@Truegamer79 Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor are some of the best Star Wars stories we've had and the first thing I thought of playing this weekend. (I really hope the new team and director do well with the third in the series.)
The deal for KOTOR is tempting me, too, though. Never tried that back in the day.
Gato Roboto is a nice compact and rewarding Metroidvania. If you like cats at all, it's a must play. Oh, that's like $2, so anyone that enjoys the genre and hasn't played it, should just do so, in my opinion.
The movie is a successful, silly, and fun ride. The best part is that it establishes some cohesive narrative to build upon based on a game franchise that was never concerned with that beyond a single game.
Charles Martinet did great in his two other roles in the movie. I think it did make sense to recast someone more recognizable to general audiences, but also someone whose voice will remain younger for a bit longer. I hate to write that, but people's voices do change as they age and Chris Pratt's will, too. If this is a franchise with a new movie every 3 years... it adds up quick.
For my taste, here's hoping the next one gives us some more emotional depth and less pop-music needle drops.
@NintendoByNature Thanks. Seems a little short for $15 and I'm usually a proponent of shorter, but better, games. I'm just going to have to wait on it until I play through some other games, first.
Hoping to get back to Ultros (PS4/5) before weekend is out.
Last time I played, it really progressed in some amazing ways. The mix of systems and mechanics had me scratching my head in the middle (maybe?) of progress, but it's all clicking now and I can't wait to get back to it.
But wait, I must, for now.
If I had the time, I'd have purchased Pepper Grinder, because that looks great to me. I did buy Thronefall and filed it right into the backlog, for now.
Oh, I did play a couple games of 5-player 7 Wonders (physical table top game) at a get together which is always a great time.
As far as the family and friends. They are playing Balatro, Slice & Dice, Wild Frost (all deck-builders rogue-likes!), and Hearts of Iron IV (free Steam weekend, btw),
Not too much game time, so far. Snuck in a game of Spaceteam, the fast and silly physical card game, during break in my game design course.
Got to play more of the feast-for-the-eyes metroidvania, Ultros, on PS5, and a bit of Slice & Dice on a Mac (it's also on mobile). Almost got some physical tabletop 7 Wonders going at an Easter get together, but not yet. Nothing on Switch, though Slice & Dice really should be on there.
The deckbuilding sale on Steam got me to buy the digital version of Ascension, one of the original physical table top deckbuilding games that was hot on the heels of Dominion but I never got to play. I probably won't have time to dig in to that just yet, as it's a bit more involved and time is limited (and the backlog grows).
Slice & Dice took most of my time, which is now on iOS, but I got it on Steam first (it's a dice-building roguelike) which I would have gotten on Switch but it doesn't seem to be available yet.
Also, Ultros which is a trippy, consuming, and, so far, amazing Metroidvania that is only worth playing on something with a wide color gamut (very vibrant colors) so that's on the PS5.
For an actual game available on Switch, there is Balatro which we played while introducing it to friends. They took to it very quickly. It has to be the most accessible deckbuilding game ever due to it being based on standard playing cards and poker/betting semiotics.
(Across my family, one is playing Wildfrost all the time, we shared a bit of Slice & Dice, one has been on Splatoon 3 getting back up to S-rank and winning 100x battles during splat fest... but also maximizing the Side Order content with invented new runs, like monotone, etc. One is on Steam playing with friends in all sorts of multiplayer games. Hearts of Iron IV is a big one.)
Ugh. It was a dark time in graphic design and marketing when they had to rely on CGI experts before those experts went beyond the technical skills and learned to be artists. You'd think they could have collaborated more, but whatever the reason industry people chose cgi rendered garbage to represent their products, I remember having similar gag reflex to what I'm having now looking at the Japanese and NA box art.
No idea Europe had respectable box art. Looks good.
Trying the game back then was incredibly disappointing after the incredible transitions to 3D that Mario and Zelda made. Fortunately, Symphony of the Night had released a couple years earlier making it seem like it would be okay for Castlevania to stay 2D — though what a weird era it became where 2D games almost disappeared!
@Magrane I had written my muscle memory comment before reading yours. It was a tough game with need for repetition to get better (in a good way). I never took to Battletoads but I don't really remember why. I think I just didn't find it fun after a point? Anyway, didn't check it out on SNES.
I finished a very long-standing backlog item: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night last night - except for a few elements, it felt like a modern throwback game; so well considered in its time that I now feel even better about the "vania" in metroidvania.
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll I did play a couple years ago and I was impressed... I think it was difficult, too? Not enough time for that.
I didn't really enjoy Blast Corps. that much when renting/borrowing it back in the day but I'll give it another shot, someday.
No idea if Killer Instinct is worth it. I wasn't interest except for graphics potential in the "Ultra 64" back when it was in arcades. I was picky in pursuing any competitive gaming as it is a huge time suck and I enjoyed co-op and 1 player games more most of the time anyway. Warcraft III was when I gave it competitive games the most time, that was 20 years ago and 10 years after Killer Instinct. Yikes.
So... some R.C. Pro-Am will be fun later today, I think. That game is just about timeless and fun for quick racing here and there. Hard but I have some muscle memory that kicks in when I go back to it.
Can't figure out what it would be called or how it will be different besides being more powerful, so... wild ideas time!
Switch Back - Has cartridge slots for all the old Nintendo systems. Yes, even for the NES, and discs. Doesn't play Switch games, though.
Switch 128 - Finally doubled from 64. Besides the register-size of the CPU, the number adds in the amount of RAM, VRAM, and even the number of ports to get to 128.
Sand Switch - Removable "bread-cons" that fold under and over the screen "filling" when going pocket size. The dock looks like a toaster.
Switch Z - Remakes of every Zelda game announced at launch. Stay tuned for the Switch M.
SNESwitch Just... yeah, Sneswitch.
Switchbox Series 2 or Playswitchon 6
Nintendo Power Switch Actually just a charging brick for the Switch 2.
(I actually like Nintendo Power Switch, and I saw it someone else post the idea first) it doubles as a stupid pun, and the sound of something you might want to upgrade to, because it is more powerful, but it is too silly to take seriously)
Reading some of the comments, I will give credit to the European version along with NA/UK that the environment was included. It seems really odd for a genre-defining game to have all of its art focused on Samus Aran as a hero character only.
And I have to concede that as much as I dislike the art style, poor attention to silhouette and negative space, cutting off the Metroid, etc. The European one suggests the original inspiration of Ridley Scott's original Alien movie the best out of all of them.
I had a hard time not going with nostalgia for this. I can't help but feel like anyone voting for European version had the same issue. For me, it was the worst, by a fair margin.
I really like the action in the Japan version, but it's just not very representative of the game. The Classics one felt a bit like a cheat and I never liked the manga/comic style that was getting thrown around when Metroid Zero Mission was coming up for release 2004/2005 though. The Samus art itself on that box is very good, but the graphic art and font around it felt "cheap" and generic to me, even back then.
I find I really enjoy the actual classic nature of the original NES black box series in NA/UK, because it was trying to represent and celebrate the actual pixel art used in the games. It is often wrong in weird ways, but stands the test of time better than most box art.
I think it was a reaction to the wide gap between beautiful Atari 2600 box art and what the graphics actually looked like. Nintendo was trying to regain the trust of the consumers at a dark time in video gaming history. So, it even helps mark the era in which it was released.
The NA/UK Metroid box and Kid Icarus boxes were the last to hold on to the design of the black boxes, though they were silver. Still, I can't discount the nostalgia of it effecting me, too. I just gave in and voted. haha.
After the Metroid Prime remaster, I'm all for more remasters. I would be disappointed, but another year of remasters like that and I'd probably be happy enough.
Nice. Just a self check for everyone. If you didn't know this was a joke immediately, you may be regularly ingesting completely garbage rumor sites in other places. However, Nintendo Life does good work, so maybe you were just giving it the benefit of the doubt at first.
Wanted to build this back in the day, but with the inside included. It was a little too ambitious and I just wasn't really interested in building out the top part and didn't have the pieces for that. (images online do look good for that part)
@umbreon_sylveon Wildfrost had some nice improvements in v 1.1.0 (December 2023). Difficulty seems smoothed out and has a higher upper limit for challenges, new collectibles, and careful rebalancing of cards.
Not sure any of that would help, just pointing out it might be worth a look again. (My wife and I took to Slay the Spire first, and she and my daughter are currently happily obsessed with Wildfrost).
Seems a bit over engineered for Lunar Lander, but I'm down for it. Between SEGA and Atari, I feel like a more nuanced and smart wave of remake/reimaginings of my childhood games is coming.
The Atari 50th Anniversary had a very nice combination of Vector games, Vctr Sctr, for instance (including a segment like Lunar Lander that my teenage son really enjoyed), and the Yar's Revenge thing with the hot-swappable graphics really hit me just right.
The new SEGA announcement of new entries from the old days looked really good.
Many of these games have been remade and copied again and again, but I feel like there are more hits than misses, lately.
Maybe it takes 30 to 40 years to really appreciate what made those game classics, so you can build around the core gameplay rather than slap the theme on something very different.
Maybe companies have seen Indies do a better job of remaking their own games, too, and realized they could get in on it.
@Solomon_Rambling said, "I love how the company is a trailblazer in video gaming, even if it forgets its backpack or how to start a fire from time to time."
@themightyant True about third party support. They tried on the Wii, but Wii Sports people really weren't interested in Nintendo games (even Nintendo got frustrated chasing casuals, there).
However, Nintendo started attracting indies during the Wii U days. Even some exclusives that we still go back to, like Affordable Space Adventures. Shovel Knight even had the first third party amiibo with Shovel Knight for Wii U.
(Side note: Hollow Knight released on Windows, first, then Linux and macOS. Switch version came over a year later, a few months before PS4 and XB1. They had originally promised a Wii U version in the kickstarter as a stretch goal that was reached but transitioned to Switch)
@rjejr For Zelda, I have trouble envisioning it as a movie. After all, most of the stories are mostly built on archetypes rather than interesting plots, the gameplay and what you choose to do being the focus.
Thing is, Mario had me thoroughly entertained. I underestimated how much fun it would be just to see how they pieced it all together into something that even worked. The plot was paper thin, the characters were just getting started, but I would get this satisfaction from all the little connecting of the dots that the games never did.
I have a feeling I'm predisposed to enjoying a Zelda movie. I'm sure they could find methods to push me away from it, but Zelda has bounced between many tones and quirks in its history of video games, so I think the movie can live in its own place and suit me just fine.
But, it does have to entertain.
For TV, I've missed all the strictly fantasy stuff, lately. For All Mankind has been the family favorite recently. (Silo, good. Severance, really good. Monarch Legacy of Monsters, good at times, keeping us connected to the Godzilla King Kong Monsterverse)
Well, Nintendo has not let me down with their hardware, except maybe for never building a portable device that my big hands could wrap around without cramping up after a short time (and "trapping" great games on them I could barely play!). I even had fun renting the Virtual Boy from Blockbuster but I don't count that one — it was never going to work and Gunpei Yokoi made the cross-shaped control pad, the Game Boy, and produced Metroid and Kid Icarus, so no problem.
NES was the first console of my own (played Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man all near when they first released...) and I didn't miss a console or handheld. Even from the worst sellers, Gamecube gave me Metroid Prime and Wii U gave me Nintendo Land (it was our daily family game for years).
Yes, I'm looking forward to whatever Nintendo shows us next.
@Solomon_Rambling There was a lot of blood in the water because of Wii U. Whether someone disliked the Wii U and thought Nintendo was dying or loved the Wii U and felt betrayed by its early death, there was plenty of frustration and skepticism to pour onto the Switch.
I feel okay about what I said back then, but I was needlessly argumentative about how Mario Odyssey looked... though I do think I had a point, hahah.
@aznable Yeah, I tried it on my Mac via Whisky and no luck, yet. Might have to blow the dust off the PC. Kind of annoying because it's made with a Multiplatform game engine (GameMaker Studio). There's always CrossOver (expensive) or Parallels (more expensive).
@rjejr Yeah, I agree with you and your wife on Zelda. Zelda has always been quirky and they need to find a way to make that work in the movie and be able to laugh along with it (not at it).
Incidentally, my family and I really enjoyed D&D Honor Among Thieves. I feel like that movie is an overlooked crowd pleaser. (Didn't help that Hasbro sank all the goodwill of D&D fans right before the movie released).
@rjejr That is a lousy situation having to complete the unpaid co-op. I guess the only way to have made that work was to get a paid position that counted? Frustrating.
Teens are weird but they are just more malleable against the societal trends. Don't get me started on social networks, silos, people only comfortable with people if they agree on everything and being susceptible to anyone telling them what they want to hear, leading them to dismiss experienced or knowledgable people who might not do that for them, etc.
@aznable The original NES Zelda was a revelation that remains one of my favorites, Zelda 2 was a brief experience for me as I was kind of in a competition to complete it quickly at the time, but I did enjoy how different it was and loved many aspects of it even though I think it felt kind of unfinished to me at the time. A Link to the Past made me partly forget it for awhile, too. (You should definitely check out HoverBat's PC remake of Zelda 2, if you haven't: https://hoverbat.itch.io/ziiaol )
I guess Zelda 2 really begs to be included in the Metroidvania genre. Maybe another reason why I was orginally surprised when the name took on the Castlevania influence...
@rjejr They should make a game that can be a conduit for their favorite story ideas. Those exist. Of course, that means the story has to be good, too. Hope it starts getting clearer and congrats on the 3-year thing, that is amazing!
Latest news is that the higher ups from the ad group (IronSource) Unity acquired is being excised from the company. Yep, more of the executive c-suite people that were ad revenue focused are going away. Plus, the new CEO is talking about taking out the middle management layer and rebuilding the culture. It is starting sound surprisingly good, if you care about the game engine itself being good for developers and gamers. Optimism?
Sega inspired: Nintendo Mega Switch Nintendo Master Switch (I don't really like the word "master", but that's pretty good, right?) Nintendo Switch Genesis (Makes no sense)
Nintendo Switch eroo Nintendo Switch, the sequel
"Switch", I think, is necessary to keep, but really hard to have a subtitle, I really think we might get Switch 2
@rjejr Fantasy sword-and-sandal movies are not automatically bad, but I do hope they transcend that genre, a bit. (Lord of the Rings easily does, for me, except for those occasional montages of the orcs ransacking random villages, those are a bit too familiar lol)
I think in the first few seconds of the first teaser or images we see of the movie, it will be much easier to know what to expect.
@rjejr Oh yeah, I didn't count the Tim Burton Mark Wahlberg 2001 movie. That one is a standalone and starts good, but just... ugh. (The apes and armor costuming was great, though).
Ryan Reynolds as Beedle is now something I want to see. Haha!
Really, you hit the nail on the head about Detective Pikachu. It was a good movie to fans and non-fans, which is exceptionally hard to pull off and also exactly what Nintendo will want with a Zelda movie.
@rjejr Oh no! Maybe in the meantime, look for wider interactive software or motion graphics jobs. I've been told by people who have the experience, that those jobs have been easier to find in more places and often pay more. Game studios are spread out in little clusters, still, unfortunately. Moving to them is often necessary.
If your child is super passionate about making video games, I recommend they get involved in a local game dev group and start building something, sharing it, etc. They can show their strengths and network and find others to work with. Helps immensely as one or the other gets a job or starts a promising project.
Of course, I don't have the details of what you all have already been doing, so sorry if it's not helpful. This has to be a stressful time.
Still, it's a solid degree and they should be well-prepared for many types of jobs, so it might take some time, but options should come up. Just might not be a dream job for a long time.
I'm not looking forward to the job search. I have a child starting college and who knows what it will be like in 4 years or so.
I hope all goes well! (And unfortunately, I'm less help than I could be if I dealt with the last half of college, I'm all on the foundations and intro classes in the first two years).
@Princess_Lilly A natural effect of much more media availability and how fans are spread into more specific niches.
Here's an alternate consideration:
Not being up with the latest trends is something older people have experienced for centuries. You don't keep up because music and entertainment takes a backseat to more important needs, and then you find yourself saying "it all went downhill" since back when I cared about it, back when it was "the best".
It's a cliché because it's a perception that is hard to avoid. People stop making music you care about because your tastes become irrelevant and, frankly, you are better "served" by reselling you the only stuff you will think is good.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift ruled the media world in 2023 in a way that few artists ever have and is a nice example of a celebrity just as famous (or more) than "the old days". (I'm not really a fan, nor do I know anyone that is. Though "shake it off" comes to mind occasionally.)
It takes effort to follow trends and find what people are liking in modern music and other media that you are most likely missing or dismissing because it's not what you are used to and probably is not made to speak to people like you in the first place.
It's the kind of effort I have little time for, myself. That doesn't make the latest trends objectively worse, just harder for me to perceive or appreciate.
I just don't play Smash (had fun with it back on the N64, played every other iteration, but never stuck with it).
However, I was always a fan of the original Kid Icarus and its quirkiness, and the 3DS Kid Icarus Uprising was kind of amazing and maintained the quirkiness and theme so well — I just couldn't last long with it due to my hands cramping up.
So, whatever game he is working on, I hope that he at least oversees a remaster of the Kid Icarus Uprising for Switch/Switch2. If he was to make a full-on sequel or something, I'd be ecstatic.
However, that doesn't seem likely. I get the feeling he would only be interested in Smash if it was taking a very different direction, right? But fans would not stand for that... Plus, it would be so daunting to enter into that same project again.
So, for his sake, I hope he is getting to work on some sort of dream game he has always wanted to make. I'd love to see his passion poured into something different — just oversee that Kid Icarus Uprising remake on the side.
Derek Connolly wrote Safety Not Guaranteed, which is quirky and worth checking out (I personally really enjoyed it at the time).
What he has shown, later, is how he can work within an existing franchise that has major control from people shepherding that franchise, like the first two Jurassic World movies.
He also wrote Kong: Skull Island which actually managed to work really well for what it was. (The movie has grown on me as an over the top b-movie with a budget).
He managed to write Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, which was a bit of miraculous movie that it could work at all, in my opinion. And, of course, this is probably the biggest reason he was chosen.
He can work within tight constraints and make something good, even if not great. That works for me, as a choice for writer. (He is also credited for "story" on some movies, which means he had much less control how they came out, so I don't hold that against him, too much).
I don't expect a LoZ movie to be super deep, but I really hope it can have characters I care about through an adventurous and triumphant story. I think there's a good chance he can deliver this.
That Apes movie that the director, Wes Ball, is working on will be a huge indicator. The first 3 movies were incredibly well directed and made, so if this 4th one "fits in" with those, he will have proven himself just fine to me.
As far as budget... I imagine it will be relatively large after the success of Mario. It's worth the risk for their second big movie, right?
Unity going public seems to have been a huge mistake... or at least, the previous CEO did everything wrong trying to make it work.
Fortunately, that CEO is gone.
This sucks for those losing their job, and it's too big a number for the layoffs to apply to only the "right" people, unfortunately (I mostly doubt there is some sort of retribution for speaking out against the horrible initial installation fee plans, there are far more important factors to consider when deciding who to keep and who to let go).
The "reset" was, by all outside indicators, really necessary, though. The size of the international company was massive in numbers and it was always unclear — to me, at least — how all those multitudes of employees were boosting the revenue from the core product and services.
Services are the biggest problem, too. A couple of unfortunate (for them) industry changes, like restrictions on user tracking, made their ads services suffer — and that was their big gamble, I think.
For someone who uses the engine to build games and teach how to make games, I can envision a refocusing of the company that actually makes the engine itself better. But, I have to admit that it's a toss up on whether it goes in that direction.
The new CEO has said all the right things and comes from a background of helping Linux succeed using an open source business model as CEO of RedHat. That helps me lean a bit towards optimism.
Really can't know until after the next big release and the subsequent roadmaps... so, I'm giving it one more year before abandoning ship and... well, that's the other problem.
From my perspective, teaching game development, nothing really beats Unity, at this point. Godot is still learning to walk; Unreal is a bumpy ride for new learners; GameMaker is good, but only 2D; everything else is libraries and frameworks, many of them fantastic, but made for people with extensive coding experience.
Unity is my only reasonable choice, for now. And frankly, it's fun to build games with it. So, once I'm in it, I forget the flames consuming the building around me and just sip my coffee.
I’d rather see someone do for early Nintendo what was done for the Atari 50th anniversary game… or better, really. Bringing context to the games, including materials such as the packed in map and hints, but also preparing modern gamers for what to expect in terms of controls and difficulty, pointing out games that influenced it and were influenced by it. That would be great.
Acknowledging the speed running scene and including randomizer options would be another nice touch. (As others brought up)
For graphics, the original pixel art should be preserved. It would be interesting to have some options for a more pleasant color palette with less limitations or sounds/music tweaks to reduce harshness, but all able to be toggled on or off at any time.
Then, what would be really sweet would be a well-crafted third quest with parts of the game that never made it into final or just ideas the original designers had, and other refinements (like new progression hints that make more sense or suggest some additional story) and other little surprises.
Comments 6,335
Re: Feature: An Incredibly Moving Night At The Stardew Valley: Festival Of Seasons Concert
That was a very well written article, thanks!
Re: Round Up: Celebrate Star Wars Day 2024 On The Nintendo Switch
@Truegamer79 Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor are some of the best Star Wars stories we've had and the first thing I thought of playing this weekend. (I really hope the new team and director do well with the third in the series.)
The deal for KOTOR is tempting me, too, though. Never tried that back in the day.
Re: BlackMilk's New Range Of Zelda Clothing Drops Next Week
Clothing looks great! (Stuff at the site looks better to me, like the TotK hoodie) Why do the models look so sad, though.
Re: Nintendo Japan Reveals New Range Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Merch
Oh, these are so good. I didn’t expect to care much but now I want several. Some great choices about what to create.
Re: Slay The Spire Is Getting A Sequel, But It's PC-Only For Now
I’m confident the game will be impressive and feel new while playing, but it sure looks similar to the original in those screenshots.
Maybe that’s the best way to differentiate from all the other deck-building rogue-likes, though. It’s a much more crowded genre, now.
Re: Switch eShop Sale Knocks Up To 80% Off Select 'Metroidvanias'
Gato Roboto is a nice compact and rewarding Metroidvania. If you like cats at all, it's a must play. Oh, that's like $2, so anyone that enjoys the genre and hasn't played it, should just do so, in my opinion.
Re: Random: Chris Pratt Looks Back On The Mario Movie With A 'Brilliant' Dad Joke
The movie is a successful, silly, and fun ride. The best part is that it establishes some cohesive narrative to build upon based on a game franchise that was never concerned with that beyond a single game.
Charles Martinet did great in his two other roles in the movie. I think it did make sense to recast someone more recognizable to general audiences, but also someone whose voice will remain younger for a bit longer. I hate to write that, but people's voices do change as they age and Chris Pratt's will, too. If this is a franchise with a new movie every 3 years... it adds up quick.
For my taste, here's hoping the next one gives us some more emotional depth and less pop-music needle drops.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (6th April)
@NintendoByNature Thanks. Seems a little short for $15 and I'm usually a proponent of shorter, but better, games. I'm just going to have to wait on it until I play through some other games, first.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (6th April)
@NintendoByNature How long did Pepper Grinder take to complete? Curious about the play time.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (6th April)
Hoping to get back to Ultros (PS4/5) before weekend is out.
Last time I played, it really progressed in some amazing ways. The mix of systems and mechanics had me scratching my head in the middle (maybe?) of progress, but it's all clicking now and I can't wait to get back to it.
But wait, I must, for now.
If I had the time, I'd have purchased Pepper Grinder, because that looks great to me. I did buy Thronefall and filed it right into the backlog, for now.
Oh, I did play a couple games of 5-player 7 Wonders (physical table top game) at a get together which is always a great time.
As far as the family and friends. They are playing Balatro, Slice & Dice, Wild Frost (all deck-builders rogue-likes!), and Hearts of Iron IV (free Steam weekend, btw),
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (30th March)
@appleseedeon I really want to play pepper grinder, too. Seems to be a very solid game.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (30th March)
@Yalloo Good luck on Ghosts 'n' Goblins on NSO. That was brutal even on original NES hardware with lower latency analog CRT.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (30th March)
Not too much game time, so far. Snuck in a game of Spaceteam, the fast and silly physical card game, during break in my game design course.
Got to play more of the feast-for-the-eyes metroidvania, Ultros, on PS5, and a bit of Slice & Dice on a Mac (it's also on mobile). Almost got some physical tabletop 7 Wonders going at an Easter get together, but not yet. Nothing on Switch, though Slice & Dice really should be on there.
The deckbuilding sale on Steam got me to buy the digital version of Ascension, one of the original physical table top deckbuilding games that was hot on the heels of Dominion but I never got to play. I probably won't have time to dig in to that just yet, as it's a bit more involved and time is limited (and the backlog grows).
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (23rd March)
Slice & Dice took most of my time, which is now on iOS, but I got it on Steam first (it's a dice-building roguelike) which I would have gotten on Switch but it doesn't seem to be available yet.
Also, Ultros which is a trippy, consuming, and, so far, amazing Metroidvania that is only worth playing on something with a wide color gamut (very vibrant colors) so that's on the PS5.
For an actual game available on Switch, there is Balatro which we played while introducing it to friends. They took to it very quickly. It has to be the most accessible deckbuilding game ever due to it being based on standard playing cards and poker/betting semiotics.
(Across my family, one is playing Wildfrost all the time, we shared a bit of Slice & Dice, one has been on Splatoon 3 getting back up to S-rank and winning 100x battles during splat fest... but also maximizing the Side Order content with invented new runs, like monotone, etc. One is on Steam playing with friends in all sorts of multiplayer games. Hearts of Iron IV is a big one.)
Re: Animal Well Brings Pretty Platforming And Creepy Creatures To Switch This May
From what I've seen in previews it will stand on its own just fine. Fascinating to watch, looking forward to it.
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl - Castlevania: Legacy Of Darkness
Ugh. It was a dark time in graphic design and marketing when they had to rely on CGI experts before those experts went beyond the technical skills and learned to be artists. You'd think they could have collaborated more, but whatever the reason industry people chose cgi rendered garbage to represent their products, I remember having similar gag reflex to what I'm having now looking at the Japanese and NA box art.
No idea Europe had respectable box art. Looks good.
Trying the game back then was incredibly disappointing after the incredible transitions to 3D that Mario and Zelda made. Fortunately, Symphony of the Night had released a couple years earlier making it seem like it would be okay for Castlevania to stay 2D — though what a weird era it became where 2D games almost disappeared!
Re: Poll: What Switch Online Rare Game Are You Playing This Weekend?
@Magrane I had written my muscle memory comment before reading yours. It was a tough game with need for repetition to get better (in a good way). I never took to Battletoads but I don't really remember why. I think I just didn't find it fun after a point? Anyway, didn't check it out on SNES.
Re: Poll: What Switch Online Rare Game Are You Playing This Weekend?
I finished a very long-standing backlog item: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night last night - except for a few elements, it felt like a modern throwback game; so well considered in its time that I now feel even better about the "vania" in metroidvania.
Re: 8% Of Developers Are Apparently Working On Games For Switch's Successor
REQUEST: Anyway to get the comments to work with the markdown syntax? Ever since Discord it has become ubiquitous with gamers.
Re: 8% Of Developers Are Apparently Working On Games For Switch's Successor
Can't figure out what it would be called or how it will be different besides being more powerful, so... wild ideas time!
Switch Back - Has cartridge slots for all the old Nintendo systems. Yes, even for the NES, and discs. Doesn't play Switch games, though.
Switch 128 - Finally doubled from 64. Besides the register-size of the CPU, the number adds in the amount of RAM, VRAM, and even the number of ports to get to 128.
Sand Switch - Removable "bread-cons" that fold under and over the screen "filling" when going pocket size. The dock looks like a toaster.
Switch Z - Remakes of every Zelda game announced at launch. Stay tuned for the Switch M.
SNESwitch Just... yeah, Sneswitch.
Switchbox Series 2 or Playswitchon 6
Nintendo Power Switch Actually just a charging brick for the Switch 2.
(I actually like Nintendo Power Switch, and I saw it someone else post the idea first) it doubles as a stupid pun, and the sound of something you might want to upgrade to, because it is more powerful, but it is too silly to take seriously)
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl: Metroid
Reading some of the comments, I will give credit to the European version along with NA/UK that the environment was included. It seems really odd for a genre-defining game to have all of its art focused on Samus Aran as a hero character only.
And I have to concede that as much as I dislike the art style, poor attention to silhouette and negative space, cutting off the Metroid, etc. The European one suggests the original inspiration of Ridley Scott's original Alien movie the best out of all of them.
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl: Metroid
I had a hard time not going with nostalgia for this. I can't help but feel like anyone voting for European version had the same issue. For me, it was the worst, by a fair margin.
I really like the action in the Japan version, but it's just not very representative of the game. The Classics one felt a bit like a cheat and I never liked the manga/comic style that was getting thrown around when Metroid Zero Mission was coming up for release 2004/2005 though. The Samus art itself on that box is very good, but the graphic art and font around it felt "cheap" and generic to me, even back then.
I find I really enjoy the actual classic nature of the original NES black box series in NA/UK, because it was trying to represent and celebrate the actual pixel art used in the games. It is often wrong in weird ways, but stands the test of time better than most box art.
I think it was a reaction to the wide gap between beautiful Atari 2600 box art and what the graphics actually looked like. Nintendo was trying to regain the trust of the consumers at a dark time in video gaming history. So, it even helps mark the era in which it was released.
The NA/UK Metroid box and Kid Icarus boxes were the last to hold on to the design of the black boxes, though they were silver. Still, I can't discount the nostalgia of it effecting me, too. I just gave in and voted. haha.
Re: Back Page: 'DO NOT MENTION SWITCH 2' - We Infiltrate Nintendo And Sneak A Peek At Its 2024 Calendar
After the Metroid Prime remaster, I'm all for more remasters. I would be disappointed, but another year of remasters like that and I'd probably be happy enough.
Re: Back Page: 'DO NOT MENTION SWITCH 2' - We Infiltrate Nintendo And Sneak A Peek At Its 2024 Calendar
Nice. Just a self check for everyone. If you didn't know this was a joke immediately, you may be regularly ingesting completely garbage rumor sites in other places. However, Nintendo Life does good work, so maybe you were just giving it the benefit of the doubt at first.
Re: LEGO Zelda 'Deku Tree' Set Rumours Resurface Online
Wanted to build this back in the day, but with the inside included. It was a little too ambitious and I just wasn't really interested in building out the top part and didn't have the pieces for that. (images online do look good for that part)
Re: Soapbox: As A 'Slay The Spire' Addict, I Can't Believe I Almost Missed This 2023 Gem
Had no idea this game existed, and I'm extremely curious now.
Re: Soapbox: As A 'Slay The Spire' Addict, I Can't Believe I Almost Missed This 2023 Gem
@umbreon_sylveon Wildfrost had some nice improvements in v 1.1.0 (December 2023). Difficulty seems smoothed out and has a higher upper limit for challenges, new collectibles, and careful rebalancing of cards.
Not sure any of that would help, just pointing out it might be worth a look again. (My wife and I took to Slay the Spire first, and she and my daughter are currently happily obsessed with Wildfrost).
Re: Atari Goes Celestial In New 'Lunar Lander Beyond' Narrative Trailer
Seems a bit over engineered for Lunar Lander, but I'm down for it. Between SEGA and Atari, I feel like a more nuanced and smart wave of remake/reimaginings of my childhood games is coming.
The Atari 50th Anniversary had a very nice combination of Vector games, Vctr Sctr, for instance (including a segment like Lunar Lander that my teenage son really enjoyed), and the Yar's Revenge thing with the hot-swappable graphics really hit me just right.
The new SEGA announcement of new entries from the old days looked really good.
Many of these games have been remade and copied again and again, but I feel like there are more hits than misses, lately.
Maybe it takes 30 to 40 years to really appreciate what made those game classics, so you can build around the core gameplay rather than slap the theme on something very different.
Maybe companies have seen Indies do a better job of remaking their own games, too, and realized they could get in on it.
Looking forward to more.
Re: Yes, The Nintendo Switch Showcase Really Was Seven Years Ago
@Solomon_Rambling said, "I love how the company is a trailblazer in video gaming, even if it forgets its backpack or how to start a fire from time to time."
Great analogy, haha.
Re: Yes, The Nintendo Switch Showcase Really Was Seven Years Ago
@themightyant True about third party support. They tried on the Wii, but Wii Sports people really weren't interested in Nintendo games (even Nintendo got frustrated chasing casuals, there).
However, Nintendo started attracting indies during the Wii U days. Even some exclusives that we still go back to, like Affordable Space Adventures. Shovel Knight even had the first third party amiibo with Shovel Knight for Wii U.
(Side note: Hollow Knight released on Windows, first, then Linux and macOS. Switch version came over a year later, a few months before PS4 and XB1. They had originally promised a Wii U version in the kickstarter as a stretch goal that was reached but transitioned to Switch)
Re: Sony CEO Drums Up Hype For Nintendo's Zelda Movie
@rjejr For Zelda, I have trouble envisioning it as a movie. After all, most of the stories are mostly built on archetypes rather than interesting plots, the gameplay and what you choose to do being the focus.
Thing is, Mario had me thoroughly entertained. I underestimated how much fun it would be just to see how they pieced it all together into something that even worked. The plot was paper thin, the characters were just getting started, but I would get this satisfaction from all the little connecting of the dots that the games never did.
I have a feeling I'm predisposed to enjoying a Zelda movie. I'm sure they could find methods to push me away from it, but Zelda has bounced between many tones and quirks in its history of video games, so I think the movie can live in its own place and suit me just fine.
But, it does have to entertain.
For TV, I've missed all the strictly fantasy stuff, lately. For All Mankind has been the family favorite recently. (Silo, good. Severance, really good. Monarch Legacy of Monsters, good at times, keeping us connected to the Godzilla King Kong Monsterverse)
Re: Unity To Axe 25% Of Its Workforce As Part Of "Company Reset"
@rjejr Well, nuts. And yes, "don't get me started" really means, "well, here I go..." haha.
Re: Yes, The Nintendo Switch Showcase Really Was Seven Years Ago
Well, Nintendo has not let me down with their hardware, except maybe for never building a portable device that my big hands could wrap around without cramping up after a short time (and "trapping" great games on them I could barely play!). I even had fun renting the Virtual Boy from Blockbuster but I don't count that one — it was never going to work and Gunpei Yokoi made the cross-shaped control pad, the Game Boy, and produced Metroid and Kid Icarus, so no problem.
NES was the first console of my own (played Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man all near when they first released...) and I didn't miss a console or handheld. Even from the worst sellers, Gamecube gave me Metroid Prime and Wii U gave me Nintendo Land (it was our daily family game for years).
Yes, I'm looking forward to whatever Nintendo shows us next.
Re: Yes, The Nintendo Switch Showcase Really Was Seven Years Ago
@Solomon_Rambling There was a lot of blood in the water because of Wii U. Whether someone disliked the Wii U and thought Nintendo was dying or loved the Wii U and felt betrayed by its early death, there was plenty of frustration and skepticism to pour onto the Switch.
I feel okay about what I said back then, but I was needlessly argumentative about how Mario Odyssey looked... though I do think I had a point, hahah.
Re: Review: 9 Years Of Shadows (Switch) - Unique Ideas Elevate This Scrappy Metroidvania
@aznable Yeah, I tried it on my Mac via Whisky and no luck, yet. Might have to blow the dust off the PC. Kind of annoying because it's made with a Multiplatform game engine (GameMaker Studio). There's always CrossOver (expensive) or Parallels (more expensive).
Re: Sony CEO Drums Up Hype For Nintendo's Zelda Movie
@rjejr Yeah, I agree with you and your wife on Zelda. Zelda has always been quirky and they need to find a way to make that work in the movie and be able to laugh along with it (not at it).
Incidentally, my family and I really enjoyed D&D Honor Among Thieves. I feel like that movie is an overlooked crowd pleaser. (Didn't help that Hasbro sank all the goodwill of D&D fans right before the movie released).
Re: Unity To Axe 25% Of Its Workforce As Part Of "Company Reset"
@rjejr That is a lousy situation having to complete the unpaid co-op. I guess the only way to have made that work was to get a paid position that counted? Frustrating.
Teens are weird but they are just more malleable against the societal trends. Don't get me started on social networks, silos, people only comfortable with people if they agree on everything and being susceptible to anyone telling them what they want to hear, leading them to dismiss experienced or knowledgable people who might not do that for them, etc.
Re: Review: 9 Years Of Shadows (Switch) - Unique Ideas Elevate This Scrappy Metroidvania
@aznable The original NES Zelda was a revelation that remains one of my favorites, Zelda 2 was a brief experience for me as I was kind of in a competition to complete it quickly at the time, but I did enjoy how different it was and loved many aspects of it even though I think it felt kind of unfinished to me at the time. A Link to the Past made me partly forget it for awhile, too. (You should definitely check out HoverBat's PC remake of Zelda 2, if you haven't: https://hoverbat.itch.io/ziiaol )
I guess Zelda 2 really begs to be included in the Metroidvania genre. Maybe another reason why I was orginally surprised when the name took on the Castlevania influence...
Re: Unity To Axe 25% Of Its Workforce As Part Of "Company Reset"
@rjejr They should make a game that can be a conduit for their favorite story ideas. Those exist. Of course, that means the story has to be good, too. Hope it starts getting clearer and congrats on the 3-year thing, that is amazing!
Re: Unity To Axe 25% Of Its Workforce As Part Of "Company Reset"
Latest news is that the higher ups from the ad group (IronSource) Unity acquired is being excised from the company. Yep, more of the executive c-suite people that were ad revenue focused are going away. Plus, the new CEO is talking about taking out the middle management layer and rebuilding the culture. It is starting sound surprisingly good, if you care about the game engine itself being good for developers and gamers. Optimism?
Re: Talking Point: What Will The 'Switch 2' Actually Be Called?
Nintendo Switch Blade
Sega inspired:
Nintendo Mega Switch
Nintendo Master Switch (I don't really like the word "master", but that's pretty good, right?)
Nintendo Switch Genesis (Makes no sense)
Nintendo Switch eroo
Nintendo Switch, the sequel
"Switch", I think, is necessary to keep, but really hard to have a subtitle, I really think we might get Switch 2
Re: Sony CEO Drums Up Hype For Nintendo's Zelda Movie
@rjejr Fantasy sword-and-sandal movies are not automatically bad, but I do hope they transcend that genre, a bit. (Lord of the Rings easily does, for me, except for those occasional montages of the orcs ransacking random villages, those are a bit too familiar lol)
I think in the first few seconds of the first teaser or images we see of the movie, it will be much easier to know what to expect.
Re: Sony CEO Drums Up Hype For Nintendo's Zelda Movie
@rjejr Oh yeah, I didn't count the Tim Burton Mark Wahlberg 2001 movie. That one is a standalone and starts good, but just... ugh. (The apes and armor costuming was great, though).
Ryan Reynolds as Beedle is now something I want to see. Haha!
Really, you hit the nail on the head about Detective Pikachu. It was a good movie to fans and non-fans, which is exceptionally hard to pull off and also exactly what Nintendo will want with a Zelda movie.
Re: Unity To Axe 25% Of Its Workforce As Part Of "Company Reset"
@rjejr Oh no! Maybe in the meantime, look for wider interactive software or motion graphics jobs. I've been told by people who have the experience, that those jobs have been easier to find in more places and often pay more. Game studios are spread out in little clusters, still, unfortunately. Moving to them is often necessary.
If your child is super passionate about making video games, I recommend they get involved in a local game dev group and start building something, sharing it, etc. They can show their strengths and network and find others to work with. Helps immensely as one or the other gets a job or starts a promising project.
Of course, I don't have the details of what you all have already been doing, so sorry if it's not helpful. This has to be a stressful time.
Still, it's a solid degree and they should be well-prepared for many types of jobs, so it might take some time, but options should come up. Just might not be a dream job for a long time.
I'm not looking forward to the job search. I have a child starting college and who knows what it will be like in 4 years or so.
I hope all goes well! (And unfortunately, I'm less help than I could be if I dealt with the last half of college, I'm all on the foundations and intro classes in the first two years).
Re: Random: The Golden Globes Is The Place For Top Super Mario Bros. Banter
@Princess_Lilly A natural effect of much more media availability and how fans are spread into more specific niches.
Here's an alternate consideration:
Not being up with the latest trends is something older people have experienced for centuries. You don't keep up because music and entertainment takes a backseat to more important needs, and then you find yourself saying "it all went downhill" since back when I cared about it, back when it was "the best".
It's a cliché because it's a perception that is hard to avoid. People stop making music you care about because your tastes become irrelevant and, frankly, you are better "served" by reselling you the only stuff you will think is good.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift ruled the media world in 2023 in a way that few artists ever have and is a nice example of a celebrity just as famous (or more) than "the old days". (I'm not really a fan, nor do I know anyone that is. Though "shake it off" comes to mind occasionally.)
It takes effort to follow trends and find what people are liking in modern music and other media that you are most likely missing or dismissing because it's not what you are used to and probably is not made to speak to people like you in the first place.
It's the kind of effort I have little time for, myself. That doesn't make the latest trends objectively worse, just harder for me to perceive or appreciate.
Re: Masahiro Sakurai Plans To "Wrap Up" His YouTube Channel This Year
I just don't play Smash (had fun with it back on the N64, played every other iteration, but never stuck with it).
However, I was always a fan of the original Kid Icarus and its quirkiness, and the 3DS Kid Icarus Uprising was kind of amazing and maintained the quirkiness and theme so well — I just couldn't last long with it due to my hands cramping up.
So, whatever game he is working on, I hope that he at least oversees a remaster of the Kid Icarus Uprising for Switch/Switch2. If he was to make a full-on sequel or something, I'd be ecstatic.
However, that doesn't seem likely. I get the feeling he would only be interested in Smash if it was taking a very different direction, right? But fans would not stand for that... Plus, it would be so daunting to enter into that same project again.
So, for his sake, I hope he is getting to work on some sort of dream game he has always wanted to make. I'd love to see his passion poured into something different — just oversee that Kid Icarus Uprising remake on the side.
Re: Sony CEO Drums Up Hype For Nintendo's Zelda Movie
Derek Connolly wrote Safety Not Guaranteed, which is quirky and worth checking out (I personally really enjoyed it at the time).
What he has shown, later, is how he can work within an existing franchise that has major control from people shepherding that franchise, like the first two Jurassic World movies.
He also wrote Kong: Skull Island which actually managed to work really well for what it was. (The movie has grown on me as an over the top b-movie with a budget).
He managed to write Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, which was a bit of miraculous movie that it could work at all, in my opinion. And, of course, this is probably the biggest reason he was chosen.
He can work within tight constraints and make something good, even if not great. That works for me, as a choice for writer. (He is also credited for "story" on some movies, which means he had much less control how they came out, so I don't hold that against him, too much).
I don't expect a LoZ movie to be super deep, but I really hope it can have characters I care about through an adventurous and triumphant story. I think there's a good chance he can deliver this.
That Apes movie that the director, Wes Ball, is working on will be a huge indicator. The first 3 movies were incredibly well directed and made, so if this 4th one "fits in" with those, he will have proven himself just fine to me.
As far as budget... I imagine it will be relatively large after the success of Mario. It's worth the risk for their second big movie, right?
Re: Unity To Axe 25% Of Its Workforce As Part Of "Company Reset"
Unity going public seems to have been a huge mistake... or at least, the previous CEO did everything wrong trying to make it work.
Fortunately, that CEO is gone.
This sucks for those losing their job, and it's too big a number for the layoffs to apply to only the "right" people, unfortunately (I mostly doubt there is some sort of retribution for speaking out against the horrible initial installation fee plans, there are far more important factors to consider when deciding who to keep and who to let go).
The "reset" was, by all outside indicators, really necessary, though. The size of the international company was massive in numbers and it was always unclear — to me, at least — how all those multitudes of employees were boosting the revenue from the core product and services.
Services are the biggest problem, too. A couple of unfortunate (for them) industry changes, like restrictions on user tracking, made their ads services suffer — and that was their big gamble, I think.
For someone who uses the engine to build games and teach how to make games, I can envision a refocusing of the company that actually makes the engine itself better. But, I have to admit that it's a toss up on whether it goes in that direction.
The new CEO has said all the right things and comes from a background of helping Linux succeed using an open source business model as CEO of RedHat. That helps me lean a bit towards optimism.
Really can't know until after the next big release and the subsequent roadmaps... so, I'm giving it one more year before abandoning ship and... well, that's the other problem.
From my perspective, teaching game development, nothing really beats Unity, at this point. Godot is still learning to walk; Unreal is a bumpy ride for new learners; GameMaker is good, but only 2D; everything else is libraries and frameworks, many of them fantastic, but made for people with extensive coding experience.
Unity is my only reasonable choice, for now. And frankly, it's fun to build games with it. So, once I'm in it, I forget the flames consuming the building around me and just sip my coffee.
Re: Soapbox: It's Time For A Zelda 1 Remake, Please
I’d rather see someone do for early Nintendo what was done for the Atari 50th anniversary game… or better, really. Bringing context to the games, including materials such as the packed in map and hints, but also preparing modern gamers for what to expect in terms of controls and difficulty, pointing out games that influenced it and were influenced by it. That would be great.
Acknowledging the speed running scene and including randomizer options would be another nice touch. (As others brought up)
For graphics, the original pixel art should be preserved. It would be interesting to have some options for a more pleasant color palette with less limitations or sounds/music tweaks to reduce harshness, but all able to be toggled on or off at any time.
Then, what would be really sweet would be a well-crafted third quest with parts of the game that never made it into final or just ideas the original designers had, and other refinements (like new progression hints that make more sense or suggest some additional story) and other little surprises.
Re: "Fans Have Waited Many Years For A Return To Form" - WayForward On Contra's Grand Revival
Said all the right things and they have the experience to back it up. Looking forward to this one.