Rooty

In ten years time I'm not sure there will be as many tears shed for the loss of the Jurassic Park video game universe as some of the histrionics in this thread would suggest.

The good news is I'm sure it can be resurrected one day by some morally dubious biogeneticists with a chunk of fossilised tree sap and enough frog DNA.

It's Porygon. Always and forever. Eternal shame on Nintendo for hanging my beloved virtual duck out to dry in the face of seizuregate with that whole anime business back in the day. That was all Pikachu's doing but money talks clearly :I #JusticeForPorygon

This looks delightful. Glad to see it scoring well!

Can't wait for the inevitable day one outcry that they butchered the game when MGS4 lands with bugs out the wazoo. There was a reason nobody wanted to go near porting that thing.

I would love this to be great since I share a home with an avid Voyager fan, but nothing about this at any point has jumped out to suggest it will be. Hopefully it will at least do a better job of the alternate paths idea than that execrable Walking Dead game last year but I'm honestly not expecting much beyond that.

Resident Evil 7 in the top 30. Sure why not.

The fact it takes until entry number thirteen on this list to get into 8/10 territory with player reviews goes to show just how much forgettable dross has been squeezed out of this franchise by Square over the years.

Somehow ended up with a copy of MySims Kingdom back in the Wii era and it was a surprisingly fun time. If they can still capture the silliness and whimsy of those older titles I'm all for a comeback.

Finally, blessedly, banished Ball x Pit from my life after platinuming it on PS5. Next up on my roguelite odyssey is Spiritfall, which is a gem of a game in its own right and a bit like if Dead Cells, Smash Bros and Spiritfarer all combined into one glorious genetic aberration. Also started Path of Radiance for the first time ever thanks to the Switch 2's Gamecube library and I'm already entirely too invested just three missions in. Finally I at long last took my first steps into Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and was overjoyed to discover it's nowhere near the horrible wet parp of a game some quarters of the gaming world have been making it out to be. It's as gorgeous and atmospheric a sequel as I could have hoped for. ViOLa is also there, I guess. At least Samus looks suitably badass riding it, even if I know in my heart the game is never going to give me my dream of an epic motorbike showdown with the eternally resurrecting Ridley :<

Here's the problem as I see it, which is even mentioned in the article. You either make the reward for scanning them so meagre as to be irrelevant to the gaming experience or you run the risk of upsetting people who might (rightfully) question why in-game content is being effectively paywalled by the amiibo system. With those constraints in mind it really is a minor miracle amiibos have lasted the way they have.

Major 'all the gear but no idea' vibes, alas. Best of luck I suppose.

Let's all aspire to be more Jan this coming year.

Man bankrolled by mega corp defends mega corp. Astonishing stuff.

As people have said, the Japanese cover looks more akin to an art print than a video game cover. It's like they're trying to pretend Mario Tennis is some transcendental cross-media masterpiece rather than a goofy multiplayer sports sim. NA actually does the job of selling the thing and has ten times the charm to boot.

Way, way, way too much Ball x Pit, to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. Maybe I'll pluck up the courage to finally start Metroid Prime: Beyond before the weekend's out, but right now I just can't see it while there's so many gosh darned balls to bounce.

I loved Radiant Dawn on the Wii and it always irked me how much people fawned over Ike and co. essentially hijacking the plot of the game from the new characters introduced as if the Greil Mercenaries were these undeniable badasses whose supremacy couldn't be questioned. Now, at last, I can see what all the fuss was actually about and if it was genuinely justified.

Honestly the only reason I wanted a Switch 2 in the first place. It's finally here!

Removed my last comment since for some reason I had it in my head Bananza and Mario Kart World weren't Switch 2 exclusives. Though I still feel most folks are probably waiting to see a big new Zelda/Pokemon/Smash before jumping on the Switch 2 bandwagon. Once the exclusives come they'll show up. Probably.

@Jeremazing I mean I do get it. Nintendo clearly don't want to be blamed for making it confusing for customers to differentiate between stuff for the Switch and the Switch 2 but I agree the current colour scheme is pretty lacklustre.

I feel like my whole life I've been waiting for someone to finally make this game. I've played plenty of fishing sims over the years and they've never quite scratched that particular zen itch I've been yearning for. Do I dare to dream that this, this, is that game?

Imagine if that Pikachu card was game-legal and usable at tournaments. It would be chaos.

Probably my favourite article I've ever read on Nintendo Life. Gosh this one gets you right in the feels. Fandom can be the most joyous of things if we just let it be, sometimes.

Farewell from these shores, Felix. You've been just lovely and will be missed by many. Best of luck in all your future adventures!

Bananza has this all day long. It's Nintendo doing what Nintendo does best, and that's basically ninety percent of the point of owning one of their consoles right there.

Started Breath of the Wild again on Switch 2 for a Master Quest playthrough and was immediately reminded just how hands-off the game is in terms of easing you into things for a Nintendo production. Spent an embarrassingly long time just trying to hunt pigs on the Great Plateau and falling to my death running from Bokoblins. Also started up Tears of the Kingdom for the first time alongside it but sadly fell asleep during one of the opening cutscenes so I have remarkably little idea why I'm suddenly now five hundred feet above Hyrule on a floating continent. Also been putting time into Senua's Sacrifice and Army of Ruin-a stellar Vampire Survivors-like that's surpassed the original for me in terms of eating up way too many personal hours in search of those sweet, sweet dopamine pew pews.

Meanwhile, Tonic Trouble continues to exist.

I mean...okay? So much for immersive historical accuracy. You do you Ubisoft, I guess.

@Maxz That's a beautiful take on the series.

Watched Matt McMuscles play this on his Youtube channel and he actually had some fairly warm things to say about the execution of the game. I know it looks like bargain bin fodder in the screenshots but from what I watched a 6 is maybe a tad ungenerous. Fully agree that Double Dragon has been a C-tier property for years, mind. A series with the occasional bright spot but predominantly a litany of clunkers. And whatever was going on that time they hung out with the Battletoads, of all creatures.

I honestly don't think Pokemon needs or would especially benefit from voice acting. But then I thought the same about Zelda and they just about made that work. Ultimately it seems more like a luxury than a necessity for Nintendo games to have voice acting. One of Nintendo's biggest strengths has always been how universal their IPs are and how they resonate the world over. Adding fifty different dubs for their games runs the risk of taking time and resources away from what's actually important in them.

First there was Dead Cells. Now we have Dead Memes.

Come on, this would only qualify as 'news' if it hadn't been named one of the best gaming inventions of the year.

Oh look it's Wilbell. I remember her!

....sort of.

KAMEHAMEnawwww not this guy again ._.

Got really sucked into Monster Train the second time of asking so I've already put a couple of runs into that this weekend. Might push on with mopping up the last trophy on Crow Country to platinum it on on PS5 if I can summon up the willpower and I've been itching to play something nostalgic after binging Youtube videos on Zelda this week. Maybe a cheeky bit of Majora's Mask to round things out.

Nobody here acknowledging the fact that by the time of the Pikmin games themselves, the sobering truth is that those Pikmin and that baby are all presumably long dead.

'Family-friendly' corporation my foot D:<

@KingMike And yet, Bubsy still hasn't been invited to that kart race they're all having right now.

...has he?

'Gallivant across 16 total stages, each containing an average of 300 screens, packed with wacky enemies and kooky mechanics.'

I know this is supposed to be read as a positive, but given Bubsy's reputation this inadvertantly sounds like unadulturated hell.

This really feels like someone at Nintendo saw the Bubsy collection was out and immediately was like 'Oh s**t, we gotta warn these poor folks somehow.'

I'm glad this turned out well. The Yooka-Laylee series has always seemed like a series with its heart in the right place, made by people who just wanted to make fun games. Maybe this will give the series a second life and see more games down the road.

Of all the years to pick to launch your kart racer, the same year as the guys who literally invented the genre probably wasn't the optimum choice Sega.

@Lizuka I wouldn't be shocked either...though it'd be interesting to see what form it might take. To my mind the world of Silent Hill is probably the farthest thing from compatible with the bullet blitzing battlegrounds of Vampire Survivors.

Not going to deny the game is a classic, but these days so, so many improvements have been made to the tactical RPG formula it's really hard to recommend one that is a) slow as molasses and b) so inscrutable in its systems you're almost destined to arrive at the worst ending at the end of it all by design. Maybe if you've exhausted all other options and you've a spare month of your life to devote to it it'd be worth a go, otherwise this classic is probably better best watched on Youtube or the like.

The Metroid Prime title sequence is possibly my all-time favourite for a video game, if not any piece of media. Honestly outside of the same series I'd say it wasn't even especially close. No idea why someone at Retro or Nintendo decided that Metroid was going to be the series for bonkers good openings (let's not pretend there haven't been a few clunkers *cough * Other M/Dread/Prime 3 *cough) but I'd go so far to say as it'd be a genuine disappointment if Beyond doesn't deliver on that front. Even the Prime Trilogy re-release had its own bespoke, insanely good, launch sequence. Come on Prime 4, you know what you have to do.

Let's be honest, the real reason Nintendo is happy to roll its properties in the mobile free-to-play filth is so their $80 games look like a good investment by comparison.

I'm kidding, obviously.

@cire_GDC With the greatest of respect, DVD players are nowhere near as prevalent as they were even five years ago in people's homes. Technology marches on in all areas of entertainment, not just the console sphere.

Aww man, Zion videos are always as wholesome* as the video game franchises he holds so dear. A great content creator and a great person by all accounts, best of fortune in your coming adventures.

*except that one video where he shot Jon, obvs.

Someone should probably have told them 'Pacman Fever' went out in the eighties.

I've played both the original and the 3D remake of Seiken Densestu 3, and I will say that from a flavour aspect the class system is impeccable. From a gameplay one though? Honestly it makes bugger all difference which you pick.

I love Brotato, but I have to question if this isn't a little late in the day to be adding additional content to a game a large chunk of the playerbase have probably long since moved on from? The roguelite space is pretty crowded these days.