Gauchorino

Nothing's changed since Gen 8's criticism, then. At least this site isn't crying "review bombing" now.

@JohnnyWarbux "Look up CEO of 'insert massive company' and see the ratio between men vs. women and people of color. It’s just a fact."

No, that's just an ideological claim. Since gender and race (and grouping people into those categories) is so important to you, what's the actual ratio? Which group is overrepresented and which group is underrepresented per their respective US population size?

"The person that always wins when there is strong competition? The consumer."

True, but what does the gender and race of an executive/employee have to do with competition?

@Rainbowfire Cool. You may like EarthBound, as well, for some of the same reasons (example: no random battles), though its battles are slower-paced than Chrono Trigger and the post-NES Final Fantasies, and it also has other "archaisms" that those two series don't feature.

I think I know what you mean. Last less-modern RPG that hooked me was (ironically) the first Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest, I think. There's a lot more "prep work" in older JRPGs that leaves less room for just relaxing while playing them.

@Rainbowfire Have you given Chrono Trigger a try? It has no random battles like most older RPGs do, it's fast-paced like FFVII is, and it has fun minigames sprinkled throughout it. It also started the feature called "New Game +", which lets you start a new game with all your levels, techniques, and items that you earned in your last completed playthrough.

The PlayStation version has load times, so you might not have the best experience by playing that version first. I can't remember if the Steam version got its issues fixed, but if so, then every other version is fine to play.

Where did Reggie mention the word "union"? Also, ironic that The Washington Post asks about poor treatment of employees, considering their affliation with Amazon.

@Rin-go I'm referring mostly to their hardware's direction rather than their software's. It seems like they're trying to take their whole company the way they made the NSMB series: recognizable but very generic.

@UmbreonsPapa From what I recall, supposedly he was involved with the concept and development of Switch. I'm referring to the company's former direction (especially under Iwata's leadership) of consistently innovating the games industry, while now it seems as if they most often don't care if it's innovative or not as long as they can fling their IPs forward in cheap (and unappealing) ways to make sales instead of constantly adapting and taking risks to make sales, like they did before.

@icomma Abolishing capitalism will show those billionaires! It's not like they (and politburo members in totalitarian governments) are trying to eliminate as much competition as possible or anything. Envy always solves everything!

@Pat_trick "one other think to think about is that Microsoft makes the game pass model so accessible because they want to defeat the competition. If they do win the console war and become a monopoly, what's stopping them from hiking prices or creating 'tiers' with access to different games according to how much you pay, thus creating another class division?"

That's what I've been thinking, too. It would get especially bad since they've recently suggested mass-platform banning of those they designate "the bad guys."

@thenewguy Hopefully it's as innocent of a situation as you're arguing, and I hope you're right. However, I'm not very confident that Microsoft is much better than those four other companies, sadly (see Spencer's recent comments on his support for crypto-monopolyesque platform banning, for example). We'll see.

@CharlieGirl Almost seems like there's no vision at the company anymore without Iwata. Just salarymen trying to appease (and sometimes intentionally neglect) fanbases they don't understand.

Phil has seemed (subversively) ingenuine for a long time, despite that he provided a sense of hopefulness in the games industry. Now that Microsoft's gaming division is in a much better place than last generation (financially and credibility-wise), the true face is being revealed. Quite unfortunate how he turned out.

@Spiders Didn't see it, sadly, but I genuinely appreciate the support. I liked your reply to the other user on your comment above your reply to me, though. Well expressed. Keep talking while you're still allowed to, regardless of what they do to or say about you (ironically what they're trying to protect against, as long as only their feelings and thoughts are applicable to that rule; bullies will do what bullies do).

@CharlieGirl Seems a bit hasty. One's standard of "abusive player" could conflict with another's. You could get banned on all platforms because of the potential misjudgment from a single moderator, even on platforms that may not consider what that moderator that banned you judged as abusive as abuse.

Plus, people can make mistakes and can change, so demagoguely not allowing violators to change could stifle interest in those platforms, altogether, from everyone (since anyone can now be banned from platforms with multiple different sets of rules between them even though they violated only one platform's set of rules).

This won't shortsightedly lead to abuse or accidental banning or anything.

"Attack YouTube, defend The Pokémon Company"

Nothing opportunistic about that, NintendoLife. Also, the answer your question,

"How do you support 'free speech' but protect people from harassment and bigotry?"

is that you consider not only the feedback of the people upvoting you but also considering the feedback downvoting (and upsetting/"harassing") you. Blocking commenter feedback and then next baselessly and selectively throwing around the emotion-fueled terms of "review bombing, bigotry, toxic, sustained campaigns, etc" right after no one is able to respond to your feedback-hating tantrums, is not going to solve nor decrease the problems your emotion-fueled terms accuse commenters of doing.

Who could guess why it's been kept quiet? 🤔

@Rin-go The people getting paid (for making many choices that their customers (ie, the ones that have paid them and have voluntarily promoted their products for them, for decades) have expressed constant distaste for) are victims?

Have they listened to their fans' feedback and criticism? That's the real question.

There's no arguing that developing a franchise worth billions is hard work and pressure-filled. But ignoring the fanbase and then demeaning them when they speak out against aspects of the product they paid for, rather than considering their words and applying them to the products that the both the publishers and the developers want these fans to continue buying, seems rather counterintuitive to quieting the fanbase's criticisms and also in keeping your loyal fanbase.

Getting upset about (rather than heartily considering) constructive feedback isn't a solution to lessening the amount of it. It just makes people more bitter at you and makes you (as well as the article writers making excuses for you) less credible.

@RetroOutcast What's even worse is that some commenters in this thread, when appropriately called out, have gone beyond spitting on the filthy, scrap plebs' words of criticism and have effectively said that these "dumb" and "mean" little people shouldn't be able to freely make purchase decisions of their own in the market, at all. When you start to advocate against unpleasant words and respond to them with pretentiousness and threats of demagoguery, you're beginning to prove the point of the very people who make you so angry.

Devs are entitled to your money!

Regardless of what you personally think of Other M, remember that NintendoLife gave it a 9/10 review score. Take that as you will.

Well, I was excited about Castlevania's chances for this, but then you mentioned Goemon. To think, a Mii costume was all it took to bring him back. At least I can hope.

Next, how about letting them work on some Hudson IPs like Bonk, Milon's, Galaxy Fräulein Yuna, Neutopia, Adventure Island, and Military Madness?

Not well thought out. You can't even see Saki's weapon, and Airan's is clipped off. Wouldn't have passed back in those days.

@Arawn93 High profile, sure, but was it affecting sales or the image of any of their properties?

Strange that they would go after this, of all things. Hopefully we'll see them publish these guides on their website for free or something, though.

That's interesting, since I thought Sword and Shield are supposed to be what next-gen Pokémon should look like. That's what anyone who provided criticism for those games was constantly and dogmatically told, anyway.

@DrDaisy You make a good point about NintendoLife's tendency to write articles that have nothing (or sometimes next to nothing) to do with Nintendo games (and games/series on Nintendo systems), even when it involves topics that I, myself, enjoy (eg, talking about non-Nintendo retro systems, characters, etc). That should be pointed out more often than it is, and thank you for doing that! If the writers on this website won't maintain quality-control nor the purpose for this website (ie, covering Nintendo products and reviewing games on Nintendo systems), then they implicitly leave it to their audience to do that for them (and to hold them accountable to this purpose via criticism). Nothing wrong with them having Soapbox articles on their personal experiences with Nintendo products, but as NintendoLife bringing up Netflix shows and other "random" topics all the time turns this website away from it's original purpose towards as many clicks as possible and causes us, the audience that helped them gain interest and grow to the extent that they are now, to be angered by their rejection of their original purpose in pursuit instead of new audiences that weren't attracted to information and entertainment to games on Nintendo systems.

However (whether or not it's a veiled attempt by the writer in order to write an off-topic article about a popular non-Nintendo device to gain as many clicks as possible), the headline for this article does say "How does [the Steam Deck] compare to the Switch?" which is relevant to at least some of us who are interested in the Switch and how it's competing in the industry, so it's not off-topic (at least, not technically or completely) in regards to discussing Nintendo systems and games.

I remember bringing Dragon Quest IX in Tag Mode to the uni and having a similar outcome.

Gamer exploitation. Might as well be a Simpsons or Adult Swim segment.

@somebread Why are you insisting that it's okay to cyberbully someone as long as their victim doesn't commit suicide? And what apology did Tom owe to anyone? On behalf of Konami (who Kalata admitted already wrote the offensive word in the original Japanese text)? Does someone deserve to be endlessly harassed and doxxed if you believe you're owed an apology by them? Or do they only deserve to be harassed and doxxed if they don't give a "correct" apology?

And where did I "admit" that Kalata wasn't involved with any of this? Again, he encouraged this harassment and fellow users from Resetera helped him enact it continuously (longer than simply two days, regardless if you only found two Tweets of his talking about this; I never mentioned Twitter, by the way, just Resetera) then he tried playing the victim when people responded negatively to his targeted harassment.

As for the doxxing, Kalata and his goons encouraged a real life acquaintance of his to harass him offline (which is reportedly the cause for his panic and depression previously mentioned). That's all I know, and that's already probably too much information about his personal interactions shared here, anyway.

I give you the benefit of the doubt about this, since you might like Kalata's works and seem largely unaware of these events until now.

@somebread Kalata did encourage a targeted harassment campaign against translator Tom, and I have no idea why you're defending him for this (outside of the fact that you probably have no idea what went on). Tom was even doxxed after Kalata's campaign against him against a word from a '90s Japanese satirical game, which is why he went into a deep depression and wanted to quit the translating games altogether (especially after being repeatedly accused of being a "far-right extremist" by these goons). Tom even did change the word (in an update) to suit his bullies' taste (from t****y to the original Japanese script's transliterated "newhalf", which Kalata, himself, admitted was already very offensive, yet he and many users registered with the website Resetera continued with their "not-dogpiling" and harassment of Tom), yet they continued to target him after this.

It was no different than what was done to Near. Have some decorum, yourself, before trying to blame victims of targeted cyberbulling based on your apparent personal tastes of "who deserves it."

Why was my last comment removed as "inappropriate" when it merely highlighted the fact that the author of this book treated retro video game fan translator Tom the same way that Near, the subject of this following NintendoLife article, was treated?: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/06/tributes_pour_in_for_near_the_developer_behind_one_of_the_worlds_best_snes_emulators

But it looks worse now? Was this point about changes during development supposed to highlight an improvement? The most positive change I notice from these screenshots is that there is now slightly more grass on the ground, but the new lighting outweighs the good, as it makes the colours bleed into each other blurrily (in contrast to the version's it is supposed to have improved upon).

It's only a logical progression for something literally named "Egg Watch." These things only get cooler by the year.

I'm not really understanding the problem here. Scalping is a terrible and shameful practice, but how is there "profiting off of people's misery" in this situation? Why would you be making luxury purchases if you're struggling to survive (and then get upset/envious about the person who sold you those luxury items)? Corporate elite-imposed lockdowns have indeed caused widespread starvation and destruction of entire economies, but those still wealthy enough getting upset at someone for selling things they, themselves, can apparently afford doesn't make much sense.

A bit of a false equivalence, perhaps?

Almost as bad as forcing people out of business and arresting small business owners and workers worldwide while the corporations and politicians make billions more!

Supporting an Internet bully by buying his book? Yeah, I don't think so, especially after what happened to Near a few days ago. This site just posted an article about someone that committed suicide after being cyberbullied constantly, and now they are encouraging buying a book from someone who encouraged the cyberbullying of someone else just last year (and never even apologized for it)...?

"Note that 'black cart' games were excluded from our OG Game Boy list"

Where's Pokémon: Yellow Version, then? That one is the same as any "black cart" game (such as Link's Awakening DX and Wario Land II), as it has an exclusive palette for GBC and yet also plays on original GB, Pocket, and Super Game Boy.

Nice idea and presentation. Thankfully, however, I only have two loose carts among all the others in hard cases.

This game was developed in Taiwan (ie, the Republic of China), which had a lot of unlicensed ("bootleg") games companies because they were essentially considered an anathema to much of the world after the early 1970s, trade-wise, because of their conflicts with the communist-occupied mainland China. Communist China was not often making nor allowing video games in general until quite recently (though this and a few other games were excepted from this standard or smuggled into the communist-occupied mainland during the '80s-'90s). Therefore, unintentionally, the PRC flag on this article's thumbnail is inaccurate and a bit misleading, @ThomasBW84 (though the uploader of this video is at fault for that, not Tom).

30-machine online matches would be nice, as well as a built-in level editor.

That thumbnail looks like Leon and Claire switched faces.

@Deltath Since we agree that it does seem likely that the (broad) phenomenon of financial interference in games reviews exists (eg, like Balan Wonderworld's, according to this article's implied conclusion, at least), then I suppose the contentions come down to these: 1. Can professional reviewers be bought off, and are they?, and 2. Is there direct evidence that they are?

1. I think yes, and I base this off of the disparities between (detailed) negative coverage of certain games (like Sword and Shield) and their final review scores (even when said reviews mention negative aspects previously reported on, yet waive them away without explanation, especially among more than just a few professional review hubs ("hub" is the best word I can think of to describe a multitude of places that a particular professional reviewer is affliated with). Moreover, just type "review bomb" (a highly-opinionated term) at the top of this page to see several examples from this site of how preferentially certain combined negative consumer review scores (of popular game releases) are treated (again, despite highly negative coverage of a game prior to its release qnd professional review), at least recently (since NintendoLife gave a far more negative score to past Pokémon games with far less noted flaws, such as (from what I recall) Pokémon Emerald). One other notable example of this that comes to mind (that should appear in your results after you type "review bomb" in the search bar above) is a recent FIFA game.

2. Though there may be some out there, no, I'm not aware of any.

To reiterate, I think it's fair of you to not draw this same conclusion as mine because that this inference isn't convincing to you.

@Deltath On the whole, I think we'll have to agree to disagree, then. The crux of this article acknowledges that it is likely that Balan Wonderworld had been using paid (or in any case, dishonest) ratings. That said, I think you make a fair point by assessing that this is not proof that the conclusions of this article are true or not.

"I think you're missing the point. One is not remotely evidence of the other. A company being willing to instruct or even just encourage their employees to go online and make a few hundred fake profiles on Metacritic to boost the user rating (or hiring a third party data firm to do it for them) is NOT the same as a news outlet taking financial bribes to alter their review scores."

Again, you may be missing my point. What I stated from the start is that this article acknowledges that there seems to be likely interference in game reviews by game publishers. I didn't claim that this the methods used or even the analogy was exactly the same. Just something to think about, really.

"If professional reviewers are so easily bought, why didn't Square pay them off for good critical reviews for Balan Wonderworld? It was universally panned."

Good question, and I thought about this earlier, myself. We couldn't say for sure, but possibly because Square had less to lose with this new, unestablished IP, so they thought it less necessary to use as expensive and extensive means than to just use "bot"-esque postings on Metacritic, while The Pokémon Company and Game Freak had a lot more to lose if Sword and Shield caused their reputation to be tarnished, especially after the major setbacks they faced with Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee's highly mixed reception (and the same with some of EA and EA's recent releases, etc). It's also possible that Square-Enix does not have the sort of means or connections to the press that The Pokémon Company, but I'd think this is not likely. But remember, (according to the implied conclusions this article leads to, and my own agreement with it) Square allegedly did try to influence the review score of Balan Wonderworld, so it was not universally panned. It was only panned by a particular aspect of its total reception.

@Deltath This is going back to my point that we're selectively allowing Pokémon to get away with not being criticized simply because of favouritism. Why does this explain that Balan is getting paid fluffed reviews but not Pokémon? Just because one has "professional" critic reviews and the other (supposedly) hasn't? Can professionals not be enticed to spread dishonest evaluations?

@Deltath I didn't say you couldn't have fun with Sword or Shield, but that they had serious (and acknowledged) flaws that were never addressed by launch, and yet had been given incredibly high ratings by games reviewers despite this, which is a pleasure few other games with the same sort of flaws had gotten likewise. Pokémon should not be an exception to this standard simply because it's a well-loved series, and yet it was. Please refer to my second comment in this comments section for my answer to you concerning evidence of payment for positive game reviews.

@Deltath Many consumers like it simply because it's Pokémon (aka, brand loyalty). Many reviewers were paid to give it good reviews despite its overwhelming flaws (which they, themselves, noted), which they derided other games for that had many of the same flaws that Sword and Shield had (such as many of the flaws noted about Balan Wonderworld, here on the review on this website). Very few liked SwSh based on their merits (of which there are very few, especially pre-updates and DLC; note that the pre-update, pre-DLC versions of SwSh were being given extremely good reviews, absurdly and suspiciously).

@Zoomzeta The point is that this article is an acknowledgment that publishers are very likely paying for good reviews, regardless of your opinion on Sword's and Shield's relation to that (though it was widely speculated that those games were involved in nefariousness like this, due to extreme controversy about their content before release and the fact that almost nothing was changed about them, positively-speaking, once they were released, yet they kept getting 8-10/10s for some strange reason).