gingerbeardman

I can't figure out if this is an advert, or paid promotion, or a you-write-it-and-we'll-publish-it article in return for the console used in the photos.

And I would question some of the claims - the ABS moulds for starters, followed by some others.

Also, for somebody who claims to want the quality of their work to speak for itself, he's not shy of bad-mouthing his competitors.

This just doesn't sit well with me at all.

@Gs69 I'm here because I'm trying to scratch my Downhill Domination itch. Great game on PS2!

Been waiting for this! I don't mind a graphical downgrade in the name of framerate. It's all about the gameplay for me.

Missing a whole bunch. So many that I have up looking.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/wii/991149-kid-adventures-sky-captain/data

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/wii/971450-gti-club-supermini-festa/data

I love it, but it's not perfect. It's too difficult to 100% and the urge to do so always leaves me frustrated. But that's more my problem than the game.

Also, shout out to the amazing Yoshi Touch & Go! on the DS.

What an absolute ripoff.

I never enjoyed any of the previous Golf Club games, something about them didn't sit right with me. And the user interface is the worst of any golf game I've played. So this one would have to fix a lot to get me to buy it.

A highly commendable honest review. I particularly enjoyed how you set the stage and show your knowledge and respect for the medium before you get to the harsh, but fair, critiscm. Well done.

At the end of the day lag is a personal thing, some will notice it and some won't. However, if the lag is worse than the same game on other platforms then that's a problem, and it's only fair to say so.

I don't know how these particular games are put together, but lag on Switch is rife. Particularly with Unity games. So I'm happy this issue is getting some attention.

I'm only 11 years late playing this, but it's brilliant.

How quick we forget. There's no way I'll ever give Nicalis another penny of my money given their business practices. They exploit their own staff and the independent developers that they publish.

60fps is great, but the game would benefit immensely if the graphics and menu design were handled by an experienced texture artist and user interface designer. It could reach RalliSport Challenge 2 levels of greatness I'm sure, because it has the gameplay sorted.

HD rumble has been added in the Nov 2019 patch https://twitter.com/vddevgames/status/1194659843304546304?s=21

I enjoyed this, but for me it's a 7/10 and I would hesitate to recommend it because it has rough edges and is lacking in certain crucial aspects.

It looked gorgeous, is nice and varied, and controls were mostly OK (though canoe controls were reversed and/or simply wrong).

It felt more like Golf Story to me than Zelda, but is much shorter (not a problem) and less enjoyable (a problem) than than either of those. The game just wasn't tight enough, it felt a bit hollow and lacking. The status of some goals was difficult to figure out (which X of Y items have I already got?). It is a technically brilliant engine in search of great gameplay, which I feel is the same problem with all Shin'en games. I say this because I care.

I loved the arcade mini games. I didn't like the poor English translation - including errors in grammar, punctuation and line-breaks/wrapping. I also feel some of the jokes had been lost in translation, one in particular in a beach hut made absolutely zero sense.

Finally, I hope that Shin'en hire somebody to work on core gameplay, leaving their existing staff to work on their brilliant engine technology.

@KoopaTheGamer actually Apple funded (in part or in whole) the development of this and the other Apple Arcade games. So the developers got lump sum up-front funding. Apple spent hundreds of millions on games for Apple Arcade. https://www.ft.com/content/44236e86-5ba3-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a081a

It’s not clear how developers will be paid going forward.

This is really great! I thought it would be fun, but it is absolutely hilarious. The commentary and things that crop up in the game are absolutely crazy. We had some great 4-player races last night.

@tendonerd and @TechaNinja both now added! i'd not played either series

@PaulusVV which wireless keyboard? Please tell me more

@Varazadi we all do - he's on Twitter. Though I don't expect he will reply.

@Harmonie the Kirby appearances of Kabu I sometimes want to delete, and sometimes don't. In some Kirby games they look very Moai, so should only some Kirby games be included if it's the same character in all of the games? I don't know. It's tricky! For now I have left them in. Maybe I'll contact Masahiro Sakurai about it?

@BootyMessiah there probably is an element of that though let's not forget this list is the result of many people over many years.

@X68000 @insertcoin2play I consciously try to mix up the Gradius images to feauture all types of appearances because having the same style Moai in all Gradius screenshots would be... less interesting?

@PBandSmelly ✨🗿✨

@StephanDLW makes me happy to read that! cheers

Typo in joys list: A truly beautiful remake of one of the (best?) Zelda games

Currently on sale for less than £1

@Bunkerneath love your animated avatar!

This excites me for many reasons. Mostly because it proved Nintendo are still unafraid of doing something innovative. But also because they're still happy to release things focussed on joy cons after the introduction of the Switch Lite. And of course because I love Wii-era Nintendo the most: Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Excite Truck!

So excited for this!

it's a shame that most of my top 10 (stuff that happened to only be released outside of Europe) were not in your database. So my votes were not really what I wanted them to be.

How is the rumble/vibration on this?

Missing some games out of my top 10 list:

• 1500DS Spirits Vol. 5: Hanafuda (Tasuke, 2007)
• Puzzle Series Vol. 5: Slitherlink (Hudson, 2006)
• Sideswiped (Majesco, 2009)
• MaBoShi (download play from WiiWare game; Mindware, 2009)

And seemingly many more are missing.

So this never made it?

"There's little music to speak of during the races" - what? wait, turn up the volume and listen to those glorious Totaka tunes!

@OniLink303 when you say "before"... Shmupulations translated it in 2016 based in part on Glitterberri's 2012 translation. This Electric Brain translation was published in 1992. That's 20+ years difference.

@bluesun awesome, thanks! which page has that thumbnail on it? (for wikipedia citation)

@KingMike good question: Electric Brain started as a Fanzine (under a couple of different names) but after a while was picked up by a publisher and sold on the high street (WH Smith). The issue containing this interview, Electric Brain 25, was released before the publisher was around to ensure higher quality control. You can read about it on Wikipedia.

@retro_player_22 do you have a copy of the original that I can get re-translated and share?

@popishighbrow do you have a source to the original Japanese interview?

Electric Brain can be read online here: https://archive.org/details/Electric-Brain/

Even back in the 90s this was an average game. Bitmap Brothers were always graphics over gameplay.

I'm in for VR BIRD Pilotwings.

@Daftbomb RetroArch NX will do it @sausage @hbkay

Wow I have this for my GameCube. Never got round to playing it! Haha.

Bravo for not lowering the score because it's a "short" game (hello Donut County review)

I picked this up cheap on a trade in. As well as the data on the game cartridge, there is a mandatory 13.1GB download! The mandatory download was there from the beginning (mentioned on front of box, and on back as "at least 7GB") but it seems it was around 9GB, with subsequent updates increasing in size. The download version is currently listed on the Nintendo eShop as 29GB. Yikes. Crazy that this was not mentioned in the review?

I've not played this on Switch, but I assume it's the same game as was released on PS4/Xbox a while ago (which I have played).

As a huge Pang fan, and a friend of PastaGames (who created this for DotEmu) I am sad to say I found this game disappointing. To me, it is only superficially Pang. Imagine you played a game once and then went away to make your own version, you'd have missed so much of the original. That's the case here.

Not only are the ball bounces unpredictable (the one thing you really have to get right in a game about bouncing balls!), but also the puzzle-aspect is completely missing. And these are just the first two problems; there are many more.

The DS version remains the series best game, and I just wish the developers had played it enough to appreciate the brilliance they were tasked with following-up. I'd give this 4/10, on a generous day.

I just finished this masterpiece. Without doubt one of my most memorable gaming experiences to date. Moving, beautiful, thoughtful, imaginative and focussed.

For me, this is - without hesitation - a 9/10 game, and perhaps even a 10/10 game. I don't think it put a foot wrong, it did exactly what it set out to do.

I only had frame rate issues a handful of times throughout the game. Comparing RiME to BOTW: both games have frame rate issues. They are more frequent and less severe in BOTW, or less frequent and more severe in RiME, depends on your point of view.

So, I can see the reasoning for the 6/10, which may have been valid at the time, but it seems that the subsequent patch has improved the performance to an acceptable level. For reviews like this, I think perhaps a re-score or addendum is needed. What do you think @Damo?

@sethperfecthat I'm still on the 4th level on the Face section, the one with the ball in the pool. I got to this point in a single sitting.

The bit that annoys me is the controls. There is a delay after pressing the jump button, and there is no affordance or leeway when jumping from a platform. Both are a sticking points for me and the way I play. See here for "forgiving jumps" https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=28793

That said, I love the concept, style, music and puzzles. The level design could be a bit kinder to the player in certain points. But really it's just the controls that get in the way of enjoying the game fully.

Finally, I'd really love aim to be on the second analog stick, rather than a toggle button, for controllers where that applies.

RIME and VSR: Void Space Racing

This is decent, I'm enjoying it even with the frequent crashes after a race restart. I've unlocked 3 different ships, no idea of they are different in terms of performance? Also unlocked extra courses by finishing 1st in all races on Easy. Is there more?

@GrailUK I'm totally fine with one and done in 3 hours, just like I'm fine with a movie being over and done in even less time.

@SwitchVogel Reading the review again, it contradicts itself by saying "it's hard to see how (it) could realistically introduce more content" and then "the paltry content". It's feels confused, like its a score in a search of a review rather than the other way around. I don't have a problem with the score, it's the fact that it is influenced by the weight of total "play time" that irks me.

There's also a point raised about a sense of disappointment upon reaching the end credits, but that's the case with every single game I have enjoyed recently. From huge adventures like Zelda Breath of the Wild to little jaunts like MiniCopter Adventure Flight, I was deflated when I realised there was no more game to play. That doesn't mean I feel that either game deserves a lower grading, just that each did what they set out to do just perfectly.

I don't want to watch another 2 hours of my favourite movie after it finishes, I just want to bask in the afterglow of the experience. I don't think the Mona Lisa is any less of a painting because Leonardo DaVinci didn't paint her legs.

Whether an experience was succinct or meandering matters not, as long as it was enjoyable.

@SwitchVogel I disagree 3 hours is too short. For me, as a family man with too many games to play, I'd rather get a great experience in 3 hours than a long, artificially extended, diluted game experience over 20 hours. Again, it's a personal preference that I don't think should affect the rating of a game. Every game will be a different length, penalising a game because it doesn't pad out with filler encourages the wrong type of game design IMHO.

Would you penalise Tetris because a game can be finished in 30 seconds? An extreme example, but hopefully it gets my point across that tying a rating of a game to any metric of "play time" is a bad idea.

@ryancraddock I had no idea price was hidden behind a tab on the mobile site. Another vote to put it on the review page.

@switchvogel Now, as for this review, I disagree with the reasoning.

Whether a price is affordable is a personal thing. Personally, I have no with the price of this game.

I feel a game should be judged on its content alone. Tying a review to a factor that can and will change, such as price, seems a bit shortsighted or even disingenuous.

What happens when the price changes and the review stays the same?

For this reason I also feel games with big patches that fix major complaints or change the game in recognisable ways, like with RIME, should be re-reviewed.

Shame you couldn't fit screens of all 6 events into the review.