Fath

That plotline sounds pretty messed up, but summarily sanitizing it to boost sales is abhorrent.

Applying a magical fix to a subject to change their basic nature into something more socially acceptable... gay conversion is a big no, but apparently game conversion is a-ok.

@Xenocity http://www.nowinstock.net/videogaming/games/fireemblemfates/full_history.php
Amazon sold out of the SE within 2 hours, Best Buy within 6, and Gamestop had it in stock for, uh, 61 hours spread across 7 nonconsecutive days.

Calling less than 72 hours of availability across the big three online retailers combined "a long while" isn't Bayonetta Kirby talk, it's Sarah Palin Kirby talk.

Nintendo didn't do jack squat to gauge demand.

The subject of this article is so... corporate, using the percentage of a consumer's daily decisions that are influenced by a brand as a metric of success. We need to find a way to give weight to a counterbalancing influence, for humanity's sake.

Not in terms of Nintendo, they've gotta do what they've gotta do. Just society in general.

@Setrodox Receiving a patent is a very lengthy process. From the link in the article, it appears that the patent was first filed by Nintendo in '94, but not granted until 2000.

First the Animal Crossing bundle, and now this; Nintendo's standard-size New 3DS strategy for NA has me completely baffled.

No need to be put out of shape by it; it's not controversial that the name Virtual Boy is synonymous with dud, deserved or not, so it's only natural for the Oculus to try to distance itself and its potential market from it. The modern attempts at VR need all the positive spin they can get, if they want to have any hope of carving out a niche for themselves.

I don't want to understand the thought processes of anyone who would buy this.

I would've gotten the special edition, but since I've apparently missed the window for that, I doubt I'll be getting around to buying the game for at least a few years.

@ZenTurtle If it's our moral duty to object to things we find offensive instead of letting them become commonplace, then consider yourself objected to for perpetuating the expectation that anything with boobs deserves outrage and pitchforks.

I'll bet you couldn't even give a proper definition of the word "objectify."

I would jump on the New 3DS in a heartbeat for the stable 3d and hopefully zippier home menu, but only having the XL model available is a dealbreaker. The old XL is just cripplingly bulky when it comes to portability, and I really need to be able to try a smaller size New to weigh the tradeoff before I can commit to a purchase.

Both NoA's and my loss that they couldn't be assed to bring the critical model over the pond properly.

Never voted in the ballot, didn't have any die-hard favorites, but I just can't get excited about Bayonetta. Taken on her own merits instead of some weird love letter to Platinum, she seems a bit unremarkable for a capstone character. Dunno.

So doofy. So, so doofy.

Since these are Hyrule fairies, I presume that after you dress them and get them ready for school, you can imprison and kill them to restore your vitality, right? That one in the bunny ears is pretty cute...

I would totally pay the full price of a 3DS game and more for all the content being made for Legends... if I could play it all on the unconstrained Wii U version, story, adventures, fairies and all. Sigh.

Linkle's Losey Loopieland, anyone?

I think she's a fine lil' character, but using her as a character swap would just be selling out the identity of the protagonist for the sake of cheap pandering (apologies, ladies).

Despite being a different and silent character every game, Link, in any incarnation, has more identity than, say, any Pokemon game protagonist save the original (Ash, or Red, or whoever you'd like him to be). Now, I'm not saying him being a single character in any given game instead of him-or-her-or-whoever is the only reason, but damned if it doesn't help.

A Link fangirl who dresses up and acts like him? She really IS a female Tingle, then! I'll bet she's 40-something and balding under that hood and vestcloak, too!

@TwilightAngel I've already made my point, but I'll accept your 180 to a live-and-let-live mantra as an ok compromise.

@TwilightAngel Made to be enjoyed, not sealed and put in a box for 20 years in the hopes it'll get you on Antiques Roadshow.

I would have preferred listening to the original Gerudo Valley on loop than this remix. It makes my ears sad.

Glad to see this review gives the Temple of the Ocean King due respect; I always thought that really tied the game together excellently, and am disappointed at how much dislike it seems to get.

The one big criticism I remember having of this game was that save for Linebeck (and maybe the fairy?), none of the NPC's (I think there were some, though I honestly can't recall) had any characterization or point whatsoever, making the world just... soulless.

I hate to be the one saying the emperor has no clothes here, but that was... terrible. Like, on so many levels. The voice acting was cringeworthy, the plot was tripe, the characters were vapid, the jokes fell flat, and the animation was meh. All of which would be par for the course if this was aimed at young kids, but the corpses, bare breasts, and god-damn-its leave me scratching my head in bafflement at what I just watched.

It saddens me to think that this is coming from the same people who made the ending to Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. Are trashy kids cash-grabs really all that Level-5 can do these days?

Looks very well done to me, except the face looks too old. Interestingly, the untextured face looks like a much better fit, though. I wonder if any of the facial features were adjusted between the two models, or if the texture just makes THAT much of a difference.

@ThomasBW84 That's a relief, thanks for the quick response!

@ThomasBW84 Small question - the feature you mentioned of story boss difficulty being reduced after 3 failures, is that optional? Games that forcibly lock the player out of taking on a full-power boss or such after a few failures are kind of a pet peeve of mine.

I was charmed by Nintendo Badge Arcade, so I spent around $10 on it the first day and had fun.

I'm only going to buy a game once, though, not every day, so I haven't really had fun with it since. I'm pretty sure it takes longer to load the damn thing than it does to get through the 0-1 free play I get per day.

This free-to-play model is crap.

Wow, it's been said plenty already, but using a cowboy costume to wipe out any trace of the native American costume is a hilariously terrible gaffe. It's hilarrible.

Yawn. With all the other characters they're cramming into this version, Toon Link is easily the least exciting thing about Legends.

Nice musical selection, though.

@pubjoe To clarify what I said about Nintendo "digging their own grave," I don't think Nintendo will lose significant sales by people boycotting the breast slider's removal. Rather, what I was trying to get at, but couldn't be bothered to rant about this morning before work, was that going to such lengths reinforces the image Nintendo has cultivated in recent years of being a laughingstock of a gaming platform. They're literally a running joke to the gaming industry and anyone between the ages of 8-20 (the older side being tempered by wacky parents and nostalgic old guards like me).

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization , at least through the summary, should be required reading for any Nintendo fan or critic, as Nintendo is a real-life textbook example of becoming a caricature of itself over time (speaking of time, though, don't click any links on that site unless you're prepared to lose the rest of your evening!).

No.

This change is pointless and stupid. Nintendo's digging their own grave.

@bloodycelt Heck yeah, more games these days need nice manuals.

@Browny Exactly, and with consumers so resistant to price changes, publishers have had to resort to underhanded tactics like DLC to recoup the difference, which not only gets the consumers to pay more, but taints the gameplay experience as well.

... Is the story I'd like to tell, though I concede it muddles cause and effect quite a bit. It's more fair to say that games are the best they can be within the constraints of pursuing every pricing structure available. Even in that scenario, though, I'm content with the chance to buy the expensive full package instead of the piecemeal one, as at worst, my money's still going to a dev and/or publisher that I respect and am ok with supporting.

Not having gone past the starting area or so of this myself, I would've paid full price just for a version of this with no jaggies - it's seriously depressing trying to get into playing the original on an HDTV. The amiibo and soundtrack are fantastic icing on the cake.

That said, I'm worried that the treatment in the video might err on the side of being too sharp and bright, for a game that has such great somber and fuzzy overtones. I hope they don't forget that this game is called TWILIGHT Princess - that magical time where everything becomes a bit darker, a bit murkier, and a bit more mysterious.

Going to buy this special edition, because I'd rather pay more for my games up-front than have them polluted by DLC to make up the difference. I'm delighted that a producer's finally giving us the choice.

Games can't continue to grow exponentially in technical complexity and depth while prices stay flat-to-decreasing (accounting for inflation over time). Squeeze a jelly donut too hard, and things're gonna get messy.

@Tiefseemiez You have my sympathies; this guy makes grateful that I finished Wind Waker a few years ago, since yeah, he's pretty much a walking, talking spoiler - except that he's floating instead of walking for no reason at all in this trailer, and calling his monotone grunts "talking" is a pretty big stretch.

Here I was ready to write this launch edition off, but the iridescent silky finish on that poster looks REALLY nice.

But damn it, Atlus, why can't you standardize the sizes on your wacky first-edition boxes? I like to think I'm pretty modest as hoarders go (I'm no Jaxon, that's for sure), but keeping all them oddball boxes around is pure OCD hell.

@NintendoFan64 Well, to be precise, it's not Toon Link dressed as a cat, but rather a cat dressed as Toon Link (and talking as a cat, which is really closer than it should be to the talking-in-grunts-and-yells that modern Link does!).

I can't decide whether Kitty Link is perfectly ridiculous, or ridiculously perfect.

You never know, though, with the hamfisted way Nintendo's localization handled some of the game's other stuff. They could have easily cut her out because, hey, she's got boobs, and we can't have that in a family-friendly game like this. Maybe they replaced her with, say, Princess Peach; you can't be sure until you unlock it yourself! Such mystery!

@Splatburst I know, right? It just looks so very wrong.

So, what I'm getting from that quote is that EA views the NX as being on par with a smart fridge.

I'm finding the complete model change more of a shock than the censored outfits; the style is so different it's hard to believe they're from the same game.

That said, censorship is still stupid and bad; in a game with a plethora of costumes each available on a plethora of characters, I'd argue that Nintendo's even done their PR more bad than good by drawing people's attention to apparently the single worst combination.

It's like hanging a big sign on your closet door saying "PLEASE DO NOT OPEN, I'M DEEPLY ASHAMED OF WHAT'S INSIDE." It makes you a monster for what's in there no matter what it is, even if it's completely ordinary.

@Yorumi Taking the time to go into detail on how poorly thought out your argument is would make me late for work, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader for now.

@skywake This is a massive, MASSIVE distinction in the context of this article. The headline is not only misleading, but flat-out wrong in its summary of the quote.

It's not mobile profits that are being referred to, it's the profits of the entire company (and in a distinctly NX timeframe).

@rjejr Aw, bummer, food is such a visceral experience that I can see a kid getting seriously bummed out about that.

As for amiibo, one thing even I can respect about them is that they really do defy pigeonholing into traditional categories. Even calling them part peripheral, part collectible, part DLC doesn't quite cut it, since DLC nearly always targets a specific game, while an amiibo you buy today can and usually will affect games across series, across genres, and into the future to games you don't even know are in development yet.

It's something distinctly new, and it's objectively a good question to ask what effect it's having on financials.

(That went longer than expected; I just meant to commiserate with a sad tyke!)

That Ashley theme is a nice Halloween touch.

@Stu13 Clearly, his amiibo's lack of angry eyes is to blame; we Americans just don't recognize him without them!

@rjejr I'm going to try thinking of amiibo as pigs-in-blankets from now on, maybe it'll help temper my abhorrence at them being the unholy spawn of DLC and Tickle-Me-Elmo.

I just need to decide whether to picture them as the food item, or literal piglets in warm, fuzzy blankets.

Points for hours spent playing games instead of hours spent filling out surveys will be a relief.

I was amused by the line in the screenshot, but I'm not on social media (and I've quit WoW), so I don't get flooded with memes to the point that they're toxic to me.

If that line's representative, this translation is only going to get better with time, not worse, as overuse of the doge meme dies out and fades from memory, and all that's left is the humorous lingual tension it's powered by.

The new 3DS doesn't need exclusives, the stable 3D is reason enough to get one (judging from what brief store demo time I've had).

That said, I clicked in here to verify that the smaller model still hasn't surfaced in any form I'd be willing to buy. Yep, nope, article answers my question perfectly.