N64-ROX

I've had the exact same experience, but with Nidhogg. Really there's nothing quite like it. Really makes you miss home when you get that taste.

Wait, I just realised that Neodori Forever is from Qubic games. I can highly recommend that one. It's a perfect mix of Outrun and modern retro 90s aesthetic.

Yes Qubic is a long way away from the really shady publishers, like the ones who put out "Call of Honor War Shoot Royale Battle Simulator", or the ones who put out "AAA Clock arbitrary monthly new edition #58". There are publishers on the eShop who put out brazen asset flips, mobile ports so lazy that they don't even recognise controller input, zero-effort games so amateur that the collision doesn't work and you just fall through the floor. Qubic Games are like Wii-era shovelware in my opinion: pretty lame but at least they're legitimately trying.
I did enjoy Rekt back before we had better stuff like Rocket League, Tony Hawk, Descenders etc on the system.

I'm not much of a fan of colons either, to be honest (the punctuation, not the vital organ). Even Legend of Zelda finds a way to work without them, and those games have been eschewing numerical sequels for over 30 years. A title with a colon basically means that they couldn't make up their mind what they wanted it to be, so they chose to keep both options (and sometimes more than two!)

Sands of Time is just too perfect in its movement, puzzles, tech, and sense of adventure not to win this one. After that for me it would be POP 2008 for its combination of gorgeous cell shaded visuals and almost-nonexistent combat. And then there's the original, which is a groundbreaking nostalgic classic but too old-school to really enjoy playing anymore, for me at least.

@JayJ I don't care if people don't like it, or aren't interested in it. But it's the people who act as though its very existence is an insult to everything they hold dear in this world - these are the people for whom I really have to wonder what their true problem with it is. It is just a game after all.
Perhaps I did word my previous comment too aggressively. So I'll put it like this: I wonder what would be the venn diagram of people who hate Gone Home and people who use "woke" as an insult.

I agree that Super Kiwi 64 and Macbat 64 were very easy, but I didn't mind that. As cheap games they act as more of a palate refresher, an easily digestible dose of nostalgia and a reminder of how great the real Banjo Kazooie is. Still I'd enjoy playing something more meaty in this vein, and Corn Kidz 64 looks pretty sweet regardless of which way it ends up swinging.

The venn diagram of people who hate Gone Home and people who are bigots is an interesting one.
That game did nothing especially wrong (walking simulator is an entire genre, people) but it did a lot of things very, very right (tension, environmental storytelling, graphics, sense of place) and it delivered a type of story which which was at the time not seen before in video games. There is absolutely nothing controversial in the game, except for the fact that it's about a certain type of person. A type of person which hate groups wish didn't exist, or at least didn't have a voice. And to a certain extent that could even boil down to "a female person".

Does anyone else find it sus that the eshop page for this doesn't include any screenshots or videos? Like it's trying to lure in a purchase without letting people consider "wait a minute, this is what I'm spending my $38 (Australian) on?"

Write the review you cowards! If the game doesn't work, give it a zero. No need to revise it down the line.

@Semudara sounds like it has a good sense of humour at least!

@Nontendo_4DS I will say though that I like your username. I always dreamed of calling myself N65-Rox.

@Nontendo_4DS I disagree. If I see a headline about Miyamoto and click on it, that doesn't mean that I have an insatiable appetite for Miyamoto articles and that paparazzi should follow him home and try to dig up a scandal. I read Switch firmware patch note articles for goodness sake; anything vaguely in my area of interest will do. As a reader I'm not telling people what to write.

we, the hungry customers, may be somewhat to blame. We struggle to remember the last big game that was released without some kind of leak or slip-up to sully its otherwise watertight launch.
I will never not get annoyed at statements like this.
1. Are we, the customers, the ones hacking into developers' servers? No. Those are attention-seeking hackers.
2. Are we, the customers, demanding to know every minute detail of the development process, spurring on the hackers and scaring the publishers? No. It is the people and organisations who write gaming news who decide what to write about in an endless bid for audience attention. We're not screaming at journos to tell us what colour socks Miyamoto is wearing, we're just opening up NintendoLife or Twitter or whatever and seeing what you've got for us today.
Regardless of the topic of the actual article, I just really wish journos would stop trying to tell us that consumers are responsible for the ills of the world. We're the last link in the chain.

I will never trust anyone who writes a professional text including the words "bomb diffusal". They literally don't have any clue about what they're doing (writing English) nor what they're describing (the act of defusing a bomb)

Yes thanks for this review, the screenshots on the eshop look awesome but without a video there's no clue what kind of game it is. Rhythm based platformer sounds perfect - I thought it might be a twin stick shooter which really don't do anything for me. This was already on my wishlist; definitely going to get it now.

That's a pretty funny video. But it's a distant second to the amazingness of that subheadline!

@LoneHammerBro that's definitely how I approached it in the beginning; and the great thing about emulation is everyone getting to get what they want. Seeing the 3D in crisp high-res was amazing. Great for screenshots. But eventually all the little things started to build up for me, especially with pre-rendered backgrounds and UI: weird green aliasing where the transparencies didn't align, and the constant feeling that the characters didn't fit with the world they were running around on. A pixel didn't equal a pixel didn't equal a pixel, it felt amateurish and wrong, like the recent Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters which look like Kemco mobile games. It just wasn't the experience I was looking for. So found the settings which worked for me.

@-wc-
does anyone else wish that you could turn back the "hi res" elements of FFVII on switch, though?
For sure, it reminds me of the late 2000s, after I had spent a decade playing on emulators, when it clicked with me that PS1 games actually look better as a whole if you run them in their original internal resolution. All of a sudden the mismatch between 3D polygons and pre-rendered CGI and UI disappeared and it's like yes, this looks so much better now. The backgrounds stop looking like a green screen / painting, and the characters look like they actually belong in the world.
Even fully 3D games look more realistic since the number of polygons and the resolution of the textures better match the number of pixels being displayed overall - it looks more like the mindblowing technical leap over SNES that it was at the time, as opposed to a quaint relic of a pre-HD age.

Couldn't care less about 2D Mario.
I know in my heart that these are surely not taking any development resources away from "real" 3D Marios, but I can't help but feel a bit ripped off whenever the latest Mario game that everyone's talking about is one of these things.

Woo, I've been waiting for this review!
Mudrunner on Switch was also blurry but the experience of it shone like a diamond, to the point where I've avoided playing Mudrunner or Snowrunner on PC since that would likely ruin the Switch version for me.
Those were already impossible Switch ports and now we have Expeditions, even more impossible. As long as they haven't completely botched the port (and it sounds like they have managed it as well as the other two) this will be excellent fun. Looking forward to this.

I agree that turn based combat seems like a weird fit to an otherwise immersive atmosphere where you want to feel connected to the world around you. Makes me think of an indie developer sidestepping the things that they're not good at. Still I love the vibe and I'll be really tempted to get this.

Why would you walk anywhere when you could build a hoverbike in seconds?
Roughly 400 hours in and I still find myself only really busting out the vehicles when the situation really calls for it. But maybe that's just me: I barely even rode the horses in this or BOTW. Something about clambering everywhere by foot or by hand really makes me feel attached to the place, and appreciate the scope.
On the other hand, it's amazing tech and this fan mod is also really impressive.

It's not like we need SwitchStars to warn us about these scam games. They are all pretty obvious. But man it does feel good to see it "shouted from the rooftops" as it were, on a successful YouTube channel, as opposed to just becoming a cynical fact of life on the eShop with everyone just silently putting up with it.

Look at those empty, empty Shibuya streets.

Yeah half a billion dollars is a lot of money. But they're leaving with over 3000 employees. This isn't some "indie dev had to buy the rights to their freedom" gambit, this is more like if Activision bought itself back from Microsoft.

I rented Blast Corps when it was still fairly new, and I couldn't stand it at all. Weird, unintuitive controls, highly stressful gameplay, and a graphical presentation which could only be described as uninspiring after the heady 3D freedom of stuff like Mario 64 and San Francisco Rush.
Later on when used cartridges were like $10 and I was better at games, I picked it up and challenged myself to 100% it. As a result I, like many, developed a fondness and respect for this game which had a huge amount of creativity and cleverness and it really puts the "action" on action-puzzler. But man, you really need to be thoroughly invested to reach that point, in my opinion. It's unfriendly to pick up and hard to master; it wasn't a looker even back when it was released; it's a game by and for game developers without much of a hook for a normie looking for a fun time.

@JohnnyMind thanks for the tip!

There's definitely a market for this, and I'm in it. I always wanted to play the CDi Zeldas for the solid gold meme-iness, but their so-bad-it's-bad gameplay reputation turns me off actually doing it. But someone taking the meme-iness and the aesthetic, and putting it into something which isn't physically painful to play, is exactly the ticket. Plus I've heard the actual lines from Morbo and the king so many times by now that something evocative yet new is preferable.

Not to imply that there are people looking to learn Japanese just to play Ys 1 on the Switch. But if you're already a weaboo there's a pretty good chance that you're interested in classic games.

While this is a non-starter for me due to the language barrier, I think it's great that they are releasing this worldwide and not just restricting it to the Japanese eShop. Plenty of Japanese speakers (and people willing to learn) outside of Japan.

@Mgalens I completely agree! I don't need original hardware to enjoy classic games, but I'd still prefer that they look and play the same way they did originally. And for sure I wish we could just buy them once-off.

Personally, zero interest in remakes. People who love or are interested in the original can play the original (or at best a remaster if that's the only way to get it on your modern console). People who have no attachment to the original can enjoy new games without needing to get some kind of nostalgia transplant.

I really appreciate this review. I saw this on the e-shop, got drawn in by the screenshots and seriously intrigued by the trailer. But really there was no way to tell whether this was a 20-minute amateur experiment in visual aesthetics or a solid and satisfying work of art. And it's exactly the kind of release which slips through the cracks and never gets reviewed. So it's great to read here that it's not just good but really good. The review itself may be going overboard a bit with its praises... But perhaps not. I think I owe it to myself to find out.

That's awesome, I was sure it would end up as Limited Run.

I could have done with one of these 5 years ago, before investing thousands of dollars into legitimate Switch games! Now my backlog is so daunting that I wouldn't want one of these if it was free!

Oh and Gary Bowser would have to be a true maniac to get himself associated with this thing. I highly doubt that he's part of it at all.

In theory, console lifespans should be getting longer and longer, as the plethora of indies and retro ports and AA games prove that there's a huge appetite for experiences which don't necessary push current technology to its limits.
However, in practice, devs are getting negligent, third party engines are deprioritizing Switch performance, and games which could have run comfortably on the PS2 or Gamecube are struggling to hold frames on the Switch. And that's for the most popular console of the last 20 years! I'd love to keep playing my Switch for another 5 years but at this point a successor is obviously needed, even though the same problem will just happen again - likely sooner and sooner if Nintendo's next console slips further and further behind the level of its contemporary Sony/Microsoft consoles.

If you like this topic (but completely different gameplay) and have a beefy enough PC I'd recommend The Talos Principle 2, which just released recently. It's not shy about putting its mouth where its money is though - it has plenty of dialogue and will make you think twice about your own opinions, regarding both the state of our world today and the fantasy of fixing it.

This reads like a really minor patch - fixing a couple of low resolution textures and adding a couple of extra display/audio options. Certainly doesn't seem like something indicative of a lazy unfinished release. Sure I wish I could get the whole thing on a cart and MGS3 at 60fps, but those were clear business decisions which don't look to be changing.

@NinjaNicky not at all; good developers can optimise a game properly and you don't feel like you're getting a substandard experience on Switch at all. It's just annoyingly common now that they don't.

@Slim_in_Blue I'd say that this is a big issue with Game Pass in general. It's why I quit it after a couple of months. You have access to everything, you don't own anything; gotta sample as much as you can before the day they delist it or you stop your subscription. Backlogs and wishlists are far too long already without a distraction like that.

What are these guys even talking about? A pre-rendered trailer for GTA 6 and an entirely hypothetical Switch 2.

Every so often I think to myself: why is Minecraft so successful? Why is it still so culturally and commercially important and (by many metrics) unsurpassed today, 13 years after its creation?
The reason is that it doesn't have unlocks, or sorting, or merging; it doesn't have cute sofas, or any sofas, or even houses at all, really. A block is a block and you make of it what you will. It's ultimate power; ultimate blank-canvas creativity, even if most of us aren't especially creative ourselves. So many games have come along over the past decade which offer more... but Minecraft's secret sauce is that it offers less.
Anyway yeah enjoy Lego Fortnite if you like.

Unless we're talking about a crazy impossible port, there is no excuse for shoddy performance. Games have been running perfectly smoothly on consoles ever since consoles have existed - you are supposed to build the game so that it runs properly on the hardware it's built for.
The Switch is much more powerful than a PS2 which runs DQ8 just fine. It has become no less powerful than it was when it launched... Games later in a console's life are supposed to perform better as developers get better and more knowledgeable about the hardware. Instead for some reason the opposite is true with the Switch - everyone seems to be starting their projects with PS5-level expectations and then just lazily pruning things back until they can say that technically "it runs". The only exceptions seem to be Nintendo themselves (obviously) and their close second-patties such as Retro Studios and Monolith Soft.

What a classic; I'd love to play this with dual analogue sticks but for the true experience I'm happy to jump back into this now with the Switch N64 pad.
Took me months to finish back on the original N64, there's essentially no way to reach the end other than 100%ing this beast, but I proudly did it with no guidebook whatsoever and then promptly switched it off in relief, happy to never touch it again.
Having save states available now is going to be a game changer. With some classic titles it can be a real moral dilemma when or if to use save states, but with Jet Force Gemini I think save states can pretty much add two points to the review score.

Cats getting married? Now I've seen everything. Too bad they don't go the realistic route of just letting you get busy with every warm body you come across.

What a name. Gamemill. Pretty much tells you all you need to know.
Reminds me of that other purveyor of eShop crapware, InstaMarketingAndGame.

And the little building out the back of Lon Lon ranch, a 10 minute walk away from anything else. And the way the river at the bottom of the gorge at Gerudo Valley will wash you away to Lake Hylia. And the magic carpet guy in the haunted wasteland.
Man I think it's time to play OOT again.

For me it was the places which were off the critical path and able to be overlooked. The back alley in Hyrule Town is definitely one, but there's also that one puzzle room in Dodongo's Cavern (a child Link temple) that you can only get to if you go back as Adult link and have the scarecrow song and can figure out exactly where to play it.
Also the diving pool next to Lake Hylia, with its caged shark. Technically the pool has a purpose but it always felt as though there was more to it than met the eye...

I wonder how you initiate the trial chambers. Reminds me of the Vault Hunters mod; I suspect it will put you into a different dimension as opposed to anything which actually exists within the overworld.