It's not up to Nintendo to decide really. If the owner of the game pulls it from the NSO lineup, then that means Nintendo has no say over it any more. If the IP owner wants to put it up on the eShop separately, that's up to them. If it were up to Nintendo, then it would just stay in the NSO app.
BTW, one random observation about Sonic Unleashed that I always thought was interesting...
The two versions of Unleashed are so fundamentally different from each other that the very rules of lycanthropy are not consistent.
On Xbox 360 / PS3, Sonic changes to Werehog form based on the time of day. Eggmanland has hourglass switches that highlight this.
On Wii / PS2, however, Sonic changes to Werehog based on if he is in the light or the dark. There are the puzzle temples that involve switching forms that highlight this.
Sega can never keep Sonic lore consistent, not even within different versions of the same game.
Yeah, I suppose so. If Sega ever feel like making any more collections, Sonic Colours DS should be included in a Sonic Rush collection. Since it plays pretty much like a third Rush game.
Werehog levels weren't bad intrinsically, but I remember later in the game, they did rely a lot on sections where you walk on thin tightrope paths, which wasn't the most fun gameplay mechanic around. And Eggmanland is just too long.
If Sega ever rereleases Unleashed, they should include the 360 version and the Wii version together as a bundle. Many people played the Wii one, which was very very different.
Katamari 1 was fantastic. An amazing start to the series.
We Love Katamari was perfection and the highlight of the series. Introduced so many new environments and circumstances to make everything feel fun and varied.
Me & My Katamari was fine. Understandably limited by the PSP hardware, but it's good what they were able to pull off.
Beautiful Katamari has good gameplay, but lacks the same spirit - there are no cutscenes, and they decided to do on-disk DLC, which was... not appreciated. ugh. But the game aside from that is good.
Katamari Forever was mostly rehashes of previous levels, with like only two or three actual new levels. And you played with weird remixed music, and weird visual filters. The gameplay was there, but the presentation was kind of off.
Touch My Katamari is the laziest cashgrab of a Katamari game, with missing features such as no item catalogue, fewer cousins, and even more rehashed gameplay ideas. And the monetisation was even worse, with progression requiring you to purchase "Fan Damacys" from the PSVita store in order to actually unlock more levels. Disgusting.
Then there were the now delisted mobile games, I Love Katamari and Katamari Amore. As far as I remember, I Love Katamari was an extremely pared-down mess that only worked with gyro controls and was basically a nothingburger of a game.
Katamari Amore had actual touch controls and played decently well, but again, most of its content was expensive DLC, with very little actually available in the base game.
And the two modern Reroll releases - they're good, but Namco took the lazy route and didn't bother including the English voices. Just like their recent Baten Kaitos release.
...
Basically, every Katamari release after the original duo has had some kind of problem, and they've been getting worse and worse as the series continues.
Since it's been such a long time since we've had a new game, I hope they've actually been working on something worthwhile. But I don't have much faith in them to be honest.
as someone who grew up in the era of the first set of Pokémon cards, the imagery of the iconic Pokéball design from the back of the cards is ingrained into my mind. And the promise of an included limited-edition card is too tantalising to pass up.
I know the Japanese cards had a different design, which is fine, but the design in this box art is being obscured by the logo.
Also, I think the image you chose for the Japanese box art isn't actually what was printed on the box? It includes the release date, so this is probably a promotional image and not the actual box art.
I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.
I never played the original Romancing SaGa 2, nor the original Romancing SaGa 1, nor Minstrel Song or any other related game. The only other SaGa I played before was The Final Fantasy Legend. So my thoughts are based only on what I see in this version.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I enjoy the open-endedness of the exploration and the freedom to complete the quests in the order of your choosing. For the most part, it seems to be mostly an RPG made out of nothing but sidequests. There is literally no main questline at all - rather, some of the sidequests just so happen to lead to one of the Seven as a boss, and that's considered progress when you beat them.
It's certainly unique to have an RPG with no actual main character. Instead, the main character keeps changing, because the game can seemingly arbitrarily decide that there's been a 150+ year time skip in between sidequests. I don't know what causes the timeskips to occur, but it seems to happen whenever the game feels like you've accomplished "enough" things in the current era. I guess the emperor just decided to forget about doing any more work for the rest of their natural life? Even when there were more things to do?
The inheritance system has interesting implications for the gameplay mechanics, such as passing down previously- learned skills and all that, but in a worldbuilding sense, it does feel a bit contrived. It certainly doesn't feel like such a huge timeskip has occurred when all of the towns have the exact same layout with the exact same NPCs saying the exact same dialogue as they did 150 years ago. Kids cheering that their town is now monster-free and they can now play outside... even though their town has been monster free for over 150 years, so what the heck are they still celebrating like that for? Every NPC in the game gets replaced with an identical "descendent" so that you don't lose access to sidequests and such... it really doesn't feel like any real history is occurring at all.
Occasionally they do do something interesting with this though - once I failed to get around to helping an ally nation before a timeskip, and in the next era, they had been overtaken by enemy soldiers, and the questline changed to liberating them. That was kinda cool. I don't know how many quests work this way though - for the most part, they all seem to patiently wait for me, no matter how many hundreds of years pass.
Maybe this was easier to suspend disbelief for this kind of thing back when it was a 1993 pixel game? In such a detailed fully-3D modern RPG, details that don't make sense like this are harder to overlook.
From a gameplay perspective, this game is pretty fun and it's nice to explore dungeons and do quests and stuff, and I like the simple turn based battles. But presentation-wise, it feels like there's a lot missing to make this world feel fully-realised and make sense. Because as it stands, it just plainly doesn't make sense.
Yeah, I agree, it would be great to be able to play a proper modern collection rather than having to rely on a now-proven-to-be-unreliable service like NSO.
Capcom has released MM Battle Network collections to decent success, so hopefully they'll think about their other RPG classics.
I played Suikoden IV last year. I wrote an extremely extensive blog post about my opinions on it if you are interested in hearing a newcomer perspective. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, but I had a LOT of problems with it.
Well... this is certainly a worrying new precedent.
Thankfully I would think all the first-party games are safe, but there are a LOT of third-party classics on there at the moment.
Can you imagine being 30 hours deep in Breath of Fire II and then suddenly Capcom wants to release their own collection and orders Nintendo to remove it from NSO? It sounds bad, but it is absolutely not an impossible scenario by any means.
...This is literally the reason why I bought the SNK collection to play Crystalis rather than use the NSO app btw. I have never felt fully comfortable with the way the app works, and here is literally exactly my problem manifesting.
My one hope for this game is that this is an official Pokémon Showdown simulator kinda thing where you can just create a team, tweak every stat, every IV, every move, exactly how you like it, and then battle online.
Knowing Pokémon's track record, this isn't likely, it's probably just a new Pokémon Battle Revolution kinda thing.
A whole special broadcast just for one re-release? They didn't do this for Dominus Collection or any of their previous recent games. ... are they planning to reveal actual new Suikoden content? Or at the very least new remasters or ports?
Yeah, I suppose on average, I can get through one large RPG in a month. Though it does depend on the game of course.
I do like to play smaller games in between though. As sort of palette-cleansers. Believe it or not, I can feel fatigued from playing nothing but RPGs too.
In between finishing Fantasian and starting Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, I played every Donkey Kong Country game for example. ...and I also played Glover on N64. literally because the eShop listing for the Switch port of Glover reminded me that I never played the N64 cart I already have. So I just... went ahead and played it lol.
Before Fantasian, my previous big RPG was actually Fire Emblem 1 NES. I played it courtesy of that limited edition version that Nintendo made available for like four months a long time ago. And I was extremely surprised at just how playable it was - I was expecting a painful old game, but it was actually really fun.
In-between Fire Emblem 1 and Fantasian, I randomly played Rygar The Legendary Adventure on PlayStation 2 as my palette-cleanser game. I also played Pocky & Rocky Reshrined and a few other miscellaneous smaller games.
Last year, in between playing Suikoden III and Suikoden IV, I played Ghost Trick Phantom Detective for DS, Patrick's Parabox on Switch, and Poinie's Poin for PlayStation 2. And some other miscellaneous smaller games that aren't coming to mind right now. It wasn't straight from 3 to 4, I had some non-RPG downtime.
It's not non-stop RPGs for me, but since they do take the longest, they feel like big milestones that tend to define my memory of the month I play them in.
The smaller games I play don't have much rhyme or reason to them. I just pick something that's been in my collection unplayed for far too long and give it a go.
I'm getting the Suikoden 1+2 remake, and also the Lunar 1+2 remake.
So much retro RPG goodness ... and I still haven't yet played the Grandia 1+2 remake I bought a while ago, nor any the FF Pixel Remasters. And I still have Octopath II to play!
How did so many JRPGs come out! I only just finished Fantasian Neo Dimension (and I loved it), and there's already so much more to play around the corner.
Last year I played the original versions of Suikoden 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4 and Tactics), so there's no need for me to play the remaster so soon, but I still want to buy it. I have a family member who is interested in Suikoden, so I at least want to have it to show it off.
...that reminds me, though, I still need to play Suikoden 5 and Suikdoen Tierkreis. Around the time I finished Suikoden Tactics last year, both Zelda Echoes of Wisdom and UFO 50 released close to each other, so I put off starting Suikoden 5 until I had a less busy gaming schedule.
But things don't always go back on track so readily. Currently I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, so Suikoden 5 will have to wait even more I guess..
Hm.. It would be nice of Konami if, after Suikoden 1 and 2, they re-released 3, 4, Tactics, and 5 next, wouldn't it? And Tierkreis. And maybe that Japan-only PSP game if we're lucky?
I think Suikoden 4 and Tactics should be bundled together just like 1 and 2 are here. But... tbh I don't think it has much likelihood of happening, because they're not the most popular games around.
Suikoden 4's encounter rate is ridiculous, and the main quest is really short, and the ship is annoying to control, and the game is too easy in general. It's not the most amazing RPG around to be fair, but regardless, fans of Suikoden 1&2 who want to play the whole saga should be given that option, I say.
drip feed indeed. eight minutes of soundtrack in one week. still, it's a classic that obviously belongs on the service, but... yeah, this service is kinda. ... ... it's just kinda.
I just finished playing all of the Donkey Kong Country games.
I found the Game Boy Color DKC1 at a CeX recently and bought it.
I then got the three DKC games on GBA from eBay. (DKC3 GBA seems a bit pricey usually, but I managed to win it in a bid that was lower than the buy-it-now listings, which was nice)
This is how I went about doing it: I played DKC1 on SNES NSO, and would complete a world. Then I played on GBC and completed the same world. Then I played on GBA and completed the same world again. And I would alternate like that. To see the differences between each version.
Was kind of fun to do it this way.
I did the same for DKC2 and DKC3 with their NSO and GBA versions.
DKC3 was particularly interesting with its GBA version, as it added a brand new world called Pacifica, located in the north-west of the overworld map.
(...Pacifica Northwest? made me think of Gravity Falls for no reason), and also has a completely different soundtrack to the SNES version.
But overall, for all three games, when they ported the level design over to GBA, they didn't always transfer it perfectly - sometimes an out-of-reach barrel on SNES was perfectly reachable on GBA, or a line of Gnawties that you can easily roll through on SNES would cause you to take a hit on GBA. It felt like the conversion wasn't always perfect, and the SNES originals always had the most deliberate and congruous level design, despite the GBA adding new content and improvements on top.
I also played the Game Boy DK Land games on NSO. They were fine. DK Land 1 was definitely its own thing, though it felt unrefined, and the cloud levels are just annoying.
DK Land 2 was very much trying to be a GB port of DK Country 2 with simplified level layouts. It felt a bit redundant, but it wasn't bad.
And DK Land 3 sits somewhere in between - not exactly a DKC3 rehash, but not its own entirely new thing like DK Land 1 either. It's okay. I enjoyed them.
I then played DKC Returns on the 3DS (didn't feel like buying the Switch port when I had this one in my collection already), and Tropical Freeze on Switch.
They are good games, but I found them incredibly frustrating to play at times. Tropical Freeze was much better than Returns in my opinion, but I was surprised that I found myself enjoying them a lot less than the SNES games.
I was also surprised at how extremely difficult they are in comparison. Normally you'd expect a modern Wii era game to be easier than a classic SNES era game right? Hahaha. No. DKC Returns was one of the most difficult games I've played in a long time.
For both of these games I got 100% but did not try to go for Mirror Mode / Hard Mode at all. One playthrough was enough for me.
HAL is one of the absolute best developers out there in my opinion. Almost every single Kirby game is top notch quality, and their other output is nothing to sneeze at either.
The Seal of Quality doesn't check for things like a game's options menus or playability or accessibility.
It ensures that Nintendo have checked that the game is compatible with your system. It boots up, it doesn't damage your hardware, it doesn't crash constantly. Games need to pass a Lot Check which tests for these kinds of issues among other things, and when they pass, they get the seal.
This is what happens when you don't have the Nintendo "Seal of Quality" on your products. Of course Nintendo themselves aren't going to license your new NES releases in this day and age, so I suppose any newly made NES games are going to have to be scrutinised more.
It's good that this issue was caught, but it's rather worrying that products that can damage your vintage consoles are being sold to regular people who may not be savvy about technical things.
Funko is one of the least-appealing products I've ever seen, and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would buy them, nor why they are popular enough for them to fill game shops and toy shops shelves to the ridiculous extent they do.
Even for Funkos made for brands I like, the fact that they remove their eyes and replace them with giant black dots, or the fact that they force everything into this weird misshapen square head shape... it feels more like an insult to the character design than it does a celebration of them, don't you think? I truly truly don't understand how Funkos have ever gotten so popular.
Ys 6 plays similarly to Origin and Oath in Felghana, so it will have an audience for fans of those games. And it also has a modern Steam version. The Steam version of Ys 6 doesn't have the extra Konami-developed content from the PS2 and PSP versions (extra dungeon on PS2, extra minigames on PSP), but it does have added fast-travel. If they port Ys 6, they'll likely just port over the Steam version since they own all the content in that one.
Ys 5 on the other hand, only has a bad SNES game and an even worse PlayStation 2 game, and has never had a modern version or an English version at all. It was technically ported to PC once on a CD-ROM in 2003 for Windows XP computers in Japan as part of "Ys Complete Works", but it was just the SNES ROM on a disc.
More likely, Ys 5 is going to get a Celceta-style brand new overhaul, rather than any kind of port. It just makes more sense when you see how they've handled the rest of the series - anything 16-bit or older doesn't see the light of day (Aside from the EGG CONSOLE releases, which seem to be available for historical value more than anything), and now only proper Falcom-developed and Falcom-owned versions are allowed.
easiest quiz I ever took. Perfect marks. I used to watch Majora's Mask speedruns quite often back in the day, including randomisers and the like. And it's one of my favourite games ever anyway.
It was also on PlayStation 4 - that's the version I played. I really enjoyed the game overall. it borrows the same general gameplay style of Ys Seven, but feels a bit more open-ended, and you can explore a good chunk of the Celceta Forest at your own pace before needing to do story progress things. it's pretty fun.
And it's not as long as Ys 8, 9, or 10, for those interested in giving it a go! It's a medium-length adventure, so I think it's more approachable than the later games.
What's not so fun is the mapping system, where if you don't brush against every single wall in the game as you're travelling, you might miss an 0.1% of map completion, which isn't always easy to see where it might be on the map screen. And there are important rewards tied to map completion, so this is something I hope they might address in a new version.
For those who may not be aware, Memories of Celceta is the modern retcon of Ys IV. Previously there were three completely different Ys IVs, one on SNES, one on TurboGrafx-16, and later on, one on PlayStation 2... and all three of them took their own individual creative liberties with the story and world design. Memories of Celceta decided to address this issue by once and for all laying down its own version of the Ys IV story, which is now considered the canon one.
Because of this situation, it's unlikely that the classic versions of Ys IV will reappear any time soon, which is a shame since I am a huge fan of the TurboGrafx-16 Ys IV in particular.
...I have never managed to actually beat a Shinobi game. I got decently far in Shinobi III in the Mega Drive Classics collection (PS4 version cause Switch version has too much input lag) but I don't think I managed to make it to the end before I had to stop playing.
This game looks cool though. Not a priority for me personally, I don't have much attachment to the Shinobi brand, but I'm pleased to see Sega is continuing to release followups to their legacy series. Would love to see a new Comix Zone, Ristar, Phantasy Star (classic Algol series, not online), Fantasy Zone, and other classic Sega series get a new chance to shine one of these days, so hopefully Sega continues the trend.
I live in the UK, and I was able to preorder this game on Amazon 10 days ago. I know Amazon likes to put up listings as soon as possible before any details are known, but they usually do a good job at eventually fulfilling the preorders anyway. I'll wait and see what happens with this one.
I remember liking this one more than Triple Deluxe, yet at the same time, I found it difficult to distinguish it from Triple Deluxe in many ways too. I think I like the robobot armor gimmick more than the hypernova gimmick, but apart from that, the games felt very similar in playstyle.
It would be a bit strange from them to just release Robobot without Triple Deluxe there too, but then again, I also thought the same thing about Tropical Freeze getting ported without DKC Returns, so whatever, Nintendo does what it does.
Oh and i should probably mention, since Nintendo doesn't credit anyone on this app: Golden Sun is a Motoi Sakuraba soundtrack! So you know it's gotta be a good one!
@Zeebor15 I think anything on NSO is fair game for this service tbh. Nintendo probably views the NSO service and the Nintendo Music service as connected, since they are both part of the same subscription.
Regardless, this is one of the GBA's best soundtracks.
If you play GBA ports of SNES games like Donkey Kong Country or Final Fantasy, you might come to the conclusion of "ehh the GBA has poor sound capabilities", but then you get games like Golden Sun and Mother 3 whose soundtracks were designed for GBA hardware from the beginning, and then you realise that it's possible to have outstanding osts on this thing. And this game is a prime example of an outstanding GBA ost.
Fun fact: In The Lost Age, there's an NPC in the battle mode lobby who acts as a secret sound test if you talk to them while holding L+R. It's the lower left one iirc. This sound test includes music from both games. Which technically means The Lost Age's in-game ost comprises both games' osts, even if the first game's themes aren't found in-game anywhere else. (iirc I think you can only hear the full osts of both games if you use Clear Data to access the battle lobby, otherwise you're limited to songs you've heard before within that save file)
Abyss is the best game on the list, but since we have it on PS2 and 3DS already, I would prefer for one of the Japan-only games to be translated such as Rebirth, Destiny 2, or Destiny Remake. A bit annoying how Destiny Remake is not a separate option in the poll, so I just voted Destiny.
As much as I am in eternal everlasting love with the GBA and DS games, I actually voted for a new 3D game in this poll.
Definitely not a fan of Lords of Shadow style (seriously the majority of that game is repetitive clambering around scripted sets of climbing ledges with no room for freedom or creativity in the way you approach it, with bouts of hack n slash in between), however the Lament of Innocence style has some potential - if they tuned up the exploration and level design, and refined the combat, made movement fun, added more variability akin to the DS games such as soul abilities or something else to give it more customisability and flexibility, it could seriously be something great.
Imagine a game with the amazing interconnected 3D world design of a Metroid Prime, mixed in with the ridiculous attention to detail and assortment of weapons, spells, weird food items, rare enemy drops, grinding spots, rooms with a single unique enemy in them for no reason other than it being cool, breakable walls, etc from SotN / the DS games.... with a simple yet satisfying combat system on top of it all. If they can keep the "feel" and tone and atmosphere of Castlevania intact (unlike Lords of Shadow which discarded the feel of Castlevania entirely), then I think they could have something seriously interesting.
Of course I wouldn't say no to more retro style 2D pixel goodness either. If Konami has decided that the only thing Castlevania fans want these days is 2D pixel stuff, then I wouldn't say no at all. as long as they can continue the quality from the DS games, I'll be all for it too.
Limited Run?? for a fully Sega-developed and published game? They are exploiting their fandom. They know that Puyo is too niche outside of Japan for a full release, but they also know that the Puyo fans outside of Japan are fanatical enough to buy from LRG.
I'm definitely a little bit on the fanatical side when it comes to Puyo, yet I have absolutely no desire to get this version.
Puyo Champions itself is not very impressive of a game. It's mostly a functional game. Like if you want no-frills standardised Puyo matches online, then Puyo Champions is perfect. it's more like a "multiplayer client" than it is a "game". So that's why the idea of a LRG release feels so weird and unappealing to me. Because... it's not really a "game preservation" issue. Standard Puyo Puyo 2 matchmaking will always be available in some way or another. So this feels purely exploitative.
Oh right, forgot about Virtual Boy Wario Land. I played it on emulator, and it was actually pretty good. The final boss is a huge difficulty spike though!
The emulator I used had settings for 3D support with the classic blue/red 3D glasses, so I was able to play with the Virtual Boy's 3D effect intact, though it did actually give me a headache.
I was always hoping that the 3DS would get a Virtual Boy collection one of these days, as it was the perfect platform for such a thing. but instead we got 3D Urban Champion. ...
This game has a real unique vibe. You could tell the sound designers were allowed to go crazy in this game.
The "Hurry up!" theme is so effective at setting the frantic mood for the escapes.
And I find it so funny how the unlockable sound CDs are just... weird experimental sound performance art things, rather than a more "normal" unlockable like the game's ost or something. It's so peculiar, you can't help but appreciate it.
...would be nice to get Wario Land 1 and 2 on here too, it's weird that just Wario Land 3 was on the service right away, and we waited THIS long to get 4. The dripfeed is painful sometimes.
It's going to be so annoying when devs don't support the mouse functionality for no reason other than unwillingness to put in the extra dev time to use switch features.
Already so many different games can't be bothered to use the Switch's touchscreen, it drives me insane. Even literal mobile ports like Fantasian don't have touchscreen support, like what the heck? Or when shooting games can't be bothered to implement gyro aiming. Or, most frustrating of all, when ports of old computer games like the EGG Console PC-88 releases, or the port of Epyx Rogue don't support USB keyboards and force you to bring up on-screen keyboards.
It's all well and good when Nintendo makes all these cool new features, but it's so frustrating that it's always up to the individual devs to put in the work to make them functional in their games, because the vast majority of them don't.
The drip-feed for these things feels so unnecessary.
doesn't really matter when every game ost ever made is on youtube anyway, so i'm not all that fussed, but Nintendo's way of going about these subscription services is just frustrating to see.
@DwaynesGames
I think that Woolly World is one of the last few Wii U exclusives that could feasibly be ported with no issues to Switch.
Other games like Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush might be tricky to make work without the gamepad, Game & Wario and Nintendoland would be near impossible, and Paper Mario Color Splash and Starfox Zero don't have enough popularity.
I think it would be even better if they did a double pack of Yoshi's Woolly World and Kirby's Epic Yarn, if HAL were willing to collaborate. Both got 3DS versions, Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World, and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn - just like DKC Returns, the 3DS versions of these games got extra content, so it would be nice to see the definitive complete versions on Switch.
I just beat this game, and I have to say, the analogue stick issues when the camera shifted position were really annoying the entire time. Glad to see it's been fixed, though I'm probably not going to play again any time soon so it's a bit moot for me!
When Donkey Kong Land GB got added to the Switch NSO at the end of last year, I decided to give it a go, because I had never seen this game before. After beating it with 100%, I had the funny realisation that I never actually finished the original Donkey Kong Country with 101% before - I had never gotten all the bonus rounds in this game when I played it in the past. And it was kind of funny that I had managed to fully complete the GB spinoff, but never the original. So I decided to also play the original Donkey Kong Country on NSO and finally got myself the 101%. Some of those levels are tricky, you know!
After this, I realised that I never managed to reach the end of Diddy's Kong Quest before when I played it many years ago, and I had also never even played Dixie Kong's Double Trouble before, ever. So I've been spending the past few weeks playing through all the Donkey Kong games on NSO to try and rectify this. I mean, how can I be a Nintendo fan who hasn't even played the DKC games all the way through, huh?
So currently I have now finished DK Land With 100%, DK Country with 101%, DK Country 2 with 102%, DK Land 2 with 100%, and now just yesterday I finally started DKC 3 for the first time.
I plan to finish with with 105% (i think that's supposed to be the max in this one, right?), and then move on to DK Land 3 and get 100% there too.
I was quite surprised at just how great DKC2 is. I always knew it was the most-loved of the trilogy, but now that I've played it all the way through - yeah, I can see why!
So for the moment, I am catching up on my Donkey Kong arrears...... lol. DKC3 so far is rather similar to DKC2 in terms of having to find collectables and bonus barrels in the levels and all that, but seems to differentiate itself with having a slightly more open-ended world map, which is fun.
I also have a 3DS copy of DKC Returns that I never actually finished too. I may go for that one afterwards just for the sake of it. ...and no way am I getting the new Switch version unless I can find it for cheapo, since I already got it on 3DS innit.
@Zuljaras
Love to see it, people paying attention to Castlevania 64 despite its reputation. Be prepared to get used to the janky controls and camera, it can catch players used to modern games off guard.
I enjoy this game a lot - personally I like it better than Lament and Curse due to its level design... Lament and Curse felt very flat and repetitive to me, whereas CV64 has some actual verticality and landmarks and the levels feel like more properly fleshed-out locations.
Comments 2,412
Re: Opinion: Nintendo, Let Us Buy The Games Being Delisted From Switch Online
It's not up to Nintendo to decide really. If the owner of the game pulls it from the NSO lineup, then that means Nintendo has no say over it any more. If the IP owner wants to put it up on the eShop separately, that's up to them. If it were up to Nintendo, then it would just stay in the NSO app.
Re: Random: This Unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC Port Has Us Dreaming Of A Switch 2 Remaster
BTW, one random observation about Sonic Unleashed that I always thought was interesting...
The two versions of Unleashed are so fundamentally different from each other that the very rules of lycanthropy are not consistent.
On Xbox 360 / PS3, Sonic changes to Werehog form based on the time of day. Eggmanland has hourglass switches that highlight this.
On Wii / PS2, however, Sonic changes to Werehog based on if he is in the light or the dark. There are the puzzle temples that involve switching forms that highlight this.
Sega can never keep Sonic lore consistent, not even within different versions of the same game.
Re: Random: This Unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC Port Has Us Dreaming Of A Switch 2 Remaster
@MirrorFate2
Yeah, I suppose so. If Sega ever feel like making any more collections, Sonic Colours DS should be included in a Sonic Rush collection. Since it plays pretty much like a third Rush game.
Re: Random: This Unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC Port Has Us Dreaming Of A Switch 2 Remaster
Werehog levels weren't bad intrinsically, but I remember later in the game, they did rely a lot on sections where you walk on thin tightrope paths, which wasn't the most fun gameplay mechanic around. And Eggmanland is just too long.
If Sega ever rereleases Unleashed, they should include the 360 version and the Wii version together as a bundle. Many people played the Wii one, which was very very different.
Re: New Bandai Namco Trademark 'Once Upon A Katamari' Spotted
Katamari 1 was fantastic. An amazing start to the series.
We Love Katamari was perfection and the highlight of the series. Introduced so many new environments and circumstances to make everything feel fun and varied.
Me & My Katamari was fine. Understandably limited by the PSP hardware, but it's good what they were able to pull off.
Beautiful Katamari has good gameplay, but lacks the same spirit - there are no cutscenes, and they decided to do on-disk DLC, which was... not appreciated. ugh. But the game aside from that is good.
Katamari Forever was mostly rehashes of previous levels, with like only two or three actual new levels. And you played with weird remixed music, and weird visual filters. The gameplay was there, but the presentation was kind of off.
Touch My Katamari is the laziest cashgrab of a Katamari game, with missing features such as no item catalogue, fewer cousins, and even more rehashed gameplay ideas. And the monetisation was even worse, with progression requiring you to purchase "Fan Damacys" from the PSVita store in order to actually unlock more levels. Disgusting.
Then there were the now delisted mobile games, I Love Katamari and Katamari Amore. As far as I remember, I Love Katamari was an extremely pared-down mess that only worked with gyro controls and was basically a nothingburger of a game.
Katamari Amore had actual touch controls and played decently well, but again, most of its content was expensive DLC, with very little actually available in the base game.
And the two modern Reroll releases - they're good, but Namco took the lazy route and didn't bother including the English voices. Just like their recent Baten Kaitos release.
...
Basically, every Katamari release after the original duo has had some kind of problem, and they've been getting worse and worse as the series continues.
Since it's been such a long time since we've had a new game, I hope they've actually been working on something worthwhile. But I don't have much faith in them to be honest.
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl - Duel: Pokémon Trading Card Game
@SoIDecidedTo
It was this Meowth card https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Meowth_(Wizards_Promo_10)
Additionally, this Venusaur card came with the Official Player's Guide for the game
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Venusaur_(Wizards_Promo_13)
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl - Duel: Pokémon Trading Card Game
as someone who grew up in the era of the first set of Pokémon cards, the imagery of the iconic Pokéball design from the back of the cards is ingrained into my mind. And the promise of an included limited-edition card is too tantalising to pass up.
I know the Japanese cards had a different design, which is fine, but the design in this box art is being obscured by the logo.
Also, I think the image you chose for the Japanese box art isn't actually what was printed on the box? It includes the release date, so this is probably a promotional image and not the actual box art.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (1st March)
I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.
I never played the original Romancing SaGa 2, nor the original Romancing SaGa 1, nor Minstrel Song or any other related game. The only other SaGa I played before was The Final Fantasy Legend. So my thoughts are based only on what I see in this version.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I enjoy the open-endedness of the exploration and the freedom to complete the quests in the order of your choosing.
For the most part, it seems to be mostly an RPG made out of nothing but sidequests. There is literally no main questline at all - rather, some of the sidequests just so happen to lead to one of the Seven as a boss, and that's considered progress when you beat them.
It's certainly unique to have an RPG with no actual main character. Instead, the main character keeps changing, because the game can seemingly arbitrarily decide that there's been a 150+ year time skip in between sidequests. I don't know what causes the timeskips to occur, but it seems to happen whenever the game feels like you've accomplished "enough" things in the current era. I guess the emperor just decided to forget about doing any more work for the rest of their natural life? Even when there were more things to do?
The inheritance system has interesting implications for the gameplay mechanics, such as passing down previously- learned skills and all that, but in a worldbuilding sense, it does feel a bit contrived.
It certainly doesn't feel like such a huge timeskip has occurred when all of the towns have the exact same layout with the exact same NPCs saying the exact same dialogue as they did 150 years ago. Kids cheering that their town is now monster-free and they can now play outside... even though their town has been monster free for over 150 years, so what the heck are they still celebrating like that for?
Every NPC in the game gets replaced with an identical "descendent" so that you don't lose access to sidequests and such... it really doesn't feel like any real history is occurring at all.
Occasionally they do do something interesting with this though - once I failed to get around to helping an ally nation before a timeskip, and in the next era, they had been overtaken by enemy soldiers, and the questline changed to liberating them. That was kinda cool. I don't know how many quests work this way though - for the most part, they all seem to patiently wait for me, no matter how many hundreds of years pass.
Maybe this was easier to suspend disbelief for this kind of thing back when it was a 1993 pixel game? In such a detailed fully-3D modern RPG, details that don't make sense like this are harder to overlook.
From a gameplay perspective, this game is pretty fun and it's nice to explore dungeons and do quests and stuff, and I like the simple turn based battles. But presentation-wise, it feels like there's a lot missing to make this world feel fully-realised and make sense. Because as it stands, it just plainly doesn't make sense.
Still having a good time overall though.
Re: Nintendo Switch Online Announces Removal Of Super Famicom Title
@BringleWorkshop
Yeah, I agree, it would be great to be able to play a proper modern collection rather than having to rely on a now-proven-to-be-unreliable service like NSO.
Capcom has released MM Battle Network collections to decent success, so hopefully they'll think about their other RPG classics.
Re: Konami Airing Suikoden "Special Program" Broadcast Next Month
@Suikoden_1986
I played Suikoden IV last year. I wrote an extremely extensive blog post about my opinions on it if you are interested in hearing a newcomer perspective.
Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, but I had a LOT of problems with it.
https://benjysgames.blogspot.com/2024/07/suikoden-iv.html
Re: Nintendo Switch Online Announces Removal Of Super Famicom Title
Well... this is certainly a worrying new precedent.
Thankfully I would think all the first-party games are safe, but there are a LOT of third-party classics on there at the moment.
Can you imagine being 30 hours deep in Breath of Fire II and then suddenly Capcom wants to release their own collection and orders Nintendo to remove it from NSO? It sounds bad, but it is absolutely not an impossible scenario by any means.
...This is literally the reason why I bought the SNK collection to play Crystalis rather than use the NSO app btw. I have never felt fully comfortable with the way the app works, and here is literally exactly my problem manifesting.
Re: 'Pokémon Champions', A New Battle-Focused Game, Announced For Switch And Mobile
My one hope for this game is that this is an official Pokémon Showdown simulator kinda thing where you can just create a team, tweak every stat, every IV, every move, exactly how you like it, and then battle online.
Knowing Pokémon's track record, this isn't likely, it's probably just a new Pokémon Battle Revolution kinda thing.
Re: Pokémon Legends: Z-A Trailer Confirms Starters And Mega Evolutions, Coming Late 2025
...they could have replaced Totodile with Popplio or something to make it match Arceus more, right? I wonder why they chose these starters
Re: Konami Airing Suikoden "Special Program" Broadcast Next Month
A whole special broadcast just for one re-release? They didn't do this for Dominus Collection or any of their previous recent games. ... are they planning to reveal actual new Suikoden content?
Or at the very least new remasters or ports?
Re: Pokémon Centre UK Releases Gorgeous New 'Loungefly' Backpack Range
i like how Togepi gets a free pass for products that rely on gen 1 nostalgia bait. despite being Pokédex number 175, Togepi is like honorary gen 1 lol
Re: Nintendo Highlights Four Brand New Games "Coming Soon" To Switch
@Solomon_Rambling
Yeah, I suppose on average, I can get through one large RPG in a month. Though it does depend on the game of course.
I do like to play smaller games in between though. As sort of palette-cleansers. Believe it or not, I can feel fatigued from playing nothing but RPGs too.
In between finishing Fantasian and starting Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, I played every Donkey Kong Country game for example. ...and I also played Glover on N64. literally because the eShop listing for the Switch port of Glover reminded me that I never played the N64 cart I already have. So I just... went ahead and played it lol.
Before Fantasian, my previous big RPG was actually Fire Emblem 1 NES. I played it courtesy of that limited edition version that Nintendo made available for like four months a long time ago. And I was extremely surprised at just how playable it was - I was expecting a painful old game, but it was actually really fun.
In-between Fire Emblem 1 and Fantasian, I randomly played Rygar The Legendary Adventure on PlayStation 2 as my palette-cleanser game. I also played Pocky & Rocky Reshrined and a few other miscellaneous smaller games.
Last year, in between playing Suikoden III and Suikoden IV, I played Ghost Trick Phantom Detective for DS, Patrick's Parabox on Switch, and Poinie's Poin for PlayStation 2. And some other miscellaneous smaller games that aren't coming to mind right now. It wasn't straight from 3 to 4, I had some non-RPG downtime.
It's not non-stop RPGs for me, but since they do take the longest, they feel like big milestones that tend to define my memory of the month I play them in.
The smaller games I play don't have much rhyme or reason to them. I just pick something that's been in my collection unplayed for far too long and give it a go.
Re: Nintendo Highlights Four Brand New Games "Coming Soon" To Switch
I'm getting the Suikoden 1+2 remake, and also the Lunar 1+2 remake.
So much retro RPG goodness ... and I still haven't yet played the Grandia 1+2 remake I bought a while ago, nor any the FF Pixel Remasters. And I still have Octopath II to play!
How did so many JRPGs come out! I only just finished Fantasian Neo Dimension (and I loved it), and there's already so much more to play around the corner.
Last year I played the original versions of Suikoden 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4 and Tactics), so there's no need for me to play the remaster so soon, but I still want to buy it. I have a family member who is interested in Suikoden, so I at least want to have it to show it off.
...that reminds me, though, I still need to play Suikoden 5 and Suikdoen Tierkreis. Around the time I finished Suikoden Tactics last year, both Zelda Echoes of Wisdom and UFO 50 released close to each other, so I put off starting Suikoden 5 until I had a less busy gaming schedule.
But things don't always go back on track so readily. Currently I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, so Suikoden 5 will have to wait even more I guess..
Hm.. It would be nice of Konami if, after Suikoden 1 and 2, they re-released 3, 4, Tactics, and 5 next, wouldn't it? And Tierkreis. And maybe that Japan-only PSP game if we're lucky?
I think Suikoden 4 and Tactics should be bundled together just like 1 and 2 are here. But... tbh I don't think it has much likelihood of happening, because they're not the most popular games around.
Suikoden 4's encounter rate is ridiculous, and the main quest is really short, and the ship is annoying to control, and the game is too easy in general. It's not the most amazing RPG around to be fair, but regardless, fans of Suikoden 1&2 who want to play the whole saga should be given that option, I say.
Re: Super Mario NES Banger Joins Nintendo's Music App, Here's The Full Tracklist
drip feed indeed. eight minutes of soundtrack in one week.
still, it's a classic that obviously belongs on the service, but... yeah, this service is kinda. ... ... it's just kinda.
Re: Poll: Which Pokémon Game Really Deserves A Remake Next?
Hmm.
There's no option for "no more remakes please for goodness' sake" in the poll.
So I didn't vote
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (22nd February)
I just finished playing all of the Donkey Kong Country games.
I found the Game Boy Color DKC1 at a CeX recently and bought it.
I then got the three DKC games on GBA from eBay. (DKC3 GBA seems a bit pricey usually, but I managed to win it in a bid that was lower than the buy-it-now listings, which was nice)
This is how I went about doing it: I played DKC1 on SNES NSO, and would complete a world. Then I played on GBC and completed the same world. Then I played on GBA and completed the same world again. And I would alternate like that. To see the differences between each version.
Was kind of fun to do it this way.
I did the same for DKC2 and DKC3 with their NSO and GBA versions.
DKC3 was particularly interesting with its GBA version, as it added a brand new world called Pacifica, located in the north-west of the overworld map.
(...Pacifica Northwest? made me think of Gravity Falls for no reason), and also has a completely different soundtrack to the SNES version.
But overall, for all three games, when they ported the level design over to GBA, they didn't always transfer it perfectly - sometimes an out-of-reach barrel on SNES was perfectly reachable on GBA, or a line of Gnawties that you can easily roll through on SNES would cause you to take a hit on GBA. It felt like the conversion wasn't always perfect, and the SNES originals always had the most deliberate and congruous level design, despite the GBA adding new content and improvements on top.
I also played the Game Boy DK Land games on NSO. They were fine. DK Land 1 was definitely its own thing, though it felt unrefined, and the cloud levels are just annoying.
DK Land 2 was very much trying to be a GB port of DK Country 2 with simplified level layouts. It felt a bit redundant, but it wasn't bad.
And DK Land 3 sits somewhere in between - not exactly a DKC3 rehash, but not its own entirely new thing like DK Land 1 either. It's okay. I enjoyed them.
I then played DKC Returns on the 3DS (didn't feel like buying the Switch port when I had this one in my collection already), and Tropical Freeze on Switch.
They are good games, but I found them incredibly frustrating to play at times. Tropical Freeze was much better than Returns in my opinion, but I was surprised that I found myself enjoying them a lot less than the SNES games.
I was also surprised at how extremely difficult they are in comparison. Normally you'd expect a modern Wii era game to be easier than a classic SNES era game right? Hahaha. No. DKC Returns was one of the most difficult games I've played in a long time.
For both of these games I got 100% but did not try to go for Mirror Mode / Hard Mode at all. One playthrough was enough for me.
Re: Anniversary: HAL Laboratory Is 45 Years Old Today
HAL is one of the absolute best developers out there in my opinion. Almost every single Kirby game is top notch quality, and their other output is nothing to sneeze at either.
Re: New Limited-Time Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Distribution Event Is Now Available
well.
today i booted up pokémon scarlet for the first time in a while.
i downloaded a jumpluff.
and then i turned the game off.
i'd say that was a play session well spent.
Re: Be Warned, Two NES Titles From Limited Run Games May Damage Your Console
@Princess_Lilly
The Seal of Quality doesn't check for things like a game's options menus or playability or accessibility.
It ensures that Nintendo have checked that the game is compatible with your system. It boots up, it doesn't damage your hardware, it doesn't crash constantly. Games need to pass a Lot Check which tests for these kinds of issues among other things, and when they pass, they get the seal.
Re: Be Warned, Two NES Titles From Limited Run Games May Damage Your Console
This is what happens when you don't have the Nintendo "Seal of Quality" on your products. Of course Nintendo themselves aren't going to license your new NES releases in this day and age, so I suppose any newly made NES games are going to have to be scrutinised more.
It's good that this issue was caught, but it's rather worrying that products that can damage your vintage consoles are being sold to regular people who may not be savvy about technical things.
Re: Nintendo Music's Latest Update Adds 3DS 'SteetPass Mii Plaza' Soundtrack
this is for all of us with streetpass nostalgia.
simpler times for many of us. ...
Re: Funko Fusion Is Deemed A "Complete Commercial And Critical Failure"
Funko is one of the least-appealing products I've ever seen, and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would buy them, nor why they are popular enough for them to fill game shops and toy shops shelves to the ridiculous extent they do.
Even for Funkos made for brands I like, the fact that they remove their eyes and replace them with giant black dots, or the fact that they force everything into this weird misshapen square head shape... it feels more like an insult to the character design than it does a celebration of them, don't you think? I truly truly don't understand how Funkos have ever gotten so popular.
Re: PS Vita's 'Ys Memoire: Memories Of Celceta' Lands Switch Remaster In Japan This May
@8thDoctor
6 is definitely more likely than 5.
Ys 6 plays similarly to Origin and Oath in Felghana, so it will have an audience for fans of those games. And it also has a modern Steam version. The Steam version of Ys 6 doesn't have the extra Konami-developed content from the PS2 and PSP versions (extra dungeon on PS2, extra minigames on PSP), but it does have added fast-travel. If they port Ys 6, they'll likely just port over the Steam version since they own all the content in that one.
Ys 5 on the other hand, only has a bad SNES game and an even worse PlayStation 2 game, and has never had a modern version or an English version at all. It was technically ported to PC once on a CD-ROM in 2003 for Windows XP computers in Japan as part of "Ys Complete Works", but it was just the SNES ROM on a disc.
More likely, Ys 5 is going to get a Celceta-style brand new overhaul, rather than any kind of port. It just makes more sense when you see how they've handled the rest of the series - anything 16-bit or older doesn't see the light of day (Aside from the EGG CONSOLE releases, which seem to be available for historical value more than anything), and now only proper Falcom-developed and Falcom-owned versions are allowed.
Re: Can You Name These Zelda: Majora's Mask Masks?
easiest quiz I ever took. Perfect marks.
I used to watch Majora's Mask speedruns quite often back in the day, including randomisers and the like. And it's one of my favourite games ever anyway.
Re: PS Vita's 'Ys Memoire: Memories Of Celceta' Lands Switch Remaster In Japan This May
It was also on PlayStation 4 - that's the version I played. I really enjoyed the game overall. it borrows the same general gameplay style of Ys Seven, but feels a bit more open-ended, and you can explore a good chunk of the Celceta Forest at your own pace before needing to do story progress things. it's pretty fun.
And it's not as long as Ys 8, 9, or 10, for those interested in giving it a go! It's a medium-length adventure, so I think it's more approachable than the later games.
What's not so fun is the mapping system, where if you don't brush against every single wall in the game as you're travelling, you might miss an 0.1% of map completion, which isn't always easy to see where it might be on the map screen. And there are important rewards tied to map completion, so this is something I hope they might address in a new version.
For those who may not be aware, Memories of Celceta is the modern retcon of Ys IV. Previously there were three completely different Ys IVs, one on SNES, one on TurboGrafx-16, and later on, one on PlayStation 2... and all three of them took their own individual creative liberties with the story and world design. Memories of Celceta decided to address this issue by once and for all laying down its own version of the Ys IV story, which is now considered the canon one.
Because of this situation, it's unlikely that the classic versions of Ys IV will reappear any time soon, which is a shame since I am a huge fan of the TurboGrafx-16 Ys IV in particular.
Re: Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance Brings 2D Ninja Action To Nintendo Switch This August
...I have never managed to actually beat a Shinobi game. I got decently far in Shinobi III in the Mega Drive Classics collection (PS4 version cause Switch version has too much input lag) but I don't think I managed to make it to the end before I had to stop playing.
This game looks cool though. Not a priority for me personally, I don't have much attachment to the Shinobi brand, but I'm pleased to see Sega is continuing to release followups to their legacy series. Would love to see a new Comix Zone, Ristar, Phantasy Star (classic Algol series, not online), Fantasy Zone, and other classic Sega series get a new chance to shine one of these days, so hopefully Sega continues the trend.
Re: Lunar Remastered Collection Physical Release Will Not Be Up For Pre-Order (North America)
I live in the UK, and I was able to preorder this game on Amazon 10 days ago. I know Amazon likes to put up listings as soon as possible before any details are known, but they usually do a good job at eventually fulfilling the preorders anyway.
I'll wait and see what happens with this one.
Re: Metroid Prime First 4 Figures Samus Phazon Suit Sneak Peek, Pre-Orders Open Soon
I read the title too quickly and saw "Metroid Prime 4 first sneak peek" and got real excited for half a second
Re: Rumour: Kirby: Planet Robobot Will Indeed Come To Switch, It's Claimed
I remember liking this one more than Triple Deluxe, yet at the same time, I found it difficult to distinguish it from Triple Deluxe in many ways too. I think I like the robobot armor gimmick more than the hypernova gimmick, but apart from that, the games felt very similar in playstyle.
It would be a bit strange from them to just release Robobot without Triple Deluxe there too, but then again, I also thought the same thing about Tropical Freeze getting ported without DKC Returns, so whatever, Nintendo does what it does.
Re: Nintendo Music Adds Golden Sun Soundtrack, Here's Every Song Included
Oh and i should probably mention, since Nintendo doesn't credit anyone on this app: Golden Sun is a Motoi Sakuraba soundtrack! So you know it's gotta be a good one!
Re: Nintendo Music Adds Golden Sun Soundtrack, Here's Every Song Included
@Zeebor15
I think anything on NSO is fair game for this service tbh. Nintendo probably views the NSO service and the Nintendo Music service as connected, since they are both part of the same subscription.
Re: Nintendo Music Adds Golden Sun Soundtrack, Here's Every Song Included
Not The Lost Age too? Just the first one?
Regardless, this is one of the GBA's best soundtracks.
If you play GBA ports of SNES games like Donkey Kong Country or Final Fantasy, you might come to the conclusion of "ehh the GBA has poor sound capabilities", but then you get games like Golden Sun and Mother 3 whose soundtracks were designed for GBA hardware from the beginning, and then you realise that it's possible to have outstanding osts on this thing. And this game is a prime example of an outstanding GBA ost.
Fun fact: In The Lost Age, there's an NPC in the battle mode lobby who acts as a secret sound test if you talk to them while holding L+R. It's the lower left one iirc. This sound test includes music from both games. Which technically means The Lost Age's in-game ost comprises both games' osts, even if the first game's themes aren't found in-game anywhere else. (iirc I think you can only hear the full osts of both games if you use Clear Data to access the battle lobby, otherwise you're limited to songs you've heard before within that save file)
Re: Talking Point: Which 'Tales' Game Will Come To Switch Next?
Abyss is the best game on the list, but since we have it on PS2 and 3DS already, I would prefer for one of the Japan-only games to be translated such as Rebirth, Destiny 2, or Destiny Remake. A bit annoying how Destiny Remake is not a separate option in the poll, so I just voted Destiny.
Re: Nintendo Announces The First Tetris 99 Maximus Cup For 2025
let me guess. regular Jungle Hijinxs music for the majority of the match, and the Rocket Barrel theme for when there are few players remaining.
Re: Poll: Is It Finally Time For Castlevania To Rise Again?
As much as I am in eternal everlasting love with the GBA and DS games, I actually voted for a new 3D game in this poll.
Definitely not a fan of Lords of Shadow style (seriously the majority of that game is repetitive clambering around scripted sets of climbing ledges with no room for freedom or creativity in the way you approach it, with bouts of hack n slash in between),
however the Lament of Innocence style has some potential - if they tuned up the exploration and level design, and refined the combat, made movement fun, added more variability akin to the DS games such as soul abilities or something else to give it more customisability and flexibility, it could seriously be something great.
Imagine a game with the amazing interconnected 3D world design of a Metroid Prime, mixed in with the ridiculous attention to detail and assortment of weapons, spells, weird food items, rare enemy drops, grinding spots, rooms with a single unique enemy in them for no reason other than it being cool, breakable walls, etc from SotN / the DS games.... with a simple yet satisfying combat system on top of it all.
If they can keep the "feel" and tone and atmosphere of Castlevania intact (unlike Lords of Shadow which discarded the feel of Castlevania entirely), then I think they could have something seriously interesting.
Of course I wouldn't say no to more retro style 2D pixel goodness either. If Konami has decided that the only thing Castlevania fans want these days is 2D pixel stuff, then I wouldn't say no at all. as long as they can continue the quality from the DS games, I'll be all for it too.
Re: Sega eShop Puzzler 'Puyo Puyo Champions' Is Getting A Physical Switch Release
Limited Run?? for a fully Sega-developed and published game?
They are exploiting their fandom. They know that Puyo is too niche outside of Japan for a full release, but they also know that the Puyo fans outside of Japan are fanatical enough to buy from LRG.
I'm definitely a little bit on the fanatical side when it comes to Puyo, yet I have absolutely no desire to get this version.
Puyo Champions itself is not very impressive of a game. It's mostly a functional game. Like if you want no-frills standardised Puyo matches online, then Puyo Champions is perfect. it's more like a "multiplayer client" than it is a "game". So that's why the idea of a LRG release feels so weird and unappealing to me. Because... it's not really a "game preservation" issue. Standard Puyo Puyo 2 matchmaking will always be available in some way or another. So this feels purely exploitative.
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch Online's GBA Library Next Week With Wario Land 4
Oh right, forgot about Virtual Boy Wario Land. I played it on emulator, and it was actually pretty good. The final boss is a huge difficulty spike though!
The emulator I used had settings for 3D support with the classic blue/red 3D glasses, so I was able to play with the Virtual Boy's 3D effect intact, though it did actually give me a headache.
I was always hoping that the 3DS would get a Virtual Boy collection one of these days, as it was the perfect platform for such a thing. but instead we got 3D Urban Champion. ...
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch Online's GBA Library Next Week With Wario Land 4
This game has a real unique vibe. You could tell the sound designers were allowed to go crazy in this game.
The "Hurry up!" theme is so effective at setting the frantic mood for the escapes.
And I find it so funny how the unlockable sound CDs are just... weird experimental sound performance art things, rather than a more "normal" unlockable like the game's ost or something. It's so peculiar, you can't help but appreciate it.
...would be nice to get Wario Land 1 and 2 on here too, it's weird that just Wario Land 3 was on the service right away, and we waited THIS long to get 4. The dripfeed is painful sometimes.
Re: New Nintendo Patent Seems To Confirm Mouse Functionality For Switch 2
It's going to be so annoying when devs don't support the mouse functionality for no reason other than unwillingness to put in the extra dev time to use switch features.
Already so many different games can't be bothered to use the Switch's touchscreen, it drives me insane. Even literal mobile ports like Fantasian don't have touchscreen support, like what the heck? Or when shooting games can't be bothered to implement gyro aiming. Or, most frustrating of all, when ports of old computer games like the EGG Console PC-88 releases, or the port of Epyx Rogue don't support USB keyboards and force you to bring up on-screen keyboards.
It's all well and good when Nintendo makes all these cool new features, but it's so frustrating that it's always up to the individual devs to put in the work to make them functional in their games, because the vast majority of them don't.
Re: Nintendo Music Adds Classic Super Mario SNES Soundtrack, Here's Every Song Included
The drip-feed for these things feels so unnecessary.
doesn't really matter when every game ost ever made is on youtube anyway, so i'm not all that fussed, but Nintendo's way of going about these subscription services is just frustrating to see.
Re: UK Charts: Donkey Kong Slips From The Top 5 As Sniper Elite Makes Its Debut
@DwaynesGames
I think that Woolly World is one of the last few Wii U exclusives that could feasibly be ported with no issues to Switch.
Other games like Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush might be tricky to make work without the gamepad, Game & Wario and Nintendoland would be near impossible, and Paper Mario Color Splash and Starfox Zero don't have enough popularity.
I think it would be even better if they did a double pack of Yoshi's Woolly World and Kirby's Epic Yarn, if HAL were willing to collaborate. Both got 3DS versions, Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World, and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn - just like DKC Returns, the 3DS versions of these games got extra content, so it would be nice to see the definitive complete versions on Switch.
Re: UK Charts: Donkey Kong Slips From The Top 5 As Sniper Elite Makes Its Debut
I'm glad that DKC Returns is doing so well because that means that it'll be one of those games you'll find at CeX for real cheap later on.
Re: Fantasian Neo Dimension Receives New Switch Update, Here's What's Included
I just beat this game, and I have to say, the analogue stick issues when the camera shifted position were really annoying the entire time. Glad to see it's been fixed, though I'm probably not going to play again any time soon so it's a bit moot for me!
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (1st February)
When Donkey Kong Land GB got added to the Switch NSO at the end of last year, I decided to give it a go, because I had never seen this game before. After beating it with 100%, I had the funny realisation that I never actually finished the original Donkey Kong Country with 101% before - I had never gotten all the bonus rounds in this game when I played it in the past. And it was kind of funny that I had managed to fully complete the GB spinoff, but never the original. So I decided to also play the original Donkey Kong Country on NSO and finally got myself the 101%. Some of those levels are tricky, you know!
After this, I realised that I never managed to reach the end of Diddy's Kong Quest before when I played it many years ago, and I had also never even played Dixie Kong's Double Trouble before, ever. So I've been spending the past few weeks playing through all the Donkey Kong games on NSO to try and rectify this. I mean, how can I be a Nintendo fan who hasn't even played the DKC games all the way through, huh?
So currently I have now finished DK Land With 100%, DK Country with 101%, DK Country 2 with 102%, DK Land 2 with 100%, and now just yesterday I finally started DKC 3 for the first time.
I plan to finish with with 105% (i think that's supposed to be the max in this one, right?), and then move on to DK Land 3 and get 100% there too.
I was quite surprised at just how great DKC2 is. I always knew it was the most-loved of the trilogy, but now that I've played it all the way through - yeah, I can see why!
So for the moment, I am catching up on my Donkey Kong arrears...... lol. DKC3 so far is rather similar to DKC2 in terms of having to find collectables and bonus barrels in the levels and all that, but seems to differentiate itself with having a slightly more open-ended world map, which is fun.
I also have a 3DS copy of DKC Returns that I never actually finished too. I may go for that one afterwards just for the sake of it. ...and no way am I getting the new Switch version unless I can find it for cheapo, since I already got it on 3DS innit.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (1st February)
@Zuljaras
Love to see it, people paying attention to Castlevania 64 despite its reputation. Be prepared to get used to the janky controls and camera, it can catch players used to modern games off guard.
I enjoy this game a lot - personally I like it better than Lament and Curse due to its level design... Lament and Curse felt very flat and repetitive to me, whereas CV64 has some actual verticality and landmarks and the levels feel like more properly fleshed-out locations.
Re: Random: Oh No, You Can Buy A Life-Sized Gardevoir Plush From Pokémon Center
I love Gardevoir, one of my favourite Pokémon, designwise, lorewise, gameplaywise.
People who are weird about Gardevoir online are funny, but I'm not about to let them get in the way of my fandom for Pokémon.
...That being said, this plushie is too pricey and takes up too much space for me to consider getting.