Rooty

Hooray. Now I can listen to the music without having to look at all those dreadful haircuts!

@andyg1412 Nintendo published it. They're the ones who released it. They're responsible for putting it 'out' into the world.

These are jobs that don't exist any more given the company's fundamentally changed its direction. Of course you'd hope they'll be generous with severance money and that they've at least tried to accommodate people in other roles if they want to stay with the company but it just isn't going to be feasible in all instances. Lay offs aren't always about kicking people to the curb after you've had your pound of flesh off them, and it'd be ridiculous to force companies to keep people on the books who simply aren't going to do actively useful work for them going forward. If nothing else it'd irritate everyone else putting the hours in while some employees are paid to functionally do nothing. What are they honestly supposed to do here?

Edit: I guess they could always promote a shedload of new CEOs. That might actually be the answer.

F-Zero GX. Awesome but soul-crushingly difficult. Possibly the hardest thing Nintendo has put out since the eighties?

EU/Japan is undoubtedly the better composition, but it looks a little too much like a Saturday morning cartoon tie-in to really capture the melancholy spirit of the series like NA does.

Came close to finishing Dragon Age:The Veilguard yesterday so I'll try and end that this weekend. The game's been fun but almost painfully formulaic for roughly eighty percent of its runtime, though the developers do appear to have pulled out all the stops to craft a spectacular (if tearjerky) climax. Outside that I don't know. I work weekends and I'm tired. Maybe I'll play a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as well. Maybe.

Streets of Rage is the game I've always said I'd take with me to a desert island if I could only play one game for the rest of time, so I guess that's me sorted for the next eternity, then.

Knowing I'll be able to drag my joycons painfully across my jeans fills me with determination.

Go away you tiresome person. Or at the very least learn what 'camping out' actually means before you go shouting it from the rooftops.

Of course they'll do paid DLC. And they'll use it to sell people Switch Online passes again. And lots of people will get angry and complain. And thus the cycle will begin again.

Luigi's Mansion lays claim to one of gaming's greatest main themes and a pretty fine credits track to boot. One of Nintendo's most unique soundtracks to be sure.

Mario Kart World is just that much more emblematic of the galaxy of possibilities a new console launch should evoke. Maybe on another occasion it'd look a little too crowded, but as the herald of the Switch 2 age it really deserves the crown.

I dipped out of the WII U era of Nintendo precisely because of the price tag associated with it, only returning once the Switch had built up enough of a library to offer a breadth of gaming experiences at what I percieved as good value for money. This was supplemented with the Switch voucher program allowing me to pick up first party Nintendo titles I was into. I can't imagine Nintendo won't implement a similar updated program for the Switch 2, and the software library looks on course to be every bit as strong as the Switch in terms of third party support. Somehow I think we'll all survive this outrage.

Played some Great Ace Attorney Chronicles this morning and I've been hitting Dragon Age: The Veilguard all week so I imagine I'll be putting some more hours into that. The story and characters are fantastic but the decision to basically redo Dragon Age 2, the mediocre middle child of the franchise, is certainly as they say 'a choice'. Might sneak a dash of Pokemon Snap in on the periphery but that'll only drive me closer to making the terrible financial choice to track down a copy of New Pokemon Snap I imagine :I

Alas, this is inevitably destined to land in the great bargain bin in the sky along with all the other gimmick-dependant games that have come and gone over the years. Very few people are going to want to learn an entirely new method of control for a simple sports game, and those that do aren't going to be doing it for long once cramp sets in. Coupled with the terrible aesthetic choice for the graphics this series will be DOA at any price over 10 bucks.

This is great news for people who live in entirely white voids with interrogation-level lighting, at least.

I can't remember any company offering to upgrade my old DVDs of films to Blu-Ray for free, so it makes sense there'd be a price attached to getting your old-gen games updated. Even in the instances where films were sold as DVD/Blu-Ray combined during those years where people were still adopting the technology they'd routinely bump the price by ten or twenty percent otherwise all anyone would ever do is buy the old stuff and upgrade it for free.

This is bad news, there's no doubt about it. But whenever these sort of things happen I do have to think back to the early nineties when I first got into gaming and big first party games from Nintendo and Sega back then were pretty routinely priced around the fifty quid mark. It sucks, but while the company's on top they really don't have any impetus to engage in the deep price cutting that's become the norm elsewhere to try and recoup costs on failing properties. They are really going to have to deliver on quality this gen to keep the audience however.

It's a good film, but it's no Casablanca.

The problem with a Star Fox film is it'd almost inevitably be a retelling of the same old Star Fox story fans of the franchise have already seen at least three times at this point. A Star Fox: Origins series however? That could have legs. Even if the Star Fox team themselves don't :/

I can't imagine ever wanting to play Harvest Moon games back-to-back regardless of quality, but whoever their target audience is I hope it sells well.

A touching tribute to a character who died on the way back to her home planet.

Aww yeah it's on like Donkey Kong.

('94)

Sega did what Nintendidn't, I guess.

How is Japan winning this? That NA cover is iconic.

Assassins Creed Odyssey, as I have been the past two weeks straight. I'm still struggling to get my head around just how legitimately, stupidly, big this game is. It's alternately a dazzling testament to one company's boundless ambition and a truly terrifying glimpse into a world that perpetuates crunch culture at the same time. Truly mindboggling stuff.

19/24. Beefing it on the Mask of Scents is shameful ._.

Never played the Ridge Racer series outside of a brief handful of times in the arcades and maybe once on the original Playstation back in the day as I've never really considered racing games my 'thing', but having just played a quick mode race of this I'm shocked at how good this version is. I totally understand why folks might not be excited about it dropping, but this is a legitimately fun arcade racer that looks stellar on the Switch OLED to boot. Super drifty without being punishing with it, I now want to go on and see how many of the cars I can unlock. I just wish they'd given the Pac-Man themed car better stats so I could justify using it in races :I

Country's DK was designed to fit a whole different aesthetic in the first place, and while they've made a few tweaks here and there over the years here and there to fit him in with the rest of the Mario crew (The Mario vs Donkey Kong series' version was excellently done, if you ask me) the entire Mario franchise seems to be shifting more than ever towards a cartoonesque style these days. Not changing Donkey Kong to fit in with that might have just left the big ape exiled from the Mushroom Kingdom entirely, which you could argue might be a worthwhile trade but I think most people still associate DK with Mario and would like to see him cropping up in Mario-related games. It also brings him way more in line with Illumination's take on the character in the movie which is probably how most new Nintendo fans are going to get to know him in the coming years.

@nhSnork I understood maybe twenty percent of that. Your Captain America image though?

'I understood that reference!'

Ubisoft really are pinning their hopes on a reputation revival with Nintendo, aren't they? Pull up the drawbridge guys >.>

All of this stuff looks great. Except that DK T-Shirt, which is an honest-to-goodness eyesore xD

What I want to know is how long has Diddy's design been changed so he looks like he's on the run from a Youtube parody animation?

Good to see they've taken the breakup with the Sony and Microsoft fanbases well and are keen to move on with their lives at Ubisoft HQ.

EU and America are both awful. Japan on the other hand is hilariously awful and wins on that count alone.

Next you'll be telling us they've somehow miraculously made this new Switch 'more powerful' than the old Switch or something equally implausible :I

Donkey Kong Country 3 doesn't have a bad soundtrack persay. It just has a soundtrack that was tasked with following up Donkey Kong Country 2, which for most people is GOATed (and with good reason.). Booting up DKC3 and hearing that awesome fanfare at the start you're expecting something on that level and instead you get this almost experimental ambient soundscape behind you the whole time. That said I am really looking forward to revisiting it as a listening experience, so thanks uncle Ninty

Meanwhile, it ends up on Yahtzee's 'worst games of the year' list. Go figure.

@JSC016 Take it from someone who waited years to finally play Chrono Trigger because of it's hugely venerated status. There can be a thing as 'too much' hype for a game :I

It's fascinating how the comments section seems to skew towards Japan this week but the actual vote is leaning heavily the other way. I voted for EU/US because I'm in the camp that old-school Link looks goofy as. It's a fine cartoon for the instruction manual, less so for selling your product to the masses.

Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine or we riot D:<

If Nintendo are allowed to put themselves in the position of deciding what does and doesn't constitute a 'good' game, rather than just a 'playable' one on their platforms is that really a road we want to start down? Sounds great in principle until they use that power to deny competitors a fair slice of the pie. I fully agree the eshop is in desperate need of an overhaul and the company should probably be doing more to confront this sort of thing given their current reputation but I don't think it's as simple as Nintendo just being able to tell these clowns to naff off with their scamware.

Technically the Japanese one might be superior, but I'd be lying if I said that blue EU background wasn't dreamy. Genuinely tough call.

I can't imagine it's relevant to those who defend to the death things like the Steam Deck but honestly why must all these things look so dull? Say what you will about the Switch it's at least eyecatching with its colour scheme.

I know the kind of the whole point of the Nintendo Directs was so Nintendo could stage manage every facet of their own appearance to the public, but Satoru never seemed like anything less than absolutely genuine in his humanity whenever he was on. He was the best of the company, and the best of the wider industry. We were so lucky to have him.

I don't know much about the series but aren't the Splatoon tracks usually recorded by vocal artists? Maybe it's a licensing issue they've yet to iron out.

Does this mean that soon we'll be seeing dozens of children playing with their Wankos at the dinner table?

Write to your local MP today, citizens!

I like video games. They're fun and easy to play

The colour scheme of the Japanese box art alone is so much more everything than the generic fantasy schtick of EU/America.

For the love of God nobody tell them about the Sea of Thieves subreddit.