SmaggTheSmug

Well, it does looks like Link in NES Zelda is running around without any pants, so it's good to have it confirmed that he's not completely Scotsmanning it there under the tunic.

Something tells me "uhhhh I worked on stability" is what Nintendo devs are saying when they were slacking off all day.

@HammerGalladeBro I got the same impression, either Muttley or another Hanna-Barbera dog. It also reminds me of the haunted house racer from Wacky Racers.

Yes, and I've been unknowingly boycotting this series for years! Which is to say I have very little interest in Bayonetta. She's repulsive.

I know of someone who was offering spicy photos for proof of voting for sniffer.

They will be redubbed for local cinemas anyway. It will be interesting to hear Polish Mario (Hydraulik Marian?).

And to make it worse, the company is already looking for a micro transaction specialist.

I have two mics from other Let's Sing, does the Switch support more USB mics than two?

That trailer looked very low effort. I wonder about the game. After a decade just more of the same may be enough, but I'm not a hard-core fan of the series.

I'm honestly not that wowed by HD-2D. Too much bloom and the characters don't seem like they belong to the world. I like what I see here more.

I wonder how would that turn out if it was just as easy to return games for Switch as it is on Steam.

You know how in various historical figures' stories there's often someone who is like a precursor for them but is ultimately mostly remembered as the guy who discovered the famous guy?
I think we're seeing that with Andrew Hussie and Toby Fox. He's outdid Homestuck a few times over by now.

I like that they took a stab at HD-2D but without the excessive bloom and similar effects. In fact it looks better than Square games, it doesn't seem to have as much of a flat stickers in a diorama effect.

Splatfest demo has shown me that I wouldn't like it.

A game about an electric mouse on Switch! Who would have thought?

@Patelo1994 They will laugh at the videos. They're clearly shying away from showing ugly parts of butchery, like cleaning out the guts or draining blood. That Chicorita video is basically like peeling a steamed vegetable. One with eyes, but still.

GrimGrimoire sounded interesting until I saw the trailer. Barely any gameplay and it looks more like those flash games where units go into a single line into each other than a proper RTS (or even a single unit control one like Tooth and Tail or AirMech). And it has that off-putting oily animation style on top.

@3rdStrongestMole The video has "wet market" in it's name so it's probably mocking traditional Chinese medicine.

Not sure why y'all are protesting. Chicorita is Grass type, so the dish is clearly vegan.
Now eating Bulbasaur is just silly. It's clearly marked as Poison.

Switch is my first Nintendo system, so yeah, I would like those two. But I also don't think the rumors are true because they almost never are.

I get the feeling that GameFreak kind of wants to really promote Poison type as not just the evil or creepy Pokemon lately.

@fenlix It would be fun to see a top refund chart.

Sad to see Saints Row top. It's a bad game. Yet people still buy it on the name alone.

@Snatcher "Woke" is usually when garbage writers attempt to "fix" a beloved franchise by inserting their politics into it and accuse any critics of being a bigot. It's a practice of using minorities as a shield and exaggerated outrage as marketing. However most people don't see past this and mistake the symptoms (minority actors) for the cause (which is insecure garbage writers).
Here they cast a black guy as one of the characters that was originally white (Wesker IIRC).

I joined Scissors because GF did and I am a balancing act because I'm terrible at this game. Where's my mouse?!

@russell-marlow IIRC she was designed by a woman.

Weird, I thought this series was about building and trading in Middle Ages and Renaissance?

@Gitface I have not, the art style doesn't do it for me. Everything looks so "oily" and weird. I know it's probably a great game, but I can't get over the graphics.

You know which D&D games have not aged horribly? Capcom Mystara ones. Note that I played them fairly recently for the first time, so it's not nostalgia clouding my judgment.
I didn't even much like regular Baldur's Gate back in the day though. And I run paper D&D.

I don't expect the motorbike lizards to handle like the bike in Zelda. Which would be grand.

I have played it years ago and I will not play it again when I have other things to ho through. But it's okay, I haven't played Stray and probably won't for years to come. Same with Final Fantasy 7.

I have to say a Frogun sounds like the best weapon against Beelzebub (a.k.a. the lord of the flies).

I remember there were a lot of those arcade/puzzle games with gratuitous nude pictures thrown in. Some of them were probably hacks.
And the tradition is still alive with those mahjong/solitaire games with anime girls (or "girls") undressing as you progress.

A lot of people here seem to have forgotten the previous news post about this game.
All those statements are here to fend off the screeching twitter crowd that for some reason decided to target Japanese erotic games (I would bet a lot of the same people praised those awful sex scenes in The Last of Us 2).
It's just another attack on Japanese media by cultural imperialists.

If you wonder why they needed to specify all those things in those statements: it's because there was a crowd of stupid people accusing them of wrongdoing. The kind of moral busybodies that back in the day claimed D&D was satanic, hip hop would be the downfall of society and Counter Strike taught people how to perform school shootings. All while studies show otherwise.

@GrailUK They said they would proceed with legal action against people "spreading false rumours" and "making harmful social media posts" about their game. That would be difficult to pull off, but this disclaimer should in theory shut them up.
I would be cheeky and add "any well-adjusted adult should already know this" to that statement, but I'm guessing it's not a Platinum game

@GrailUK That only appeared because some people claimed that it does encourage crimes. You know, the "video games make children behave badly" crowd. Except this is an 18+ game, so that attitude makes even less sense.

@AG_Awesome Off my wishlist then

Unfortunately Live A Live stopped my Hollow Knight playthrough. But I should be able to get back easily. I haven't even beaten the Mantis Lords yet.
As for Portal, I've beaten it years ago so it's hardly in my backlog. I'll sit that one out with my own backlog bash.

They should implement a "do you Catan" mode as a compensation at least.

@russell-marlow I don't know, I always found her weirdly off-putting. The overly long legs make her look like some kind of a weird insect. But that's personal preferences.

Reminds me of the disastrous Cats premiere and later re-edit.
It's part laziness and part disrespect for both the developers and customers. Especially when they are pushing pre-order bonuses as well. Sorry, but when I'm about to play an unfinished, buggy mess of a game, I expect to be paid for it, not pay for it.

@jowe_gw >And how do you distinct "right to express opinions freely" and "destroy someone's reputation"?
Most legal systems (especially American legal system) have no problems with that. As do most people. The clue is "false statement of fact".

If you don't see the difference between the issue with the names and the "false rumours" then you're either being deliberately obtuse or just slow.

@jowe_gw Again you just used incorrect premises to come to the wrong conclusions.
Free speech is about protecting the right to speak truth and express opinions freely. Not tell lies to destroy someone's reputation. Hence defamation is not a free speech issue.
The part about real names used is true, but the suit is about "spreading false rumours". The developers changed the names so it would be weird if they sued over this. Ergo, the names aren't the issue.
Lastly, even if the complaints about sexual content were a result of those names used, they aren't justified if they are "false rumours".
Lastly you assigned opinions I do not hold to me multiple times.
Cease this pointless sophistry.

@jowe_gw Simple: you're basing your arguments off of assumptions. You assume that the backlash against the sexy part is caused by the real names part, you assumed plenty of times what my position is (and you were wrong every time) and you assume that the ones sued by the Japanese company are Americans. You also wrongly assumed that this is a free speech issue and you assume that even if it was, it would be hypocritical (where it would be more of a case of "we warned you that would happen" not "we wanted it to happen").
Nothing you speak is based in fact, it's all based on "consider if...". Well, consider you're wrong. Because you are.

@jowe_gw Repeating falsehoods does not make them true. Didn't someone tell you that already?
But you seem incapable of arguing without resorting to strawmen and false correlations, with a dash of goalpost moving. You can repeat your comments as many times as you like, but they will still be wrong.

@jowe_gw You're just making stuff up and assigning people things they didn't say. If the issue was the names then the devs wouldn't sue over "spreading false rumours". First you said the backlash had nothing to do with lewdness and now you're desperately trying to tie the lewdness to the names. Just stop being disingenuous to make your point, because if you have to, then you have no point at all.

There are two separate stories: the backlash with the names and the attack on lewdness. The developers are suing over the latter while they caved in to the former (and smartly so, because it could be a suit on them; see how JoJo changes names for western markets). And neither has anything to do with free speech issues.

@jowe_gw BTW, here's the tweet.
https://twitter.com/qureate/status/1550427832610062338?s=20&t=qP9LmKIq2wTN9BQd3AA6Jg

"We are also taking legal action against the spreading of false rumors, malicious social networking posts, and other activities that may interfere with our business."

So yes, this is regular defamation as westerners understand it. They're suing people over spreading lies about the game. Which everyone is in favor of. Free speech advocates too.

@jowe_gw You're assuming a lot things about me. Like I said, I don't even care about the names thing and the subsequent backlash. Yeah, it was stupid on the dev's part to use those names and the backlash is understandable. It seems they changed those anyway. So it's not part of the argument and you should stop it. They're not suing people who brought that up, they're suing people who say this game will "promote rape culture" and "is similar to assault in massage parlors". So yea, the lewd part.

Defamation laws were never part of pro-free speech argument. You should also stop pretending like that's relevant. No, defamation was never framed as "censorship" be free speech activists. Hate speech laws are, and those are an entirely different beast. So please stop being dishonest and putting words in my mouth.

What am I in favor of? People getting a taste of their own medicine. I don't even like that particular law (IMO defamation should only be applicable when there's a "false statement of fact that damages one's reputation"), but that's how Japan rolls and those people who like to feel powerful by throwing various accusations around are now receiving the kind of pushback they didn't expect.
And how do you know they would use American law? In the example I gave the claimant was American. Here the claimant is Japanese, so by that logic Japanese law would apply. Which means "your game promotes rape culture" could be used as base for a defamation suit.

@jowe_gw There is no hypocrisy here. Defamation and censorship are completely unrelated things. There are almost zero free speech absolutists who would argue against defamation laws. You're creating a strawman here by even bringing such terms into the argument. Stay on topic.

I don't even care about the real names used in the game. I don't think the suit is based on this (the developers seem to have changed the names, so it can't be), it's likely more about the "this sounds like rape" part. I just find it interesting that people who usually advocate for "consequences culture" are now facing those consequences. As in, the shoe is on the other foot. It's not that they "deserve" it, it's that they asked for it, without ever thinking it could be used against them.

Maybe more Japanese companies will follow suit and sue twitter loudmouths. This is the interesting part, regardless of which side of the issue you stand on. You seem to be under impression that one cannot sue someone from overseas, but there was this case of an American suing a British YouTuber over a video, by American law. They lost and the British guy counter-sued for expenses and won. International court cases are very much a thing.

@jowe_gw This whole thing isn't a speech issue, it's a defamation issue. No one argues against defamation laws, they argue about censoring of "hate speech", where "hate" is ill-defined and could be easily misused by governments to shut down dissent. Kind of like "political correctness" used to mean "don't speak ill of the communist government" or "gay relationships aren't to be defended".

The only thing that isn't genuine is your framing of the free speech argument.

However this is something different entirely: it's bad actors on the internet, in their misguided sense of cultural superiority, attempting to destroy the reputation of a video game company. And this time the company is pushing back using legal tools. So now they will have to back up their claims in court. This is what makes it interesting, because so far Japanese studios either simply ignored the "crazy foreigners" or just withdrawn from overseas markets, depriving a wider audience from experiencing the games. Which is, you know, bad. Especially when these people usually use "wider audience" as their core argument.

It's not about free speech, it's about moral busybodies getting more pushback than their expected.

@jowe_gw You're strawmanning what free speech advocates are arguing about. But it doesn't matter, because this is what SJWs are arguing for: speech having consequences. They just never imagined that they would be the ones facing them.