Comments 1,810

Re: Nintendo's Bringing Mario Kart Junior Esports Tournaments To UK Primary Schools

RadioHedgeFund

@Bunkerneath Its for STEM and PSHE. You can teach kids a lot about society and how to deal with negative emotions when playing 4-player Mario Kart. Race tracks are also a good way to introduce the concepts of level design into Design and Technology and ICT lessons. You can then elaborate on this and talk about urban design and the challenges city designers face in taking transportation into account.

As a Design and Technology teacher I use videogames as a starting point for lots of concepts. I even taught a lesson on custody battles in PSHE using Street Fighter 2.

Re: Now, This Is What Next-Gen Pokémon Should Look Like

RadioHedgeFund

All we've ever wanted for the last 25 years is the anime, but in game form. A game more like Witcher 3 in size, with seperate large areas in between the cities, wild Pokemon behaving like animals rather than just randomly sharing some long grass and maybe some Shadow of the Colossus-type climbing and action to capture the legendary pokemon. It can keep the classic turn based battling: This is what Ash does! Just vary the exploration.

Id like to see what Namco's Tales team could do with it.

Re: Soapbox: Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Was The Basis For My Taste In Music

RadioHedgeFund

It’s amazing the effect gaming can have on your musical tastes.

My interests were a mix of pop and indie until O heard the soundtrack to Wip3out in 1999 and it blew my mind. I heavily got into progressive trance and house because of that game and discovered tons of artists and DJs I still follow within that scene.

I think it was the release of SSX3 that got me back into rock and indie. Love me some Yellowcard and Placebo.

The most recent (?) is Forza Horizon. The OST to the original 2012 release is on constant repeat in my car. They created the perfect driving playlist within that game.

Re: You "Won't Believe" Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania's Next Character, Says Geoff Keighley

RadioHedgeFund

It has to be a classic Sega character. Billy Hatcher is a good bet but I’d also guess Alex Kidd, Vyse or Aika from Skies of Arcadia or Alis from Phantasy Star.

That said Sega do have a history of putting some proper left field secret characters in their games like the Horse in Daytona or even the Daytona car in Fighters Megamix. Heck, the final secret character in Sonic Racing 2 was a Dreamcast controller!

Re: Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins Has Arrived On Nintendo Switch

RadioHedgeFund

@YorkshireNed But how can a group of Assassins be lonely? Surely the title should ready ‘The Lonely Assassin.’ Lonely implies singular, alone. Yet the ‘S’ at the end of Assassin means there is a group.

It’s a double negative: a singular plural (Like The Lone Rangers from Airheads. You can’t pluralise Lone Ranger)

Re: Soapbox: A Strange Desire For Switch Sports And A Return To Wii's Wuhu Island

RadioHedgeFund

I never understood the animosity towards the Wii. It remains Nintendo’s best console. It had 2 quality Zelda releases, 2 Metroids, 2 absolutely stinking Mario platformers, some very clever mid-life games like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and frickin’ Sin and Punishment 2 (a sequel nobody expected!) and it’s latter years gave us fruit like Xenoblade and the highly underrated The Last Story.

But it was the golden age of local multiplayer I will remember the most. I was 23 at the time and had friends around every week. They’d bring some controllers and we would blast Wii Sports, Super Monkey Ball and l, yeah because it was pretty good Red Steel. Ghost Squad brought back hazy memories of cinema arcades and HOTD Overkill was hilarious.

Wii Sports Resort was an ingenious title. The skill required to master table tennis was genuine. The OG Wii Sports cleverly compensated for the original remotes lack of precision with programming tricks but there was no hiding with the W+.

I can only imagine people who hate on Wii Sports Resort were just crap at it! A Switcb rerelease is long overdue.

Re: Nintendo Is Shutting Down Dr. Mario World For Mobile

RadioHedgeFund

It’s a shame Nintendo don’t set an example to the rest of the industry and release an update so the title can be played offline, blocks all IAP but moves it into and delists the title. That way existing players can continue to enjoy it but no new players can accidentally download it.

Re: Talking Point: Which Game Stage Have You Replayed More Than Any Other?

RadioHedgeFund

Happiness on SSX3. I played through the whole game with every character on GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360 backwards compatibility and Xbox One rerelease. They also reused the SSX3 levels on the PSP version of SSX On Tour so this only adds to it.

I’ll regularly replay it just to see if I can beat my times. Normally I have Bitter End by Placebo or Way Away by Yellowcard playing in the background.

Re: Random: 'Switch Vs Steam Deck' Memes Are A Thing Now, Apparently

RadioHedgeFund

I see it this way:

I am sat on a train with my Switch playing Mario Kart 8 DX. A stranger (who may or may not be attractive....) sits down next to me. I offer them a joycon and we play a few rounds of MK8. This starts up a conversation about gaming, what the other person does or does not play and we both have a pleasant journey reminiscing, debating and talking. This did actually happen to me.

I am sat on a train with my Steam Deck playing League of Legends. A stranger sits down next to me and asks wtf that monstrosity is I am playing on or outright ignores me because I seem like 'one of those people'. I either do not care and keep playing or put it away, self conscious of the thing.

Which scenario do you want to be in?

Re: Gabe Newell: Pricing Valve's Switch-Like Steam Deck Was "Painful"

RadioHedgeFund

@BloodNinja if those games were built that way out of convenience not to be played on the bus. Nintendo don’t have some sort of exclusivity on great portable games (Locoroco says hi!) but going back to the original argument: part of the reason the PSP didn’t do so well was because developers were building PS2 games for the format whereas Nintendo had over 15 years experience with the Gameboy line by the time the DS came along and then the iPhone launched the App Store in 2008 which necessitates short bursts of gameplay.

There’s just something about titles built for dedicated portable hardware that home titles just don’t have in their DNA. I could play Starcraft on the Gabe Boy but Advance Wars will always be a better option.

Re: Gabe Newell: Pricing Valve's Switch-Like Steam Deck Was "Painful"

RadioHedgeFund

@BloodNinja there are a lot of modern gaming sensibilities like auto save which play well with the idea of portable play but still weren’t built for that play style.

Nintendo have these subtle design cues that were the results of many weeks of brainstorming how they can make titles that can be played for 10 hours like a home console game but also designed to be played for 10 minutes like a Gameboy or DS title.

The bite size challenges of Mario’s moons and Links Shrines is a testament to this.

Re: Gabe Newell: Pricing Valve's Switch-Like Steam Deck Was "Painful"

RadioHedgeFund

@Spiders Did they, or did they announce an underpowered PC?

If you are a PC gamer you want the best of everything and therefore only a custom rig with the best parts will do. Why compromise for the sake of portability, a portability that likely won’t be used outside the house?

I think the machine great and it has the potential to become an emulation powerhouse. I’d buy one for that alone. But I don’t see the larger steam customer base buying it.