EarthboundBenjy

I mean. ... This is all well and good, but have you seen how long it takes SSB Ultimate to boot up.

@Rudolf
Dragon Slayer IV Drasle Family is also available on the Switch as "Legacy of the Wizard", which is included in Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2. I think this version might be a more worthwhile purchase since you also get the rest of the collection too.

@Fizza
Yes, Castlevania has never really been a "horror game". It may be more accurate to call it a "horror-themed" game.

By the way, this game is great. I tried it for the first time on the Switch NSO app earlier this year, and it really took me by surprise how good this game is. It plays like a cross between Mega Man X and Castlevania. I highly recommend it!

I voted for the Japanese cover, I like the vertical composition better. And I don't like that there's a screenshot on the front cover of the PAL cover, what's the deal with that lol. Screenshots are for the back.

This is just NES Remix with added multiplayer, which is fine, but it's very bizarre to see how far they're leaning into the World Championships branding for a game like this.

The Kickstarter ended in 2015 and the game came out in 2019. The fact that this game is still in active development is astounding.
I guess they do have an obligation to fulfil the stretch goals. I don't know why it's taken this long, but I don't mind either since the game is great (on platforms other than Switch anyway)

@PikminMarioKirby

honestly, I have more nostalgia and affinity for Super Paper Mario than I do Thousand-Year door. Of course I love both games, and I'm very happy to see the TTYD remake... but Super Paper always felt like the unappreciated underdog that never got the appreciation it deserved, which is a shame because it's definitely one of the most bizarre and creative games in the entire Mario series. (that Francis segment being one such example of how off the rails it gets)

Last week I spent playing mostly Eiyuden Rising. it wasn't that great, but I finished it anyway.

I really need to get back to Suikoden III now - currently I have played through four first chapters (First Hugo, then Lady Chris, then Geddoe, and then Thomas). Now I need to finally play a chapter two, and I think I'll go back to Hugo. It feels like a slow game because I guess I've just spent 15 hours playing nothing but introductory stories lol. But I presume things will pick up shortly as I go into the deeper chapters.

Because Suikoden III is on the PlayStation 3 (digital download version), I find it less convenient to play than games on my Switch, which may have contributed to me finishing Eiyuden Rising even though I was much more interested in Suikoden III. ...

And now on the "something completely different" side of things, I decided to buy Patrick's Parabox on a whim yesterday night because I loved Baba Is You, and wowee, Parabox is fantastic haha. Can't wait to see what ridiculousness awaits me in the later puzzles.

Ok, so here's my idea of how it could possibly be called a "mistake".

The removal of the pictures was intentionally made possible during development, due to the potential that it would have to be done for the ratings boards etc.
When the ratings boards gave them the OK to keep them in, then they left them in. But in a patch, maybe they were working from a build that still had them removed, and nobody noticed.

So yes, it's definitely not likely that they were "oopsie we accidentally edited this portion of the map to remove these images lol", but at the same time, I can still see their removal being accidental, if they intentionally made a build without them in "just in case" it needed to be done, and then accidentally used the wrong build.

This is my speculation.

To me it seems like Atari keeps saying, "Hey, remember the good old days when we were relevant? Let's be like that again!".

@Krisi
Wow, I respect the Pokémon Dash criticism. That sounds impressively awful, beyond what I would have expected. Haha, that's amazing.

@Krisi
The quality of the actual game itself is only one piece of the Sticker Star-hating pie. There's also the matter of Nintendo's hubris and complete disregard for their fans... as well as their disregard to the entire concept of creative freedom in game development.
The environment that creates a game like Sticker Star is a place where overzealous brand-protecting executives interfere with the creative process to such an insane degree, that only the most sterile shell of a game can come out the other end. It is the embodiment of "executive meddling".

Alrighty, I'll go through each of your listed games to see how they compare to Sticker Star, if I must.

Urban Champion: It's definitely not so great, but it's fun for a few minutes. It was probably overpriced on its initial release compared to the few other black-label NES games that were available at the time, but I'd say it's inoffensive.

Wii Music: This game has the amazing honour of giving us that infamous E3 moment, there's no way I can hate a game that has provided the internet with something like that! The game itself is kinda just a nothing casual game, and I have no problem with its existence.

Pokémon Dash: Haven't played it, but IIRC it's a touchscreen-focused racing game? I think it was also a gen 3 game that introduced some gen 4 mons for the first time? I guess it had some value there. I don't see what's so offensive about this game.

Pokémon Rumble: Haven't really played them. But the Wii U one did give the Wii U NFC sensor a purpose before amiibos were introduced, I guess that's something...?

Hey You Pikachu: How can you hate a game where you get to insult Pikachu lol. It might not be great, but it definitely has the potential for creating a lot of silliness.

Pokémon Channel: I actually played this one to completion because I wanted the free Jirachi lol. It's cute, and I enjoy that it includes some emulated Pokémon Mini minigames too. The game preservationist in me gives it some props for that alone. Yes, the gameplay is mostly just watching TV with Pikachu, but it was a chill time.

Warrior's Way: I dunno, StreetPass games were never really supposed to be proper games, they were just fun ways to interact with your StreetPass hits, weren't they? I don't particularly remember this one - maybe I never bought it lol. But its existence is fine with me.

WarioWare Snapped is pretty awful, I agree. I think it should not have marketed itself as if it was a true WarioWare game, that much I definitely agree with. The game itself is tiny and barely functions. Definitely a bad one, but IMO Sticker Star is guilty of much worse.

DK Jr Math is funny. I enjoy the fact that it exists because it's just so absurd lol. It's not fun to play, but that doesn't stop it from being fun to think about.
Not familiar with that Popeye game, but it sounds equally funny.

Never heard of Solar Striker before, I'll have to look into it.

Yoshi's Cookie and Yoshi were fun puzzle games, I thought. Nothing particularly special, but fun timewasters. What's wrong with them?

And Touch & Go... Sure, it's bland. It's an early DS game made before they really figured out what the DS was gonna be like, I guess. I dunno. I'm struggling to think of something to say lol.

So yeah. After considering every one of those games... I still dislike Sticker Star the most.

EDIT: Whoops, didn't notice that you also brought up Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival ... I agree that Amiibo Festival is definitely up there as one of the worst games Nintendo has produced. And it was also a huge disappointment to its fans, much like Sticker Star - that much is true too. However, it didn't completely kill the series like Sticker Star did. So while Amiibo Festival is pretty dismal, I will say that I dislike Sticker Star more. Animal Crossing has since thrived with huge acclaim with its very next mainline entry on the Switch - but Sticker Star was itself supposedly a mainline Paper Mario game, and its awful new style superseded the original style. That's a much bigger problem to me than Amiibo Festival being a terrible game. Amiibo Festival didn't affect the rest of its series.
But yeah, Amiibo Festival really does represent one of the most dire times in Nintendo's history.

@batmanbud2
Oh, no disagreement there, for sure. I happen to think that Sticker Star is quite literally the worst product Nintendo has ever released. Or at the very least, it's my least-favourite game by Nintendo, by far.

I find it so funny that Nintendo Life gave Sticker Star an 8/10 back in the day - and the only criticism it got in the 2012 review was that it was "playing it safe", and it being "more of the same"...??? in no way are those the actual issues with the game lol.

When I played it at launch, straight away I felt such a betrayal from the game, for abandoning everything that made Paper Mario special, and I didn't need a decade's worth of hindsight and two mid-tier followups to come to that conclusion. I knew right away what was missing.

The reason I say I find it funny is because I read statements in modern NLife articles about Sticker Star such as: "Now, it's safe to say that this one probably doesn't top the ranking of 'Best Paper Mario Games' (in fact, we know it doesn't),"

...Nintendo Life is definitely aware of the game's shortcomings nowadays, it seems, hmm? Does that make me feel vindicated for disliking the game from the start? To be honest, I'm not so sure.

...More recently, I disliked Princess Peach Showtime straight away too, yet that one is also inexplicably getting high scores. I'm genuinely curious to see how the perception of Peach Showtime will change over the years.

Anyways, regarding the box art, sure the USA one is more interesting to look at, but seeing this game in any form just makes me sad, so I'm not going to even vote.

I just finished the prequel game Eiyuden Chronicle Rising, and I was thoroughly unimpressed by it. It was as if the designers thought that fetch quests were the most important part of gaming. ...I finished it anyway cause I did kinda like it despite this, but yeah. I hope the main game is more interesting to play.

@shonenjump86

Annoyingly, the NSO N64 app doesn't support saving for games that used the Controller Pak memory card to save game data. for example, WinBack, which is already on NSO, has no way to save at all aside from using the NSO app's savestate feature.

Both Castlevania games on N64 are in a very awkward spot regarding this, because the Japanese versions save to the cartridge and therefore would work fine on the NSO app, but all non-Japanese versions (USA, PAL) of both games use the Controller Pak to save data, which means that they would have to rely on the player making savestates, just like WinBack.

Unless Nintendo fixes the ridiculous Controller Pak incompatibility issue with the N64 NSO app, I unfortunately only foresee the games coming to the Japanese NSO app and not internationally .

@shonenjump86

N64 Castlevania has some really janky controls and camera. That much we can all agree on - even the fans of the games won't deny this about them. Legacy of Darkness does improve the controls a little bit compared to the original CV64, but it still isn't amazing, especially by modern gaming standards.

(Seeing a game like Castlevania really does make you appreciate how amazingly well-thought-out Ocarina of Time's control scheme is in comparison.)

If you can get past the controls, then there really is a fun and engaging linear action game with exploration elements in there.
The atmosphere and mood of the game is really engrossing to me, and I enjoy seeing all the different kinds of environments as I work my way through the stages.

I personally love these games a lot, but I would only really recommend them to people who have the patience and savviness to get to grips with it. These games would definitely frustrate the majority of modern gamers who aren't so accustomed to early 3D games.

I'm always very surprised when an undocumented cheat code gets discovered in an old game. ...There was also that Super Punch-Out code that activates a hidden 2-player mode that was discovered in 2022.

....All of these classic well-known games have had their ROM contents available online for decades, and there are certainly many fans who are dedicated enough to delve into the files looking for cool stuff. Lots of other obscure or unused contents from the game files have been documented online for years.
For example - the TCRF page for Legacy of Darkness mentions that you can change the skeleton's bone-throwing behaviour by holding the R button on player 3's controller. ....How is it possible that something like THAT was discovered before a title screen button code like this? That's what baffles me the most.

@KoiTenchi
This game was before the trend of angry Kirby. That trend started with the GBA and DS games. All of the GB, NES, SNES, N64 Kirby games don't feature angry Kirby on the box art - not even Kirby's Avalanche, which was never released in Japan and even has tough-talking in-game dialogue from Kirby lol.

@SalvorHardin
https://youtu.be/tb6GJUvJGpM?si=ZvMxUIPtSCi1uKZD&t=118

Straight from the horse's mouth. The wooden box design is to make it come across an "extravagant experience".

Hmmm. I never liked the "8 games in one" claim, because it's not really true. It's more like "6 scenarios, 2 minigames and an unlockable boss rush... in one".

That being said, I do like the black with gold stars design of the US box. And I think Super Star is a better name than Fun Pack.

Not really sold on the Japanese wood-burning design. Sure, Kirby has tons of elegance and sophistication, I know, but still... I don't think the box art really communicates the kind of silly fun Kirby is all about.

I tried the new Princess Peach game and it wasn't very engaging. I put it down and likely won't pick it back up for a long while. That game really isn't very friendly to players who want to try and get all of the collectibles within the stages, and the stages themselves aren't anything to write home about.
I got to the "Dashing Thief" level, and the side-scrolling hookshot action brought to mind Chibi Robo Zip-Lash, and I guess I had some kind of adverse reaction to that comparison lol, it made me really want to stop playing and find something better to do with my time.

A shame too, cause Peach deserves to have her time in the spotlight. But this game is just. .... not it.

I started playing it because of this NSO trial. It's ok, but so far the gameplay has been literally nothing but fetch quests. Not a bad thing by itself - I'm okay with fetch quests in my games, but this one goes a bit too heavy with it right off the bat. I can't really explore the areas thoroughly because I haven't collected a bunch of a material, returned to town, had a cutscene with a shopkeeper, yadda yadda yadda. it's rather unsatisfying to always have to be turning around back to town when you feel like you've just gotten started.

Playing games like this just makes me wish more devs would learn from the likes of SteamWorld Dig 2 - a game where collecting resources and returning to town felt so satisfying and addicting, you couldn't get enough of it.
Eiyuden Rising... is not like that, unfortunately.

I think I'll stick with it and hope it eases off on the fetch quests later on. I'm not having a terrible time, but it's not been amazing either.

They added Marvelous to the Japanese app? Haha, I played a fan-translated version of Marvelous on emulator last year, it was pretty good actually. A nice little point-and-click adventure game, which is a genre you don't see from Nintendo very often.
Here's a bizarre fun fact: Did you know that there exists unused character models from Marvelous hidden in the ROM for Zelda Four Swords Adventures? Seems like there may have been plans to bring the IP back that were scrapped. Oh well!

@HalBailman Silius is on the NSO NES app, is it not?

I haven't gotten around to DQ7 yet, and I was thinking of playing the PlayStation 1 version. .... I wasn't aware the 3DS version had extra content DLC, hmm. I'm not sure how it works, or if I'll need a homebrewed 3DS to access it, but I'm glad that this content isn't going to be lost forever.

mmm. Last month I played through Suikoden I & II, and a couple weeks ago I started Suikoden III, but I haven't played for a few days and I fear i'm losing momentum. Nothing to do with the game itself, but maybe I'm burning myself out a little. I might just play through the new Princess Peach game or something and then get back to Suikoden III with a refreshed mind.

Suikoden III is okay so far. It's got multiple story perspectives that you can choose from in a character select menu, which is cool. I finished Hugo's Chapter 1, then Lady Chris's chapter 1 and just started Geddoe's chapter 1 but haven't gotten far yet. It's interesting I have the option to do this - I like that I'm not forced to complete Hugo's entire story before I can start Lady Chris's story. ... kinda reminds me of Octopath in that way. Though I do have to actually finish the whole chapter before I can access the character selection screen again.
But yeah, the game itself is okay. Combat system is a bit more convoluted than the previous game, but nothing bad or anything.
Also... this game has ducks in it. that really threw me off haha. Was not expecting... ducks.

@CaleBoi25
Ivy the Kiwi?

So this includes games 1, 2, and 4? ... Do they expect people to just play 1 and 2, then go get a PlayStation 2 secondhand copy for 3, and then jump back in on the Switch cart for 4, or what? Why wouldn't they port the third game before releasing this bundle lol.

I've not played this series before, so I don't know if there's any more to it that I'm not aware of that makes this make more sense.

Japan actually shows all four turtles, and some others in the backgrounds. And for a fighting game, showing the roster is the way to go.

Also there was really no need to take a jab at Street Fighter in the US/EU tagline. I guess attitudes were different back then, with rival devs always trying to one-up each other... feels so petty lol.

This is the third N64-like modern indie game I've seen in recent times, after Cavern of Dreams and Kiwi 64. tbh after all the hunderds of NES style indie games, it's kinda fun to see all these 64 style ones. I never agreed with people who said N64 graphics look awful. They have their distinct appeal, and I'm happy to see developers who agree with that.

Only two games in this collection, huh? I just looked it up and there was apparently also a GBC game called Baby Felix Halloween, but I guess it's not included since it wasn't a Konami game. (or Hudson i guess)... mmm... Would have been nice to include more than just two games regardless though, because this isn't really worth the price in my opinion.

@the_beaver
It's a "walking sim" game. The only gameplay is choosing which direction to walk in. It's basically just a narrative kind of thing.
But the narrative is so ridiculous and it pokes fun at all sorts of gaming tropes, media tropes, and has all sorts of meta-commentary about the nature of games and game design as a whole. it's a really fun and clever experience. Just don't go in expecting any kind of involved gameplay or anything.

Lots of people have mentioned Symphony of the Night already. And while that would be great, I think it would be even more valuable if Konami ported Castlevania Harmony of Despair. It would work SO WELL with the Switch's local wireless communication mode in a way that it never worked that well offline on PlayStation 3.

I honestly and truly wish Pokémon games just stopped making two versions. Just make a game like any normal dev.

And if you need to expand the story post-release, then DLC or a sequel. Not the same dang game again but slightly different.

I never really knew anything about its backstory, but for some reason Llamatron was included in one of the freeware / shareware CD-ROMs I had around the house when I was growing up. So I might actually get this collection just to see Llamatron again lol.
I also really liked Atari 50, so having another "gaming history museum" release like this is definitely a cool thing.

@TYRANACLES
The pop tart is named Negative Man. he's a unique enemy that appears in a lategame cave and has absolutely no plot relevance. All he does during battle is mope and whine and maybe inflict 1hp of damage occasionally. You can defeat him and it does not accomplish anything.

it's pointless for them to limit it this way but it's also pointless for them to have it be a fomo system in the first place. Nintendo wants to do what it wants for these icons, and for some reason they chose to make it disproportionately complicated for what they actually are.
They're just icons. If they wanted to make them an incentive to NSO subscribers then whatever, the best way to do that would be to just give us a huge menu to pick from that gets updated with new ones and leave it at that. Having to spend coins, having them rotate, and now having region-exclusive ones... it's just so many extra steps and systems and restrictions that just don't need to exist for PROFILE ICONS! It's not that deep Nintendo, you don't need to do all of this complicated rubbish for some icons. just let subscribers have the ones they want.

I was always a little upset that Nintendo released so so few DS games on the Wii U virtual console. It was weird how the Wii U only ever got Nintendo-published DS games, and not even all of them at that. They never gave us Golden Sun Dark Dawn, Super Princess Peach, Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Rhythm Heaven, and a bunch others. It was such wasted potential since the Wii U was the last and only machine that could feasibly emulate DS games without too many compromises.

Anyway, my main answer is of course the Castlevania games. They absolutely deserve to see new life, just as the GBA games did with the Advance Collection.

I spent all of 2023 playing the entire Ys series (with a break for Zelda and Pikmin when they came out of course), and so I'm long overdue for playing the Trails series now.
Unfortunately, I am also long overdue for a ton of other huge RPG series, so it may take a while before I actually get to Trails. ...
I just finished Suikoden II and was planning for Suikoden III to be my next huge RPG.

I'm sorry Trails series! I'll get to you at some point, I promise!!

Ok Nintendo, you can either have this kind of system OR the fomo system, but not both at the same time!!! that's just annoying

this game requires an online connection to play? why

Ys 9 Monstrum Nox managed to do fine set within one city. Though it did have a couple surrounding grasslands areas you could explore later in the game too. But for the most part it was pretty much entirely just within the city. You gained access to new districts as you made progress through the story. And Ys 9 even had abilities that let you climb walls and glide through the air, just like Legends Arceus had.

I wonder if Pokémon Z-A is going to be anything like Monstrum Nox, or if it will do things in an entirely different way.

@Mario500
it's a quote from homestarrunner, an old flash web toon series. it means "it's a christmas miracle"

I do enjoy the boat in the European cover because the first level Foggy Lake is one of the standout areas of the game in my mind.

By the way, I think it's incorrect to say that Legacy of Darkness contains the full Castlevania 64 as a bonus unlockable. That's not really 100% accurate.
It's not like Donkey Kong 64 that contains the original arcade DK, or Dracula X Chronicles that contains the original Rondo of Blood, or Metroid Zero Mission that contains NES Metroid 1. Legacy of Darkness doesn't "unlock the first N64 game" in this way at all.

Rather, Legacy of Darkness has Reinhardt and Carrie as unlockable characters, who play through their campaigns from CV64, but, rather importantly, using the LEVEL DESIGN from Legacy of Darkness's version of the stages! It's like a bonus treat for fans of both games, and NOT a replacement or retcon of CV64 as a game.
I don't think enough people play or care about the N64 Castlevania games to really understand this.

kinda random but I opened the NES NSO app to check the addition of these games, but I didn't end up playing any of them. Instead though, I decided to launch Rygar on a whim and then spent the next 2 and a half hours beating the whole game in one go. So that's something I guess.

I was so enamoured with the idea of them finishing a previously-abandoned GBA game and then actually releasing it on GBA despite evrything years later, I just had to buy it.

@Eggolor
You can already grab the chosen four here lol
https://www.1101.com/mother_project/items/friends_en.html

I like that Mother still gets new merch. I recently bought the Chosen Four plushies from the Hobonichi Mother Project store, and they are cute.
I don't have much use for a watch though, I don't like wearing them. Cool to see anyway.

I don't like the idea of games that behave different docked vs undocked - the whole appeal of the Switch is that you can take literally the exact experience from the TV with you on a portable device at a moment's notice with no compromises.