Thomystic

But where is Fighting Force? I think they announced it equally long ago.

The Mana series has perhaps the best art direction of any franchise.

I'm surprised other sites to my knowledge haven't copied this article type. It's brilliant and so original.

In-game purchase will be a Silence Beam to choose NPCs with. Beautiful business idea.

@darylb24 Probably T for Tardy.

I think the optimistic take is that a movie is being looked at in the smoke-filled rooms. And a movie would need talking and thus other characters besides a computer named "Adam" and a levitating jellyfish that squeaks. This game might make $5 million less in compromising its vision (if concerns are warranted) to set that up but make $100 million more for the company in the form of a more viable movie.

And while the Marvelization is being decried, I believe many of the same people have called for a Nintendo Cinematic Universe of sorts. Perhaps that's the Marvelization they're going for. If the rumors of a Super Mario World movie were true at one time, they skipped that a Sunshine to go to a Galaxy setting for Super Mario movies, perhaps allowing Samus to tie in more naturally. It's just a thought.

And there I was thinking Metroid Fusion was too intrusive when it was just coming from alarms and announcements. What no one is mentioning here is that other characters in games often serve as the voices of the game devs pushing you along their linear intentions. If that's heavy-handed, that veers the game away from the "first-person adventure" that Nintendo has always claimed and towards an action game, which we have plenty of. That then makes the series less special. It's a spectrum; it's not binary.

To go even more grandiose than that, in so far as this game is a barometer or rudder of game design philosophy (coming from the most Western subsidiary of the most Eastern publisher), this particular difference seems to reflect an East-West divide, and we've seen what the bombastic overstimulating Western-style game design results in: lowest common denominator homogeneity and studio closures. Sort of a "What happens when the salt loses its saltiness" kind of situation.

Obviously, saying Myles MacKenzie is the death knell of traditional gaming as we know it is ridiculous. But I think some of the above dots are being connected subconsciously as a possibility or harbinger by some of the commenterati on various outlets.

If Baba is You was a dungeon crawler

@HugoGED Weren't the ones from that era on Wii?

I wonder if anyone on this team happened to work on Star Fox Assault back in the day. I’m reading that the Ace Combat team did NOT make Star Fox Assault.

Could they have asked for the rights to Xenosaga while they were at it so that Monolith can get cracking?

@Zeebor15
I would love for us to get Hirogami. It’s a very Switch-type game.

@Arnold-Kage
Imagine what Tokyo EPD could do with Rayman.

I don't know why touchscreen for menus and maps is not more prevalent, so kudos to Ubi for this extra effort.

I was hoping Brok was a spiritual successor to Plok.

@kevin74 Well, now we know.

I love the orders of magnitude on display in the hardware charts.

@gabrigoes True. I've long noticed that movie genres vary in what they're referring to: western, sci-fi, fantasy, and period refer to a movie's setting while comedy, drama, action, etc refer to the plot or tone. In games, roguelike and Metroidvania refer to the progression system, shooter and platformer refer to the core gameplay, and RPG no one is really sure of.

How did a Devolver game release escape my purview?

@metaphysician @rallydefault
I suspect, although I'm not an engineer or supply chain person, that one factor was tariffs, at least indirectly. The push to manufacture and import as many console units as possible into the US before tariffs kicked in likely competed for the same factories, parts, and boats as the dev kits which in theory should be very similar technology. This paid off in terms of units sold but might cost the release calendar some thickness.

Also, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC's 30% off.

@Gatorclops National teams and entire major professional sports leagues are not the same thing. The WNBA is the only one that's mainstream. There used to be a scantily-clad women's football league in the states, but I'm not going to count that.

I didn't even know there's a women's hockey league. That's pretty cool.

My main 3 multiplayer games I'd play with my best friend back then were GoldenEye and Wayne Gretzky's 3-D Hockey--and Mario Kart 64.

It's a mini console, and the Japanese one doesn't show it to scale. It's not even eligible in my mind. NA all the way because it shows more than just SMW, although it fails to say how many games are in it.

Now we need Einhander and Gradius V.

@MontyCircus I have that as a permanent bookmark.

I'm surprised there's no Minish Cap, Hades, Kid Icarus Uprising, Xenoblade 3, or even TMNT IV. I have to think they'd be in the honorable mentions 110-101.

Syn Sophia, how far they've fallen

This might be my first key card given that it's only $40 and that this is perhaps a legit reason. But it makes me wonder how much of an issue it would have been physically and for the UI to have a 2nd SD card slot.

How many heralded games got a first sequel this year? Hades 2, Outer Worlds 2, Ghost of Yotei, Silksong, Death Stranding 2--geez. And that's overlooking Elden Ring: Nightrein since it's a spinoff.

Hopefully this tonal shift with Marine Mackenzie is designed to make the series more appealing to Japanese gamers. And hopefully it works. Metroid's neglect over there makes me wonder how games like Mass Effect, Doom, and Dead Space do over there. They like robots, but maybe they don't like human protagonists dressed as robots.

These categories really are frozen in 2014. Fighting games have a category but platformers don't. There are enough platformers nowadays, especially if you include Metroid-likes.

Best self-published indie game seems like a good distinction that avoids the Dave the Diver controversy.

The differing prices on digital versus physical is really encouraging. Perhaps Nintendo loosened their rule on that to account for the unpopularity of key cards.

@AlexOlney Did you try telling him, "That's more than enough waffling."?

Perfect Dark remaster please.

That alarm clock has to be a reference to Superliminal.

@HalBailman My #2 is also Super Metroid, haha, behind Chrono Trigger.

But can I play it on the rooftop?

This is the weirdest booklet I've ever seen.

I had never really noticed the "ignore" user option below the comments. (You might say I ignored it.) But it's coming in handy on this one.

They had me choose my #1 game over my #2 game twice, causing my #2 game to be ranked 8th for me due to its win/loss record. 🤦‍♂️

@antdickens
Congrats, NL and Anthony! Also, F-Zero X is in fact the best game. Racing game, at least.

I was confused with the first pics how she could stay upright--something important for a dancer to do.

Maybe they should lay off the limited-time displays until they no longer have to use a lottery system. Let demand catch up and then use FOMO gimmicks.

@bosh My roommate and I got them opening night. My more Sony fan roommate got a Switch 2 recently for Hades 2. So our household has 3.

Imagine if there were sufficient dev kits.

If they sold a Nintendo arcade cabinet (not Labo), more people would buy an extra Switch. Although maybe not since they raised the price.

I love this series but am kinda waiting for their to stop being updates to this one to get started with it.

Perhaps our best chance at a partial virtual console for first-party games is for Nintendo to commission similar treatment for the NES black box era at least. Maybe even adding in a Labo R.O.B. 😆

Please not Forever Entertainment.

Wasn't Davide Soliani starting his own venture? He clearly has love for Nintendo properties and can spread their design philosophies.

@Liam_Doolan I think maybe you meant Split Fiction rather than Split Second.

This only encourages their scummy practice of releasing an expanded version a year or two later like with SMT games.

They take risks on these really deep cuts. I hope they stay solvent long enough to port games gamers are more interested in.

By speaking in terms of profit margins, does that mean they're shifting away from Game Pass? There's no marginal cost on a streaming service.

Are we to assume that only 20% of MKW sales were digital? Or that it has an attach rate above 100%? Both figures seem incredible.

@Nintendontyouknow The gaming of the shrew