charliecarrot

Also, I could be wrong, but isn't it a little silly to offer Pikmin 2 as a Nintendo Classic when there's already an HD remastered version available on Switch?

"not planned for release at this time"

So planned for a later time then. Got it!

Well the videos that got popular for the 3DS game were mostly people holding up their phone cameras to the screen, so if we have to revert to doing that, then we will

inb4 someone complains about "plz" in the tag line 🫣

This here is Mona Pizzaaaaa
Makers of the world's best eatsaaaa
Fresh sauce and cheese galooore
Brought straight to your front doooor
(Touched soundtrack when?)

Cool, but... I'm not planning on using 3rd party controllers on modern systems when they always lack features compared to the real deal.

There are services on eBay that will repair or replace joysticks with TMR sticks. You can even buy controllers outright with the joysticks already replaced.

You know, we're coming up on the 40th anniversary of Zelda... I'll take anything, even Twilight Princess 🙏

I hope the new Rhythm Heaven gets its own direct too!

All these people complaining about how niche and uninteresting Tomodachi Life is, and meanwhile it easily outsell Rhythm Heaven... Which is the actual best series Nintendo has ever made.

Basically every title here is worth playing. If you like turned-based battles, grab yourself a copy of Final Fantasy X and don't look back.

What a list!

It's definitely a must for racing games in my experience - especially ones that lean more towards simulation

This was my most-played switch game of 2025, but I completely dropped it a bit after finishing the story. At the time, I fully intended to get the DLC when it released... Now I'm reading this article thinking "wait, the DLC is out?"

Maybe I'll go back to it one day

I'm amazed that the improved textures, lighting, and reduced pop-in from the PS5 version is all here on the Switch 2 version.

I know they mentioned the lighting changes were mostly artistic choices rather than things held back by the hardware on PS4, but why did the PS4 original have so many low res textures?? Glad Switch 2 isn't plagued with that weirdness

There's gonna be so many great Scott's Stash videos over all the various little updates Switch games get on their Switch 2 versions.

I'd be surprised if Forza Horizon 6 doesn't eventually drop on Switch 2!

Final Fantasy XIV, for sure, but honestly every game after FFXII would be nice! Give us a XIII trilogy, give us FFXV so we can road trip with the bros.

Seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Phantom Hourglass soundtrack is great! Maybe not as fondly remembered and a bit derivative, much like the game itself, but I played through it last year and I was really surprised by some of the tunes on offer here.

I often choose to play certain games in 30fps quality mode on my PS5 because for many games, it really doesn't make a difference.

For more action / adventure / platforming type games, yes, give me 60 fps performance mode all day. But animal crossing? I couldn't care less that it's 30fps.

We've been trained to focus on negatives by algorithms that prioritize engagement over everything else. Content creators make money on YouTube with long videos only pointing out flaws in games they claim to otherwise love.

One of the first comments on this article only has negative things to say about the game, and then says "it's a 7/10" which is a decidedly above average score (meaning, assumedly, more positives than negatives). It's so odd to me - if you like something enough to consider it above average, why would you share only criticism? Maybe sharing more about the parts you liked could help elevate the discourse.

Ready for my Daddy of Dojima 😍

It's so funny how many people buy into the venture capitalist / shareholder propaganda. Of course they say "it's going to constantly improve" and other capitalist nonsense that assumes endless resources because that's what gets them short term $$$.

In reality, the capabilities have plateaued for years now, every AI company is bleeding money, and there's not actually good evidence to show that it IS going to improve any more - they just hope if they throw enough money at it and build more data centers, something magical will happen eventually.

I often use AI tools at work as a software developer, and while they're immensely useful to generate boilerplate and reduce the number of rote tasks I have to do, when you work with these tools regularly, you become intimately aware of their limitations.

I'm genuinely scared for the future with the number of people who rely on LLM chatbots to make decisions and trust them as valid sources of information. The disclaimers are right there - LLMs don't know anything, they don't think, and they regularly hallucinate information. They're fancy autocomplete, probabilistically generating text strings based on previous input. But people ignore that because it feels magical to use chatGPT, and critical thinking goes out the window.

My top three:

1. Pokemon Legends Z-A
2. Persona 5 Royal
3. Zelda: Breath of the Wild

All hovering around 50 hours

No one deserves $35 billion. No one even deserves $1 billion.

I don't think people comprehend how much that is: The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.

That means someone with a million or two is closer to a minimum wage worker than they are to someone with a billion dollars.

No one should have a billion dollars.

Welcome aboard Mai! I hope you enjoy it!

@Stormcloudlive The main reason I'd prefer to have physical at this point is that I really like having physical representations of media on my shelf that I can pick up and hold. It's not necessarily a preservationist thing - I just like holding game cases and looking at pretty boxart.

Because of that, I've ended up double dipping a lot and buying physical copies of games after I already own the digital copy. It's kinda like how even though I have an ebook reader, if I really like a book, I pick up a physical copy so I can see it on my shelf and make it part of my physical environment. I'm more likely to remember something and think about it if I see it around my space as opposed to having to open up some device and scroll through a list.

I went mostly digital on switch for the exact reason you say - I wanted the convenience of having everything on the system ready to go instead of having to swap out cartridges. However, I found that as I amassed my library, going through the list of games became sort of overwhelming for me. With physical cases, I can organize them how I like, keep a section visible near my entertainment stand for games I want to have in active rotation, etc, but with digital games, if they fall outside the main switch menu I often end up forgetting about them. I wish you could choose to "keep games in home" like you can on PS5. That works well for me since I'm easily distracted and have a not-so-great memory haha. May not be as much a factor for people who can actually stick with one game all the way through and then move to the next.

There's also something about owning the physical media that makes it feel more "real" in a way that's hard to describe. For example, it's very easy for me to play loads of retro games on my tablet or PC, but I'm more likely to form a connection with a retro game that I obtain a physical copy of and play on original hardware, and I'm more likely to stick with the game all the way through when I do that.

I used vouchers to buy so many games! And now I wish I had physical copies instead haha

Pretty confident these aren't fully AI generated images. Whether a photo "contains AI imagery" is hard to pin down because any photo editor may integrate some type of AI in its editing tools.

That being said, while I'm more than tired of the discourse surrounding "is it AI???" under every photo lately, that's exactly what's so scary to me. If we're getting to a point where most of us can't distinguish between a real photo and a false photo generated by AI, how do we know what's real? Photoshop could always fool people, but now any random average joe can type a couple words and spit out an image in seconds that would fool most people.

@Orbphan I totally agree with you. Color does not make things childish. Even if it did, why should that be a problem anyway? The Switch 1 was a massive sales success and it was colorful. PS5 is a big success for Sony and they have all kinds of colorful controllers and console covers. Not sure where people are getting this idea that Nintendo suddenly desperately needs to appeal to adults and they must do so by removing all color.

@Max_the_German Totally not on topic, but I found your comment extremely odd. Ethical vegans do indeed avoid leather. I've never met anyone who is delusional about the source of leather. Your comment sounds really pointed like you had a bad experience with someone in particular... Or maybe I'm missing some joke lol

Yeah I mean personally, I was thinking about getting either a Switch 2 or another PS5 for my household on Christmas, and I ended up picking up a PS5 since they were on sale for $399 and there's just a much larger library of games to play there. And my Switch 1 backlog is still so large!

It's funny that PlayStation is the one going bold with their colors now while Nintendo is sticking to dark grey/black with small accents. What's happened?

@Pillowpants No worries. Tone is hard to convey over text. When I see things like "what the hell" and "?!", I assume it's a more aggressive tone, but clearly ymmv!

@Pillowpants There's a first time for everything! Be glad you learned something - you're one of today's lucky 10,000!

If all it takes is a quick google, did you really lose much by being slightly confused the first time you encountered an unknown abbreviation? Do you get similarly upset when you come across a new word that's not in your lexicon, or is does the vitriol stem from the fact that it's an abbreviation chiefly used on the internet?

FWIW (for what it's worth), the term originates from US (United States) car advertisements in the 70s, indicating the mileage on your vehicle may differ from the recently implemented EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) ratings.

Anyway, it's truly a sad state of affairs when an online video game news and review website uses a term that was in common usage before the website itself was created (according to Google trends). Hate to see it.

Microsoft Flight Simulator! Just got my commercial pilot license so I can start making money 🤑 once I realized you can control the yoke with gyro on PS5, everything opened up for me

@Strawblaze makes sense - I last played on PS4 and it took me way longer to load into areas than my friends

I wonder if this means support for PS4 will continue for a while longer since it has a similar performance level.

I love ConcernedApe. Never ceases to provide us with free updates.

We'll miss you Felix! Best of luck

Do they have the ability to optimize it for Switch 2? It barely runs well on the base PS5 and the PC version is horribly optimized.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake was such a triumph in gameplay and combat mechanics, and it's a shame FFXVI couldn't build from it (since it was a separate development team I believe).

Having an actual party with banter is essential - it's the ONLY reason FFXV did as well as it did, yet for the very next game in the series, they made it a one-man show. I don't care if it's open world, linear, turn-based, or a fusion. Give us characters to journey alongside.

The PS5 is also fully backwards compatible with the PS4, but the PS4 lives on even to today. In fact, it's the backwards compatibility that helps keep the previous console alive.

I wouldn't be so quick to say goodbye to the Switch 1 just yet.

Obviously a controversial topic. In a perfect world, it's just another tool that makes our lives easier and potentially more interesting. Sadly, we live in a world that values profit over people. I don't see things going in a positive direction with this technology.

You had me at gliding! Already interested.

I played Harvest Moon SNES on the Wii virtual console, and no subsequent games in the series ever gave me the same feeling as that original one. Only Stardew recaptured the sense of discovery and comfort for me. The two remakes on Switch were overall bland and uninteresting to me. Curious if this remake will change that.

It's quite a long list - I wish it would at least fit on one page. Either way, happy to see The Hundred Line mentioned!

Sad to see lazy ports with no effort put into optimization for the target system. It just makes your game/company look bad when you offer a subpar experience.

Overlooked, but also ported to every platform ever (including as a launch title for the 3DS!)

Also I remember the N64 version having a fancy green cartridge - maybe that was a US only thing though

My partner has been having a blast with this game on PS5! Glad it's coming to Switch 2!

It's almost like watching an interactive superhero cartoon (reminiscent of Invincible) interspersed with the "dispatch" sections that comprise deciding which supes to send to handle different emergencies on a map view. In other words, very much not my cup of tea, but if you find the characters and dialog enjoyable then it should be a fun ride.

I'm so excited for both a new Rhythm Heaven and Tomodachi Life!!

Luigi here to save the day again

Agree with everyone else. Why would we ignore things in December? I hate how other year wrap ups exclude the last month of the year.

Oh, that's what Mega Swampert looks like? 😳

Cute article!

Growing up, I never got a console the year it released. I got a hand-me-down SNES after the N64 had released. I don't really agree with the other commenters that it's a necessary good to get your child the newest video game console just because they really want it. Sometimes you gotta learn to wait - and for consoles, you're almost always better off waiting a year or two after launch anyway.