N64-ROX

The guy very clearly said that he loves Mario Kart and plays it all the time. This game is designed to fill a niche between that and more simmy racers. There are a lot of people in this thread who seem have been triggered by absolutely nothing.
Obviously there are many people out there who prefer less cartoony aesthetics, that describes like 80% of all games being made.

@mackers84 oh that's cool, thanks for the heads up!

Dear lord what is that D pad! Just give me 4 discrete buttons please.

I've been playing Rocket League on the Switch 1 almost continuously since 2019, but a few weeks ago I made the decision to put it down.
After they added voice chat it didn't take long for me to mute it as the toxicity was getting too much. And that was fine! But something odd has happened over the past few months. The same toxicity has somehow crept in to the text chat. In a game as relentlessly fast paced as this, people are taking the time to stop and type out aggressive put downs. I initially thought it was one or two jokers, but it seems to happen pretty much every match now.
It's a real shame because Rocket League is a game which just feels so good to play - the movement, the control, the speed, the spectacle, the competition, the quick hit 5 minute games, the fact that all of the F2P monetization stuff is easily-ignorable cosmetics. It's a great way to shift into a different zone after a hard day of work. But now heaven forbid you make a single mistake - whiff a block or accidentally bump a team-mate while concentrating on the ball - because then it's time to get mercilessly belittled by your own team on the text chat for the rest of the match, and not in a joking way either. And of course playing on console I'm not going to spend 2 minutes pecking around on an on screen keyboard to respond. It's too much and I've had enough.

Gorgeous visuals but I've never enjoyed fishing in any game (and we all know that it's in a lot of 'em). Fishing in real life is the most boring activity on the planet, and video game fishing usually boils down to RNG gambling crossed with waiting.

I'll definitely be keeping notice of this thing. I already have an n64 pad for TV gaming but will this be a solution for handheld? My experience with older telescopic phone controllers (and hell even just telescopic tablet holders) tells me to not get my hopes up. I can't imagine it's going to be the sturdiest setup; would have been nice if they were true joy con replacements. Still the possibility for greatness is tantalizing.

@molkom somebody tell him that Cho Aniki Collection is available on Switch!

I have very similar habits. I eventually learned that the eShop (at least the Switch 1 version) actually has two limits to the number of games you can have on your wishlist. There is a "hard" limit, where you're literally told that you're not allowed to add any more and you're hit with a mix of shock and embarrassment while you go off to spend 30-60 minutes pruning off games which you've never bought even though they've been 75% off a dozen times. And then there is a "practical" limit somewhere before that, where the eShop has an almost-100% chance of crashing before you can scroll to the end of the wishlist itself.
Of course the other danger is that these wacky games which you wishlisted just for the title go on a sale that you can't refuse, and you wind up with your actual library clogged up with stuff like Gran Carismo and Duck Creator and Funny Truck and Doronko Wanko and Toilet Shooting Star etc.
From the examples in the article though, I would definitely recommend the delights of Milkmaid of The Milky Way, About An Elf, and Bahnsen Knights; those are some fantastic games.

Ever since the PS1 I've been a big fan of separate buttons instead of a D Pad. No wonky accidental diagonals; you get precisely what direction you intended, every time.
Now the joy con sticks, on the other hand...
And if we're talking about diversity, how about a joy con with 6 action buttons instead of 4 so that you can play Street Fighter or N64 properly...
And how easy would it be to add freakin' analogue triggers for racing games and GameCube...

My parents weren't fans of video games so they never once bought me anything video game adjacent, aside from a couple of family computers throughout the years. Everything I got, I saved up for and bought myself. But my fond memory is of the TV ad over xmas for Banjo Kazooie whose Grant Kirkhope themes were already a combination of adventurous and christmassy, with a tantalizing narrator and footage of them jumping over moving cogs in Rusty Bucket Bay and traversing a giant tree in Click Clock Wood. I didn't have an N64 yet but I was already obsessed with Mario 64; it was that Banjo Kazooie commercial which pushed me over the edge and made me realise that I needed to make an N64 happen in my life.

Thanks for the review. I really enjoyed discovering Moon on the Switch. But that game too had a lot of friction. You meet these amazing quirky characters but then you get paranoid that you've chosen the wrong dialogue option and locked yourself away from ever being able to see them again. At least it sounds like here with Lost Children you can approach it like Undertale's True Pacifist run: bang your head against a wall during the fights trying to find the correct sequence of nonviolent options, but the worst that can happen is that you fail, die in the fight, and have to try again. As opposed to some random dialogue choice popping up in the field which may or may not ruin everything.

This looks and sounds amazing. I always enjoy a well executed walking simulator so I'll definitely be grabbing this.

@mjtaylor76 I'm from Australia, perhaps we had a different one? I definitely remember a giant 4-page feature article prior to release which made it look amazing, and the end of the magazine always had a big bunch of 1-screenshot, 1-paragraph micro-reviews of every game on the system (which is quite sad for the N64 now in retrospect) and that certainly never served to turn me off of it.

@Adamn you're definitely not. I excitedly played chapter 1 as soon as it released, but then years later when chapter 2 came out I realised it had been a terrible mistake. I'd forgotten so much that I had to start again from chapter 1, which ruined the discovery and freshness of it all and made me not want to play the way I like (slowly and methodically scouring every corner and drinking in every bit of content) since I knew I'd just have to do it all over again later when the next chapter came out, and then the next...
So I gave up before even starting chapter 2 and have put the whole thing on my "wait until it's done" pile. Frankly I don't understand how this piecemeal release approach doesn't ruin it for everyone else, but if people are managing to enjoy it then more power to them.

After reading about Rayman 2 all the time in N64 Gamer magazine I eventually got a hold of it later on PC, and by then it felt dated, restrictive, and a bit lame. But those were the days before nostalgia, when a couple of years (and definitely a new console generation) would render a video game laughably obsolete. Right now I am super pumped to rediscover N64 Rayman 2 on Switch, as well as Tonic Trouble.

Let's look at it this way: if Nintendo actually do abandon this deal in 15 years' time you will have already paid $750 USD just to rent the access to these virtual boy games. Another $100 USD for the premium headset is just a drop in the bucket!

So let me get this straight: you work for Nintendo Life, and your own son has spent (what would feel like) an entire year being denied a Switch 2. You're a monster!

@h3s personally I wouldn't want indies to have to use an engine which only works for the Switch. But yeah I'd place the blame on Unity (and definitely also Unreal Engine) for treating Switch support as an added extra as opposed to something which can be properly optimised for.
Anyway this is a good news piece so I'm just happy for these guys.

@Farts_Ahoy you could say that about pretty much any pixel art game, but the number of graphically simple games which struggle and chug on the Switch 1 proves that it's not just about whether it should be able to run at max FPS, it's about whether the developers have put in the effort to get it to actually do it. So it's always good news when it does happen. Especially from indie teams who are often bound to the limitations of third party game engines and tend to have less resources to spare to polish something which is already 'finished".

As a huge huge fan of Nidhogg 2 (in fact I'm a convert who initially thought the change in art style was a travesty until I actually started playing it) I've been super intrigued by this one and will probably end up picking it up even though I'm generally not interested in roguelites or even most top-down stuff in general.
Maybe not on the Switch though if the performance is as bad as people are saying.

A review of the Switch 1 version would be nice.
Although it's really only a curiosity for me; I beat this game on PS3 and had had enough of it well before I was done. It definitely does the Uncharted thing where it frequently locks you in an area until you have killed 200 people. With the added fun of QTE rollercoasters that are thinly veiled excuses for torture p*rn.

What an eyesore!

I get why they are insisting that you can still choose to play it fast even though the whole nature of card based games is to slow down and consider every single action. The secret sauce of Vampire Survivors is that the weapons fire themselves and all you need to do is focus on movement. The prospect of having to select each attack every single time seems like the complete opposite of that, even if it's possible to do it "fast" i.e. mindlessly. But I guess this is indeed a different game entirely (first person perspective completely changes the equation too) so it will have to be taken on its own merits.

I like how the North American one has a constipated Karate Kid on the cover.
And I like how the European one took the Japanese art and said: OK, anime characters we can live with, but speed lines? That's taking it too far for our delicate western audiences.

Hey what, this is a new Katamari game? For some reason I saw this on the eShop and thought it was a remaster of the Xbox 360 one which left me cold for some reason. I forget what that reason actually was (it may have just been a combination of exhaustion from completing the PS2 originals, and sadness that my exquisitely Japanese hidden gem game was now being marketed to the masses on the disgustingly American Xbox) but apparently it wasn't just me if this reviewer says that this new one is a return to form.
Upgraded from "eternally wishlisted" to "will buy at some point"!

@dazzleshell I remember when we all thought that we'd be getting something special for Zelda's 35th anniversary (e.g. Zelda 3D All Stars, or at least Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) and they kept us waiting all year and never released anything at all!

I never had a computer back in the isometric heyday, although I've read quite a few retro reviews of ZX Spectrum games so I get the concept.
I played the first Lumo and it was clearly a new entry to that old genre, but it all felt so tightly consistent that I had no idea that it was referencing numerous distinct games. As opposed to something like Horace which indulged itself with crazy surprises at every opportunity.
Anyway, Lumo 1... I found it cosy, ingenious, and impressive with its complex level design. I did figure out that ice block room, although it took literally hours and hours. But then I reached a section where you have a long, long gauntlet of jumps from moving platforms. I consider myself a persistent gamer. But friends, the isometric malarkey broke me.
It lives on in my "finish me!" pile, but the overall layout of the world is so insanely complicated that I feel that I'd need to start again now in order to have any idea where to go next even if I made it through that maddening gauntlet. And that ain't gonna happen. So in the pile it stays.

Seems like a bit of a stretch to say that this is "AI".
People were making CGI mockup trailers which were nothing like the quality of the actual gameplay for years before AI came along.

No discount on any of the Atelier Ryza games either. This looks like a clearout of the also-rans.

I like how the scorpion in the NA cover is just kinda chilling there. "For you human, this is a fight for your very life. For me, it's Tuesday."

I daresay that there is a big difference in writing code for a game (where intangibles such as "fun" must reign supreme if you're doing it right) than working to spec for most other commercial applications.
But even in my industry (financial and billing) the best developers don't just mindlessly follow the spec. If they can think of a better or more elegant way of doing something once they're knee deep in actually building out the solution, this is a valuable insight. They don't have carte blanche to just deliver something completely different to what was requested, but prototyping out an alternative will often end up being agreed to be much better.

Good thing Disney don't employ the same lawyers as Nintendo, otherwise they would patent the concept of a monster bursting out of a person's chest and sue these guys into oblivion.

Nothing like what I expected, it's like they're an indie publisher now!
None of these 2D games are for me, but the snowboarding game looks colourful and fun.
Kudos to Acclaim, I say. Better to make a fresh start with some fresh indies than to squeeze out some dire AA attempts or try to cash in on old licenses.

The North American box art was terrible in its day. But now from a retro perspective I actually think it's cool. It's pure 90s grunge, even though grunge had been dead for like 5 years by the time Forsaken popped up. For the un-discerning connoisseur it's a memorable classic.
The game is an utter dog though, in my opinion.

@Runex2121 if the code was on the cart then you'd only ever need to plug it into your console once. It would download the game and from that point on would work the same as any other digital download. No need to ever swap the cart back in again. Which in my experience makes a huge difference in how frictionlessly and how often you end up actually playing the game. So with GKKs you don't get to play easily and you don't get to keep it forever. It's the worst of both tradeoffs.

@Runex2121 you realise that all you've done is paid for an empty piece of plastic which you now need to put in and out of your switch whenever you want to change games, as if it were a real cartridge? Just buy it digitally if you don't care about physical media ownership. Not needing to switch cartridges is the one benefit of digital purchases, and a GKK is just a digital purchase without its one benefit.

Is it just me or was the Switch 1 really good when it first launched? I feel like it took 2-3 years to reach the point where every review and preview had to admit that the Switch version looked and played like a dog compared to every other platform. With the Switch 2 it's been the case since day 1. Makes me sad, to be honest.

@PKDuckman yep, still not up on the Australian eshop. I suspect it's because there are ladies in it, which is somehow worse than the daily hentai games which never stop releasing.

Just sending out a Public Service Announcement: you can still buy Switch 2 games without supporting game key card nonsense. Just buy it digitally! It's the same product except with the added benefit of not having to switch game cards all the time.
Not as nice as a real physical game, but there is no need for anyone to ever buy a game key card.

X = X, i.e. the letter X.
Anyone who claims otherwise about any title is just trying to be cute.

The moral of your travel story is not "it'll be fine"!
The moral is "always get yourself to the airport at least 2 hours before boarding, otherwise AT BEST you're going to be running around like a chump."
Oh and "German trains are always late - especially the expensive ICEs."
Seriously, you got very lucky in the end and learned completely the wrong lesson.

WWF Warzone, baby! Let's go back to the days when The Rock was a heel and Vince McMahon was a commentator. When Owen Hart was alive and The Undertaker had never heard of Limp Bizkit. When some pansy Wildlife Fund had no sway over the most electrifying force in sports entertainment! Where special moves required Street Fighter style button combos and create-a-wrestler was just overlaying different textures on a single skin on the model.

I tried to think of a "Nightdivey" game that I wish they'd remaster, but all I can think of is Shadow Man, which surprise surprise they have already done and I've already bought. Maybe PoP Sands of Time? But of course Ubisoft would be as likely to give that away as Nintendo is this.

Mad BMX Skills 2 may be of interest to any budding [insert BMX rider]

You mean Dave Mirra! He's just like Tony Hawk (TM)!

This one's not going to be close!
But at least the Japanese cover proudly proclaims "Made in Wario" - a claim most of us here only wish we could make of ourselves.

The title is fine - at least it's not "Action Explorer" or another weirdly literal internal-project-name such as Octopath Traveller (the game with 8 travellers), Triangle Strategy (the strategy game with three factions), and Various Daylife (where you do various day-to-day slice-of-life activities).

I was definitely all about the "Blast Corpse". Luckily everyone else at school was uncultured like me so nobody ever questioned my pronunciation.

Man those screenshots make it look like a Switch 1 port. A month in and we're already at this stage...

Let's be honest, the switch's touchscreen is terrible. It's not too surprising that they tried to implement it and decided against it. The on screen keyboard is the perfect example: it's easier to type with d-pad navigation than touch the actual keys responsively.

That European box is terrible. There seems to have been a weird trend in the 90s to put borders and pop-ins around everything to make the key art as small and as blemished as possible. And here we have a red & white banner pattern framing a picture of red & white banners which acts as a frame for another red & white banner. What a mess, it's amateur hour on the computer! Either go less-is-more with your logo, or more-is-more with the badass gigantic insect dude. Not just copy and paste the logo a bunch of times, then create another layer in photoshop and copy and paste it some more over the top!