MARl0

Nintendo really needs to step in with scam games like this. I get wanting to have a very low bar of entry to make the eShop more appealing to publishers. But there has to be some standards at least.

I do not like the idea of jump being on the A button. Hopefully there is an option to change it. But this is Nintendo, there's a good chance that there isn't one. Some of their games do have options for stuff like that (Kirby), some of them don't (Metroid Dread).

8/10
I'd give it a 9/10 if they didn't remove the ability to fall to your death. That is a big part of DK'94 and the original version of Mario vs Donkey Kong. And removing that really hurts the game. Still a great time overall, but not as good as the original.

Personally, I'd put DK'94 at number one. It's the best DK game by a long shot. I'm also a little confused by the placement of the Mario vs DK Switch remake? Why is it so low?

Nah, I have no interest in Sora. I was honestly a little disappointed when he was revealed as the final character.

Releasing at the same time as Mario Wonder was definitely a bad idea. Put those two against each other, and Mario is always going to win that battle.

@Smug43 Having those games on Gamecube would definitely be different. 😅

It's so frustrating to me that M2 doesn't release so many of their games outside of Japan. Yes, the Switch is region free, but it should be more widely and easily accessible. I don't want a physical copy and don't want to create a japanese Nintendo account.

@Pigeon "Ugly" You still keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. 🤔

@Pigeon "Ugly" You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means. 🤭

@burninmylight Shinobi is being developed by the Streets of Rage 4 devs, so you can rest easy with that one.

Skies of Arcadia please!

@gcunit This might be the most disingenuous take I've ever seen here. The issues with S/V are in a whole other league compared to this game. And it isn't even close.

@DdG1408 Contra ReBirth was after Contra 4, and it was better than Contra 4.

Oh god, it has the side scrolling Unity game stutter in the trailer. They absolutely NEED to fix that before release. Way too many Unity games have that problem, and it is totally fixable. It's not a performance issue, it's a problem with the default settings in Unity when attaching the camera to the player character for horizontal scrolling. If that isn't fixed, then I will have to skip this one.

My favorite pinball game is easily Devil's Crush on the Turbografx-16. That game is legendary! I even took part in a recent little high score competition for the game among some friends, and proceeded to come in dead last! Still, fun times were had!

I'll be getting this on PS5 eventually. Games like this absolutely should not have frame rate issues on Switch. Indie developers won't get the message until fans stop buying retro-style games on Switch with poor performance. I love me some old school pixel art in my games, but no modern platform should have trouble running them at a rock solid 60fps, including the Switch. This is just poor optimization.

I give the SNES version a 9/10. And the remake a 7/10. The remake just isn't landing with me the way the original does. The performance is horrible, the music is a downgrade (thankfully you can select the original music), the timed hits suffer from input delay, the comedic timing in a lot of the animation isn't as good with the move to 3D, and some of the animations have been completely changed for the worse. Still a great game underneath, but the SNES version is the superior experience in my opinion.

Hopefully the Switch version is more polished than the PC version. I tried it out on Steam Deck, and it was forced into 720p even in docked mode, which is the only game I've ever seen on the Deck that had that problem. Then when I left a review mentioning that issue, the developer responded by lying about it. Saying that Valve mandates that the game only output to 720p in docked mode on the Deck because of the Deck's own screen resolution. That is flatly false considering every other game I've played on the Steam Deck supports higher resolution output in docked mode.

30fps? Oooooof. Absolute deal breaker for a fighting game. How on earth did they think that was acceptable? Genuinely broken and shocking for the genre. 5/10 is too generous.

They have to care first for that to become a reality.

@nkarafo I would avoid Chained Echoes. Its gameplay systems were insufferable for me personally. It got off to an amazing first impression. But I finally dropped it after about 20 hours, because I realized that I just wasn't having fun anymore. A real shame, because it was one of my most anticipated games last year.

I haven't tried Sea of Stars yet, but Octopath 2 is fantastic.

"Surprisingly good visuals for the era"

I'm confused by this. It's a remake. It didn't look like this back in the day.

@Arcata It's currently at about 80% of the N64 library is playable and in a very good state (many are all but perfect). The main games that don't work yet are the ones that require TLB, which hasn't been implemented into the core yet (the developer has stated that TLB will be one of the last major features added since it takes up a decent size of the core and he wants to optimize everything else first).

Seriously though, it has come a long way in a shockingly short amount of time. Only a few months ago, no games would even boot. Now a ton of them are an even match for original hardware. I've been playing through Mischief Makers on it recently, and it is near flawless. And the Nintendo Switch Online N64 controllers work perfectly with it. Easily the best N64 experience I've had since the last time I hooked up my actual N64.

I'd be shocked if the rest of the library wasn't playable by the end of the year.

"that the only other alternative is to opt for the original console from Nintendo"

My MiSTer says "Hi". The MiSTer core is already in such an amazing state, and it's still early in development. I can play games like F-Zero X and Wave Race 64 on it, and they are identical to original hardware.

Very happy with how they handled the Switch version. They did what they needed to do to hit that 60fps target, which in my opinion is absolutely crucial for side scrolling platformers—especially Sonic. Good on Sega for not doing Sonic dirty this time! Was happy to reward them with a purchase.

About what I expected honestly. It looks...fine. But based on what I've seen of it, it seems to not have the love and care of something like Sonic Mania. I'll still give it a go though.

The ongoing Hatch Tales incident really killed any goodwill Atooi had with me personally. Honestly makes Might No.9's Kickstarter seem like it was run like a well oiled machine. It's that bad. And management that bad does not happen by accident.

If this doesn't have english voice acting, I'm going to have to pass on it. That's how I watched the show, so without it, it's just not the same.

Such a shame, but also completely expected based on the Switch reveal trailer. The first game is an absolute banger on Switch. This one? Not so much. They definitely learned the wrong lessons indeed.

Completely unacceptable for MGS2 and 3 to be 30fps on Switch. Especially MGS2 which was 60fps on the PS2 back in the day. No chance that I buy the Switch version.

The lack of english voice acting is the deal breaker for me on this one. You just don't take away features in a remaster like this. I still have my GCN copies, so I'll just stick with those.

@brandonbwii This is not even remotely constructive, and a really dumb point to make. It doesn't change anything at all in the fact that it is a case of different reviewers giving their own take. That's how all gaming sites handle reviews, and it's basic common sense.

@9-Volt That is not how reviews work. Nor is it how they should work. They have to review the game that is presented to them. One can never ever just assume things will be fixed in the future. Genuinely shocked that someone would actually say this.

@westman98 FYI, this is not true. Paper Mario TTYD absolutely does run in 480p 60fps. Nearly every Nintendo published game on the GCN runs at 480p, and Paper Mario is no different. Even just tested it again myself, and it does.

I honestly might skip this one. I like TTYD, but I can't say that I love it. And having its frame rate cut in half is a major downgrade. Remakes should be better than the original, not worse. The visuals look nice, but they also looked nice in the original, so the upgrade there isn't worth the performance drop.

I need to know how it runs on Switch. The review mentions that it runs well on Switch, but it doesn't specify if it's 30 or 60fps. That's an important distinction and something that should be mandatory in every review.

I've really loved seeing so many MK4 and PS2 generation characters return after being absent for so long. Especially seeing how they've been reimagined in the modern visuals.

@belmont Just because you didn't notice it, doesn't mean it wasn't there. It is constantly there any time you explore the game as the camera moves. There is never a time when the camera is scrolling that it isn't occurring.

@Levantine They've been plagued by stuttering scrolling since day one and it has never been addressed. The worst problem with these versions. I would have taken a fix for that over the fonts any day.

Does this finally fix the stuttering scrolling in the games? It's insane that these still run worse than the originals, even though the originals were released on much weaker hardware.

@TheExile285 Its systems were just not for me. I put 20 hours into it, and came to the conclusion that I was just not having fun playing it. I felt like I was forcing myself through it rather than playing and finishing it out of a sense of fun.

The level up system is horrible and the game gives little reason to fight enemies, and when you do fight enemies the battles are needlessly drawn out and tedious, which makes the lack of rewards for battle feel even worse.

Managing your equipment is also aggressively tedious. Every time I saw new equipment available at shops or when I received new equipment from chests, I dreaded it, because the process of constantly upgrading, removing gems from your old equipment, placing them onto your new equipment is a convoluted and horrible mess. And this process is all but necessary, because not only will battles be even more annoying without updating your equipment, but the new equipment is always weaker than your old upgraded equipment, and the only way to make the new equipment viable is to go through the whole process every damn time.

I'm genuinely dumbfounded as to how the developer (admittedly one person) thought this stuff made for a fun and compelling RPG. There is no way it was play tested.

What makes it so tragic is that the game gave an amazing first impression. In the opening hours it felt like it was going to be an incredible retro style RPG that would be right up my alley.

Apologies for the long winded answer, but Chained Echoes was one of my most anticipated games last year. I love retro style JRPGs like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, and it just did not live up to my expectations.

As long as it's better than Chained Echoes, I'll be happy. That game was such a disappointment for me.

The remake is the more fun version to play since its battles are more balanced. But any version is always a great time regardless.

I've done it many times over the years. It was one of the most famous tricks in the game when I was a kid. That, and the 1up trick.

The NES versions of SMB1 and Lost Levels are superior since they don't have the brick physics bug. That ruins the SNES versions.

SNES SMB2 and 3 are better though since they simply look better and don't have any major bugs.

I see someone woke up this morning and chose violence!

I really wish they fixed the poor pixel scaling in this collection. It's so blurry. Sonic Mania's visuals are super crisp in comparison.

@Serpenterror Even M2 has had problems. In the Genesis Mini console, it had horrific audio lag that really made a lot of games awkward. Like in Castlevania and Mega Man, when your character lands on the ground it makes a sound effect. But on the Genesis Mini, because of its audio lag, the sound effect is delayed, making it way out of sync with what happens on screen.

Those staff members are good people indeed.