Lyricana

@TryToBeHopeful It's really not soon. Plenty of other franchises have new entries every year. Super Mario Party released OVER three years ago. If anything, over three years is usually when people are going crazy that a sequel hasn't happened in many franchises.

And while it's true it'll probably slow sales of Super Mario Party, the sales have already slowed a lot. It probably only had a couple million left in it over the next year or two and they'd rather strike before the iron has cooled completely and get a new game out there with immediate, big sales.

I actually like the free one the most.

@Matl They actually have quite a few nice physical rewards.

@SonOfVon What 30 year old port is getting tons of coverage that it doesn't deserve...?

@SonOfVon They don't have time to cover every game and why would they? It's a port of a decades old PC game that has been lightly remastered. And it has been covered TO DEATH on other websites.

Also, they have published multiple articles about it anyway, they just didn't review it.

@Dethmunk Assuming you play any real time games at all, I wouldn't simply disregard it on the expectation that Monopoly should be slow paced. It isn't Monopoly, really. It's a party game with the Monopoly license thrown in.

@Anti-Matter There is a lot of actual gameplay footage.

For me, top 3 would be: Castlevania Bloodlines at 3, then Shining Force and then Phantasy Star IV at number one.

@Petew No one has said that at all in any capacity that means anything. It was errant speculation by someone with no real information, claiming it as a possibility that the price increase is related to that.

One thing that's worth noting with Metroid Dread and isn't being properly reflected is that the clock only counts deathless, unpaused, mapless playtime. The average player is spending hours on the menu, from reading to tutorials to checking upgrades, but mostly studying the map, setting markers, etc. And the average player is probably dying dozens of hundreds of times. None of this play time is clocked.

I wouldn't be surprised if Metroid Dread was offering 15-25 hours for many "average" gamers. I've already seen a number of people claim their Switch profile showing 15-20+ hours played even with a completion time of 8-12 hours. And that game time counts. It's not like Dragon Quest freezes the clock when you hit up the menu or Tales when you retry a rough boss fight for the tenth time.

@MsMaestroon No, it's nothing like that. It's a tower defense game and it's not really modern day. It's an 11 year old game getting remastered.

The article titles always have me expecting more. "Perfectly recreates" is just too much of an overstatement! It is a really good effort, though.

I feel like I got clickbaited into a reading an article about Mario Kart Tour. It's hard for me to imagine something related to this game could be the best anything that Nintendo gives its fans!

@Aerona Included how?

It's interesting to see Nintendo felt the need to step in and fix the supposed bottleneck. This studio has a somewhat troubled past, which is briefly mentioned here. I remember reading it years ago after Lords of Shadow 2. Maybe they'd be better off if Nintendo just purchased them and restructured the management.

@Einherjar Actually, allegations of misconduct and problems in the past are far more extensive than they are now. There's some serious controversy that hit them after Lords of Shadow 2.

@Joe-b
"As reported by The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella, Sony's PlayStation 5 was September's best-selling hardware platform in both units and dollar sales."

The part you're referring to is the little bit at the end Nintendo Life added about the overall yearly sales numbers to date, which don't really mean anything in this particular case.

@Grumblevolcano Why hopefully?

The OLED is definitely the real culprit here. Many people looking to buy a new Switch in September logically would hold off until October and just get the better model. I bet the actual unit numbers even still aren't that much lower than PS5, in spite of many holding off for OLED. I'd also wager Nintendo will be right back on top, perhaps commandingly so, this month.

At first I was aghast at the price point. Truly taken aback. I was expecting a $10-$15 increase, not a $30-$45 increase, so it seemed like way too much. But I've thought about it a lot today and the reality is, it's overpriced if you consider the additional content being added minus the Animal Crossing DLC. But.. it's not overpriced for the overall package. It doesn't feel like a strong value proposition when compared to the standard subscribers, but not because this is an overall overpriced sub.. rather because the standard is so ludicrously cheap, particularly the $35 family plan that comes out to $4.375 a person for a year.

The new plan is $10 a person for the upgrade. And 6 of the 8 people on my plan want the Animal Crossing DLC. That's where the real savings comes from. 6 copies of that DLC would be $150 alone so.. a $64 (my prorated cost for this first year) doesn't seem so bad to get everyone the DLC and the other NSO games and such.

Whether or not it will be worth it next year is a different story. I HOPE this big free DLC business continues to happen once or twice a year, because that would make this pay for itself time and again if they're bonuses like this for other big games. No way to know for sure today, though, as Nintendo is always tight lipped.

@Tasuki Any company is going to have some restrictions on how much work you have to do to get credit. Maybe in a case where it has been 11 months of work on a 48 month project, you make an exception. But there's nothing specifically shady about limiting the credit for those who do the vast majority of the work. If anything, I'd say maybe change their term of service to "25% or 6 months, whichever comes first".

@MrDinosaur I'm fine with 100% and under 8 hours. I don't think I have the stamina to try for under 4.

@Ralizah Nothing about what he said mentioned limiting controls to 6-8 buttons as an answer. He said he's thinking about how he can press the 6-8 MAIN buttons needed to play. He's generalizing that most games take around 6-8 buttons to play and his concern isn't a gimmick like waggling, but how he can access the required buttons. You definitely misunderstood what he was saying in that regard.

Obviously regarding the gimmicks, you didn't. And I agree with you there. Nintendo has no obligation to stop innovating because this one person thinks it gets in the way of bigger concerns. There's no reason Nintendo can't address accessibility and still pursue their usual antics with experimental gameplay.

@HenHiro I imagine it'll be like Xenoblade. There will be 8-12 big, open feeling regions. And you're free to move through them similar to how you would in an open world, but smaller.

@BongoBongo123 How was the analogue stick "literally broken"?

Time is money and money is power. So.. Clock must be the most powerful game on Switch. Breath of the Wild killer, anyone?!

@Aurumonado Of course it's subjective. There's no way it could be objective. It's an opinion piece. It's literally called "Soapbox" and even has a disclaimer saying it's the opinion of the author.

@Moistnado They didn't say it was better than Metroid Dread, did they? Though with review copies sent out a week or two ago, they probably have played it, right.

@anoyonmus I guess it depends on how much you care about playing in order or seeing the series as it is. If you really want to play Firis, I'm sure it'll be fine.

As for Lulua, I actually haven't played that one but it is the fourth and final game in a four part series and I personally wouldn't want to start there.

All of them are on sale right now on Switch but only for one more day in the UK and the US so I'd grab a few that you want and enjoy yourself. Ultimately, you know what you like most and what's most important to you better than I would. Rorona is good if you want to have narrative continuity and eventually play through all the Arland games. Firis is good if you want to try the more oddball open world-ish design that one had. Sophie is good if you want to get ready for the sequel. Ryza is the newest and shows off some of the ways the series has evolved best, etc. They're all pretty fun games though and none is really a bad choice.

@anoyonmus All the entries are pretty good. I like Sophie quite a bit. Firis is kind of fun, but it's also fairly different from most of the other games in the series. Not to say you won't like it, but it isn't as indicative of the rest of the franchise. I'd try either Rorona, Sophie, Ayesha or Ryza. It's definitely more fun to start at the beginning of the various subseries.

They all run well on Switch as far as I've seen, though I haven't actually played Ayesha on Switch. They're PS3/Vita games though so there's no imaginable way they wouldn't unless there's some known issue.

@Kimyonaakuma Have you ever played any?

@MsJubilee I imagine a lot of them were holiday games originally for 2021 but got pushed back. And January isn't usually a great month for selling a new game, so.. February and March get jam packed.

@anoyonmus Any of the subseries are fine, honestly. I'd just grab the first one of whichever is on the best sale on Switch or your system of preference.

@moodycat It's not an issue of laziness. It's an issue of cost. They're not big money makers and it's cheaper this way. Seems unlikely they'd change it without selling a lot more.

@Ralizah To be fair, the Yakuza games have half as many entries and the games are often less than half the length or even shorter. I'm not saying you have the time for it, but you could play every mainline game in under 200 hours. Still a decent chunk, but there are a lot of RPGs that are over a hundred by themselves. I've always loved that the Yakuza games are dense, awesome experiences but they also aren't so overly long that I get worn out. Though 7 is definitely much longer than the rest!

@Dingelhopper I think some of them actually do. Even the article says "colour helps to highlight just how much the shape looks like Mario's moustachioed mug" when in reality, it isn't just the color. They drew in the entire hat linking the lions together into one image, they drew on the ears, reshaped the whole image, etc. It looks nothing like Mario without the drawn part over it.

I use the White theme, though it's mostly because my significant other uses the Black theme and it's faster from the lock screen to see which system is which that way.

However, I do hate how often people tell me I'm wrong or bad for using the White theme and the idea that people say there is a "correct" choice is frustrating. I assume (hope?) it's just being said as a joke here, but I have actually been insulted multiple times for being dumb for not using the Black theme.

@Yosher I'm just saying it's nice for people who like to know that stuff. I guess I don't think that's silly.

@Yosher Why? It's not like it's the kind of thing that's really a spoiler. Many people want to know this ahead of time. And those who don't, well, it's not like it's hard to avoid. It's not like you're going to accidentally see the article, then accidentally read or skip several paragraphs, then inadvertently absorb 120+ lines of text with all the mini game names.

It's pretty telling when there are considerably more mini games from just Mario Party 2 than 7, 8, 9 and 10 combined.

Overall, good list. I'm excited. Though where's Running of the Bulb?! That's one of my all-time favorites!

@BongoBongo123 Why would they change the analogue stick? It would defeat the purpose of giving you a near replica controller to play N64 games with.

@chipia Lodoss is a big franchise and this is actually based on (or a prequel to, I believe) a 2019 light novel.

@MARl0 I don't think quality is a metric in determining whether or not a game gets reviewed. Honestly, I'm not even sure how that would work. How do you determine it's "very good" and good enough to review without essentially reviewing it to begin with? I think the issue is a matter of how well known the game is. Maybe they haven't heard of it or didn't think it was well known enough to be worth reviewing. They can't review every game that comes out by a long shot, so they have to pick and choose.

@Heavyarms55 In a moment of strong nerdiness, I recently made a list of every GBA game I wanted to play/replay and it came out to 57 games. GBA is definitely the system I miss most. So few of its games have made it off the system and it would be a great addition to NSO!

@Teksetter Haha, right! I saw you mentioning learning Japanese to enjoy things like games and anime. I've taken a few classes myself, but I'm still a novice. Maybe one of these days. Definitely a big time commitment, though I suppose like anything.. it won't get anywhere unless you take the plunge. Any suggestions on the best tools to use to get there?

And Nadia is Hank Pym's daughter from his first marriage but he didn't know his wife was pregnant. Nadia grew up in Russia as a prisoner, and only came to finally meet Hank after he'd passed, so Janet took her in and adopted her.

@Snatcher I guess I'm just saying that we get Dr. Mario and we can play Custom Robo if we want to still. Other than that, the titles are all the same, anyway, right?

@Teksetter From my perspective, the idea of them localizing games for their NSO catalogue was never even a consideration. It just wouldn't make sense for them to do it. As you say, I'm just super happy that it's easy to access and play them and I've had a reasonable amount of fun playing some of those Japanese exclusives! And I'm pumped to get time with these when they come out.

Oh, and as for my avatar, thanks for the compliment! It's actually Nadia Van Dyne, the Unstoppable Wasp! It's a 2017 American comic series but the art for the sequel series is done by a team of Japanese manga artists which gives it that kind of older mecha style.

@Snatcher I guess we all just speak Japanese then, oh and we all want to make an alt account just to play these games, its not like I don't want to mindlessly run through, [enter game here] without knowing the controls, oh and wile were at it I should ask an only Japanese speaking gamer to play [enter game here] with no translation to speak of, You know, story driven games, just like the one JP got last time, need a translation.

Obviously not everyone speaks Japanese. That's not the point. People are getting angry that a classic games services has more games to play. What exactly would they prefer? Nintendo not to let Japanese players ever enjoy games that never got released internationally because UK and American gamers might feel jealous? Or do you legitimately think Nintendo should be required to translate every classic game they drop on the service into every language or not release them at all? Because both are preposterous. They're not going to make any money translating decades old, ultra niche N64 games to release as a tiny aside alongside a service that a huge portion of their customer base is already paying for. It makes no business sense and it makes no practical sense.

The fact that they let the NSO be region free and make it easy to access by either making an alternate account or just simply toggling your region on their site (both take about 20 seconds to do) is already more than I'd expect. Seriously, it's like people are just trying to find things to be mad about. Like they'd legitimately be happier if Nintendo simply didn't put those games on the service at all, because having them in Japanese is apparently worse than not having them at all.

I don't read Japanese fluently and would mostly stumble my way through, but I'd still rather be able to play those games and I'm glad the option is there. Whether or not they translate them and sell them to us later (like the original Fire Emblem) seems like a completely unrelated issue.

@Snatcher @Daniel36 I mean.. you can play them. Just as easily as the Japanese gamers can. What's the issue? I never understand these complaints. No one is getting less.

This likes an early alpha of a pretty good game.