kupocake

XIV players groan as they realise he's thought of another 12 ways of reusing the Calofisteri rig

Feels like this would be less of a problem if there wasn't a blanket prohibition against non-express Micro SD cards. Happy they're making Express a requirement for new software, but why can't we use our Switch SD Cards for Switch games?

Port 14 please, I wouldn't mind selling my Steam Deck.

Getting some mixed messages from the interview and the stuff we've seen, and the coverage that's out there - the PSP script was explicitly said to be in both versions of the game, and the trailer specifically has cinematics from the PSP version. They've also talked about additional scenes and dialogue being in.

I can't honestly say I care about the contemporary XII and Tactics A2 cameos (they never made sense) or the two added jobs (they were late game).

And I don't know guys, but I'm kind of glad they actually have a vision for what should be in their own game?

@Hawkes142 @Galaxy2IsTheGOAT - While this is exactly how I've used joycons since 2017, these things suddenly have renewed relevance for anyone moving onto Switch 2. Makes a lot of sense to keep hold of old joycons even if you sell Switch 1, but you need a way of charging them.

@Suketoudara Let's Dancing!

I never got round to this one (the first game was probably enough) so may pick up the Switch 2 version at some point.

Valve have the opportunity to do the funniest thing: port Aperture Desk Job and sell it for the lowest possible price.

Heartened by all these people keeping theirs, as it'll hopefully mean the price doesn't plummet quite as much.

Not looking forward to the joycon grief though.

My local fishmonger is taking Switch 2 preorders. Price is a lot less than I expected, but I think it's just a plaice holder.

Sorry everyone, it's XIV 😔

It's probably a fairly safe bet to be honest. It's been a long time since Nintendo have been able to follow a success with an equal or greater success within the same product class. It's just the fickle nature of these things—that wider pool of people are more content with their existing console than those of us who are more hooked into console hardware cycles.

I suspect it'll be a 3DS situation - surprisingly slow in the beginning with ample popularity coming in the long term.

Can't believe the composer of Final Fantasy XVI pulled rank over the composer of Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker to get his songs in the game 😔. The producers of those two games should call a truce.

@Corvus96 clock speed is only the same for black cartridges, i.e. the ones that can be played in a regular Gameboy. It clocks up for games like the Zelda Seasons titles, hence the different cartridge shape.

@Corvus96 This isn't correct? Color has more ram and double the clock speed.

Nintendo will just talk kind of opaquely about lifetime sales anyway, as they do with Game Boy, rolling clearly distinct systems into the "family of systems" to inflate the numbers and obscure any missteps.

The lack of an announcement for the two final packs kind of implied a bit more of a mystery. Like Bravely Default tracks being in is absolutely cool, but not a big surprise?

Casts some doubt on the last pack being 16 as seemed obvious, when it could just be Octopath or some other Square Enix property. I'd kind of hoped this one would be Endwalker too, since that's just been banger after banger after banger.

Lists are extremely a trap but no list of good games made in 2023 should have Bioshock Infinite on it, even at #83.
**runs**

Always a risk to foretell anything FF Tactics related when AT THE END OF THE BROKEN PATH LIES DEATH AND DEATH ALONE

Three essentially full-scale Pokémon games in 12 months remains absolute nonsense. I get that we'll see the usual "fastest ever selling Pokémon title" news stories next Monday regardless, but this feels like peak Pokémon. Kids will eventually get bored of the churn too. Everyone involved in these decisions always had the option of taking longer over a single, more focused game.

With FF14 doing numbers and appreciation for Dragon Quest growing post DQXI... if Square Enix took a punt on DQX online as a western release I'd actually be less surprised than I once would have been. Like not "this is 100% going to happen soon", but "I can see why they would take this risk".

But then I can equally see a world where Square Enix doesn't localize either the online or offline versions, because it's just the kind of nonsense they'd pull?

Oh no.
Considering the predilections of this fandom I'm worried about the implications of the phrase "Sonic bust".

@montrayjak what is this, a crossover episode?!

Back in the nineties, I was in a very famous horsey game.

Congratulations, Jeremy Parish.

"Xenoblade Artist, Secret Of Mana Composer", disappointing "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" sequel.

Richer people than you also have nostalgia for the things you liked a quarter of a century ago and the consumer market has devised ways of more efficiently extracting their upscaled wealth. We'll have more on this breaking story at 10.

Easy to understand why the CoreGrafx Mini isn't on this list, but it definitely deserves to be (I mean, other than it being joined at the hip to Amazon). Curated collection of a corner of gaming a lot of people don't know about and can no longer buy into easily on the collectors market. Only one I've bothered with personally.

(Well, I have both Game and Watch releases and would happily buy more of them, but they feel like a different proposition entirely).

In the pattern of how these collaborations usually go down: months from now they'll finally make it to the UK, a month after that I'll remember they were a thing, there will be weird-sized stock left of FFII and FFXIII t-shirts. All along I'll be quietly grumbling that they forgot Tactics.

(I kind of want the XIV one).

Not Bandai, potentially creating a risible interactive product in the Gundam franchise!

(To this day I'm still surprised that they didn't dip for the Toys to Life trend).

Even accounting for how much game development has changed in those years, it's sort of illuminating that in two whole decades we haven't yet limped from 11 to 16. The HD era has been extremely rough for the franchise—they allowed themselves to get bogged down in spinning more out of a 13th entry that nobody really loved and somehow made two entirely different versions of 14 in quick succession.

16 seems like a genuinely exciting prospect, but if it doesn't hit there's definitely a feeling that the series will just keep remixing what we used to love about the first 15 years or so in perpetuity.

@Toads-Friend "It's-a-me, 10MAR!"

"Today's tech-obsessed skeletons fall apart after a single stomp or fireball, though to be fair they do somehow magically reconstitute themselves after five seconds".

That's the plan, but still haven't played #2, despite owning a Wii U and the game since near launch. I got a bit hung up on the first being something I wanted to re-play first to relive all the craziness, play more competently and better get my head around and just failed to do that?

It doesn't make intuitive sense that "18+ horror game unable to undermine market position of children's adventure game" is noteworthy, yet this is how games and my Nintendo Switch friends list actually work.

@Scapetti I'm offering ransomware as an explanation for why so many businesses are suddenly, without visible evidence of actual demand, engaging in a business practice that seems to the majority of people to be entirely self-sabotaging. It's like "why would anyone do this, unless someone had some dirt on them?"

I won't pretend for a second that I've "done the research" on the subject to the degree required by any anonymous comment combatant, but I'm time-poor for finding more out about things that only the worst people seem to be advocating for.

@Scapetti Ehh I didn't really express an opinion either way on NFTs, it's just been clear that NFT-based ventures are a PR disaster for months, so it's perplexing to see new faces jumping on the bandwagon.

Why on earth do companies keep doing this? Was there some kind of huge-scale ransomware attack? The Arrested Development '... but it might work for us' scene embodied.

If it's a genuinely new mainline title, it feels a little too hesitant. Having Diamond and Pearl remakes so recently, focusing so heavily on an existing region and familiar designs (no new starter Pokémon feels weird), having only one version (not all series staples are great)... it all feels engineered so that they can choose what it really is after the fact?

If the market doesn't take to it, it was just an odd experiment in spin-off territory. If it sells on target, this'll be how we do them going forward. Quite why they're releasing in January is anyone's guess though? That aspect of it just screams "someone wants this to fail". Where is the urgency? Why not give it a little extra time to refine it and get it on kid's Christmas lists?

Unfortunately, I fear the specific bit of Gundam this recalls is from halfway through the original series, where external pressures mean they suddenly have to write in all the doofy-ass plane and tank transformations.

The font and that chubby face on that life counter is driving me slightly mad. It's like it was drawn from memory rather than by just using the original thing?

Who will be first to ask the big question on everybody's lips: what if your crappy behavior was an NFT?

Putting the Mega Drive and SMS/GG versions of Sonic 2 into the same pot is a bit of a stretch. Still a pretty good chance the MD game alone was on top at Christmas (the 8-bit versions were released in the summer I think?) He should re-run the numbers with that in mind

There's definitely a part of me lamenting the fact that I can't play any version of DQX while waiting in the queue for the Square Enix MMO they actually let us play.

@Ooyah All rank amateurs next to Clive.

Switch BIG BOI2

"This pre-dates Apple" once and for all providing proof that gender anxiety in marketing boardrooms rots the brain really awful.

I like that they've gone for the non-DX version of Link's Awakening. The color dungeon was never that great, and there's the phantom limb of the Gameboy Printer in there. The monochrome version is the better match thematically for the Game & Watch line, and the GBC's pallette was always quite unimpressive on those backwards compatible carts. Plus, DX is the one that anyone with a 3DS can go buy for themselves right now.

Just say no to lists.

Doom should be your FPS rep. Halo, Portal, Half-Life 2 and Modern Warfare are fine first person games but they're incremental improvements over conspicuously absent FPS late 90s entries (Half-Life particularly. Then there's the absence of trailblazing immersive sims like Deus Ex).

Mario 64 and Mario Kart make these kinds of lists because people just don't have the gumption to admit that everyone would pick their not-that-different-enough successors 99 times out of 100 if presented the option.

To then put Super Mario Bros. 3 on here but not the original speaks to how arbitrary the criteria are.

Breath of the Wild and The Last of Us are both in my personal top 5, but just feel weird in a "greatest of all time" list. They will be superseded, if they haven't already.

Pokémon GO fits the criteria perfectly IMO, such as they are. Easily my least favorite game on the list but that's not what they're asking.

One context for the "lazy devs" accusation that particularly makes me cringe is speed running: like some really obscure glitch is found that nobody uncovered in normal gameplay, running on a machine less computationally capable than my toaster. And the patter in the commentary is ripping on those dastardly lazy devs. It's exhausting.

Though maybe we still need "lazy devs" around as one of those red flag phrases that let you know to set your expectations that bit lower? It's like Clear Blue for opinions that probably aren't worth hearing.

Looking forward to the cast of Final Fantasy XVII being various blunt smoking chimpanzees entirely unique to my experience.