McHaggis

Even though I loved the original game, I don't think I'll be buying this. I bought ½ Genie Hero on the Wii U, which barely gets powered on these days. I don't agree with paying full price for the game a second time on the Nintendo Switch, so I'll probably give the DLC a miss.

Maybe if there's a really sweet deal that includes the game and DLC in the future then I will reconsider.

I prefer 2D Metroid games to the 3D ones (that I also happen to love). I always liked that, when the GameCube was released, 2D games were the focus for handhelds and 3D games were the focus for home consoles, but was sad that it didn't last.

Now with the Switch blurring the home console/portable lines, I'm worried that we won't see as many 2D Metroid games in the future.

A lot of the spin-off games would make good casual smartphone games now.

That's really cool! Not many companies want to do stuff like this anymore, which really is a shame.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE exactly what I was going to say!

Oversaturation of the market is a big point but I think Skylanders contributed to that the most by not stopping at figures. Instead of concentrating on improving the software, they kept coming up with additional hardware (traps, trophies, vehicles, crystals, etc) as the margins on those products were very high. Classic corporate greed, plain and simple.

My son's Skylanders Imaginators that he got for xmas is still in its cellophane wrapping. He clearly lost interest because the software is not enticing enough.

I have significantly reduced my spending at GAME over recent years, since they hiked the prices of all their digital downloads on Xmas eve a few years ago. It was an underhanded tactic that left a bad taste in my mouth as I'd planned on adding the games to my kids 3DS consoles for quite some time and didn't expect the price to increase suddenly.

Then there's the merchandise. My kids went through the whole Skylanders and Amiibo phases (still in the Amiibo one!) and we would go into our nearest GAME almost every week. My kids would pick up a figure they wanted and ask me to purchase it, but at £5 more than the MSRP, I always said "no" and took them somewhere else to buy it. I did get my Switch from them, but that was a gift from my fiancee.

GAME are out of touch with the average consumer. They have a good range of merchandise but price themselves out of the market all the time. Why would anyone buy a game from them when they can pick it up at their next supermarket shop at a lower price? I hope they go bust, then we might see an increased presence of Grainger Games and other smaller retailers.

@PigmaskFan the forum for the game. Accepting money of any kind turns it into a commercial entity as people are receiving money for working on the project. There's no way around that, really.

This is the kind of respect that Nintendo commands in the gaming industry. You don't often see companies talking up their competitors.

New Super Mario Bros. was already available in China, via the iQue DS that was released in 2005. Nintendo has historically made deals with iQue, but I could see a quid-pro-quo deal between Nintendo and Nvidia being possible since they're such good chums now.

@Spoony_Tech I never see any other news sites doing this and, frankly, it's annoying. It seems very desperate. I can't imagine Nintendo Life is struggling to pay the bills without this.

This is actually very useful for changing the order of controllers. Power them all down, then back up again in the desired order.

The Switch has the advantage of being truly portable, so this may factor into it's worth on being ported. I don't play many FPS games, so I wouldn't buy it, but it would be nice to see others get their wish.

I would buy three for my kids if it had cloud saves and a family sharing library. If it doesn't have either of those things, then I wouldn't bother.

@Anti-Matter open world pokemon would be awesome

You only have to look at the majority of these comments to see the problem with GAME.

I lost confidence in them the Xmas before this one. I'd planned to purchase some digital eShop downloads for each of my kids the day before Xmas, when I discovered they'd put the prices up for said games by £5 each, clearly trying to capitalise on the fact that stores were closed. They also sell things like Skylanders and Amiibo characters well above MSRP, which is their loss because I walk into my local GAME several times a month and say to my kids "put that back, I'm not spending an extra £5 when I could have it tomorrow from Amazon".

They lost me as a loyal customer a long time ago, I only purchase from them now if it benefits me.

I don't see GAME offering this for my faulty Joy-Con

I don't agree that it's justified. Nintendo games have always been more expensive. They could quite easily have swallowed the increased manufacturing cost for BOTW game cards in the huge margin they make on each one, as well as the ridiculously high margin on digital downloads.

My fiancee bought me BOTW (and the Switch) as a gift, and paid £59.99 for it. Arguably, that game is worth it, but I won't pay close to that for another game.

Sales will quickly tank if every multi-platform game comes out £10 more expensive on the Switch.

The problem with not having an answer for this at launch is that I don't know what strategy to use when I purchase games. Do I buy game cards so that I can 100% definitely share across systems, or do I buy digital downloads in the hope that me and my kids can play single-player games simultaneously?

Google's family sharing would be a perfect solution to this problem. You have a master account that links several other accounts, then each device can download purchased games. Purchases on the other devices use the master account's credit card and go into the shared library.

If restrictions are required to prevent abuse, simply use a check-in/check-out system for the games. Player A downloads Game A and checks it out. Player B downloads Game A and cannot check it out until Player A checks it in again. Checked-out games can be played offline this way, but an internet connection is required to check in/out.

I just wish they would make it concrete instead of fannying around.

I don't think it matters who said what. We're talking about something that happened 20 years ago. Things get said in the heat of the moment and bygones should be (and are, it seems) bygones. It would have been amazing to see the main Final Fantasy series return to Nintendo consoles around the Gamecube era, though.

@gortsi maybe, I haven't played it myself. Though maybe I should to get my money's worth .

Not sure about anyone else, but I was getting increasingly annoyed by how much Activision were going after my wallet with each release.

I loved the simplicity of the first game for my son. It was just "buy the starter pack, buy some Skylanders (at least one of each type)". Then with each iteration it was,

• "now you need at least one of each type of the more expensive giants,"
• "now you need one of each type of the more expensive swappers,"
• "now you need at least one of each type of crystal, plus some trap masters,"
• "now you need to buy cars as well as Skylanders"
• "now you need imaginators crystals and senseis"

Each one comes with a new portal, which is just annoying as hell. Imagine if, every time you bought a new Assassin's Creed or Gears of War, it came with some slightly-upgraded version of the previous game's BS accessory.

I actually bought Imaginators for my son as an Xmas gift, but considering he didn't play Superchargers half as much as he played Trap Team, I think it would be the last even if a new one came out next year.

Interplay only published Lost Vikings and Rock N' Roll Racing—though they did develop Rock N' Roll Racing 2—, which were developed by Blizzard (earlier known as Silicone & Synapse). Blizzard were later responsible for publishing GBA ports of both games, so I suspect they retained, reacquired or shared the rights for both.

Breath of Fire I, II and III remakes or a new game in the series would be awesome.

I would go fully digital only if Nintendo introduced a family account that allowed sharing games between family members. Digital downloads suck in that regard.

Ahaha that explains the out-of-the-blue invitation I got from you, Tom. Don't feel bad, though, I did the exact same thing about 3 months ago!

I prefer download games these days, though I can't purchase many on the 3DS because they're not sharable between family members. I made that mistake with Bravely Default and now my daughter wants to play it. Do I cough up another £30 for a game I already own but am not playing right know? I think not...

I wish Nintendo would introduce some kind of family account that allowed games to be deleted from one 3DS so they can be used on another linked to the account.

I'm a bit tired of never being part of the select few. I am a large Nintendo consumer, there are 5 3DS consoles, a Wii U and countless games for each in my household, yet I feel like a second class citizen whenever these promotions are doled out. Why don't they send the codes to everyone? Neither me nor my kids got any codes and we're all signed up to the newsletter.

Granted, I have a friend who can provide me with a download code, but it's not the point. Treat everyone fairly, Nintendo.

This announcement goes some way towards improving my hopes for this game but, on balance, the overall track list is still mostly poor in my opinion. It lacks a lot of what made the older GH games great.

Snoozeville. No drums and, so far, no noteworthy songs. Looks like I'll be sticking with Rock Band 4.

The Mario Kart DLC seems a little better value for money than Smash Bros. 16 extra tracks, 6 characters, 8 vehicles and the palette swaps for £11 isn't great, but it's not too bad. £3.59 for a single character is pretty horrendous, as is £5.52 for costumes that add no value to the game whatsoever.

I'm worried that by lapping up this DLC, we're just encouraging Nintendo's arbitrary pricing that doesn't reflect actual value (ie has no correlation to work done) – just like with 3DS home themes.

@BassLostie these are to stop the game cards accidentally being ejected. I sometimes do this with my current 3DS XL, so it actually sounds like a good idea to me.

The Game Boy never suffered from this problem!

The buildings and bridge in the first picture remind me of ye olde London. The style is strikingly similar.

Diesel is not amused.

"We'd like to think that Nintendo UK's new advert for its 3DS and 2DS systems is a knee-jerk reaction to the news that UK children are now more likely to game on a tablet than they are on a traditional games console, but we're not sure even the great Ninty can work that quickly."

That's a little bit assumptive. There's a good chance that Nintendo's own market research (either in-house or outsourced) would have told them the same thing quite a while ago, or at least that the market was travelling in that direction anyway.

This would be a great step forward for Nintendo, especially with VC titles. NES games should be playable both on the Wii U and 3DS without having to pay again for the second platform.

What I'd like them to more seriously give attention to is family game sharing. I've got about 4 games on my XL that I'd like to let the kids play without them having to commandeer the console. It should be straightforward enough for me to just transfer a single game for them, but it's not.

Here's a crazy idea, Nintendo: why don't you let me transfer some of my downloaded 3DS games to my children so they can experience those games now that I'm finished with them?

I'd love to see some kind of feature where I could manage my childrens' Nintendo Network accounts from my own, where I could purchase additional licenses for games that we can share and monitor their activity on Miiverse to make sure they're using it responsibly and safely.

The graphics remind me of the Breath of Fire games. I might take a look at this when it comes out.

There's a few devices that do this already available to western markets. I have the R4i Save Dongle, although it doesn't work on Animal Crossing/Pokemon X and Y. It hasn't seen a firmware/software update in ages, either.

These look loads better than the ones we got in the UK recently, though 5. Mario with the Goal Pole puts some seriously disturbing images into one's head!

This is great. I'd rather see them integrate the Wii U system menu into the in-game home menu, though. Since the system speed-ups last year, I think game loading times are more than tolerable, but exiting a game to go to the home screen to load a different game is still a pain.

I always enjoy a good chuckle, and that's what I get from reading the comments on this site. In particularly, whenever a negative aspect of a Nintendo product or business decision comes up in the news on a site, it's guaranteed that so many people will immediately leap to Nintendo's defence. There's so much ignorance and bias when it's not really necessary. Case in point, "we don't need a track editor because Nintendo's tracks are awesome", is ignorant because of the use of "we" to mean "I", and also the fact that eventually even the most loyal of fans are going to get bored of racing the same tracks over and over.

That being said, I never really go in for level/track editors much. I guess I'm not really that creative or just don't want to put the time in. I can still see why it would be a desirable feature for a lot of gamers, though, and that is reason enough for me to want it to be included too.

Plus, imagine an online mode that was custom tracks only. A 5-race GP randomly picking from the top 100 tracks based on Miiverse "Yeah" count, or something.

@RetroBillyT: I'm not sure I agree. Wii Sports Resort had 12 sports and launched at £34.99 including a Motion Plus adapter.

At £9 per sport, Wii Sports Club offers 3 sports for around the same price if we knock off the value of a Motion Plus adapter. Sure, they look better but I would argue that most of the groundwork was already there. There's the add online infrastructure, of course, but I still think anything more than £5 per sport is poor value for money.

I have bought a day pass, however, which I think is fairly reasonable for all the sports. I know if I paid the full price for each sport I probably would spend more than it would cost me in day passes to play over 2 years, so I'm going to wait until they release more sports and add a good deal.

It seems like a strange move. I guess they're not selling much DLC these days, but would it do any harm just leaving it there?

I don't play much anymore, but most of my DLC was for Rock Band anyway, which worked better with my V-Drums.

@AltDotNerd

"After the Philips CDi did...THAT...to the Mario and Zelda games, Nintendo vowed to never again allow one of their games on someone else's console."

That's not really the same thing (and they didn't really vow anything, they did what they had to at the time to get out of their deal with Philips). Nintendo didn't develop those games and had little or no creative input for them. What people are debating is if Nintendo should themselves develop games for other platforms.

I think It's sad that the Wii U even needs validation like this. I wish people were less concerned with having an uber powerful console, but it's clearly not the case.

@Ernest_The_Crab: nope, to get the good ending, you have to do what @ChronoPower says. You can get the bad ending much earlier (from around Chapter 5 or 6, I think).

@ChronoPower: yeah, I agree with that. I enjoyed the game, but I got a bit fed up of repeating the same process over and over for what seemed like a really long time.

It hasn't put me off buying the sequel, however.

I remember this, it was certainly tough. Me and my brother stayed up really late playing it into the night every night for ages. I'd definitely be interested in a sequel.

However, I want a classic Metroidvania‒style Castlevania game for the 3DS more. The DS got 3 classic Castlevania games but all we've had for the 3DS is Mirror of Fate (and there's no classic Metroid in sight).

The ornamental thumb pad isn't as pointless as you might think. At times where you need to push the analog stick to the right for a length of time, I sometimes find my thumb slowly slipping from the tip. This happens even more on my partner's pink 3DS XL: her thumb pad is a slightly lighter colour than mine but is much more difficult to grip.

Maybe I just sweat more in my hands at times of intense gaming, but an ornamental thumb pad wouldn't have these problems.