Prizm

Metroid Prime 4 is just going to be another generic yawn-fest 3D game with a Samus skin. Cancel your preorder and wait for real player feedback befor buying.

The hype became a meme (like HL3), with people jumping on the bandwagon just because they want to be part of something.
I'll bet many people commenting "SILKSONG??" in the recent Nintendo Directs hadn't even played the original.

Hollow Knight was ok, but attacking felt sluggish and sloppy, and the constant dreary mood was a downer every time I played. The art was beautiful though.

I also didn't buy it until after the DLCs came out because I was put off by the lazy "Knight" reference and figured it was another crappy game cashing in on the Shovel Knight craze.

Amusing jokes aside: Just FYI, the pronunciation is wahn-ko. "Wan" (rhymes with number "one") is a sound word like the equivalent of "woof" or "bark" in english.

"Ko" is at the end of many girls names (Kimiko, Sachiko, etc) to give the name a child-like, feminine, or cute meaning. So wanko is a bit like doggy or woofie in english.

It's still a really stupid decision not to give the game a proper english name though. They really shot themselves in the foot.

If this comes to Switch 2, it better be 60fps, otherwise it's dead in the water (like every other third-party kart game on Switch).

Though Mario Kart World also needs to bring some innovative gameplay, because MK8 is stale AF. I put countless hours into MK8, but enough is enough, it's been 11 years for god's sake.

Disney Speedstorm is a horrible monetisation fest, but the gameplay itself spanks Mario Kart 8. Nintendo has some catching up to do.

I loved Sonic Transformed (on PC where it was 60fps), so I was hoping CrossWorlds was going to be good. But reading a couple comments here has me worried now :/

Box art is nice. Game looks boring AF. Remove Samus and it's just another yawn-inducing 3D adventure game with cut-down Switch/mobile graphics.

"Project:;COLD case.mirage"

For the love of god, Japan, stop butchering the English language.

Marketing 101: Your product name should be easy to read and write and not be confusing. Japan is so bad at this.

@Crono1973 - True, on the American side, XBox console names are the worst.

Funny how people think the best and obvious marketing name is a 'genius' move... but sadly Japan has a track record for very stupid product/brand names.
I'll bet NoA put their foot down and told NoJ, "You're going to call it Switch 2 and that's final. No, it's not going to be called Switchly Default! DX Edition 2/C Another. We're not gonna take the fall for you again like we did with Wii U".

@Kvnc77 "I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home."

That line is from another sci-fi trilogy that was actually good 😅

@gingerbeardman @Roger_Brazil -
Incorrect. Annapurna was the publisher of Stray, not the actual developer.

@VHSGREMLIN "Jim Carrey is the only good thing in them."

Jim Carrey was the only good thing in the first movie... in the second one he completely phoned it in and did a real half-baked job. Either that or the director didn't give him the freedom to be himself.

That second movie sucked except for maybe 5 minutes of the final battle 😅

So it's just a plush?

Nintendo must be the only company where it makes me groan when they release a so-called 'update' 🙄

"General system stability improvements"
You'd think after years of mockery from the fanbase, they'd at least stop using phrases with the word "stability" — if only for optics reasons. Because it paints the company in a negative light if all their updates revolve around "stability" and usually nothing else.

Nintendo is so out-of-touch.

Uhh.. pretty much all those games were the low-budget bargain basement type games 🤔 Hardly anyone is begging for these.

I rented one or two of these, but that was it. Back then the 'best' games were always $30 USD, while the low-budget and initial launch title games were $20 or even $10. These games are all the cheaper ones that I would skip over when looking for my next game at the store.

Balloon Kid was $20. So was Bubble Ghost, IIRC. I looked every where for Revenge of the Gator, but never saw a real copy. I suspect it had a really short run.

Stop being such a dud, Nintendo 🙄 Interacting with fans in real life promotes goodwill and positivity towards your company.

Which you sure as hell need after your constant emulator and YouTube takedowns.

Meh, sorry, not into that blocky voxel look.. like a glorified Atari game.

@larryisaman - I agree, the boring dialog and story really lets this beautiful game down. I'm probably somewhere in the third act, but I stopped playing months ago. It got to a point where I was just tapping through the dialog because it was so unengaging. I've been trying to get the motivation to finish it.

It was a different genre, but The Messager was fantastic though.

"3D assets were determined to be the best way to deliver on the vision KONAMI and WayForward had for the project."

Spoken like a true corporate BS artist 😆

Looking at that trailer again only confirms my fears. It looks like a mobile game with assets copied-and-pasted into the levels. Characters and objects don't look like they organically belong in the scene.

Maybe there's a chance the gameplay can make up for it.

Mario running around with a sniper rifle like it's some kind of G-Mod? Samus doing stupid dance moves like the floss? Sure, that's not brand-damaging 🙄

Ok, it makes more sense to insert someone like Samus who already uses a gun, but my overall problem is it cheapens the brand of whatever IP bends over and sells out to Epic. It would only make Nintendo out to be Epic's little b-word.

@BrazillianCara @rjejr - Something smells. It's almost like Nintendo is making this up for some reason.

Does anyone have any third-party evidence of a genuine threat to Nintendo? (I don't buy the 'toxic Splatoon community' idea). Japan is very safe, violent crime is rare, and they would have more than enough time to ensure there is sufficient security.

As some people have said, threats are made all the time to companies. The police should have a better idea whether this is a genuine threat worth shutting down an event. It would be more believable if the event was in New York or some other major western city.

Star Wars... how cringy.

@Pod "but my take gets deleted for being off topic?"

And why delete harmless off-topic comments anyway (unless it's grossly out of hand on every article)?
More comments and replies means more people returning to view the article, which means more ad revenue for Nintendo Life. They shoot themselves in the foot.

From 16.1.0 to 17.0.0. Dear god. Nintendo just rubs salt in the wound every time by making their version numbers actually seem significant.

This is not how the rest of the programming world using version numbers, Nintendo.

Grandma, I said I wanted a Nintendo Switch 😅

It's a pity it's full of Disney characters 😆
I try not to touch Disney basically out of principle these days, with the way they've run practically all their IP into the ground.

Wow, this is amazing, thanks for the photos and interview.

Those clay covers were creepy and intriguing at the same time. That touch of reality made the cover more mesmerizing.

An obvious (and totally lazy) final milk of the original Switch. Little kids and unsuspecting grandmas are sure to go for it.

Nintendo should've just gone all-in and charged another $50.00 for it. Because why not.

Lazy.
"Hmm.. we have too much red plastic left before the launch of the Switch 2... let's pump out another mediocre console and milk this thing one last time."

@Picola-Wicola said "As someone who has never played a JRPG… do I start here!?"

Yes. It's a modernised JRPG style that will get you used to the turn-based mechanics of the classics like Chrono Trigger. It's genuine turn-based, so they also won't attack while you're still choosing your own attack.

The game also has "relics" that you can find that are basically additional game settings that you can turn on and off. One of the relics you find early is basically an easy mode setting (if you're concerned about it being too hard).

@Daimando "Get it digitally or wait for the physical edition?"

Get it digitally. Then if you like it so much, get the physical edition to show your appreciation and support.

HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN!!

This game almost needs a buy just for its contribution to meme history 😄

All Your Base was probably the first internet meme as we know them (photoshopped images, etc). I remember it being all over emulation forums around 1997/1998.

Day 1 buy for me 👌Not playing the demo since I don't want any spoilers.

The fact they are making a tribute to classics like Chrono Trigger, and even got Yasunori Mitsuda to compose a couple tracks for it is worth it alone.

The Messenger was also a surprisingly good game.

I could never get into FF besides some of the music (always thought the stories were boring), but this was a great interview and also pretty funny. It's always great to hear stories about how these NES/SNES games were made. I'll have to watch part 1 now.

Great story, thanks 👍 You were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and have a parent willing to help.
I remember one or two events as a kid where the stars seemed to align and it ends up being one of the best memories you ever had.

@duffmmann "But to proclaim these outdated ways were 'better' feels awfully ignorant"
You seemed to miss the point. It was better because rare pokemon were actually rare and hard to get in real life. Therefore it meant a whole lot more when you actually got one, combined with the experience of others and not just you sitting on your couch.

Man I hate the Tour tracks. For the most part, they are so uninspired and feel like the creators are just going through the motions.
"Hmm.. how can we make a bunch of new tracks quickly... let's just base them all on cities! Ok done, chuck in some landmarks, some red arrows to make it a damn maze, throw some bats in undercover areas, and pump these tracks out, baby."
The generic unmemorable music is the icing on the cake.

@Figeluren "she never gets to start in front of her dad"
For a family-friendly company, they really fail with certain things when it comes to kids. Basic stuff, like how so many of their games rely on the child knowing how to read.
God forbid they add a voiceover. Not only that, but the difficulty level of the language used.
Now your child can only play the game when mum or dad are around to read the (often overly-wordy) text. This is why my daughter just went back to iPad games at that age.

The sound effects and music ruined All-Stars for me. It sounded so weak compared to the NES sound chip.

All that horrible thin MIDI-style music, and limp SFX. Yuck. It followed the Super Mario World sound design, which also sounded flat and weak to me.

Well of course Microsoft isn't going to prevent Activision games on other consoles. They're gunning for a future of GamePass and cloud gaming on third party devices. The writing is on the wall.

You've seen how Phil Spencer keeps trying to convince Nintendo to allow GamePass on Switch.
Spencer also admitted last year that Microsoft considered a new XBox console 'Keystone' that was a stripped-down, cloud-only unit.

Microsoft's ultimate plan seems to be to abandon the power-hungry hardware console and focus more on offering game services and cloud gaming.

FF sucks. The series started getting all self-conscious and try-hard 'epic' with FF8 (fanboys were all like, OMG it's got teh orchesTra muSics and emotioNal cutsCenes and chinese pop sOng").

I played 4 to 7 and tried to like it, but the stories and characters were so boring that I could never finish any of them. The only good thing was a few good tunes.

lol Japan almost always sucks when it comes to box/poster design. It looks washed out and Photoshopped. Though I never cared for the US box either, it looks too busy.

And that pre-rendered 3D was horrible. Sure it was all the rage in the mid-90s, but it sure was ugly. The soundtracks for the DKC games are still legendary though.

@Sam_TSM "An incredible 3D adventure" sounds a bit misleading.

Well back then that pre-rendered 3D stuff was everywhere and often referred to as 3D graphics. Real 3D was nowhere close to looking like that (eg, Star Fox). A quick look at a screenshot on the box would give away which 'version' of 3D it was, so I don't think most people felt misled.

Disney's horrible remakes made money on name and nostalgia alone. Are little kids seriously choosing to rewatch them though?

I have to admit I was impressed with the quality of Fortnite's Robocop skin, but all of these movie-based Fortnite skins cheapen their respective brands 👎

Now you'll be able to make Optimus dance like a female to trashy pop songs (since almost all Fortnite dances look like they were motion-captured from female performers).

Stability... fading.... ADHD.... intensifies....

The Tour tracks are a bit crap with little originality and lame music. Hope there's not another 4 of these.

Ahh, the pre-Disney Pixar days. Back when the prospect of a new Pixar movie coming out was exciting and you knew you were in for something special and fresh.

Ok.. but "Batboy" is still a cringey title 😅

The trailer music sounds all over the place, like a piano app where you can't hit the wrong notes for a scale, so you just bang away at the keys randomly.

I'll keep an eye out for this one though.

Final Fantasy storylines are always boring, and since FF8, they have just been full of fan service and trying to be 'epic'.

The only good thing about the early games was some of the music.

For those that enjoy chiptunes:
Jurassic Park 1 and 2 for Gameboy had a great soundtrack by Jonathan Dunn (same composer who did the well-known Robocop intro tune for Gameboy). Most tracks are the same for both JP games, with perhaps some slight refining of the tracks for JP2 Gameboy.

Jonathan's tracks often use a style that was popular with British Commodore 64 composers, namely that fast 'arpeggiated chord' sound (listen to the beginning of the Gameboy Robocop theme for an example if you're not sure what it is). Japanese composers never seemed to adopt this style.

For the first level music in both Gameboy Jurassic Park games, Jonathan Dunn's track pays tribute to the C64 Comic Bakery theme by Martin Galway. Martin was a very popular C64 composer.

A don't recall a single third-party kart game on Switch that runs at 60fps. For god's sake Nintendo, bring out a Switch Pro already.

Not that I want to give money to that foul entity Disney though.

@Fizza "IT ISN'T EVEN OUT IN PLACES LIKE JAPAN YET OH MY GOD 0_0"

Probably because Nintendo of Japan gave it a copyright strike 😆😆

@LastFootnote @JohnnyMind - Your comments are noted, and thanks for the heads up about the cartoon.