Ogbert

I can accept the lumpen sculpt given the size and toy-first nature of these. But that box is dumb and the price is ridiculous.

Also…why Pauline? Because of Bananza? Ok it’s nice to see Pauline getting her time in the spotlight but we all know if this was Cow nobody would be questioning anything about it.

There’s enough new racers in World they could have just done a new series or two. Just throw in a costume version or two of the old racers so it’s not all weird enemies and you’re good to go!

The character style is borderline Funko Pop bad.

This one has been on my list of retro games I want to play someday for a while. But it’s harder to get hold of GC games for an affordable price and I don’t have the setup for my GC at the moment anyway. So I’ve been going back through DS and PSP games I missed instead.

@ImpromptuR the ‘world’ in the title is referring to the in-game open world though, not the real world we all live in.

I’ll be upgrading my subscription just for this game! Gives me hope for a Doshin the Giant and Kururin Squash release too.

I do want Nintendo to keep doing more smaller, experimental games again…. But this one just lacks the classic Nintendo character and characters.

I missed the event as was busy that weekend and apparently that was it so I don’t get another chance to give it a go.

Reception seems positive but I really don’t care for mouse controls and can’t see myself sat there rubbing joy cons on my legs for this one. Maybe if it was more visually exciting I’d let myself be taken in but as it stands I’m not fussed.

I hope it does well though!

Yeah the main character is quite unappealing and if I’m honest the particles were getting to be a bit much visually for me.

But I like a puzzle adventure so I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

I was interested but the fact that it’s just kinda stolen the character design of Snipperclips (the faces and shoes) has put me right off. If it were the same artist that’d be fine but from what I have found online it’s not. Which is a shame as the rest of the art is nice and original enough.

Pretty adorable! Honestly if I could buy just a question, brick and music block I would for my desk.

Very cute! Kids will love it and the wooden pieces being amiibo is a really nice touch.

Is This Seat Taken was the most interesting title for me. But those characters’ faces and shoes look so much like the Snipperclips characters I had to see if it was the same artist and it’s not, they’ve just copied their style which has sort of tainted it for me a bit.

I completed Pokemon Picross without paying anything. I remember it just had an energy system so I just played a few puzzles and when that ran out I just switched to Pokemon Shuffle, then Pokemon Rumble World then Nintendo Badge Arcade!

Bit of a click bait title.

Nintendo aren't refusing to work with them they're saying they just need to sort legal stuff out first and there isn't time to get that through this year. Sucks but it's nothing sinister or mean spirited from Nintendo. And we don't know their plans going forward, for all we know they could be arranging extra support for the next year?

Looks at backlog...

Yeah I don't need this.

Doesn't visually look anything like Borderlands to me? It's much more colourful and it's cell shaded, it looks more Hi-Fi Rush in terms of palette and rendering to me. Though with a much saturday-morning adventure cartoon, setting and tone.

The rogue-like element has me out, I've tried enough and I can't get into them, bar Balatro. But I like what they're doing in every other aspect so I hope this is a success for them!

Excited for this one! Only thing that could sell me on it more is if it had the Robobots in it!

Oooh Indie Directs are either really good or really samey, lets hope this is a good one!

Pretty basic design, if that's all a collab takes I'd rather a Pokémon or Animal Crossing one. But each to their own!

So many fun characters Nintendo just left behind!

The 3DS one with Miis was fun, but I'd love to see this cast return in a new entry. It really doesn't need to be anything groundbreaking or huge, I'd take a smaller download title that was basically the same as before but HD. I mean let's be honest it won't sell amazingly well, but I think it could sell enough if made on a sensible budget.

Vanquish Remastered would be a dream come true!

It's a lovely map. The only thing I'd maybe ask for, though also this maybe be confusing, would be a way to slice through the map and see the tunnels I've dug (but keep the secrets hidden) like in the indie game "I Am Dead", on on a 3D printer preview.

All three sat on my wish-list until I finish Banaza and a couple other smaller games.

I've played Patapon 1 & 2 back on the PSP but I'm definitely wanting to go back to them. A 2D, side-scrolling, turn-based, rhythm, RPG? It's such a unique concept and the only other game I've seen try to match it is Ratatan, made by the remnants of the original Patapon team! I miss the days of this Sony.

Time flies also looks wonderfully odd and unique, and Monument Valley is just a no-brainer. It's a great trio of selects this month!

This is lovely box art, thought I wonder why not a reversible cover?

Sadly just played through it recently so no reason to buy the physical, but I did pre-order the design works.

It's a lovely game, really clever. I've only done the second layer and don't know if I'll do the third (got some of it already so maybe) but even just knowing it's there is really cool.

I hope we get another article with Cheep Cheep and Goomba's voice actors confirmed soon so we can all form para-social relationships with them too!

Honestly, a little bit yeah (Though Andor s2 and Skeleton Crew have reignited the franchise for me), but mostly it's because I just don't want another big open world Ubisoft game.

I really just want a nice tightly scripted, linear story at the moment. In the veins of Uncharted and the like, I feel like we're missing them at the moment. And honestly Star Wars feels a perfect fit for that sort of thing.

I'm struggling to see how touchscreen controls would cause frustration here that they didn't cause on the original platform?

I really hope they patch them in with the DLC.

I think it took a little bit to get going for me, but once it did it's an absolute blast!

My only criticism...I don't like Pauline. I might be in the minority there but she's constantly talking at DK, commenting on things, I really want to turn her dialog off. And she doesn't really add anything to the gameplay, DK whistled the barriers away before she sung them away and DK could shout the words (or ape noises) in multiplayer mode. Maybe she's essential to the story but...I ain't here for that. DK getting his bananas back is enough story for me.

The visuals are stunning though and the enemy designs are some of the most unique and weird things I've seen for some time, I love them! It's all just a little bit silly, and that's great.

NA is hard to read but the illustration is very cool. It’s the winner for me even though it’s far from perfect.

EU could have been better if they’d maybe just removed the banner and had just the clearer logo, larger on a black background. I don’t think you need characters and gameplay to set the tone (look at the NA and EU covers for Heavy Rain for a perfect example) and a logo like that on a clearer background would have drawn me in for sure.

I completely forgot this was a thing!

@Orwellian87 How do you feel about the artists, animators and programmers who have worked on these characters and come and gone over the years?

Good voice acting is important, and certainly a real-life human voice actor. But we seem obsessed with it, like they are more important than anyone else? I kinda get it, it's the most tangibly human connection in the whole thing, the art, the animation these are made by a human hand but we don't witness the human behind it but the VO we hear their own voice, so the para-social connection is just that bit easier. But games are made by a team and members of that team come and go and none of them get a 'proper send off', not publicly at least, so why do the voice actors deserve it more?

@SillyG I guess when you have a physical release planned it’s a lot harder and probably very expensive to move deadlines around. You’ll have to put factories on hold for which they’ll want compensation and you’ll need to store what is done. Those things are very pricey.

Easier for digital releases though it still could cost a lot and mess up marketing campaigns and strategies. And as much as it sucks those sort of things can make or break a game these days.

@SillyG Not to defend it, but it takes a while to get the game printed and distributed, so the patch was likely being developed as that happened and didn't exist until after the fact.

This is a weird one, I was curious about it, but I might wait until it's on sale and wait patiently for a "PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+" port to Switch 2. I don't know why the lesser sequel is on Switch but the most perfect version of Pac-Man ever made is still stuck on my PS3?

@Suketoudara That was one of them.
A product of it's time! Maybe in another 20 years we'll look back at the current reboot and cringe at some of the things in that.

Oooh very excited! I loved Danger Mouse growing up but re-watching the originals was a bit shocking, quite a lot of problematic stuff. So when they rebooted it, and the reboot was actually really good I was very pleased!

This is definitely based on the reboot (c'mon NL!), and that's no bad thing! 15 levels doesn't sound much but that depends on the length and quality of the levels really.

@Zeebor15 BoxBoy, Pushmo/Pullblox and Dillon's Rolling all did well as eShop series though, they all got multiple sequels and some physical releases and amiibo.

@Old-Red Not meant to be aggressive, but it was steeped in sarcasm for the first part. But to be frank, I did not like your initial tone and the implication that this was an easy, simple and obvious oversight on the experienced and praised game designer's part. Coming from someone who, from the context of their message, clearly has no idea how making games or licensing works.

You can't make a game under a licensed IP and when that IP is taken away for whatever reason "just patch" it to a different game entirely. For one there are so many legalities involved in making licensed products and who owns what, it's not necessarily just Bithell's thing to do with as he pleases, it will be in part owned by the IP holder and each contract is different, there is no standardisation in any of this.

Secondly, for game preservation and customers who bought the game, you can't just completely overhaul the theme because the IP rights to keep selling are gone. Imagine if you bought a TMNT brawler, excited to play as your favourite turtles and then a week later suddenly the game is now anime cat-women instead of turtles and Shredder has been replaced with a robot Lion and it's now called "Big Cat Battle Girls" or something. You'd be upset because that's not what you bought if not very confused as to what this game you didn't buy was and where your TMNT game went. That's an insane thing to do to a customer and you're just wiping the existing of your previous game off the face of the planet. Why would you do that?

Lastly, even if you were legally ok to do it and didn't give a damn about your existing player-base, it's not a small job. Mike Tyson's Punch Out was made in 1987, 4 decades ago, it's a much simpler game to edit and was far less themed around the licence and licenses were very different as video games were very new. Tyson was just one character in the game. JWH is a much more complicated game built on the lore and characters of the film franchise. You'd have to rewrite the entire story, change all the locations and characters, adjust UI themes and graphics and probably change a bunch of the fighting as it was specifically built around the fights in the films. You talk as if you can just change the colour of his hair and suit, call him 'Steve Wick' and be done, which to anyone who knows the slightest thing about game dev, is incredibly ignorant. You also don't know if that IP will be taken away, so why do all that extra work on a 'just in case' basis?

So I apologise if it came off aggressive. Aggression was not my intention. But your initial post was incredibly rude and ignorant and I was trying to point that out.

What Bithell may be able to do, depending on what the contract says he does and doesn't own, is use the designs and systems he created for the game to start and entirely new IP game in a similar vein. If that's what he even wants to do. But it's basically making a new game from scratch, and then publishing and marketing said game. None of it is easy.

@Old-Red Yes because that is definitely how that works with licences and not at all a huge chunk of work. Also not something that would at all upset everyone that bought the John Wick themed game, for it to now suddenly be a completely different theme.

Hopefully Bithell has the rights to the gameplay mechanics and is able to make his own IP based on it later with updates and improvements.

@LikelySatan honestly I just hit ‘Ignore’ and moved on. Their either trolling or actually that boring a person and I don’t have time for either.

Production is a full time job there is no way he was also working on Mario too.

@demiurgesays except the future ones are all machines and they are either from the future or a parallel timeline. Either way they somehow became full robot and swapped eyes for LED displays and necks for springs and such.

I think the whole game would have been better just leaning into the prehistoric Pokémon, which is already a thing with fossils.

Really don’t care for the idea of teen Mario cast. But I would like to see more costumes and maybe more characters. The Koopalings return would be welcome, as would long forgotten Para Koopa. But on that note I’m more wanting to see new costumes for those who have scant few or none at all.

Classic Cup would be very welcome. Something more to do with stickers too. I really like them!

Then, and probably most importantly, just a way to join friends when going online. If a friend is already racing, give me an option to join them, or to queue to join them. The thing that puts you in a small group of just your friends is weak.

Or if that’s all there already then please make it more obvious and give Para Biddybud some costumes!

@VeganH she was replaced and she went online and said that Platinum was crappy to her and replaced her. Lots of people got up in arms at the injustice of this. Platinum then came out and said they offered her the same amount as before and she declined, asking for more. They said no, so she said no and they hired a different actor.

The internet was enraged because how could they possibly not just give a voice actor of all people more money?? How dare they! Voice actors are apparently the only important factor in the creation of any given character.

People then found out how much she was offered and asked for, demanded she be given an ever higher six figure sum for her work. She deserved it and royalties! She made Bayonetta with her voice!! Now obviously the character designers, 3D modellers, animators, programmers etc, etc did not deserve these too because A- they hadn't bothered to learn their names and B- they weren't a voice actor they had formed a parasocial relationship with.

Some more people searched about and found how she had previously bragged about how the last Bayo game took her I think 4 weeks to record the lines for. They then pointed out at this rate the offered pay was actually very reasonable and above comparative rates for much more in demand voice actors.

People still demanded that she deserved more and royalties. Basically her 4 weeks of work should have granted her a years wage and then she should get royalties on sales and retroactive ones on the past 2 games. Also Bayonetta 3, Kamiya, Platinum and Nintendo should all, ironically rather counter-actively for their royalties plea, be boycotted. Oh and in the meantime Jennifer Hale, the replacement voice actor was getting a torrent of hate online for accepting a job offer. That voice actor did not deserve the wage or royalties because...reasons?

Then after the two sides fought for a while others slowly uncovered that she had said some really heinous stuff on social media and proudly supported some, let's say questionable and very right-wing groups. I believe it also came out that she had done this sort of thing in the past and had a rep for lying and trying to rally internet fury. Then people supporting her promptly stopped and so did her career and nobody apologised for their rude behaviour or learnt any lessons.

Some of the prehistoric ones were fun. The future ones were stupid though. Oh so they all evolve to be machines instead of organic beings? I know there are more machine-like Pokémon like Magnemite and Varoom but they all felt more organic than the Paradox Pokémon. Future Delibird’s head was on a spring and kept popping off!? Plus they all become made entirely of metal but none of them are Steel type as a result? It was all really poorly thought out.

@HalBailman good point on Prime 4 I was also forgetting that!

I mostly played Arms without the motion controls, they did allow you to finesse the movement, but you didn’t really need it. But equally I can see how it’s not everyone’s thing.

Honestly I don't think it's that surprising for the Japanese charts. UK yeah I'd be very surprised, but Japan appreciates the good stuff.

@WhiteTrashGuy Ok, you are entitled to buy digital only and wait for a sale. that's fine.

I'm just saying key card is an option that gives you a bit more flexibility than a digital download. You don't have to choose it, but they are an option and that's all they are.

People are loosing their heads over this getting upset that they even exist because they want a fourth option that isn't available, never will be and wouldn't be even if this option wasn't there. It's just silly.

@Rayquaza2510 Wow you really don't understand at all? My friend, we are not saying the same thing, not even close. It's ok that you don't understand what I'm saying, you're clearly not going to. Good luck...in... everything I guess.

@ktej75 All consoles have a storage problem, it's very expensive and the reality is the average consumer probably wont fill it, so why waste money and resources there?

But equally I'd say a bit part of the issue is a lot of these games have overly bloated file sizes because taking the time once the game is made to optimise and reduce the size is a thing not many studios are afforded the time to do. Nintendo do it but that's likely out of necessity from having to work on more limited systems.