KevynOnVideo

Who/whatever it is, I predict that Nintendo would have made the choice with the mindset that it's a finale and should be big, or at least something worthy of Ultimate's final bow. To me that means it will be a choice honoring Nintendo's history, and not the broader video game history. That means it won't be Sora or Alan Wake.

They may finally give Waluigi his due after years of fans demanding him. They may get another third party character either with a history on the NES like Ryu Hayubusa/Billy Lee, or someone positioned as direct rival mascot character like Crash or Master Chief.

Or they could get really meta and/or out of left-field. That could be Sakurai himself, a Polygon fighter or 64 bit Mario from Smash 99', or even a deck of Hanafuda cards.

The only certainty is that a lot of people will be thrilled and a louder group of people will be outraged.

@piecez Now you've gone and put an idea in my brain that can only lead to disappointment. So thanks for that.

In the States, it was (and is) common for arcade owners to rig the Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) machines to run many times faster than they do by default. Namco officially does not endorse this mod, so it's never been an option on any of their re-releases, but since this is how I've always played it, it's hard for me to enjoy the games at standard speed.

I doubt it, but if the Arcade Archives release gave me this option I would pick it up day one.

Looking back, the first one has a certain out there pulp novel huckster charm which I find preferable to the close but not quite right depictions on the sequels’ box art in the west. They more call to mind a bad Hasbro cartoon/action figure line than anything else.

@Nalverus Truth. We’d already lived a decade of beautifully but misleading Atari 2600 box art by this point.

Like too many LR announcements, if it had come around the same time as the digital release, I'd be more tempted. Same with the Castlevania collection. The priciness is a barrier to begin with, but the double-dip factor makes it a non-starter.

The North American box looks like a game you get free with a magazine subscription.

@BloodNinja F-Zero X is criminally underrated.

To be honest, many of these themes seem like they would make it even harder to follow the chaos going on in the game than it already is. I voted for "Border" as maybe the only exception. And also for "Rolling Thunder" and "Namco Classic 1"(Sky Kid) because they're fun.

I hope it will be possible to unlock some of these themes through gameplay.

I still play every day, but in more of a "check in & check out" kind of way. I look to see who's visiting that day, talk to the neighbors, and mine bells (even though I have nearly 50mil in the bank at this point). Hopefully we'll get some gameplay updates in the coming year to spice things up.

@TheFullAndy No problem, glad I could help! Good luck!

@TheFullAndy Levels become available for you to choose only after you've cleared every level before it at least once during gameplay. That means dropping the flag at the end before dying or letting time run out. When you do this the level's thumbnail in the selection screen will have a flag icon in the corner. For unlocking 8-4 that means every level from 1-1 to 8-3 has to have a flag, even if you have later levels unlocked already.

Find and choose a level without a flag next time you play and use warp zones to skip through the queue quickly. 1-2 comes up frequently, so hit to the warp there and either take the left-most pipe to skip ahead the furthest, 1-2 or 4-2 when applicable to easily access another warp zone, or if you're lucky you might even find the level you selected. Then when 8-4 is finally unlocked, choose it and repeat the process until you clear it and Luigi is yours!

(& just hope you're not in a round where people are spamming Lakitus or Hammer Bros. constantly.)