JetForceGemInEye

Just go dark (never use WiFi again).

You can also just buy a new switch and then never connect it to a network. Don't remember hearing about mega game-breaking glitches found at the launch cartridge version...

Expensive but doable

"That's a lot of nuts!"

Only played through FF7. Started through FF6 and got triggered by the espers/magic. "How did you manage to get through FF7 you say?" Back in 2003, I wasn't as sensitive. Still avoided sketch summons like Hades and only used elemental magic, not dark..

Anyway, the soundtrack for ff7 is un-real. That was the first thing i bought on ebay: the japanese version of the full OST. (I expressly made the ebay account for that and then didn't use ebay again for a few years.) Oh, and the game was also fun. Oh and the story was pretty cool (somewhat confusing.. but, I gather from Dunkey's explanations that in comparison to Kingdom Hearts, FF7's story is a nursery rhyme as far as plot complexity -ahem- discombobulation.) Oh, and I really liked Cid, and Cloud, and I liked Tifa. Oh, and that flashback where you go to the haunted town with Sephiroth and he just REKKKKKKS lel

No.
Way.
!!!

Switch 2? Metroid Prime 4 teaser? New details on Pikmin 4? Wait, yes there will be!

@Zeropulse Tecmo Super Bowl is sooooo good. Bo Jackson = broken. "QB Eagles" = Broken. Joe Montana & Jerry Rice = Super Broken. The thing is, counter to most games, it's these broken players that are so endearing and memorable. You can randomly meet someone who played Tecmo back in the day and it's these kind of players that evoke immediate shared experiences. As a sports game, you can easily "get around" these ultra-legends by avoiding the teams they play for..

**Gets on a boat headed to Japan--Can't afford airfare after hundreds of dollars on Pikmin 4 & Pikmin swag**

@Jhena Their voices definitely haunted my 12 year old Pikmin 1 mind as well. That and the sight of them getting insta-death stomped by Beady Long Legs or eaten up in bunches by the Burrowing Snagret..

@HammerGalladeBro It's almost like it's a theme in the series.. I think the engineers on Hocotate & Koppai really need to work on the atmospheric entry mechanics for their spaceships XD

"Impact Site" music from Pikmin 1 playing on repeat in my head. Pumped for Pikmin 4! It is a real game!!

@Axecon Is Grant now headed to Retro Studios?!? haha. Would be epic.

@WaffleBoat The Banjo Kazooie OST is legendary.. I love 'Treasure Trove Cove', 'Freezeezy Peak' & 'Spiral Mountain"

Amazing work on two exceptional games with exceptional music! My faves:

Kingdom Battle
-Mid Boss Mayhem**
-Icicle Golem Fracas
-Theme with no name 2
-Exploring the Mine
Sparks
-Midnite Ball
-Icy Battle Ballet
-Paean to Palette
-Hitting Bedrock**
** - Favourites

I also love Spout Forth, Galaxy Encounter & Fight Songs from the Flower Planet by Gareth and Battle of Beacon Beach by Yoko.

@larryisaman Yeah, we'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts. If I'm honest I've probably played it 3 or 4 times in the past few months so I need to put my money where my mouth is and get back into it. But yeah, I have some hope it will be around for a decent while yet. The events they host every couple months are a way to promote their new games so that's definitely a value-add from a business point of view. It was Return to Dream Land most recently and then Fire Emblem Engage before that. My money is on either Advance Wars or Scarlet/Violet next.

@JJtheTexan Barren lobbies are frustrating..

@larryisaman Yeah, same. I think it's my most played game at about 400 hours. However, I've found over the past couple years that the lobbies are becoming emptier and emptier.. I don't know if the matchmaking netcode is garbage or what..

@mercilessrobot I've found exactly the same thing! Fun game but loses its appeal once you're playing a bunch of bots. May as well be playing offline at that point..

It was fun but wayyyy too many "shadow bots" in online versus mode the past couple years.. Lots of level 10s with generic names (instead of CPU 1, CPU 2, etc. like you have in tetris 99). I also found in virtually every game, you'd lose about 10 players in the span of seconds when you got down to ~80 players.

I really enjoy Tetris 99 but the lobbies are 1/3 to 1/2 full, even during "peak" online times. I can't understand how they can't pull a single lobby of human players together..

@sketchturner Felt this conviction IRL. Played Breath up to the first shrine. spirit orb sequence. Triggered. Never played it since..

@B238ben I have the same concern. When I first saw the new art style it reminded me of the art style difference between mega man 10 (and earlier) and mega man 11. But yes, I'll see if I can get used to it..

Nintendo Life is the one website I check every single day, often multiple times. Great articles and solid review methodology. So becoming a supporter is well worth what Nintendo Life provides every day!

@Magician Wait, what?? You're a voice from the past man. It's good to have hearing you now.

Mind blown 0_o

@Sirvant7 Oh Marth..

@gaga64 Good point. There are so many amiibo out there now that most core games moving forward are compatible with a previously released amiibo. But yeah, I agree and think big enough titles should still get new amiibo, particularly new characters and new outfits for key characters..

Aww yes, the heady days of the first batch for Smash 4. Highly desirable Villager and Wii Fit Trainer and extremely desirable Marth. I remember being in Best Buy on launch day and having one of the staff show me an inventory print out showing the quantities of each figure they were to receive on launch day, inferring from that which amiibo might have a lower production run..

"Oni" = Immediately thought of Little King's Story for Wii. Mastahpeace!

This is awwwwesome. I remember with sadness the final print issue of Nintendo Power. Mario was on the front and Mario Galaxy (can't remember if it was G1 or G2..) was the feature game. Anyone remember with those latter NP magazines how the spines gradually created an image issue by issue? Awww yes, fond memories.

I'm happy as well that the spirit of NP carries on in a sense via the Nintendo Power podcast!

@gcunit I hope. Is the story of the freezer meant to signal something coming up in Winter?!? heheh

@Friendly Lol. No kidding eh. The way they could cram stuff onto the N64 and older games is wild. And evidently they had to make tough decisions/come up with clever workarounds for certain Gamecube games too..

Even the progression in graphics from console launch to end-of-life-cycle is nuts. NES you start with mario bros and end up with games like Mega Man 6 where the frame rate/flashing churn is so heavy, heheh. For N64 you have super smash and mario 64 and then get to games like perfect dark & majora's mask, granted the expansion pak made that possible..

@Edu23XWiiU Yeah, 20 years goes by fast.. The game holds up so well too. I'm near the end of MP3 but I'm thinking I will probably play the entire trilogy from the beginning in the months leading up to the release of MP4. Hopefully there is a remastered (or simply up-rezzed) trilogy to play at that point but I have the Wii version (via the Wii U) and am happy to play that..

@YoshiF2 Totally with you on that. I really hope they decide to release a remastered or at least, up rezzed Metroid Prime leading up to the release of MP4. Even better would be releasing the trilogy. They already have the Wii trilogy to use as their starting code and then they could ideally do an up-rez. Heck, they could just release the Wii trilogy as is and the graphics are strong enough that it would still sell well. There is a pretty decent level of existing hype around MP4 but the Prime series is still one of the (relatively) less popular franchises. I think Metroid Dread has certainly helped put Metroid into the hands of a younger generation but getting the trilogy — or yeah, at least MP1 — to a larger audience would be soo perfect...

Tom Nook has raked in so many bells.. so so many

@boxyguy I one hundred percent agree. I'm in Eastern Canada and even during busier times of the week (fri eve, sat aft, sat eve, sun aft, sun eve) that's exactly right: You not only get the 'CPU #' bots, but after playing dozens of games I can tell that they have some bots made to look like human players. I repeatedly notice that the time gap between about 80 and 65 players remaining is tiny. If you look at the standings after the game, these players tend to have run of the mill names and are generally level 10 (or level 5, can't remember, one of those for sure). Do you find that too @boxyguy?

In addition to that dynamic, I imagine millions of the those downloads are "oh, it's free, why not" and the player tries it and either plays it just a few times or gets tired of it/frustrated with it after a couple cumulative hours. Some others may have purchased the offline modes and mainly stuck with those. Also, given the game launched on April 7, 2021, you have the natural attrition over time that many online games encounter (case in point: mario tennis aces, which i love, but player pop is hella low)..

But 9M is 9M!

@SonOfDracula It's unreal they were able to do so much with such a limited repository of sounds & restraints on memory. I think of other NES music greats like: Batman, Faxanadu, Mario 3, Ducktales.. Even Metroid was pretty dang good despite being a very early title..

I also really like Jake Kaufman's chiptune work with the Shovel Knight series. A really cool thing about the original shovel knight OST is that Manami Matsumae (of Mega Man renown) actually wrote a couple tracks for the game: 'A Thousand Leagues Below' (Iron Whale) & 'Flowers of Antimony' (The Explodatorium). Both great tracks..

@Realness Oh man, yeah. Incredible. Kondo just nailed these atmospheric area themes. Gerudo Valley, Hyrule field, Shadow Temple, Kokiri Village..

@Erigen "** Drumroll ** And the top game of 2018.. SUPAH MARIO BROTHERS TWOOOOOOOO, NAHTTTT EVEN CLOSE!

@ThePizzaCheese Which music? Music A, B or C?

@Deenroy Love DKTF

@Jack_Goetz Such a jarring song..

@Poodlestargenerica Oh man, that's a good one. The music of adventure..

@SonOfDracula I love Mega Man music. NES era, SNES era.. The composers were geniuses

@sanderev The perfect track to welcome the player to the feel and whimsy of the MG world.

I have a VG music playlist on YouTube of 400+ songs, 98% of which are from Nintendo games (even after the removed GilvaSunner tracks)

But if just one..Hmm..

I would say the original 'Gerudo Valley' from Ocarina of Time. Supremely catchy, perfect marriage of music and environment, love the trumpet solo, can listen to it forever without it growing stale. Of course nostalgia has big points but isn't that half the wonder of music in general, especially VGM?

Close behind is 'Runway' from Goldeneye 007. Both the standard track and then the faster-beat "X" section of the level music.

Booo-teee-full. I <3 Arcanine. One of my 6 go-to pokes in Pokemon GO. [For the 0 or 1 person interested, other 5 are: Magnezone, Machamp, Gyarados, Yanmega & Tangrowth

@NEStalgia Indeed. Bought my Switch in 2017. I didn't take the plunge on the OLED.. The screen looks amazing and the minor tweaks are cool too. But it's just too much money for something with the same hardware. If i played hours and hours and hours on the go, then yeah. but i'm probably 60%docked/40%onthego. Given it's such a large chunk of change, I'd rather save it for the Switch 2, which will, for me.. be a day-0.000000001 buy lololol!!!11!!!one!!!!11!!two

@NEStalgia

"Bottom line is Nintendo has a very well selling product that can only shakily produced, and a time when consumers are not feeling spendy (electronics are piling up in retailer warehouses), are pulling back to spending mostly on food, and discount brand food at that, while electronics parts are expensive and unpredictable, manufacturing is at an energy and labor driven high cost, and distribution is at an energy and labor driven high cost......what rational company would disrupt their current sales for the exceptionally expensive and messy transition involved in that.....let alone the ultra-conservative Nintendo?"

• Great points re timing of the next Nintendo console, leading candidate being some sort of "Switch 2/Pro".

The BOM on a Switch Pro would be absolutely prohibitive right now. Especially given the current loss on the OLED.. Switch 2 you're probably looking at the current OLED screen, same joycon (maybe minor tweaks) and existing plastics/tooling (think maintaining current production lines — huge factor) but a new chipset, which will be HIGH cost for something that could provide a good amount of additional punch in such a small form factor. I mean, it should go without saying, nothing near the performance of the Xbox S Series S-X Box One720 720S X S (honestly, who is on the naming team there — i would just love to be a rational person in the room during the initial meetings when they were pitching "Xbox One" as a name.. [not to mention big brother camera on at ALL TIMES and DRMed games]. It's like the scene in the Simpsons episode where Herb (Homer's long-lost brother who owns a car company) is hearing pitches for a new car from his marketing team: "We present.. the Persephone" I lawl EVERY TIME XD. Anywho, nothing near the performance of the Xbox Series X or ps5 of course, given those two consoles have football fields more real estate in their core console form factor for their chipsets and fans and cupholders...

Also, one little potential "clue" dare I say, from the Splatoon 3 Direct.. They said it would be the "conclusion" of the trilogy/series (can't remember the exact word). Seems to me, this implies the successor system to the current gen-1 switch guts (STD/Lite/OLED) will be the same form factor, or at least, compatible with existing joy con in a comfortable way...

From how deep and awesome S3 looks for launch (not to mention maps/weapons/gear planned for 2-years PLUS the paid single-player DLC), a 4th game (ie something potentially running on a new form factor console, which is my main point) would be years and years and YEARS away. S1 came out in 2015, S2 in 2017 and now, 5 years later, S3 in 2022. So, that's a LOT of dev time, especially between 2 and 3. So yeah, I think they will ride this form factor (i think it's the perfection of gaming — sorry to the 7 or 8 people on earth in the Playstation sub-sub-sub-sub-demographic who connect their controller to their phone and stream a game on the go. lawl) for their next console at the very least...

No stress peeps! Quoting from article 'Nintendo Reports Drop In Sales For Q1- Should We Be Worried?' of 3 August 2022:

"Operating profit declined by 15.1% to 101.6 billion yen, however net profits were up by 28.3%, totalling 118.9 billion yen. Nintendo states that this is in part due to foreign exchange gains of 51.7 billion yen on the yen's depreciation at the end of the first quarter when compared to the same period last year."

For those unfamiliar with what "net profit" means. That's your simoleons AFTER expenses: paying for materials, paying for utilities, paying your staff, paying the tax man, etc etc.
Soooo, going up 28.3% is AMAZING:

¥92.67B --> ¥118.9B
[...exchange rate on August 3, 2022 - ¥133.4130 = 1USD...]
US$704.03M --> US$903.31M

That doesn't sound like all that much compared to the likes of google, apple, amazon & tesla. However, it's the PERCENTAGE gain that is YHUUUUGE.

If we look at Apple's increase in net income ("net income" is basically the same as "net profit") between Q3 2021 and Q3 2022, it went up: 11.84%. Really good, but not 28.3% good.

And yes yes yes, forex boost, blah blah blah. But still!!

Quoting:
"Operating profit declined by 15.1% to 101.6 billion yen, however net profits were up by 28.3%, totalling 118.9 billion yen. Nintendo states that this is in part due to foreign exchange gains of 51.7 billion yen on the yen's depreciation at the end of the first quarter when compared to the same period last year."

For those unfamiliar with what "net profit" means. That's your simoleons AFTER expenses: paying for materials, paying for utilities, paying your staff, paying the tax man, etc etc.
Soooo, going up 28.3% is AMAZING:

¥92.67B --> ¥118.9B
[...exchange rate on August 3, 2022 - ¥133.4130 = 1USD...]
US$704.03M --> US$903.31M

That doesn't sound like all that much compared to the likes of google, apple, amazon & tesla. However, it's the PERCENTAGE gain that is YHUUUUGE.

If we look at Apple's increase in net income ("net income" is basically the same as "net profit") between Q3 2021 and Q3 2022, it went up: 11.84%. Really good, but not 28.3% good.

And yes yes yes, forex boost, blah blah blah. But still!!

Awesome question! For me, my most prized game is Dune II: Battle for Arrakis for DOS. It's not the OG edition but rather a much later (probably the last) retail version. It's big box format and published by Virgin.

As far as console gaming, it would be my copy of Jet Force Gemini (big surprise there!). It's complete in box and well-loved to say the least.

It's hard to pin-point but it was either:
Kid Pix (played at school)
Tetris (on Game Boy)
Mega Man 2

I lawled SO hard at this. Great way to start the day. Also. Metroid Dread to-more-ohhhhhhh