LastFootnote

@johnedwin Sad but true.

@Lizuka I haven't played the Secret of Mana remake, but my understanding was that they updated all the graphics (I've seen screenshots) and music (I own the remixed soundtrack), but left the gameplay exactly as it was. And that's…the worst of both worlds?

I mean as a kid I loved Secret of Mana on the SNES, but as an adult it's painfully obvious that the graphics and sound are the best parts of that game. The gameplay mechanics are awful in at least three very important ways. First, the attack gauge. I used to defend this mechanic, but really it's just an awful band-aid. If you don't want characters to be able to attack foes as often, use knockback and invincibility frames. Second, action-adventure games should not have accuracy and evasion stats. If your weapon collides with an enemy's hitbox, that should be a hit. Third, if a game has a multiplayer mode, then opening a menu should not pause the game for everybody. That's just common sense.

The remixed soundtrack is uh a very mixed bag. Man they took some liberties with that music. A few of the updated tracks are huge improvements, but most of it is just OK and a number of the tunes are just butchered beyond recognition. That's not hyperbole. If you listen to the new and old versions of Together Always back-to-back, you probably wouldn't recognize that they're supposed to be the same piece. And they turned A Curious Tale into a call-and-response thing, but the the response portions are about 80% too quiet—it's barely audible.

@VrginX The more people buy them, the more standard they’ll become. So if you hope they won’t become standard, don’t buy them.

@TheMainMii It's totally not the only way, though. Any game you can get on a key-card, you can also just buy full digital.

@no_donatello Not to be a Nintendo apologist, but have they actual shut down the ability to re-download things you own on any of their systems? I thought you could still e.g. download all of your Wii purchases. You just can't buy new things on the Wii shop.

@Juanblue85 So just out of curiosity, why not just buy the digital version? You plan to sell it later?

@VeganHerpes Spoiler: they’re all the same price, at least in the US.

I’m not a physical diehard, as the article put it, but since I don’t sell or trade in games, there’s zero reason to choose a game-key card over digital. If I’m going to have to put this on my SD card anyway, I’ll take full digital every day of the week.

In practice, it means that I would have bought Bravely Default on day one for $50 or maybe even $60 if it were all on the cart. Instead I’ll wait until it goes on sale for $20 or less in a year or three. Thanks, Square-Enix!

@Jhena “This is one great Boktai day!”

@johnedwin Honestly I’m starting to consider it.

Dang I’m now going back to wondering why I bought a 4K TV recently when so many Switch 2 games top out at 1080p.

I wish I could have bought a 1080p OLED TV, but apparently almost nobody made those.

Possibly turning encounters off entirely is a separate toggle, potentially a single-button function for convenience. Then you could easily switch between 200% encounters and 0 encounters, for example.

Still not sure I’ll get this version though. I may buy it digitally, but will never buy a game-key card.

I want to support this, but I really don’t care about any of these games. Eh, maybe it’s time I tried out a Rune Factory game.

@Yoshi3 It's not that they couldn't. It's that they wouldn't.

The steady drumbeat of bad news from Nintendo continues. If they want to maintain customer loyalty, it sure would be nice for them to drop some good news soon. I'm being worn down.

@kfflscnt I don’t understand how this relates to anything I’ve said.

@intheShadows Awesome! Thanks for that. I’m feeling a lot better about it now.

@Kwyjibo_Kitsune I hope you're right, but I believe the Switch 1 UI is only 720p, so I'm not at all sure that the Switch 2 UI will be 4K.

@OorWullie I appreciate that! I think I need to just give it some time and stop worrying.

@Pickettfury Yeah, they are, but I still have a perfectly good 1080p TV (which I'm now using in another room, replacing an older 720p TV).

Honestly, I’m already regretting the 4K TV I just bought. When even Nintendo’s first two big games run at 1440 and 1080 and need upscaling, what is even the point?

At least I’ve fiddled with the settings such that Switch games look good to me, but dang. Buyer’s remorse.

@TwinFami If it were the unlockable content I cared about, then sure. For the Zelda amiibo, I don't really care about the paraglider fabric. I'd just like the statuettes. (But won't buy them at these prices.)

I don't care about Street Fighter at all.

@rjejr Yeah, I saw that at Best Buy a couple of days ago! I already have those amiibo, but for that price I was thinking of picking up a set for my son.

@Spider-Kev You sure about that? They're definitely all shipped and through customs already? And they're not making more and shipping them? I'm open to that idea, but I'd love to see your evidence.

Because $30 or $40 for one of these things isn't greed; it's shooting themselves in the foot. They are no longer affordable.

@N00BiSH It's "a lot of things" in the same way that tap water is made up of a lot of things. There are trace minerals and things, but it's overwhelmingly H2O. The $10 price hike for amiibo is "a lot of things", but it's 99.5% the sudden 145% tariff.

Like, I'm guessing the actual margin Nintendo makes off of these amiibo has plummeted even with this enormous price hike. If they'd passed it all on to us, it would have gone from $20 to $50.

@Tasuki Again, amiibo are manufactured in China and the US has a ONE HUNDRED FORTY FIVE PERCENT tariff on Chinese goods right now. This is Trump’s fault, period.

Bowser’s comment there means precisely nothing. It’s corporate-speak and has zero substance.

@N00BiSH This isn’t simply inflation. I’m guessing this is the 145% US tariff on Chinese goods at work.

Yes, Nintendo is so greedy. This certainly has nothing to do with the 145% tariffs the US has placed on goods from China, where amiibo are almost certainly manufactured.

For $30? No. For $20 maybe.

@Saints I agree the prices are insane, but at least the Switch 2 dock actually seems to do something beyond being a glorified HDMI output.

@jfp That's a good point I hadn't considered. With US tariffs on China currently at a ridiculous 145% and climbing, it's a wonder we didn't get even higher prices.

@87th I think it's actually 72 hours. But uh the problem is that they're not planning on telling us whether we've been selected until early May. So if I want to try to ensure I get a Switch 2, I have to try to secure a retailer pre-order as a backup. It's a bad system.

@GrailUK Definitely not aimed solely at gaming. It's just sort of top-of-mind right now, you know? Trust me, I spend more time than I ought to reading general news and wishing my country had had more sense back in November.

@Willo567 I do blame him. But Nintendo also had a choice. They're in the middle of a storm of bad press right now, just one thing after another. It may have been wiser for them to take the hit on their (likely high) margins in order to try to maintain customer loyalty.

During the Switch generation Nintendo generated a ton of goodwill from me. I've gone from enjoying Nintendo products to becoming a fiercely loyal fan of theirs. But this constant barrage of bad news is steadily chipping away at that. I wish they'd take steps to stop the bleeding, even if they are dealing with economic circumstances beyond their control.

@Clark2k I wish I had your optimism. But from what we've seen of this launch so far, they seem to be strongly prioritizing their bottom line over customer loyalty this generation.

@Clark2k Yeah, but the announcement pretty clearly says they WON'T necessarily remain $70-$80.

I really don't want to be a downer, but somehow this really depresses me. In addition to nickel-and-diming us on accessories EVEN MORE than they already were, they're effectively saying that future games will be more expensive on average. I don't know if we'll see any $90 games, but I think it's likely that games previously planned for $70 are going to be $80. Add that to Game-Key Cards and needing to buy MicroSD EXPRESS cards, and I think my excitement for this system is finally reaching a tipping point. It's starting to just fill me with dread.

Hmm, I can’t remember what this game’s music is like. Should be worth a listen though.

I’m really hoping for either the Thousand-Year Door or Origami King soundtrack sometime soon. This year would be awesome.

"Battle Mode is back and more hectic than ever!"

But I don't want it to be more hectic than ever. Mario Kart 64 had the best battle mode in the series, precisely because you could be careful and strategic.

@Grumblevolcano I think they're more likely to release it for Switch 2. Galaxy 2 requires a lot more pointer controls than Galaxy 1 (aiming Yoshi's tongue, etc.), and we've learned from lots of Wii-to-Switch ports that gyro is not up to that task. It drifts horribly. Long story short, Galaxy 2 would be a nightmare to play on Switch.

With mouse controls, though...

Although hmm, you'd also have to use the right Joy-Con's face buttons a lot. Maybe that wouldn't be comfortable.

@mikegamer I'm gonna guess that most or all of the Mario baddie playable characters need to be found and recruited. Go to the desert to find and unlock a Pokey. Go out into the ocean to recruit a dolphin, etc.

@Rosona You are correct. Code-in-a-box is at least on the same order of bad as Game Key Card, if not worse. In my mind I was instead comparing a Game Key Card to a digital download, which was my mistake. Yes, a Code-in-a-box is a stupid waste of plastic and I've never bought one.

I strongly disagree that the advantages of Game Key Cards compared to digital downloads outweigh the disadvantages, but that's a reasonable difference of opinion based on how we use games.

@Rosona For folks like me who don’t sell their games, Game Key Cards are just worse. You need to install the entire game on your SD card (which is much more expensive on Switch 2 by requiring MicroSD EXPRESS), and you still need to use the game card, which destroys the convenience of digital games. It is literally the worst of both worlds, just so publishers can save money on game cards but still have their product in stores.

I’m looking forward to it. I just hope the fact that it’s $10 cheaper than Mario Kart World doesn’t mean it’s somehow a budget title with a smaller scale. I know that sounds crazy for $70, but Nintendo has trained us to think that all of their games should be the same price.

@ryan_nil I'm of an age with you, for what it's worth. And no, I won't be buying any Game Key cards. Don't see why I wouldn't buy a Switch 2 though.

And let me state the obvious: if these Game Key Card releases don't sell well, they'll stop happening. Personally if there are any such games that I want to buy, I'll wait for a steep discount and buy them digitally instead.

@8bit4Life Actually you can lend out digital games starting late this month, with the Virtual Game Card functionality Nintendo described in the March Direct.

@ryan_nil "That's the world we live in now" is exactly the wrong attitude. If everybody rolls over like you are, then it will be the world we live in. But it's not like it's some cosmic inevitability.

I don't sell games, and Nintendo has already provided a solution for lending digital games, which they showed off in March Direct. So yeah, this is just purely bad news for me. They've simply pushed the monetary (data storage) and time costs off to the consumer so that they could save a few bucks on the cartridge. And let's not forget: the Switch 2 only allows MicroSD EXPRESS cards, which are more expensive and have a smaller capacity. I haven't seen one with more than 256 GB of space.

It's extremely disheartening to see so many third-party games jumping on this bandwagon so quickly. I won't be picking up any Game Key cards, and I hope they fall out of style ASAP.

Well when you put it that way, they all kind of suck.

I voted Switch due to Breath of the Wild, Shovel Knight (which wasn't new, but Specter of Torment was new and a Switch-exclusive for a time), and Snipperclips.

Wii, GBA, and NES were also very strong. Switch 2 would probably win in terms of "Which of these sets of games would I choose if they were the only games I could play for the rest of my life", but it's got too many ports and remasters to be really exciting the way some other systems were.