dudujencarelli

@khaosklub More freedom in Link's Awakening? Let's revisit both games.

After you bring Zelda to the Sanctuary, you can pretty much explore the entire overworld, with the exception of Death Mountain and the Upper Zora's River area because of Power Glove rock barriers. Otherwise, you can pretty much go anywhere (except for swimming in deep waters).

Meanwhile, Koholint Island is pretty much restricted. You can't even leave the confines of Mabe Village and the beach if you don't get the sword. Until you claim the Roc's Feather (Level 1) and the Power Bracelet (Level 2), you can't really explore the island. And even then, you still need the Pegasus Boots to reach the eastern portions of the island, the Flippers to swim and access vital areas, and forget about exploring the western hills without the Hookshot or the Iron Shield. In short, you're forced to explore dungeons and reclaim key items to open up the overworld.

You don't need to clear a level five separate times. If you have a spare Wii remote, all you need to do is to drag another character and carry him to the flagpole at the end. I only did Champion's Road three times, using Mario, Peach and Rosalina. I merely threw Toad and Luigi at the pole.

@Einherjar It sort of happened on Super Mario Galaxy 2, when they recreated Sunshine's spinning platform level for that game's World S. They applied Galaxy's stiff physics. If you tried to play it as it you were controlling Sunshine's Mario, by playing fast and loose with the platforms, chances are you'd fall to your death.

Wait a freaking minute! Did someone in editorial forget about Super Mario Land 2 while choosing Mario History titles to reminisce? That game was launched a year prior to this entry.

It's worth pointing out something. Nintendo admitted that no one in the Zelda team was able to beat the Endless Cucco dodging minigame. And they honestly tried. I still haven't done it myself, and I tend to play Rollgoal for fun on Twilight Princess.

Another 600K and it'll surpass the Dreamcast. Job nicely done.

It's not the NX that's underpowered. It's the XOne and PS4 that are overpowered to compensate for the sheer incompetence of western developers to properly program and take advantage of the hardware they're working on. Nintendo-developed games run just fine on their hardware.

Takashi Tezuka is also an interesting choice. Not only he designed most of the early Mario and Zelda games, but he's been on a supervising role for years now, and he's only 54.

Takeda's never been the man in the spotlight. Always working quietly behind the scenes. That alone, plus his hardware expertise and design experience, makes him the perfect choice. Only issue is his age. He wouldn't last more than a decade on the job, certainly not as long as way Iwata did.

I'm probably buying this, even though I own the 3DS version, as well as the Wii version, and the original N64 cartridge.

The only regret is that this version probably doesn't have Fire Temple's original chanting either. I really miss that Muslim-esque chanting.

@RegalSin Are you aware that Keiji Inafune isn't really the creator of Mega Man? He designed the character, but it's not as if he produced or directed the game. He was hired to work on the Mega Man team when the higher brass decided they wanted to make a platformer.

To add to my previous point, if you reduced the sprites on a handheld game, you'd get something like the original Super Mario Land. Borderline unplayable due to the tiny size of Mario's sprite.

@MitchVogel But I wasn't talking about the screen size. That's obviously an issue with porting the SNES game to the GBA. I had the same problem with the Super Mario Advance games. It takes some getting used to the smaller screen.

What I meant was the issue of large sprites being a nuisance for maneuverability. Mega Man 7 was designed like that, but you never had a problem seeing all of the screen. The sprites were still large, and you played accordingly, navigating tight corridors packed with mostly unavoidable enemies and traps (Turbo Man's level on that game is a good example of what I mean).

MM and Bass original SFC version had the same large sprites, the only difference being you could see more of the screen.

The reviewer complains about "large sprites" no less than three times in as many paragraphs. He really should study Mega Man design history.

It is well known that both Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8 follow the same level design choices, following on the footsteps of the Game Boy MM games rather than the NES entries. Mega Man and Bass simply followed through with the same ideas, while pushing bigger challenges.

The GB games were also cramped, and taught the player to master the levels differently compared to the abundant space you had to maneuver in the NES titles. In short, you have to be more defensive and ready for the unexpected as you move Mega Man around.

And by input lag I meant the keyboard.

Am I the only one who felt some serious input lag while playing this? I'm unable to turn corners with any accuracy because of this.

Amazing article!

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/03/how-navigating-the-louvre-with-a-nintendo-3ds-made-me-rethink-the-future-of-gaming-art-and-virtual-reality

"The anti-gravity didn't actually change the gameplay, just how the tracks spiral towards the camera--now with twisty animations. Big whoop. The game itself was still the same old Mario Kart they've been churning out for generations."

@Quorthon Have you even played the game? The drifting physics were directly affected in the antigrav sections. Try making a drift turn on the N64 Rainbow Road the way you did in the original version. You'll fall off the track.

@MasterWario I knew it! My memory never fails.

Didn't Toadette have a thing for Mario? I recall reading that somewhere.

http://www.n-sider.com/contentview.php?contentid=231

@Platypus101 That's not at all how it happened. Sony's lawyers crafted an agreement in which they would get most of the profits from publishing games, including the ones designed by Nintendo themselves, leaving them in the dust.

Sony would get to control and license all CD-based games for the console, as well as SNES cartrigdes, meaning Nintendo was at their mercy. They'd have no control over license and manufacturing.

Truth be told, I felt as if my 3DS had gotten a little sluggish after that last home menu theme update. Took a few seconds for my icons to load on the lower screen.

I assume this one will fix those issues and improve my handheld's performance.

Thanks to speedrunners, I was able to beat this game without ever going back in time (except for the prologue bit, obviously).

I was also able to 100% the whole thing by doing a 12-day run. It's the way I always play whenever I revisit Majora. Cycle 2 is usually where I achieve 60% of my goals, including finishing 2 dungeons, plus getting the Giant's Wallet and upgrading my sword to gilded.

@shigulicious Can't say I agree. Yesterday, I raced Neo Bowser City and won through skill and speed. I started on 8th and ended on 1st without getting hit by items once. I merely bypassed the other racers. I even took a Blue Shell on the last lap and still won. I didn't even boobytrap the race with banana peels on strategic spots as some people tend to do. Items can shift balance sometimes, but skill counts for a lot. So does acceleration.

Do these more complex drifting techniques also apply to Mario Kart 7? It seems to me I could use some of these to get 1st place more often whenever playing online worldwide.

@Gen0neD Waluigi Pinball was already reused in Mario Kart 7.

@HawkeyeWii That's because Banshee Boardwalk is one of only three tracks in the game that are actually challenging (the others being Bowser's Castle and Sherbet Land). They're the only ones which resemble the classic SNES track design. Not only you have to keep the enemy AI in check, but you have to drive consistently well.

All of the other tracks in MK64 are wide open roads with tons of room for error. And most have long laps, which gives a player plenty of time to recover to 1st place.

Case in point, the retro N64 tracks in MK8 are the game's easiest courses. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo had to redesign Rainbow Road for both this and F-Zero X in order to provide at least some challenge.

I'm surprised no one, not even the reviewer, realized the real reason behind the sprite size issue on this game.

Not only the designers had a mere 3 months to put the game together, but they decided to follow up the series by translating the portable Mega Man games, instead of rehashing the console level designs. Mega Man 7 functions as a spiritual sequel to both Mega Man IV and Mega Man V. The sprites are bigger because the player is supposed to navigate Mega Man through more cramped levels (there are exceptions, of course, most notably sections of Spring Man's level).

The game even borrows the P chip element from the portable GB games, hence the playing collecting bolts for refills and upgrades.

After six similar console Mega Man games, plus the X series taking a different direction, it was only natural the designers had a desire to try something new. I think the sprite size works well with the graphic and visual design. Mega Man 7 is more of an acquired taste.