Maxz

But how will I get the full experience in Waifu Simulator XV: Dungeon Lovers Uncovered ~ My Sweetheart is an Enchanted Dragon ~ Untold Future Edition?

Putting the 'meh' in 'homehscreen‘

I am fully in support of more ooph-inducing Kate Graysian strap-lines. They feel like a small victory in a world where AI is quietly homogenising everything.

Stings a bit to have to pay ~40% more for the multi-language version as opposed to the Japanese region-locked version, but even then it still comes out cheaper than buying a system from the UK.

I suppose this stops Japanese consoles being pinched by international scalpers (weak yen = cheap console), or the Japanese market having to pay international prices when the yen is working against them.

It’s probably actually a decent compromise. But I will take this opportunity to grumble anyway.

@MrHaggi Absolute blad lad.

TIM CROOK IS NOT A RACOON HE IS A RACOON DOG AND HE IS NOT A RACOON DOG HE IS A MAN IN A SUIT AND HE IS NOT A MAN IN A SUIT HE IS A VIRTUAL REPRESENTATION OF A MAN IN A SUIT DRESSED AS AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC RACOON DOG FROM AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SERIES OF VIDEO GAMES OMG WHY CAN’T PEOPLE GET THIS RIGHT!?

Thing is, Switch 2 doesn’t have ears.

Well, I suppose it does, if you count Joy-Con as ears.

…And they basically are ears, aren’t they? Ears with twiddly bits and fancy sensors and a camera button. But still ears.

…So there goes that argument.

MAMMA MII-EAR!!!

It’s not nin-JAH-la:
It’s NIN-jala.

It’s not ba-LAH-tro:
It’s ‘BA-latro’.

It’s not ma-RI-o…

It’s-a me, MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-rio!

_{It is, however, ‘ma-RI-a’… these things aren’t exactly consistent.}

Because it’s the written form of a vocalisation (like ‘ahh’, ‘oh’, hmm…’, ‘umm…’, etc.) rather than a word referring to a specific action/object/concept/etc., it’s difficult to ‘translate’ it in the way one could translate ‘猫/neko’ to ‘cat’ or ‘pomme’ to ‘apple’.

What does one mean when one says “aah”? Potentially many things.

Nevertheless, I think the interpretation of ‘ほうほう/hōhō’ as a ‘vocalisation in response to something one finds in intriguing’ is on point. All that remains is so find an appropriate ’match’ to express the same sentiment in English.

“Well now… (that’s interesting)” seems to fit the general vibe, but many good/better alternatives have already been posted.

All we know is that Sakurai knows something we don’t. Which is nothing new, really. I don’t really see how people are specifically reading ‘Kid Icarus’ into this…

I think Nintendo will keep announcing Directs until the NL homepage is just a sheer wall of countdown timers.

“digging out our old Wii U out and blowing off…”

Really @Olliemar28, this article should come with a warning of its own. That’s some fairly explicit imagery right there. I hope the poor Wii U consented.

Mario wins by killing absolutely everyone.

Is it wrong to pick up grills in a Home Depot? Cuz BBQ season is just around the corner and I wanna know where the best deals at.

Japanese games should stick to classic Japanese themes like those found in golden-era JRPGs: tales of elves and goblins and wizards and citadels and knights and knaves and kings and queens and princes and princesses and…

…wait.

@Araquanid Thanks a lot for clearing that up!

Could someone give me a better idea of what the ‘plastic wrap’ in this case refers to?

Is this just the transparent plastic film used on box sets and other larger items, or does apply individual packs of cards?

If is does apply to individual packs, then I’m forced to conclude that either each booster pack has a separate plastic wrap distinct from the pack material itself, or that the pack material is the plastic wrap in question. That is, they open each pack for you at the point of purchase.

Both of those options seem a bit off…

“There’s no such thing as a tailwind. Either you’re pushing against a headwind or you’re having a good day.”

Originally a cycling quote, but there’s a broader truth in there somewhere.

Fair fortune lets us to move unimpeded and thus feels invisible. Luck saves us time, but the time saved barely registers as it was never experienced in the first place. In contrast, facing wave after wave of misfortune can feel like wading through an ocean of treacle. But considerably less delicious.

Imagine you’re trying to get a rare item with a 2% drop rate and you get it after 5 monsters. The odds were against you: there was a 90%+ probability this wouldn’t happen so you should really count yourself lucky. Yet you’re more likely to just smile and move on to the next grindy-ass loot-hunt without giving it much thought.

Let’s say the next grind is for an even rarer item with a mere 1% drop rate.

You take out 100 monsters. Nothing. You feel irritated. You plough through another 100 monsters to no avail. You curse the heavens. You are about to give up, but decide to defeat one more demidragon before going to bed. Finally, on your 201st try, you get the diamantine draco-dust or whatever you were hunting for. Relief courses through you, mixed with righteous indignation. How could you have been forced to spend so much time in the depths of the dank, dreary dungeon defeating hordes of demidragons? Seriously, what are the chances!?!?

Ignoring the rhetorical nature of the question: about 13%.

So yes, you were unlucky. But that streak of unluckiness should be contrasted with the first case in which you got the 2% drop-rate item after just 5 monsters. The odds were over 90% against you then. Yet how much time did you spend basking in the warm glow of that particular streak of luck?

Probably not as much time as you spent feeling aggrieved about the second case.

You could use this example as the basis for a piece about how human psychology and intuition are mismatched with the mathematical realities of probability and statistics.

But I think the more interesting psychological question is, what drives the desire to the grind in the first place? What were the goals of the game’s creators, and how do they align with those of the player?

Whenever I read about a great grindy gaming goal that someone has set themself, I can’t help but think of Hetsu’s gift from BotW: the player’s reward for tracking down all 900 Korok seeds and maxing out all the stashes.

It’s a polished turd that does nothing.

A slap in the face to players who dedicated so much time to game? Perhaps. But perhaps those players needed a slap if they were expecting anything more.

BotW has plenty of things to collect, but it wasn’t conceived as a collectathon. The reason the devs scattered 900 Korok seeds around is not because they wanted to you scour every corner of the world for them, but so that whatever corner of the world you find yourself in, there is something to discover — a pleasant surprise.

Really, that’s all these rare drops amount to: a pleasant surprise.

All of which is to say…

If you find the grind unpleasant, bereft of all surprise, then giving up such vain pursuits of loot could well be wise.

Essay 100% complete.
_{Where’s my reward?}

“Hey babe, why don’t you come back to my place? We can get cozy on the couch and admire my 1,972 piece LEGO Super Mario: Mario Kart - Mario & Standard Kart LEGO set until sun rises.”

But really Jim, could you not have blurred some of these pictures out? Mario’s exhaust pipe is sticking out for all the world to see.

“So we have this Japanese monster catching RPG which we want to make it more appealing to a Western audience… any ideas?”

“How about we turn it into a sports game — specifically a sport that that’s very popular in Japan but most Western countries don’t give a crap about?”

“Like American football?”

“What? No! No one gives a crap about that in Japan either!”

“Mölkky?”

“The Finnish stick throwing game? That’s only just been invented and won’t be popular here until it inexplicably blows up in a few decades!”

“How about baseball?”

“Japan’s most popular sport? Perfect! The international audience is gonna love it!”

I die a little inside whenever I hear a game’s problems attributed to ‘lazy devs’.

It’s almost never the case that those developing the game simply ‘couldn’t be bothered’.

For larger teams, you potentially have unrealistic timeframes, poor work flow, out of touch management, lack of communication and a million other issues that can arise when trying to get something as complex as large group of people (sometimes spread over multiple countries) working on something as complex as a modern video game.

For solo devs and smaller teams, many of those issues are avoided, replaced instead with the pressure of wearing a million different specialist hats while juggling a hundred different balls.

Problems can arise in either case, but it seems misguided the point the finger at ‘lazy’ devs who have often sacrificed their health and sanity to get these projects out of the door.

This missed out on the actual year of the dragon by a few months. It’s now the year of the snake! Where is my $50000 Trowzer statue?

Hope the Agency for Cultural Affairs didn’t forget to SMASH that Subscribe button, hit Like, and butt-stomp the hell out of that bell icon so that it stays notified whenever new content drops.

_{The fact that series is over and there won’t be new content any time soon notwithstanding.}

@MSaturn It’s fun to roast Gibson but Fender has had its fair share of sick burns, too!

Putting Stratoclysmic pyromania to one side, I’m with you all the way. There’s a healthy amount ninetees/noughties nostalgia around at the moment which seems ripe to capitalise on… but perhaps easier said than done.

The timing of these controllers is curious though, isn’t it? It makes you wonder if something is brewing…

It may say ‘Gibson’ on the headstock, but the fact the headstock is still attached to the guitar is irrefutable proof that it’s not a real Gibson.

This is was a real Gibson looks like:

@JohnnyMind I agree, it’s nice to have some good feel news for a change!

My dad is Nintendo and I can confirm that Walmart Canada is the last people that he told the price of Switch 2 to. 👍

(Right after Lady Gaga, who was the second to last people he told.)

It’s finally here
And smelling brand new
It’s the first version of the DK Shoe

I don’t know how anyone in their right mind could consider Pull-out Pikmin Cookies “non-essential”.

And as for New Horizons Polvorones…

_{quickly googles what a “polvorone” is}

…why, I don’t think I could survive without my daily dose of New Horizons Polvorones.

I believe a full apology and a lifetime’s supply of polvorones is in order!

I can do this too HOLD MY BERE

ehem…

The Nintendo Switch 2 will cost 12345 of a currency of your choosing.

I’d love to see Nintendo being Miiverse back. But there’s no way that they would (or should) do so.

That said, I hope the Switch 2 has some sort of whacky Nintendo-flavoured social feature. Stick a step-counter and proximity sensor in a Joy-con and you have the social pedometer function of the 3DS but without the bulk of having to carry the entire system around.

Basically, what Gavin said: StreetPass 2 or something like it!

Nothing screams turn-of-the-millennium ‘TUDE more than BIZKIT, PIZZA and a gun-slingin’ DUDE.

HOO-HAH!

@Lightsiyd I’m not mistaken the top 4 most popular credit cards in Japan are all VISA.

It would take an awful lot to loosen that stranglehold. I doubt this move is specifically anti-VISA, as the majority of Japanese card purchases come from VISA-affiliated cards anyway.

May as well play poker at this point if you’re going to blow so much money on a card game.

At least then you can pretend you’re James Bond sipping a martini opposite Tuxedo Luigi.

Delusional perhaps, but no less so than thinking you’ll get rich off Pokémon cards.

@jojobar I felt quite similar. I loved Celeste and really enjoyed Towerfall, but seeing the trailer for Earthblade just reminded of all the competently-made-but-somehow-uninspiring Metroidvanias that I’d fallen off before.

This whole thing makes me wonder how many great games really started off with the intention of being ‘epic’. Celeste might well have become worthy of that description, but it began life as a simple prototype made for a Game Jam. Splatoon was refined from a few featureless tofu cubes. Smash (probably the most epic fighting game in terms of sheer scale) had similarly humble beginnings.

It seems to me that many products which became something ‘epic’ grew from a very small seed, which was a nevertheless strong enough as a core idea to sustain the entire project. Aiming for ‘epic’ as a goal in itself probably doesn’t lead to much more stress, frustration and disappointment unless you’re… I dunno, Michelangelo or something (and I’m sure even he suffered setbacks).

I don’t envy the dev team working on the follow up to Celeste, but I’m glad they’ve freed themselves from the shackles of the sunken cost fallacy. Hopefully they can all find something less epic but more inspiring to work on!

@ancientlii I think the main message is that climbing a mountain (either literally or as a somewhat one-the-nose metaphor for overcoming personal hardship) is really freaking… hard, and that you often need to fail a dozen (or even several hundred) times before you succeed. In that respect, the whole ‘dying a lot’ thing seems pretty on message.

If you collect lots of strawberries you are pictured eating lots of strawberries at the end. If you collect only a few strawberries then you are pictured eating only a few strawberries at the end. I’m sure we all have personal definitions of “being shat on” but this doesn’t come under my mine.

I’m also not sure what the issue is with being taught a core mechanic (air dash) by a crow early in the game. The scene takes about 3 seconds and equips with you a move that is necessary to play the rest of the game.

So what he’s saying is I’m a blind fanboy and I’m going to buy it no matter what? Is that what he’s saying? Huh?

…Cos he’s got a point.

They should refer to us as ‘Stick Masters’ or ‘Button Beasts’.

I don’t feel seen unless my mastery over the controller is explicitly acknowledged.

The leaks ruined the surprise that it was going to be fundamentally unsurprising — at least in terms of form factor.

I still imagine Nintendo has a few tricks up its sleeve that will be able to surprise as well as delight. It’s easy to forget just how many gimmicks from Nintendo’s long lineage are crammed into the original Switch design given how cohesive the whole thing feels.

Home console? Check.
Portable? Check.
Wii U-style Gamepad with touchscreen? Check (kind of)
Wii-style waggle controls? Check.
Virtual Boy-style ‘strap it to your head and enjoy somewhat cumbersome VR experience’? Check.

Michelangelo didn’t reinvent pencil and paper but he did put the boundaries of what would be achieved with them.

There’s plenty of potential for combining all that tech (plus the updated IR sensors) in exciting new ways. And even if that falls through (a la Labo) they’ve still got the fact that ‘it’s a portable with Nintendo games that you can play on the TV’ to fall back on.

The tech itself was never going to blow people’s minds, so in that sense there was very little for the leaks to spoil. What matters — and remains to be seen — is how Nintendo utilises that tech to create an exciting and enticing product.

Those cards are still very much in Nintendo’s hand, and it’s going to be interesting to see (in April) how they play them.

If using ‘Mario Kart 9’ as a placeholder name for the next Mario Kart is ‘bait’ then it’s the least spicy bait I’ve ever taken.

It’s like trying to catch a polar bear in the antarctic by dangling an ice cube from a stick.

There’s no shortage of ice and there aren’t any polar bears there to begin with.

Now you C it. Now you don’t.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe II: 365.59 Days % Crystal Warriors ~ Phantom ReFluX: Galactic Edition confirmed!

Haven’t been following the rumours, but that’s pretty slick if true.

I’d never even considered this as a possibility, but it seems very doable and very worth doing. A mouse is not a particularly sophisticated piece of tech, but the functionally opens up all sorts of options!

One of my friends is friends with Nintendo and he said she’s really mad.

Putting the X in Alex.

…And also the ale. 🍺

Let us celebrate this milestone with a kveiky brew!

10/14

I did well in a Nintendo Life quiz!!!!

I’m not a betting man but I would bet my entire Switch collection that we’ll have a successor to the Switch before next Xmas.

It’s seems about as certain as Nintendo announcing a new video game featuring Super Mario. I have zero concrete evidence that Nintendo are working on a new Mario title, but it would take a lot to convince me otherwise.

@VHSGREMLIN You’re right! Many modern banknotes are now made of polymer rather than paper, which makes them more durable but also more likely to shrink if you put them in the microwave.

Many of us are now trading plastic (or more often digital money) for goods and services instead of paper.

_{If any of the above is objectionable, feel free to give your own take on the financial system instead. I’d be interested to hear how it functions without the use of some form of currency, be that paper, plastic, crypto, or something else entirely.}

@VHSGREMLIN To be fair, the same could be said of pretty much the entire financial system — especially in the pre-digital age.

Pokémon cards are basically banknotes at this point, but with the beardy blokes replaced with cartoon critters.

Yes, they’re just bits of paper, but much of human society still revolves around exchanging bits of paper for goods and services. One of the advancements of the last few decades has been making the paper increasingly invisible, but the basic idea is the same.

It’s a fairly bizarre system, but… well, in Golduck we trust, I suppose.

At that price it’s probably worth finding out whether this is the most underrated game of all time, or the most overrated.

Nintendo is kind of like Japanese City Pop.

Poppy on the surface, but built around more sophisticated harmonic principles drawn from jazz.

A bit retro. Perhaps even a little cheesy at times. But vibey as hell.