I fear that accidentally stealing the Crown Jewels to fund your 3DS addiction puts you in something of a a legal Gray area. You’ve let the Kat out of the bag with this admition.
Nintendo should put more money and resources into developing lesser known series like Super Mario rather than continuing to milk the teats off established cash cows like Drag x Drive, Teleroboxer, and Galactic Pinball.
Nintendo should give up on hardware and just focus on software as that’s what Nintendo does best. It’ll never be able to compete against technical powerhouses like Sony and Microsoft with their virtually unlimited budgets for R&D and wealth of experience developing a range of technological products. Nintendo will quit the hardware business and we’ll be playing Mario games on Xbox within 5 years.
…I believe that was a popular take during the Wii U era.
@BTB20 Given that he couldn’t be bothered to read @SakuraHaruka‘a comment because it was “too long”, perhaps attention is not the user’s strong point.
One might argue that a world in which we just shout our own version of the ‘truth’ into the void with no regard for other people’s views — or for the basic facts of the matter — is a bit… ‘Orwellian’. But that would be a bit too ironic.
A merci-ful development indeed, especially regarding the game pricing.
I can take a one-off hit to the wallet for the console, as I only expect to splash out once (maybe twice) per generation, but for every single game purchase to feel like major financial outlay… well, it stings. I know modern games aren’t exactly cheap to develop, but…
Let’s hope this is the start of a broader trend and not just limited to the land of liberté, égalité and fraternité.
@larryisaman Did they need to? No. Did they generate more engagement through this approach than they would have otherwise? Absolutely. This was a publicity stunt; a promotion for Nintendo Pictures. The fact that “they got the publicity” means it was a successful publicity stunt.
@canaryfarmer The original video has racked up well over a million across Nintendo’s YouTube channels. There have been plenty on “what the what” videos from content-hungry Nintendo-centred YouTube channels. The three ‘Close to You’ articles on this very website have generated several hundred comments between them.
The ideal length on time to tease people is ‘long enough to generate speculation, but short enough to satisfy people while they’re still curious’. 5 minutes would indeed have been too short, but 36 hours seems have been right on the money. The fact we’re here discussing it is proof enough of our ‘engagement’.
@Switching Join me in pouring one out for the Big N. ‘Tis a true travesty that a game with a ~95% attach rate doesn’t have… a higher attach rate.
Every true Nintendo fan should head to Japan immediately and spend the whatever savings they have on purchasing multiple copies on Mario Kart World. There is no greater injustice that we as a species must collectively rectify.
@The_Nintendo_Pedant It says both! ‘Pane’ in the in-game dialogue at 0:22 and ‘pain’ in the text at 0:40.
I can only assume the ‘pane’ spelling is deliberate (either a play on words based on ‘pane of glass’ or a sign that the in-game character doesn’t full understand what he’s talking about) but both spellings are there!
Yeah… sorry guys. Even with the update, I’m still not sold. Call me a sceptic, but you’ll have to do more than fill a video with Pikmin to convince me this has anything to do with Pikmin.
In fact, I’m starting to question whether any of the Pikmin games are actually Pikmin-related. The only one I feel sure of is Hey! Pikmin because that has the word ’Hey!’ in it and ‘Hey!’ is a very convincing word.
…Really though, I still feel that ‘it being Pikmin-related’ (which was obvious from the start) doesn’t rule out the possibility of it also being Mario-related. There’s been some cross-pollination between the franchises before, most notably at Super Nintendo World theme parks — which incidentally, Miyamoto had a big hand in developing.
See if you can spot the six Pikmin hiding above
‘Close to You’ seems like the exactly the sort of thing that Miyamoto would be involved in. He’s already played a major role in developing the original Pikmin shorts, as well as the Super Mario Movie, and this sort of ‘developing the Nintendo brand outside of games’ is basically his main job at the moment. If he can sprinkle a little Pikmin into the Mario theme parks, then he can sprinkle a little Mario into a cute Pikmin video. Note the nods to the Galaxy games in this video:
Mario-esque stars and Lakitu clouds on the mobile hanging toy.
Rosalina-esque rattle toy.
Similar Rosalina aesthetic on the clock.
Rosalina for reference. She has quite a distinctive colour-way. Also, her hairstyle has shares some features with the baby’s: a prominent central tuft with swept-back sides. I’m not on team ‘the baby is Rosalina’ just yet but the similarities are there.
Whether these are just little Easter eggs, or whether this is part of a greater tie in with the Galaxy movies, I don’t feel confident saying just yet. The video does give off ‘high budget Western animation studio’ vibes, and we know a high budget Illumination-produced Mario Galaxy movie is just around the corner, but… Illumination’s name appears nowhere in the video.
Nintendo has been super explicit about the studio’s involvement before, featuring interviews with Chris Meledrandi in its Directs, so it would be surprising for them to not credit the studio here — especially now that the ‘true’ version has been revealed. This video could well have been produced by Nintendo’s ‘in-house’ animation studio Nintendo Pictures who worked on Pikmin 4.
So yeah, it was obviously Pikmin-related from the moment the leitmotif started playing, but the degree of Galaxy influence is still open for debate.
Musically it’s got Pikmin written all over it. Nintendo wouldn’t “accidentally” include Pikmin’s central leitmotif multiple times (0:29, 0:56, 2:02, 2:20, 3:26) in its video about invisible Pikmin-sized creatures carrying objects around a real world environment in a very Pikmin-like way.
The question isn’t “is it Pikmin related?” but “is it just Pikmin related?”. That is, does it tie the franchise in to something larger?
The Pikmin references are undeniable, but there are seemingly some nods to the Mario series, too:
Note the Mario-esque stars and Lakitu clouds on the mobile hanging toy.
Rosalina/Galaxy-esque rattle toy.
Similar Galaxy aesthetic on the clock.
Rosalina for reference. She has quite a distinctive colour-way. Also, her hairstyle has shares some features with the baby’s: a prominent central tuft with swept-back sides. That said, I don’t feel confident asserting ‘the baby is Rosalina’ at this point, despite the similarities.
One could easily speculate that this is a teaser for Pikmin 5 or some other Pikmin project featuring invisible Pikmin as the new mechanic.
Alternatively, this could be Nintendo’s animation studio creating standalone videos that aim to show that ‘Magic of Nintendo’ is all around us — hiding just out of sight. Perhaps this is the first in a series of videos which show that Nintendo’s fantastical worlds are really a part of our own, but we need a certain innocence, imagination and playfulness to see them. Hence the Pikmin only revealing themselves to the baby once mummy is out of the room.
I dunno. All I know is that there’s a whiff of Galaxy and a great big Pikmin pong.
Huge, huge love and respect for everything Zion has brought to all of us through Nintendo Life, and also much respect for his decision to move on — through I won’t pretend I’m not sad!
Like many curmudgeonly Brits I was a little dismissive when this bubbly new chap turned up and merrily Americaned all over the lovely-but-sardonic ‘Alex from Nintendo Life’ show… but over the years that followed, he has channeled that positivity and enthusiasm time and time again to create some truly wonderful pieces of work — in addition to being a consistently charming presence on the channel.
Good luck with whatever comes next Zion, even if it’s just watching staring out of the window and watching the birds for a few months. Thank you so much for everything you’ve made for all of us.
Once we establish the monetary value of a standardised a unit of ‘fun’, then we need to address the issue that certain players will be playing certain games for longer than others and therefore having more fun. This is clearly not fair.
We can ensure the ‘fun to cost’ ratio is kept consistent by tying ‘fun-inducing’ game actions to their associated costs.
For example, I think we can all agree that Mario’s jump is, on some base level, ‘fun’. Therefore, we should establish how much ‘fun money’ (henceforth referred to as ‘funny’) a single Mario jump equates to. I propose $0.03.
This can be scaled across all games to ensure everyone is fairly paying for the fun they’re getting. I think this is a system everyone can be happy with.
Don’t tell me this doesn’t sound like fun.
EDIT: I see @Slideaway1983 has presented us with a much more sophisticated system. Let us use that instead.
@nessisonett They are no longer on speaking terms after an acrimonious and irreconcilable dispute over the correct order in which to spread jam and cream on scones. In fact, they can’t even agree on how the word is pronounced.
I’m not normally one to plug Kit and Krysta content, but they’ve put out a video on this which is fairly insightful (if a bit on the long side). Worth a watch.
@jojobar To be fair, the only condition she need meet to have a bigger personality than Doug Bowser is ‘having a personality at all’.
(Sorry Doug)
Part of me wonders whether it’s reasonable that we expect the top corporate suits to be entertaining and likeable. They didn’t sign up to be entertainers.
But… this is the entertainment industry, and both Iwata and Reggie really embodied a sense of playfulness that people associate with the Nintendo brand.
Koizumi and (to an extent) Miyamoto have done a decent job is stepping in to fill Iwata’s place in the Directs. It would be good if someone from NoA could bring some of Reggie’s energy to the company, too.
At the very least, as @SpaceboyScreams has said, please stop making the game announcements so cringe. I can’t bring myself to watch the English language Directs because of them.
I also imagine people who prefer their video games released in a finished state will be relieved too, assuming they fall under the net of ‘people you’re done arguing with’.
@NotASockPuppet The problem is not that he has a problem with you having a problem, for he has no such problem. The problem is you having a problem with him not having a problem.
@dazzleshell Yes, this was a neat little feature in the DS version! Part of me wonders if Nintendo learnt the hard way from Miiverse etc. that letting players… draw stuff leads to… certain stuff being drawn, but it’s still a feature in Splatoon 3, so they can’t have given up on it entirely!
@TrogdorTheBurninator Yes, it would be good if the rewards gained through engaging with the open world actually amounted to something. Stickers are possibly the most underwhelming reward possible, as you can only set one at a time, and even then, nobody will really see it or care.
Some sort of customisation option where you could stack collectibles earned from Free Roam would have made the whole mode feel a lot more worthwhile. Even something as small as Splstoon 3’s locker system would have been a big improvement. A more ambitious option would have been a customisable garage which you can decorate with rewards from Free Roam. An even more ambitious option would have been a track maker mode with various track pieces scattered around the world. So many interesting potential options.
But instead we have stickers, and I don’t think any amount of patching is going to change that.
For what it’s worth, I actually think the open world is really well designed. As a piece of world building, it’s great. What’s lacking is a decent reward system to really motivate players to explore it. It’s like if Tolkien had released all the lore books describing Middle Earth, but forgotten to actually write the stories to go with them.
We should aim for 1 frame per minute, at most. Anything more is crazy. How are you meant to really appreciate each sumptuous morsel of animation if it’s immediately swapped out for something else?
Imagine sitting in an art gallery, peacefully admiring the cascade of colours in Van Gogh’s Starry Sky, only to have it ripped off the wall and replaced with one of Francis Bacon’s bits of moody body horror. Yuck.
Life is right here, in the present moment. Stop wishing for that moment to be whisked away.
In all seriousness, 60fps would be nice and it’s a shame there isn’t the option of a performance mode, but the review does a good job of explaining why it’s not the dealbreaker it would be for most other sports games. Football, as a sport, has a degree of lag built it. It’s not ping pong or clay pigeon shooting. Things may look smoother at 60FPS, but waiting a maximum of 0.0167 seconds longer for your ‘shoot’ input to register is hardly a game changer when the in-game character would already take much longer than that to actually initiate the command.
There’s a lot to unpack here, but the assertion that ‘digital outlasts physical’ is surely irrelevant, as the existence of proper ‘on-the-cart physical’ games in no way impinges on the existence of digital games from a digital storefront.
Up until now, the standard has been to offer both options: full digital and (pretty much) full physical. In contrast, the current system offers two variants of the much the same thing: fully-digital digital or physically-gated digital.
‘Digital vs. physical’ has historically been an ‘apples to oranges’ comparison: each offered advantages over the other, and the player was free to choose which best suited their needs. Now we have an ‘oranges to rotten apples’ situation: key cards still posses some advantages over fully digital games (e.g. resale value), but virtually no advantages over the fully physical games they’re replacing; they are simply inferior from a consumer perspective.
From an industry perspective, publishers can now sell a cheaper, inferior product at the same price (or more), which may count as a ‘win’ for those concerned with profit margins, but from a player perspective there seems to be very little to celebrate.
@itsapossum I feel there’s a bit of space between “Nintendo is trying to make money by selling you somewhat unnecessary plastic/cardboard accessories” and “Nintendo hates you”.
Admittedly, my IQ is too low to really make sense of what the statement “Nintendo hates you” means. I haven’t met Nintendo, and can’t work out how or why he/she/it would posses any enmity, or indeed any love or compassion, towards me or anyone else.
I’ll admit it sounds good though: “Nintendo hates you!” I might start saying it myself. “Hey you, man in the street! Did you know that Nintendo hates you!? So much so that it wants to sell you accessories to recreate the experience of playing its least successful games console ever. Yes, really — the one that sold even less than the Wii U! THAT’S how much Nintendo absolutely detests you!”
Well… at least they’re not limited time releases like 3D All-Stars, but… ooph indeed on the pricing. Certainly soured some of the celebratory spirit surrounding the anniversary.
@SillyG Yeah, I experienced a fair amount of terraforming-induced stress, too.
I understand that they needed to develop the series, and introducing more customisation/crafting elements is a natural way to do that, but my favourite entry in the series is either the original or Wild World, where your locus of control is pretty limited, so you just have to learn to love your town for what it is.
You can’t do as much with it, but equally, there not as much to go wrong.
They should have called it ‘Slowpokia’ and had Slowpoke be the main character and obviously he’s too lazy to do any of the tasks necessary to actually progress the game so you just loll around and nothing gets done and it’s the most relaxing life sim ever made.
I’m joking but I think I’d genuinely prefer that to Starview which feels more like a ruthless exercise in productivity and time management than a ‘let’s chill out and enjoy the countryside’ sort of vibe.
“It doesn't appear that this release will be enhanced for Switch 2 in any way, but Nintendo is also launching new Mario Galaxy-themed amiibo alongside a physical storybook product from the game.”
@Dogorilla I was hoping they might at least go down the ‘free for NSO Expansion Pack members’ route.
But yeah, TotK being more expensive than BotW could sort of be justified by the fact that A) it was very, very big, and B) they weren’t trying to sell launch day DLC alongside it. Like, with a bit of mental gymnastics you could convince yourself that ‘the DLC was included’. It would have been nice if that approach held true for most Switch 2 games. If Mario Kart World gets paid DLC, I will furrow my brow so hard it might get stuck there.
@Dee123 Okamoto left the company in 2008. That’s 17 years ago.
To make a not-so-bold assertion: things change with the passing of time. And 17 years is quite a lot of time to pass — both in the life of a human, and in the evolution of a company.
For perspective, 17 years is the length of time between Super Mario World (1990) and Super Mario Galaxy (2007). Many of Nintendo’s younger members would have been literal children when Okamoto departed.
‘Things might have changed’ means ‘there exists a possibility of change’. Negating this gives, ‘there does not exist a possibility of change’. That is, ‘we can say with 100% certainly that in the last 17 years since Okamoto left, absolutely nothing at the company has changed’.
Without wishing to be rude, I know which of the two statements I find ‘wild’.
Sort of reminds we of when Fender started doing reissues of their 50s and 60s guitars and all the marketing material was like “We managed to track down ACTUAL guitars from Fender’s golden age and then reverse engineered them to bring you the most faithful recreations ever.”
I couldn’t help but think, “Why was it such an effort to track these guitars down given that you literally made them, and were there not any records from the time that would have made the ‘reverse engineering’ process less necessary?”
But seemingly not. It’s easy to look at a company logo and assume that it guarantees a degree of institutional memory and product consistency, but really a label is just a label and the actual people behind it are frequently changing — and not always leaving behind the clearest records for their successors.
The real travesty is calling this game ‘football’ when that term should be exclusively reserved for the game where the ball is not a ball (it’s sort of a large, inflated peanut) and mainly played with the hands. They should have called this game EA Sports: Not FootbalL (or ‘NFL’ for short).
If we call this game ‘football’ then that means we have to call the American version ‘Handpeanut’ and I don’t want to do that.
@Olliemar28 As @Late has noted, the version coming to the US is significantly different to the version showcased in the Japanese Direct — in that it’s the original Chinese language version developed by a Taiwanese developer Team9 and first released back in 2022.
I’ve been looking through the Japanese Wikipedia page for the game which goes into just how much of a nightmare it was to localise into Japanese, which is perhaps why the Japanese version has only recently been released several years after the original.
I don’t think there’s anything actually wrong with the article as it is, but the fact that this is not the Japanese version (published by Flyhigh Works) might be worth including somewhere as an addendum!
“文字遊戯 "Word Game" looks really intriguing, although I’d put the chances of an English localisation at less than one thousandth of a millionth of a billionth of a gnat’s bum.”
…was my comment under the direct. I suppose it’s not technically wrong, but I really wasn’t expecting it to come to the West in any form, localised or otherwise.
Nor did I realise that the Japanese version is already a localisation of the Chinese language original, which was released way back in January 2022 and seems to be the version here.
There must be a sufficiently large audience of Chinese speakers (well, readers) in the US to make releasing it worthwhile!
I have a soft spot for the European artwork, even if as a child I found it really confusing because it’s so misrepresentative of the game’s general aesthetic.
Comments 2,900
Re: Microsoft On Its Gaming Business Going Forward: "We Want To Be Everywhere"
After short-form video, the biggest threat to gaming is developers having their projects abruptly cancelled after years of development.
Thankfully Microsoft won’t let that happen because Microsoft is a fantastic publisher.
Re: Back Page: I Was The Louvre Heist Thief, But I Was Just Trying To Steal Their 3DSes
I fear that accidentally stealing the Crown Jewels to fund your 3DS addiction puts you in something of a a legal Gray area. You’ve let the Kat out of the bag with this admition.
Re: Takaya Imamura's Comment On Super Mario Odyssey's 8th Anniversary Makes Us Feel Very Old
Nintendo should put more money and resources into developing lesser known series like Super Mario rather than continuing to milk the teats off established cash cows like Drag x Drive, Teleroboxer, and Galactic Pinball.
Re: Xbox Reiterates Its Support For Switch 2
Nintendo should give up on hardware and just focus on software as that’s what Nintendo does best. It’ll never be able to compete against technical powerhouses like Sony and Microsoft with their virtually unlimited budgets for R&D and wealth of experience developing a range of technological products. Nintendo will quit the hardware business and we’ll be playing Mario games on Xbox within 5 years.
…I believe that was a popular take during the Wii U era.
Re: Sakurai Has No Plans For Kirby Air Riders DLC: "Everything Is Here"
Is it even a racing game without a Wreck-it-Ralph season pass?
Re: Banjo-Kazooie Director Marks Departure From Rare With A Poem
There are only so so many cancelled projects one can take before one cancels oneself from the company. Good luck with the next step, Gregg.
Re: Review: Pokémon Legends: Z-A - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - Stellar Battles, But A Step Down From Arceus
@BTB20 Given that he couldn’t be bothered to read @SakuraHaruka‘a comment because it was “too long”, perhaps attention is not the user’s strong point.
One might argue that a world in which we just shout our own version of the ‘truth’ into the void with no regard for other people’s views — or for the basic facts of the matter — is a bit… ‘Orwellian’. But that would be a bit too ironic.
Re: Nintendo Is Opening Its Fourth Store In Japan This Year
I visited the city a few years ago.
It was FukuOK.
Re: Switch 2 Bundles Get A Surprise Price Drop At Select French Retailers
A merci-ful development indeed, especially regarding the game pricing.
I can take a one-off hit to the wallet for the console, as I only expect to splash out once (maybe twice) per generation, but for every single game purchase to feel like major financial outlay… well, it stings. I know modern games aren’t exactly cheap to develop, but…
Let’s hope this is the start of a broader trend and not just limited to the land of liberté, égalité and fraternité.
Re: Sorry, Nintendo's Recent Pikmin Videos Aren't Hinting At Something More
@larryisaman Did they need to? No. Did they generate more engagement through this approach than they would have otherwise? Absolutely. This was a publicity stunt; a promotion for Nintendo Pictures. The fact that “they got the publicity” means it was a successful publicity stunt.
@canaryfarmer The original video has racked up well over a million across Nintendo’s YouTube channels. There have been plenty on “what the what” videos from content-hungry Nintendo-centred YouTube channels. The three ‘Close to You’ articles on this very website have generated several hundred comments between them.
The ideal length on time to tease people is ‘long enough to generate speculation, but short enough to satisfy people while they’re still curious’. 5 minutes would indeed have been too short, but 36 hours seems have been right on the money. The fact we’re here discussing it is proof enough of our ‘engagement’.
@TheBigK You would think so… and you would be (partially) correct. Nintendo Pictures are credited for working on Pikmin 4, Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Super Mario RPG and (perhaps more interestingly) Death Stranding 2. Maybe they’re not FMVs, but it seems they helped out on the animation side.
Re: Japanese Charts: Sucker Punch Stops Mario Galaxy Soaring Too High
@Switching Join me in pouring one out for the Big N. ‘Tis a true travesty that a game with a ~95% attach rate doesn’t have… a higher attach rate.
Every true Nintendo fan should head to Japan immediately and spend the whatever savings they have on purchasing multiple copies on Mario Kart World. There is no greater injustice that we as a species must collectively rectify.
Re: Devolver's Awesome New Skating Game Lands On Switch 2 This December
@The_Nintendo_Pedant It says both! ‘Pane’ in the in-game dialogue at 0:22 and ‘pain’ in the text at 0:40.
I can only assume the ‘pane’ spelling is deliberate (either a play on words based on ‘pane of glass’ or a sign that the in-game character doesn’t full understand what he’s talking about) but both spellings are there!
Re: Nintendo Updates Animated Short Film 'Close To You' With Some Familiar Faces
Yeah… sorry guys. Even with the update, I’m still not sold. Call me a sceptic, but you’ll have to do more than fill a video with Pikmin to convince me this has anything to do with Pikmin.
In fact, I’m starting to question whether any of the Pikmin games are actually Pikmin-related. The only one I feel sure of is Hey! Pikmin because that has the word ’Hey!’ in it and ‘Hey!’ is a very convincing word.
…Really though, I still feel that ‘it being Pikmin-related’ (which was obvious from the start) doesn’t rule out the possibility of it also being Mario-related. There’s been some cross-pollination between the franchises before, most notably at Super Nintendo World theme parks — which incidentally, Miyamoto had a big hand in developing.
See if you can spot the six Pikmin hiding above
‘Close to You’ seems like the exactly the sort of thing that Miyamoto would be involved in. He’s already played a major role in developing the original Pikmin shorts, as well as the Super Mario Movie, and this sort of ‘developing the Nintendo brand outside of games’ is basically his main job at the moment. If he can sprinkle a little Pikmin into the Mario theme parks, then he can sprinkle a little Mario into a cute Pikmin video. Note the nods to the Galaxy games in this video:
Mario-esque stars and Lakitu clouds on the mobile hanging toy.
Rosalina-esque rattle toy.
Similar Rosalina aesthetic on the clock.
Rosalina for reference. She has quite a distinctive colour-way. Also, her hairstyle has shares some features with the baby’s: a prominent central tuft with swept-back sides. I’m not on team ‘the baby is Rosalina’ just yet but the similarities are there.
Whether these are just little Easter eggs, or whether this is part of a greater tie in with the Galaxy movies, I don’t feel confident saying just yet. The video does give off ‘high budget Western animation studio’ vibes, and we know a high budget Illumination-produced Mario Galaxy movie is just around the corner, but… Illumination’s name appears nowhere in the video.
Nintendo has been super explicit about the studio’s involvement before, featuring interviews with Chris Meledrandi in its Directs, so it would be surprising for them to not credit the studio here — especially now that the ‘true’ version has been revealed. This video could well have been produced by Nintendo’s ‘in-house’ animation studio Nintendo Pictures who worked on Pikmin 4.
So yeah, it was obviously Pikmin-related from the moment the leitmotif started playing, but the degree of Galaxy influence is still open for debate.
Re: Poll: Do You Think Nintendo's New Animated Short 'Close To You' Is Pikmin Related?
Musically it’s got Pikmin written all over it. Nintendo wouldn’t “accidentally” include Pikmin’s central leitmotif multiple times (0:29, 0:56, 2:02, 2:20, 3:26) in its video about invisible Pikmin-sized creatures carrying objects around a real world environment in a very Pikmin-like way.
The question isn’t “is it Pikmin related?” but “is it just Pikmin related?”. That is, does it tie the franchise in to something larger?
The Pikmin references are undeniable, but there are seemingly some nods to the Mario series, too:
Note the Mario-esque stars and Lakitu clouds on the mobile hanging toy.
Rosalina/Galaxy-esque rattle toy.
Similar Galaxy aesthetic on the clock.
Rosalina for reference. She has quite a distinctive colour-way. Also, her hairstyle has shares some features with the baby’s: a prominent central tuft with swept-back sides. That said, I don’t feel confident asserting ‘the baby is Rosalina’ at this point, despite the similarities.
One could easily speculate that this is a teaser for Pikmin 5 or some other Pikmin project featuring invisible Pikmin as the new mechanic.
Alternatively, this could be Nintendo’s animation studio creating standalone videos that aim to show that ‘Magic of Nintendo’ is all around us — hiding just out of sight. Perhaps this is the first in a series of videos which show that Nintendo’s fantastical worlds are really a part of our own, but we need a certain innocence, imagination and playfulness to see them. Hence the Pikmin only revealing themselves to the baby once mummy is out of the room.
I dunno. All I know is that there’s a whiff of Galaxy and a great big Pikmin pong.
Re: Video: Let's Have One Last Chat With Zion Before He Leaves Us Forever And Ever
Big LUV 2 BIG Z!!!! Fare be well ye mighty lovely stallion!!!! May your coming adventures take you from A to Z and on and on and on!
Re: Japanese Charts: Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Can't Compete With Mario Kart World
Don’t give up hope yet, guys. It’s like Sonic always says:
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
…Pretty sure that’s Sonic’s catchphrase.
Re: Video: After Six Wonderful Years, Zion Is Leaving Nintendo Life
Huge, huge love and respect for everything Zion has brought to all of us through Nintendo Life, and also much respect for his decision to move on — through I won’t pretend I’m not sad!
Like many curmudgeonly Brits I was a little dismissive when this bubbly new chap turned up and merrily Americaned all over the lovely-but-sardonic ‘Alex from Nintendo Life’ show… but over the years that followed, he has channeled that positivity and enthusiasm time and time again to create some truly wonderful pieces of work — in addition to being a consistently charming presence on the channel.
Good luck with whatever comes next Zion, even if it’s just watching staring out of the window and watching the birds for a few months. Thank you so much for everything you’ve made for all of us.
Re: Round Up: The Reviews Are In For Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 On Switch
Once we establish the monetary value of a standardised a unit of ‘fun’, then we need to address the issue that certain players will be playing certain games for longer than others and therefore having more fun. This is clearly not fair.
We can ensure the ‘fun to cost’ ratio is kept consistent by tying ‘fun-inducing’ game actions to their associated costs.
For example, I think we can all agree that Mario’s jump is, on some base level, ‘fun’. Therefore, we should establish how much ‘fun money’ (henceforth referred to as ‘funny’) a single Mario jump equates to. I propose $0.03.
This can be scaled across all games to ensure everyone is fairly paying for the fun they’re getting. I think this is a system everyone can be happy with.
Don’t tell me this doesn’t sound like fun.
EDIT: I see @Slideaway1983 has presented us with a much more sophisticated system. Let us use that instead.
Re: Feature: Who Is Devon Pritchard? - Meet The Next NOA President Stepping Into Bowser's Boots
@nessisonett They are no longer on speaking terms after an acrimonious and irreconcilable dispute over the correct order in which to spread jam and cream on scones. In fact, they can’t even agree on how the word is pronounced.
Re: Nintendo Of America President Doug Bowser Announces Retirement
I’m not normally one to plug Kit and Krysta content, but they’ve put out a video on this which is fairly insightful (if a bit on the long side). Worth a watch.
https://youtu.be/Y9fW2TGXxco?feature=shared
Re: Nintendo Of America President Doug Bowser Announces Retirement
@jojobar To be fair, the only condition she need meet to have a bigger personality than Doug Bowser is ‘having a personality at all’.
(Sorry Doug)
Part of me wonders whether it’s reasonable that we expect the top corporate suits to be entertaining and likeable. They didn’t sign up to be entertainers.
But… this is the entertainment industry, and both Iwata and Reggie really embodied a sense of playfulness that people associate with the Nintendo brand.
Koizumi and (to an extent) Miyamoto have done a decent job is stepping in to fill Iwata’s place in the Directs. It would be good if someone from NoA could bring some of Reggie’s energy to the company, too.
At the very least, as @SpaceboyScreams has said, please stop making the game announcements so cringe. I can’t bring myself to watch the English language Directs because of them.
Re: Nintendo Of America President Doug Bowser Announces Retirement
@FrenchVaniIIuxe Y’know Doug Bowser didn’t actually make Bowser’s Fury, right? Nor did he make Bowser’s Inside Story.
…Although if that’s not the name of his memoir I’ll be sorely disappointed.
Re: Nintendo Of America President Doug Bowser Announces Retirement
…I hear he Doug his own grave.
(I’ve heard nothing I just wanted to make a dumb pun)
Re: Professor Layton And The New World Of Steam Has Been Delayed Until 2026
@NotASockPuppet I had to look up what Lackadaisy is. Apparently it’s a webcomic about anthropomorphic cats set in a Prohibition-era St. Louis, MO. I don’t know why we’re talking about that, but I’m sure fans of the comic will be relieved that you’re done arguing with them.
I also imagine people who prefer their video games released in a finished state will be relieved too, assuming they fall under the net of ‘people you’re done arguing with’.
Re: Professor Layton And The New World Of Steam Has Been Delayed Until 2026
@NotASockPuppet The problem is not that he has a problem with you having a problem, for he has no such problem. The problem is you having a problem with him not having a problem.
Re: Professor Layton And The New World Of Steam Has Been Delayed Until 2026
“A gentleman is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.“
Hershel the White
Re: Mario Kart World Has Been Updated To Version 1.3.0, Here Are The Full Patch Notes
@dazzleshell Yes, this was a neat little feature in the DS version! Part of me wonders if Nintendo learnt the hard way from Miiverse etc. that letting players… draw stuff leads to… certain stuff being drawn, but it’s still a feature in Splatoon 3, so they can’t have given up on it entirely!
Re: Mario Kart World Has Been Updated To Version 1.3.0, Here Are The Full Patch Notes
@TrogdorTheBurninator Yes, it would be good if the rewards gained through engaging with the open world actually amounted to something. Stickers are possibly the most underwhelming reward possible, as you can only set one at a time, and even then, nobody will really see it or care.
Some sort of customisation option where you could stack collectibles earned from Free Roam would have made the whole mode feel a lot more worthwhile. Even something as small as Splstoon 3’s locker system would have been a big improvement. A more ambitious option would have been a customisable garage which you can decorate with rewards from Free Roam. An even more ambitious option would have been a track maker mode with various track pieces scattered around the world. So many interesting potential options.
But instead we have stickers, and I don’t think any amount of patching is going to change that.
For what it’s worth, I actually think the open world is really well designed. As a piece of world building, it’s great. What’s lacking is a decent reward system to really motivate players to explore it. It’s like if Tolkien had released all the lore books describing Middle Earth, but forgotten to actually write the stories to go with them.
Re: Review: EA SPORTS FC 26 (Switch 2) - A Fantastic Football Game, Once You're Used To The Frame Rate
We should aim for 1 frame per minute, at most. Anything more is crazy. How are you meant to really appreciate each sumptuous morsel of animation if it’s immediately swapped out for something else?
Imagine sitting in an art gallery, peacefully admiring the cascade of colours in Van Gogh’s Starry Sky, only to have it ripped off the wall and replaced with one of Francis Bacon’s bits of moody body horror. Yuck.
Life is right here, in the present moment. Stop wishing for that moment to be whisked away.
In all seriousness, 60fps would be nice and it’s a shame there isn’t the option of a performance mode, but the review does a good job of explaining why it’s not the dealbreaker it would be for most other sports games. Football, as a sport, has a degree of lag built it. It’s not ping pong or clay pigeon shooting. Things may look smoother at 60FPS, but waiting a maximum of 0.0167 seconds longer for your ‘shoot’ input to register is hardly a game changer when the in-game character would already take much longer than that to actually initiate the command.
Re: Mario Kart World Has Been Updated To Version 1.3.0, Here Are The Full Patch Notes
@TrogdorTheBurninator What is the update you are waiting for? (Genuine question)
Re: Round Up: The Reviews Are In For Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
I was expecting mainly 7s with a smattering of 8s and the odd 6, so it’s nice to see the game doing better than that! (Not that 7 is ‘bad’!)
Re: Japanese Charts: Switch 2 Surpasses 2 Million Units Sold
@illmatic20xx The ‘X’ is for ‘expat’.
Re: Sega Reignites Its Nintendo Rivalry In New Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Trailer
Can’t wait to play this on my Sega SwitchCast.
Re: Nintendo Is "Acting To Protect The Industry" With Switch 2 Game Key Cards, Says Ex-Capcom Composer
There’s a lot to unpack here, but the assertion that ‘digital outlasts physical’ is surely irrelevant, as the existence of proper ‘on-the-cart physical’ games in no way impinges on the existence of digital games from a digital storefront.
Up until now, the standard has been to offer both options: full digital and (pretty much) full physical. In contrast, the current system offers two variants of the much the same thing: fully-digital digital or physically-gated digital.
‘Digital vs. physical’ has historically been an ‘apples to oranges’ comparison: each offered advantages over the other, and the player was free to choose which best suited their needs. Now we have an ‘oranges to rotten apples’ situation: key cards still posses some advantages over fully digital games (e.g. resale value), but virtually no advantages over the fully physical games they’re replacing; they are simply inferior from a consumer perspective.
From an industry perspective, publishers can now sell a cheaper, inferior product at the same price (or more), which may count as a ‘win’ for those concerned with profit margins, but from a player perspective there seems to be very little to celebrate.
Re: Opinion: I'm Celebrating Super Mario Bros.' 40th Anniversary By Finally Finishing It
“Clear Bowser history”
YES JIMMMMM!!!!! So goood!
Re: ICYMI: If You Want To Play Virtual Boy Classics, You'll Need To Buy One Of Nintendo's Accessories
@itsapossum I feel there’s a bit of space between “Nintendo is trying to make money by selling you somewhat unnecessary plastic/cardboard accessories” and “Nintendo hates you”.
Admittedly, my IQ is too low to really make sense of what the statement “Nintendo hates you” means. I haven’t met Nintendo, and can’t work out how or why he/she/it would posses any enmity, or indeed any love or compassion, towards me or anyone else.
I’ll admit it sounds good though: “Nintendo hates you!” I might start saying it myself. “Hey you, man in the street! Did you know that Nintendo hates you!? So much so that it wants to sell you accessories to recreate the experience of playing its least successful games console ever. Yes, really — the one that sold even less than the Wii U! THAT’S how much Nintendo absolutely detests you!”
Re: Super Mario Galaxy 1 + 2 Prices Are Live, And It's Sticker Shock Time
Well… at least they’re not limited time releases like 3D All-Stars, but… ooph indeed on the pricing. Certainly soured some of the celebratory spirit surrounding the anniversary.
Re: Pokémon Pokopia Looks Like An Adorable Mix Of Minecraft And Animal Crossing
@SillyG Yeah, I experienced a fair amount of terraforming-induced stress, too.
I understand that they needed to develop the series, and introducing more customisation/crafting elements is a natural way to do that, but my favourite entry in the series is either the original or Wild World, where your locus of control is pretty limited, so you just have to learn to love your town for what it is.
You can’t do as much with it, but equally, there not as much to go wrong.
Re: Pokémon Pokopia Looks Like An Adorable Mix Of Minecraft And Animal Crossing
They should have called it ‘Slowpokia’ and had Slowpoke be the main character and obviously he’s too lazy to do any of the tasks necessary to actually progress the game so you just loll around and nothing gets done and it’s the most relaxing life sim ever made.
I’m joking but I think I’d genuinely prefer that to Starview which feels more like a ruthless exercise in productivity and time management than a ‘let’s chill out and enjoy the countryside’ sort of vibe.
Re: Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 Bundle Confirmed For Switch, Launching October
@EarthboundBenjy Mario never had a 35th Anniversary. There was no Super Mario Bros. 35 and there certainly was no 3D All-Stars.
Re: Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 Bundle Confirmed For Switch, Launching October
@Olliemar28
“It doesn't appear that this release will be enhanced for Switch 2 in any way, but Nintendo is also launching new Mario Galaxy-themed amiibo alongside a physical storybook product from the game.”
This paragraph could do with a trim!
Re: Surprise! Donkey Kong Bananza Is Getting DLC, And It's Out Today
@Dogorilla I was hoping they might at least go down the ‘free for NSO Expansion Pack members’ route.
But yeah, TotK being more expensive than BotW could sort of be justified by the fact that A) it was very, very big, and B) they weren’t trying to sell launch day DLC alongside it. Like, with a bit of mental gymnastics you could convince yourself that ‘the DLC was included’. It would have been nice if that approach held true for most Switch 2 games. If Mario Kart World gets paid DLC, I will furrow my brow so hard it might get stuck there.
Re: Surprise! Donkey Kong Bananza Is Getting DLC, And It's Out Today
Everyone: Odyssey never got DLC.
Luigi: Are my BALLOONS a joke to you?
Re: "Everyone Is A Director" At Nintendo, Says Former Dev, But Don't Make Excuses
@Dee123 Okamoto left the company in 2008. That’s 17 years ago.
To make a not-so-bold assertion: things change with the passing of time. And 17 years is quite a lot of time to pass — both in the life of a human, and in the evolution of a company.
For perspective, 17 years is the length of time between Super Mario World (1990) and Super Mario Galaxy (2007). Many of Nintendo’s younger members would have been literal children when Okamoto departed.
‘Things might have changed’ means ‘there exists a possibility of change’. Negating this gives, ‘there does not exist a possibility of change’. That is, ‘we can say with 100% certainly that in the last 17 years since Okamoto left, absolutely nothing at the company has changed’.
Without wishing to be rude, I know which of the two statements I find ‘wild’.
Re: Tales Of The Shire: A The Lord Of The Rings Game Updated On Switch
Better be a bloody good cabbage patch.
Re: Final Fantasy Tactics' Devs Had To Lean On Fans To Recover Original Source Code
Sort of reminds we of when Fender started doing reissues of their 50s and 60s guitars and all the marketing material was like “We managed to track down ACTUAL guitars from Fender’s golden age and then reverse engineered them to bring you the most faithful recreations ever.”
I couldn’t help but think, “Why was it such an effort to track these guitars down given that you literally made them, and were there not any records from the time that would have made the ‘reverse engineering’ process less necessary?”
But seemingly not. It’s easy to look at a company logo and assume that it guarantees a degree of institutional memory and product consistency, but really a label is just a label and the actual people behind it are frequently changing — and not always leaving behind the clearest records for their successors.
Re: FC 26 On Switch 2 "On Parity, Basically" With PS5, According To EA Sports Dev
The real travesty is calling this game ‘football’ when that term should be exclusively reserved for the game where the ball is not a ball (it’s sort of a large, inflated peanut) and mainly played with the hands. They should have called this game EA Sports: Not FootbalL (or ‘NFL’ for short).
If we call this game ‘football’ then that means we have to call the American version ‘Handpeanut’ and I don’t want to do that.
Re: Word Game Showcased In Japan's 'Indie World' Is Coming To The West
@Olliemar28 As @Late has noted, the version coming to the US is significantly different to the version showcased in the Japanese Direct — in that it’s the original Chinese language version developed by a Taiwanese developer Team9 and first released back in 2022.
I’ve been looking through the Japanese Wikipedia page for the game which goes into just how much of a nightmare it was to localise into Japanese, which is perhaps why the Japanese version has only recently been released several years after the original.
I don’t think there’s anything actually wrong with the article as it is, but the fact that this is not the Japanese version (published by Flyhigh Works) might be worth including somewhere as an addendum!
Re: Word Game Showcased In Japan's 'Indie World' Is Coming To The West
…was my comment under the direct. I suppose it’s not technically wrong, but I really wasn’t expecting it to come to the West in any form, localised or otherwise.
Nor did I realise that the Japanese version is already a localisation of the Chinese language original, which was released way back in January 2022 and seems to be the version here.
There must be a sufficiently large audience of Chinese speakers (well, readers) in the US to make releasing it worthwhile!
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl - Harvest Moon (SNES)
I have a soft spot for the European artwork, even if as a child I found it really confusing because it’s so misrepresentative of the game’s general aesthetic.