Rosalinho

@OorWullie Are they all featured on General Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club?

I'm waiting for someone to make the fake rumour I started in the playground of a "Lon Lon Temple" with Epona as the sage a reality.

Glad the colourisation nation have got round to Wario Land. This game is a gem. Fond memories of playing it on holiday in Spain as a kid; played it again a few years back and it's still solid.

Also notable for making Mario a bigger jerk than Wario himself.

"Hello, EA? This is Sepp Blatter. I hear you need a new name for your football game and I was wondering how much you would pay me for Blatter Football... Hello? Hello?"

It's incorrect to say that Nintendo just retroactively came up with a Zelda timeline at some recent time. I could list all the deliberate story connections between the games and remarks in interviews by Aonuma and Miyamoto but it would be boring. It's just a strange thing to argue given all the evidence to the contrary. Also, most Zelda fans don't "get mad" about lore, we just enjoy discussing it. It's part of the genius of the series that there's a coherent narrative throughout but enough left up to the imagination for fans to speculate on.

I don't like Double Dash.

Sure, I tried to convince myself I liked it in the GameCube days when it was the new 3D Mario Kart that it felt like we'd waited forever for, but I don't like most of the tracks, I don't like the handling, there are no words for how bad the music is, and the emphasis on overpowered special items like giant bananas and humongous Bowser shells sucks all the fun out of racing; I feel totally the opposite about those to Kate. Add to that the most unfair blue shell in the series, which doesn't even attempt to hit anyone except the person in first, and you've got a frustrating and often unfun experience.

I realise it's a lot of people's favourite, but I don't think I'll ever go back to it. Wii, 7 and 8 are all miles better as they each get the balance between items and driving pretty much bang on and have more than four decent tracks. (And what is this weird obsession with Baby Park? If there's one track I never wanted to play again its that one.)

Eh? Super Mario 64 controls better than the overwhelming majority of 3D adventure games before or since. Are people playing it with a keyboard? Is the stick sensitivity off in the 3D All-Stars version (not inconceivable due to the N64's weird stick response)? What's going on here?

I know nothing about Corrie, but he perfectly sums up everything I love about Nintendo and why they're still the centre of the gaming universe. Keep on Nintendoing George!

If Link has to eat continuously to stay in the lava, surely he would eventually sink from the massive weight gain?

Really guys? The Wii sold almost as many units as the Switch and is still widely played today. If Nintendo did end access to games people had paid good Wii Points for without any notice it would be a jerk move no matter how old the platform is. (I'm not saying that's what's happened. We don't know.)

Though I'm more annoyed with myself that I never bought anything from WiiWare despite it hosting some great games, and now I can't.

Wow. Mario references in Star Trek? Talk about a pop culture singularity. You are a hero, Terry Matalas. Live long and-a-prosper! Wahoo! 🖖

This isn't a shock.

"99% of quotes are misattributed." - Albert Einstein

Koopa Cape and Maple Treeway are both boss tier tracks (much like nearly every track from MKWii) so no complaints here. Whoever's picking these tracks clearly has good taste.

Despite what other people are saying, I'm fine with SNES tracks being sprinkled in. Flatter, less intense tracks are good to balance things out, although not at the expense of stone cold classics from 64, Wii and 7.

I'm not saying that enjoying games like this is the worst thing in the world. But how defensive people get about doing so does tickle me. If someone called me a pervert for having Rosalina in a swimsuit as my avatar, I'd probably laugh it off. Fair cop.

@roboshort Look up the famous Sony vs. Connectix case if you're wondering why it's most likely legal in the US; it also relates to how Nintendo don't make you agree to an EULA forbidding reverse engineering before playing.

However, the assets used in the game (models, textures...) are still Ⓒ Nintendo, which is why they're not included and you need a ROM to compile the game. So that part is infringing.

Also, copyright and trademarks are different things, and the bar for prosecuting someone for trademark infringement is usually higher than for copyright.

Gosh, now I've got big dreams of a hack and slash platformer based on massacring Bowser's troops by chaining together lethal bicycle kicks and diving headers. It needs to be made.

Given how I still think "I wonder if that goes to the Mushroom Kingdom?" every time I see a big pipe, I'm mildly creeped out at how relatable I find the middle-aged man who wants to be a fairy. Kooloo-Limpah!

And the kicker of asses and taker of names is absolutely right. Metaverse is just a scam designed to fool gullible investors and distract everyone from Frances Haugen's disclosures about what went on inside The Company Formerly Known as Facebook. The sad fact is that it's succeeded in that, given that all people are talking about is metaverse rather than what Haugen exposed.

There isn't a product. There aren't any ideas. It's all just theoretical vaporware. "Love us and give us money! We'll build something totally cool! Promise!"

I read the headline and was expecting Tingle's head instead of Mario's.

Don't ask me to choose between X and GX. It's like forcing someone to line up their children and pick a favourite.

(GX does win hands down on music though. Give me a full-on rave over Iron Maiden tributes any day.)

Wait... this is fake? You mean I threw my Wii into that ravine for nothing?!

But it was on the Internet! It must be true!

This is cool and a lot of it feels very true to the original, but I think it would be improved if they dialled back the realistic foliage, grass and ivy. It doesn't mesh that well with that chunky, cartoony look that's so iconic to a lot of Rare N64 games. I think they got the balance right with Bubblegloop Swamp though, and Freezeezy Peak, Clanker's Cavern and most of Grunty's lair look great.

Without Mario and his world the universe would be a darker, sadder, less fun place. There are few things I'm more grateful for in life than the joy that Mario games have brought me in the good times and the bad. Happy Mario Day! Wahoo!

Oh my. Light guns on modern displays have been my classic gaming white whale for years. We can't say we've preserved the NES until future generations can play Duck Hunt as it should be played.

Lag is always going to be an issue with anything that isn't a CRT though. Some plasma screens are fast enough for the Zapper to sometimes register a hit (I've tried it) but I've never found a TFT TV that does. There are very fast TFTs but they rarely make it into consumer tellies, unfortunately.

This video entertainment is lacking Link's Awakening manner Switch remaking! I HAVE FURY!

A great inventor who was stiffed by Atari and had to fight tooth and nail for patent royalties from Nintendo and Sega. Though he was a fan of the Wii, so clearly no hard feelings and a man of great taste in consoles. Glad he gets more recognition nowadays.

@Yosher I thought the Goombas held their baseball bats in their mouths, but Google Image Search has proven me wrong. I stand corrected before your expertise in Goombology.

Wait... do these Goombas have telekinetic powers that enable them to hold spears and shields despite having no arms? That'd even the odds against Mario's boot all right...

I dislike this concept of "beating" a game. I suppose it makes sense with games that are intentionally hard and unfair, but a game like BotW isn't an enemy to pummel into submission. And I do think that you're done with a game when you're tired of it, whenever that may be.

BotW is one of the best games ever made and one of my favourites of all time, but I think I've played it enough now. I can't picture myself playing Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time again either, even though they are both masterpieces. At some point, even the greatest of games becomes humdrum and playing it feels like going through the motions. So I'm happy to just leave the majority of those little wooden [expletive]s under their rocks for all eternity.

I can't hear the words "Chocobo" and "racing" without thinking of the hours of grinding for a walk-on-water Chocobo I put into FF7 so I could one-hit Sephiroth.

It sounds solid, but the season pass aspect just isn't my thing.

Can't wait to see people try this with every Labo toy-con.

If this isn't patched in BoTW 2, Link and Zelda will be able to duplicate infinite copies of the Triforces of Courage and Wisdom and throw Ganondorf into the sun.

When I was a kid my mother made some joke about how Mario and Peach had secretly had a baby called Giovanni. I became obsessed with this idea and repeated it to everyone who would listen. Then Mario Golf came out with Baby Mario as a playable character and I was overjoyed at the "proof" of Giovanni's existence.

@KingMike That's interesting, I know about the floppy based copiers but didn't know CD ones existed. The thing is, that kind of copier loads the game into RAM which is wired up to the cartridge port (similar to the Famicom Disk System's RAM pack). So if Nintendo had gone with that approach out of wanting to avoid the slowness of CD, they would have had to put a huge amount of RAM in the N64, which would have been technologically possible, but given the cost of RAM in 1996 would have led to the machine being unaffordable.

With the N64, Nintendo rightly or wrongly believed that the speed advantage of cartridge was essential to the kind of games they wanted to create. It wasn't all about screwing over developers or stopping copying.

People should be careful about assuming that cartridge was a mistake and the games that we love from the N64's library would have worked out fine on CD. Maybe Nintendo were wrong, but until someone builds a frankeN64 which runs the classics off CD we'll never know.

Now we know why the Soviet Union collapsed. Too much Dendy.

It's like watching two multimillionaires at a country club argue over who gets to park their Jag in the shade.

Give us an article about the Famicom's online capabilities, NL!

Unfortunately, Nintendo wants to have it both ways. They want people to pay for classic content again, but they don't want them to have any real ownership of it.

That said, the answer probably isn't for the VC to return. It's for Nintendo to build a better subscription service, one for the next ten or twenty years, instead of reinventing the wheel on classic content with every new platform. The issues that fans have with the current NSO options (which I still think are good prototypes for what Nintendo should be doing) would be less contentious if we had some kind of guarantee that Nintendo was committed to building a classic game service that had staying power. Deals with third parties would help. Perks like more original artwork and manuals would be great. And of course, getting the emulation right is a big one.

It's not so much about subscription versus individual purchases as a sense of security and knowledge that the service will be around for the long term. It can be done but it requires Nintendo to invest in building and maintaining accounts/online play/content delivery systems which can stick around.

Nintendo already provide parental controls which don't require strangulation.

So, so hyped for the new tracks. Bring 'em on. This is what MK8 has badly needed for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised that Nintendo is going all in on new content for the game that people just won't stop buying. Especially hoping for a good helping of MK7 tracks to be liberated from the small screen.

Great article, NL at its finest. Thoughtful analysis from @dartmonkey. Fascinating to get an inside source on this kind of thing, and it's interesting to hear about the tug of war between NOA and NCL.

It's a shame Nintendo wrote off the Wii U so quickly. Consoles with botched launches have been turned around before (Sony have it down to a fine art). I mean, we got the Switch out of it, so I shouldn't complain. But it's still bittersweet.

1:45 blew my mind. The whole of Hyrule is a Great Plateau for the rest of the world. But then... could the rest of the world be a Great Plateau on a still larger world?

There's a great video by SwankyBox on a similar theme where he tries to reach the edge of the universe in Super Mario Galaxy. The results are trippy and mildly disturbing.

Well said @Ogbert. I'm glad I'm not alone in finding this patronising and cringeworthy.

Another day, another story about another games company with another bunch of allegedly awful working conditions.

It seems to be epidemic and it's never out of the mainstream, non-games media at the moment either, which is sad. Companies need to start thinking more about how low staff morale reflects on the industry and our hobby as a whole. Talented people are going to walk away from the industry if games firms don't stop making the same mistakes.

Nobody is disputing that Nintendo has the legal right to enforce whatever copyrights they own. What rubs people the wrong way is that there's fan demand for better access to Nintendo soundtracks, which Nintendo refuses to meet.

Nintendo has an opportunity here to provide a better option by offering music they own for streaming themselves, as well as to make money in the process. Not much money, mind you. But more money than they make by not doing it.

It's the fact that they respond to fans' desire to be able to easily listen to Nintendo soundtracks in a negative way (takedowns) rather than a positive way (their own official streams) which gets people riled up.

One of the top five greatest games of all time. The cinematic feel. The banter between the Star Fox team and the supporting cast. The graphics which have aged so improbably well. The soundtrack, which is among Koji Kondo's best work. The multiple routes and the way that no two playthroughs are ever the same. The simplicity of the gameplay combined with a learning curve that extends well beyond beating Andross. The fact that I still play a game I played to death as a kid and still find new techniques to rack up those hits.

An almost perfect game.

This is the first time I've seen those noses out of context, and, um... they look different. And now I can't unsee it.

Well, I'm a Nintendo fan and a Nintendo shareholder, so this sure works for me. And even when the share price tanks, I can still tell people I own a piece of Nintendo.

Is Kirby 3 on NSO yet? If not, it needs to be. A Tilt n' Tumble sequel could also work in this age of gyro controls. I also think Kirby's world would work well with a collection of fun little sprite based mini-games a la Game & Watch Gallery. In any case, I'm glad that the puff is getting some love.