Qwiff

I have a printer somewhere but can't remember the last time I actually printed something, so the ink cartridge will most likely be dry. So, no, I won't be printing this.

Anyway, started playing this weekend and fell in love with the humour. It's my first Paper Mario, actually, and I'm not used to Nintendo games being this funny.

I had a similar experience with Metroid Dread, a game that I was looking forward to so much, I even pre-ordered the collector's edition. But what I found was a game that was, well, remarkably linear for a Metroid and filled with too many bosses. Anyway, got fed up, quit halfway through, then gave it another chance a year later and was hooked.

I guess it's about having the right expectations. Hollow Knight clicked with me after 5 mins, but it's not for everyone.

Although I had planned on playing it later, I caved in and bought TTYD. So that's what I'll be spending my lazy Sunday afternoon on. GC is my favourite console, but this is one of the classics from that generation that I did not get around to playing.

@Dr_Corndog The earlier Ultimas (until 5) have dungeon crawling sections, but otherwise they're the precursors to today's open-world games. Quite different from Wizardry.

I would urge anyone interested in retro RPGs to give at least Ultima 6 a try. That's the last one that had turn-based gameplay and the then-new mouse interface makes it relatively accessible. The pixel art is great as well.

Back then, I felt that SMB beat Nintendo at their own game, by being the best showcase for the then-new GC controller. Wave Race Blue Storm sold me on the console, but SMB was the launch game I ended up playing the most.

New Star GP. Played the demo on XSS a while back and was looking forward to the Switch release. The somewhat higher price, for an indie game, and the mention of some minor FPS dips in the NL review, gave me pause. Now that it's on sale, and most likely patched up, I have no excuse anymore. I love arcade racers and this is probably among the best ones on Switch, or any other platform for that matter. Just played the tutorial for 5 mins and the FPS seems to be fine.

Also, more Hollow Knight.

For me, it's the greatest game of all time, because it captures that childlike wonder of "where does this path go?" and "what happens If I do this?" in a way that no other game has done before.

The story beats were great as well and I loved the fact that you could experience them out of order. Sure, the scenes with the sages got a little repetitive, but that's the compromise they had to make for giving players so much freedom.

Also, the last time I played BOTW, was back in late 2017, so the map didn't feel too familiar 5 years later. Re-exploring the world, to see what had happened to some of my favourite places, like the Great Plateau, was genuinely exciting.

Bowser's Fury also deserves a mention. Due to technical limitations, it comes across as a "cancelled" attempt at bringing the open world format to a Mario game, repurposed as a bonus game. It runs 30fps in handheld and unstable 60fps docked. Despite the brief playtime, I was thoroughly satisfied. Hopefully they'll expand upon the open world format for a Switch 2 Mario game.

Link's Awakening comes to mind. Skipped the bonus (colour) dungeon, because I felt the experience was just perfect as it was.

And, of course, Inside.

Too long: Luigi's Mansion 3. Despite the levels being of consistently high quality, it simply went on for too long.

My dream DLC for TOTK would have you playing as Zelda during the time of the Imprisoning War. Now if they'd make a full game out of that setting, even better. Sure, that would give them another "excuse" to remix the same Hyrule map, but still, it's something I'd love to see.

@westman98 Yeah, the Lomei side quests were brilliant. The rewards at the end didn't really interest me, tbh, but that makes these quests a perfect example of the journey being more important than the destination. I would say that whole notion encapsulates the main TOTK experience more than anything else.

Just before the final showdown, I decided to exchange stamina for a heart container, basically on the gut feeling that I was going to need that one heart.

Well, in the last few moments of the first part of fight, I was down to just one heart, having exhausted all options for heart restoration. So, at that moment, it was literally him or me. Never felt so elated at landing a winning blow, especially not as it was my first attempt. The ~135 hours that preceded it came full circle. I played and beat the game on my own terms. For me, it's the game of a lifetime.

I stopped playing after that and haven't touched it since. There are plenty of light roots and shrines left to discover, but I'll save those for a future run on the Switch 2.

@Croctopus Most likely there's still one or two major titles in the pipeline for the current gen. If so, that explains why they also announced in advance that the next Direct will not mention anything about the successor.

The BOTW art book was translated as well, so it would be very surprising if Dark Horse left this on the table.

Day 1 buy for me.

EDIT: checking Wikipedia, it seems the English translation took almost a year to be released.

The more point-and-clicks, the better.

For me, this might be a bit too "fairy tale" in terms of atmosphere, but when autumn comes around, I might appreciate its vibe more.

With current inflation levels, I don't think major price cuts are likely, but, rather, the new Switch will be more expensive. So they'll keep the 2019 revision as the cheaper option, but drop the OLED model from the lineup to better differentiate between the two generations.

Anyway, yes, I think there's at least one major, unannounced Switch title left for the holiday season, and a cross-gen launch title for next Spring.

Nice, stealing the spotlight from Apple's iPad showcase.

Yep, like I said yesterday, there could still be one or two unannounced major titles in the pipeline. I hope one of these is the long-rumoured DK game, supposedly being developed by the Odyssey team. But, of course, MP4 would be great as well.

They'd be leaving money on the table if they didn't have a big title this holiday season. Sure, they need new, exclusive games to sell Switch 2 hardware, but software is pure profit.

Shame about this particular game not coming to fruition. The 2nd half of 2024 is completely free for DK to make a long-overdue comeback. I believe there's a still at least one major, unannounced release left for Switch and DK could be it. Remember that Wonder was announced only 3-4 months before its release. There may be some surprises left this year.

In terms of vibes, it seems odd to release this at the start of summer. At least for the northern hemisphere. Never played it and definitely interested, but will pick it up later in the year.

Going to be copypasting this for the next few weeks: more Hollow Knight.

Have a great weekend everyone!

That final quote, about wanting to make games that can be held onto like a treasure, explains why these titles stay evergreen. Great article!

@Sonicka You're comparing apples and oranges here.The "game A runs at 60fps, so game B should do as well" argument does not take into account the different types of rendering and their impact on memory bandwidth. The Metroid Prime comparison is irrelevant. If you're curious about the subject, see my recent comment history for a more detailed explanation. Specifically, this comment. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/04/paper-mario-the-thousand-year-door-switch-frame-rate-revealed#comment8093180

@AllieKitsune No it doesn't matter, because modern games maintain an internal tick rate, separate from the rate at which they're rendering their frames. So movements and button presses are handled with exactly the same timing.

Yes, people will undoubtedly experience the game differently, due to the difference in frame rate, but that's just perception.

For me, this comparison only confirms that memory bandwidth is the reason for the 30fps. The shadows, reflections and lighting effects on display here don't come for free.

Having said that, I can understand why someone would prefer the original's look, without all the visual pizzazz. In the ideal case there would have been an option for toggling between the old and new graphics.

Assuming backwards-compatibility, I'm sure it will render at 60fps on the next Switch.

@RupeeClock It could just stay in handheld mode and upscale the 720p frame for backwards-compatible titles to 1080p, or display black borders to keep it at 720p.

If the screen is, indeed, 1080p then that means memory bandwidth will increase as well. That alone would be good news. 1080p is more than twice the amount of pixels of 720p.

@smoreon Yeah, bandwidth really is the major shortcoming. The Switch is in the same league as PS3, which has a similar bandwidth of ~25Gb/s. PS4 increased the bandwidth to ~176Gb/s, showing that console makers recognized it was a bottleneck. It's unlikely we'll see a similar increase for the next Switch, since it's almost certainly a mobile chipset again. For reference, the latest iPhone tops out at just ~50Gb/s. Mobile chipsets are not gaming hardware.

@smoreon Good points! Thanks for sharing.

While it's true that a 2D game typically has to render a more limited slice of the game environment, this does not outweigh the performance loss of using hires textures. I.e. at mip level 0. This is because the vast majority of rendering time goes to the fragment processing stage. The vertex processing stage, basically the major difference between 3D and 2D scenes, takes much less time than you might think. In other words: rendering 2D scenes has little performance advantage over 3D, when large, hires textures are the only option available.

@Denoloco There's a perfectly valid reason, and that's because Odyssey is a 3D game. Like I explained in my previous post, 3D games can take advantage of mipmapping to reduce memory bandwidth. Mipmapping means the game uses lower resolution textures the farther an object is placed from the camera. The lower the texture resolution, the less memory bandwidth it uses.

Games with detailed sprites in the foreground, like Paper Mario, cannot use this type of optimization. That also explains why relatively simple-looking 2D games can still have performance problems on Switch. The latest Contra being an example.

@Mario500 ofc = of course, ballpark = estimate. edited the post.

@Ulysses Before you start judging the downgrade as "inarguable" and declaring the game a "rush job", you should perhaps take a look at the underlying technical reasons.

Allow me to explain.

Like I said in another thread, people don't appreciate the extra overhead that rendering in HD brings compared to SD. The Switch already has low memory bandwidth, so lighting effects like bloom (which typically require an extra render pass), only strain that bandwidth even more.

The GameCube original uses interlaced rendering, meaning it doesn't render the full 480p frame at 60fps. Arguably it's more accurate to say it renders two halves of its output at a rate of 30fps for each 240p half.

To put it in numbers:

GC: ~10Gb/s texture memory bandwidth
Switch: ~25Gb/s texture memory bandwidth

GC: 720 x 240 = 172800 pixels
Switch: 1280 x 720 = 921600 pixels

So, assuming it's rendering at 720p resolution, the Switch would have to render more than 5 times the amount of pixels, with only 2.5 times the memory bandwidth. And this example does not even take into account the extra resolution in docked mode. In turn, 1080p contains 2.25 times the amount of pixels of a 720p frame, just to put things even more in perspective.

In addition, for 2D/2.5D games there's little opportunity to use mipmaps to reduce memory bandwidth, because, being 2D, they render their textures at the same level of detail. 3D games can use lower resolution mipmaps for objects rendered farther from the camera. That also explains why Metroid Prime does manage 60fps.

Of course these are just rough estimates, but I just wanted to illustrate that memory bandwidth is almost certainly the deciding factor for the change to 30fps. Limits in memory bandwidth are also the reason for 30fps becoming the norm for most games, after consoles made the transition to HD. I.e. Xbox360/PS3.

Putting every game aside for Hollow Knight. Bought it just hours before the last indie sale closed, basically on whim. Let's give this a chance, I thought. Well, 5 minutes in and I know this game is going to keep me occupied for a very long time.

Have a great weekend everyone!

@Ryu_Niiyama OST is on Spotify and Apple Music.

Assuming it uses modern game engine approaches, the game runs at its own internal tick rate, which is separate from the rate at which it's rendering its frames (i.e. the FPS).

For the sake of argument, let's say you're playing a game blindfolded and are, somehow, capable of reproducing the exact movements and button presses, at exactly the same time. The outcome will be identical, regardless of which frame rate the game is rendering at. And it doesn't matter, because in this scenario you're blindfolded anyway.

To me, it's starting to feel disingenuous to start this FPS subject again. We know the Switch is underpowered, it's always been the underdog, yet people keep driving this subject into the ground.

If you're good at the game on 60FPS, you will be good at it on 30FPS as well.

People don't appreciate the impact of rendering 720p and 1080p frames. Assuming they render at native resolution, HD games have to push many more pixels than games from the SD era. The transition from SD to HD is why 30fps became the norm in the Xbox360/PS3 era.

I don't see why 60 fps is an absolute must-have for this type of game. I'm sure they made an attempt and decided that stable 30fps was the best way to go.

Yep, I'm also old enough to remember this series, along with Ultima, Bard's Tale and Might and Magic.

Hopefully it has text size options, because some of it looks too small, especially for handheld.

I know what I'll be watching tonight!

I already read about some of the details of the TOTK physics system and it made me admire the game even more. It's great that we now have access to the integral presentation, because there's a lot to learn from it. Anything physics-related has my attention, the section on water buoyancy especially. Fascinating!

Anyone lending their IP to Fortnite is either poor or greedy.

I can't say I've played any of these games, and I'm not sure if I have a working GBC anymore, but I just wanted to say that it's fascinating to read about these labours of love.

Nintendo should consider bringing these new titles to NSO, making them available to a wider audience. Who knows? We might see a renaissance of old-school gamedev.

Not much time for gaming ATM, but I can squeeze in one or two sessions of Yoku's Island Express.

1986 is definitely a good pick. I grew up playing MSX in the mid 80s, so got lots of exposure to Japanese games and Konami in particular. Metal Gear, Nemesis (AKA Gradius), Vampire Killer (AKA Castlevania).

But for me personally, I would say the early GameCube years, so 2002-2003. During that time, after PS1 and N64, devs had more experience working in 3D, and it shows. Most major titles still hold up today.

Mini-documentary (~15 mins) about the Game Boy, Super Mario Land and Link's Awakening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IIFHtem9Gk

Fascinating stuff!

The Split Pad Pro is decent, but the weight distribution feels off. Exactly the hollow feeling that was mentioned earlier in this thread. Filling it with rumble motors would have killed 2 birds with 1 stone, but I guess licensing issues prevent them from doing so.

There are a few games, such as Quake, that support the Switch's internal gyro, so you get motion aiming anyway.

If you want a Switch-like Fallout experience, you need a portable gaming PC. That gives you access to every title in the franchise, including the classic ones.

But, yeah, I hope to see F3 in remastered form some day on a Nintendo platform. While I agree that NV is the better game, F3 has a charm of its own. Back then, you could really feel that Bethesda was eager to take ownership of the franchise.

Also looking forward to revisiting F4 with the next-gen console update next week. Played it once on PS4 back in 2015 / 2016. I didn't care for the main campaign, but Far Harbor redeemed it.

This is my favourite Nintendo Life topic. Every once in a while, someone mentions a title that I would have overlooked otherwise. Such is the case with Yoku's Island Express. Aside from being a great game, with unique mechanics, its vibe is a good match for the sunny and warm weather over here. Have a great weekend everyone!

I'm not sure about that closing sentence regarding Nintendo being on a "warpath" here. There's no official word from them, and all we can do is speculate.

If you remember the Dolphin situation from a while ago, it was actually Steam who preemptively contacted Nintendo. Meanwhile, Dolphin has been around for more than 2 decades, without Nintendo intervening, AFAIK.

It's probably the same situation here, with the platform holder (Discord) taking preemptive action.

Hm, bit strange that the two leads don't seem to be on the same page regarding a sequel.

I just hope this new game doesn't turn out to be this studio's Starfield. I.e. a new IP that receives a lukewarm reception, taking time away from developing the game that people actually want.

I usually play Wave Race Blue Storm when it's warm and sunny. Might also dive into Super Mario Sunshine to match the mood. I picked up the 3D All Stars physical back when it was new , but never got round to actually playing.

Dipping into the Cyberpunk 2077 5-hour trial on XSS, but not much else.

Thanks for the article! As a part-time solo dev working on my first game, these kind of stories are inspiring. I'm definitely going to give the Pepper Grinder demo a try this weekend.