Gauchorino

Similar situation appeared to happen with Sword & Shield's launch and some other big name releases, as well.

Agreed with you about DX. It's still a great game, and I own it, but its colour scheme is forced and dated (since it seems to be designed around making the visuals have a lot of contrasting colours and pop (as a launch title showcasing the GBC's new colour), rather than more natural ones that are designed to conform with the actual graphics of the game, a la the Oracle duo of games'), and that's not even its worst problem, since it slowed down some menus from and eased the difficulty of certain bosses (such as the boss of Bottle Grotto) from the original 1993 game.

@Pod Wow, I forgot about that! Based on Tricky's name and based on his function in Star Fox Adventures (doing tricks), I wonder if the development or merely the concepts behind Dinosaur Planet was actually conceived before DKR was released and that it's another one of Rare's legendary development secrets.

@Pod Really interesting. I thought they put there to them there just to showcase their upcoming games. Hopefully more of Rare's deeply-hidden secrets (like the two games of theirs that recently leaked) will come to light, soon, as they always are incredibly interesting at the very least.

@Tourtus I think they created him for Pro-Am 64, specifically to be the game's mascot. Of course, that game eventually was released as Diddy Kong Racing.

@everynowandben I feel just the opposite, but fair enough.

@jedisquidward Any other straw men from 2004 that have been living rent-free in your head since then? Also, "I'm not a puritan, BUT".

@AxeltheBuizel Yes, although it appears that master Charles won't be joining the jam this time.

@Rexenoboy Underrated.

Ruining a retro console just to make your Switch look different. Why...

@TheBigK This event does seem slightly contrived, true, but providing free meals does cost money/resources/labour/willingness and with more money (ie, capital) they can provide more free meals and provide them more often. The people giving them money also get a (hopefully) good and high-quality product of their choice in return, so everybody can win.

"It just got review bombed by TROLLS! Nothing to see here!"

I like Steve Wiebe, too, but everyone dogpiling on Billy for being falsely accused of this should really have at least some contrition for doing so. Just because Steve Wiebe is the hero of a film and seems to also be swell in real life doesn't mean Billy is literally evil and should automatically be considered guilty of anything he's accused of simply because he's portrayed as an antagonist in a movie. Just be reasonable, please.

@Chibi_Manny Good point. Very bizarre of her. She definitely developed at least New Leaf, too, making this even stranger.

@Chibi_Manny when it is obviously the 5th generation of this series

Really it's the 4th generation (you could class the Wii and DS games as the 2nd generation since the Wii game is just a slightly modified version of the DS original, and you could class the Gamecube game as the same as the Japanese N64 one and the other two Japanese Gamecube versions, making those the 1st generation), and I don't get what she means, either.

Namcot is an abbreviation of "Namco Home Entertainment" (sounds a bit more intelligible in Japanese pronunciation and cultural context), hence why the games featured here are apparently all either ports or console originals.

Give it time. They might give out this version a little bit later, too.

@duffmmann That's a really interesting point. Maybe your Rival would have Eevee in either version, or perhaps they initially envisioned Rival to have the opposite version's starter but they thought it would be strange for tough guy "Gary" to have a Jigglypuff, perhaps also influencing the scrapping of Pink altogether. Or perhaps they planned on having a female Rival/Player(option) but that didn't test well or was too overbearing of a programming task for Game Freak, so they didn't continue to pursue it and focused more on reflecting only on the perspective of "Satoshi/Ash" just as the anime does.

Something else that may have influenced the scrapping of Pink: because Pikachu was made the series mascot of the anime, this scrapping may have taken place very early in development/planning, seeming costly and excessive to make two new versions when one of the proposed new versions already had a character that appealed to both boys and girls.

@frogopus While I think you're very right that Pokémon (the game series) was likely designed largely for children, and was seemingly originally conceived to cater towards a more equal male-to-female audience, the fact that only one gender for the player appears in the game until Crystal seems to indicate that the game series was initially marketed to a predominantly young boy audience (even though the game features female trainers and even though the original commercial for the game series prominently featured a female player: Tomboys were big thing back then, and they didn't mind playing "boys games/toys", which might possibly explain why you saw/knew a lot of girls playing it at the time while I definitely did not (and was instead teased by girls for liking it)). The anime (and probably initially the manga, also) is a wholly different story, as girls in the 90s were expected to just as likely watch TV/films as much as boys were, but definitely were not as expected to play video games as boys were, then. Pikachu was definitely made the star of the anime (and eventual mascot of the whole metaseries because of that) because of wanting to attract female audiences (which was much more difficult to do at the time with video games, especially ones with "monsters"/"gross-out" visuals in them).

The MLP comparison is a bit anachronistic, too, because My Little Pony was not at all popular with a male audience until My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic launched a little over a decade ago.

Interesting thoughts, regardless.

@RupeeClock While I would like your prediction to be true from a fan standpoint, it seems that Jigglypuff is the far likelier candidate, for a few reasons: Jigglypuff was in a prominent guest role in the anime and had a lot of merchandise released internationally and cameo appearances in non-Pokémon media (at least compared to Clefairy), and had a unique and focused personality. Clefairy, while originally planned to be the first starter and series mascot, didn't appear in the anime in any prominent role outside of the typical "one episode per one of the 150" original format." The anime is key, I think, because that was marketed towards a general audience and the subsequent merchandise and cameo appearances seem to support this (and also, of course, because Yellow was intended to incorporate a lot of the anime's unique elements, so it seems rational to expect Pink to follow the same formula). The manga had already been marked as wholly a different canon than the anime's and a different target audience (and, possibly, age group) since before the anime, largely due to the manga author's distinct usage and vision of (especially) Clefairy. More information is needed, true, but either way is very cool.

Pleasant that there's something we all agree on, here.

It's about time. People have been asking for this for ages.

There goes 20 seconds of my life that I'll never get back. Click is on the house.

Why did they choose to orient both of the the Gamecube controller ports 90 degrees? That looks odd and could seemingly damage your controller.

And the most misleading headline award goes to...

@Kr96 Thank you, that's interesting.

@Kr96 Aren't most of these "Asia" releases only Japanese and/or English language, not Chinese? I thought that was the case for the FFVII-VIII Twin Pack, at least.

"either"

Ok then.

Sorry to hear about this random person. Another great and relevant article, Liam.

Too bad we can't select all of them! Etrian Odyssey might be my favorite of that series, but having all of those already, I'd rather see the Vanillaware games, Soul Hackers, Catherine, SMT IV series, and at least the last three Persona games.

Adore this series, but sad that this looks to be mobile rubbish, especially considering that asking price.

Surprised that these things include a link slot, considering how cumbersome it got on the Game Boy Player. Hopefully the price is much more affordable than either the Gamecube or any Retron console to justify having to do that.

This partnership has no effect on the independence of our company, and we will continue operations under our current corporate structure.

Hopefully (somehow), your word stands true in the coming months and years. Investors rarely provide capital without seeking a specific type of return, and Tencent is part of a political structure that seeks a certain kind of return.

Ah, too bad, but not too bad when it goes down in price a bit. A great series which is hampered by the hardware, seemingly despite the developers' best efforts.

@Damo You're continually moving goalposts, so your "point" keeps getting further and further away from where you originally insisted it to be. And no, the gameplay is not the same. The boomerang moves further and the character jumps higher, which makes for different gameplay. Similar gameplay, and based on the same engine and framework, but not the same. The story is also different, which you're neglecting to acknowledge. Again, these make your use of these two games for this article reaching.

@Damo "The visuals and levels have been overhauled", and also the story and gameplay. So, again, how is it the same game? It even recieved a sequel (by the same developer), while Power Blazer did not. Had you called it a "reimagining", that would have made much more sense, but then you couldn't have put it in this article, I suppose.

Some of these are arguably better or, at least, not really worthy candidates for this pandering, sycophantic, (ironically) puritanical "RANDOM!" article, such as you tacitly admitted in the cases of Link's Awakening, Phalanx, and possibly Burai Fighter. Power Blade is not even the same game as Power Blazer, so that is an especially strange and reaching choice. Picking Black Belt is very lazy, especially since most Western Master System games at that time had that sort of "generic," "boring" cover.

Also, it's not true that most Japanese see anime as "a legitimate art form" rather than as just cartoons. That is true in some cases, but other times it is seen as childish in Japan, as well, hence the term "otaku." Weird flex.

@clvr "The more specific you are, the least amount of people you're going to reach." Also this. However, over a long period of time, with hard and consistent work, that specific audience may grow bigger and bigger (through word-of-mouth of the quality, etc). That's exactly what happened with (still independent and genuinely fan-focused) NL a few years ago, during the height of the 3DS era, when they were featured as a reputable source by Nintendo, themselves, on the eShop's front page. They didn't need to sell themselves out to build a wide audience. They just needed a little luck and to stay consistent.

@clvr "We always see backlash against microtransaction-ridden games on fansites, but (guess what?) they always end up on top of every sales chart." Bullseye.

@MrTanuki "Provoking readers into hating your 'content' is a journalist's (journalist's) job." Yeah okay lol

@clvr It did seem a bit spicy last time I dropped by there, too. Interesting.

Also, I'm personally hoping the writers themselves change their attitudes/perspectives, as I'd rather see that then have the site fail. And don't worry, I think tons of others see these same things we do (especially with the constant activism for bad/controversial games that writers here keep doing: this is angering a lot more people than normal) and will make an impact, so just keep following your convictions, friend.

@Priceless_Spork Yeah, I love Shiryu. Regardless of whether or not I have been necessarily interested in every single article he's written, he always brings his own genuine interest and passion into his writing, which makes his pieces continually interesting and enjoyable to read. From the personal conversations I've had with him, he's a really swell chap, too. Gaijillionaire, who hasn't written here for a while but who has great YouTube content and is also swell, is another writer here who I love to promote.

@clvr Perhaps that's true about the current typical quality of their reviews, but I'd be fine if the quality of their reviews was their only issue. Thankfully, they still have some staffers and guest reviewers that have a particular interest in reviewing (in general) and knowledge concerning the games they're reviewing (eg, Gavin and Shiryu immediately come to mind), regardless of whether or not a particular review was good or bad. But to your point, another example of their shallow or biased reviewing lately would be the laughably dissonant SwSh one by Alex Olney, who gave the game an 8/10 despite that much of the content of his review was negative criticism of the game.

And that's another good point you make concerning their original purpose (which sort of "all-reviewing" and digital-games-reviewing gave them a good niche and kept them interesting without sacrificing their integrity). It didn't used to be that they posted several articles every day, but they made sure to post relevant articles every day that was either a review or retro/modern Nintendo-game-related. I don't think it was even an issue of curation (though surely they did a bit of that, then, which is fine) but rather an interest of the (then) writers to actually write articles they enjoy (ie, when NL was still a (consistently) fan-focused site). The turning point may have very well been near the end of the Wii U era or somewhat after the beginning Switch era, since as you've said (and as I'd forgotten about), the drought was a bit intense back then, perhaps causing them to change focus in order to "keep the site alive," and here we are.

@clvr Nor do I, nor when James was around. Liam didn't used to be as vapid as most of his daily articles currently make him seem, either, when he first started writing here several years ago (hence the site's apparent shifted focus).

@Damo I clearly delineated your Witcher coverage (for example) into things that were actually Nintendo-related (even loosely) and non-Nintendo-related in a previous post, so you're being disingenuous and misrepresenting my criticism.

And again, as has been noted here, the fact is is that your content has shifted from actually fan-focused (which, to be fair, I have given and still give you credit for almost singly-handedly (along with a handful of guest writers and very rarely normal staff, as well) providing on occasion, still) to promotion-based drivel at a constant rate with the occasional, related damage-control opinion/slander piece (an example of a passive-aggressive slandering activist piece would be this very article). That's not a good look, and surely you know that.

@Kalmaro Hopefully that's proof that their shilling is working against them.

@Kalmaro Yes, you're right. They've been doing that a lot lately, with seemingly almost no discretion given to what the product they're reviewing is. It used to be that "Hardware Reviews" here only dealt with particularly interesting or popular hardware products (retro or modern), but now, that has been expanded to almost anything, even if no one knows or cares about it, which, you're right, is promotion (intentional or not).

@Tulio517 Don't worry, I don't think you're defensively defending NL, though I respectfully disagree with your conclusion that I'm being too harsh. I agree that this is still one of the best Nintendo-news websites, but that's only relative to the absolutely abysmal state of most other "game" websites, unfortunately.

To clarify what I mean by "subjects only remotely Nintendo-related", for example, it is on topic, relevant, and (potentially) interesting when they write a Witcher 3 (NS) article or even the thoughts or opinions of a Witcher 3 (NS) game developer or even a non-Nintendo game developer that's rumoured or planning to release a game on a Nintendo system, but it isn't when they write a (promotional) "Netflix Witcher" article, which is irrelevant to the subject of "video games" (regardless that that show is (loosely) based on a video game) or when a random game developer is "caught" playing a Switch or when some random (and possibly low-quality) Nintendo merchandise is released. Almost no one cares about that, and it comes across as either paid-promotion or desperation of the site/article-writer to simply publish something to meet a quota, and that's pathetic and unappealing.

@Kalmaro "How shall they hear, if no one is there to speak to them?" Your click might be doing much more than their baiting intended it to do.

@Tulio517 Sadly, I think them being ignorant is no longer plausible. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for at least two years now, but especially since the Switch began to take off, they have had a lack of game-related news content which they began to replace with anything remotely Nintendo-related (and remotely is no exaggeration: hence their "PS4-version Untitled Goose Game news (published on NintendoLife, not (just) on PushSquare)" and "Netflix Witcher" articles, for example), even if it was extremely uninteresting and irrelevant to this site's userbase. At first, I thought this was due to a few of the inexperienced new writers, but seeing senior writers like Damien McFerran (increasingly) make similarly pointless and highly-opinionated articles (he (uniquely) did such, to a lesser extent, before, too, such as with several emulation-related articles he published here in the past, but nothing to the degree as he currently does, I don't think) causes me to believe that this is an intentional shift in focus for this website.

@Kalmaro No, I don't think having conversations with other users here will affect that. Sure, they generate ad revenue by the clicking on of articles, but like @nimnio said, it keeps increasing the divide between bad/disingenious writers here and the audience, increasingly making that apparent among the audience and gradually damaging the reputation and credibility of this site, which I'd think is much more valuable to the site's owners than a few extra clicks over a relatively short timespan. Rather, our conversations is what they'd rather not have on this site, I think.

@Kalmaro It's just pathetic that this is what is put out here, now. If they can't write an informative and relevant article, then why even try? No one asked for mindless clickbait to read out of boredom, so why are we constantly getting that, here?

Further, this isn't game journalism, it's activism, and apparently there is no separation for some people between their opinions about games and their opinions about other things.

Not only did you tear down a straw man, here (ie, that fans are upset that "having less Pokemon will be worse for competitive play") and made it very clear that you intended this article to be a hit piece against those you disagree with ("Hang on,"), you also revealed your political bias in this article ("[Brexit is a] political mess [and therefore so is this insulting term] 'Dexit' [which we call people that criticize the game]."). Ouch.