ReaperMelia

@Bretlfcampbell It's because the actual Special Edition contents are shipping out in September while the game itself ships in July. It would be a pain to work that out logistically for retail stores unfortunately. Part of me wishes they stuck to the September release date just so it could be available at retail at this point honestly.

I can't wait to spend another 10 hours staring at Wario's face only to come up empty-handed again!

Jokes aside, I really, REALLY hope Nintendo prepared for the actual demand this time. The first attempt was a total mess.

This was an easy day-one buy for me. I normally wait for a physical, but I couldn't wait in this case... and honestly, if they do get a physical release later, I won't be upset about having to pick that up, too. Both of these games are masterpieces, and I'm super excited to replay them both on the Switch! The port's been fantastic so far as well. I just hope Valve brings Half-Life over next, it's my favorite of their IPs and one of my favorite game franchises period. Half-Life 2 was ported to the Nvidia Shield along with the Portal games, so I'm hoping we at least see that come to Switch too.

This is going to be a busy Switch weekend for me... While I'd like to get Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, I decided I want to avoid picking up any big games for the Switch right now so I can work on clearing my backlog a bit before Xenoblade 3 takes up all my time on the system. That being said, I did pick up the Capcom Fighting Collection, so I'll be doing my best to figure out how to play those games! They're all new to me, as are old 2D arcade fighters in general to be perfectly honest. I'm having fun, but they're really tough to learn! I also didn't make much progress in Crosscode's DLC last weekend, so I'll hopefully finish it up this weekend. On top of that, I did end up jumping back into the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. I finished Super Castlevania IV and decided to skip Castlevania: The Adventure, so now I'm on Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. I think I'm about halfway through, it's been really fun so far!

On Steam Deck, I decided to be responsible and hold off on replaying Final Fantasy VII Remake until I finish some other games I wanted to get through, including FFXII on Switch. In the meantime, I'm a little over a third of the way through Spyro 3, so that'll be my game of choice for now. I'll probably mess around in some other games as well, but Spyro 3 is one I'd really like to get through soon.

I'm wondering how many of the people up in arms over this played 2 and its DLC (And are even interested in this game in the first place to be perfectly honest). The DLC for 2 was also announced a month in advance and was met with similar resistance, but the value was absolutely incredible. It added an extensive challenge mode, new party members/quests, and a 30-hour standalone campaign that was big enough to get its own physical release. If any company knows how to do DLC the right way, it's Monolith. I trust them to make this worth the price.

That being said, I'll hold out for the likely physical release before I get the DLC. I bought 2's expansion pass days before the physical release of Torna was announced, so I'm not making that mistake again.

I've picked up a few of these games and liked what little I played of VIII, so I was interested when I saw a tease for X... although the news that they're drawing inspiration from Dark Souls is certainly one way to make me less interested. I hope they don't go too heavy on it, I like a good challenge but all of the Souls-inspired games seem like way too much to me. If people enjoy them, more power to them, but the first Dark Souls is the only one to catch even the tiniest bit of interest from me and I've been questioning that one lately as well.

@ThePizzaCheese The controversy isn't about Chris Pratt's heritage, it's that they ignored Mario's decades-long voice actor in favor of some famous celebrity for marketing purposes. I haven't seen anyone seriously complain about Pratt not being Italian.

@KingMike Amano really likes to draw blonde characters. Some of his concept art for Squall looks almost blonde as well honestly.

That being said, I haven't seen anything to confirm it, but I've heard the pixel art for Terra actually came before Amano's concept art. That would mean green hair was the original design. I wish they stuck with it for her appearances beyond the original game, it makes her stand out a lot more and it also just fits really well given her heritage.

The NA art has some nostalgia value (even though I didn't play it back in the day, it's still the first one I came to associate the game with), but it's really hard to beat that Japanese art. The only problem I can raise with is that Terra's hair could use more green (Yes, I know Amano always drew her with blonde hair and that's her "official" depiction these days, but come on, the green hair is way cooler and more fitting for her character)

@RareFan They don't ignore Pikmin in favor of Fire Emblem, FE and Pikmin are by two completely different studios. The reason we haven't seen Pikmin or other dormant IPs is because the teams associated with them don't want to work on them, not because Nintendo had to choose between Donkey Kong or Pokemon.

On Switch, I'm still working my way through Crosscode's DLC. I'm past the halfway mark I think, so it shouldn't take too much longer! I've had to do a lot of grinding so far, but I am enjoying the new temple. If I finish the DLC this weekend, I'm thinking I'll move on to either Castlevania Anniversary Collection (Specifically Super Castlevania IV since I finished 1 and 3) or Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. The other option is returning to Final Fantasy XII, but...

While I had very mixed feelings when I tried it on PS4, the new Steam launch of Final Fantasy VII Remake along with a decent discount made me pull the trigger on it, so I've started that up on my Steam Deck. Not sure if I'll shelve it for a little bit to focus on some other games I wanted to get through first or if I'll wind up powering through it all now. It's running surprisingly well on my Steam Deck, which is a pleasant surprise! I know they said it was Verified, but so did Horizon Zero Dawn, and the performance in that was pretty bad, so I was a bit worried here. I've wanted to try the game out again for a while, so this seemed like the perfect excuse to do so.

Elsewhere, I want to finish Shantae: Risky's Revenge on PS5 so I can move on to another game on the system; I'll either pick Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga back up or start on Returnal, probably.

@MamaSelkie DK64 was on Wii U Virtual Console, so it could definitely come to Switch as well.

@solarwolf07 Yes, this spoils a pretty big part of VII's plot. Definitely play the original first if you can!

As much as I dislike most of Square's attempts to cash in on the success of FFVII with all the spin-offs/sequels/prequels/remakes, Crisis Core was actually a game I really loved back in the day and I've been wanting to revisit it for a while. This is the perfect excuse to do so! I'm really glad it's coming to the Switch, I just hope Square gives it a proper physical release in the west.

On the Switch, I finally decided to revisit Crosscode to play through the DLC. That being said, I quickly realized I'm very underprepared for it, so I'm working on grinding before I get back to the DLC. It's fun to return to this one, though!

On other platforms, I finished Horizon Zero Dawn on my Steam Deck! I was going to jump straight into the DLC originally, but I'm feeling burned out, so I decided to start Spyro 2 in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy instead. I'm already about halfway through and having a lot of fun! I also got the new Capcom bundle from Humble Bundle, so I'll probably be playing some Street Fighter on there as well. I'd also like to get back to Evil Dead: The Game on PS5 and Xenosaga Episode II on PS2 soon.

@CharlieGirl That's true! I'll just do that then given how many of these overlap with their other collections. I wasn't sure if these were just updated arcade ports of the originals or new games, but that premise sounds really interesting! I'm excited to try them out.

@thinkhector Yeah, I know the dedicated collections have online play while these don't. I just find it odd they'd have so much overlap between the Fighting Collection and this new collection that comes out a month later.

It's odd they're coming out with a collection including a couple Darkstalkers games and some others that are also in the Capcom Fighting Collection a month after that's out. I've got the Fighting Collection already pre-ordered and I'll use that for the overlapping games, but I'm still tempted to grab this as well. The Mega Man games in particular have my interest since I love that series and I've never played the arcade games. I'm not sure how many Street Fighter games here overlap with the Street Fighter collection since I still haven't picked that one up, but if there are any that are just in this collection, that makes it even more tempting...

I was checking in all day... this is by far the worst product launch/pre-order I've ever experienced. Xenoblade is my favorite series ever so I absolutely want to get this to go with my collection, but today was just a complete mess. Nintendo needs to either get their act together if they intend to use this for all special editions or they need to stick with retailers from now on. I'm not the type to get mad at Nintendo over a lot of things, but I'm really upset with them over this.

Honestly, I'd prefer if they took the Limited Run Games model of just having a month-long open pre-order model and then making enough units to match that. Since the SE contents are coming later anyway, it's not like anyone ordering it would mind a potential extra wait. I just want to know that I've secured one.

Lechonk is already the best Pokemon of this new generation. I don't care what else they show, nothing will top this magnificent creature.

@Mr_Fox Was this ever confirmed? The game was still pretty early in development, music usually comes much later in the development cycle.

@Mr_Fox @Mauzuri The series composer passed away at the end of last year, so they'll definitely be getting a new composer to take his place.

Mostly the same as last week: Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam Deck, Evil Dead: The Game on PS5, and Live A Live on 3DS. I also decided to start up Shantae: Risky's Revenge on my PS5 a couple days ago since I wanted to work through some more of my PS library, so there's that to consider as well. I'm also kind of itching to get something going on Switch again... just need to decide what to go with. Maybe Pikmin 3? Or Eastward... I have a lot of Switch games to choose from.

@EVIL-C Oops, that's my bad. Thanks for the clarification! That being said, I unfortunately still have my doubts any distributor would pay extra for the 32GB carts given how expensive those are.

@Grim The games can't both fit on a single cartridge together, so there won't be a physical double pack. The standalone releases from LRG are all we'll get.

EDIT: Whoops, turns out they'd fit, it'd just be close to the limit! Ignore that.

I was pretty narrow-minded in terms of what I'd play when I was really young, mainly just JRPGs and platformers. Even then, it was mainly the same few series. I think Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the first game to encourage me to step outside my comfort zone as it introduced me to all sorts of different characters and IPs I was curious about. Now I enjoy most of Nintendo's franchises featured in Smash and a good number of the third party ones as well.

I think the other thing that helped me expand my horizons was a friend who talked me into trying out my first shooter. When I was young (12-14 or so), I had the dumb mentality that all M games, especially shooters, were overly violent trash with no real value. That was until a good friend pointed me towards Valve's games, and that made me see how wrong I was. Half-Life instantly became my favorite FPS, and I've since branched into others like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Bioshock. Splatoon became my favorite shooter once I played that, but I generally prefer singleplayer shooters (I'm just not a very competitive person and tend to stress out when I jump into a new PvP game and have to catch up to long-time players), and it's all thanks to that friend giving me the push to give an M game a fair shot. I also got into horror games as a result; I've always loved horror in general, but I kind of figured horror games were typically cheap jump scare-fests since those were popular at the time I was in high school. I'm now a huge Resident Evil fan though, and I've played a number of other horror games I enjoy as well.

I do feel pretty happy with the variety of genres I play now. JRPGs still are and always will be my favorite, and I still love platformers as well, but shooters, survival horror, roguelikes, and fighting games are all genres I've come to really enjoy as well. There are some genres I just have no interest in (realistic racing sims, dating sims, and visual novels aside from Ace Attorney), but I still feel like I've expanded my horizons a ton and there are plenty of games I still need to check out in the ones I do like.

@EVIL-C Most of them are games that wouldn't get any physical release if they didn't take the one-print model. It's too expensive for the majority of indie studios to do a general retail release unfortunately. I've missed out on LRG releases I wish I could have gotten too, but the reality is that the only other alternative for the vast majority of their games is no physical release at all. And as I said before, there are still LRG-partnered retailers that sell their games at standard retail price (Best Buy in the US, PNP Games in Canada, Amazon is starting to sell some games from their distributed line now too). They're also beginning to roll out their own retail stores that will carry their games as well, so it will be even easier to get a hold of them in the near future.

@link3710 Most of LRG's Switch releases are also sold at Best Buy or Amazon, at least here in the US... And they have open pre-orders when they list games on their website, so they make enough to meet demand plus extra for Best Buy.

@UltimateOtaku91 I believe Namco owns the Project X Zone IP, not Capcom. It would be cool to see it return, though!

I decided to start playing the original Live A Live before the remake comes out, so I'll be playing some of that on my New 2DS XL. It's a really interesting and cool game so far, I'm glad I was able to pick it up! I'm looking forward to seeing how the remake turns out as well.

On other systems, more Horizon Zero Dawn on my Steam Deck and Evil Dead: The Game on PS5.

@XenoShaun Adding to the frustration for the PS5 is the fact that the controller has a built-in mic that's always on by default too, so you'll get all sorts of people unwittingly broadcasting their whole home to everyone in multiplayer games. I don't like voice chat with randoms in online games personally, it's always just people hurling insults/slurs or being obnoxious.

I finished Rogue Legacy 2 on Steam, so now I want to focus all my Steam Deck time on Horizon Zero Dawn. I've been having a lot of fun with it so far, but RL2 completely stole my attention for a couple weeks, so now it's time for me to continue my trek to Meridian.

My Collector's Edition copy of Evil Dead: The Game will be arriving shortly, so I'll also be having a pretty groovy weekend thanks to that. I can't wait to cut and blast through tons of Deadites! I'll definitely try playing as them as well, but I always prefer playing as a survivor in asymmetrical multiplayer horror games.

If I get in any time on my Switch, my copy of One Step from Eden arrived from LRG, so I'll probably get in some of that. I also need to get back to Xenosaga Episode II soon if I want to get through the older Xeno games before Xenoblade 3 is out...

I don't get why people can't see Nintendo's statement that the Switch is halfway into its lifespan as proof that we aren't getting a successor this year or next year. It'll still be quite a while before we see a new Switch, I'd guess maybe mid/late 2024 AT THE EARLIEST. It's still massively successful despite not being as powerful as its competitors and it will continue to be successful as long as Nintendo has strong exclusives lined up for the system. We've got plenty of heavy-hitters already confirmed for this year along with BOTW2 next year, so the release schedule is showing no signs of slowing down. I could see a revision akin to the New 3DS coming this year or next year, but anyone who's convinced we're seeing the Switch 2 this year or next year is setting themselves up for disappointment.

@UltimateOtaku91 They don't know when Nintendo's next console will come out. They were just covering their bases in case it did come sooner than expected (which it won't) and in case the game can't run on the Switch.

I'm still certain Dragon Quest X Offline will get an international release in the future. While Square Enix explicitly shot down the online version coming to the west in the anniversary stream, they didn't say anything about the Offline version not coming to the west just a few minutes afterwards. There's no reason for it to not get localized, it'll just come after the Japanese release since it still needs to be translated.

@NintendoEternity Yeah, I'm getting it on PS5. If there's no crossplay, I'll probably grab it on Steam by the time it goes there so I can play it with friends.

@Daniel36 I know it's a side game, but part of me can't help but wonder if they'll do some sort of bundle with both games or something like that once the main game is out. I'll honestly probably buy it off the eShop soon-ish if there's no word on a physical release, although I'm not in any particular rush right now anyway with all the RPGs coming this summer and all the ones I still need to catch up on.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is on my radar, but I might wait to see if it gets a physical release in some form unless it's a budget eShop game. Pac-Man Museum is definitely one I'd like to get. I'm not really into Disgaea, but the games in NIS Classics Volume 2 are ones I've heard good things about, so I might take a look at that as well.

@NintendoEternity The Switch version was unfortunately delayed. No word on when it's coming yet.

It's probably going to be a very Steam Deck-focused weekend... much like this past week has been. Rogue Legacy 2 just came out a couple days ago, so I've been playing a lot of that. I loved the first game, and so far, 2 just improves on it in every way! I'll also play more Horizon Zero Dawn on there since I've been enjoying that as well.

I should really get back to Lego Star Wars on my PS5 soon. I don't have that much left in terms of episodes at least. On 3DS, I started up The Mysterious Murasame Castle again today, so we'll see if I can manage to stick to it for once or if I drop it after getting stuck like I usually do. I also need to get back to Xenosaga Episode II on my PS2 soon. I'll probably get in a bit of Chocobo GP on Switch, but I get the feeling I'll be focusing more on other platforms for a little while. My Switch usually gets all my attention, so it's probably good for me to give it a break.

Maybe if Donkey Konga had some "Play to Own"/blockchain elements, he'd like it a little more.

It's honestly kind of disappointing the K.K. Slider vinyl is just the instrumental tracks rather than the vocal versions, though it's still kind of tempting...

Happy 30th birthday, Kirby! Forgotten Land was a great way to kick things off, I'm excited to see what else is in store for his anniversary.

I can't wait until we get to see videos of people throwing their joy-con into their TV while playing bowling. Wouldn't be a Wii Sports sequel without a few smashed TVs.

I'm really curious to see what this is! I'd love to see a Lego version of Rosalina's observatory, though I'd imagine that ship has probably sailed. Maybe it's something tied to Odyssey? I'm surprised they haven't done anything from that yet, at least to my knowledge.

Yeah, still expecting this to be abysmal. Illumination is a horribly soulless studio, they're the worst fit for Nintendo IPs.

Also, to everyone expecting a trailer, it's incredibly rare for a movie trailer to come out more than a few months before release. It's not like games where they drop multiple trailers over a two-year period. I'd be shocked if we see a trailer before December, maybe November at the soonest.

Yeah, I'm happy with the PS3 collection I got for like $10. Still need to get around to playing these games one day, though...

WATA is scummy, plain and simple. What they're doing isn't preservation; it's assigning an arbitrary number to a game, sealing it in plastic, and selling it for absurd prices. They've harmed the retro collecting community to a possibly irreparable degree, they aren't worth defending in the slightest. They don't care about the games they're "preserving," they just care about whatever scam will make them the most money right now. They did the same thing with coin collectors before, they'll move on to something new once they're done with games.

My Steam Deck should arrive this weekend, so I'll be playing around with that a lot. I've got a lot of games I want to play on it to try it out: Doom Eternal, Horizon Zero Dawn, Dusk, Planet Zoo, and many more... I have a big Steam backlog, so it'll be handy for getting through that.

I've also been playing a lot of games on my 3DS lately. I just fired up the 3D Classics remake of Kid Icarus, so I'll hopefully get through that this weekend. I'd like to at least start on its GameBoy sequel as well.

The recent news of Xenoblade 3's release date being moved forward made me realize I now have only three months to catch up on the older Xeno games, so I started up Xenosaga Episode II a couple days ago. I'd definitely like to make some good progress on that this weekend so I can finish these games in time for Xenoblade 3. I've been taking a bit of a break from Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, but that would be nice to return to as well.

Boxing and bowling are the two I remember playing the most in the original. I gave my vote to boxing, but both were good. I never touched golf personally, just seemed boring to me.

I feel bad saying this, but even though I had Wii Sports Resort, I don't think I really played much of it. I'll need to fix that one of these days... I remember swordplay being cool, so I'll pick that as my favorite. No clue what my least favorite would be since I don't remember any of the others

I'll be waiting for the physical release, although I haven't put an order in just yet. Going to give it a bit of time to see if there's anything else I want to order alongside it.