Pak-Man

So does this mean the Kirby we know and love is, in fact, bald? I mean he IS, technically, but it's interesting that he HAD hair and now doesn't.

I'll believe this leak because it's exactly what I want to hear!

Hopefully it's not one of those deep-dive directs where it's just, "Let's spend 30 minutes showing off our latest game, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes."

Fair! However, in the fandom's defense, it was your job to make us understand it, Sega.

I've really got to get around to finishing the first one.

I don't know about leaks, but I know that if there WERE an E3, Nintendo would have had their treehouse on the 15th.

"The time of year where we all want a Nintendo Direct, and then we don't get one, and we're really sad" is every time of year that there isn't a Nintendo Direct.

Waiting in line for a special edition you may or may not be able to get when you get to the front. They really have brought the brick and mortar experience to our homes.

@Lin If you want a challenge, the DLC is great. Some real neat variations on how the battles go down.

I don't think they can get that toothpaste back in the tube. All the big names have figured out how to get their message out there without a big in-person, and they didn't need E3 to do it. Probably saved some companies literal millions in marketing. What's the compelling reason to go back to a big stadium?

@Axecon If there was still an E3, it would be next week...

It's neat to have as a Bill and Ted collectable, I suppose, but the NES game (And I am VERY forgiving when it comes to old NES games) is really just the worst. There are moments where you can see something like a decent game shining through, but it's just bogged down by really lazy design.

I think what we have here is an underwhelming tech demo. It looks boring, but Sega is a smart enough company to not release boring. It'll be fine when it comes out. Maybe even great.

Every few years there's that E3 where you think, "I don't know what I want right now. All my favorite series have had recent drops." Those are usually great E3s because they're full of surprises.

My way-outside pick would be for them to include Panic, which was a game where you picked what button to press to navigate a sort of maze. Selecting the wrong button would send you back or trigger a funny animation. The real goal was to push all the buttons.

The Metaverse reminds me of how big companies used to do Internet in the mid-90s. You could go to Dr. Pepper Dot Com and see an ad for Dr. Pepper. No way to make money from it, nothing for visitors to do to "engage with the brand" or whatever. But they knew they had to do it because that was how they could get in on the whole Internet thing.

Just want to note that while it says there's a 32 gig cap on SD cards for 3DS, if you format a larger card to FAT-32 (There are instructions online on how to do this) it will accept much larger cards. I currently have a 64 gig card that used to live in my Switch in my 3DS and it holds a LOT of full-size retail-release games. Probably as much as you'll ever need. I hear it works with 128 if you somehow hit that ceiling.

For what it's worth, after Fourside, the Difficulty spikes kind of level out. For me at least, the rest of the game features battles that you're generally equipped to handle without much grinding.

And on the ol' Wishlist it goes!

What the heck is this and why can't I stop tapping my toes to it?

OK. Hear me out, here. Power Stone, BUT add Smash Bros' "Everyone is here" gimmick. Get a roster of about 20-30 Capcom stars, pull in a couple guest stars.

Wayforward Ninja Turtles Metroidvania? How have I never heard of this?

OMG why isn't The Witness on Switch?

There are a handful of Genres that, for better or worse, Nintendo pretty much owns. If you make a Kart racer, you're going to be measured against Mario Kart. If you make an isometric top-down adventure puzzle game, you'll be held up to Zelda, and if you make an arena brawler, you're going to be compared to Smash Bros.

Earthmotherbound 3: Endings 2

All I need to hear: TMNT: Shredder's Revenge out NOW!

So little of my time enjoying a game is spent gazing at the box art. And yet there's something about it that says, "You were late to the party on this one. You got a deal, but you weren't THERE when everyone else was playing through this gem."

Big Rifftrax fan here, and can't wait to dig into Rifftrax: The Game.

I feel like stating that Advance Wars is definitely December shows that these are educated guesses at best. Advance Wars is ready to go, pulled just a month before it shipped because of external circumstances. If a sudden outbreak of world peace were to occur, Nintendo could release it whenever they need a major release. Why wait until December? What if war is still happening in December?

RE: That hefty data need - There are instructions online that let you format SD cards bigger than 32 gigs so they will work on your 3DS. So if you've moved your switch up from an old 64 or 128 gig card, format it, pop it in your 3DS, and you will have more storage than you will ever need.

A lesser company would have called this DLC.

Anyone who hasn't really should. It's one of those games that sticks with you and makes you think, but not in the depressing way that so many of these games do. It uses humor, and uses it well.

Maximum elasticity on those bear puns in the subhead. I approve.

Seriously, this looks like my jam and I am making plans now to spend way too much time playing it.

The thing is, Origins looks really cool, but SEGA seems to want to check off all of the gamer pet peeves with this release.

They can't delist my physical copy of the Sega Genesis Classics collection!

Wow. $5 per Monster Hunter game on 3DS. Those games never clicked with me, but I'm tempted to get the set in case they ever do.

Just a little note that while the Ace Attorney Collection looks way sharper on Switch, the 3DS versions are IN 3D! Only way you'll ever be able to enjoy them in 3 dimensions.

I got all those feelies the first time around, so I'll just be ordering the standard version, which will slip into the Collector's Case that Limited Run sold me with the first one.

I don't blame the Kids These Days for taking a look at the original and seeing hot garbage, but if you were THERE, the ability to pilot your little 3D Arwing through shooting-gallery style space battles was amazing. The sound design with the big booming soundtrack and the warbly chatter noises created all kinds of "This is so COOL" feelings. The graphics certainly didn't age well, but the gameplay is still rock solid if you commit yourself to it.

Least we forget, the 3DS was fully capable of GBA emulation, but Nintendo did nothing with it after the ambassador program.

It's the post-game where everything really starts to sing. Trying to find all the thousand or so doodads by solving puzzles and running mini-missions is all kinds of fun. It reminds me of the Mario Odyssey endgame.

You know the Sega Genesis Classics collection is like $30. It may not have the bells and whistles, but it has like 46 other really cool games. Some of them come with Sonic!

I have never played a bad Star Wars game. (Although I've played only a few GREAT Star Wars games.)

So if anyone was wondering what the "Classic Characters" pack entails in a game that already has several copies of those classic characters, it gives them the look of the first Star Wars minifigs, with yellow faces and all.

OK, Nintendo. You want me to upgrade to the expansion pack? GBA is how you get me to do that.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has been keeping a big fanboy grin plastered on my face for the past week.

Other titles:

Earthbound
Actraiser
EVO: The Search for Eden
Super Mario Odyssey
Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

True Story: 999 showed me I have prosopagnosia (Face Blindness). The funny thing about it is most people who have it don't realize they have it and just think they're really bad at names.

But (Without revealing too much) there was a puzzle at some point where you have to identify characters by face, and one character was getting weirdly anxious about it, and I realized I was feeling really anxious about it too. I learned about his condition, looked up some facts online, and now I know I have it too.

I would definitely upgrade with or without BOTW2. Don't think this is the year, though. They can't go FOREVER without releasing some sort of Switch upgrade, but supply chain stuff I don't understand seems to say it's not happening soon, and it's not like Nintendo's sales are hurting.

Picked up Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 and Persona Q2 to complete my Etrian Collection. Now I'm a happy dungeon cartographer.

I have the advantage in cases like these of being older than the hills. I was there when video games were new, and I'm pretty good at framing 40-year-old games in the context they were originally presented. I can start up Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, for instance, and I can think back. "OK. This stuff is done to death now, but it was cutting-edge back in 1990. Look how innovative this feature was back then" and so on. This means for me, it's always best to start at the beginning because I have all that context, even if I wasn't playing it back in the day.

I can imagine for younger gamers, going back to the old stuff is probably painful. The games back then didn't teach you how to play or tell you what to do. The way action is represented today just wasn't there then. To them, old games are always going to be old games. There are reasons to try to push past that, of course. They're good games. We swear! But the foundations they created have been built on for 40 years, and it's hard to go back to that.