MSaturn

Honestly I skipped the article because I haven’t gotten to play this game yet and I didn’t want to know anything about them. But I am a fan of the traditional dungeons and without them the the BotW games feel too flat and monotonous. BotW largely got away with it because the overworld itself was so well designed. The journey was the reward. I didn’t feel that way about TotK. I hope these dungeons are well received and Nintendo reconsiders excluding dungeons like this from the series.

The only atelier game I’ve ever played is Atelier Iris way back on the PS2. I’ve been curious about trying one of the modern ones. I’m thinking about the Ryza series. The fact that there’s three of them is both a pro and con to me.

I was looking at this last night. The pixel art looks great. Thanks for the review; I may get this eventually.

It is the difference between being a leader and a follower. Nintendo leads and Sony and MS follow. And I’m not usually a console warrior type of guy, but I mean it’s pretty hard to dispute this in my opinion. Nintendo invents the d-pad when everyone else is doing Atari style joysticks or dials. Nintendo puts analog sticks on the controller. Nintendo does the rumble pak. Motion controls. There are many other examples.

On the other side of the ledger Nintendo shied away from CD technology, probably their biggest blunder, so others innovated in that area. Other companies do often iterate and improve on Nintendo’s ideas. I’d say the dual shock improved on the N64 controller. But Nintendo is still the “leader”. They are like the laboratory where new forms of play are experimented with. Then everyone else cashes in on the successful ideas.

I never played this game, but I did play Worms 3D on the original Xbox. It was one of the best and funniest multiplayer games I’ve ever played. Sounds like this has that same spirit. How is Worms 3D viewed by the series fans? Is it well liked? I take it Armageddon is considered to be better?

Serious gamers who are paying attention may reward them for this but the consumer masses will likely not know or distinguish between games made with and without AI. AI will therefore be money saver with little downside for many developers and Nintendo refusing to participate in this “innovation” may lead to fresh wave of negative comments from investor types. Beyond that we’ll have to see what happens…

Amazing, I honestly thought this was impossible. I’m curious to learn some details like are they doing a new localization or reusing the working designs one? I’m not the biggest fan of the blurry top and bottom of the screen. I’m wondering if when you switch the graphics to the old style it’s the sega cd graphics or the player ion graphics? The screenshots are clearly based on the PlayStation graphics. Anyway these are great games, highly recommended to anyone who wants a straightforward traditional JRPG. They are pretty lighthearted, fun adventures.

Whelp, I will definitely be getting this. I had some doubts at first but they are gradually being replaced by optimism. Ultimately I have to play it and decide for myself. I’m looking forward to it!

Pretty good score. I’ll be getting this later this year I think. Can’t wait to read the full review though and see what’s really going on!

I thought this one looked good. Here’s hoping that the delay doesn’t signal something wrong with the development of the game. A delayed game is eventually blah blah blah etc.

Initially I was very skeptical, but if digital foundry is convinced that certainly adds some weight to this. Those guys usually know what they’re talking about.

@Bonggon5 I agree but I would add that there’s something in the Ice Palace in LttP that’s kind of tricky as well… I can’t remember the details, but I remember being stuck in there for quite a while. Granted I was like 7 at the time. But yeah for the most part the puzzles are always easy.

I will be getting this, because I have gotten every Zelda game since 1993… but I’m not sure that I’m expecting to like it. I can’t tell… it might be different and unique, cool, or it might be different and half-baked which is sadly what I kind of expect from this franchise now.

@XE77 agreed. I predict that sometime before Nintendo’s 150th birthday both Sony and Microsoft will give up on consoles, becoming purely subscription apps on smart devices. Nintendo will wind up the only major console maker left.

Frankly now that I see it I'm even more doubtful. It looks too much like the exact same system, just bigger. I feel like even if Nintendo went with an essentially very similar concept for the switch 2 (which I hope they do) they would make a few more changes and tweaks than this.

Ugh, I was afraid of this. Every time I saw the game I thought “how well can this possibly run on switch?”

They look pretty realistic/plausible… but at the same time there’s nothing shown here that couldn’t be easily faked. I don’t know. Regardless the suspense is killing me! I just wrote yesterday that I didn’t expect to hear anything until after Christmas but I’d really like to be wrong!

This question has been on my mind ever since the partner directs last month - does this mean there’s no September direct? And I’ve decided that the answer is probably “yes”. I don’t think the switch 2 reveal happens until after Christmas, and I don’t see much need for a direct for the Fall games. I also assume that there is little need to talk about 2025 games as I assume most of those are actually switch 2 titles. The switch is winding down. We’re going to get that classic Nintendo dry spell where like no games come out for six months and then the console launches in September 25 or something. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic but that’s what I’m preparing myself for.

I’m on the fence on this one. On the one hand I don’t really go in for this type of game usually. On the other hand, I do love Tolkien’s world. Plus, I just read the Hobbit to my two small daughters and they loved it, so they might get a kick out of this. Basically I guess this delay is good since the game will presumably get better and I’ll have more time to waffle lol

@CurryPowderKeg79 I hope not. I will say both the street fighter collection and capcom fighting collection were real cartridges…

Astro Bot in Smash confirmed.

I wonder what’s going on with Dragon Quest XII? When will we get an update on that game? That would be a very welcome surprise, so I’m sure it won’t happen lol.

I mean it’s earlier than I expected but they certainly could do it this month. I was thinking it would probably be after Christmas. But they usually do some kind of direct in September and I was wondering if the recent partner showcase was taking the place of that. These rumors could indicate that some kind of first party news is still coming. Maybe just an announcement of an announcement?

I’m planning to get this just for Powerstone. The changes don’t concern me, they seem pretty minor. They do seem weird and unnecessary though. What is the theory here? A game explicitly themed around beating the crap out of each other needs to be desexed just a tiny bit, or else impressionable players will have the wrong kinds of thoughts about women? If players are that impressionable how are they supposed to interpret all that fighting? Eh, whatever.

I have thought a lot about AI ever since ChatGPT came to wide public consciousness two years ago. I have concluded that it is unrealistic to try to stop AI or slow down its implementation or whatever. So I feel for the voice actors and agree with them in principle, but ultimately I think AI will replace many of them and it will do the same for many other workers from lawyers to coders to office workers, etc.

This is a must purchase for me… I have to wait for pay day though. But these guys always deliver. They’re batting a thousand so far.

Maybe someday.

I mean, what price is acceptable depends on how advanced the machine is. But I will say historically Nintendo has preferred lower price points to keep that barrier to entry down. I’m expecting $300-350. I would go higher personally but I’m not sure if parents will which is a big part of their market.

I do not think these are the golden days. This is obviously my own opinion, but I believe gaming peaked in 1999. The golden era is basically NES through Dreamcast. The launch of the PS2 began the decline of gaming (I know a lot of people love that era but like I said, it’s just my opinion). However I do the the Switch and the now fully mature indie scene have ushered in something that I might call a “silver age”. I don’t know, I mean there have been individual good games all along but that feeling that gaming was just getting better and better ended for me a long time ago.

I think we need more book length analyses of individual games. If games really are the art form of the future they should be able to support this kind of deep dive.

I’m not surprised. I took this to be the implication of promising only an announcement this fiscal year. If it was releasing this fiscal year, the announcement would likely have already happened. I do not expect an announcement too soon… possibly as late as January (otherwise they could have said an announcement was coming “this year” rather than “this fiscal year”). I don’t expect a release until maybe a year from now. However I would be excited to be wrong, since I do feel the switch is getting a little long in the tooth.

I predicted this would happen. But unfortunately, these versions tamper with the games uselessly… still, all in all it may be worth an purchase all things considered.

I’m ready for the next thing, for sure. I have a massive backlog but hopefully everything will be backwards compatible as rumored. I have a launch switch and it’s starting to show its age. The fan is quite noisy now and… I don’t know, it’s been dropped a few times… I’m just hoping it can get me there!

A few theories:
1. Emio sounds like Mario. Therefore this must be the third Mario brother, and his games will evidently have a Silent Hill vibe. Mushroom Kingdom survival horror confirmed.
2. Horror is scary and scary is bad. Bad things lead to frown faces, not smile faces but actually a smile IS a frown, upside down, which is the key insight that leads to solving the riddle. We can now translate the Smiling Man as the Frowning Woman. And Emio backwards is actually Oime. So that clears things up.
3. How would you get a bag off your head? With scissors! Therefore Nintendo has bought the rights to the back catalogue of Human Entertainment and this is a Clock Tower thing.

Pretty sure it’s one of these three. But don’t worry, no need to congratulate me until I’m proven right.

It’s a big mistake IMO to not port their older titles to modern platforms. They produced some of the best RPGs of the last couple decades. Truly the old spirit old Final Fantasy went to Mistwalker, showing that Sakaguchi was something of an auteur all along. This company could grow to be a major fan favorite, but not if they allow their titles to languish in obscurity on defunct hardware. Maybe he could partner with some other company to port them…

I have to say I don’t usually get this feeling. I go back and replay old games all the time, and I usually feel that they hold up fine (or better than fine!) I don’t really understand this feeling, although I accept that apparently a lot of people feel this way. Like, people are worried they’ll ruin their memories if they replay it and discover that it wasn’t as good as they remember it being? Does anybody feel this way about music or movies or is it only video games? I would like to understand this better.

I have this game on a steam, but I would double dip. It’s very good.

If you’re speaking to a journalist you should always assume you’re on the record, unless it’s specifically stated otherwise. Why did he think this Bloomberg reporter was messaging him anyway? Just to have a friendly private chit chat?

@GrailUK well I think you’re making a fair point, but I would just say that to me a game (and a series) is defined really by its mechanics and structure. How does the game play and how does progression work? Zelda has done everything imaginable it feels like and at this point it has almost no identity left. The last thing the franchise needs in my opinion is even more experimentation. They need to take one of the many promising ideas they’ve introduced and give them another shot so they can refine them.

I was excited when the new Zelda got revealed… until Aonuma said “does this mean Zelda will be swinging a sword? Well we decided to do something surprising…” (or something like that). I literally turned to my wife and said “Oh no.”

My hot take is that Aonuma has not done a very good job managing this franchise. I’ve thought so for years, way before BotW. I actually wrote a letter to [a Nintendo Life competitor which I will leave unnamed] making my case. They did not agree, lol. But I think my former favorite series has basically been killed. This game may be very good… but why is it a Zelda game? I feel like Aonuma just wants to make other kinds of games and I guess his position at Nintendo requires him to make everything Zelda?

I’m not too worried about this game in particular, but I think the trend towards very very long development cycles is not good. It’s bad for AAA studios and it’s equally bad for indie studios, for a number of reasons but principally because it makes every game very high risk.

@Jiggies I bought the same bundle! What a bargain! I started with replaying the Crash games (I had all of them back in the day) and these remakes do seem really faithful and good at least as far as my memory can tell. Enjoy these games a lot, I definitely recommend them to anyone into traditional platforming games.

Honestly there is more stuff I’m interested in buying in that list than all the other show cases combined. I guess I just like this kind of stuff!

Sounds pretty cool. I’ll probably check this out eventually. I think this is kind of an under-explored setting in games.

Am I imagining things? I thought they announced a Shovel Knight 2 a long time ago? In one of their presentations… they said something like “Shovel Knights next game is in development but you’ll have to wait a little while for more info” or something like that. Does anyone else remember this? And if so, is this announcement referring to that same project? How long has this game been in development? Or did they scrap the earlier game? Or did I just imagine this whole thing, lol!?

@Fizza that soundtrack really is great.

I will always welcome more stuff from M2. I wish there were more companies with M2’s level of quality and consistency.

Good! I hope it runs well. With Shadow of the Damned also getting a remake we will have a significant amount of Grasshopper’s output available on Switch. Still a few games left to account for but maybe we’ll get them too…

@Maubari I completely agree with this and I would add that I don’t love the idea of normalizing performance vs graphics mode because I think it lets developers off the hook. I was disheartened when I saw that Eiyuden Chronicles was getting these options because I thought, “this means they’re giving up”. Yeah maybe in a theoretical perfect where all developers were doing the best they could this would be a purely beneficial option but in the real world this will be another way for developers to avoid really finishing and polishing their games and then they’ll try to pass this off as a “feature” they’re offering us.

You can go by years, you can go consoles generations, or you can go by feel. I have realized that for me, only going by feel makes sense. Old games have a certain vibe, a style or aesthetic that is hard to define but noticeable. It’s not reducible to something specific like pixel art. For me everything up through the Dreamcast is retro. The PS2 generation is sort of a transitional period. Nintendo then goes off on its own which means the Wii still feels like a transition system while the PS3 and 360 definitely do not. Games from the PS360 era will eventually be old, crossing any arbitrary year marking you choose, but they will never feel retro because the style of game design they used is totally unlike earlier games, and is indeed still the dominant style of game design today. So I think ultimately that’s the way to think about this. At least that’s what makes sense to me.