LastFootnote

I dunno, I guess I'm used to RPG characters not acting super lifelike. This has yet to bother me in the game.

@PolitiClank I mean, you’re probably right, but on the other hand Nintendo isn’t one huge monolith and also they do things we consider nonsensical on the regular.

@PharoneTheGnome Have you…played Bananza or Z-A?

I watched the first Air Riders Direct, but honestly I just cannot make myself care about this game. It looks polished, but as someone who hasn’t played the original, without a good demo, I can’t make myself spend $70 on it.

I never played this game back in the day, so it’ll be cool listening to this for the first time.

I’m still riding high on the Thousand-Year Door soundtracks, so Nintendo has a lot of leeway with me for these smaller OSTs right now.

@Yosher Look dude, I'm all for voting with your wallet. I wish I hadn't bought Pokémon Scarlet and Violet; it's a train wreck in so many ways. I put that game down after two gyms and haven't come back to it.

Legends Z-A is really polished and great fun from what I've played so far. As one example, it actually has many Pokémon engaging in appropriate activities rather than just spawning and milling about randomly. Spinarak climb around on walls in the cemetery. Trubbish hide behind waste bins in alleys. Also the character animations are pretty great by Pokémon standards.

It's obvious that a ton of careful design went into the city as well. There's a lot of hidden passageways leading to important items and uncommon Pokémon.

If you want to vote with your wallet, you have to actually buy the games they DO put effort into, and this is definitely one of them.

The Emerald Rush roguelike mode in a lot of fun and seeing DK Island again brought plenty of smiles, but the whole package felt a little bit empty otherwise.

Yeah, other than the things in it, that package sure was empty.

facepalm

The physical Switch 2 version is already at version 1.0.1, no download required.

@darkfenrir Maybe, but mostly it’ll just be an Ability-less game. The hacked game data for the new megas just shows the same Abilities their normal forms have.

@DennisLofgren Woukd you rather they fire a large portion of their team in order to hire people with the competencies they need? Because that’s what seems to be lacking here: the expertise needed to make high-quality console games.

Or! They could charge $40 for their games instead of $60-$70. That’s a quick, easy fix.

I dunno. I have a physical preorder, but I’m having second thoughts. Reviews have been middling and I’ve been burned by Pokémon enough times. It’s not like I won’t be able to find a copy later.

One big thing for me: the most exciting part of Mega Evolutions was Pokémon getting new, powerful Abilities. But Legends games don’t have Abilities, so are Megas really back? Ehhhhhh…

@MamaSymphonia Silksong is $20, not $70. If GameFreak weren’t charging AAA prices, most people wouldn’t be complaining about the lack of AAA quality.

@Bats1234 They're expecting it for a few reasons:

1. They associate Pokemon with Nintendo, which has a much higher standard of quality.
2. Pokemon games on handheld systems were legitimately much higher quality relative to the other games on those systems when compared to their output on Switch.
3. Pokemon is the HIGHEST GROSSING MEDIA FRANCHISE IN THE WORLD. Being a small studio is not a terminal condition. They COULD easily step up to the plate and make their games both more ambitious and more polished. They CHOOSE to keep their team small and create subpar experiences.

I wish we ever got discounts like these here in the United States of Late-Stage Capitalism.

Oh nice, this has been on my Steam wishlist for a while. I’ll grab it on Switch instead if it runs well on Switch 2.

@montrayjak The Capture button you can remap (and therefore disable). You can't remap or disable the Home button though (which makes sense, but is unfortunate for my very specific use case).

@BTB20 True, I’d forgotten that. Although as much as I enjoyed (parts of) Tears of the Kingdom, Thousand-Year Door is much more exciting as a soundtrack, at least for me.

Either way, I’m glad they’re putting so much thought into this service.

See, this is how you do it. If you need to take a week off, overload the couple of weeks beforehand with some extra midweek goodies (Bananza tracks and the new Super Mario Galaxy tracks), and then drop a huge, fantastic soundtrack on the Monday before. And also, letting us know there’ll be a break so we aren’t let down at the last moment. That’s key!

Two thumbs up for Nintendo Music today.

Coming back to Super Mario Galaxy, man it's just not that fun of a game to replay for me. The control is just bad enough to be irritating. And for the Switch version(s) specifically, I have to reset the gyro way too often even with Switch 2 Joy-Cons. (I thought they were supposed to be better than Switch 1 Joy-Cons in this regard!) I give this a 7. The games are good, but they just don't hold up the way the 2D games and later 3D games have.

If I could lock just the Home and Capture buttons, this would be great. I have a child who sometimes impulsively pushes the Home button even in the middle of multiplayer games.

But if it also locks the "+" and "-" buttons? Well now it's worthless. A swing and a miss, Hori!

I gotta say, it's hard to care about any of these characters that constantly wear ornate masks. If they're wearing them throughout the game, it'll severely lower the chances that I'll pick this game up.

@KeeperBvK Yes, I’m sorry for that unfortunate typo! I meant the Legacy Collection. The one with poor emulation quality and really bad input lag.

@John_Deacon Well, that's annoying! Confirmed. There's a 200+ MB patch for Galaxy 2 and and 300+ MB patch for Galaxy 1. They couldn't have just sold it as a "Switch 2 Edition" that also works on Switch 1? I guess that would be too confusing for the general public.

Does the physical version already contain all the relevant Switch 2 data, or does it require a download?

I was under the impression that the Swtich 2 Joy-Cons needed a lot less re-centering than the original Switch ones. Is that actually the case, or is it basically just as bad? Because I'm way less interested in Galaxy 2 if I'm going to have to constantly re-center the controller's gyro.

OH YEAH! I’ve been waiting for this one. I know most people think this game is just mediocre and I admit it doesn’t hold a candle to e.g. Donkey Kong Bananza, but it was good enough for me to 100%.

More importantly right now, the soundtrack is legitimately good. Even the 10 versions of the main theme have a lot of great tracks, like “Assassin Disco” and “Under the Cover of Night”.

Now I just wish they’d give the game a 60fps patch for Switch 2. It could really use one. It struggles to hit 30fps sometimes. Good Feel need to ask Nintendo for help optimizing, I guess.

Man, I was afraid of this happening for a while now. It's hitting me harder than I thought it would. Good luck in your future endeavors, Zion!

Behold the Switch 2! Powerful enough that developers don’t need to optimize their games nearly as much before calling them just barely good enough and charging $70 for them. Truly a victory for profits!

@Bass_X0 That’s true, although I doubt they’re going to release Advance Wars 1 or 2 anytime soon, if ever, since they remade them for Switch.

Similarly, Super Mario RPG still hasn’t been released on the SNES app.

@poyo_pie At the time I think they considered Mario’s transition into a 3D platforming series to be permanent. Who would ever want to play another 2D Mario game after Super Mario 64?

When Mr. Driller 2 and Klanoa were announced for Switch I thought, “Whoa, these are deep cuts. When are they gonna release more first-party games?” Then I researched and realized they’d already released all major first-party GBA games already. The app is basically complete! The only omissions are the mainline Pokémon games, which—to be clear—they will NEVER EVER release on NSO.

@BlackenedHalo I haven’t played Minish Cap recently enough to weigh in on that, but Echoes of Wisdom just isn’t very fun, so I’d easily believe Minish Cap is better.

@AmplifyMJ Touché.

I hope they pull it off. In my JRPG experience, when you can go underwater in the world map it's usually really boring and/or frustrating. Explore every inch of this mostly-empty ocean, with random encounters all along the way!

You know most flights provide earbuds for you, right? You might have to pay a nominal fee, but you could have easily just plugged airline earbuds into the Switch 2 and been good to go.

I’m sure I’m just being nitpicky, but 30fps? Really? I think I’d rather have slightly worse graphics at 60fps.

Geez, Nintendo needs to stop being so stingy with the dev kits! Or rather they needed to have done that a year ago.

@Lizuka What the second game really needs is to finally get some proofreading. It's riddled with far more spelling and grammatical errors than maybe the other nine games put together.

And that's saying something about the localization quality of the rest of the games. I don't remember which game it was, but somebody said "just deserts", and I was like, "That's a diction error. But wait, is it really?" Turns out the Ace Attorney team knew better than me. Even though it's pronounced the same as "desserts", the correct form is "just deserts" as in "just what [they] deserve". Just a tiny example of the top-notch English localization of most of the Ace Attorney series.

@nhSnork We're getting a new game eventually? Says who? I must have missed that news.

As for the news in the article, this is fantastic. Really great to have an art gallery and music player.

Counterpoint: The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a great movie, wildly surpassing my expectations. Yeah the casting decisions seemed weird when they were announced, but I think they worked out great, and their performances really elevated a middling story. My only two complaints are the licensed music mentioned in the article and the two or three cringe-y lines that were clearly added as meme-bait ("Blue shell!" and "That is how you princess!" being the ones that come to mind).

@FX29 It's because a PS5 has a big hard drive. The Switch 2 has only 256GB of space and can only be expanded with very expensive MicroSD Express cards. That's the difference.

@Tin_Whiskers I'd like to do the same, but honestly the 60 FPS update for Dragon Quest III was so significant for me. I know I'll enjoy the games so much more with the Switch 2 version. So I'll be waiting a while until the eShop version goes on sale.

Oof, they're testing my Game-Key Card resolve. I mean, I still 100% won't be buying a Game-Key Card for this, but I had pledged to wait to buy the digital version until there was a steep discount for it. I don't want to pay $60 so that I can host the entire 17 GB game on my own memory card. But I'm tempted.

Hopefully I can keep my Dragon Quest itch satisfied with playing Dragon Quest Builders 2 on the Switch 2. It runs much better than on the Switch and I've never come remotely close to finishing it.

I’m optimistic that the Labo VR set will work with this, since it looks basically identical to the “cardboard” version. Labo only works with the basic model of Switch, but that should be fine.

Whoa wait, the DLC is double the size of the base game? Is that correct? I was expecting it to be about half the size.

Promising the double the size of the original game

Maybe this should be "Promising to double the size of the original game, which would mean the DLC is about the same size as the base game. That seems more likely.

@AlanaHagues

My favourite has to be what appears to be Hitmonlee’s ability; I wasn’t sure how Fighting-types could influence the shape of the world, but physically punching cliffs and raised platforms?

pushes glasses up on nose

Um, actually, I think you'll find that it's Hitmonchan that teaches you to shape terrain.

@somnambulance If by “it was cool” you mean that nobody complained about it, that’s utterly false. I can remember unending whining about the price of Tropical Freeze, DKCR, and Luigi’s Mansion 2 on Switch.

@Moroboshi876 Either that or they wanted the book to reflect the “classic” experience, perhaps assuming that’s what most fans (at least In Japan?) would prefer.

@NickOfTime90 I think that’s probably why it was limited in the first place. Nintendo knew it would eventually be obsolete.

Although that doesn’t explain why Fire Emblem was also limited-time.

@Knightkrawler14 I’m getting pretty sick of reading this take. What evidence do you have that this was part of the original game? Is it none? No evidence?

And also, in what way was DK Bananza not already a complete game? Did you beat it and then think, “Hey, where’s the roguelite mode?”