TeslaChippie

God I love the way it looks!
I sure hope it's not too messy a port. I'd love to have this on 3DS.

I liked the overworld in EOIV, but it wasn't really integral to the game experience (honestly it was mostly just avoiding big monsters in between labyrinths and hoping you had a certain item if you happened to run into a trader). What I really would like to see in the franchise going forward are overworlds that function more like the mazes, with more puzzle elements and encounters.

@RCMADIAX Wow, I can't believe this community. We're all just people trying to do our best. You keep doing your thing, and when you're ready, you make us something real special so all these classless unmotivated sods can shut up.

I expect nothing but positive things. If this baby is really a handheld console running on nVidia Tegra, the first thing that comes to my mind is: holy crap, we're finally going to get a next-gen "console"-level Pokemon at some point

I just started MH4 today. Not sure if I'll be able to finish it before the NX comes out xD

@prog4m3r Miles are ridiculous, but I like inches better than centimeters.

^ InklingOrange needs to cool his or her tatas.

I think the speed limit is silly, because hatching eggs ain't exactly game-changing. It's not like the games, where you could be trying for the single highest IV in a particular stat. I say, let 'em hatch eggs!

Sorry, but the old games are still there. Not every game has to please everyone.

I'll probably stick with the orchestrated version during the game (the previous scores in the series are some of the very best I've ever heard), but I'll definitely buy the FM version on CD if it's ever available (which it almost definitely will be).

"and an incredible Yūzō Koshiro soundtrack"

Didn't know this. Instantly sold. That man could score paint drying and I'd buy a game of it.

"Nintendo knows full well that its enthusiast audience, ie those watching E3, aren't necessarily the main target for this franchise, at least not any more."

Well I sure wish someone would have told them that before last year's digital event

They said it's coming out March 20, 2017. Has that been confirmed somewhere?

EDIT: Just March 2017. So they're assuming it'll definitely be a launch title for NX? I really worry for the game's polish; it felt like it still had a lot of work needed.

Nice article I have yet to get into this sort of game, but I'm glad the genre is producing quality titles. (Edit: Well, I guess Animal Crossing counts as a life sim and I love that)

@EarthboundBenjy @HADAA Thanks guys I got there eventually. I'm all for making the game more accessible, but that was a LOT of tutorial. It's kinda jarring coming from the hard-as-nails Rhythm Heaven Fever. Nice that it gets better! ^-^ And it's also fun having some of my favorite minigames from the Wii on the go!

I bought Rhythm Heaven, and I LOVE the beefed up presentation, but so far the games themselves have just been shortened versions of games from other entries in the franchise. I was particularly disappointed in the flying badminton game pulled from Rhythm Heaven Fever, because this version was half as long and didn't include the musical cues that made the original hilarious. Also, it's insanely easy; I've gotten "superb" on 30-some games on my first try. :/

Lovely art style~

Well, we likely won't ever see a VR headset that doesn't require a physical tether (or they'll invent a new wireless protocol that's able to stream multiple high-definition images without any noticeable lag. IR-based?).

That said, VR is game-changing, and anyone who says otherwise is either short-sighted or being purposefully instigating (or just hasn't tried it, which is understandable). I think in five years, it'll start being cheap and good enough to win over those people with less imagination.

This is another cool thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, since Nintendo is using the presence of their characters to place copyright claims on Minecraft vids on YouTube -.-

@ShikabaneHime13 Easy there Of course it's an opinion, but it's a very popular one.

Yo-Kai Watch has one major hurdle if it wants to even compete with Pokemon overall: Pokemon is a much, MUCH better video game. Stale and repetitive to some, but I still think Red and Blue are more fun to play than the first Yo-Kai Watch, personally. I'm eager to see if the second game improves the pacing and difficulty (because Pokemon is always beautifully paced and, well, sometimes challenging Heartgold anyone?)

EOIV's soundtrack is one of my favorite RPG albums of all time, and the Untold games' soundtracks are right behind. This series has some of the best music in the medium right now imo ^-^

@JaxonH I think qHD is reasonable. But quality HD screens that would fit the form factor and power draw requirements of something the size of the 3DS are not a dime a dozen, actually--they're still quite pricey, which is why you mostly find them on premium handsets costing upwards of $600-$1200. Also keep in mind that whatever resolution the screen, that's what people will be expecting it to render to... and that means shelling out for much much better internals as well. I just don't see Nintendo releasing a handheld in the $400 range.

@JaxonH Mobile power is really getting incredible... although Nintendo's strategy with handhelds is generally to maximize accessibility by moderating cost. Part of the reason the 3DS didn't fly off shelves at first (in addition to having very little software) was its well above-average price point--and it was actually considered rather underpowered when it launched.

I'd be very surprised if the 3DS's successor was HD, in the end.

3DS is one of my favorite game platforms of all time; in my opinion, it IS Nintendo's current-gen console. 4 native Zelda games, three unique Pokemon RPGs, the Etrian Odyssey series, Shin Megami Tensei, two of the best entries in Fire Emblem, probably the best version of Animal Crossing, TONS of awesome one-offs from Level-5 (not to mention Yokai Watch), and backwards compatibility with Nintendo DS, which already had one of the finest game libraries ever conceived.

I have every confidence Nintendo can turn around their home console situation, but in the meantime their portable alone has kept them in my #1 spot as far as publishers go.

@MarinoKadame I have a 64GB card in mine, and with 32 full retail digital games, I still have about 12GB free. It can hold plenty of games

I'm surprised to see so many people talking about "better graphics." o.o I'm replaying X right now and I still think it's one of the prettiest games on the system. They already took 3D away to stuff as much detail as possible into the environments; I don't imagine it'll get much better unless there's a New 3DS optimized version. And for people saying "a better frame rate," X is at 30fps 99% of the time (and Pokemon doesn't need 60). It only really drops when you crank up the 3D or when the battle camera tries to go splitscreen (which it only does when you're idle). So that's a silly thing to complain about I think.

"Reports have surfaced that chipmaker AMD is producing the brains of the NX. This means a move towards the x86 architecture which is already used by the PS4, Xbox One and PCs"

It means no such thing. AMD has made plenty of coprocessors that weren't x86, including the Wii's and Wii U's.

So the graphical fidelity was sacrificed for the dual screen mechanic, which makes sense enough. I'm disappointed that we have to wait maybe another entire console cycle to get a truly spectacular looking Star Fox, especially since games set in space can be dazzling with power behind them.

No bunny no deal.

JK. Super duper excited :3

http://web.archive.org/web/20160404022541/http://zelda30tribute.com/

Link to the archived version (which I'm not sure if Nintendo can actually do anything about), if anyone missed it.

"This was not the greatest game in the world, no. This was just a tribute."

Like+1

"As said in the source article, it's a shame that the New 3DS has been so underutilised by Nintendo"

Actually, they're saying the ORIGINAL was under-utilized because the processor was bottlenecking the GPU; technically, the old model is equally as capable graphically as the New one.

@AVahne I bought the New 3DS for Majora's Mask, and played with the 3D on the whole time I loved it so much. Worked amazing for me, even on the rickety buses we have here. Maybe you got a busted model?

The cloud-based patent looks really interesting, to be honest. It would be like Bit Torrent, but for computations instead of illegal movie rips.

@Kalmaro Unfortunately, something like that would not hold up in court. The iTunes EULA says you can only play the .m4a files downloaded from iTunes on the iPod and iPhone family of products... but they wouldn't be able to enforce that, because there's no way to track whether digital data is being interpreted by one device or another.

In other words, it might not be legal, but it's also not enforceable because it's traceless and victimless.

@AlternateButtons Common misconception. It's only theft if you don't buy the game, but seeing as how these guys are creating the emulator in the first place they're probably just running the game they bought in their PC's blu-ray drive.

(And Nintendo doesn't own the copyright for the processing architecture inside the Wii U, which is what they're reproducing.)

Hey, as long as you're using your own discs, emulation is legal and awesome. It's pretty cool to be able to play Wii games in HD with custom textures and lighting on my PC.

Love how it says "Do you want to play again?" and the only option is "Yes."

Pretty cool I remember how happy I was the first time I made something like that work.

"bricks and mortal stores."

Beautiful <3

@Sakura I love it when our brains see something we can't control. It's a little humbling to realize we aren't always in total control of what we see, and by extension when we do because of what we see ._.

"The lack of face buttons would be resolved by haptic feedback for the virtual buttons" my ass.

"Ditto is a very popular Pokémon for, erm, breeding purposes."

We're probably mostly adults or late-teens here Breeding isn't a naughty word.

These are adorable

I'm going to start Pokemon Yellow today, and continue on through HeartGold, Omega Ruby, Platinum, White and Y versions Feel like it's time to return to the most important game franchise of my childhood, and maybe it's delusion from staying up to watch the 24 hour Pokemon stream (which is still going), but I'm super excited.

Of important note here is, even with slashed numbers they're still making a HECK of a lot of dough. It's not like they're losing money or in any way "in trouble."

Yeah, I uh... I own six 3DS's of various kinds >w< What can I say? I'm a sucker for special editions.

Still hyped for this. I've been gaming mostly on PS4 and PC for a while now, so I've got some catching up to do on 3DS.

These games are amazing. I'm also hoping for an Untold III, if only for a redone soundtrack of the third game <3

@Silithas "Make the 3ds support of removal of the sdcard without showing error "

I don't know any device that you can do this safely with, even a computer. You should always assume that data is being read from or written to a removable device, which makes it dangerous to remove with the power on.

@allav866 Haha, exactly. I love when people complain about a developer offering the option for decreased difficulty as though they are being forced to use them. It's like saying a game is too easy because there was the option to choose "easy" at the beginning of the game, and you had to do it because it was there and you'd feel like a total moron if you didn't.

Poe lantern — good example of a thoughtful change that eliminates one of TP's few flaws, IMO.

My little sister LOVED Pokemon Art Academy, so I'll probably buy her this one too

@Caryslan Interesting. I recently replayed Path of Radiance (to prime myself for Radiant Dawn, which I never got the chance to play), and I thought it was downright ARCHAIC compared to Awakening. Although I do love it for introducing the series to those gorgeous cell shaded cutscenes it still features! I think a lot of people are hesitant to buy games that deviate from their predecessors in unexpected ways, so I understand your disappointment.

But it is worth mentioning that each of these three parts are about as long as vanilla Awakening was by itself (or, if you prefer, all three together are far longer than any other game in the series). And the face touching minigame? Totally optional, like Pokemon Amie was in X/Y/OR/AS. Some people (like me) find those things to be immersive additions (okay, more Amie than the slightly off-putting face petting...).

If I were Nintendo, I would have released Birthright as "Fire Emblem Fates," and then in due course released the other two campaigns as DLC. That's what it HAS done, actually, but it's sent a very mixed message in marketing that you need to buy both Birthright and Conquest at full price (which you don't. Whatever two branches you don't buy first are $20, not $40.)

@Einherjar Totally not on your side here, by the way.

Yes, the games were all made at once, using the same asset, and then split into three and sold separately. This is not that uncommon; they did it for The Lord of the Rings (and the new Avatar movies). It's not even unprecedented for video games (LOTS of games launch with paid DLC these days). It's not to cheat money out of the consumer, its to recoup the losses that come from putting a lot of extra effort into the product (and to save money during development, of course!)

And, "buddy," let me tell you that back in the good ol' days 100 hours was NOT the standard length from start to finish for DOS games; you could spend that long if you were insane, but with notable exceptions most games could be finished relatively quickly. FE:Fates cost a lot more money to develop than any DOS game you ever played. And for what it's worth, Golden Sun (~20 hours) is objectively better than any DOS RPG you ever played

Opinions aside, at the end of the day, you get 100+ hours of gameplay for $80 here, which is still a fine deal compared to what the "industry standard" seems to be these days.

Yeah, all three games can fit on a cart because they all share textures and music. (FYI, Birthright was ~15,000 blocks to download, and Conquest is just another ~900, for the extra dialogue and mission outlines and whatnot.) Doesn't bother me.

I thought Awakening was stellar, and I'm thinking this is stellar. Played in "sequence" (birthright -> conquest -> revelation) it offers an enormous game that starts easy, gets much harder, and then ends with a bang. I could understand people being upset about the pricing scheme, but they should not be upset about the "direction" the game is taking.