Waluigi451

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised they’re going the BOTW route. That one did have the most cinematic story to adapt, honestly.

I’ve been getting back into Slay the Spire this week. Also going old school with some Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days collection.

Once again, the internet underestimates how many casual gamers enjoy Pokemon.

@ElkinFencer10 I think the reputation is justified because being boring is one of the biggest sins for a video game that is meant to entertain.

@Taya Well said. It felt like playing a board game and nothing about it utilized the fact it was a video game. That’s why Mario party succeeds, it does thing with the board game format that you can’t replicate with Monopoly lol

Yes, it was that bad. I got it on a steep clearance back in the day from Toys R Us (that really dates it lol) just for the Isabelle and Digby amiibo. Played it once and was bored out of my mind. It’s pretty much a boring version of Mario Party. Now granted, I played alone, but I still enjoy playing Mario Party alone against CPUs, so it should still be enjoyable with or without people.

The one saving grace were the minigames, but even then, it wasn’t a great experience and you had to slog through the main game to unlock those (talk about a feat of endurance). I do think yeah, if it was free, it would be fine. There was a Mario vs DK game back on the Wii U and 3DS that was free and unlocked levels with certain Mario amiibo characters. So something like that would’ve been ok but, even then, it wouldn’t have made the game any less of a chore to play through.

Kind of neat they’re making some unique looking characters for this game.

Weird to not show Yoshi in this.

The cookies forced their hand!

@Ogbert I don’t get the “safe” bit either. By that logic, most the characters from the first movie are “safe” too. It’s not like they went too out there designing Bowser or anything.

What’s there to make? That’s Yoshi alright lol

I bought the PS5 version of City of the Wolves mainly just to play as Ken and Chun-Li. Worth it lol

I don’t see why this would need to be a separate app and not just something you could switch between in the Mario one.

Still Pokémon Z-A. I’ve got side quests to finish and battles to complete. Also working on getting a strong team ready for the DLC.

@ROMhaiku Your point is kind of what I was trying to get at. Companies today are very risk averse. They don’t want to invest a lot in a risk that might flop. That and customers generally gravitate to familiar brands. So yes, the talent is there, but it’s riskier to invest a lot into something that isn’t a more guaranteed bet like a proven IP with a consistent sales record.

New games and ideas are great, but the market is a lot like the movie industry rn. IP sells. People say they want new things, but their money goes to the familiar IPs.

There have been plenty of new ideas recently that flopped. Nintendo tried Drag x Drive and there was also Playsation’s Concord disaster. Concord had plenty of reasons it flopped, sure, but Sony put a lot of money into developing it and it didn’t pan out. So that’s why more and more companies rely on IP, because there’s usually a fanbase baked in that will buy a series no matter what because it’s familiar to them. They know what to expect, more or less. It’s a lot easier to convince someone to buy a new Pokemon game than it is to convince them to take a risk on something new.

“Didn’t dwell on my past hits” and yet has been making Mega Man ripoffs…. Sorry, “Mega Man inspired”, games? Ok.

She was a mainstay on my team back in ORAS. So getting her back on the team makes me very nostalgic.

Looks like I’m covered on the Zelda side. I’ll have to add those two to my village for sure!

Nintendo is finally getting the third party support I wanted as a kid. It was rough to be a kid that only had Nintendo systems. To this day, my biggest gaming disappointment was buying Disney Infinity for the 3DS. I was so excited for it until I booted it up and learned the 3DS version was just a Mario Party knockoff, not the awesome platform and toybox game that I saw in the commercials. Thankfully I was able to return it and get the Wii version, but I was still so disappointed my Nintendo handheld got an inferior version.

These days, I do have a PS5 so I haven’t double dipped too much, but now that the Switch 2 is getting current third party support, I will definitely start considering it as an option more in the future. Needless to say though, younger me would have been stoked by this generation.

@Teksette Cosmic Ghost Rider is an alternate universe version of Punisher who became a space version of Ghost Rider. It is as awesome as that sounds haha

@Spider-Kev Phyla-Vell is a comic character from the early 00s who was at one point Captain Marvel. If you’re really curious you could read a wiki about all the lore, but basically she is a Captain Marvel comic character so that’s why she looks like that.

Beta Ray Bill is a playable character. Of course their inspiration came from the comics haha

@ShadLink That’s exactly what the 3DS and Wii U had. It was an app on the system that showed your playtime. Granted I never really had a use for it other than curiosity to see how much I played, but it was still neat to have.

Putting play activity on a shopping app — instead of being viewable on the Switch itself — is the most Nintendo move ever lol

It’s a high price up front, but provides a lot of entertainment value in the long run. I think a lot of people (like me) are willing to splurge on something when they know it’ll offer a lot of entertainment for years after the purchase. Other entertainment purchases like movie or concert tickets offer a lot less for the price in terms of time entertained.

@Truegamer79 That’s how the games were, but the whole point of these retro collections is that you can play these old games in a variety of different ways. If you want the quarter-eating arcade experience, you can have that. If you want to steamroll through the arcades, you can have that too. The various Capcom fighting collections let you adjust difficulty and it works, you can breeze through an arcade mode if you wish. No reason this MK collection can’t do that too.

Glad I held off then. I enjoy these retro collections and the ability to lower difficulty. Sometimes I just want to unwind and have fun with these arcade games and actually be able to finish them. So not being able to adjust difficulty would definitely frustrate me. I’ll stay patient and get this collection sometime later once the kinks have been worked out.

Without a doubt, the 3DS soundtrack I listened to the most lol. I put in so many hours into New Leaf.

Not surprised. From what I’ve seen around the internet, there’s a pretty dedicated playerbase (and plenty of whales). I don’t see this slowing anytime soon. Even digital Pokemon cards are hot items.

I’m a broken record at this point, but more Pokemon-ZA. I did finish the story last weekend so now it’s just battles and pokedex hunting.

Nah, I don’t care about any of the extra features in the upgrade pack. All the stuff I’m interested in is in the free update.

The Switch 2 announcements are exactly like the “Welcome Amiibo” update for New Leaf when the New 3DS came out. A way to keep the game alive and push it for a new system without actually having a new game. Now the difference between Switch and Switch 2 and the 3DS and New 3DS is a lot different, so I don’t think these New Horizons updates mean we aren’t getting a new AC game for Switch 2. But I do think it’ll be a couple years.

@Suketoudara That would be hilarious lol. I did kinda like what New Leaf did with the retro consoles where they played minigames that had the AC characters. The island survival one was surprisingly addicting.

Back on the 3DS, the “Welcome Amiibo” update was one of my favorite things and this was partly why. I loved creating Mario and Zelda inspired rooms. Looking forward to getting to do that again.

I said this on the other article, but it just doesn’t have the same magic. In the old versions, the retro consoles were having extra games within your game. It was amazing and truly felt like a bonus. Now it’s just playing something off your NSO subscription. Just doesn’t hit the same. Still fun to collect the consoles, though.

One little nitpick is the retro consoles just playing a game off NSO with a subscription doesn’t quite have the same magic as when they included retro games in other installments haha. Still fun to collect those systems, though.

FINALLY! The content drought is over. We are so back, AC fans.

I think Pokémon’s primary appeal is to a more casual audience who do not look for the things that the more engaged gamer audience of this website do. The games are still fun.

For an analogy, Pokemon are blockbuster movies. Tons of people enjoy them. But ask a hardcore cinephile what they think of the latest superhero flick and they’ll rip it apart and point out all the flaws. But those flaws don’t matter to the average person who just wants to have fun and enjoy something. That’s what Pokemon is and that’s why it continues to sell better than other games that are “technically” better, just like a Marvel movie has a better box office than the latest Oscar winner.

@ShadLink I remember revisiting Pokemon Red and Blue back when it was released on Virtual Console. They did not hold up very well. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad games, but they’re not masterpieces that still hold up today in the way say, Super Mario Bros does.

@burndive yeah I get that, just hoping season 2 doesn’t get harder and K can still be obtained in a single sitting.

Really hoping this is still doable next time around. I’m a little concerned that by season 2 people will have some jacked pokemon and be extra sweaty. But hopefully the lower ranks are still feasible. Just want to get this one and Chesnaught, then hopefully never have to touch online again.

This is one I’m going to wait on. I’m still working on Pokemon and Kirby Air Riders is just around the corner. I can be patient for this one.

I’m dying for that new Layton to come out already.

This is very interesting considering the other article today about UK sales. But again, this excluding digital gives us a frustratingly incomplete picture of Z-A’s total sales.

@Chibi I agree with this. The numbers don’t paint a full story without digital included because it could just be that Europe is moving more and more toward digital sales instead of physical. Could just be Europe turning away from Pokemon too. We’d have to see physical and digital numbers as well as other regions to see if there’s a similar drop across all platforms/regions. Otherwise this number in the article doesn’t tell us much.

Dropping these the week of Halloween is certainly a choice

I’ve consistently opened packs everyday, but that’s the extent of it. I’ll do cpu battles and the EX events (or whatever they’re called), but I gave up on competitive months ago. Once the game added too many cards, it was hard to keep up and adjust so I just tapped out.

From a casual and free perspective, it’s fine. I like opening free packs and seeing what I can get. But I absolutely am not trying to collect em all so the annoyances mentioned in this article don’t bother me.

It’s definitely like any gacha game, though. Designed to squeeze dollars out of players. But it doesn’t seem as egregious as most, imo

I doubt I’ll ever equip these but hey, who am I to turn down free costumes?

Some more Pokemon ZA! Hoping to finish the story this weekend.