JohnnyC

Still enjoying the new stuff added in Splatoon 3 a couple of weeks ago. Elsewhere, I treated myself to Horizon Zero Dawn: Remastered. Very pretty and good fun. Started it on the PS4 when Sony gave it away for free and got about 20 hours in back in 2022, but got distracted and never got back into it despite meaning to. Hoping to stick with it this time.

@Chlocean One of my nephews has racked up over 6,000 hours on Fortnite on the Switch 1. I'd love to see his face if and when he plays it on pretty much any other platform.

My 2017 Switch doesn't have any scratches on the screen, and it's been shared between two adults and two kids in our household in both docked and handheld mode. Planning to treat the Switch 2 the same way when we upgrade next year.

Splatoon 3, using the new features.

Elsewhere, nearly finished Daxter, a PSP spin-off of the Jak and Daxter series. Fun game.

No patch to BotW to allow you to hold all armour items, including dlc items yet?

Splatoon 4 NEEDS a skip feature for Sheldon. Hearing him go on about his 30 new weapons?

"And that's not all..."

Yeah, no kidding!

(I know that tapping ZR speeds it up, but it still took an age)

Breath of the Wild and Street Fighter 6, on my 2017 Switch and PS5, respectively.

With you Switch 2 owners in spirit, if not in body.

Great game. Loved it first time round, got the HD remaster on the PS3, and looking forward to completing it a third time on the Switch 2.

@Suketoudara Yeah, at least they eventually caved in and released Red, Blue and Yellow on the 3DS VC.

A good batch of games, but it still baffles me that we're missing Super Mario Land 3 and Wario Land 2. Those are as close as it gets to being AAA first party games on the GB and GBC, and Nintendo have otherwise been pretty good at getting those kinds of games out on their other NSO apps.

With most Wii U re-releases on the Switch, there was usually some extra content. Mario Kart 8 kicked off well by including all the Wii U dlc. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze added a new mode, Super Mario 3D Land added a whole extra game, New Super Mario Bros U included the New Super Luigi U content etc. This is expected based on the precedent they themselves have set, as well as what their competitors do.

New games cost £40-£50 back in the early 90s, with quite a few being £60.

Since then cost of manufacture and technical quality of the games has soared, but cost per unit to the consumer is actually a lot less due to inflation. My view is that we can't keep demanding bigger and better for the same price. Realistically, I expect to be able to save £5-£10 off these prices day 1, as happens at the moment through retailers offering discounts. Otherwise I'll just wait for a sale.

The only shocking thing is that this hasn't happened a lot sooner.

Astro's Playroom on the PS5 says "hold my beer."

Best tech demo ever, bar none, and available at launch at no extra cost. Sorry Nintendo, but that was a rare instance where Sony took you to school.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered. Great game, beat it on PS3, enjoying playing through it again. Would love to see Most Wanted Remastered to complete the Criterion trilogy.

It'll look weird having Metroid Prime Remastered and Metroid Prime 4 on the shelf and on my Switch library with nothing between. If only Nintendo could provide a solution...

Good idea. This and Metroid Prime 4 were the highlights for me. That new app looks interesting as well.

Yeah, and there'll be one in February 2025 too.

Believe it when I see it, and not a moment before.

Ooh, Matron! Well I never!

Love Picross, this will be getting some serious hours from me.

I do wish they'd get Super Mario Land 3 on there. Feels like one that should have been added a while ago (no third party issues, primary IP etc).

I've compiled a list of every generation where Nintendo has not come first against other dedicated portable gaming devices, so they can learn from past mistakes in this arena. See below:

This was largely used to knock a bit off the NSO subscription for me, as I rarely buy digital stuff outside of dlc for physical games. Still a good way to save a few quid though.

It's tough to argue that Nintendo deserved any of these awards more than the competition based on last year's output. Mario Party Jamboree is excellent, but Astro Bot was just pure joy from start to finish. And they're still adding content to it at no extra cost. I don't object to the fact that it's relatively short either. Some AAA single-player games outstay their welcome by adding unnecessary padding (Mary Jane sections in Spider-Man being the most annoying recent example) and this was just great fun. To get 100% on it took me about 20 hours, so I feel I got good value from it.

I'll be interested to know how those NES controllers are getting charged on the Switch 2.

Whether you like the game or not, it's got fantastic cover art.

I played this daily over Christmas while they had the winter tournament/season on. Really enjoyable game, but like Tetris 99 I only really go back to it when there are events on. There are better games I'd rather be playing with my limited gaming time.

To answer the weekly question about who doesn't own Mario Kart 8 Deluxe yet: at least 80 million people.

Not counting the several billion who don't own a Switch or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Tears of the Kingdom. 63% completion after 205 hours, I am properly back into this game after a long break for most of 2024.

Not the first Mario Kart I played, but the first one I owned, I'd like to say the Western art is objectively better (I think it probably is) but truthfully there's a ton of nostalgia wrapped up in that imagery for me.

Genki, I can remove the left half of my Switch from the right half with brute force, but due to not being an idiot I'm not doing it.

This takes me back to the warning in the original Xbox manual that said it could seriously injure a child if dropped on them. Duh.

Not a single analyst would have predicted in the 12 months leading up to March 2017 that the original Switch would be one of the top-selling consoles in history with one of the biggest and best software libraries, still selling in good numbers in its 8th year without a successor on the market.

Economists make educated guesses but they're all just guesses.

All I know about being stable is that a well should be nearby, which will earn me 10 rupees from a nice lady for telling her about it. As there are no stables in this update, I shall have to sell mushrooms to wandering strangers.

I finished Astro Bot's campaign last night, which was just joy and magic on disc. There won't be much distracting me until I get 100% on that.

Hopefully manage another go on Super Mario Party Jamboree with the family at some point this weekend.

If it has Dreamcast titles onwards, I'm interested. Not bothered about any platform prior to that aside from Mega Drive, and I still have a physical compilation for that if/when Sega's NSO contract expires.

"Smithers, release the lawyers."

I picked up Super Mario Party Jamboree and Astro Bot last week. Both wrapped up and ready to go under the tree. 9 days!

When we got our PS5, the free Astro's Playroom game was and remains one of the best games on the system. That's not a dig at the other games as there have been some great ones, but it was just magic. Cannot wait to play this on Christmas Day. Also, say what you like about Sony, but the substantial free dlc they did last year for God of War and this year for Astro Bot are very consumer-friendly.

Nothing against Nintendo and their releases this year, I'm also looking forward to getting around to Echoes of Wisdom at some point, but Astro Bot has more of a wow factor for me.

The only Switch game I bought this year was Pikmin 4, which I loved and played to completion. Otherwise, this has been a backlog year, which I've also enjoyed very much. Hopefully get Mario Party Jamboree or Echoes of Wisdom in the next couple of months.

Either that or Diddy Kong Racing will hopeully be the expansion Pak release for December given the focus on getting as much Kong on Switch as possible. I'd prefer Diddy Kong Racing, as (1) I never played it first time round, and (2) it would be perfect for Christmas.

Amazing that a title like this has been missing from the NSO apps for more than 6 years.

After introducing Ganondorf to the business end of the Master Sword last weekend, I'm planning to crack on with "completing" Tears of the Kingdom now that I can see my percentage completion. Currently sitting at just over 55%. Got all shrines, all side adventures and all but one of the side quests (finding wells - yay!). Like Breath of the Wild, I doubt I'll ever get to 100% in game as finding all the Koroks doesn't appeal to me, but we'll see how we get on.

Otherwise, got back into FF7 Remake. Managed to get Rebirth for £35 in Black Friday sales, so hoping to work through those back to back.

They made a Lego James Bond Aston Martin. Looking at the properties they did adapt, I think they could have found a way. Indiana Jones has lots of gunfights and killing, and they managed that. In terms of the bed-hopping shenanigans (as they did with Tony Stark in the Lego Avengers game), just leave that out and focus on gadgets, gunfights, chases and puzzles. Seems like a perfect fit to me.

It'll be super powerful and have little/no first party support.

See PS Move, PSVR2 and PS Vita for examples of this approach (and, based on recent years, the PS5 too). I own/owned all of those aside from the PSVR2 and there's no way I'm splashing out upwards of £300 on new hardware (which is what this new thing will cost) until it's got at least 3 or 4 games that I really want to play.

Feels right to me that Nintendo has been left out of the overall GOTY category this year. I'm not sure all the nominees are deserving, but the consensus from most multiformat critics is that FF7 Rebirth and Astro Bot knocked it out of the park this year. Haven't played either yet, but hoping at least one of them will be under the Christmas tree next month.

Arkham City. Beat the story on the Arkham games ages ago on the original versions, and again a couple of years ago on the remastered versions of the first two. Recently got 100% on Asylum, so trying to do the same on City. The challenges appeal to the longtime fighting game fan in me. Great games, always enjoy revisiting them, that have proven to be timeless. For all the talk of the PS5 pro's bells and whistles, these still look amazing too in my opinion.

I remember back in the 90s, hearing rumours about this disc drive that was definitely coming soon for the N64 from the other kids at school and seeing a couple of pictures of it in magazines. When I started hearing about Project Dolphin, I realised that sadly I'd never see this in person. I do hope that the DD games come to NSO or something one day. Can't see any reason not to do that, and they shouldn't be a stretch for the Switch.

Always been curious to try Tetris 2. I hope that makes it to one of the NSO apps. I get why Nintendo wouldn't allow their versions on this collection due to it being multi format, but I was hoping to see some exclusive content for the Switch version like with Starlink or Soul Calibur II and have that as a workaround for getting at least GB Tetris in the collection. As good as this collection is, not including the GB version (not by choice) is like talking about the history of Man Utd without talking about Alex Ferguson.

Need for Speed Most Wanted makes sense for EA, given their remasters of Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. I'd take a remaster of that to go along with Criterion's other two beauties.

Glad about this, if only because it was weird opening up the app just to see two games there. Maybe because I'm used to seeing a lot more in all the other apps.

Pikmin 4. Not far off finishing it. Really enjoyed it since starting it a couple of weeks ago.

In the spirit of conformity I'll say that this also counts as a seasonal title due to the night expeditions.

I'm off out to copyright Super Duper Smash Bros. Ultimate.