Rooty

@Rykdrew This must be some weird happenstance of fate. I literally just finished my first successful run of Roguebook today and very nearly bought Monster Train on Switch as a result. Having had a heap of fun with Slay the Spire earlier this year I guess I now know what I'll be playing this weekend. Thanks for the recommend

This is this some next level viral marketing going on from Nintendo Life.

@Kyloctopus Better if for no reason other than it's exploiting people's nostalgia for the golden era of a popular tv series. That'll get it looked on kinder in reviews.

On paper this sounds like it should be awesome. But it won't be. It just never is with this franchise outside of Telltale's efforts.

Of course Nintendo aren't going to add any more tracks. This is the company that routinely adds Japanese games to it's online libraries without even the barest effort to help people decode them and calls it a job well done. Nintendo are the undisputed kings of low-effort when it comes to their free content.

Man who is not plumber voices plumber who does not plumb.

Film at eleven.

@OldGamer999 Spiderman 2 is surely going to flatten Mario in the first week at least. One's aimed squarely at the young-men-with-disposable-income-and-poor-impulse-control crowd and the other's likely going to rely on traditional Nintendo longevity in sales as parents pick it up for their kids as and when they can get round to it.

@ZZalapski Oh they undoubtedly have enough material. It's whether they have enough good material that's the real question here.

Played the NES game as a kid, though was only ever able to beat it with the able assistance of a certain Game Genie. The modern remake is far, far and away a better game so I'm surprised to see these being unearthed for a re-release. At least it's not priced ridiculously. If you do get this, prepare to have the endlessly repeating background tune burned into your brain for the rest of time though :/

@Rika_Yoshitake You earn cards by levelling up naturally through playing the game, though the latest released cards are usually extremely rare to come by due to the 'pool' system they use to distribute them. You can also spend currency (which you can earn or pay for with real money) to get cards early, and I think each month you're allowed to pick one card from a set group you'd like to claim as a freebie. Like most free-to-play stuff it's super generous with the content at first but eventually the card supply will dwindle to a trickle unless you pony up money to speed the process.

It's terrifying to think there are a whole three games in the series worse than the N64 version of Mythologies.

Played the game for a few months consistently, then the lack of things to actually do in it became increasingly apparent and I just uninstalled it. I doubt it'll come to Switch any time soon, if only because Hearthstone hasn't. It seemed like it was pretty optimised for mobile and will presumably stay that way while it makes money.

Actually quite surprised this only got a 7/10 considering it's a double helping of two sprawling RPGs of immaculate visual and audio polish (regardless of where you stand on 'the dreaded dub') with a unique combat system that sets them apart from the crowd. Obviously tastes may vary but for my money there's very little these games do wrong.

Aw, bless. Keep dreaming, Phil ;D

@GogGogGogGog I'd love this to happen but the game seems to be firmly rooted in emulating the original F-Zero experience now, and thus the original four cars that featured in that. Another thing they'd have to consider is how to balance any new racers so that they don't accidentally create a situation where one vehicle consistently outshines the others and leads to nobody ever picking anything else. The differences between the cars seem pretty minimal as it stands, but I'd imagine it's still a programming headache they'd rather avoid for now.

Sea of Stars! And it's ace! Also, rather more shamefully, Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp! That 'game' is just the dirt worst, but I am still deep in the thrall of it's hideous fanservicing tentacles.

I am a terrible person and I deserve terrible things.

@Hippy_Pirate_89 Yeah, that's the one. Way too easy to get locked into a practically unwinnable situation with no way back at that part. At least you can rest easy knowing it (probably) wasn't your gaming skills that let you down there xD

Looks incredible, but could have done without that reminder at the end of the super creepy Princess Peach subplot. Still no idea what they were thinking with that all these years later.

Amazing. What a ride the Smash saga has been.

@Hippy_Pirate_89 There were a couple of notoriously tricky boss fights in the game, though if I had to put money on it you likely fell foul of that one fight against Giacomo and his goons in the game that for some baffling reason takes place right after a save point with literally no option to go back and grind, so if you were underlevelled or didn't have enough of the right cards you were borked. Hopefully they've remedied this or lowered the difficulty of the fight this time round!

Finally took the sanity-retaining step of uninstalling Yakuza 0 rather than sinking any more time into its ludicrous amount of sidegames, took my first few steps into Yakuza Kiwami. Somehow still haven't managed to finish Breath of the Wild after discovering several more mountains I just had to climb in Hyrule, and revisited Danganronpa v3 just over a year after leaving it half-done to try and polish that off too. Oh, and I also cleared Classic Mode in Smash Ultimate on the highest intensity-something I could never manage on the previous iteration of the game, so a winner is me I guess.

I'm with Shigsy on this one. The Mariophant looks like an idiotic cereal mascot to me.

Edit Also, poor Yoshi ._.

@Gryffin Hahaha thanks so much, I'd literally headed straight for the mountain since it was the first location mentioned in the list of objectives so that's saved me one heck of a baptism of fire.

Didn't the original Pokemon Pinball come with a weird rumble attatchment built into the cartridge? I dimly recall it making my gameboy look absurdly space-age sticking out the back of it, but it's entirely possible I hallucinated the whole thing. Either way, the public demands the return of Poke-pinball D:<

In the endgame of Breath of the Wild now; 100 shrines down, Ballad of the Champions polished off and just about ready to go gunning for Ganon after a final treasure hunt across Hyrule and a few more snaps for the album. Also sunk plenty of time into Vampire Survivors, Smash Bros and took a few tentative steps into the world of Blasphemous after reading all the good things about the sequel this week.

Rayman is one of those video game mascots I never 'got'. I'm not disputing the quality of the games but the little limbless dude has just never done it for me. He can join Tintin and Asterix in the 'blandly European characters who just sort of exist' bucket unfortunately.

Nice. Never had Excitebike for the 64 but it's been up there on my list of games to experience on the console for a long time.

Oof. This hits right in the childhood. Everything I've ever heard or read about Charles Martinet has painted him as an exceptional human being. A hundred gratitudes for being the voice of gaming for so many for so long.

Labelling anyone an 'Xbox Legend' has the distinct whiff of damning with faint praise about it

It's slightly worrying that I only played this a few years back, loved the heck out of it and yet still can't for the life of me remember what it was that supposedly took place at the start of the game in that 'shocking' train sequence. Or even that there was a train. I may only have room for one video game train intro in my brain, and I think it's been given to Uncharted 2 instead :/

I think Baldur's Gate 3 will probably take it, given the momentum the hype train is building around it at present. Not sure how I feel about a game that's been playable in some form or another for what feels like years at this point taking the award for this particular year, but I'm enough of a fan of the series to overlook that at the end of the day.

I think TotK would have been an absolute lock if it weren't for the fact they recycled so much of the original game in it. It doesn't matter that it's still bonkers creative, I think it's just too easy to dismiss it as copypasta Zelda and use that as an excuse not to give it the top prize.

Playing guess the lookalike with the cast in the image up there has me pretty certain on all of them except the dude to the below left of 'Rick'. I'm guessing that's supposed to be...the Governor, maybe?

I wonder if this will see a race amongst the big publishers to see who can release the 'next' dirt cheap retro roguelike. That could make for an interesting Christmas period.

First game I have ever preordered in my life, based on word of mouth and the fact it's an absolute steal at the price. Played one run so far and happy to report it's as much of a dopamine factory as the reviews suggest. Glorious fun.

I love, love, love Baiten Kaitos with all my heart, but I'd be lying if I said it won't be bittersweet playing it without the narmtastic English voice acting. Most of it was goddawful (looking squarely at you, Lyude) but the voices for characters like Xella, Mizuti and Savyna will live forever in my mind's eye. Or ear.

I owned Contact and completed it years ago, and although I can at least say I've retained a basic knowledge of its name in the intervening time since I found myself watching a playthrough of it on Youtube some months ago and realised with some bemusement I didn't remember a lick of the game's actual content outside of the weird, fourth-wall breaking final scenes. I guess some games are just destined to live outside the range of human memory.

@NinjaNicky The article sort of explains this but I appreciate it doesn't make it wholly clear that they the Japanese Pokemon Stadium 2 is what we received as just plain old Pokemon Stadium. The very first Pokemon Stadium game had far less Pokemon in it and was pretty much considered redundant by the time America and Europe had jumped on the Pokemon bandwagon, so they released Pokemon Stadium 2 in lieu of the actual first game there.

I have next to no deep nostalgia for Quake or any particular fondness for the FPS genre in particular. I think I did have the game on the N64 back in the day but I was absolute cack at it and I've never been back to the series since. At this price however I'm legitimately considering buying it and attempting to rediscover this universal classic, and I hope this release rakes in a tidy profit for Nightdive and all involved. This right here is how you do video game preservation right, here's to many more revisited properties to come

Stumbled back into Rogue Legacy 2 after an extended hiatus away from the game and, gasp, actually managed to beat some bosses! The influx of new goodies and areas this unveiled saw me pretty swiftly back out of the endeavour in sheer dread and return to Yakuza 0. And also that one rhythm game on the Switch with the birds in it and you are also a bird. You know the one. Super Bird Buddies or what have you. It's adorable and you get to jam out with a woodpecker, so sue me.

@JONOFTHEJONS This. This is the content I log on for.

@GrailUK Isn't that the essence of play though? It's an activity you partake in that amuses you yet ultimately nets you no practical gain at the end of the day :/

@Doopuberpoop The ratio of goofball to sane has defintiely gone up over the generations. Mr. Mime was an outlier in gen.1, nowadays it's like two thirds of the roster are made out of sentient plasticine.

Raikou already looked goofy as hell, so can't say this is much of a downgrade. Definitely seems to be a case of the artwork being far superior to the in-game model however.

I've defended this price already once on this site, but good grief companies don't help themselves when they release patronising statements like this that are defiantly tone deaf to the mood in the fandom. I appreciate the executives need their post-holiday bonuses but come on, Take Two, would it have killed you to just do the decent thing for once and drop the price by ten or twenty bucks? When you're already on thin ice with the state of your ports you probably don't have the luxury of sitting there telling customers what they should be paying you.

Not even sure why they bothered putting the original Stadium on NSO when this eclipses it in just about ever way save for its lack of Lickitung-based sushi bar antics. Even without the gameboy conectivity it holds up, thanks in no small part to the hilarious random cup that makes the rubbish rental Pokemon into something of a positive since everyone's lumbered with them all the time.

I know it's nothing but a pipe dream, but if this were to ever lead to them actually localizing the sequel and slapping it on Switch Online I'd be giddy as a spin-dryed Spinda.

Beat the base game once, only to find out it didn't really 'count' as I'd used skills that invalidated the run. Genuinely fun experience, but like a lot of games in the genre it can occasionally be a bit on the obtuse side regarding mechanics which necessitates either way too much time experimenting or poring over online guides to clue you in. Obviously to some that will be an abject positive but for me it eventually became a bit of a frustrating time sink.

Brilliant game, well worth a purchase for anyone who didn't experience it first time round. That said, Rockstar still have a ways to go to dig themselves out from under the GTA Trilogy mess so wouldn''t surprise me if this fails to set the sales charts alight.

I know, I know, that on paper the sequel is just better than Secret of Mana in nearly every aspect. But one thing Seiken Densestu 3 can't beat this game on in is simple, earnest heart. Spending time with Secret of Mana's protagonists is utterly charming from start to tear-jerking end. The fact it looks and sounds gorgeous on top of that is just icing on the cake.

Down to the last ten shrines in Breath of the Wild, and fully intended to have it wrapped up by the end of the week. That was until I fell down a hole named Yakuza 0 and redirected the bulk of my game time to that instead. Technically the only game I've actually played on the weekend so far this week is Smash Ultimate though-I just can't get enough of the adorable bespoke paths for the characters in Classic Mode so I've been forging ahead with those.