FishyS

@Morsel I did play 162 games which is a lot! But yeah, I like bite-sized play sessions for most games so I may play Picross for 10 minutes or play just a couple levels of a platformer. It means my total played games to played hours ratio is kinda weird. Plus I play lots of dirt cheap eshop games which only take like 2 hours to beat 😆

My top 3 were:

1. Picross - LogiartGrimoire-
2. Fitness Circuit
3. Zelda Echoes of Wisdom

Overall I played 583 hours and 162 seperate games. My personal GotY is Zelda EoW.

Tetris Forever is interesting and it's hard not be fond of the OG Gameboy Tetris, but Tetris Effect definitely wins for me. Tetris 99 is a close second.

oooh. I forgot we hadn't had this theme yet. Count me in.

I hope everyone has had a great week. Holidays coming up soon! This week I have played:

• Infinity Nikki - My main game is still a non-Switch game which is unusual for me. The graphics can be massively ramped up and down (which actually adds more flowers and other details) but sadly would still be difficult on our Switch potatoes. This game made the IGN GotY contender and deserves it. If it wasn't for the gacha (which is optional but still annoying) it would be an easy 9/10 game or higher. I'm mostly exploring so far and doing occasional shrines and dungeons. Some of the mini games are quite cute. I don't have a ton of outfits yet, but I have a few lovely ones. I hooked up my phone to my tv and a controller which is silly but works surprisingly well for the game.
• Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble - Dipping into the third world but also trying some of the speed-run challenges.
• BZZZT - The difficulty of this game ramped up massively at least for 100%-ing levels so my progress is slow. Still very fun. 27 levels finished.
• Tetris Forever - Finishing up the documentary part this weekend; lots of actual games to still play. Semi addicted to Hatris even though it is ridiculous.
• Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons - 109/270 main puzzles completed. I really like how the puzzles mostly stay the same sizes but manages to increase and decrease difficulty by the exact artwork and symmetry; it's a well-done take.

Happy gaming everyone!

p.s. I forgot you can't vote for non-Switch games; I was trying and failing. 😆

@Jack_Goetz I'm thinking of grabbing Okami also; that $5 sale is hard to resist.

I'm glad it won. Even if it also 'stole' the action/adventure and family category from Nintendo 😆 Nice to have a family friendly platformer win.

NAIAD looks super pretty.

Of those 10 nominations, Zelda is the only one I have played. That said, Zelda is easily my personal GotY.

@Zaruboggan Agree on all points. Well-timed echo spamming, crazy dodging, and napping in the middle of boss fights makes combat fun and hilarious.

Wait, 10 million yen damages total?? So like 70,000 dollars. That has to be far less than both companies spent on lawyers.

@Lightsiyd I was tempted by Brothership but after reading all the somewhat negative reviews and discussion about it I decided to get Jamboree instead. I was curious about your comment on Voidwrought.. I enjoyed the demo but was waiting for a sale to buy the full game; is the demo super misleading about the gameplay?

• Echoes of Wisdom: 10/10; personal game of the year.
• Peach Showtime: 9/10; some small flaws but I loved every second of it.
• Mario Party Jamboree: 8/10; just a fun Mario Party game.
• Pennys Big Breakaway: 8/10; fun crazy platforming.

I buy most games on sale months (or years) after release so I need to remember which other games I played actually came out in 2024 😅 Probably some more 8/10s, but I think I only had the two games in the 9-10 range.

@NINTELDRITCH Great choices! 😀

@Lofoten Agreed, Echoes of Wisdom is under-rated.

I hope everyone has had a great week. This week I have played:

• Infinity Nikki - I don't normally mention mobile games here, but this may be one of my main games for a while. It's on PC and PS5 also, but I suspect the devs decided Switch was too wimpy (please come soon Switch 2). I have played the related 2D fashion RPG game Love Nikki for years. This new game is a 3D open world fashion RPG with platforming, puzzle dungeons, enemy camps with treasure chests, fishing, etc. Beautiful art and quite fun exploring so far. Kentaro Tominaga, one of the BotW directors, is in charge of Infinity Nikki and there is definitely some Zelda style which shines through. The advertising catch phrase for the game is "The Coziest Open-World Game". Because it's free to play and has some gacha mechanics I suspect the game will eventually lose some of it's shine, but for now I'm really enjoying the story and gameplay. I'm glad to see Alana Hagues above is playing it also so I'm not alone. 😅
• Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble - Finished the first 2 story mode worlds with all the banana goals and special bananas. Haven't gotten the time goals for some of the levels; they can get surprisingly hard. Overall, a very good Monkey Ball game so far.
• BZZZT - 22 levels finished but only 18 100% because getting all the collectables while also hitting the speedrun goal is getting harder. I won't say specifics to avoid spoilers, but there was a super hilarious hidden challenge level.
• Tetris Forever - Finished Chapter 4 of the video history and played the games up to the first Bombtris game which was quite interesting-- the bombs really mix things up.
• Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons - 105/270 main puzzles completed.
• Leo's Fortune - I grabbed this for a couple dollars because I heard good things about it 10 years ago. Basically just a level-based platformer where you are a fuzzy blob that sort of rolls. The art is nice and the level design of the first couple levels has been good. Also, they explained the standard coin trails in a hilarious way: someone stole the main character's money but is accidentally spilling some of it as they run away.
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I played just a little this week, but since Infinity Nikki just came out and there are prizes you get if you play early, I will likely shelve TotK for a while. I will return, I just can't play multiple big open RPGs at once.

Happy gaming everyone.

@NinChocolate Clearly you didn't go through Idaho during one of the gravity storms when all the trees start floating 🦆

Clearly people should buy Fitness Boxing feat. HATSUNE MIKU instead for the tunes.

Anyone else think 5 fitness boxing games on Switch is overkill?

All but 5 of those 30 also had other game awards nominations. Poor Sonic didn't. Hopefully it will get some Player's Voice votes. That said, I am voting for Zelda Echoes of Wisdom for every round until it inevitably loses.

I've been playing lots of old Tetrises in Tetris Forever which has been interesting. I'll definitely play this too.

I am also very excited by the Tetris-themed Tetris 99 event. 😆

@MontyCircus yeah, I'm also kinda sad they are removing Reader's Choice. I guess because very few people ever voted in it. Possibly also because some of the submissions are sometimes troll submissions (The last two months had votes for H games which doesn't look great appearing in these articles and I'm skeptical of the personal finance submission this month being a real vote).

I do really like the Games We Missed articles which serve a similar function, but those are unfortunately only once every 6 months.

I've been playing Tetris Forever and really enjoying it, both the documentary part and the weird old Tetris variations such as BombTris. Nine Sols would be my second choice — I haven't played it yet but it looks really good and I hope to get it eventually.

As for missed games, Leo's Fortune is a cute platformer which won some awards on mobile a decade ago. I've only just started, but so far the new port plays well and has nice visuals and is generally enjoyable.

December is always a bit quiet in terms of new releases, but I'm looking forward to playing Antonblast eventually.

I hope all the US people had a good holiday and everyone else has been having a good weekend. I grabbed 3 black Friday sale games so I have been playing those as well as a couple ongoing games:

• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I hadn't decided whether I would ever get this game but I found it for $30 and couldn't resist. I was skeptical of the crafting aspect but after playing Echoes of Wisdom I feel like it will be interesting to compare. I'm only an hour in but the intro and beginning was really neat.
• Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble - Grabbed this on 60% off; I had been waiting for a sale. I generally enjoy Monkey Ball and the first 10 or 15 levels have been fun. Some of the time challenges are remarkably hard so I may fail at 100% this time 😆 I was struggling to get a 15 second goal for one level and after I did it suggested 3 seconds as a harder goal o.o
• BZZZT - A precision platformer I've had my eye on for a while. You're a cute little robot and it sort of has an actual plot, unusual for the genre. I've played the first section so far — the game has the typical double jump and dash but the levels are quite polished. One neat aspect is as well as collection goals and speed goals per level you get an extra achievement if you do both at once.
• Tetris Forever - I've played the first 3 chapters, watching the videos and then playing the games. I had never played hat-tris before; it was pretty hilarious. I wish the game included welltris, but I'm glad it includes a few of the weirder variants.
• Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons - 93/270 main puzzles done. Still 100%-ing as I go along but then going back for better times later.
• Super Mario Party Jamboree - If I have time I want to start checking out the single player stuff because I've only played online multiplayer so far.

Happy Gaming everyone.

@cosmograph Sorry to hear about your cat, always a sad thing. Definitely give yourself time to mourn if you can; they are our babies too.

Maybe when it's on a sale. I would love an actual new Donkey Kong, but less excited about this remaster.

Definitely getting Antonblast at some point, the demo was fun.

By 'over 160 million', what they really mean is 'eventual lifetime Nintendo Switch sales' + 1

I forgot about this game, but it looks and sounds amazing. I appreciate the review. It's a pity the map isn't better, but that's always a risk with metroidvanias.

How hard do you have to squeeze Kirby for ketchup to come out? 🤔

I'd love it if they started treating Zelda the same way they treat non-Mario Mario universe characters — e.g. in some types of games she's the main character, in some games she's an alternative character to Link with a slightly different moveset, in some games you can just pick Link or Zelda sprites and they play the same and of course in some it can still be only Link.

Although I absolutely adored Echoes of Wisdom, I'd also really enjoy a more traditional action game where Zelda could use some basic magic attack instead of a sword and also, tbh, I'd still love a game where she used a bow and sword just like Link because honestly she's a dextrous elf and strong enough to pick up a huge boulder so there is zero reason she can't use normal weapons too-- perhaps not the master sword but we don't need the master sword in every game.

Imagine a game like BotW or TotK where you can choose between characters and still do basically anything but where the characters had slightly different strengths and weaknesses; it would be amazing and even more flexible than those games already are.

Clearly the only correct answer for the 'one more game in the series'/perfect flop question is doshin the giant.

@Purgatorium @Ganner In terms of people who list many games, some of the comments on this article make it clear they are talking about games they play over the whole week not just the weekend or are mentioning all the games that are 'in progress' for them, but you would be surprised how many games someone can play in one weekend, whether it's because they have a lot of free time and play games for 20 hours or just jump around a lot and play a ton of different games for 5-30 minutes each. I'm usually in the 2-6 games range for a weekend, but I'm occasionally up to 10-12 when I just want to sample a lot of different genres rather than sticking to a main game.

tbh, I personally sometimes play more games than I list here because I don't necessarily bother mentioning e.g. demos I briefly tried or that I played one short level of a game.

Everyone has different play styles. For me it's rare for a single game to addict me enough to play it exclusively or mostly exclusively, although the recent Zelda was an exception to that. I'm always kind of impressed by the people who can keep their attention on one single game for weeks in a row.

I hope everyone is well and is having a good weekend. I haven't posted on this article for a month because I was traveling for work and generally fairly busy. I'll include all the games I've played recently below; this weekend I'll probably decide between one or two of them:

• Super Mario Party Jamboree - I didn't have any Mario Party Switch games so I caved in and grabbed this one. I've only had a chance to do a couple boards — they are long! - but I've had a lot of fun so far. The online multiplayer works surprisingly well.
• Tetris Forever - I can never resist Tetris. So far I have watched all the videos for the first section and played the Electronika 60 and DOS Tetris versions which was interesting. The DOS version was kind of blinding with color choices though 😆
• Mega Man V GB (NSO)- This is my current NSO game. Fun enemies but the lag is a bit painful. I'm 2 bosses in.
• Super Mario RPG - I decided to play this game on the airplane. 3 stars in for this playthrough.
• Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons - 86/270 main puzzles done. The only game I really played a bit of while out of the country.

Happy Gaming Everyone.

@Freek I hope you heal quickly.

@Desy64 Oh yeah, I definitely never rely on game awards to pick things I like. And although no one likes to admit it, some of the criteria for some of these nominations or votes may be sacks of money handed around 😆

@Desy64 Metacritic score is definitely not an official criteria but there is overlap between reviewing outlets which effect metacritic score and the panel which chooses the nominees so it makes sense if the games which were liked during the reviews are still liked. Also, some of the panel outlets are not really gaming organizations at all so they may mostly know the most hyped games.

In practice the GotY category is almost always mostly games at or near the top of the metacritic list although games which got a ton of hype but didn't review as well sometimes make it also.

I would love it if Zelda won one of the categories, but it is competing against Astro Bot in both action/adventure and Family game, so it's quite possible Nintendo wins nothing this year.

Although Echoes of Wisdom is my personal GotY, I hope Astro Bot wins the GotY category since Zelda isn't an option.

I'm happy that Peach: Showtime made an appearance even though it has zero chance of winning; great under-rated game and one of my favorites of the year even though not quite my very favorite.

@Desy64 @sanderev It's sad Zelda wasn't a GotY nominee but given the low metacritic reviewer score it was always unlikely. The GotY nominees were literally just the top 4 metacritic scoring games plus Balatro which was in the top 10 plus a single lower-scoring exception, Black Myth: Wukong. Since a lot of publications took a point away from Zelda because of minor performance issues, I feel like it would have had a better chance of being nominated if it had released on the Switch 2, so I think of this as Switch simply showing it's age.

That's not really what I expected their reasoning to be, but interesting to know. The one positive I can think of for the single line is just how fast you can scroll through it. Even though a 2-dimensional grid would show more at once I expect it would remove the lightning scrolling aspect.

I can't say my personal experience lined up with what the devs said... I just memorized where the echoes I liked (but hadn't used recently) were and zipped to them; except at the very start of the game I never really slowly scrolled through and pondered them.

Fun survey... I would be interested to see some of the data beyond what this article summarizes.

I wonder how different the answers would be for 'typical' Switch players as opposed to ones who answer surveys on this website.

I've never played Switch on my toilet but plenty of times I've set down my Switch, picked up my phone and used that on the toilet 😆 I feel like Switch is just a bit too big for toilet usage.

Let's go for 10 million!

I'm guessing a short January reveal and then a big February direct with both Switch 2 and Switch 1 games.

I wish Mario Wonder had gotten up there but apparently it hasn't been selling much this year. It always feels a little silly to see new super mario bros U in the top 10 list; good game, but Switch has it's own 2D Mario now!

Looks like the two Pokemons are in a close race.

I think that 2.58 million Echoes of Wisdom number was only for the quarter ending in September... which basically means the week after release. I'm looking forward to the end of year overview to see if it sells a lot more in total.

I'll definitely try the demo when it arrives. I was mainly just waiting for a good sale to actually buy the game, but I wouldn't mind trying it out first.

Fun article. I've definitely enjoyed how the classic 2D Marios have evolved, ending with all the fun sprite animations in Wonder.

I'm a bit busy so I haven't played much this week. I did briefly try the NSO trial games; I really thought I would love A Little to the Left but it was a bit (very) anxiety-inducing so I stopped. Otherwise I am playing:

• Voidwrought (demo) - A pretty metroidvania. Quite enjoying the demo so I'll probably buy this one at some point.
• .cat - I can never resist a cheap cat platformer so I grabbed this on sale. I beat it very quickly. Although it had a neat idea connecting all the levels with internal portals, the game was not very well designed so I wouldn't recommend it.
• Fitness Circuit - My usual exercise routines. The randomized exercise selection gave me overly easy exercises this week so I may tweak the settings.
• Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons - 77/270 main puzzles done.

Happy weekend and gaming everyone!

I'll be traveling next weekend so I may miss out on these articles for the next 3 weeks. I may play Link to the Past on the airplane or perhaps I'll catch up on my visual novel backlog. Take care all.

On the one hand, it feels silly, but on the other hand if this ends up being extremely different than some related final product, I can kind of understand why Nintendo wouldn't want permanent easily findable YouTube videos out there giving people incorrect expectations.

Many many years ago I participated in a similar Microsoft-related limited playtest — there were thousands of people in a big odd multiplayer game and it was kind of cool but they were stressing that it was essentially a Network test and no directly related game was ever actually released.

I guess we'll see what happens with this one.

I hope it sells well overall; amazing game and it deserves some love.

Ooh, I was just eyeing the Little to the Left sale earlier today, so I'll definitely try the trial. Pretty random collection of games, but I'm happy they are doing trials again.

@MarkSeteth72 The last Minecraft Dungeons trial was only NA and this is only Europe, although at least for NA they've actually done Minecraft Dungeons trials twice before, possibly the only repeat NSO trial.

The ever-present 'Performance could be better'.

The game otherwise sounds fun though. I'll probably snag it on a sale.

It may be sacrilegious to say, but looking back at the OG reveal, I kind of hate that reveal. I really don't like the 'this is a 3 minute commercial' style. I hope the reveal for Switch 2 is more in the format of a mini direct.

I would personally put Sunshine a bit lower on the list and New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe, 3D World, and super Mario Maker 2 slightly higher than they are, but overall this order seems reasonable.

Fundamentally all the games have been great except for Super Mario Run which shouldn't even be on this list since it's not a console game. Although I don't think Lost Levels is bad, I do think it deserves Rank 22 because it didn't bring much new to the table and part of what it brought were trolls.

@Diogmites Thank you. A few people sick in this forum lately, I hope I didn't remotely infect anyone 😆 As for games, I am very tempted by Moonstone Island after seeing you write so many positive things about it, but I have been waiting for a good sale.

@JohnnyMind @LikelySatan Hope you get well soon!

@Yalloo I still mostly let Fitness Circuit choose for me; I've given up on getting all the accomplishments since some seem impossible but I like the randomness to make sure I don't permanently miss any types of exercises. After several rounds of Fitness Circuit I do some non-video-game exercises to hit some of the things the game doesn't cover, so it usually works pretty well. Honestly I'll probably still be playing this game 2 years from now.

Also, I like how you consider 30 hour games short. 😆 When I think short game I am usually thinking 2 hours.

I've never heard of Vectronom, but there is a demo so I'll try it out. The Warrior games are on my wishlist but they seem to be following Nintendo's anti-sale philosophy so I haven't picked one up yet.

Still not totally sure what to play post-Zelda as a main game. Any suggestions? Hope everyone is having a good weekend. So far this week I have played:

• Kirby Super Star (nso) - Cute little game; my first time playing. I've finished 7 modes and will finish the last one today.
• Fitness Circuit - I was recovering from being sick so only managed one day this week. It wore me out 😅
• Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons - 73/270 main puzzles done.

Some great looking games for my wishlist. I really like these features; I've found a couple games I absolutely love through them.

And thank you NL for putting up 2 of my picks and sorry to the editors for accidently submitting one which NL had already reviewed because I'm blind 😆

I'm really glad someone submitted Transiruby; great game. @cmbaum