QBertFarnsworth

I’m going to hold out and hope they offer a free copy of DQ1 with a subscription to Nintendo Power - just like last time.

We got a really good 3D platformer in DK, so next 3D Mario isn’t coming this year.

Galaxy 2 HD with mouse controls for pointer function and some Kart DLC, released as to not interfere with Metroid

Ever since I’ve had a job, I’ve always treated controllers like shoes - use them for a while, and then freshen them up. The old ones are still fine for multiplayer, but I never run into issues with drift, batteries that can’t hold a charge, etc. Controllers aren’t cheap, but I don’t feel like I didn’t get my money’s worth out of them.

Pro tip: there are actual organizations who do video game preservation. There are zero instances of somebody saving the day because nobody could track down a copy of Little Samson on the NES, but you had a copy - for preservation purposes only - that allowed the game to not fade from existence. It has never happened. You just didn’t want to pay for it.

Remember when your Wii used to lecture you about not taking a break? Nintendo has just found a way to be more subtle.

When Switch 1 came out, I remember hearing people rave about the ice cube thing with HD Rumble, though I never tried it. I remember the AR Cards with 3DS. I remember being wowed by feeling grains of sand blow at my controller with the Astro demo on PS5. There’s bound to be some tech demo on here that will be pretty fascinating that nobody, including Nintendo, will ever touch again. Curiosity, and the feeling that my little Mario Kart drivers must be tired, will get me to try this out.

@Ulysses I don’t think we see new 3D Mario until after DK because the general public might say, Mario will be better, I’ll wait. With Mario’s 40th, I think we see a Mario Direct in September - maybe teaser for new game in 2026 and Galaxy 2 HD with mouse controls for the pointer this fall? I think 1st party is mostly set for the year with Hyrule Warriors and Prime 4 being the holiday titles, and maybe like Red Dead 2 getting a port from Rockstar. Maybe Splatoon as it can start smaller and grow, but they’re counting Switch 2 Enhanced as new games in that weird way Nintendo thinks.

Most of the N64. Mario and Zelda hold up, but going back to wiggling the stick to power slide in Kart 64, seeing the framerate of Goldeneye, etc., it’s an era that should be left to nostalgia and/or replayed on 3DS where available.

I feel this way about the Atari plug and play systems or 50th anniversary release. Getting a 2600 for Christmas was one of my favorite childhood gifts, but it does not hold up the way NES games did.

Only the SNES has 5 games that if you said “X is the greatest game of all ,” nobody would argue with you. The 5 being Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, Super Metroid, and Link to the Past. They might prefer Breath of the Wild or Mario 3, but they won’t argue if you prefer the SNES games.

@jrt87 At best, they’re using the Vita version. The Switch versions of the NBA 2K games are good. Players aren’t as detailed and it’s 30 fps, but the games themselves are comparable. This isn’t anywhere close to other modern versions of MLB.

@Thoughts I voted Oracle because I’ve never played Tri-Force or Four Swords.

The Oracle games had every opportunity to fix the quality of life issues from Link’s Awakening, and instead doubled down on them. Also, many of the puzzles focused on being tedious rather than challenging your skills or your smarts. “Oh, you want to turn this circular turnstile puzzle? Well you need to go around it by traveling through four other screens. What? Now you need to turn it again? Well let’s go through those four non-challenging screens again to turn it. Wait, you need to turn it one more time? Lucky you! Prepare to waste more time!”

I know a lot of people like the Oracles. I consider them bad Zelda games (bad Zelda games are still good games).

There’s just something off about the Capcom Zeldas. It’s like your favorite band getting a new singer. The songs are the same, but not really.

I’m a Switch Pro truther, so I’m waiting a year before deciding on OLED. There was a ton of 4K Switch smoke coming from otherwise reputable sources, and the reasons for Nintendo’s denials are valid -they don’t want to kill the sales of OLED, and they don’t want investors to freak out if Switch Pro gets delayed or shelved. If Pro is not announced in time for Holiday 2022, then Switch OLED it is. I mostly play docked on an OLED TV anyway. I don’t want to buy two new Switches in two years.

@Rika_Yoshitake but my OLED TV makes me not want to play on a handheld - OLED or otherwise. I’m still holding out hope for a more powerful Switch with HDR in the future.

@Kiz3000 The game sold 3.4 million units, but there are 50 million people online who hate it, which tells you a lot of people didn't play it. It's an okay Zelda game which still makes it a pretty good game. It has one of the better Zelda stories, some good dungeons, and perhaps the best soundtrack in the series. The motion controls were some of the best on the Wii, it is just by the time the game came out, people were over motion controls. They weren't perfect, but people act like they were broken, but they weren't. It was also a 480p game when everyone had upgraded to HDTV, so you could play Skyrim, Uncharted 3, Portal 2 or any number of great-looking games in a year of phenomenal releases on PS3 and 360, and it made this game feel like it was behind the times.

They are doing a good job of getting me hyped to play this again. Now they need to do another trailer showing the excessively long tutorial section and the dowsing time-wasting quests to snap me back to reality.

The SNES better play Super Mario World music like NES played Super Mario Bros music

It was perfect at the beginning of the pandemic, but as soon as they added the Easter eggs, my enthusiasm took a hit. I’d still play at the beginning of each month to get new bugs and fish, but by summer, I was done. Once I paid off my house, there just wasn’t much motivation

@V_Va As a lapsed sports game fan, I’d probably check it out if EA put in the effort. It’s hard to be employed, be a dad, be a gamer, and be a sports fan. If I could plug away at a game of Madden while I have a baseball game and it’s many commercial breaks on in the background, I would. Sports games haven’t really advanced much in the past 20 years, so if I can get one that can hold 720p and 30 fps in handheld, and it’s not broken, I’d rather play in handheld than be locked to the TV with PS5.

@megasean It’s the same argument as when people preached about Raspberry Pi when NES/SNES Classics came out. Is it a more affordable and a more rational decision? Yes. I don’t care what’s rational, I’m going for nostalgia.

@gamekill Yeah, you really have to follow sites or YouTube channels like this site, Kotaku, WatchMojo, and others which do a good job of compiling a variety of levels. Some are tough, some are just insanely clever, most of them make me feel ashamed by how weak my levels are.

@Nomad The original Necrodancer game was $3-$4 a few weeks ago. Wait for that to go on sale again. Cadence of Hyrule is more of a Necrodancer game than it is a Zelda game. If you like Necrodancer, then this game is an easy purchase.

I tried just playing through them all prior to BOTW. Some, like Zelda 2 or the GB games, I either never finished or never played. I started to get burned out. I was not a fan of the Oracle games so I finished one and moved on. I got to Minish Cap, played about 80% and moved in to the Twilight re-release before just being tired of the series - something I thought was impossible. I was so burned out, I was not excited for BOTW. Luckily, it turned out to be amazing.

Sorry, meant Chrono Trigger should be on SNES Classic.

@NewAdvent There is no reason that this shouldn't have been on the SNES Classic.

I owned and didn’t mind the Atari 2600 Mario Bros because I didn’t yet own an NES. I mean, it’s terrible for a video game, but not terrible for an Atari 2600 game. Whenever I see the Plug and Play Atari systems, I refuse to buy one knowing that revisiting those games would ruin cherished childhood memories of Atari.

@Anti-Matter Monster Hunter is huge in Japan. Also huge - portable gaming. The Switch is the best portable gaming system. It's coming.

This headline is pretty misleading. Per the translation on NEOGAF, it says, "In regards to Switch, Capcom will think of how to support the Switch while looking at how Street Fighter 2 does on the system in May." Perhaps they're looking at it like, if SF2 does well, maybe they bring over Marvel vs. Capcom games or other Street Fighter ports. Nowhere does it say that this is an ultimatum: buy SF2 (again) or no Monster Hunter.

@Stubi This game has the scope that SS should have had, and SS should have been the game the Wii launched with (with 1:1 controls).

@onex My son is a gigantic wrestling fan, and my kids watch a lot of kids TV shows in which Cena is promoting things. I think it's possible to be an adult and only have a passing knowledge of who he is. I think every kid knows who he is. Cena is a great spokesperson for Nintendo to get.

I just know that with Cena's wrestling schedule, travel schedule, movie/TV show schedule, workout schedule, and with all the charity work he does, he's not going get addicted to Zelda like I will. In fairness, it would probably take Cena 10 years of Zelda addiction to achieve my level of Dad-bod.

I won't believe Cena is really hooked on Zelda unless his body looks like mine by the end of the year.

I feel like they're not doing a good job explaining what I should do if I disagree with the End-User License agreement.

I never viewed this as an alternative to PS4/XBO (you should own one of those or a good gaming PC anyway), I viewed it as an alternative to having to buy two Nintendo systems to play all Nintendo games. If you take all of the good first party games on Wii U and on 3DS, and combine them into a lineup for one system, you're doing pretty good for yourself.

Got mine in the mail yesterday. Absolutely worth $60, but you're an idiot if you spend $200+ on it. It's the same games that have been available on Wii VC for 10 years.

@Peace-Boy The release schedule is a bit too thin for them to not release at least part of it in 2016. If it is a hybrid console/handheld, I can agree with the rumor that part is release in 2016, and the other part 2017. Last year, they released Splatoon and Mario Maker, and little else. Things are way too quiet on the Star Fox front where that might get delayed again. The rumor is they can't get the GamePad motion controls working correctly. My guess is it's either a poorly-reviewed game or an homage to Star Fox 2. Without that, they have a re-release of a 10-year-old Zelda game and a Zelda game with TBD as its release date. That's not healthy.

@Coreyoli I think SS was rated a bit too high upon release, and received too much backlash post-release. I do have a theory that if the original Wii was HD, if it released with a Zelda like it did, and if the motion controls worked as well at release as they did for Skyward Sword, then the 100 million Wiis sold probably becomes 150, and maybe one of the other two companies drops out of the console wars.

@Stu13 Link to the Past isn't my favorite Zelda (Ocarina by a hair), but I think LttP is a perfect game. The soundtrack is outstanding, the graphics hold up, and the game is amazing at immediately setting the tone for the game, teaching you how to play, and sending you on your adventure. There's no slicing of sign posts or herding animals. It's just, "Here's your sword, go save the world."

@NewAdvent I'm about halfway through Oracle of Seasons. I'm hoping to find time to finish it this weekend. Then I'll play through Ages.

@Peace-Boy I think it gets the Twilight treatment. If the rumors are true that NX is released in 2016, then I think we see Zelda U on the Wii U maybe in September and an NX version at launch. That way, they're not forcing loyal fans who supported Wii U to upgrade to play it, and for those who don't want to invest in a dying system, they can play it on a new system from the start.

I played Majora when it was re-released last spring and loved it all over again. When Zelda U was delayed, I started on a quest to beat all single-player, canon Zelda titles in order of release. I just didn't have the time or ambition to track down multiple players (or GBAs) to play the multi-player games properly. Last spring, I would have ranked Majora in the top 3. Playing it a second time within a year, and finishing it last week, I would bump it down. The Goron/Zora controls are just too clunky for my taste. The Wind Waker HD re-release made that game so much better than earlier, so that sneaks in at number 3 for me. Ocarina and LttP are 1 and 2 for me, and if somebody argued to switch those two around, they are not wrong.

I will say, having never played Link's Awakening before this quest, I find the game a bit overrated (still good, just bottom half of Zeldas for me). I loathe the idea of assigning one of your two buttons to a shield. On the other hand, it is absolutely amazing how much they crammed into an 8-bit game.

@HawkeyeWii I believe that they originally said that this game wasn't canon, so I'm treating it as such. I was surprised the "official" timeline included the Four Swords games, because I always thought of those as more of a spin-off like Mario Kart

Here, I'll fix this. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nintendo NX development kits have been issued to third parties, have begun collecting dust, third parties blame the consumers for only buying first party games on Nintendo systems.

Son of a... I swear I have a level saved, but not uploaded right now where the key to getting through the level is manipulating Thwomps to activate P-Switches. Better upload it before the professional game makers' levels get more popular than mine due to things like better press coverage and/or level design.

@VanillaLake There should be zero concern about the physics of the games. Any difference from the original is minimal.

There are some really good Super Mario World-themed levels that have been created by the community. There are a lot of garbage courses, but if you're willing to look for course recommendations on this and other video game sites, you will find some gems. If you don't like the existing SMW courses, make your own. I didn't think I would enjoy creating. I was wrong.

I'm hoping for DLC at a later date, but this game should have a 1:1 attach rate for Wii U owners.

@shani My main issue with DD was that it felt so slow. I did like the mode where you could play through all of the tracks in a marathon session

@shani I have to disagree with MK64 being uninspiring. Just going from the flat SNES game to a game with 3D tracks containing hills and real jumps was a huge leap for the series. I loved ambushing opponents right before the jump on the Wario level so they'd fall back down to an earlier part in the track or trying to catch a shortcut through the train tunnel (which often ended in disaster).

"Powersliding was streamlined in Double Dash!!, also. Previous games would require the player to do a few hops to get a slide started, but here it was as simple as pressing the shoulder button midway through a turn."

I haven't played this game in years, but if memory serves, this was not the game in which powersliding was streamlined. I believe you still had to jump and move the stick back and forth to charge up your boost. The simplified powerslide did not become a thing until the Wii version which came about as a result of snaking ruining Mario Kart DS.

If they didn't reveal most of this in Nintendo Directs, people would be happier. I was hoping for more exciting new stuff (Mario Tennis doesn't count) for the Wii U. We pretty much knew of all of the major stuff already. The 3DS seems a little more promising with Zelda: Three Swords Adventure and a new Paper Mario.

@krakensoup Yeah, but the rain in Neo Bowser city looks amazing, and if you have surround sound hooked up, that whole level sounds great with the rain at the start of the race, the rumbles of cars and thunder as you go through tunnels - I love that atmosphere on that level. The track itself isn't anything special, but I like the inclusion.

@firstnesfan I could make it to the final tower - just couldn't get past it.

When I was a kid, I made it a point to beat every game I owned (I'll come back for you someday, Battletoads), but Donkey Kong 64 was the first game that I owned that I ever quit because I couldn't stand collecting things anymore. Not even the idea of it being free makes me want to go back.