Nico07

I love the original, but I have to go with the 3DS version for playability, framerate, and even extra 3D option. Hopefully we see a remaster sometime on the Switch 2. That said, I'm really looking forward to the Analogue 3D release next month so I can play the original in it's sharp original goodness.

I get it, Splatoon (3) can be frustrating. It's bad when your team just can't get a win sticking with the same team or swapping teams in between matches. I've gone as many as ten games without a win, other days I get a win on the first match. And then when people disconnect sometimes toward the end of the match it kicks everyone to lobby. I feel Nintendo should look into giving everyone else a few points for sticking it out and not dropping like their rage-quitting teammate. Or maybe add an Overwatch 2 feature of congratulating teammates and the opposing team for playing well. A little extra XP to complete our season rewards wouldn't hurt anyone.

That said, most of us walk or laugh it off. This guy crossed the line when he took it up to level 11 threatening the developers and others. A year in jail could be a fitting punishment to dissuade others, but if anything this guy needs some counseling. This event highlights the reality of mental health issues out there. Just a reminder to treat people with respect online.

Been waiting on this one. Even if it hits GamePass, I'd love to pickup physical for Switch to support the devs.

I could see them adding GameCube to Nintendo Switch Online this year as a fairly good stopgap measure.

But IF Switch 2 isn't coming this year, then we would need some type of big release to come later this year. While I would love to see nearly everything listed in this article, I am not sure it would help Nintendo's bottom line that much. Though I'm sure a few remasters are what they will likely do. A Nintendo 64 mini would be my pipe dream, though I think it's a little beyond current microcomputer hardware pricing for it to be profitable enough for Nintendo.

I played a few visual novels back in the day on DS, but this one never caught my attention. After playing the demo, I was hooked. The visuals are well done. The demo looked great (better than screenshots in the eShop), and the actual game looks even sharper. The screenshot at the top of this article is a bit blurry and I feel doesn't fully represent how good this game looks. With games like Ghost Trick getting remastered as well, it feels like this could be the start of a DS revival of some sort (which isn't a bad thing). Personally I'd love to see more of these games and even some Gamecube titles make their way to Switch or Switch 2.
If you have a passing interest in this game try the demo, this game has been beautifully remade.

I'm not a game developer but a tech and I was laid off late last year from a company that has generally been able to ride out the recession and other economic factors. I feel the economy has been rough on a lot of different markets. For gaming, I wonder how much things like Game Pass have helped or hurt the market in general. I guess time will tell.

For the record "The Wilds" was Chapter 4 Season 3 (from June of 2023) . Fortnite has evolved and is a platform at this point, almost like an engine where you can make whatever you want. Like Minecraft before it, I hopped on the bandwagon a little late (for Minecraft in 2014, and Fortnite Dec. 2020). From the outside, both games looked juvenile and uninteresting. In the case of Fortnite, I remember thinking with the Marvel Season, "Why would Iron Man carry around and shoot people with guns, Call of Duty style?" But in reality, it's a more lighthearted game that focuses more on modern-day memes for the fun of it. The most recent update incorporates more game modes than before with a music mode (developed by the studio Harmonix), a Rocket League racing mode, and a LEGO exploration mode. That's not to mention the many, many, many other community-built creations such as "Teddy" (6890-1483-5306) a mode where survivors try to outwit and escape a hunter by solving a few simple puzzles. For me playing Fortnite with my college-age son has been a way to stay in touch and have some fun in a 20-minute or so match.

I would expect him to say nothing less, even if the rumors were completely true. Nintendo has a commitment to sell the current inventory of Switch consoles through the holiday season, so they would be hurting themselves if they were to confirm or announce a successor before next February or later. My guess is that it would likely be announced around E3 season (June-July) and release around September 2024. The Switch is old tech at this point, it's no secret Nintendo is prepping a new console.
Nintendo historically has released a new home console every 5-6 years. Here we are nearing year 7 with no news, so technically they can do what they want, but next year is likely the year.

@hiptanaka I feel he was talking more in 2014 about how they wanted to streamline their software onto one platform. Which they have largely done with the Switch. In 2014 they had the Wii U and the 3DS and he talked about how it split their developer base between platforms, creating longer gaps between game releases on the multiple platforms. I think Nintendo has been largely successful on that front since the 3DS is now gone and we see it's games fill in the Switch release schedule giving us new Nintendo-developed games nearly every month.

While backward compatibility isn't absolutely necessary it does help during the transition period when few games are available. Being able to play older games in either higher framerates or with higher resolutions is a nice addition, and in some cases even higher-resolution texture packs. So I would think Nintendo if feasible and not too costly will be trying to implement it. In the past with Nintendo and even with PS2>PS3>PS4 there has always been issue with backwards compatibility generally because of switching over to an entirely different type of processor. With Switch this is more of an iteration jump so there really shouldn't be that much of a change that doesn't allow older processes to run. Granted unless you are running on the exact hardware there is always the possibility of bugs such as developers writing games to use resources differently than most, so timings in some games could be off, but again in some instances, it shouldn't take more than a developer releasing a patch to address these issues. So in conclusion I would speculate that backwards compatibility will likely happen as it technically shouldn't be that difficult and allows 100+ million user base to transition without needing to keep their old hardware.

@calbeau She-Ra got a successful new entry with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. So I'd agree that He-Man does deserve more attention though. I think it's just a you have to be a certain age to recognize type of series currently, which is sad.

Voted X-Men, but honestly why is there no "all of the above" option?

Here Team Money, you've earned this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-P2qL3qkzk

@WaveBoy The art style is the exact same as the modern Mickey Mouse and Friends cartoon. My kids enjoy watching it. The gameplay from everything I've seen seems to remind me more of Runbow than anything else. Will probably be grabbing it here soonish.

@antdickens I agree the nuanced controls in X were better. I think the meme could have been the other way around as F-Zero GX is the shinny more visually impressive game, whereas X is by many comparisons the better game. Still I went with the masses and voted GX as the arcade-style gameplay is just what I remember in recent memory, and maybe that is because the Wii U port was so bad on it's controls. Both in my opinion deserve remasters.

I wasn't going to update but then went ahead and used one of my vouchers for a digital copy. It then auto-updated as part of the purchase unfortunately.

@duffmmann https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_case

@duffmmann Agreed, and again another athlete that was featured in 2K19.

Kobe was a great baller since his rookie days even starring in his own games on the N64 and Gamecube. I was lucky enough to get a courtside seat and watch him play his last game in Utah against the Jazz before he retired that same season (March 28, 2016). Regardless of his offenses and personal life, he brought a lot to the game. He's been featured twice (2021 and 2024) on NBA2K covers since his death, and while that's great, a safe bet, (a controversial take here) but it's also a sign of the lack of role model NBA players today.

Too bad, hopefully all of the developers will make their way to other studios. I grabbed both games on the 3DS before it closed shop, have yet to play them. But I'm sure I'll enjoy them. Thanks for the future memories I suppose.

I like the look of the text in this port. The PC version has always looked off with it's super sharp and small text. The game is still up on PlayAsia for those interested with code "ninwire" taking 5% off. Shipping over $100 is still free. Debating grabbing this and Fatal Frame as I'd really prefer a physical version over an eventual 10-20% off sale for the digital versions.

What's with the whole page ads after switching to a paid version?

Seems it may already be down. Trying to access the 3DS eShop I'm greeted with a message that the "007-5503 Nintendo eShop is currently undergoing maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please try again later. To learn more about maintenance, visit support.nintendo.com"

Maybe they were writing in German. "Die" simply means "The", so Die Nintendo literally just means "The Nintendo".

Bring them all over. Though my preference would be the Kongs starting with Funky, Diddy, and even Dixie. Hopefully with the inclusion of more characters we can also get another battle arena. Block Fort 64 anyone?

Collectors Edition is nice but I'll likely keep my GCU preorder from back in the day.

@Anti-Matter I think he was referring to everyone being on their phones instead of interacting with each other, such as this line.

@Waluigi451 I always thought it was strange that Nintendo from the beginning stated they didn't want to ever produce a title that was amiibo exclusive. Personally I think it would have been cool to have a Nintendo adventure, maybe even a Street Pass style game, where you play as your physical amiibo character through some sort of mini adventure.

Nice bonuses for all of the (many)...(complete collection of) Fire Emblem amiibo I own.

As much as I love the Gamecube controller this looks cool and much more comfortable specifically for playing games on the Game Boy Player (for GBA and GB). Will have to pick one up.

@dimi Some Super Nintendo games were $70 or $80 at retail back in the day, many NES games were $60. Video game prices in general haven't inflated much over the years until recently with DLC and season passes making up the difference. It wasn't until Sony's push with the PS5 that games are starting to go to a $70 MSRP.

Just disappointed I didn't realize until last week (when it was too late) that this catalog was ending, and so quickly. I ended at 89 and will fall short of the dab emote, but oh well.
Note to all those wanting to easily complete their catalog next season. It doesn't mention in-game but does in the Nintendo Switch Online app that you get 7500 points for your first win each day. It takes 9500 to level each time, so playing to at least one win each day will net you the most points for the least effort. After that, it's 1400 points for each win and 800 points for each loss. With this season being two days short of three months (82 days), others will likely be the same. You'll need 950,000 points for level 100. 615,000 or nearly level 65 (82 days at 7500 pts for a win) of which you can get by simply winning a match each day, not counting any other points you'll get playing any other match or mode. So just a heads up for those looking to easily complete their catalogs next time around with the least effort.

I have fond memories of the Wii U when it launched. Despite its confusing marketing in many ways, it was more powerful than the aging PS3 and 360 competition at the time. The GPU was a bit more powerful though the CPU (IBM Tri-core "Espresso") was probably it's biggest hardware limitation. Building up to launch at E3, EA had come on stage to talk up it's "unprecedented relationship" with Nintendo. Those words would fall flat at launch when we got Mass Effect 3, while all other consoles got a trilogy for cheaper. We did get the best console iteration of NFS Most Wanted 2012, though it did come out a whole six months later in March. Criterion did an absolutely amazing job on that game. We then later heard that Crysis 3 was ready ship and ran beautifully on the console, but EA decided to pull the plug at the last minute and it never released.
The launch of the console was kind of lackluster with NintendoLand being a fun multiplayer but not very deep single player entry for those who bought the more expensive 32GB console. Mario Bros U was also a great title, and the Call of Duty Black Ops 2 on Switch was actually a great entry. Zombi U, Skylanders Giants, Batman Arkham City Armored Edition, and maybe Assasin's Creed III were all good launch titles as well.
All in all, the Wii U had a rough life with the Xbox One and PS4 launching a year later. Many games were often delayed such as Breath of the Wild, where many of it's features talked of in developer interviews were later stripped from the game as it eventually became a Switch launch title. The Sheika Slate Link carries around (Wii U Gamepad) is very telling of this.
We received Mario Kart 8 on Wii U back in May 2014, which has largely been unchanged short of a boost to 1080p 60fps on Switch, it runs at 720p 59-60fps on Wii U. It was the same for many other titles ported from Wii U to Switch. Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Captain Toad, Pikmin 3, Splatoon 1 and many others went from 720p to 1080p porting over to Switch.
Some games like all LEGO titles actually did two screen multiplayer. LEGO City Undercover was a single player back then. But playing LEGO Marvel SuperHeroes and the rest of the LEGO titles offered each player his/her own screen, one on the TV and the other the gamepad. There was even talk for a while that they were researching releasing a second GamePad as a peripheral for two player gaming in some cases. Ultimately it never happened.
Other features like some of it's quirky TV and weather apps were fun. I remember using it's video chat application to have virtual game nights while playing World of Warcraft with a friend at the time.
Miiverse was a nice attempt to have a community, but was ultimately faulted by peoples desire to draw penises on screen, something Nintendo would not have show up in their games. This same concept would only continue into Splatoon where we still have community art and questionable other content show up from time to time before it's pulled by Nintendo's monitoring team.
I still have my Wii U and it's games that I pull out and play from time to time. Like I said the Switch is really an evolution in a lot of ways of what the Wii U was to be. The biggest thing it lacks is the asynchronous gameplay of titles like Luigi's Ghost Mansion of NintendoLand. Still I would love to see Nintendo pull off a NintendoLand like experience using multiple Switches at some point.

New stages look great, but at some point we need Moray Towers readded to the selection. That stage alone is my all-time favorite. It defines the game in a lot of ways and is so iconic, it's the one they pulled from to add as a stage to Smash Ultimate.

It's still a great game. I bought the physical edition as we have four Switch consoles in our home and sharing the cart makes it easy for anyone to play. It sucks the online portion is going down, but honestly I always play locally so this news doesn't affect me. It's a fun game for up to eight players locally (or bots if needed) that I can easily recommend anyone to pickup if you just want a fun couch co-op game. The fun comes from multiple victory types. One is to hoard the max number of eggs, another cross the map aboard a slug, and the third kill the enemy queen. With a few players it gets pretty frantic especially when you are focusing on one goal only to have the other team accomplish a completely different goal and win. I recommend to pick it up physically if you'd like or wishlist it in hopes that it goes on sale on the eShop for $2 again. Again, the online component going away doesn't affect the games playability in solo or local modes (the only modes I ever played).

@Stocksy FTP has it's place, but I've fallen out with most of them. They should be called FTS (Free to Start) as most only let you play a small amount of the game before quickly asking a huge pricetag. Pokemon Go was fun enough until you reach level 37 and can't progress after that. I've fallen out with most mobile games and even a lot of these console conversions.

@Stocksy A game like this could do really well if done right. Give players a free character to start, offer other free characters randomly as you play, and then have optional paid costumes in the shop. Mario Kart Tour did this with lootboxes which isn't a great consumer friendly way of doing business. They also had crazy pricing like Diddy Kong for $40. Keep the prices low, like maybe $8 at most, and without loot boxes have players know what they are buying. So at Christmas have an Scrooge McDuck and so on. There are so many Disney characters and variants they could easily make a ton of money off of this while still offering a free or cheap base game.

@RubyCarbuncle Exactly, especially coming from GameLoft, developers of the also "free to play", Asphalt 9. That game was a blast on Switch and other platforms but has a sudden cut off at around 7 hours in where unless you pay $100 you aren't getting any further in the game causing it to initially review well. But after that point no amount of lack of mistakes keeps the rubber-banding AI from winning against your free cars.
I tried the demo for SpeedStorm and it played well, and I plan on grabbing it during it's "Summer" release (developers are really pushing this summer length with Splatoon and now this). But yeah I fully expect this game to have a similar cut off at some point where unless you buy you can't play any further. This game should be just like Fornite in offering optional characters that many choose to buy but no one needs. Mario Kart Tour was an example of how a racing game could offer (in that case terrible loot mechanics for) optional characters and be profitable. We'll see, but experience with GameLoft tells me this game should be the same as their others.

@GrailUK I just pulled out my copy last week to have another go at it. Surpringly still holds up to this day aside from the blurry visuals. Flying through the caves with the jet pack takes a lot of patience.

Nintendo could re-release Star Fox Zero on Switch without the second screen and optional gyro controls and it would sell way better than it did on Wii U. I hated playing that game as it forced you to look down at the Wii U GamePad and it's 480p screen when you have beautiful HD visuals on your TV they didn't want you to watch.

@Snatcher So true. I have a Steam Deck (as well as every Nintendo console made) and would rather play these officially on Switch despite the few steps it would take to play them on the Deck. I feel I'm not alone in preferring official means over other methods when available.

@Switch_Pro I agree and have said it several times. The way to perfect Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Battle mode would be to add Block Fort from MK64.

@Not_Soos You skipped over Mario Kart 64, but that's cool. As for Mario Kart DS it was fun online, but it had a terrible problem with "snaking" where players drift quickly left and right to get constant speed boosts. Some called it next level, but most of us called it cheating.

I gave up on Mario Kart Tour a long time ago. When a game offers $39 DLC to add Diddy Kong versus an entire game costing the same on sale, or it's DLC costing only $24.

First played these games just a few years back. Most reviews don't mention and I think many forgot that the old games let you carry over your save from the first to the second game. So if you had a buffed up warrior you could start with him if your save file was on the same platform/memory card. Missed opportunity here.

@Mr_Horizon Fortnite does a good job in my opinion for a free to play FPS genre. Free to play racers haven't really been done well yet. We'll see where the pay wall does up here. Would be nice if the paywall stayed with optional cosmetics.

Good to hear, have been waiting on this since I tried the Steam beta. This formula of free to play works great for games like Fortnite. Will be interesting to see how it works here. Games like Asphalt 9 use a free to play model but put a hard cap on progression after maybe ten hours of play. So will be interesting to see what happens here.

Would be great to see more tracks. Love the game and bought the pass. With their own deadline of releasing everything by the end of 2023, they would technically need to release new content at least every four months. In this case by the end of July, to be on track. Granted they could easily extend this, but you would think given the schedule that they would have had a good portion of the content nearly ready to release. Still would be great to see what is coming.

@Tandy255 This game sounds great. I own them all and the original (so far) is the best for story and generally just being a great game. X was a great game, but not as story-centric, at least starting out, and it's locked to the Wii U. I love Chronicles 2, but the visuals were a bit low resolution and with rumors of a Switch Pro at the time I held off in case it got a boost from new hardware. But again, really looking forward to this game.

@AlexanderDaniels True, but Nintendo themselves are the ones who setup this timeline, it wasn't impossed by anyone outside of Nintendo. Most groups if they were to commit to something like this would have maybe 40-50% of the content near ready to go when announced. It does only benefit them to drag the content on forever with most getting it by subscribing to the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack service. But personally, I still see Nintendo either releasing semi-regular updates or just missing the deadline with a strong likelihood they will just extend out development.