Tevor

@TerribleTerabytes That's backwards.

Canon comes after the story telling and world building not before.

Canon is determined by the writer. There is nothing to BE canon before the writer writes it.

You write something, that's the canon. If you then write the next part and it changes something established in the first part, that's canon too.

All canon is is "What happened in the story". It's a recounting of events from an outside source with no power or control. It has no influence on the story itself and can be changed on a whim by the authors.

@Lizuka Eh. There's tons of streets named after and status of slave owners in the US. Same difference. Monsters are remembered.

So in timeline A Donkey Kong failed to defeat Ganandorf and dies.

In timeline B, which was always totally a thing that both existed and you should take seriously, Donkey Kong kills Ganadorf then adopts a human child who travels through time as an adult to timeline A.

Then in timeline C, which is based on a game no one has even thought of yet but still counts as cannon because they're going to sell a hundred dollar book that says it is in about eight years from now, there is in fact a third Pauline. She's a pirate!

Dang, I should replay Dragon's Trap. That game rules.

Super fun game. Glad to see it getting a second chance without EA involved. Wouldn't be shock to see this become a franchise if this does even kind of ok on the Switch. Koei has more realistic expectations of their products then EA does I reckon; this was never going to topple the market leader. Nothing ever does.

But yeah, it's a Monster Hunter with really cool prop building gimmick that adds a lot to the gameplay. Give it a shot if that's your jam. Just don't base your expectation of quality on if it "outsells MH" or not. And certainly don't expect the longevity and almost live service amount of post launch support a MH game receives either.

That'd be a silly way to view the world.

I will say it ran kind of rough on a PS5 though so... we'll see.

@Purgatorium The point? It's so you can share your digital games. That's all. Nothing fancier.

Why in the world would anyone expect a different version of the game to be included with a special edition. SE's are always just an off the shelf boxed copy thrown in a bigger box with a bunch a junk.

They wouldn't make a "super special and cool" version of the game card that actually contains the game just for a limited release. If they were printing those carts they'd just put the game on all of them. They're not going to start printing two versions.

I know these people hate the thing Nintendo is doing here but the copium is ridiculous.

Yeah, no. All X should be Y is just universally a bad take regardless of topic.

All it is says is that everyone needs to cater to my specific tastes and desires. Complete rubbish.

It's cool if you hate fall damage.

It's also cool if developers think it adds value to their game and has a place in their design.

The idea that "every" game needs literally anything is just a silly and kind of selfish one. It's also needlessly limiting and prosciptive. You can't innovate if you're all following the exact same mandatory design notes.

Believability aside... THAT'D BE SO COOL!!!

ahem

I mean that'd mean the Switch 2 is a totally traditional console but also has full mouse support, motion control support and dual screen support?

You could port just about every past game to the thing and play it as intended. More or less. That's super fun.

Cute idea.

Yeah, JRPG voice acting back then? Garbage. At the very best it could sometimes be fine.

There's almost no way redoing the audio wasn't the right call.

I'm sorry for your nostalgia.

Wild to see this on a Nintendo console. Sure that rubicon was crossed ages ago, but still.

Wild game. Some pretty heavy subject matter.

What does Castlevania coming back even mean though?

Who makes it? What form does it take? Is it even good?

People have this insane attachments to IP that defies all logic; it's like the Bioware problem, or potentionally the Retro-Metroid problem.

They get all attached to the name on the box, which is trivial and means nothing, and pay literally zero attention to the actual factual human beings who are responsible for everything they claim to love about something.

This is how Silent Hill 2 Remake was a huge talking point last year while the GUY WHO MADE SILENT HILL 2 can put out a new project the same year and barely get any coverage beyond some niche "Oh hey, this is kind of neat too, don't forget about it" end of the year stuff.

Konami is a company. Castlevania is a brand. They can slap the Castlevania name on any piece of garbage. Like a pachinko machine or some trash mobile game. Those are not hypotheticals.

Castlevania is one of my favorite things ever but o I want it back if it's just some nothing game that has nothing to do with anything and is just trying to extract value from a corprately owned IP? Of course not.

Meanwhile actual people who made actual Castlevania games continue to make exactly that same kind of game. And they're great!

Or a million other games made by talented passionate artists and game makers who invoke the spirit of Castlevania all the damn time.

I don't care about corporately owned IP. I'm not a stock holder trying to get a return on my investment. I play games.

I don't need a new Castlevania cash in by people who don't actually care because the true legacy of Castlevania never died and lives on in stuff like Bloodstained. Of which a sequel is already in production. That's your "new Castlevania".

cough

But if a miracle happened and someone at Konami lost their mind and let one of those passionate teams make a really great game with no gross greed tactics bolted on that'd be pretty ok too

"And we can charge anything we want. 2,000 a day. 10,000 a day. And people will pay it! And then there's the merchandise..."

So Nintendo's official statement is a formal denouncement that the original staff doesn't count as being "anyone involved in making or contributing to a game's creation".

At least they're honest about their insane position?

People still play videogames right? We're buying a device to play videogames, correct?

Pointless "reveal". Switch looks like a Switch. Congratulations.

If they wanted to wait until April then should have waited until April. Only the cazies would have minded waiting. This? This was nothing.

Oh wait, a couple seconds of a new Mario Kart. Ok. It gets a 2 instead of a 1 for aknowledging a videogame.

I remember back in the day there was some controversy in online forums, around the time of Ocarina coming out, about people being mad that Link was now a child for the first time.

Yes the internet was always stupid.

The thing that drove me crazy though was the people trying to counter argue that "Link was ALWAYS a child!" as if little details like this box art, or really every official piece of art for both the first two games, or even stuff like Link's Awakenings in game cutscenes, didn't consistently portray Link to be the exact dude pictured above. The guy who shows up in the back two thirds of Ocarina.

Neither here nor there but seeing this image fired some neurons and triggered that memory for me lol ^_^;

Anyways even as a child myself I always thought something was kind of off about Z2's box. It was clearly apeing Zelda's box box but it just wasn't as cool. I think it's the ugly sword. Too ornamental and non-functional looking. It's the kind of sword a rich pretender owns, not the kind the hero uses.

This is a hard one. I prefer the dressing and font work on the Japanese version but the actual key art does very little for me. So that double rules out Europe.

But the classic screen shot NES box art is... well it is what it is. It served a function at the time but they're hardly lookers.

So I guess Japan wins just for the logo treatment.

They did it, they got there. That's kind of incredible.

Look, I have no love for this style of game so I must struggle to bite my tongue here. I'm just not entertained by flashing lights, slot machines and getting treats for ringing the bell.

BUT there's obviously so much love here for Castlevania, and always has been since the beginning of Vampire Survivors, and that trailer is just so god damn incredible. I'm mostly just stoked for the dev who by all accounts seems like an ok guy?

Plus the more Castlevania DLC sells the more likely Konami lets someone make a real Castlevania game. That's the kind of gambling I CAN get behind.

I'mma say No just on the principle that "Because they did it once before" isn't any kind of reason to do it again.

If there's someone at Nintendo with a really cool idea and is really passionate to do it? Someone who actually thinks it'd be a worthwhile and additive iteration to the series? Sure. Go nuts. That's what art is all about.

But if we're just revisiting Zelda 2 because old folks like me, sigh, "remember it exists"? Then no. That's not a good enough reason. That's just trying to capitalize on nostalgia. I'd rather you do something new and different.

Hurray! Uncharacteristically good news from this sector. Good job Nintendo.

I found this news genuinely confusing. Like... why?

I'm not inherently against it I suppose. I just don't understand why anyone would would schedule production on two titles in the same series this way.

Not an Atelier fan so my assumption is that I'm missing something obvious. Like one is obviously the "real mainline sequel" and the other is obviously some experimental spin off. But to my casual eyes they both just look like actual, real, run of the mill Atelier games.

Let me know internet! I'm fascinated by this turn of events.

I just ask that difficulty options be explicit with what exactly the differences are. Saying "easy, normal and hard" means nothing as what's hard for some is easy for others and obviously normal is less helpful even then that.

For example I like a challenge but I don't want simple pointless stat and hp inflation and would choose the default over that form of "difficulty" every time. However if the higher difficulty is more enemy types, with more aggressive AI and additional attacks then that's much more interesting a choice. And of course you need to know what the game was actually designed and balanced around. How did the people making the game intend for you to play it before making changes for difficulty levels.

That information should all be provided up front so that people know what it is they're choosing, regardless of the reasons they're choosing it.

I hate when you start a game are given a vague, or even completely contextless, choice of difficulty. The first choice you've made with the game comes built in with having to second guess whether you've ruined your experience with an unclear menu option. Great.

This one seems... ok? I'd like more description honestly. But what I read from that text box is that you're intended to play the game on Normal and that Hero is more explicitly a challenge mode. So it largely meets my criteria; it tells me what the intended version is and let's you know what some of the major changes are.

Hmm, even if it's a layer deeper it'd be nice if there was literally just a submenu you could open if you wanted that listed all the changes like they were patch notes. That goes for any game with difficulty options btw, not just Zelda.

@Dualmask So I'm wondering if it's platform based. These recent two collections both have Naomi/Dreamcast games on them so that seems like a solved problem.

The older collections are all CPS1, 2 or 3 based games. So Arcade ports.

The things they really haven't touched are the Playstation specific games. Things like Rival Schools, Star Gladiator or even, as some have asked for, SF Alpha 2 Gold.

Maybe there's some issue with the PSX games that makes them just hard enough to not want to bother with? I can't imagine what but now that I'm thinking about it... are there a ton or raw PSX ports done? There's full remakes, there are games that were ON PSX but whose modern ports are generally based on the PC versions (like Tomb Raider or Shadow Man for example) and I think when even Sony themselves do stuff like the PSOne Classics it's actually a PSX emulator literally running the original software.

I assume Sony wouldn't license an official PSX emulator to third parties to run on competing platforms.

Now I'm curious! If anyone reading this knows anything about PSX games being hard to port to modern hardware let me know please!

I love the way this is presented in the article, emphasizing Power Stone.

All us fighting game freaks are marking out because of Capcom vs SNK 2, to a lesser extent CvS1 and are by and large shocked and thrilled by inclusions like Project Justice and Plasma Sword and kind of surprised by deep cut Alpha 3 Upper. But seriously CvS2 is a Marvel vs Capcom 2 level get.

Oh, and taking the opportunity to laugh at Capcom Fighting Jam. Bad game. I'm super glad it's in there though. Put the bad games in collections too please. Like how the original terrible Haunted Castle is in the new Castlevania collection alongside the good new version. It's just all upside.

But then there's the reaction I've seen over and over again from people who otherwise just had blank looks of non-recognition when all time classic fighting games magically appeared from the void.

The reaction being "***** yeah, Powerstone!"

Why? Because Powerstone ***** rules. But the interesting part is that is goes beyond the normal fighting game people. Like whoever wrote this article totally sand bagged the Capcom vs SNK part and made it all about Powerstone being the big headliner. A valid take if that's how you feel btw though I'm sure there'll be comments making fun of them for it.

Modern Capcom has been really just crushing it in recent years. Even when they miss with something like Exoprimal at least they missed with a huge swing on a new IP. I really hope that people over there see the reaction that Powerstone has been getting from all the non fighting game people and take note of it's massive crossover appeal.

People always tell Capcom to bring back franchise x or y and usually it's something like Darkstalkers, which would at best do only ok for them and only sell to hardcore fighting game people. (Give it to me now plz) But Powerstone? Powerstone could do business. Powerstone could sell to everyone. Maybe not Smash numbers... but kind of. It has that way broader appeal that Smash does as a game, if not as an IP showcase.

I'm betting this collection is going to sell way better then the other ones. Because folk like me? We're going to buy all of them anyways. But there's all these Powerstone fans from back in the day who don't care about Marvel or CvS or Rival Schools. They'll buy it too.

And then, just maybe, Powerstone 3. After all these years. It could happen.

@GameOtaku This is always my main beef with recollection or re-re-releases. And not just Capcom at all.

There's so many times a game has gotten a new remake or some new form of rerelease that just ignores the three other rereleases/remakes and any new features, fixes or improvements that appeared in between the original release and today.

SquareEnix is a good example of this. They've been doing a great job in recent years of bringing their back cataloge forward in all sorts of interesting ways. However in doing so they've just kind of swept away a ton of games they put out in between. SaGa collection is cool but I imagine we'll never see the 3D remakes again. Same deal with Pixel Remaster; the Wonderswan, PSP, GBA and DS remakes of all those games were also worth preserving but we scrapped it all in favor of raw NES and SNES versions.

Capcom has classic games up the wazoo. But why are we ever releasing vanilla arcade Alpha 3 when, bare minimum, the Dreamcast version exists? Never mind the later versions which, while compromised, do have additional characters. Vampire is in a similar boat. I adore the addition of Vampire Hunter/Savior 2 in that collection but the thing Darkstalker fans would really want , besides a sequel, is a fixed version of For Matching Service or Chaos Tower (Or the PS2 version maybe?) that actually just has all the characters and plays like VS proper.

I dunno. I get that some of those Capcom releases are just arcade ROM collections, so fair dinkum. But when people go to the effort of actually making elaborate collections or new versions they really should be approaching the game as a whole and not just going back to square one. People worked just as hard on those other versions, they have merits of their own and people have nostalgia for them as well.

@Anti-Matter That is, uh, so incredibly specific. I can't help but respect it. Good request.

And yet I doubt there will be much talk online about how the Volgarr devs made an intentionally difficult game. Oh it'll be its defining characteristic sure... when it gets brought up. But its fans will love it and the rest will ignore it.

Hmmm. I wonder why that is. Who could ever guess. Hmmm.

cough Anyways Volgarr the Viking was great and this looks like a, very unexpected, fun time in kind. Looking forward to it someday.

Don't let the atrocious art style throw you off though. Dawn's still a fantastic Castlevania and one of the best in general.

The art's less jarring in game when you get used to it and it's not exactly the most dialogue heavy game, so you're rarely subjected to it while exploring the castle.

Shout out to, I think it's called, Draconian Quest in DQ11.

I gave my Luminary the Shypox trait on a whim and it was absolutely brilliant. I was able to RP the silent protagonist as having this crippling social anxiety that he had to battle through anytime he talked to anyone or fought. This in turn kind of justified the "silent" part.

That's pretty wild in a game that isn't exactly known for player choice or, you know, role playing. I think there's a real meaty vein here conceptually some canny dev could mine for a fun way to really personalize seemingly static protagonists. I really felt more connected to the guy then I do a lot of fully voiced and written characters, simply because I could to pick a single personality trait that unobtrusively worked its way into the game. There's something to that.

Anyways I do love silent protagonists but it really depends on the game. Sometimes it wouldn't work at all and sometimes it's the perfect fit. It's almost like not everything is exactly the same and needs to be judged by the same criteria. Funny that.

How appropriate! Is this a coincidence or are we celebrating the rerelease of SVC Chaos starring our boy Firebrand?