Gauchorino

So the four Nintendo CD-i games were most likely developed by teams that formerly made educational games? That explains a lot. Impressive efforts, in that light.

@Dalarrun Wow, don't take it personally or anything.

@Haywired But it is relevant. Sega and Atari didn't even make those. AtGames did, in the same vein as a cheap toy. Nintendo making their own consoles is irrelevant to the fact that a company sold a device featuring licensed branding. Furthermore, if it AtGames' model was the catalyst for this, then we would've seen the PSClassic long ago (and it wouldn't use the word "Classic" in its branding).

It's perfectly fine that Sony is doing this, and it's pretty cool, too. The dishonest defensiveness of PS fanboys that deflect criticism with anecdotes is a little annoying, though.

@BionicDodo But will the average person do the math after seeing that £18 pricetag?

The people who don't have a Switch yet might buy into it, sure. They likely won't realise what they lost. But the Switch already has a sizeable userbase that is susceptible to being damaged by bad moves like this one.

@BionicDodo I'm just basing that on the extremely negative coverage and reception it's getting, really. I imagine a lot of the general public that already own a Switch will object to having to pay for something they had for free, as well, but I guess we'll see.

Actually kind of awesome that Switch Online is failing so hard. They'll either have to scrap the whole thing to start from scratch (maybe by making it free again to draw in new buyers), or they'll make Switch's great emphasis on local multiplayer even better. Win-win.

@electrolite77 Their home console business is soon going to be completely dwarfed by PCs' matchless power (and interconnectivity with FTP games also on Switch and on that other console that once was said to be able play games) since the PS4 only plays movies, anyway, and they're already too late to have another chance at competing in the handheld sphere, as you noted. Will they survive? Won't they survive? And if so, how?

In any case, you said it well, so, let's do this again, sometime. Don't recall this degree of clamour since the Star Fox Zero days.

@electrolite77 The problem with that method is that it's very much a gamble. Consider, for instance, that it seems evident that the PS4 is currently topping out its lifetime by still fighting the graphics race insofar as now the "games" it gets are filled to the brim with cutscenes with just a bit of gameplay sprinkled on top (eg 2, the Vita's discontinuation next year). At this point, SCE will be dependent on trying to either salvage the crumbs of the market of any potential customer and any development company that's not already on board with the Switch by making a more expensive clone of it (eg, PSP, Move), but will their higher ups approve of another lukewarm machine? I'm not so sure, but we'll see, I guess.

Enjoyable chat, and pretty refreshing in comparison to the mindless virulence of much of this thread.

"You're not allowed to criticise this thing I bought!"

This has no chance of dividing the site's readerbase. Yes, I understand that the body of the article seems to present a more nuanced perspective than this, but the tone of the bad tagline you went with is not at all nuanced.

@electrolite77 Fair point. I disagree that it's usually better to follow the trends, but SCE usually know exactly what they're doing while doing so. A better word would be "audaciously".

The frequent, nostalgia-induced, white-knighting "but Atari and Sega!" defence of this makes no sense (nor do the other even more reaching anecdotes like the "analog stick" one). AtGames developed (and continues to develop) very poor quality devices stamped with Atari's and Sega's franchises in order to sell them as cheap gimmicks in dollar stores. Nintendo made their own compilation console but did not make it a low-quality product nor did they fail to support or market it widely. Thus, the only similarity between AtGames and Nintendo, here, is the superficial observation that both companies made classic console compilations.

Contrarily, Sony (as usual) is "coincidentally" doing almost everything Nintendo has done, tit for tat (literally down to the naming of this device), simply because Nintendo was successful. I guess that's fine (and frankly, the PSClassic is the only one of these devices that actually has seriously caught my interest), but it's nothing but flagrant fanboyism to deny the fact that almost all of PlayStation's history has "coincidentally" been dependent on mindlessly cloning/copying everything successful Nintendo does.

Looking forward to Sony announcing their new portable console hybrid, the PlayStation SWAP, next year.

Good thing not a single person cared about these in the first place, then.

Final Fantasy VII was originally supposed to launch on the Nintendo 64.

Source? It seems rather that FFVII being "originally planned for N64" is an urban legend based on pre-announcement assumptions from a tech demo featuring polygonal renders of FFVI characters and is not based on any official source. http://www.lostlevels.org/200510/

Oh, no! This game isn't EXACTLY the same as Mega Man 2 or 3, again!

We can't say how safe this controller would actually be to use with your Switch.

Yet you just spent an entire article advertising it. Why all the clickbait articles like this, lately?

@RazumikhinPG People love buying cheap bootlegs and products of slave labour? I guarantee that you'll push start to rich after buying this, 白左.

@RazumikhinPG The question was "who wants to?"

@ShadJV Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.

I get that they're excluding many features from it in order to keep the cost down, but how exactly does disenabling the "grip mode" do this?

"Yes, a purse. I carry a purse!"

Collection pack when?

@Arnold-Kage My pleasure, friend. And I'm not sure if you lost that discussion, as virtual pet toys (like Tamagotchi, Nano Pets/Fighters, and Digimon) could probably be considered as games, too. But maybe you mean "videogames played on a console" or something similar, in which case, yes, 1999 PS1 game Digimon World was based on the "virtual pet gameplay" combined with the more developed themes of the anime.

@Arnold-Kage See Bunkerneath's first post for the answer. The anime is based on the 1997 virtual pet.

Didn't they already release Majora's Mask?

"Freedom fighters"

Yeah, okay. (Evin Prison is still actively used, you know)

A lot less cheesy than I imagined it would be. Well done, Sega's marketing team. Just make sure your developers follow suit in your pursuit of quality.

@Rayquaza2510 "Game is censored in Japan because non-target, foreign audience could be offended"

The irrational lengths self-hating people go to in order to disparage their fellow man.

@PanurgeJr Yes, a business decision to censor "sensitive" imagery.

Because it has been deemed unacceptable to criticise the banning of the "Ash with blackface" Pokémon episode, no one is allowed to get upset about this censorship.

@notahuman "Some people are not comfortable with you posting here. You don't bother me, but don't you think that others' feelings would be spared if you deleted all your posts and left (even if you're not technically being rude or abusive)? It would be the compassionate thing for you to do.

It's not censorship if you're prevented from using your favourite website for no reason."

@Tim_Vreeland Maybe when you're older, sweet chap.

@Tim_Vreeland Something you should be aware of about adults: they can inconveniently give and withstand criticism. Perhaps you also will understand that, someday.

Hopefully X6 will be getting some sort of the same treatment. "Blaze Heatnix", "Shield Sheldon"

@superGear You're making a false dichotomy. Hyperbolic reduction to the mean isn't necessary to stay faithful to source material, as you're suggesting. See Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie for an example of an adaptation that didn't radically alter its source's characters' identities or plot and was still critically acclaimed.

@Krisi @ottospooky I came here to comment on Konami's insistence to include every character of theirs into this game except for their commonly-neglected mascot (ie, Goemon), but you two delivered. Cheers!

@up-up-down-down That's perfectly fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Despite the criticisms I gave it for its undeserved praise, I still found many of its elements entertaining.

But it is still only superficially Castlevania, which is the most disappointing part of the matter. It fundamentally changed the "good vs. evil" plot of Castlevania III to resemble a relativistic struggle to revise (straw man) Western ideals and replaces the virtuous zeal of the main characters with humanistic apathy, which is taking "artistic license" far too far in this regard. I chalk it up to this version being developed by a 21st century, self-hating Westerner rather than the usual respectful and admirative Japanese designers. Also, again, the animation is very poor during several action scenes (though I do like the unique character designs) and the various vulgarities it uses are often awkwardly out-of-place and forced, which is not representative of canonical Castlevania.

@Zuljaras The point they're making is that the great amount of vulgarity used in this series is often unnecessarily forced (seemingly as a low-effort attempt to make up for its banal and "un-Castlevania-like" plot and characters). Criticisms like this are not dependent on the series' popularity.

@Tim_Vreeland Oh dear, did I just criticise your favourite show?

Great, more choppy animation and retconning of Trevor as a nihilistic oaf. Netflix was a mistake.

They could have added the obvious addition of the "permanently exclusive" character of Wario to the Switch version, but Max is cool (and will probably be added to other systems later...).

So Celebi was "legendary Eevee".

No idea why so many here are upset about the new Let's Go games. Actually innovative mainline titles in a series that's nearly hitting the monotony levels of EA Sports games makes me very excited for them. Hopefully "Pokémon 2019" follows suit.

@dimi Not surprising since you just named three gimmick spin-offs by design (not to say any of these isn't great fun). Digimon World for PSX is an appropriate comparison to these games.

So, your potential issues are:
1. Licensing issues limiting the library
Not a legitimate fear, as Nintendo made plenty of deals with third-parties for their past mini systems. Even if they make none this time, there are over 25 fantastic first-party N64 titles to fill the slots for this one.

2. Controller is weird
This entirely subjective observation didn't turn people away in 1996, nor will it do so, today (at least not for those who played the N64 during its lifetime). I could make the same claim about the PSX controller's jagged figure and uncomfortably segmented directional buttons (not to mention its necessarily poorly-placed left analog stick).

3. Unlike for the NES and SNES, the N64's graphics did not age well
Also subjective (see A Link To the Past's or Mario World's humanoid sprite designs, for a counterexample), but perhaps more understandable than the controller thing. However, this is not likely to turn away any previous N64 fan (even if they've been playing remakes like OoT3D) nor anyone who remotely finds the idea of a "3D compilation mini system" attractive. Remember, this is all about nostalgia.

This almost sounds like a Kotaku-esque screed. Don't let those elitist opinions get to you.

@GamePerson19 More likely incompetence than a scam. From his words on his Kickstarter page, it sounds like he wasn't prepared for pitching to a large international audience and now is a little panicked.

Then again, it is Kickstarter: scammers' paradise.

@ottospooky He also did some scenario writing on SNK's Kizuna Encounter and The Last Blade games and helped design Tomba 2 for PlayStation and Capcom's Sengoku Basara: Battle Heroes for PSP, so he seems to have a background in cult Japanese action games (which is hardly "legendary development status" as this article indicates). The Good Life's Kickstarter page boasts that the creator of the Panzer Dragoon series for Sega Saturn, Yukio Futatsugi, is leading development for the game, as well, interestingly.

The game appears to be like an indie attempt at a point-and-click Pokémon Snap.

@CrimsonMoonMist @Jingo_Unchained True, the Switch has been selling out on Martinet's name alone.

This won't age well.

The 130-year shogunate is finally over. Here's to not recklessly attacking your competitors in the near future, Big N.

The Switch has some significant fundamentally-superior features to the 3DS, obviously, meaning that once its software library begins to effectively overlap into 3DS' intended audiences and once its pricepoint begins to lower, the 3DS will be history.