when im going traveling in about two weeks Unlike a lot of other comments here i like the art-style and the bonkers setting. And i find that stylized art looks way better on the 3ds than trying to go for a more realistic look, esp. considering its hardware limitations.

@Quorthon while you have some good points i think you misunderstand the term warchest here...

Warchest = money in the bank to spend in case of loss. Unlike a lot of other companies, a fair amount of the profit nintendo makes goes into building a cash reserve, not giving it out to the shareholders and CEO's

This means they can spend a lot of money on experiments and failed attempts without going under. Heck if all else fails they can go back to creating playing cards and toys. (aMiibos seem to sell fine )

What brought companies like Sega to their knees is that they spent a whole lot of cash to launch failed hardware, expecting to make it back, and buckled under a lack of money to finance any next project once that fell through. Call it over confidence or a gamble, it was a risk they took, and one that they could not afford failing.

And its not like Nintendo are hemorrhaging money. Its just that profits are lower then expected. They are not in the red numbers, just lower black numbers

@BaffleBlend I have a small hope that part of this unified platform effort made by Nintendo is that this is a thing of the past. (Though I'm not holding my breath)

They just made Wii Games run "emulated"(still launches wii mode so i suspec it still uses the fact that the U has the same architecture) on the wii U. Hopefully they will at some point make some sort of emulation framework that will be able to be moved over as the upgrade platforms.

I do fear that the temptation to keep asking us to pay for the same game on each hardware platform is to big though... and us fans.. we will do it too.

@Quorthon I agree, mostly. I think its too bad they where unable to do the same turnaround as they managed with the 3DS, and i think mainly they needed to have a much bigger push with their first party software much more early on.

What i fear for the NX now is that they do the same. Hurry to launch new hardware without any first party big hitters in the pipeline and watch the thing fall short of potential success.

As it stands now i feel the Wii U is not a complete failure, its just barely limping along instead of running. And i feel that nintendo don't think the machine is as much of an obscure failure as the 'Cube turned out to be, but its far from where they want the hardware to stand as far as sales go.

The main difference from other game hardware manufacturers, a lot doomsayers seem to forget about Nintendo is that they A) have a large warchest, and B) Sell their hardware with much less loss (in fact the 3ds and wiiU where the first to be sold at a loss on launch) then other players in the market. This alone makes these "failures" (I prefer lack of success) much less of an issue in the long run.

Nintendo is not going anywhere, and they are not going the way of Sega any time soon (Becoming a pure software dev). That's the two points i find important, Among all the doomsday predictions that gets thrown around.

That being said, i agree with you that the NX needs to step it up. And i think rushing it out is the worst possible idea right now, and i hope that for once big N understand that.

@Quorthon

Yes that is a good point, and as a fan of both this system, and quite francly all previous systems i find it sad that this console has fallen so flat sales wise.

I think that fires up a lot of people that love the console too, they feel (and probably incorrectly so) that a lot of people making comments havent given the wii U a proper chance and are just joining in on the "wii u sucks" circle jerk instead of any real comments on what they specifically don't like about it.

@Quorthon Really... you and I must frequent different parts of the Internet. I don't find the Wii U to be a massive embarassment at all, and most players i talk with love both the machine and its games.

Note the guys i talk about are broad gamers, and not xbox or playstaion purists, that only care about the next COD. I think you have to have a broad and playfull mindset to enjoy the different flavour of the nintendo brand

@TwilightAngel My console seems to be running just fine, and is far from dead. I have a lot of great games to play, and more coming down the line.

Maybe Its just because i have a PC and other systems i also play on, but i don't find the Wii U dying at all.

@MasterBlaster I seem to remeber a lot of them went way further and predicted it would go the way of the dreamcast. Forgetting completely to bring the difference between Nintendo and Sega in how they back up their company financially, and just how strong first party titles are for Nintendo.

@Quorthon I think he means that its your subjective interpretation of that data.

Whenever you extrapolate, be it from facts or not you are bringing your own frame of reference into the extrapolation, in fact that is how extrapolation is possible for the human mind.

And Subjective does not simply mean "emotion based, non fact based." it means in lack of a better phrasing "colored by your subjective (personal) frame of reference"

@Quorthon I mostly agree with you. And i think a 2016 release is feasible, but my gut feeling says it might take a bit longer this time.

Also with regards to your time line. You have a timeline between reveal and release, but how is the timeline before first mention or first rumors and reveal/release.The fact that the mention of this new "dedicated game platform" comes this much out of the blue, leads me to believe it might take a bit longer this time (But i think we will see it before 2017, but not not much, i think possibly holidays 2016) - Of course unlike a lot of these analysts i will state that this is just wild guessing on my part

I think its the wording of the articles and some times the analysts statements them selves that tick people off. Because its allways "X is doomed!" "X is heading down the drain!"

Oh, and I'm not but-hurt My behind is doing just fine now that i got that ointment.

@Quorthon Yes, i agree. But people keep repeating this stuff like its gospel. And quite often they are way off. And Patcher (the top one in the list i posted) is renown in the industry for being accurate, most analysts are far worse off.

I think also I'm being biased because i pay the most attention to the Nintendo side of the industry, and if there is any company that Analysts have been way of with, its Nintendo. (The 3ds would fail, the company would fold within a year etc etc... just completely ignorant claims.)

Can people stop repeating the drivel these so called analysts cough up?

I wish i was payed for making up opinions from the top of my head. (Or as with a lot of these guys, pulling them out of my ass...)

EDIT:

I mean look at this:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/18/how-accurate-are-your-favorite-video-game-analysts/

Even the top analyst is just barely correct 60% of the time, most of them are far lower.

@Retro_on_theGo IT is on the disk They unlock it once they have enough players reach the right rankm in order to have matchmaking work properly. Its a sensible decision.

The artstyle on the box is exactly how they should make a new megaman game. Retro gameplay, cellshaded graphics But alas capcom doesn't seem interested in doing anything.

@Compeau I think the c-stick shows up as the controller addon (that i forget the name of) for older games so if the game supports that, it probably supports the c-stick. (Don't shoot me if im wrong )

Loved the demo. Went from quite interested to exited about this title. I like both action games and turnbased strategy games that lets me think about a problem, this feels like a great blend of both. Love the clever gameplay of this title.

Im getting the mayflash one, mainly because it also works with PC

@NbaJunkie Well to put it this way: if the F-Zero track doesn't have any antigrav stuff, they are officially idiots

I suspect they save this feature for where it works both thematically and with the layout. I for one is happy that they didn't just shoehorn it into every single map.

@IxC

You make some valid points, but consider that Nintendo has a history of releasing a lot of their downloadable content on disk too (Like the luigi U game), so you might be able to either get a "DLC Disc" or a "Gold edition" of MK that contains all of these add-ons in the case of the system "going retro" as it where.

Also games releasing with additional content for payment, is nothing new. We had expantion packs as far back as doom and quake. DLC is in its propper form (Not the on disc bullpoopoodoodoocacapoopledoople) is just the modern take on this, and makes a lot more sense now seeing as making additional content to a modern game takes a lot more money and hours of work to do.

I'm fine with the DLC model, if it means i can get more content for my games and enjoy them longer.

Would your position be the same if it where free? - i would imagine so with your whole "the game is not complete" rationale?

I would be standing with my pitchfork out, yelling "burn the witches", if i felt the original game was somehow lacking and you needed the DLC to get a propper game, but as it stands, this is simply not the case.

Suddenly that "never burn bridges" comment looks awfully ironic, eh?

Could we have a trend where a company filing these kinds of lawsuits are considered to be in desperate need of profits and their stocks dumped by shareholders?