GravyThief

I feel the word ‘portable’ has lost all meaning in this day and age

How does it compare the Metroid Prime Remastered? Is it as good as that? Because if so, then all is fine, that looks awesome. If it somehow looks less favourable, then that’s worrying. Shame you didn’t mention it.

I want you to do a side-by-side comparison of the two versions, using a close up of Myles’ mug.

I still haven’t played Pikmin 2 (despite owning it on both GC and Switch). Hopefully I’ll get to it one day. I definitely have a soft spot for the first Pikmin. I actually liked its 30 day limit and its simplicity. It’s like a pure, distilled form of Pikmin that I really like. I still like 3 and 4 though, too.

Haven’t followed Air Riders at all. But all I can say is I had the original on GameCube back in the day and it was god awful. So I have zero interest in this, and I can’t argue with the rest of the UK gaming public either.

This is just getting ridiculous now. What next, will they all be doing a group selfie with Samus?

@RobbySuave the original Game Boy model, the first one released. The big grey one. Its model number is DMG, and people generally use that as an easy way to identify which Game Boy model they’re referring to. Other models are Game Boy Pocket (GBP), Game Boy Light (GBL), Game Boy Color (GBC), and the Game Boy Advance (GBA). Hope that helps.

@OmnitronVariant the angle of my thumb doesn’t answer it for me. Plus the angle changes depending whether I’m using joycons, pro controller, or even a SNES pad, yet all still feel wrong. I think part of it is muscle memory, on all these pads I’m just used to Y being run and B being jump. But checking a DMG and GBC, I do think a big part of it is the size of the buttons, especially on a DMG. My thumb sits nicely across both of them, especially the DMG where the buttons are both bigger and closer. Doing the same on a Joycon or pro controller, the buttons are smaller and the gaps are (relatively) larger too. I think that answers it for me anyway.

@Lizuka it’s bizarre. When I play games on a real Game Boy / Color, I find it perfectly fine that B is run and A is jump. But the moment I play GB games on something like the Switch, I don’t like it. It must be the placement of the buttons, and the fact they’re bigger on Game Boy hardware. Who knows.

@Protion9 ooh that’s a good shout. I never thought of using the N64 pad in lieu of the Mega Drive controller. Saves me having to purchase yet another NSO controller. And of course it’s only a 3-button controller anyway.

Apparently the contract stipulates no dissing of Myles MacKenzie

@Arkz ah, that explains it!

8 years. That’s 0.57 years per letter of Myles MacKenzie’s name. Or 1.75 letters per year.

Isn’t the maximum disc size for PS4 50GB? So if that’s the case, why is this nearly double the size?

@Kraven we all know it’s not going to be one instance. Our lad MacKenzie has his own spanner symbol in the top corner of the HUD, so clearly he’s going to be a buddy for Samus throughout the game. And all it takes is one instance to ruin atmosphere anyway. If you’re happy for Samus to have buddies in your Metroid games then absolutely, we have different expectations. I expect Metroid, not Halo. But to each their own.

@Kraven it probably won’t. But even just one instance is enough to spoil it for me. It’s hard to get pulled in to the atmosphere or to feel truly isolated when an NPC has said the line “It's about to get real nerdy in here” to Samus.

Gosh what a terrible list.

I missed that this douche was called Myles MacKenzie. Somehow that just makes it worse. Maybe there’s a secondary story arc where you save his brother, Chuck.

@Kraven but the appeal of Metroid games for a lot of fans (me included) is the atmosphere and sense of isolation. So absolutely, one yapping NPC (and the trailer shows more) is enough to ruin it for us.

Maybe it has built in ear plugs to block out the yapping from the marine buddies

@Strumpan I’ve never completed MP3 for that very reason. It just didn’t feel like a Metroid game. Especially at the start where you’re just casually walking around chatting to everyone, then you end up in that room getting a briefing from a generic American military man, while surrounded by people in the worst fancy dress costumes ever. I couldn’t believe it. Seems this is going down the same route.

Seeing all that marine stuff and hearing the voice acting has really put me off. It isn’t Metroid anymore. They’ve clearly missed the point, or Nintendo want to make the Prime series their generic space shooty shooty game going forward, in the hope of enticing more sales from the general public.

God seeing the teamwork and hearing the soldiers speak like it’s a Hollywood action movie, my fears have been realised. The design team have missed the point of what makes a Metroid game Metroid.

I’m just starting to play it now. BotW was never my favourite Zelda game (it’s an Open World game, not much Zelda going on), but I think I’m enjoying TotK even less. I’m enjoying it, don’t get me wrong, but the depths, my goodness what a dull, annoying slog they are. It would have been better to just not have them. I never once thought BotW’s map was too small, to add basically a full map again but this time it’s all some boring, dark underground blandness. Ugh.

Also I don’t know how they managed to do it, but they’ve added even MORE doodads to collect and craft. That’s definitely what was needed after BotW.

Thanks, been waiting to buy one of these for ages. I refuse to pay the silly scalper prices. Just ordered one now, cheers!

Looking at the faces of the characters of their latest Dragon Quest game, I’d say they’re already using it

I have this pre-ordered, because Metroid Prime is one of my favourite games of all time. But I really hope this lives up to its predecessors (well, 1 & 2 mostly). The whole bike in the Open World desert just looks s*it and very un-Metroid.

I like the top piece from the last section where Peach and Zelda are having to rescue Link and Mario. Makes much more sense that way around I think, Mario and Link are very weasley!

Also impressive to see someone from the US doing Fire Emblen art in 1996. That’s a good 5 years or so before the first ever Fire Emblem game released in the west.

This is such a missed opportunity. The book itself looks lovely, as do the pictures inside from what I’ve seen, but I want something to read too, and not just repeats of the in-game scans. I need more than just pictures if I’m to spend a whopping £40 on a book.

A much better example, while not videogame related, is the Fighting Fantasy Magic Realms art book. It included full page art works, but also a couple of pages about each artist and artwork covered. Such as the artist’s background, the medium they used to paint the art, their thought process, other info such as deadlines etc. It was genuinely interesting AND had great pictures to look at too.

There is so much more they could have included in the book. I’ll consider it if I see it cheaper (under £30), but it’s a hard pass at £40 for me.

Hopefully it comes to the UK store. I’ve got a few K of Platinum points just burning a hole and what’s currently available I either have or aren’t interested. This looks to be one of the better rewards they’ve done.

He made the correct decision.

@FullMetalWesker when I tried it yesterday, because it was the US Nintendo site it said it was the wrong region for me. However, I just tried again today and I didn’t get kicked out, so I managed to nab the sample.

Thanks NL for posting the pics, so I know I’m missing out on literally nothing by not going there.

@HammerGalladeBro I’ve been waiting close to a year for those SNES controllers to come back in stock!

I’ve got the NTSC/60hz fix rom on my SD2SNES cartridge, so I really should play it. Especially how I can play it in English without borders, I have no excuse!

I did have a genuine PAL copy, but seen as I’d never play it (when there is an NTSC rom available) and it was worth £250+, I decided to sell it. I never had it back in the 90s so don’t have any nostalgia for it. Maybe I’ll regret once I get around to playing it and realise how awesome it is!

The question is, should I play Illusion of Time/Gaia first? As I’ve never played that either.

I really find the faces on these characters… unnerving. Disturbing even. I don’t know what it is, but there is just no way I could play a game with those faces looking out of my TV screen.

Hopefully the sample becomes available in the UK/EU. Currently that link only works for the US region, and I can’t find the equivalent on Nintendo’s UK site.

VC would be nice, alongside the NSO. I fired up my Wii U the other day, just a regular switch on to try and keep that pesky NAND thing at bay, and it was nice seeing all the VC games I’d purchased back in the day, just waiting to be launched any time I want. I didn’t have to worry about connecting it to the internet, and it’d even remembered where I’d last played up to, and resumed right where I must have left it 8+ years ago! I didn’t realise how good we had it at the time.

I like the idea of this, but only if there’re some pointers or guidance as to where paths can branch and where to find the new levels (think the ‘red’ levels in Mario World where you know there’s a secret exit). What I don’t want to have to do is play through it blindly multiple times trying to figure out where all the alternative content is, I don’t have time for that any more unfortunately.

Pikmin or Chibi-Robo. Or both!

I really don’t like the + and - buttons on the Switch 1 Pro Controller. Same with the options button on the PS4 pad. They’re not raised whatsoever, so it’s really hard to feel them when mid-game. The number of times I’ve hit the home button instead of the + button in the heat of the moment is infuriating. Why do modern pads do this? I can only assume they’ve done it for aesthetics. Give me a nice prominent start and select button any day.

The moment the dreaded ‘open world’ moniker was given to Mario Kart, my interest plummeted to zero. It’s a curse. It’s already taken Zelda. It’s now taken Mario Kart and there’s a good chance it’s taken Metroid too (TBC).

I haven’t watched the video (yet). But what makes ‘minus world’ different to other glitched levels that aren’t true levels from the game? Like it mentions B-D, that’s not a real level from the game is it? (It’s decades since I’ve played it). So why isn’t that minus world and what makes minus world so special?

I hate character customisations in any game. I’d much rather a skilled designer designed characters, rather than leavening it to me. It’s partly what I’m paying them for. They should decide what skills and class ext each character has.

That being said, Vandal Hearts on PS1 doesn’t well. Every character has a fixed starting class, then when you get to level 10 or something like that, you can move up a class and you have a choice of two. Yep, a choice of two, and both relate to that character and their starting class but go off in different directions. That’s about as much choice as I want.

@Isenlia that’s a huge difference. With PlayStation games, the game data is still on the disc. Even if it needs to be downloaded off the disc and on to the console, you still have the data on the disc and it can be played almost forever (as long as the disc and console still work, basically).

That isn’t the case with Game Key Cards. They hold zero data on them. It’s all downloaded from servers, and you’re reliant upon the game company keeping that server active. As history has shown us, that is not guaranteed.

So this means the SD cards you have to use with Swith 2 are ok speed-wise I presume? As you’re likely to download the game to the SD card. I thought Switch 2 game cards were as fast as those, using similar technology, but I guess that isn’t the case?

Outsourcing UK customer services to countries whose first language isn’t English has always improved the customer experience. Said nobody, ever.

Klonoa Empire of Dreams is an awesome game if you like your puzzle platformers

@Suketoudara I think part of the problem was NOE didn’t even exist back in the day. They left it up to Mattel in the early days to distribute their stuff in the UK, and later Bandai and THE Games which were much better. But it really goes to show how much we’ve moved on when you look at how games pretty much release simultaneously across the globe these days.

Seeing the Japanese release date of Mario World on the Super Famicom always reminds me that it came out BEFORE Mario 3 on the NES in Europe 🤣