@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.

The audio issue is a genuine problem that I feel is more than worth complaining about. Bad emulation in a commercial product is never okay and needs to be addressed. The other stuff is just silly.

That said, I'm seeing a lot of people here trying to trivialize the audio issue, and that is not how to handle stuff like this. Grow up and admit when a publisher messes up. Defending bad practices just leads to more bad practices. Just because it doesn't bother you personally, doesn't mean it's not a real problem.

This is an excellent shmup. Definitely give it a go if you enjoy the genre.

Most exciting Ubisoft game since the first Mario + Rabbids game.

I also preferred BotW, but for different reasons.

I really don't like TotK's building mechanic—it's tedious and never felt fun to me. I also don't enjoy exploring the depths—it's more annoying than it is fun. And the sky islands are nearly all copy and pastes of each other. And lastly, exploration of the main overworld is so trivialized by your ability to fly/glide your way around it. That also makes its sense of scale feel so much smaller than it is.

TotK absolutely does do a lot of things better. The story, bosses, and big set piece moments are all way better. But that isn't enough to make it a better game in my opinion.

Even though I absolutely hate the frame rate problems in the remake, I still have to go with that version since it dramatically reduces the frequency that you need to go into the menu to swap equipment.

The real question is how does it run on Switch now.

Bummer! I was also looking forward to this game. Will probably skip it now, but I'll keep an eye on other reviews to see what the overall consensus is.

They should have called it Project Kii U.

I feel like the presentation loses something with this version. I loved that the original games had the characters standing next to or operating an intricate machine that fires the bubbles. This version just has them standing in the middle throwing the bubbles up themselves. Obviously the gameplay is most important, but some of the charm is lost here.

@Friendly The problem is that I've been playing the game for many hours and haven't encountered that yet. So that doesn't change my experience. Sure you could stumble upon something like that early, but the odds of that happening aren't good given the size of the game.

As of right now, probably an 8 or 9 out of 10. Really enjoying the game, but some of the mechanics I'm not really digging. The building feels more like a chore honestly. And I get sick of having to create the same stuff all the time.

I also think the sky navigation kind of trivializes a lot of the exploration since you can just fly/glide to your destination much of the time. It was a similar feeling I had in Xenoblade X once you get the mechs, only that feeling occurs much sooner in TotK.

Again, still really enjoying it. An 8 out of 10 still means that it's good in my opinion! But so far I don't like it as much as Breath of the Wild.

Bring back Ninja Baseball Bat Man instead!