Zaruboggan

Dang, I'm sorry this passed me by! Thanks for the great writeup.

Definitely adding a few of these to the wishlist. Which Way Up: Galaxy Games, Chaos Code (which is currently on sale for $1.99 inthe US--80% off until 5/12)(It doesn't have online play, for the record), A Year of Springs, and CROSSNIQ+. I've had my eye on DNF Duel, but I kind of need it to get to a price where I could fiddle with it for a weekend and get my money's worth.

Surprise, surprise, I'm still progressing slowly in both Avowed and Xenoblade Chronicles X. I finished Emerald Stair in the former, and I've got a couple more characters to unlock in the latter before moving on to chapter 6.

My brothers and I will also be checking in on the latest Windblown update, which added a new area and a few new weapons.

Enjoy the new releases, everyone! I'll catch up on Clair Obscur eventually!

@GamingFan4Lyf You could change the encounter rate at any time. So if you had to backtrack or something, you wouldn't have to be interrupted. Or if you wanted to grind, you could pop it up to 200%.
In a game with repeated dungeon padding like this one, 0% was appreciated.

Stayed up late last night to fight the queues and got nothing for my efforts.
My brother considered taking off the work day to hit up Gamestop, but decided there was too much he had to do on the job. Same for me.
Too bad. We found out later that if we had gone to Gamestop before opening, we would have absolutely been early enough in line to secure a console. Almost effortlessly.
I'm happy for everyone who had an easy time of it, and I hope nobody's preorders get cancelled!

@J_C Congratulations! I appreciate the @. Alas, I finally succumbed to sleep and got nothing.

Sony's process was similar. It was still the best way to secure the PS5 during the first two years+.

@J_C @speed_loafer Yeah I just got kicked to the empty cart.
I think that's it for me, I gotta be up for work at 5:30.
Best of luck, fellow nightwalkers!

My cousin's Best Buy brought him to an empty cart after 50 minutes of waiting in line. Progress! /s

@speed_loafer Yep. I'm waiting for one of the bundles in the hopes that it'll be less impacted. So far that has not turned out to be true lol.
Shoulda gone for the double zelda bundle. No day-one-buying Switch 2 fan would want to pay 70 and 80 dollars for games they already have. And I could probably return the unopened Zeldas...

Some people have been getting cancels from BestBuy.

@speed_loafer I've seen people have orders go through with BB.
Not me, but friends of friends.

My brother got a confirmation email via Walmart. I'm not sure if that's gonna turn into an actual Switch 2, but it's something.
All the cancellations people suffered through with PS5 leave me feeling a little deflated.
So does the 33 minutes waiting for Best Buy's line, but that's neither here nor there (it's definitely here).

Best Buy just let me in line so that I can't go to sleep.

In line at Best Buy.

Hearing some people have had their Target orders canceled already.

Nothin but 'coming soon' on Best Buy so far. I wish you all better luck!

Ugh, I really needed this thing to fail so I could get one at launch easily.

Considering how few GameCubes sold (relatively), it's pretty crazy that 27 games doesn't even come close to covering everything. I must have blinked because I didn't see the best Star Fox game (Assault) on the list.
Seconding and thirding basically every game mentioned by the community above, but especially Custom Robo, Baten Kaitos, Lost Kingdoms 1+2, Skies of Arcadia...
All of them. Give me every GameCube game there ever was, please and thank you.

I'll be curious to see how games like Zelda Four Swords Adventures and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles do multiplayer. The latter, as well as Tales of Symphonia, was done a disservice by its remaster. Give me the OG.

Also, any Digimon World 4 aficionados out there? My family had a blast with it growing up!

Had a lot of fun with this one back in the day. I remember being really excited about the splitting classes and three-tier units. Grinding out the tower was also pretty fun, and that final stage with all the dragons at the ruins was a nightmare!

I'll definitely give it another run through, but I think I'm gearing up for a Fire Emblem replay first.

@Indielink @Vyacheslav333 IIRC it was literally just grunts? I wasted a few minutes trying to find anything else, and nothing popped up. Not to suggest there couldn't have been a single voiced line by Cadence, the only character who appears to have a separate JP voice actor...
The developer is also based in Vancouver, so I'm not sure in which world they WOULD feel obligated to put dual audio into the English release (grunts or otherwise).

But hey, everybody's got their hill. All the power to you, Vyacheslav333.

I keep wanting to highlight a game I played, but then I find out NL DID review it, or highlight it in an earlier article. I swear I'll be a hipster yet...

And for anybody asking for Hogwarts Legacy: See "Related Articles" on this page. They highlighted it last time!

Love hearing that Pikmin 1 can still get its hooks into new players! My entire extended family was suckered in by it all those years ago.
My personal order (since nobody asked) would be 3-4-2-1, starting with my favorite. A proper co-op campaign and that fantastic co-op mission mode make 3 the dandoriest of them all! I'm heartbroken Pikmin 4 didn't bring back either.

(If you do go the video route as suggested above, please make sure to retain the written format as well!)

I'm glad there is no future wherein Pokemon acquired the Pokemon-likes and adds them to the Pokemon roster.
At least, I hope there's no future wherein Pokemon acquires the Pokemon likes....
I'll be honest, I got that pessimism bug these days.

NA for sure! Japan's is just...not great. Maybe I'd like it more if the flowers weren't just copy/pasted all over the box, or if they filled the background a little better. My eyeballs kinda lose the Pikmin on that orange, too. I also think it would have been better without the english.
NA's is comical, suggestive of what you're getting into, and its era-specific art tickles my fancy.

I was thinking about Riju to go with my Urbosa, but I dunno. Money being what it is these days, I might just skip.

Counter argument: Nintendo should let this game be on Switch 2, and anybody who doesn't want it...doesn't have to buy it.

Avowed and Xenoblade Chronicles X again. Making progress through the Emerald Stair in the former, and wrapping up some affinity missions in the latter.
It'll be a busy weekend otherwise, with various celebrations going on.
We also have been launching some Wii and Wii U games to add playtimes to our massive spreadsheet. Did you know you can still download Wii games you've purchased? I didn't!
We'll have to buy an SD card to fit it all, which is kinda funny, considering my Wii U is hooked up to a 2TB hard drive.

Played this as a kid it's all my cousins, but I won't pretend I ever really came to grips with all the move sets.
Now that I've cut my teeth on SCs 4-6, I'm excited to come back to Link and actually do combos and stuff!

I'm gonna hold off on the Pro Controller. See if the new joycons have legs or have drift. And hope for the best.

Kinda curious how I get on with the soundtrack separate from the rest of the game.

The shooter genre has passed me by :l
I'm counting on the new Battlefield to be the game I want to play, and not another extraction/battle royale/hero shooter. Otherwise I guess I'll have to make do with co-op and single player shooters like Borderlands 4, Doom The Dark Ages and Metroid Prime 4.
Which is a lot of words to say Marathon isn't exactly my cup of tea lol

I feel similarly.
The character picks are delightfully insane and a substantial improvement over Pink Gold Baby Peach and the Koopalings (who are all likely to show up anyway), and the hints we've seen of the world map suggest we'll be touring the tracks to track them down. And we'll get to do so with friends. What's not to be excited about?
Oh, right—the pricing.
I've played every Mario Kart, and I do enjoy them, but my favorites are still DS and DD. The rest have been a matter of course for me. This one is likely to buck that trend.

"Drag X Drive (said as Drag and Drive)"

I hate this from the darkest recesses of my soul.

@rjejr The camera is capable of more than 8FPS; it's just that the Switch 2 prioritizes maintaining the game's performance over the multiple camera video streams. Which, good lol

But it'll definitely be a blast from the dial-up past all the same!

Xenoblade Chronicles X and Avowed again this week. Some Monster Hunter Wilds whose update we still haven't touched, but today should be the day.
That should do it! I'm basically getting nothing until Switch 2 at this point, and who knows if I'll even be able to get that. Of course, I wouldn't mind a chance to go back and play some oldies...

@Hawkes142 Position on the controller, responsiveness, and habit, I guess. It's how CoD used to be by default, back when I played it.
As for R1/R2, that's the PlayStation buttons, where I did most of my shooting. But you are correct that on Switch(2), it'd be R/ZR.

All I know is I like shooting with R1 more than R2.

I don't want ANY roadmap. For 80 bucks, that game better be cooked to completion.

I'll definitely be giving this a listen.
I been thinking, maybe the Kirby one was cut in two because the second half will include the switch 2 stuff?

I, uh, I never tried to lick my cartridge.

Friend Codes aren't perfect, but I'm also never told my user name is taken on Switch. Because they're not taken. You can have a hundred Zaruboggans running around in Splatoon at any time.

Maybe I'm just used to em after all these years. But also I haven't put a friend code into my Switch in half a decade, so...

Sorry to the achievement hunters out there, but my automatic reaction to this news is "good."

The video explanation for no music makes sense. Doesn't mean I don't miss it.

All my joycon are dead, my switch pro controller had to be sent back, and my PS5 controller started drifting hard in the middle of the Edin Ring DLC.
I'm tired of drift.

Kind of a non answer about the drift, but I suppose a loc guy wouldn't be the one to say definitively 'no drift.' I also imagine nobody would be cleared to say 'no drift' because if there's drift, and they've said no drift, that's a problem.

@Spider-Kev Fair shout. I can't imagine the GameCube controller wouldn't support analog controls, but stranger things have happened.

Of course it all depends on the games' and console's ultimate pricing here in the states (grumble grumble...), but I would certainly like to get Mario Kart World and Fast Fusion in launch week, when I'll also be playing F-Zero GX.

(The launch line-up above is missing Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, for the record—a game I will get for $60 on Switch 2, but will skip at anything more.)

I'll be picking up Metroid Prime 4 and Pokemon Z-A, but if the price for these games hits $80 on Switch 2, I'll have to have a long hard think. I preordered MP4 8 years ago for $60, which is crazy to think about. When PS5 and PS4 titles launch at the same price, it's hard to think Switch 2 should be doing anything different.

Kirby Air Riders is a definite (Sakurai is always a lock). I will be getting Donkey Kong Bananza. Age of Imprisonment is...unlikely.

It'll be Xenoblade Chronicles X and Avowed for me this weekend. I started the latter this week and am blown away by how beautiful it is. It's also nicely written and performed relative to the last western RPG I played, so that's been fun! It's lovely to roam around in, but I'd better advance the story and keep up the momentum.
As for XCX, I just finished chapter 5, so next I'm gonna wrap up some of these affinity quests. Gotta get my old team back together!
We'll probably jump in on the Monster Hunter Wilds update, but no promises.

My answer before I took the quiz: No
My answer after taking the quiz: No

It's fun seeing lots of people going for the same wrong answers. Well done, quiz writer!

Launch switch games did sweet things with HD Rumble. By and large, it just wasn't used by the rest of the industry.