dudujencarelli

@AndreyBoarao It was actually over 42 years ago. The first Game & Watch Mario Bros. game.

@UnbreakableAlex You mean the two Zelda games that had the kingdoms suffering apocalyptic demises and having to restart from scratch? Anyone who calls Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild childish really wasn't paying attention.

@jmbenetti Not much of a chance of that happening. Nintendo's approach to difficulty in Mario games has been the same since Super Mario World. Giving a balanced main quest, while leaving the really challenging levels as secrets to be found - in that game's case, the Special World.

The reason they do it like this is most likely due to what happened when they released the japanese SMB2, also known as Lost Levels. With the difficulty amped up to 11, we all know Nintendo of America chose not to localize that game. Hence, they don't let the difficulty of main Mario entries to get out of hand in order not to alienate younger players. That's what other series are for, whether it's Metroid or DK.

I can see them launching remastered versions of Primes 2 and 3, while giving them enough time to polish and test Prime 4 before its release. And the added time needed to remaster the previous two games also being a reason for Prime 4's delay.

@Questionable_Duck Star Wars is not obscure. Dark Forces was a major deal when it came out 30 years ago. And it spawned the Jedi Knight series. Of course the game deserved a remaster.

That certainly explains why they produced six NES Mega Man games in just over six years. They needed to sell enough to cover the cost.

The last time I felt ill playing any game was in 1997 when I first tried Super Mario 64 with its insanely realistic 3D graphics. My brain has since gotten used to it.

12/13 - only because I never bothered using the supposedly helpful guide for players who die a lot.

I've been leveling up my Tour drivers/karts/gliders for over two years now since I've started playing. I have yet to fully level up a High-End part (I'm not about to spend money on a gold pass). I have a Level 7 Toad Tourist which I always use in the ranked cups to demolish the competition whenever the tracks favor the character, but I'm still stuck going back-and-forth on tiers 64 and 65.

I'm not planning on stopping any time soon, since you lose tiers every week if you don't play ranked. And I need to keep those parts leveled up. Thankfully, that's the only mobile game that still keeps me going (I've long since completed the Sonic ones). It is not a healthy ecosystem for gaming. But I'm glad the game might get something, though I wish it were new tracks rather than new characters.

@-wc- It's got to do with budget and rising costs. FFVI employed what? 50 people? Just looking at the end credits on TOTK we can see it employed thousands.

And in terms of value? I completed FFVI in a couple of months. It took me close to 18 to fully 100% TOTK.

@-wc- Final Fantasy VI on the SNES cost $70 in 1994 dollars. And I imagine TOTK cost a lot more to produce than the old Square RPGs of the 1980s and early 90s.

I'm glad I was behind on my Sonic games. I didn't get Sonic X Shadow for the Switch, which makes holding off until the Switch 2 version the ideal situation.

Now I have a doubt. I bought Sonic Frontiers just before the Switch 2's announcement. Haven't started playing it yet (finishing Mania and Colors Ultimate). Would it be reasonable to assume it'll get some sort of visual/performance upgrade on Switch 2 or not?

@Porco Sony and their studios can spend all the hundreds of millions they want in their games. At the end of the day, Mario Kart is a MUCH bigger seller than the likes of The Last of Us, justifying its inherent market value.

@Porco Accusing them of greed is not only out of line, but seriously shortsighted and lacking context.

In case you have forgotten, when the Wii U and 3DS were struggling, their CEO took a pay cut in order to protect the job security of their lower level employees.

I'm not defending companies or the stupidity that is late stage capitalism. But it seems everyone needs to realize something:

Gaming was always an expensive hobby. Doesn't anyone remember the price of Atari 2600 games?

Even NES games in 1988 could easily cost $40-$60 dollars. In 1988 that was a LOT more money than it is now. SNES RPGs were upwards of $70 in the 1990s. A LOT more expensive than TOTK in 2025. And it goes without saying that producing a game like TOTK takes up a MUCH larger budget and resources than a Square Enix SNES RPG from 1995.

In other words, while the currency devalued over the decades, the cost of games has remained largely unchanged, meaning there were companies losing money regardless of sales.

@gazamataz I second your assessment. People really need to put their glasses on and have their eyesight checked. It looks a generation better and it's handling double the amount of racing karts plus this massive sprawling world where you have ample freedom to traverse. I'd argue it's even more of a leap than say, going from 3D World to Odyssey.

People have to realize we're getting to a point where the graphical jumps will become less pronounced. The biggest example is the pitiful difference between PS4 and PS5, where many of the games are cross-platform.

I assume the Mega Man comparison was actually meant to be the X Legacy collection rather than the classic one. Mega Mans 7 through 10 are generally better perceived as half-decent games in comparison to X5-X8's far more divisive reception.

23/24 - All because the N64 is more rooted in my brain than the 3DS version. Didn't realize they changed Circus Leader's mask's name and chose Gorman instead.

@SpinEnDash It's challenging, but doable. The trick is to rush through without completing the first dungeon (just getting bow & arrows to reach Snowhead), and then getting the fire arrows on Snowhead temple ASAP so you can get early Powder Keg and unlock Epona before night of the first day. Also keeping in mind Link needs multiple bottles to get the Zora eggs.

@Panopticon Navi's colors are pretty clear. Green is for signs and other points of interest such as hidden magic fairies you can unlock playing the Sun's Song. Blue is for NPC conversations, while yellow is for targeting enemies. It's in the game's manual.

And the Song of Time blocks? That's just a puzzle element, and a way to use the song more than once in the game.

I love the enhanced 3D graphics, and I understand the reasoning for slowing Zora Link down and making him magic dependant. The original version was overpowered to say the least. And it makes the Gyorg battle more strategic (though not perfect).

But I still prefer the N64 original for a number of reasons (there was no need to alter Twinmold for one), but the biggest one is the clock speed: playing the Inverted Song of Time on the N64 original is far more beneficial and slows down time much, much more. This means I can do a speedrun of the game, doing all four dungeons and get to the end in a single cycle. That is simply not possible on the 3DS version.

@boxyguy It's already possible. Arcade versions of Donkey Kong can be played with the Switch turned sideways.

@Mirastrix You don't have to pay a single cent to play Mario Kart Tour. I've played for 2 years now without using the Gold Pass or paying for any High-End gliders/drivers and such. I've leveled up quite a few strong players and am on Tier 60 as of right now.

Plus, neither MK Tour nor Super Mario Run have ads interrupting the playthrough. Meanwhile, both Sonic Forces Speed Battle and Sonic Dash are loaded with random ads at every turn whenever you need to grab some extra bonus rings.

AKA the best soundtrack in the series.

@-wc- The way I see it, they certainly could (they can certainly replicate the style as seen in the Mario Maker titles), but I doubt they would want to do it at all. I would certainly welcome a fresh Mario game with that art style again. But I think they just got tired of doing sprite-based pixel art after doing it nonstop from the earliest 1980 arcade games to the very last GBA games. As we've seen in the New Super Mario games (not a pixel art example, I know - just making a point about development speed), cranking them out quickly isn't an issue, but it did prove to be a game of diminishing returns (not just for us, but for them as creators), hence the decade it took for them to come up with something truly fresh with Wonder.

Plus, even back in the SNES, they could have done a direct sequel to Mario World, a Lost Levels sequel of sorts - same graphics and style. But I also imagine they didn't want to repeat themselves or risk having another game stuck in Japan (that's one of the reason Lost Levels was in limbo there for so long - supposedly Nintendo of America didn't want to release a sequel that looked identical). So instead, after doing Link's Awakening, they went ahead and did Yoshi's Island.

@-wc- Definitely some interesting ideas such as the Castlevania one.

But regarding your point about smaller devs making classic retro style games in less time. I've been playing Sonic Mania for the first time, and from what I've read that game's development took around 2 years or so (and they already had the working engine from the Sonic CD, 1 and 2 remasters, meaning less programming work, I assume). All the Genesis games were made in much less time than that. Even Sonic 3&K didn't take more than 18 months or so, and as we know, Sega being Sega split the whole thing in half in order to make that February release.

But yeah. After reading that GBA article, I feel there should be more effort into making these retro experiences that obviously take up less time than the big projects, even if they still take longer to make now than 30 years ago. I certainly miss pixel art games.

@-wc- The Switch, I'd wager.

The difference is back then Nintendo had a near monopoly on third party support, which is why we still saw a lot of entries even in 1990, such as Mega Man, Castlevania, Turtles and whatnot.

But now? It's a lot harder to support developing new games for the older console given how much time and resources they take, when they might be already focusing on the next Nintendo console. Back in the 80s and 90s, it was a lot easier for studios to crank out games at a borderline unthinkable pace - the kind that puts developers in the hospital for exhaustion. And of course, games weren't so resource-heavy either.

Plus, the concept of console generations wasn't quite yet established. Atari had gone down under, Sega was a footnote with a forgettable first couple of pre-Genesis consoles, and the SNES was Nintendo's first real successor. No one was prepared for the idea that this switch to newer generation might actually work and that the NES would become outdated. Back then, no one was really ready to give up such a guaranteed source of success like that console. Even customers had to be swayed into the notion that they would have to buy a new console for newer games. That is why the NES kept selling new games well into the '90s (2003 in the case of Japan).

EDIT: an addendum. Third party support kept the NES going past 1990, no doubt. But Nintendo's first party teams? They were already focused on the SNES. Miyamoto's people were doing both Mario World and A Link to the Past. Yokoi's crew was deep into Game Boy development. Only a few strays, like HAL, who would eventually do an NES Kirby game after the success of the Game Boy titles, and a few isolated cases. But everyone else first party-related had moved on.

@-wc- Those are the American releases. Super Mario 3 came out in Japan in 1988, and Final Fantasy 1 came out in 1987. Let's not forget back then releases were spaced depending on the region.

Not to digress though. It's pretty obvious the NES was still the reigning king of the mountain even back when the SNES launched. It wasn't until the first Sonic came out that the Genesis finally gained a bigger slice of the market.

The reason I might even remotely consider getting this is for the chance of playing the 3DS exclusive extra levels on a big screen with HD resolution and full 60 FPS. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't. I simply do not have the time to invest given my extensive backlog of unplayed games. I didn't get the Switch version of Tropical Freeze either, having already played it on the Wii U.

@sdelfin I have a different take on that. I've always taught myself to grab every optional heart/item/upgrade in a Zelda game because that's the lesson I was taught in the original NES game. If you didn't grab the optional hearts, you couldn't even grab the Magical Sword, and in 1986/87 that game could be punishingly hard if you didn't grab everything. Zelda games have gotten easier over time, but I've kept that mindset.

@Yoshi3 One thing I loved about Echoes of Wisdom was that it wasn't a 300 hour game. I completed 100% of it, and I certainly plan on replaying that before touching TOTK again.

Games don't need to be insanely long, and I think a lot of people disparage shorter games, maybe because some believe 60 dollars is a long-term investment somehow. But to me, I can spend that money on something brief, if it's that good and worth replaying.

@Yoshi3 Don't get me wrong. I don't disagree. It becomes a slog after a while, and it's one of the reasons I don't plan on revisiting TOTK any time soon (the other being the insane amount of material farming and rupee grinding for maxing out every armor).

But I still prefer that over saving/reloading the same file hoping for a different prize/outcome, because at least you're the one doing the exploration and not relying on some random algorithm.

But as I said, to me the worst one was 17 minutes dodging cuccos because it did award a special prize that actually appears during the game's end credits. For a minigame that was supposedly "endless", I was shocked there was an ending.

@Yoshi3 While 900 seeds (1000 in TOTK) can certainly be exhausting, I can excuse them since they encourage the player to explore the land carefully and be mindful of anything that might look unusual. At least there's no RNG involved like the DS boat parts or the Maple/Gasha rings.

While the figurines are the worst aspect of Minish Cap (given you need them to unlock that heart piece, plus the sound test option), it is not the worst sidequest in the series.

Getting all 64 rings in the Oracle games is arguably worse, as is the pain of getting ALL boat and train parts in the two DS Zeldas.

But the real worst damned sidequest/minigame is trying to beat the Endless Cucco challenge in A Link Between Worlds for all 999.99 seconds. You and your giant hitbox vs. thousands of RNG cuccos for 17 minutes!!!

I did it. Twice, for both normal and hero mode files. Thank the pandemic for the insane amount of free time I had to keep trying. I'm never doing THAT one again.

@Mariotag The 3DS version of Lost World was different. Same story, same music and level themes, but the actual levels are completely different. And considerably worse. Frustrating, poorly designed and infuriating.

The snow level is the worst, where you have to push massive snowballs while dodging enemies through a level that lasts over 10 minutes.

It's not Zelda 2 that soured Nintendo on the notion of doing more sidescrolling games. It's the first two CD-I games: Zelda the Wand of Gamelon and Link the Faces of Evil. Those two games left enough of a shoddy reputation to damage the brand that no one would want to associate Zelda with sidescrolling action/adventure ever again. That's how I see it, at least.

@EarthboundBenjy I knew Advance 3's hub worlds facilitated revisiting the zones. I did not know about Adv 1 and 2's options. Given that I only played them on emulator, I always save-stated in the beginning of each zone or special stage. Always assumed you had to play them in one sitting like the original Genesis games.

If they ever remaster the Advance trilogy, they have to do two things:

Allow the player to revisit levels they already cleared like in the subsequent Rush games (only Advance 3 allows this, as far as I know).

And they need to make Advance 2's star rings permanent collectibles, so we're not forced to redo an entire level's worth just for another try at a Special Stage we've lost. Having to recollect these things every time is a big no. Either that or implement save states, because having to gather all Emeralds for every character just to unlock Amy is insane.

And maybe also reprogram Advance 1's Special Stage. The ring collision detection on that one was awful.

@gb_nes_gamer 3DO? I think you meant the CD-I.

Adventure 2's problems aren't the scope or the ideas. Having various missions per level as you hone your skills for A-Rank is a good concept. I even enjoyed earning combos in the mech levels. Fun to play.

The problem is the game has a watered down spin-dash, a broken homing attack, a lightspeed dash that fails to activate, questionable collision detection, and a pretty spotty camera (especially in a level like Mad Space, which has its own major issues). People may give Sonic 06 a deserved lousy rating for all the bugs and glitches, but they were always there from the first Adventure to every other Gamecube/Dreamcast era 3D Sonic game - just not as pronounced. These games are loads of frustration because of these issues.

Also, in the slow moving mech levels, enemies literally DROP on top of you while you're walking. Who in the world thought that was a good design choice? Enemies that you can't see until they're right there isn't good difficulty. It's cheap, and forces you to redo the level until you learn and MEMORIZE all the enemy spawn points. Maybe they couldn't program the enemies to always be there at a distance while you approach them. Either way, it's lazy, and is likely the reason they toned down the difficulty and A-Rank requirements in Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog afterwards, because they kept the stupid enemies spawning in your face with no time to react.

If the movie doesn't have the following Shadow line, I'm walking out:

"WHERE IS THAT DAMN 4TH CHAOS EMERALD?"

What I love about Sylux is the way the character originated in a portable game and 'graduated' to the consoles when he appeared in Prime 3's ending. To me, that's a sign that Nintendo has always treated both portable and console gaming as equally important and relevant.

To put it in perspective, Sylux being the big bad on Prime 4 would be the equivalent to Sega getting Fang the Sniper (Nach the Weasel) from the Game Gear game Sonic Triple Trouble, and making him the main antagonist in Sonic Frontiers.

@KayFiOS The Wolf Link Amiibo has been insanely useful for me in Tears of the Kingdom. Every day it drops generous amounts of meat that I can cook for pricey prime/gourmet meat skewers that I can sell to Beedle. That alone helped me fund the outrageous great fairy upgrade prices for the insane amount of armor/clothing sets.

Let's just say I don't consider the game 100% finished until every armor is fully upgraded to max stats. It's been a long playthrough.

@CazSonOfCaz Nor any of the Jedi Knight Kyle Katarn FPS games. And I'm pretty sure they sold well, since there were four of them released between 1995-2003 (five, if we include the Mysteries of the Sith expansion - and six, given the recent remaster of the original).

@Hoshiko And as far as movies go, I've seen plenty of better ones. I'll take a Mission Impossible over a Metal Gear Solid any day.

Final Chase. I HATED that level with a passion. It took me forever to A-Rank that one, especially the harder version. Even Rail Canyon's Team Dark variation wasn't that frustrating. At least it didn't have the RNG meteors messing up your run.

@Andee Uh, Monkey Islands 1 and 2 were already remastered and have been available on Steam since 2010.

How dare they not include surround support??? I am not going to support this half-baked travesty with my money.

I just like the fact that a character/element from a portable game graduated to the console leagues. And I've heard Sega finally gave Fang the Sniper proper recognition by including him in the new Sonic Superstars game. You wouldn't see Sony doing something like that.

One detail I loved about Prime Remastered was the smoke effect from the mining laser explosions in the Phazon Mines area. Those looked like real live-action movie explosions. It looks as if they're still using the same effect on the MP4 trailer. I like it a lot.