Drake

@Dualmask: Honestly, they really don't. The summaries are intended to be refreshers for people who've played the rest of the games already and leave out a ton of details. Any claims from NISA that "it's totally fine to start with CS3" are marketing talk, since they didn't publish any of the other games and don't want to lose sales by recommending people to buy a competitor's games.

On top of that, CS3 only contains summaries for Cold Steel I and II... but it also assumes you've played Trails in the Sky FC, SC and the 3rd as well as Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure, even though it doesn't contain any summaries for them. Hell, it doesn't even have character profiles for them.

I'm going through CS3 right now and I honestly can't imagine playing it without playing through the rest of the series (not just CS1 and 2). Chapter 1 ends with a crazy event that'd probably be enough to make anyone who's played the Sky games shed a tear, while it's going to mean literally nothing to anyone who hasn't. Chapter 2 meanwhile has almost non-stop references and mentions of characters and events from Zero and Azure without any real explanation of any of them...

The game also REALLY loves showing images of characters and events from previous games whenever things in the past are mentioned without actually saying who or what is being shown. Anyone who's played them will know immediately... anyone who hasn't will just be even more confused.

It's nice that CS3 and 4 will be available in a portable format for those who have played the others, but I seriously cannot recommend anyone to actually make this their starting point. This series is truly one of a kind, you're doing yourself a major disservice if you make one of these your first Trails game.

There will undoubtedly be people who say they don't have any other systems to play the others on, but honestly, ALL of them are available on PC, and all of them will run on 20 year old toasters. They're not graphically intensive games.

A lot of people are gonna overlook this just because of the art style, but they should really give it a chance. Easily one of the best Metroidvania games there is, I'd put it in my top 3 (La-Mulana and Hollow Knight being the other two).

There's so much replay value in this, from achievements (which I believe even the Switch version has) to different difficulties, other modes (boss rushes, alternate characters) and taking different routes through the game. Almost any boss can be fought first or last depending on your preference, you can do a 0% run with (intended) sequence breaks, there's post-game DLC areas and bonus bosses and so much more.

I would sincerely hope that if Trails ever comes to Switch they don't simply port the latest game. Cold Steel III alone requires having played 7 other games to have any idea what's going on.

To make it a bit more clear:

She was in charge of the entire localization for the original (simultaneous) Vita/PS3 release so she was naturally listed in the credits there.
The game was later ported to PC with some more additional work by her, she was still credited there.
She left XSEED about half a year ago before this port was released and is now not credited in this version, even though this particular release had no new work done on it whatsoever and as such uses all of her previous writing.

Very unfortunate on XSEED and I hope they change their policy, this is personally one of my favourite series of all time and I'd hate for it to become more well-known for this incident than for Brittany's phenomenal writing.

It is far, far too early for the Switch to be anywhere near the top five, especially after the lackluster year it just had. Seriously, was there anything notable besides Smash, a handful of (late) 3rd party ports, and maybe Octopath? Let's not forget the myriad of other issues it still has, like its ridiculous methods of playing online, lack of VC and the fact it still doesn't even have a browser and other system features which the Wii and Wii U had almost instantly.

I'd also rank the N64 the lowest out of the home consoles, outside of the obvious stuff a lot of games haven't aged particularly well (See Goldeneye and its sub 10 fps) or have been improved upon several times.

If there's no way to legally buy a game whatsoever I'm absolutely 100% fine with pirating. Some of my absolute favourite games have never been rereleased since their original release over 20 years ago, what else am I supposed to do? Terranigma's one of my favourite games ever made but a cartridge alone can go for over 100 bucks. The original developers/publishers wouldn't even get any money from second-hand sales so it's hardly stealing from them.

Of course there's also games that were never even localized, I played the fan translation of Mother 3 close to 10 years ago and Nintendo still stubbornly refuses to release the game outside Japan. They clearly don't want my money, so I'll just take the easy route instead of praying that they'll just randomly decide to release it over a decade late. And no, Reggie acknowledging the fact people want it about once a year is hardly proof that it'll come eventually.

I backed this one on Kickstarter and played it pretty much non-stop on PC for a whole week after it released, almost exactly a month ago now. I'd say it's not quite as good as the first due to a number of things (endgame that feels a bit rushed, a couple of disappointing bosses, rehashed ideas and a few small bugs) but it's still very much worth playing, IF you've played the original - it relies heavily on knowledge from that game, both in terms of gameplay and story. The game's slightly more user-friendly overall but the riddles are still just as devious as before.

A few of the issues have also been getting patched, though some of them seem like they'd be hard to fix without some massive changes that I'm not sure Nigoro would be willing to make.

Oh, and of course, if you play it, take notes. Lots and lots of notes.

@retro_player_22 Most likely because Falcom had basically nothing to do with those, they were developed by other companies with very little involvement from them.

@TreonsRealm As of today (Because Celceta just released) Steam actually does cover everything except V, though I'm sure if it gets a remake that'll appear as well.

It surprises me that he doesn't mention the technical side of things - there's not a chance any of their new games at the time (Oath in Felghana, Trails in the Sky, Xanadu Next) would even have been able to run on a DS. We only just got Gurumin on 3DS and that's a 2004 game.

I'll believe it when I see it, since I remember this remake getting announced close to 8 years ago.

@Redzaku Yes, but if NISA were to get the rights to port them to the Switch I feel like that would also pave the way for them getting the right to localize Trails of Cold Steel III and IV, which is something pretty much every Trails fan dreads. XSEED's localization work on the series is easily some of the best I've ever seen and to hand that off to NISA would be a very scary prospect.

@Krull As a massive Trails fan, I would hope for this ONLY if XSEED is the one doing the porting/translating. NISA has shown some incredible incompetence when it comes to localizing text heavy games (As evidenced by them literally retranslating ALL of Ys VIII) so them getting involved with Trails would be an actual nightmare scenario for me.

As cool as this would be, Falcom's never been big on Nintendo. Pretty much all games they ported to Nintendo systems back in the day (Ys I through III, Dragon Slayer, Popful Mail, Brandish) resulted in the worst versions available, and the one time they did make an original game for Nintendo we got Ys V, which is arguably the only bad Ys game. Nowadays they've only got a very small amount of employees and they're pretty much always working on their next game, so ports have to be outsourced if they happen. I don't really see this happening, going by recent releases I think it's more likely they'll jump ship back to PC development.

Ys is good and all, but if you like JRPGs at all you should really try the Trails games, they've quickly become my favourite RPG series of all time. At the rate we're currently going it's looking like all of them will be available on Steam eventually (5/7 currently announced or released, and Cold Steel III will most likely also get a PC port).

Tiny Barbarian DX confirmed never being released then

It was released on PC close to 4 years ago and still only has two episodes out of four done.

This'll be the first Nintendo launch I'm skipping. There's been non-stop bad news and disappointments in the months leading up to the release, and aside from Zelda (Which I'll just get on Wii U) none of the launch games interest me. 1 2 Switch should've been a pack-in, and while I was initially excited about a new Bomberman game all the footage I've seen makes it seem extremely underwhelming.

@Turniplord While CX covers retro games and has Arino, DX covers new games and has his comedy partner Hamaguchi. There haven't been too many DX episodes, they've all been on Nintendo's YouTube channel.

Out of these options, DKC, EarthBound, and SMRPG, but my absolute favourite would be Terranigma.

It's already been available on PC for a good while. I thought it was kinda fun but the difficulty curve is a little steep, it goes from super easy to super hard in no time.

@aaronsullivan Nah, I was about 30 seconds slower at the end so simply skipping the knights wouldn't have been enough.

@aaronsullivan I've got the world record, just didn't manage to improve it!

@cinco Famicom Remix features exactly the same challenges, just with the Japanese versions of the games. This really only makes a difference for about four of them (The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II, Metroid and Kid Icarus) because those are the FDS versions, meaning they've got some different sound effects and music.

I think there's only a single challenge that's actually different, a Zelda II remix where you fight Gooma instead becomes one where you fight Helmethead (Because Gooma was never in the Japanese version of Zelda II). If you get every single star again in Famicom Remix you unlock nothing else, by the way.

This arguement pops up literally every single time there's a speedrun article. The goal is to beat the game as fast as possible, and if there's glitches that let you accomplish that faster, why not use them? Yes, it's not the "intended" way to beat the game, but I personally much prefer watching incredibly broken runs over "by the book" ones, as they tend to be a lot more eventful and honestly, in most cases they take a lot more skill. If you'd still rather watch a glitchless run, there's a seperate category for that, and the record is almost 4 hours.

@Kosmo Obviously luck plays a big part, but when it comes to pure stats and skill, heavyweights should win practically every single race.

@Grumblevolcano I never pick it because avoiding the cars in this version is incredibly easy and it just becomes a contest to see who can take all the turns the tightest.

@KingCreezy I had a Super Horn during the Tick-Tock Clock race!

A surprising lack of blue shells in this room, which I am absolutely fine with

(I probably just jinxed myself)

Yeah, I was a bit too busy to play this week. I'll be back next time though

@Mandalore No, high scores/completion times are not saved, except in...

@Emblem Challenge mode doesn't really offer anything new, you just get thrown into random levels from the main game and have to complete them within a time limit, although you can still look around for extra cats. It's basically just exactly the same thing but without a level select screen.

@yoroppan Yes, the screens can indeed be swapped, however, that just means the GamePad has the zoomed out view which zooms in seemingly at random and gets blocked by constant messages.

@unrandomsan I don't consider any of those negatives per se, but what happens as a result of the latter two (confusing solutions and almost forced damage) is quite annoying.

@ACK I think I mentioned pretty much all the core gameplay mechanics, you're navigating mazes, moving across and jumping between rails while trying to get to the end and rescuing one or more cats, depending on how many additional conditions you want to fulfill.

I actually kind of like the music in this game, but the instrumentation for them is absolutely awful. Somebody redid them with NES sounds instead and they're pretty good.

@Spoony_Tech 225, basically, not enough to get to the green in one shot on par 4 holes

@Spoony_Tech Unlock them in Challenges then hit R on the character select screen.

And yeah, I got an eagle on every par 5 hole, a chip-in eagle on one par 4 hole and a birdie on every other one.

@Spoony_Tech Well, my score is with star Waluigi, so you can do just fine without Miis

@WaxxyOne No, they absolutely are easier. I only really had any semblance of trouble with a couple of remix/bonus stages.

@brewsky Like Pahvi said, less games and less difficulty (When the original game's difficulty was pretty much perfect) were the main reasons I gave this 1 lower. The extra additions are cool but they're not enough to fill the gap.

Just get the superior BurgerTime Deluxe instead!

@WiiULoveGBA Sounds absolutely fine to me!

It is however worth noting that all screenshots (Both those Nintendo released and those people posted on Miiverse) seem to be darker than the game actually looks, so don't let those fool you.

Honestly, if I had to pick a greatest videogame composer of all time, it'd probably be David Wise. I was kind of worried he'd have lost his touch after all these years, but no, Tropical Freeze's soundtrack is just as good or maybe even better than DKC2's.

@Damo If you like endless stalemates and characters devoid of personality, sure!

"But few would deny that this is the better game of the two."

No way, Dual Strike is way better!

Sorry, but the 14th of March is Dark Souls II day

Will get it later on though.

@Artie: It's coming to Vita.

Also, the PC version is 90% off for two days.

Not particularly bothered by additional platforms (Since I'll play it on PC anyway), but I hope they at least manage to get enough for all the extra content ($800k).

Would love to grab it but I've only got 5300 stars, argh!

Actually, McDonald's also has Mario toys in the Netherlands (And some other countries?) as well right now, most of them are different though: http://i.imgur.com/hRWrJ2Z.jpg (Not my picture)

I've currently got 4 of them.

EDIT: There's 8 toys in Japan, by the way!

There's a bunch of spelling/grammar mistakes in pretty much every single Ace Attorney game, but I definitely noticed a lot more here than in the others. Case 2 seems especially riddled with them, the rest have a bunch as well though.

In a perfect world this would be because they're releasing the SNES version instead, but I doubt that's the case.

Love Steam, I've got nearly 700 games on it, but I'm not so sure this will be too useful, considering the amount of games it has that simply play better with a mouse and keyboard. Pricing will be everything, I reckon.