Haywired

@Krull
"Who in the UK buys basketball games anyway?" UK basketball fans who own a PS4 or Xbox One apparently.

Time for Ubisoft to do some more Miyamoto ass-kissing to get Nintendo to give them a Mario Odyssey crossover for the Switch version...

Ha, I said that to carry on their mission of stretching out the 3DS's lifespan for as long as possible, Kirby was going to get hooked back up to the milking machine again... It was inevitable. The poor little guy.

"Hey Nintendo, what does the U in the title mean?"
"Nothing, it's just a random letter."
"Seems familiar though... I feel like it refers to an old console of yours or something... Something U?"
"No. Definitely not. Move along!"

@XenoShaun
I think those were the ones that were still out of stock anyway. The newly restocked Smash ones are all the ones with "Pre-Order Now" at the top of the list I believe.

Can't believe I just got Sheik for £10.99 in 2018. Thought I would have to pay well over the odds on eBay for that one. Kudos to Nintendo for doing this. I didn't think they would.

Not sure what to think yet from the 3 seconds of game footage.

I think Ice Climber definitely deserves more than a 5/10, especially when borderline unplayable Metroid and Kid Icarus get 7s and 8s.

I'm not sure if moderate/bare minimum support is enough to expect Nintendo to hand over all their IPs to them, but OK. I suppose the Switch is getting Wheel of Fortune from them so yay...!

I wouldn't lump Street Fighter in with the complex fighting games like Blazblue, etc. Street Fighter has always been one of the most accessible ones (as its enduring mainstream popularity shows).

It's funny because Call of Duty was one of the very few big AAA franchises that was regularly released on the technically inferior Wii back in the day.

See third parties, all you have to do is put Mario in all your games, it's easy!

@BigKing
You can't do the whole "games are just for noob weaklings nowadays unlike super-tough US Marine/MMA fighters like me" thing because in this case it's the opposite. The point is that fighting games were more accessible in the old days, not now. 6 year olds were playing Street Fighter II back in the day, because it was a relatively simple and accessible game. They're not playing fighting games now. That's the problem. Fighting games went from being arguably the biggest genre in gaming to a niche afterthought because they became too bogged-down in convoluted systems, mechanics and impossibly long strings of combos, which I guess appeals to posturing hardcore wannabe-tough guys online, but it's not a recipe for mainstream success.

@Rhaoulos
"Is it to transition to a future replacement to the 3DS that doesn't have 3D or is it a way to sell as many as they can before killing it for good?"

Probably the second one.

It's sad that 2D fighting games now have a reputation for being niche, inaccessible games with ridiculously complex systems, mechanics and strings of combos to learn. Back in their early 90s heyday (when it was arguably the biggest genre in gaming), this wasn't the case. A few fairly simple special moves is all you needed to learn. Back when they appealed to everyone and not just eSports players...

I like the art style, though it doesn't really scream Streets of Rage to me somehow.

@thesilverbrick
Ha, yeah, though Link appearing in a non-Zelda game has been done to death so much in recent years that it might not have the same impact anymore.

After Nintendo put him through the shame of Star Fox Zero, Fox McCloud himself actually put the feelers out to numerous publishers asking if they would take him.

People asking for more tracks. If they keep adding tracks to Mario Kart 8 they're not going to leave a lot of ideas for Mario Kart 9 (which I assume will continue to be their business model for the franchise). It already has more tracks than any other Mario Kart, so I don't think it needs more. Maybe you could put the money towards a new game instead.

Not really surprising as Miyamoto doesn't particularly like RPGs in general.

Looks awesome.

Well it's a game on a Nintendo console so by law it has to have some sort of Zelda character/costume in it. At least the fact that it's not Link for the billionth time shows some sort of originality I suppose.

I want to support the game just for this comment alone. Nice to see a developer with actual integrity.

Wouldn't be surprised if he's bored to death of Smash Bros by now.

Jean-Ralphio!

That graph is like the embodiment of franchise bloat... Over 100 stages seems a tad excessive if you ask me, but I guess they've got nothing else to hang their hat on other than the "more is more" approach with this one.

Still no Dixie Kong...

@aznable
To be fair, male characters in fighting games aren't that different. Maybe Zangief is angry because he's being forced to wear this skimpy outfit and show off his ridiculously exaggerated male physique?

I had a feeling it was a bad omen when Nintendo opened their first ever Switch conference with 1-2 Switch. They were basically inviting third parties to roll out the "this is the Switch userbase" logic.

Japan loves shooters confirmed.

Well it's a quickly cobbled together compilation game on a declining system, so probably to be expected.

Surprised by this. Assumed Labo would be quietly shelved after the performance of the first two, but I guess maybe this was already in the pipeline.

@justin233 @ReggieFils-Aime
Yeah, while I don't mind a challenge, when these indie games sell themselves as being obnoxiously frustrating or whatever, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be enticed by that. It's more like "I was interested in this and now, for the sake of my sanity, not so much..." Seems like an odd business strategy to alienate as many potential players as you can, but oh well.

@RichardZ
"Why has nobody mentioned this is a metroidvania?"

It's an indie game. Of course it's a metroidvania...

@OorWullie
The height of the Wii/DS days definitely had a lot of Nintendo in the UK top 10 every week.

I try to forget the Wii ever existed. It almost made me quit Nintendo (having been a massive, loyal, lifelong fan since the NES days). While I agreed in theory with its general philosophy of simplicity and accessibility, the actual reality of annoying, crude, clunky motion controls was pretty unbearable for the most part.

Do Zelda characters/costumes have to appear in everything now or something? I mean, in the last few years: Super Smash Bros, Super Mario Maker, Bayonetta, Mario Kart 8, Monster Hunter Stories, Miitopia, Animal Crossing New Leaf, Skyrim, Monster Hunter 4, Monster Hunter X, Yoshi's Woolly World, Nintendo Land, Fatal Frame 5, Phantasy Star. It's kind of losing its novelty now... It's like "Link, you don't have to keep showing up everywhere..."

@dew12333
"Nintendo please do not give anymore of your Ip's to ubisoft, Thanks"

But what if they suck up to Miyamoto again real hard. That's apparently all it takes...

Yeah, the eShop can be pretty overwhelming, it's hard to keep up.

I just use sticks anyway because it's more comfortable, and I mainly play in handheld mode, so moving the screen about is annoying.

Flubadubadubaduba that true?

Seriously though, I hate those guys and their disapproving looks at my ever-so-slightly-out rhythm...

Very interested in this, but read in another review that it's grindy. Which is my pet peeve that puts me off a lot of RPGs, so slightly concerned now.

"It's clearly designed for play in handheld mode due to the amount of tapping and touching involved, but Nintendo has included gyro controls to allow for TV play."

Wait, I don't remember any tapping or touching? And gyro controls only in those few annoying Wii U Gamepad motion-centric levels? Unless you're using gyro for the camera instead of the R-stick, in which case, are you insane?

I imagine Ubisoft personally invited Reggie into that conference and kept nodding and raising their eyebrows at him, thinking that Nintendo fans are so scared of leaving their comfort zone that they'll only buy third-party games if there's a Nintendo character in it (which, judging from the amount "Now I'm interested!" type comments I've seen, that's probably, sadly, true).

Plus it also pretty much guarantees higher review scores from Nintendo sites (like with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, whose Metascore would probably drop by about 5% if it had just been Rabbids Kingdom Battle...) Its NintendoLife score would certainly have dropped from a 9 to an 8 for example.

A couple of extra features (like folders and activity log) would be nice, but one of the things I like about the Switch's interface is how simple and streamlined it is. Reminds me of games consoles of the past that purely focused on being, you know, games consoles. Sometimes I go on my friend's Xbox One and its interface looks more cluttered and convoluted than a NASA control deck.

Appealing to people like this for example:
[pasted from another forum]

"I've been tiger kneeing my ride the lightnings since they added AIROK to it in X. That was...over 17 years ago.

You're also probably not aware of the more complicated things that you should at least try to wrap your head around, like jump installs and FD cancels. Many characters, especially in A core, have super ultra specific tech that you gotta learn, or you can't really compete. Sol's gimmick is 'clean hit,' which is ARCSYSes for 'character specific counter hit air combos.' You gotta hit the big guy in the head. Hit the gundam in the crotch. Hit Ky in the throat. What? You hit Ky in the head!? No clean hit, no fat damage, no top tier Sol performance! Spend another 500 hours practicing, then come back. Or how about everything related to order Sol? Half his mechanics draw upon an ancient bug that they decided to keep. We're not talking how combos are really a bug, but how he has an anime super power bar that drains when you do your moves (and once triggered at level 2 or 3, ticks down gradually), but if you do them with dust, and just right, you'll force a level 1 version to come out. His level 1 moves are incredibly poor, to represent the fact that he's not fighting at full hot blood powerlevel. This is called charge keep, and is THE corner stone of how he plays after slash. He's also one of those nutty characters that generates huge amounts of tension, yet doesn't have anything worthwhile to spend it on, but oh wait - he totally has a miniscule number of frames to input false roman during his literal ACTION CHARGE move, which gives him a pretty beasty increase in the anime bar, then takes 25% tension, and resets order Sol to neutral. The window for this (to order Sol) absolutely crucial move is a mere 5 frames. Granted, having such open access to FRC is very powerful on its own right, but if you challenged the skullgirls community to get good at GG, their brains would explode.

As if that wasn't enough, he has VERY SPECIFIC, VERY SHORT (even by GG standards) windows during a lot of his specials where an FRC can be used. I mean, hey, man, it's, like, man, a literal 1 frame to go from bandit bringer to neutral and almost guaranteed reset. thus in GG terms, enough to win the game. You can do that, right? Every single time you try?

Well, let's say you do. Now you gotta learn the most extreme of all FRC points. It's on order Sol's gunblaze when it's powered up to max anime hype. It's another single frame input button, but it must be done at the 41st frame. If you can't hit three buttons at 41 frames, you fail. Remember, he'll be going from left to right in literally seconds, with trails of fire behind him, and unavoidably, the opponent gets hit by them, launched, you FRC and....oh, wait, you didn't actually positioning in account, so he's not in the proper space where you'd follow up to that very precise, very tight FRC was at. So you get nothing, except him on fire and bouncing across the stage.

In addition to all of this, he doesn't have a single normal move. Even his 'sweep' is a low invincible, overhead hitting, untechable, ground bounce, and ungrabbable 'huge sword to the guy's face' kind of front flip in place. You want a sword attack? Tough luck. You get a hunk of concrete with sword bits sticking out of it. Unlike the rest of the cast, he has 3 standing slashes, and not a single one of them involves proper range, attacks aimed in the proper direction, or even amount to real damage.

Tiger knees are something to put in your muscle memory,and that's it. Tiger kneeing AIROK moves makes them come out closer to the ground, which lets you recover faster. Tiger knee is a univeral thing in fighting games.

FRC points for order Sol, using a special system to squeeze more out of your special resource, as well as the reflexive knowledge to use them, and this on top of having very mechanically strong moves, but those moves are only ever really good for certain situations, and you gotta identify which character what button gets the best results on? That's a HARD MOTHER♥♥♥♥ING FIGHTING GAME. This is just two characters, by the way, while most aren't as extreme as order Sol, they're not far behind, and the A core games have about 696867869606068686 mechanics you need to learn, like (back to the order Sol example) he's one of two characters who can wallsplat with basic throws, upon which he actually has 18 frames to act before the opponent's buttons will even start registering. Once he's had his 18, the opponent is untechably stuck to the fall for 40. He's also one of a handful that can turn what seemed like a regular airthrow into an untechable and lengthy air capture like in missing link, but his lasts for a full second. Both moves have exceptionally hars proration penalties of 40% for the wallsplat throw (all damage that follows is at 40%), and 50% for the air throw, but if you have a healthy supply of anime bar and some tension, you can do a scary amount of damage.

He has access to one of the most reliable ground slides in the game. Simply hit a guy with his air HS, and they'll bounce to the corner completely helpless, GG Xrd Sol Fafnir style, but if you want a followup to this, the timing is KOF like.

Getting the most out of blockhead buster (level 1 is a more metal version of Dan Hibiki's projectile, essentially) will teach all you need to know about hitstop, hitstun, blockstun, projectile warfare, mindgames, pressure, and the core principle of guilty gear - only one player can hold the initiative, and order Sol just captured it like a gangsta - and how incredibly dangerous such a clowny character actually can be. Mixing in order Sol's special rules, and actual roman cancels to bait resets, or outright throw more damage their way, done properly, this is a complete lockdown of your opponent in the corner, with no escape. The alternation between level 2s and 3s mean he's going from slip, to untechable hit, to wallsplat (all unburstable conditions), all the while you're wailing on him with your normals. Everything's great, but... if you mess up your charge keep or an FRC action charge just once, or mistime blockheadbuster because you though the character was heavier/lighter than he or she was, then you're gonna eat a fat punish and be down all the resources you spent to set that mess up in the first place.

tl;dr skullgirls is indeed easy mode. Factually, and forever, no matter how OG you think you are, you're not, especially not when we compare to the kings of complexity like the tag team KOFs, KOF13, GG A core series, and later virtua fighters."

I just, can't even... This post has now made me hate humanity...

I've always thought Skullgirls looked really cool, but doesn't it veer more towards the Guilty Gear/BlazBlue kind of fighting game, where it's all about learning ridiculous systems, mechanics, impossibly long strings of combos, etc? Where going through the tutorial mode is more complicated than learning how to build a space shuttle? Basically niche, insular modern fighting games that are more interested in appealing to eSports players than normal people?

I'm clearly not that up on Square Enix as at first I thought the game was called Business Division 8, which sounds like the most boring game ever.

This school also uses 1-2-Switch as a punishment in detentions, ha, no, I knew this kind of article would inevitably pop up... It's just a calculated publicity stunt (how else does such a trivial thing conveniently get in the news?)

@ogo79
As if Nintendo would make a console that powerful.