Nitwit13

And I probably definitely lingered on the eshop much longer than I needed to because of that tune.

This just makes me really frustrated that Nintendo has done nothing with music for the Switch menus.

@Mr-Fuggles777 I've got to agree with you there. I DID finish the game... But I really don't get all the unanimous praise it gets. I mean - don't get me wrong - it is a good game. I just didn't really think it was a 10 out of 10. I mean, the loading times alone are a bit of a downer on the game... But like you said, the loot to find was made less exciting by the fact that it would break, so I'd end up not even using most of it, saving it for when I really might need it. Anyway, it was a good game but not flawless and 10 out of 10. I tend to wonder if it was not branded a Zelda game if it would have gotten as high of reviews.

@Heavyarms55 However, what you're talking about is your individual preference. A shop like this was able to stay in business so long because it still had demand. It's not like it was just sitting there with two customers for years...

...It's kind of like how every year or so some silly article pops up like, "Guess who's still using pagers in 20XX!" While the vast majority of the population doesn't using pagers/beepers anymore, there are still customers out there who are willing to pay for the service and so the business still exists. While most people may be streaming video and buying digital copies of games, there must have been enough business right up through 2020 to remain open.

So I get your overall point, that you think it's too expensive to use a physical rental service today when compared to the cost of streaming/digital services - Blockbuster tried adapting it's business model to compete with the emerging Netflix at the time, and for some reason failed. Other video rental chains have continued to succeed for some reason.

There was a local video shop near my town in Australia that only closed last year - I think because the owners just wanted to retire. Their secret to success was that they never got rid of anything. So that meant that while perhaps a film went out of demand for 10 years or so, people started coming back looking for obscure films from 20 or 30 years ago that is just not available on streaming services. It's like how vinyl records have come back in vogue and have outsold CDs in 2019.

I was one of the people that used to hire RPGs like Final Fantasy VI (III) and Earthbound from the video shop and play them for the few days I had them. When I'd hire them again, sometimes my save game would still be there; sometimes they would have been overwritten.

Anyway, enough from me for now!

I'm not sure if it's so much Australia's infrastructure or "botched" National Broadband Network... I was getting from the article that part of the issue is where the servers are located. So yeah, certain regional parts of Australia may not have the infrastructure yet, but a lot of more metropolitan/suburban areas are just fine. If you do ping tests to Sydney servers you're getting 10ms. If you're pinging to California, U.S. it's like 200-300ms, and the download/upload speeds are completely restricted.

When I play games with friends in Alaska, their internet infrastructure is nowhere near what New South Wales is, but because all the multiplayer servers are a lot closer to them geographically, they usually get a lot less lag and a lot more stable internet connection. I am constantly lagging or dropping out of games because I'm connected to those servers.

So perhaps if these companies were to pay to run an Australian server somewhere on the continent, the performance would be just fine.

@Travisemo007 Personally I was hoping for OG OG Turtles (i.e. the comics) as that is what I am a fan of, though I’ve never played SMITE. However I do like how the faces in the photo do look more like the TMNT toys than the cartoon; they've got that fierce look on their faces while still having the cartoon colours.

People know that the NES was originally intended to connect to the "internet," right? At least that's my understanding of what that unused port on the bottom of the console was. I believe original concepts for it were for people to check stocks, sport scores, and order a pizza - which is more fitting with the name Family Computer (Famicom).

@Silly_G I got my copy in Australia and it was already on 1.0.1 as well.

I got the game yesterday and played Mario 64 for an hour. Has anyone else noticed the tree bug? When climbing trees you can see Mario’s model as if there was no tree (i.e. theres no tree model blocking Mario when he’s behind). It doesn’t seem to be an issue when climbing poles.

I think the completion verb depends on the genre. I used to use “beat” a lot in NES and SNES days when games were made more to stop you from completing them through challenge. Today I would say I beat a game if it was roguelike or some other platformer but the walking simulators, Metroidvanias, and CJRPGs I would say I finished. Never “one hundred percented it.”

@KingBowser86 That's exactly what I was going to say! They missed a golden Nintendo reference there.

Did I miss something? Why is Bandai dealing with Nintendo merchandise?

@retro_player_77 To be honest I don’t think there has ever been a time when people could properly protect their own work. Tetris is a prime example but so are (probably) more than half of Edison’s “inventions.”

Also the games industry currently generates more revenue than the film and music industry combined. I don’t think it’s dying any time soon.

I will check this out, because I prefer to read things physically, and it's easier and nicer to flip back through previous issues too. Of course, I would imagine Nintendo could make a few dollars if they were to publish a Nintendo Power collected book. I would certainly buy one!

@MysteryCupofJoe I had the SNES one. It was a black boxy type of cartridge. I don't remember any mode 7 moments though... Granted, I think I could only get to level 3 or 4.

@nessisonett I also use DuckDuckGo but I have never seen any of the ads you're talking about. I do see a variety of other ads, some of which can be tied towards things I've seen or looked at. I don't think Google ads are purely driven by what you've searched, but by what cookies certain websites are placing on your computer. As so many websites are powered by Google or Amazon servers, I think they place cookies when you visit the websites and then other websites check those cookies as well, and they start creating a web of connection between all sorts of websites, and then the ad service basically references those things to target ads. That's my understanding of how it works anyway.

But WHY does Square keep refusing to release Final Fantasy Tactics on ANYTHING?

@OorWullie Don't know how old you are, but in my day (NES days) it was pretty standard practice to sit around and watch people play games, because there were so many great games that were not simultaneous multiplayer. Super Mario Bros. as an obvious example (as two player was still waiting turns); Mega Man, TMNT, Castlevania, as a few more. When player one got a game over, you'd hand the controller over. In the SNES or Gamecube days I used to show off games that friends had never seen or played, and they'd like to.

I know this is different to the YouTube era of watching videos, but in so many ways, it's kind of similar to sitting and watching a friend play through a game as you get a sense of it. Or in those old days, often the case was that you could only get so far in a game, but someone else could beat the game. Everyone would freak out when someone finally beat it. Did no one else ever sit and watch their parent or an older sibling play a game because you were just no good?

This is why I find GameCenter CX so appealing. It really is just sitting and watching someone play through a game, someone who really isn't that good at games, but watching someone persevere and struggle through an old NES game is fun. Especially because these days, most of us would never persist on a game that we feel stuck on. Maybe 15 minutes of dying over and over on the same level and having to start at the beginning and we'd probably give up. The Kacho once spent something like 10 hours on a single level and eventually succeeded. I mean... You didn't have to watch all 10 hours of that - it was edited.

Aside from that, my main reason for watching videos of newer games today is because I just don't have the time to play every game I'm interested in. So sometimes it is just easier and faster to watch a quick playthrough of a game to get the story or sense of how it worked.

@sanderev That's true, except when MIDI is converted to WAV files for CD audio it takes up the same amount of memory as any other audio. If you download Gameboy soundfiles it's only 100kb or so. If you downloaded them all as compressed mp3 files that soundtrack soars to 1.2GB!

I imagine heaps of Gameboy games have over two hours of music, especially if it takes you 10 hours or more to complete. Even if it is a short song, if they loop it twice that'll take up time. Super Mario Land can easily be stretched to 35 minute soundtrack if you loop each song to 3:00.

Another thing to factor in is that even though a CD can hold 80 minutes of audio, if they had 85 minutes of music, they'd split that across two CDs as roughly 42.5 minutes per CD. So just because there are four discs doesn't mean each one is full to capacity.

However, looking at Zophar's domain, it appears that there are 288 tracks for the original Gameboy title. So if you played each one for only 30 seconds, that would still be over 140 minutes of music which would just fit on two CDs. https://www.zophar.net/music/gameboy-gbs/legend-of-zelda-the-links-awakening

@Swizze They may LOOK bland, but what I prefer about them are the two concave buttons for Y and X that they have, as opposed to the European ones being all convex. I know it might be a very slight difference, but for some reason while I prefer the colours to the European/Australian controller, there's just something about the buttons that make them feel just a bit lower quality than the North American ones. Granted, I'm probably biased because I grew up using the North American ones.

@nessisonett I remember having problems with the original Brain Training speaking the colours and it not recognising what I was saying.

I also read once that with that design above Nintendo was looking to make the controllers infrared wireless.

@JorrieQPO I thought Commandos was a real-time strategy/tactical. What this game play style reminds me of - from what I've seen in the trailer - is a little known game series Combat Mission that I think uses a system called We-Go. You plan your moves and what each unit is doing and then they're executed at the same time as the enemy. What made Combat Missions brilliant was that it was like you were issuing orders, but if something unexpected popped up - say a unit running into a hidden machine gun nest -they would change plans to take cover or run with fear. You then were given another phase to adjust new orders. This one looks similar and I'd love to see how it goes, because I think that style of game-play is under-utilised.

It looks like I'm in a minority in thinking that the controller actually looks practical and useful to me. My first inclination on seeing it was that it looked awkward, but as I read the article and saw that it had a touch scroll, I was intrigued. Having used the Apple Magic Mouse on the Mac, it's one of the main things I miss since I've since abandoned Apple for Windows. That ability to inertia scroll through webpages was great. Yes, I have a mouse with a frictionless scroll wheel, but it still does not work as well as just flicking my finger on a touch mouse. Also, the D-pad while seeming silly at first, looks like it would actually be an intuitive use thumb buttons. That same gaming mouse I have has two buttons for the thumbs, then two for my index finger, but I always have to think a second which button I'm feeling for (or looking). A d-pad actually seems straight forward in feeling up, down, left, right. I probably wouldn't use the mouse for gaming, but I think it'd come in handy for working on the computer. But, it seems, that's just me.

Or you can check them out from the label themselves at GameChops: http://gamechops.com/zelda-and-chill/ They suggest buying from iTunes as the best way to support the artists.

Was anyone else more interested in seeing The Kacho (Arino) in that video? I'm assuming it was him with his comedy duo, because he wasn't wearing his normal uniform, but it would have made more sense if he was there as The Kacho.

@Anti-Matter I found it really difficult to find legitimate media products in Indonesia other than music CDs. If you wanted to buy a legit film, it was usually only on VCD, and that was a select few films in a larger shop (and of course, VCD is a vastly inferior product, with a pixelated film split across two discs). Otherwise you go into the huge DVD shop that sells almost exclusively pirated DVDs. Actually, I do remember a few shops selling proper retail DVD films, but they would be something upward of 1 juta rupiah! With video games, I don't think I EVER found a place where you could buy proper retail video games. This was in Bandung; I don't know what Surabaya is like.

@amiiboacid Exactly my thoughts. That's what makes one a minority, and also why the majority population says things like, "Pish posh! Nobody's offended at this!" It's easy to say it's just a bit of fun when you are the power holder.

@LemonSlice I bought the recent Wings game for PC and got over it pretty quick. The repetition of the levels got really mundane... That was actually my first concern in starting to read this review, that there were three mission types spread over 100 levels; but the review makes it sound like it has a bit of variety. In the new Wings, every single dogfight starts you and the enemy in the exact same spots.

So many, so many... I lived for those Worlds of Power books when I was in years 3 through 6. I still have all the ones I bought through Scholastic book orders: Mega Man 2, Castlevania II, Wizards & Warriors, Blaster Master (which was actually retconned into later Blaster Master games), and Ninja Gaiden. I really like the You Are Now Earthbound: Unofficial Earthbound Guidebook by Dan Moore as well as the Mother 3 handbook. Great illustrations. I really like the art in I Am 8-bit (9780811853194). The Legend of Zelda series manga by Akira Himekawa were pretty fun. Probably my FAVOURITE book so far though, is the Bitmap Books' Super Nintendo Entertainment System Visual Compendium, recently published (9780995658622). It is amazingly well put together and amazing value for money, considering for its price you can get a massive hardback book in a thick slip-case with a lenticular (animated) cover, four ribbon bookmarks, and hundreds of pages of great screenshots, art, and interviews from the SNES era. I've never seen a video game book crafted so well. The NES one is a very close second.

ALL of the Switch software titles take up way more than they probably need to. To me, the ultimate example is the recently released Arcade Archives Mario Bros. It is a software which in code takes up less than 36,000 bytes of information, but for some reason the Switch version needs 100 million bytes (100,000,000b, or 100mb)! Granted, some of that is going to be the emulation software, but even so the MAME emulator software is only around 50,000kb.