JugOfVoodoo

About customizing with Reese & Cyrus - In New Horizons most of the furniture have color variants that are permanent and can not be changed with customization. These color variants are functionally separate items.

Take the Retro Gas Pump for example - the sign on top is customizable but the pump's color is not. So if you only have a black pump but want a red one you have to go search for a red one. The game as it is now won't let you just repaint the item you already have.

Reese & Cyrus' customizations unlock those permanent color variants. This is especially important for the Nook Miles items (like the Lighthouse) because each island only gets one variant of each of them; you had to trade with other players to get the rest.

@NinTasha Pokemon is my favorite franchise. I was 15 when Red & Blue came out. I have played multiple games in every generation, including all six of the Gen 1 and 2 games.

It's BECAUSE I've played them all that I'm against HMs. I long ago grew tired of losing team members and move slots to field moves. No other RPG asks you to sacrifice combat functionality for overworld mobility.

@Ulysses "It meant something to older players..." I am anti-HM because I'm an older player. (I was in high school when Red & Blue came out.) I got sick of HMs affecting my team and move selection; I want to go on an adventure with the Pokemon I like, not just the ones who can get me past obstacles.

@Kieroni You didn't need to hack - just pair a Bibarel with either a Drifblim (Fly, Cut, Defog, Flash) or Lumineon (Surf, Waterfall, Defog, Flash). The leftover move (Surf or Waterfall with Drifblim, Fly with Lumineon) should be easy to fit on one of your battlers. But besides that I totally agree with you.

I see a white screen
and I want it switched to black
My eyes can't take that sheen
They are too used to black

@CodyMKW How? The original DPPt were the worst in the franchise for HMs and field moves. To carry them all you needed three Pokemon.

This game is copying Sun & Moon with the Poketch acting as the PokeRide pager. It's a much better system, allowing players to develop full teams without having to worry about getting stuck.

I'm hyped by proxy. I've only dabbled in Metroid but my brother is a hard-core fan. He's remaining completely unspoiled; he didn't even watch the original announcement. When I told him the title his eyes lit up like a child at Christmas. ("They're bringing back 'Dread'?!")

I have a feeling that my brother is going to like this. I also have a feeling that he's going to deliberately let EMMIs catch him so he can master the counter. Dude likes a challenge.

@OldManHermit It has "dread" in the name so it should count for Halloween.

@stinky_t That's what my brother is doing. He's going in completely blind. He didn't even watch the Nintendo Direct.

My older sister, who was in her mid-20s when Twilight Princess first came out, struggled with the Howling Stones. She kept trying to flick the control stick instead of holding it in place. Even after our brother and I explained it she just couldn't get it.

No joke, she spent over 20 minutes struggling with one of the early songs. Our mother finally got sick of all the off-tune wolf howling and yelled "CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, SHUT UP!!!!!!".

From then on whenever my sister came across a Howling Stone she would call one of us siblings to do it.

I swear there's more content in this $15 game than games I've paid $60 for. Dude deserves a well-earned break.

As a Gen 4 veteran, I'm digging the change. If you look closely you can see that the original map is divided into six sections. Each section does not connect to the others and can only be accessed from certain areas in the overworld.

It was difficult to tell what overworld locations led to which Underground section. Many times I've popped into the Underground to tend to my Secret Base and found myself in a place where I could not reach my base. I'd have to leave, fly to a different town, and try again.

And often when I played multiplayer down there (which was required to upgrade the base and catch Spiritomb) we'd end up running around for a few minutes before realizing that our bases were in unconnected areas. I'd have to move my base to a more accessible location, which required a consumable item and reset the base's decorations.

The new map has a clear 1-for-1 match-up with the overworld. And the different biomes make it easy to identify what section someone's base is in. I'm hoping that they either let us have one base in each section or give us a way to go to different sections without needing to return to the overworld.

Much better than the original Diamond & Pearl, where you had to either buy one of the Pokemon Ranger games (each of which could only send one Manaphy, even if you reset the save file) or attend a limited time in-store distribution.

1. I checked the 3DS Virtual Console version and the "Be a Peeping Tom" line is still there. It's on Level 2, left column, third row down.

2. Anyone notice that the fountain statues are Jinbe urinating Manneken Pis-style? Go to 5:48 on the video if you don't believe me.

3. I bought the VC version years ago after reading about it in Nintendo Power. It deserves all the praise it gets. I'd love to see a remake / sequel / amateur version in Game Builder Garage.

4. I like to imagine Muddy being voiced by Liam Neeson. "GIVE ME BACK MY MOLE WIFE!"

@AG_Awesome I can attest that the first three will be very helpful. I can't comment on the fourth because I haven't used the photo editing.

Just because I've had to debunk this before - NONE of the Indigo League's top three trainers are the two unknown kids who started on the same day as Ash and Gary (the ones who took Bulbasaur and Charmander).

According to Professor Oak, only Ash and Gary qualified for the tournament; the other two kids did not get their final badge in time. Which is ironic because for most of the season they were ahead of Ash in badge count.

My opinion on StreetPass is "that was great, let's never do it again". I'm happy it's not on Switch (which is harder to hide in a purse than a 3DS).

I live in a rural area of the US and it was very rare for me to get passes. Most of mine came from McDonald's StreetPass Relay (where the restaurant's Wi-Fi would save the SP data for the last 10 3DS systems in the store). I ended up using the Honest Abe Exploit (lets you get Nintendo's special SpotPass characters multiple times) to complete the puzzles.

Mine is beating the Tower of the Gods in Wind Waker and seeing what was under the ocean.

I was part of the backlash against Wind Waker's cel-shaded art style. I had just started college and was a HUGE Zelda fan. I hated that something I loved, something core to my identity was being made "childish".

Yet I preordered it anyway to get the Ocarina Master Quest disc. I planned to play that first. My brother was burnt out on our N64 Ocarina, so he opted to play WW instead.

Seeing the cel-shading in motion was magical. The ocean swelled, the trees moved in the wind, the world was ALIVE. I had to play it. And when I saw what was under the ocean I realized that this was going to be a milestone in the franchise and I had been a twit for judging it on its looks.

THEY'RE SO FLUFFY!

@The_New_Butler I'm sorry, I knew you were being sincere. I just thought you'd mistaken me for Gen Z when I'm an older Millennial.

@The_New_Butler I appreciate what you said. Nobody can truly know what another person has experienced. All of us, - male, female, and otherwise - need to listen to each other more.

But there's one thing you got wrong - My experience isn't more "modern" than yours because I am only two years younger than you. I'm currently 38, was born in 1983, which means I was 11 when Super Metroid came out.

@The_New_Butler "It feels unlikely that a child of 11 or 12 would have been that aware of the design choices for female characters that accentuated certain female attributes or were used to titillate older male players."

I'm a cisgender woman. I started to notice these things before I turned 10. Sex is everywhere in our society, especially in pop culture and advertising.

Also, puberty tends to begin around 11 or 12. That also tends to be when girls experience their first sexual harassment. The girls you think are too innocent to recognize sexualization are instead getting a crash course in it.

@Late And also in Clubhouse Games' "Hit and Blow" game. In that the instructions screen outright says that the different patterns are for colorblind players.

There's a surprising number of chicken games.

Anyone remember when Game Freak and the Pokemon Company avoided the term "shiny"? They kept calling them "alternately colored" and would make up special names for distributed ones like "Pikachu-Colored Pichu" or "Crown Beasts". It wasn't until Gen 5 that they gave up and made "shiny" the official term.

Other than the Lake of Rage Red Gyarados, my first shiny was a Rattata in Crystal...who I accidentally knocked out.

With its last breath that Rattata cursed me. I didn't see any more shinies in Gen 2. In Gen 3 the only ones I saw were uncatchable - a Meowth and Espeon in LeafGreen's Trainer Tower and a Slaking in XD: Gale of Darkness' Battle CD #26.

I was given the chance to break the curse in Pearl when my Poke Radar chain unexpectedly found a shiny Starly. I caught it and was freed. And a few years later while resetting my HeartGold Ho-oh for high IVs I ended up with a shiny...with terrible IVs.

@MrGawain Me too! Whoever came up with the alternate routes in Shiver Snowfields needs to be punched in the nose.

My opinion of StreetPass is "that was fun, let's NEVER do it again".
I live in a rural area of the USA and it was difficult for me to get passes. I did eventually complete all of the games, but it took constant visits to McDonald's (their Wi-Fi would save the Pass data for the last 10 3DS systems in the store), exploiting the "Honest Abe" glitch (which lets you get special SpotPass visitors multiple times), resetting my system's date and shaking it to build up Play Coins, and buying a second system to pass with myself (I was upgrading anyway, but still). I would not want to do that with my Switch.

Great article, but I've got the author beat for playing the games out of order. I skipped the series on DS but got interested in it after playing the Professor Layton crossover. I played them as they were released on 3DS, which alternated between new games and ports.

So my play order was 2.5, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 4.

I had just started college at the time and was part of the backlash. I was very attached to the N64 and Game Boy Zeldas and took the "kiddie" graphics as a personal insult.

And yet I still pre-ordered it to get the bonus Ocarina of Time Master Quest disc. My plan was to play Master Quest first and then maybe get around to Wind Waker. Eventually.

My high-school-aged brother had played Ocarina a billion times and was more interested in playing something completely new. So he opted to play WW first.

The wind blew. The trees moved. The ocean swelled and ebbed. This world was so ALIVE. I had to play it. And the moment I saw what slept beneath the ocean I knew this was a turning point for storytelling in the franchise. And I'd been a twit for hating on it.

Side Note: WW is important because it settled a long-running debate in the Zelda fandom about whether there was only one Link who starred in all of the games or if each pair of games (NES, SNES & GB, N64, GBC) had a new Link who was a descendant / reincarnation of a previous one. Nintendo of America's official position was that there was one Link who due to suspended animation and / or time travel had met multiple Princess Zeldas. Then Wind Waker came along and made Multi-Link theory canon. Now nobody remembers the debate except me.

@Diddy64 Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl

They're being done in a 3D-chibi style to mimic the originals' sprite graphics. Some fans don't like it and want their graphics to look like Pokemon Sword & Shield.

@MS7000 I did the exact opposite - was a Layton fan first, then got into Ace Attorney after playing the crossover.

@Bulborb We don't actually know if the "Detective Pikachu" Switch game will contain a port of the original. All we've been told is that it will resolve the original game's cliffhanger ending in a way that's different from what happened the movie.

Personally I hope they do port the original since so much of the game's story is very different from the movie (like how Tim's mother isn't dead and Tim & Harry are not estranged).

@ianl579 Yes, but no. There has been lots of chatter about this image on other sites like Reddit. It's because people have been sharing it without explaining that it is part of a larger countdown.

@1ofUs I can understand people not knowing the mythology, but how are so many people missing the reference to an in-game power-up?

Past AC games gave out the Resetti model for Groundhog Day. That's why it's coming in February.

Fun Fact: Media outlets and non-sponsoring corporations use the phrase "The Big Game" because the NFL gets its panties in a bunch if you use its trademarked official name without permission.

@RupeeClock To me Celeste is the Superb Owl.

Interesting idea, but the trailer doesn't explain how it works.

Picked Grape Purple, though I only had the controller. My system was Jungle Green because my mom bought it from a catalog and they sent a random color.

The Bug-Offs and Fishing Tourneys are vastly improved over those in past games. Success or failure now depends purely upon my own skill, not upon a hidden random value that I can't gauge until it's too late to change it.

They seem to be teasing a big announcement at the parade. Who has "Mewtwo bursts out of a parade balloon and takes over the world" on their 2020 Apocalypse Bingo card?

(Personally I think it would be an improvement. I welcome our purple overlord!"

@Kabloop The Switch port of the first game has bad controls (so I've heard - I haven't played it). The original version for the Nintendo DS has controls that I'd call "bonkers but surprisingly intuitive" - you control the main character on the bottom screen with touch controls and his partner on the top screen with the D-pad or buttons.

2D, but only because I get motion sick from 3D if the camera turns too quickly or I have to move around in first-person.

We still haven't gotten that car-seat mount.

@Jmjfrank She was using the Sheikah Slate's Stasis rune. It's canon that the slate belonged to her at this time, so her combat is probably built around it.

8 / 12. Not my best work.

But I know one thing: Luigi does actually appear in "Super Mario RPG". He leads the parade during the end credits. Skip to 2:50 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-T0DaK5Exw

Everybody is going on about X & Y at #2 while ignoring Detective Pikachu at #7. Most fans if told there was only one spin-off game in the top 10 would guess Mystery Dungeon or Snap.

It is a good game (easy gameplay but great story) but the only reason it is in the top 10 is because of the movie.

I'm enjoying the monthly updates. They keep things surprising.

About New Leaf's "free" update - While it didn't cost anything to download, most of its new items were locked behind Amiibo figures and cards. Despite buying all my Amiibo discounted I still spent more on them than on the actual game. ($40 versus $65)

I haven't played Ultimate in over a year and I got 15/15. (I remembered that Dark Samus floats and that pic is a very floaty pose.)

There are lots of suggestions for an all-Fire Emblem version. How about an all-Kirby transformations quiz? Or an all-Kirby-as-Fire-Emblem-characters quiz?

I appreciate that the Diglett hunt tells you how many are left in each area. With Gen 7's Zygarde cells and Totem Stickers they didn't give you any help at all.

@Harmonie I'm fine with it being on rails. First-person shooters (with your character's body and head moving independently) make me motion sick. I don't have that problem with on-rail shooters.

Also, in the trailer the rails looked like an augmented-reality overlay. I wonder if the courses will have multiple branches that you unlock and you have to plan your route before you start.