StarryCiel

Mythologies is one of the worst games I've ever played, like possibly a bottom 3 contender. But I am glad it's being preserved as all games should be, at least the cutscenes are pretty funny.

The base game and Jamboree TV being separate did have me puzzled at first, but after thinking about it for a bit, it's probably for crossplay reasons. If you play the base game online, you'd still be able to match with Switch 1 owners without having differing performances or the mouse minigames not being playable.

@LastFootnote "Jamboree TV" includes the entire Mario Party mode and all seven boards, along with a Free Play mode with all the minigames except for the ones exclusive to sidemodes like Koopathlon and Rhythm Kitchen.

I've been seeing this report a lot and I'm gonna be real, I don't see how this is a flat deconfirmation of 200cc. The full quote from the article also states "When asked whether he plans to implement a higher, 200cc difficulty like the one previously added to Mario Kart 8 post-launch, Yabuki stays mum". It reads more like he doesn't want to reveal anything rather than a flat-out denial.

Like there is a possibility that 200cc really isn't going to be in the game at launch, but I don't see how this specific interview confirms or deconfirms anything. It feels like he was just trying to dodge the topic.

@Sonicka I can echo what PerfectFrost said. If I own a game and play it on my account through the Online Licenses mode, I can have another system play the game at the same time with the Virtual Game Card.

I tried all the sites and couldn't secure a single one. I was in line for Best Buy and Walmart but got kicked off both, Gamestop crashed before I could do anything, and I had one in Target's cart for about a hour but couldn't buy it. What an absolute disaster...

Brodute has been one of the most consistent SM64 hackers for years now so I'm already very excited to see what they're cooking with this, but the fact that GalaxyTrail (Freedom Planet, Petal Crash) is publishing it too is just icing on the cake. This definitely has the potential to be something very special.

The moody, bassy, atmospheric vibe of Eveline's original soundtrack plays a big part in why I like DKC3 so much, so I'll always stand by the SNES soundtrack. For as much as I respect Wise and will praise the DKC2 and Tropical Freeze OSTs to high heavens, I think the GBA soundtrack was a real miss on his part and most of the new tracks feel like they completely miss the point of the original, from tracks like Frosty Frolics and Treetop Tumble sounding way too chipper, to Water World just being an Aquatic Ambience remix.

Thousand Year Door - 28 hours
Castlevania Dominus Collection - 27 hours
Freedom Planet 2 - 20 hours

Super Mario Party Jamboree, Sonic X Shadow Generations, and Echoes Of Wisdom are pretty close behind though

@Zaruboggan Each soundtrack has a truncated Top Tracks playlist and I think you accidentally clicked on that. Right underneath that is a list of all 136 tracks.

I've only been able to play Origin and the Nordics demo out of the ones on here (outside of that, I've played all the Ys games for PC Engine and PSP). Origin is easily my favorite game of the series so far and one of my favorite action RPGs of all time, just nonstop balls to the wall action with fast and fluid gameplay, incredible aesthetics, and a solid Falcom story.

@N00BiSH A decent amount of lines are reused from prior games, so his Mario and Luigi are roughly the same as they were in Wonder. His Wario voice is slightly improved from Move It, though, even if it's probably still the roughest. As for Waluigi, Kevin absolutely crushed it imo, he sounds fantastic as the character.

Personally, I actually really like hearing fresh takes on the characters after years of hearing the same voice lines, but so far, I think Luigi and Waluigi are who Kevin is strongest at right now.

I've been playing the demo today and it's a good time, but what's really surprising me is how long it is. I was so sure it was gonna end after the first chapter end screen, but apparently it goes up to Chapter 3? That's like 5-10 hours of content in just the demo!

It's funny how GP Legend still has unforgiving as a con when I'd argue it's the easiest F-Zero game, especially compared to Maximum Velocity right before it.

Aaaaaand, they already reached the application limit. Didn't even take a minute.

I'm not inherently against a puzzle having multiple solutions. The problem comes when you start allowing the player to completely skip over and trivialize every puzzle they see with the same solution. In TotK, that was the air bike. Aonuma mentioned the motion-controlled ball maze from BotW and how you could flip it over, but that wasn't some satisfying trick. It didn't make the game more fun aside from allowing the player to not have to wrestle with the janky motion controls. All I hope for Echoes Of Wisdom is that its puzzle solutions are fun and varied to execute.

I actually played the Shogun Showdown demo on itch.io and as someone who's not huge on roguelikes, it's actually really good. It's simple and brisk enough to be really addictive and replayable, but also has a lot of strategy and depth.

I just played Metal Slader Glory so I immediately knew what game this article was talking about. It's a good game, genuinely, it really feels like the passion project it is. The spritework and character animation really is some of the most impressive on the NES.

I'm still in shock Nintendo is actually releasing these in the West. If you're a fan of cute and colorful 2D platformers and have NSO, I implore you to give these games a shot. They are so fun and polished, and all have a ton of content to keep you busy.

Sadly, it seems Nintendo left it untranslated. These games do have a fair bit of dialogue, but can mostly be played through pretty easily without knowing Japanese since they're 2D platformers and the bulk of the story is told visually. If you do get stuck though, there are thorough Gamefaqs guides and full dialogue translations on YouTube. Either way, I think the Starfy games are absolutely worth the investment.

I never got this one since I'm not a huge tactics person so the first game didn't really do it for me, so I'm glad I'm getting the chance to try it out. I've only played a few hours so far but the increased RPG elements and greater story focus are definitely clicking with me more.

I wouldn't take these filesizes as gospel just yet. Nintendo tends to keep optimizing their games until like a month before release, and I definitely recall seeing games like Princess Peach Showtime drop like 4GB from its initial announcement.

Ah yes, a game for the souped-up Wii U looks like a souped-up Wii U game. Seriously, what was that guy expecting?

This actually looks really good. The boards look super creative and there's more than five of them, the minigame count is nuts, and they brought back Coinathlon from Star Rush! It's nice to see this series back on the rise.

I'm not a huge fan of forgiveness features like this since sometimes I don't want assistance when fighting a boss, but at least it doesn't artificially change the damage values whenever you die like some other games I've seen. You could just use the fairy before the fight or not have any of the food.

@NatiaAdamo During the Garry's Mod takedowns, some of the DMCAs came with the email shown in this tweet, https://x.com/brewsterkoopa/status/1780255004747595782, with mentions both Tracer AI and the company's address. The fact that the recent Nintendo takedowns have been uncharacteristically sloppy (taking down certain ROMs/mods but not others that are theoretically just as offensive) means some think they could be done by an AI.

From what I can tell, Nintendo recently hired a service called Tracer AI which can scrape the internet for and strike content it deems as copyright infringement. That's likely why we've been getting so many DMCAs lately, between Garry's Mod, Vimm's Lair, and now this. I'm been mostly lenient with Nintendo's takedowns because there's at least been some reasoning behind it (Yuzu was profiting off TotK, AM2R was competing with Samus Returns, etc), but contracting an AI company to spam DMCAs and wipe stuff from the internet all willy-nilly is a step too far for me.

Okay, Nintendo, color me impressed with this batch. I mean, 3/5 of these games are nothing to write home about, but IV and V are genuinely great and I'd argue stand up with the best of the Classic games.

I'd give the original an 8-9 since I do have a fair amount of gripes with TTYD (overuse of death fakeouts, TEC, linear level design), but the improvements the remake made far overshadow any lingering criticisms I have for the game as a whole. It's harder to understate just how richer all of the new details, character animations, and context-sensitive music tracks make the game feel for me, not even mentioning all the QoL improvements. TTYD still isn't my favorite Paper Mario, but this remake definitely bumps it up to a 10 for me.

I never thought of "weak point" bosses as tutorials, more like tests to make sure you know how to use a mechanic. Take the Zelda bosses, for example. They come at the end of a dungeon and often require you to use the dungeon item you've been using through it, just in a more tense and high stakes situation, with less room for error due to the boss's attacks.

I've always had complicated feelings about TTYD as someone who has the bold opinion of not even putting it in my Top 5 Mario RPGs, let alone #1, but I like it and always have, and most of the changes I've seen so far seem to be for the better so I just pre-ordered it this evening.

Japan also got Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (aka The Frog For Whom The Bell Tolls) which I would highly recommend playing any way you can since it's one of the best Game Boy games and frankly feels like a predecessor to Link's Awakening in a lot of ways.

Huh, I wasn't expecting to be the only one on here actually looking forward to this. I've heard nothing but praise towards Spark 3 specifically and was always rooting for it to get a Switch port.

@Scollurio I can quickly run through them:

• Cotton Reboot is a remake of the original game. It's a solid entry and a great way to play it.
• Cotton 100% is the SNES sequel, it looks gorgeous but it's very easy and simple.
• Panorama Cotton is the first of the two behind-the-back shooters. It's a Genesis game so it uses super-scaling but it holds up surprisingly well and is worth playing for the surreal visuals alone.
• Cotton 2 introduces a bunch of really neat mechanics like combos and the ability to pick up and toss enemies, it's one of the best imo.
• Cotton Boomerang is just 2 but harder and with more characters. I'd recommend 2 over this one as it's better balanced.
• Rainbow Cotton is the sequel to Panorama, but despite being in full 3D, it's usually considered the worst in the series. Hopefully, this remake is an improvement.
• Cotton Fantasy is the first new Cotton game since Rainbow. It's pretty traditional, but it's very polished, very flashy, very fun, and has a lot of characters.

I'd say the ones that are definitely worth checking out are Reboot, 2, Fantasy, and maybe Panorama if you find it interesting.

Freedom Planet 2, hands down. The first game was already one of my all-time favorites, but the sequel managed to surpass it on pretty much every level and became an easy Top 5 contender for me. It's everything I want from a video game and then some.

This is a pretty huge get for Game Trials, KOTOR is massive. It's just a shame it's also a bad Aspyr port job.

Based for adding the Water Temple, but Skyward Sword HD also deserves some praise. SS has some of my favorite 3D underwater controls in gaming, and the water dungeon is both visually-stunning and a ton of fun.

Also you missed Treasure Knight's stage in Shovel Knight. That's basically Bubble Man but even better.

Maybe not the moment it comes out, but I definitely want to get Mystia's Izakaya at some point. I've heard really good things about it.

First off, I can barely even notice the framerate in this case. But more importantly, Origami King was 30fps and it's pretty obvious this remake is being built from the group up with that game's engine. They're not just porting a Gamecube game and downgrading the framerate, and I wholeheartedly believe IntSys will tweak the timing of the action commands to accomodate the new framerate.

I got Corn Kidz 64 and yeah, this review seems about right. It's really meant for hardcore N64 platformer fans first and foremost, especially the 100% route. The platforming is very unforgiving, some of collectibles are very deviously hidden, and you kinda have to figure everything out on your own. It's the kind of game that'll probably only land with people who live and breathe this genre of games, and frankly it might even be too hardcore for me.

Glad to see a Resident Evil on here, even if the bad Cloud port was chosen. Nothing gets my heart racing more than a Resident Evil game, but 4 in particular is almost exhausting for me to play sometimes.

2004 for me, hands down. That was the year we got Half Life 2, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, World Of Warcraft, Metroid Prime 2, Spider Man 2, Jak 3, Ratchet & Clank 3, and Minish Cap all in a single month.

The rest of the year, we also got GTA: San Andreas, the Ninja Gaiden reboot, Pokemon Emerald, Trails In The Sky, Mega Man Zero 3, Sly 2, Katamari, Burnout 3, Metroid Zero Mission, Cave Story, Pikmin 2, TTYD, Custom Robo, Mario Party 6, Crash Twinsanity, Warrior Within, Tekken 5, Star Wars Battlefront, Riddick, Doom 3, Dragon Quest 8, Sonic Advance 3, Gran Turismo 4, along with a lot of very overlooked gems like Gurumin, Kururin Squash, Mushihimesama, Phantom Brave, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2, and Starfy 3.

And if all that still isn't enough, the DS debuted in 2004 and that's probably my favorite handheld of all time. The sheer consistency of quality on display this year was mind-blowing, it felt like gaming as a whole was just taken up a notch.

Kirby's Block Ball is criminally underrated, it's probably the best Arkanoid clone I've ever played. It's got copy abilities, boss fights, level gimmicks, varied layouts, minigames, and one of the best soundtracks on the system. It's definitely better than at least Tennis and Golf.

I played Cat Quest 2 and thought it was alright, but damn does this look like a massive glow-up in terms of visuals and mechanics. Exploring the few islands I was able to access in demo already gave me massive Wind Waker vibes in all the best ways.

Definitely an offbeat bunch of games, but not a bad one. Super R-Type is a solid entry in the series, Wrecking Crew 98 is certainly an overlooked game a lot of people have not been able to play, and any Hebereke game is a good time. Marvelous is also really good and influential (it's the first game directed by Eiji Aonuma!) but it's a full-on adventure game so I get why it only came out in Japan.

I don't have a super massive backlog right now as far as Switch games are concerned, but there has been a lot coming out this year that I've been interested. Prince Of Persia, Penny's Big Breakaway, Princess Peach Showtime, Cavern Of Dreams, Ufouria, Pepper Grinder, Freedom Planet 2, and that's just the games I got right away. Thank goodness most of these are pretty short, and things do seem to be winding down for a bit the next few months.

I'm not expecting this game to capture the same magic as the early Amusement Vision games, but this trailer is reminding me a lot of Banana Splitz for the Vita in terms of stage theming and gimmicks, which is a good sign since that's easily the most underrated game in the series and probably the best post-AV game

Sands Of Time and Two Thrones by a landslide. Sands Of Time had the most magical atmosphere and story, and Two Thrones refined the gameplay to near perfection. I wanted to like The Lost Crown, but I sadly didn't vibe with it very much, and Warrior Within's edgy style just does not do it for me.

I just noticed that Diplodocus Games has been porting pretty much all of the N64 platformer indies to Switch, including Super Kiwi, Macbat, Toree, Cavern Of Dreams, and now Corn Kidz. It's nice that they've found their niche, and their ports have been pretty consistently clean.

I'm glad you mentioned the soundtrack. I just started playing and my jaw dropped when I got to the stage with the DnB music. Always love to hear that kind of stuff in my games.

Tbh, I'm not surprised. Earthblade seems so large in scope and we've gotten so little information that the 2024 release window felt a bit unlikely. I'm glad EXOK is taking the time they need to make this game something truly special.

My greatest desire was for the Zelda movie to be animated. Well, too late for that I guess.