Pandaman

@Zaruboggan - Thanks for sharing your list!!

This was a short list of what I enjoyed the most, but I definitely had more games I wish I could have written about. I was limited to Switch-bound games, or games that the developers were comfortable publicly stating their intent to get it onto the switch!

@Wisps - Broadly speaking, one does not "insert" politics into media criticism, they can only EXTRACT it out of it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is pushing their own political agenda. (Please think about this.)

If anyone wants a website that exclusively reposts PR releases, by all means, go find that, and go read the sides of cereal boxes while you're at it.

Bc the goal of any media criticism, reviews, and/or discussion is not inherently entertainment. And it should never begin at the point of simply seeking agreement — at all.

@Dazman - Games are inherently expression, and they exist in the context of the world, which includes politics.

If you only want games media to exist as this anodyne, sterile concept, then you are arguing for the equivalent of a baby monitor.

OR, if you are saying that you want games media to exist, just not speak on topics you disagree with or in the ways you dislike, well... I'm sorry if I'm the first one to tell you this, but that opinion IS political too.

Five years ago ha ha ha no but seriously wait

@Clammy - that’s a good guess!

@fenlix The title is meant perennially, not at one specific award ceremony! 🙂

@Ogbert - Because the game has a simplified control scheme relative to most fighters in this genre and also stars silly cartoons - the trailer def isn’t “cozy” in the way people have genre-d the word though, sorry about that!

Felix and I got a long time with Mario Party at PAX and want to echo Alex's sentiments...the game is WAY better than you probably would expect. Particularly, the 20 player mode is FIRE.

@Yoshi3 - I played the game for around an hour, and it didn't feel like I could do literally ANYTHING at ALL and still succeed, as if the game couldn't be bothered to come up with a puzzle or allowed you to button-mash. Instead, it felt similar to a game like Portal, where it slowly teaches you how to think about your surroundings, and then you can do with that information what you will.

For me, that made every single room feel extremely exciting, because everything was teeming with potential. For a series as old as Zelda where we've all been conditioned to know exactly what everything symbolizes and does, I think this is a good thing!

@Manah This is a service scaled for vintage packs and booster boxes more so than run of the mill modern packs.

For example, say you have a $500 vintage pack that you know is “heavy”. You could spend ~$75 to get it scanned, find out if it has a $1,000 hit inside or merely a $20, then do with that information what you wish.

I'm sorry I couldn't find my 3DS charger for the last 365 days, Zion

Thanks for this write-up @Ziondood! It was nice going to the show with you!

I believe we get the gaming industry that we deserve.

In other words, the format of "The Game Awards" is the consequence of getting rid of the industry's yearly, communal summit (E3) to save money, creating (and strongly reinforcing) an industry reliant on silver bullet games that MUST succeed for the industry to stay afloat, and finally, an insecure drive to measure the cultural success of video games ONLY in relation to the other creative mediums.

Those factors and more are why we get an "award" show that must be ev-er-y-thing to ever-y-one at ALL times, way more than just the creative decisions of the host.

@NorthwestEagle - it's the name of their organization. thanks for reading!

Hi everyone! As Gavin said, feel free to read their FAQ on the terms if you wish to discuss semantics some other place:

https://www.latinxingaming.com/latinx

Debating semantics is pretty beside the point of both the article and the organization. Otherwise, I would have written it into the article. Thanks!

@AG_Awesome - thanks for the kind words! If you like these sorts of pieces, pass them along to more people so we get to write more of them!

@Cashews - obviously a typo! Will fix, thanks 🙂

@JHDK - this is a fair question and one I can seek clarification from the editors on....but only speaking on my end, the truth is simply that I try to write to clarity — and I've yet to encounter a media outlet or person who refers to the social media platform as "X" even on first reference. What do the readers think?

@veeflames - Always love when people say hello, and a lot of people did! Thanks for noticing and for reading!

As someone whose GOTY of 2021 was Inscryption (sorry Nintendo friends), there are a couple of narrative gameplay elements in the late game that I won't mention here, but I would be very curious how they would be ported to Switch!

@JasmineDragon I could afford all this stuff, I just wanted to reflect on the one year anniversary using the angle of Animal Crossing becoming a marketed phenomenon (after 15+ years of licensing silence). I just dragged myself to make the point, cause it’s more fun that way. I do hope there aren’t tons of people in my position who can’t afford their hobbies!

Also, another way to look at this is that I spent like $68ish dollars a month on AC for a year. That’s just dopey, not CRAZY.

@JasmineDragon I thought about Ultima some when writing this, but ultimately decided those games were a little closer to emulating role playing games, dungeon crawlers and D&D in its gameplay execution, and had intense specificity in the “verbs” of the game, as opposed to the straightforward simplicity of the first Zelda. I think that’s important. Ultima also had quite an elaborate story - the instruction book had pages of it! But absolutely, the basic concept of a digital representation controlled for adventure is present there too, for sure, so you’re welcome to debate it. It just was outside the scope of the article to also get into a historical timeline with qualifications. (My articles are long enough as is...)

Thanks for reading!

I was a little taken aback at the core creative decisions for the preview when I previewed it for Nintendo Life at PAX seven centuries ago in 2019 (ha), and I wonder how much different it really is now. Am also a fan of the original.

This point has come up a ton, and so I want to address it more clearly.

There is absolutely not one ounce of this article that vilifies people who do good work, any more than ANY article about ANY social issue vilifies the concept of good existing within it by talking about the bad. I apologize for people who feel what I think is valid criticism of the community on a personal level, because it's a systemic critique.

But please understand that you don't need IRL events to change your culture. Do you want to know how I know this? Because a lot of the abuse here, and in general, happened online. You can instill values over the internet. The main thing COVID impacts are new tournament standards in practice, not addressing the issues at all, which I feel was mixed.

Also please consider the important fact that it doesn't MATTER if this community has the cohesion or capabilities to fix the issues or not. You cant simply carry on with a standard that's proven in way too many cases to be violent to its members, and then claim "what can we do"? If you host an all-ages event and people are getting raped and abused at it, your event hopefully gets closed down whether or not you have the governance or money to address the issues. This standard should apply to places where Smashers congregate, including online.

Finally, I've seen plenty of revisionism about what happened that week of the outings. The community was NOT - and I cannot stress this enough - unified. Many people online suggested we wait to hear more. Many said that the evidence wasn't enough. Many said the accusors wanted attention. Many said nothing (!), because they were their friends. And many supported the victims and lifted them up. Proof of this mixed messaging is the fact that some of these high profile people still stream.

Unlike for this IP thing, everyone did not 100% band together to "SaveSmash" then, when it needed it most (even though many, many people did band together).

It's the contrast between the two events that the overall critique is about, NOT whether they have a point about Slippi, which, obviously they do. Thanks for reading.

I’ve written for a lot of outlets, and this is by FAR the one most dedicated to Nintendo.

@shazbot oh for sure, but gameplay innovation will always needs somewhere novel to exist, that’s the main point.

Star Fox, Wii Sports, Kings Quest, and FFVII couldn’t have happened without the FX chip, Wiimote, personal computer, or CD drive. All of those gameplay innovations needed hardware innovations. Ergo, if all games are headed towards a future of running on anything and everything, where will the hardware innovation come from? All experiences amazing to mediocre will be tethered to universality. Thanks for reading!

@Ajent - I will finally just say that I don't equate innovation with commercial success, or commercial success with innovation. Innovation has many different values. The idea here is that if we freeze in carbonite the concept of controller input in favor of accessibility because we think we've got it figured out, artistry will inherently stagnate.

New things like exercise rings and motion controls or whatever are not necessarily 1:1 inspirations for new ideas or "ideal" controlls either - bits and pieces are pulled from the entire tapestry of this field (and others!) to make new stuff.

Yet if new stuff isn't being floated or attempted because a) we don't have any hardware anymore or b) the hardware we do have needs to work on every platform inside a house, well, this particular snapshot in time will be a very long one. All the controllers and concepts and video games we have over 40 years are a result of hardware iteration.

Also, for what it's worth, ring fit and the other examples you gave were extremely commercially successful on an individual basis.

@Ajent - I would argue that keyboard and mouse interface works well in spite of itself, not because of itself.

But more importantly, the adaptive controller, the keyboard and mouse, the arcade stick......those are all things that have already been invented during their respective eras. What is next? We might not have much of a "next" if on-demand on any device takes hold. Thanks for reading.

The core argument in this article isn't ONLY cloud gaming as a threat to innovation. No.

The friction is when cloud gaming, or Game Pass, or any service past or present allows you to play hundreds of games on any device....in that case, you need the most common denominator interface to make it all work. You need a generic pro controller device that will run 500 different games on 500 different interfaces.

THAT^ means hardware necessarily needs sterilizing to work under so many conditions. It means you cant make hardware that does anything other than play every game that already exists, or could exist. It means iteration of hardware ceases in favor of iterating latency. That is the danger this generation faces.

Cloudpunk is good, yall

Want to add that while I’ve missed covering E3 for all of you, I’ve especially missed the headlines I get to both read and write that can only be borne from face to face interactions.

Last year, Nintendo Life went behind the scenes with Square, Natsume, Capcom, Bethesda, Sega, and more, plenty of indies, interviewed people like John Romero, and of course, sat down with Nintendo.

It may not seem it if you only tune into the big reveal, but a lot of the juicy news, quotes, and fact checking comes from journalists pressing during our PR meetings and interviews. Without it, gaming press is relegated to just a big shiny YouTube commercial + whichever outlet a company deems as basically, their PR mouthpiece.

In that way, a true E3 alternative is not really possible online, and when it can be in person again, needs something that allows for real press.

Thank you to Nintendo Life for letting me speak on this topic. Please be kind to each other in the comments.

As a professional copy editor and frequent contributor to Nintendo Life, I absolutely must voice my distaste for the incorrect usage of the apostrophe.

'80s would denote a contraction of "1980". 80's implies ownership.

CMON.

This game is a lot wackier than Oxenfree, so your mileage may vary. But as an old school point and click adventure fan, I loved this one. Underrated.

Sayanora Wild Hearts, you monsters.

@Ardisan aka me.

@BAN - Sure, I'll take that.

Wait, were we all supposed to write 10 articles about Breath of the Wild...?

...crap!

(Pokémon Go is awesome!)

Late to this, but anyone decrying popular streamers and players...that might be your opinion, but it's going to be a downright ridiculous opinion ten, twenty years from now.

The casual person agrees that, say, college athletes deserve compensation, given how much money they bring in to the institutions that surround them. People who bring in ad revenue for a video game are absolutely no different.

Did you click on this article? Are you interested in Smash Bros. and Nintendo? Guess what? These players just helped someone make money on something. For those who make content and bring in crowds, it makes absolutely no difference that the medium is something you personally think is unworthy.

Nobody is paying me to throw around a football. But if I were super good at it, they would.

@MARl0 mmm, the original language was just a generic attempt at conveying the issue, never meant as diagnostic or specific in my mind. I appreciate the insight though, thanks for the comment!

I want every reader to know that I put Fire Emblem #1 on my ballet so don’t come after ME.

@Aquamine-Amarine I didn’t write a 6,500 word profile on an independently run company because I think globalism is good.

For anyone who doesn't watch the video, wondering why Alex runs out of the store without paying at the end...?

@Jeffro - I have not played Jet Kave. Some insider baseball here, Untitled Goose Game is the only game I couldnt sync up with the publisher to get an appointment for, so I didn't have any time to give it any PAX coverage as a result. Still, now that you know how the sausage is made, I hope you continue to support Nintendo Life.

@Jeffro - I didn't list the wonderful and beautiful Zelda game because it wasn't one of my final favorites that I played at PAX

[sirens heard off in the distance]

@Racthet916 - Yeah, Haven is getting there. I'm excited for it though, because even if the game ends up horrible (the game is nowhere near horrible, it's one of the best games I played at PAX!), the concept is just so good that it's hard not to root for it.

So when I wrote the line about the new style not easily inviting controversy, I had absolutely no idea that was...extremely controversial lol.

As the writer of the piece and someone who enjoys but isnt a hardcore Streets of Rage fan, I often catch myself thinking something to the effect of, "Which one was Streets of Rage again...? Oh yeah, that one." To that end, I found the style a needed improvement. However, I dont doubt hardcore fans of the series might think differently, as would I if something I adored got brought back and seriously altered.

I'd just emphasize that, above all, the devs really do worship this franchise. It doesnt mean their rendition will be inherently great, but it's not like they didn't put a lot of thought into their decision making.

Also, you haven't lived until you've thrown a chair out a window.

Guys, but the dog can drive!

@luxoricious - Each screen from its respective world/level is random in its placement, but designed, otherwise. And there are X amount of screens until you get to the end. The end of each world section, which at least in the demo was three levels I believe, is marked by a boss.

I purposefully made no comparison to steam world dig, (a game that is Metroid if it were dig dug) because this isn’t really anything like Steam world dig, other than the literal similarities.

Shovel knight dig is much more rapid and arcade like, compared to the methodical single player campaign of steam world.

@60frames-please I have a framed Device 6 poster up in my home, so, yeah. You can play them on your phone pretty easily, if you have a smart phone.