The_Nintendo_Expat

@rjejr

LOL it's still me, -wc-, The Nintendo Pedant 😅

I changed because I felt I'd lost the title since I was kind of jumping ship, and chose a new name to reflect that.

the pic is bad because it's actually cropped from a candid photo of Jason Alexander from life, looking annoyed at presumably a fan or paparazzi taking a pic while he was trying to demo a Gamecube at a kiosk in public somewhere. People think it's Costanza though and I usually don't correct them. 😂

I've been on here saying "I wish the Switch had themes/better controller mapping/folders/return policy/performance options/better eShop/fullsize sticks/real dpad..." and on and on for years, and it turns out the Steamdeck was the right choice all along! I could not be more pleased with it, even though it feels like I am super late to the party. people here may not believe it but when the Switch generation started, I was still a fiercely loyal Nintendo fan, with full faith in the company even through what many people describe as the "dark days" of n64, gamecube, and especially Wii U. I loved all of those eras and I still do! but this is a "news" blog, not a retrospective, so I usually comment on "now" as opposed to "then."

for me, the Steamdeck is exactly what console gaming should be by now, if progress and consumer needs were made top priority instead of whatever they've been doing. alas, I guess that makes me a PC gamer, something I never wanted to be 😆

PS - not sure what you mean by "Nintendant or thereabouts." Glad you reached out and thanks for asking! always good to hear from you. ✌️

hello, gay-Pritchard!

Good luck, Felix!

@Ornstein welcome! 👋

i've been "meaning" to play Undertale forever now. maybe I'll get to it! the hype has been so hyperbolic (🤔) that it's kind of a turnoff, especially all the "PIYL Earthbound" style personal recommendations from friends that ive been trying to get to play actual Earthbound for years.

as far as Deltarune, i cant play games in episodes. its a personal failing, im sure. ✌️

@TerribleTerabytes "Some of you need to get with the times"

@MattmanForever Metroid Prime 4: "Divorced from the changing of the times"

"if you dont like this beleaguered game that even the creators themselves admit is flawed and more, then you need to STFU so we can pretend it isn't more convincingly" 😂

@AlanShore

"The couple million fans will get mad at me for saying this but the series needs a complete overhaul if we want the games to have more appeal to a wider audience and sell enough copies for consistent releases like Nintendo's top performers."

speaking as one of those fans (not mad tho:)

I'm perfectly content with a narrow appeal, with rare releases that are 10/10 on their own terms, like the best games in the series.

I can't imagine a fan of anything hoping for the thing they like to be watered down for the benefit of someone else's profit. ✌️

if Nintendo wanted a shooty talky space series I wish they would just make some new IP (heaven forfend) or at least a new spinoff series.

points at dog 😂

@WaveBoy

the Wii era was glorious! ive never had a better time gaming or been more excited for Nintendo's future. the Switch-era reversion to ps1 era controls after all that evolution was such a letdown for me, and the bait-and-switch of gyro for IR is just insulting.

i could see getting excited for mouse controls in pikmin, but mouse is just generally not my jam in games, feels like work somehow 😅✌️

I mostly used my Switch for indie and retro games, but since I now much prefer my Steamdeck for those, I dont have much use for it or a Switch 2 until Nintendo gets their first party act together.

OTOH its a Nintendo that I owned and loved so it'll stay with its older siblings. i dont sell my consoles 👍

@Zedecks

i had the same reaction tbh, but then i asked myself: "who is the second most beloved Nintendo character who famously uses a YoYo as a weapon?"

we are on a Nintendo focused site afterall ✌️

(maybe there is another more beloved and well known yoyo-er in the Nintendo universe but i cant think of it 😅)

doesn't "cleaning up" usually mean "doing the best by far?"

I'm done buying the same games again.

(I bought and played this one two generations ago and my backlog is a mile long.)

"inevitable" is what people on the wrong side of history always say.

for whoever needs to hear this, a game can be at once a boring open world and too linear in the sense that it leads you by the nose from point to point. ✌️👍

"open world" is not synonymous with "non-linear," nor antonymous with "linear."

@batmanbud2

" I can assure you that I never wanted this..."

fair enough! 👍

"I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Nintendo's open-world design peaked with Bowser's Fury and, to a lesser extent, the Xenoblade franchise."

I've been sleeping on both/all of those, and I intend to correct this eventually 👍

PS - "The first Zelda game on NES was open world" and "Metroid Prime was an FPS" are two fallacies I hear repeated or reinforced by well-intentioned Nintendo fans constantly.

@LikelySatan

im really glad Link had an ocarina, rather than a motorcycle and a radio buddy.

EDIT - UGH, Navi. OK.

P.S. Epona is not "a motorcycle."

though I can't picture Samus in the desert on a horse, that kind of bizarreness might've gotten me back on this game's side.

PPS I'd be okay with a metroid game with time travel, perhaps.

@batmanbud2

"the thing is, the push for open-world, 200-hour experiences was so strong in the 2010's, especially the late 2010's, that there was no avoiding it back then."

no, there was "avoiding it." it's called "not hopping on trends." 👍

"It's partly their fault"

it's completely their fault. this is the company that famously does not listen to anyone and does exactly what they want. or, they were still for at least some of the 2010s.

"but it's also our fault for thinking that was the way the industry should go."

maybe you thought that. ✌️

"Sometimes I wish Skyward Sword had sold more copies while Skyrim was left in the ditch back in 2011."

from your mouth to god's ears, as some people like to say. by the same token i wish botw sold horribly, totk never happened, and they ran back to dungeons and musical instruments like a real Zelda game. but i digress 😅✌️

thanks for replying, always good to see your name pop up here 👍

if only they hadn't been trend-hopping in the first place. who could've seen it coming.

@Bass_X0

game genie was incredible for getting "more" from the games youd already played to death, as well. very underrated and misunderstood device imo ❤️ i need to get one again, or figure out how to emulate 🤔🤔

@mlt

even with a hard mode, Wonder's overwhelming "for baby" vibes are just a non-starter for me. (among other things.)

they had the perfect balance for about 40 years and now they've killed it, imo.

EDIT - to dig a little deeper, i think the fact that games were inherently "for kids" when i was growing up, yet they were made by adults seemingly to suit their own tastes, aesthetically and thematically, has made me a bit dismissive of straight "for kids" stuff since i was a little kid myself. does this make sense? ✌️

@BulbasaurusRex @DownRightSam

i was playing SMB successfully (with Grandad's guidance ❤️) at three/four in the late 80s. It just depends on the kid! ✌️

@DennyCrane

Happy (belated) festivus! Thanks for thinking of me, haha 😅✌️

"I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!"

@AlleyCat

hey, thanks! no need to bother with this one, then 👍

does this game force you to create an Ubisoft account to play it?

(im usually pretty good/lucky with getting around the "sign in" hurdle but with that other recent PoP game I had no luck, and that was just the DEMO.

yadda yadda I didnt play that game and ive all but written off Ubisoft as a publisher for good, so nice job guys 👍)

this is just a joke when the eShop is full of awful looking explicitly adult games and no filter for NSFW

for the love of god please censor the eShop properly. 😅

@Nate88

verified, this is a total ripoff 👎👎

IDGAF about "The Big Companies" anyway.

@Picola-Wicola

hey, cheers 😅✌️ we all have a role to play, right?

one can imagine that if my brain produced a normal amount of dopamine, maybe id be out on a mountain bike somewhere instead. but then who'd show up here everyday, fighting the good fight against.. uh...

@Broosh

you know? thats a really good point that hadnt really occurred to me! it's a metroid-vania because its a castlevania with some metroid blended in, as opposed to a "vanilla" castlevania game (a "Castlevanillia" if you will 🙃)
thanks!

just a reminder: you (anyone) make choices every time you speak or write, and we are all steering this crazy ship every day, voting with our word choices. those with a platform like a blog or podcast have outsized voting power, and therefore more responsibility than others.

let's please let this "top down metroidvania" nonsense die in the incubator. we can do it! ✊

@OmnitronVariant

lol yes, metroid was metroid at a time when vania was simply vania 😅👍

"This Top-Down Metroidvania Is The Best Zelda Game Of 2025"

"Zelda-style gameplay with a touch of Metroidvania"

the false dichotomy of "top down metroidvania" vs "zelda style game" is hurting my brain and I demand that we stop this conversation immediately.

· Metroid is and always has been "Zelda on its side."

· Prime is and always has been (well until they messed it up) "Ocarina in first person."

· "Metroidvania" is a buzzy, silly term created when the only games it really described were Super Metroid and SOTN, and it means "side scrolling action RPG."

(sorry folks I don't make the rules. ✌️)

@Sindayl

not everyone was lucky enough to have it on DC at the time. ✌️

"He may look ‘armless," 😂👍

While I agree with others here that this is not an overlooked game, i really enjoyed the article and really love this game, as well. ✌️

for me, it will always be a DC game, and emblematic of that magical year in which i had the machine that played "the good version" of every crossplatform game and arcade port that came out 🥰 i was a lucky kid.

@BlackenedHalo

"is this really a port or just demake made from the scratch?"

I'm 1999, this was a distinction without a difference.

(or not, as the case may be, as i had never heard the term "demake" at the time 😂✌️)

@ImpromptuR @Jeff2sayshi

I really regret all (ALL) of the free games, demos, and $0.09 discounted games i purchased in my early Switch owning days, before I realized they would clutter up my "redownload" list (the only actual static list in existence of all the games in my collection) for eternity with no ability to delete, return, hide, or otherwise purge them. yes, there are some (utterly terrible) No Gravity games in there.

...yada yada downside. 👍

@Exerion76

in my haste to make a dumb joke, i missed it!

well, I'm genuinely glad for that 😊 and thanks for pointing it out to me! ✌️

only 3d games, seems pretty biased to me.

when i see an Avatar i immediately think we are talking about a c.2008 game. this is the longest running, most financially successful "dead" series I've ever seen, and in my experience the ratio of "avatar fans" vs "yeah, the first film was ok IIRC" people IRL is something like 0:1.

(EDIT - also the couple times i ever heard someone say "I'm an Avatar fan," i automatically assumed they meant the anime, and they didn't even think to make the distinction, and we were both right.)

@Aki77

i appreciate your candor 👍 we can agree to disagree about the definition of the word "grammar," though i hope its clear that as with most of what i post here, i'm attempting a bit of tongue in cheek and I don't really care about grammar, or what it technically is or isnt etc etc. it is definitely possible that it's all for my own amusement and no one else thinks im funny (alas.)

I hope i havent personally offended you along the way, though i will take your continued interactions with me as a sign that we are on decent footing, or at least that I havent been blocked yet 😅✌️

@Aki77

Technically, capitalization and punctuation are writing mechanics, not "grammar," per se.

...

(additionally, who says im not irritated? 😂)

@Aki77

"Why don't you start sentences with a capital letter?"

i have always typed this way in informal communications, going back to the days of email chains and AIM.

when smart phones became a thing, i disliked the strict, stifling formality (and too-frequent inaccuracy) of autocorrect, so i turned it off right away and simply never looked back 😅 i like what I put out there to be exactly what I typed.

@MarcelMaigre

your comment reads like poetry, it is my privilege to be so thoroughly called out in this way 😅 you are right, my comment had a "you people" tone and that is regrettable 🥴

EDIT - choosing the stain of cowardice over light bigotry, I have edited my original comment with your notes in mind. ✌️

seems like every JP cover is the same, all the characters just kind of floating around, most without feet or only their torsos drawn. seriously wtf is with that?

what do the japanese publishers of the era have against utilizing composition, setting, context, perspective, light sourcing, storytelling...?

anyway MM6 has long been my favorite MM cover, i still have my childhood cart (purchased new AFTER I'd already gotten and beaten MMX) and that cart just SHINES. great looking label on there. 👍

(edited for tone ✌️)

@Krull

"is the Steam Deck really superior to the Switch 2?"

i will come back to respond fully to your thoughtful comment (thank you) but i thought id get ahead of this part. 👍

to clarify, im happy with my choice, but im not making any claims that one is better than another ✌️✌️ they are very different, was kind of closer to where i was going.

@Faruko

"You are missing one point tho, the term exclusive is just not a thing anymore. Gone are the times that console manufacturers would pay a lot of money for them and with that, third party developers would just put their games on everything."

thanks for responding to my extemporaneous, meandering utterances! 😄👍

so, to choose a random example, where's Tekken on Switch? 🤔 is someone besides Nintendo (Sony, I suppose) willing to pay, but Nintendo not?

you are saying that third party games aren't a thing on Nintendo platforms because Nintendo decided they were no longer important? they would rather save the money than court third parties?

During the N64 era, the excuse was that they no longer had market dominance, missed the boat on the new cdrom format (i was typing 64 but thinking cube, fixed it -ed.) so the third parties went elsewhere. (though in hindsight, i actually think N64's perceived lack of third party support was a bit unfounded, as with many of that console's "shortcomings")

Then, it became that PS2 had such a bigger user base than gamecube, third parties naturally preferred ps2 if there was only going to be one platform.

obv third party support on Wii was understandably... weird, even though Nintendo was finally selling competitively again.

I don't know why then, using the contemporary logic, Nintendo would be less willing to "pay for" something like Tekken Switch Edition than they were roughly a decade ago. especially considering they finally have a console that is both a living room staple and close to having a conventional control/display arrangement again. 🤔

anyway thanks for listening to my ramblings 😆✌️

@Aki77

"Hopefully there is a Steamdeck equivalent site to this one where you can share your wit and wisdom about something you enjoy."

"So you think it's a nonvite?"

"It's an unvitation!"

😅✌️

increasingly, im loving having a Switch for modern(ish) Nintendo games and a Steamdeck for "everything else."

i know its a "must be nice," but the choice was between a deck and an S2 and so far im extremely pleased (and saved 130 bucks too.) if Switch 2 gets some bangers* I'll upgrade but ill still likely use the two in the same way.

*this is an opinion obviously

PS - this is a tangent but i never understood why switch 1, for all its sales dominance, didn't get more 3rd party exclusives.

maybe im just not remembering (i can think of... astral chain and bayonetta maybe?) but in a world where GameCube got the resident evil remakes, Rogue Leader, and Baten Kaitos, and Wii U got Tekken Tag 2 somehow, what actually gives?

tldr 3rd party sucked, on Switch 1, from my perspective wth. 😮‍💨 thank you.

borrowing a bit of the silhouette from the steamdeck, here. im not complaining!

i wish someone would make something like this, but with both sticks at the top, U Gamepad style. or just go full hog and make a steamdeck clone i can slap a switch into 😂

@DaftSkunk

"To list "Without the Terminator licence it's fairly shallow" as a con is a little odd, to be quite honest. Like, that may be true, but considering it does have the Terminator license, it's just a hypothetical. Do better."

yeah if it's shallow, that's all you have to say.

i also find this odd. 👍✌️

@Gamecuber

Linear and simplistic? I thought the idea was that the game changes with multiple playthroughs

yeah im a bit confused about this as well. how could a game with branching alternate universes be "too linear?"

I will play it for myself for the answer... when it goes on sale. womp, womp.