Also, Nintendo's released a bunch of Super Famicom games "as is" on the North American NSO SNES app. It's very likely that the "future games" list is not the be-all and end all, but rather just the tip of the iceberg. Custom Robo could come to western regions' NSO N64 as-is in the future.
I agree that the graphics look old and bad, but they're not THAT bad.
It's more like they just used the exact same engine from Bayo 2, which was a Wii U game and had similar power to the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Methinks you forget how bad the PS2 really looked in comparison.
It also makes a lot of sense. Bayo is a performance heavy franchise, and the Switch doesn't handle a lot of things going on at once much better than the Wii U does, nor is its graphical engine that much better. But if you seriously think this looks like GameCube or PS2 graphics, then you have no clue what you're talking about.
It's cute and it's amazing that Project M is still going so strong.
I highly doubt anything like this would happen in Ultimate, but it's a good moveset idea for the next Smash title, if they finally want to upgrade him from Assist to Player Character like they did to Little Mac.
Why no Ocarina from A Link to the Past and the summoning of the Loftwing/Duck?
Even if it's just literally the same thing as the Ocarina of Winds?
And why no Bell from A Link Between Worlds? And what about the Harp of Ages!!?
What about the Spirit Train's steam whistle? What about Ganondorf and the Happy Mask Salesman's Pipe Organs?
What about the various instruments in Cadence of Hyrule!?
Also missing are the higher level harps used by Sheik in Hyrule Warriors:
Lv-2 Typhoon Harp
Lv-3 Triforce Harp
Lv-* 8-Bit Stepladder
Lv-4 Triforce Harp+
Lv-4 Shining Harp
You mean all the things it ripped off of BotW?
Or are you referring to its copious microtransations and gatchagame mechanics?
Or perhaps you're referring to the ridiculous fanservice?
Or maybe instead you're referring to the games' entirely different genre of party-based console roleplaying game?
Every ability they've shown off seems to be used both in combat and in exploration. I'd say this looks Metroidvania to its core, not Contra-ish in the slightest…
Regarding Pulse Scan, I'd argue that it's a more limited version of the X-Ray Scope from Super Metroid, since it runs on your precious Aion meter.
Finishing up Skyward Sword HD, then it's back to Metroid timeline binge. Currently on Metroid Prime 2.
Has anyone mentioned yet how gorram annoying it is to beat Paeter's high score of 43 bamboo cuts with a pro controller or in handheld mode? I feel like every time I want to just slash back and forth, I just end up spin-attacking. Finally beat it today (got to 52 cuts), but it took over 500 Rupees of tries and this was my 6th round of attempting (this time with the Master Sword).
I think the one issue I have with the classic controls set up of SSHD is how spin attacks and ending blows are performed. I think it's just too finnicky to input Street Fighter-level of directionals to get this right when it really matters (like the bamboo game or when the game surprises you with an enemy you can ending blow). Otherwise, I'd say this is my favourite Zelda control scheme EVER.
There's something also to be said about the ecological value of NOT going for the most powerful, energy-consuming hardware.
Switch might be based on decade-old hardware by now, only slightly more powerful than an Xbox 360, but reduces the number of systems a given family has in their home (one console instead of a console and a handheld) and it uses vastly less electricity resources than the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5.
Nintendo's corporate environmental commitments are piss poor compared to Microsoft's, yes, but Nintendo's hardware alone is a better investment BECAUSE it delivers high-quality games without needing to always have the best graphics money can buy.
When will graphics be good enough? How long can we ecologically sustain more and more energy-consumptive hardware? At some point, we need to plateau or make a managed retreat, and say that we don't NEED better graphics; fun doesn't require them.
I'm all for a Switch Pro if it can solve the stability issues, mind you. But I'd far prefer a stable console with amazing game experiences based on old hardware than continuously trying to push hardware to its limits and face stability issues because the graphics were too good for the ancient hardware, or continuously trying to race to an impossible finish line of "more realistic" graphics.
I would assume the reason is that the financial endurance of Nintendo as a company has a direct impact on the quantity, quality, and continuity of Nintendo games and consoles.
I think it's worth noting that video games play to our dopamine receptors and really can be addictive and drug-like. My youngest sibling had to go to a detox boarding high school with a bunch of drug-addicted youth due to his video-game addiction that was ruining his life.
The thing is… video games aren't necessarily worse than other addictions. But because it's a business, they can work on malicious pathways. The app creators of microtransation loot-box games in particular know how to keep feeling the dopamine and FOMO brain chemicals to keep people paying more and more money. It works along the same addiction pathways as gambling.
But this is hardly different from how Facebook or Twitter use brain chemical reward systems to keep people interacting with their platforms, or how Netflix tries to keep you binging shows when you run out of episodes. Video games are not uniquely a problem in this sphere.
They are an interactive medium, so that works on different neuropathways than a purely visual medium like an addiction to watching porn or something. But they are not uniquely worthy of damnation, and video games can also be a high art form.
The struggle is really more one of balancing art with capital - how do we raise up the art form while pushing back against the business that is not there for our benefit but rather for their shareholders, and will do anything to keep us hooked and paying them money?
Piracy of course is not the answer - that just leads to the art form collapsing as the artists lack the ability to maintain their output. But blind embracing of the corporations publishing these games isn't helpful either. We need reasonable restrictions on what sort of things can happen in games. Banning loot boxes is a great start, maybe governments should also ban microtransactions in games. Time management is the other piece of this, and maybe there's a way to incentivize game developers to create experiences that aren't "binged" but rather explored in small bites. Nintendo's old "hey listen! you've been playing for over an hour now, maybe you should take a break?" doesn't help - it just makes the player indignant against the game. But designing the game around smaller chunks of play, and letting players drop off and pick up at any time helps a lot (as opposed to say, Majora's Mask where my mom was demonized by our "we can't turn off the N64 now, we have to get to an owl statue or the end of the 3 day cycle!"). 3DS and Switch have helped with that, since you can just put the console to sleep and pick up later. But designing the game's chucks helps with it more so too. Breath of the Wild's shrines are a good way of designing over small chunks, though Breath of the Wild is a very "bingeable" game since there's always something new to discover and rarely a clear threshold of "we accomplished this, better call it quits for now."
Wow this site's readership skews oldest Millennials / cusp Gen X.
I was born in '89 and grew up with a Game Boy, but it looks like a lot of folks here played NES prior to SNES (my first home console was a N64 though that was because my mom was a holdout against the video game craze of the 90s and didn't like what it was doing to folks).
I took the survey and let them know that I still desperately want a localization for Terry's Wonderland 3D and Iru & Luca's Marvellous Mysterious Key 3D - doesn't have to be on 3DS, mind you, but a modern remake of the original two DQM games on Switch or something would be Day 1 purchases for me and I'm still furious they didn't localise them when 3DS was in its heyday.
Future Connected seemed to set up the next game - either a crossover between the two games' settings or even a crossover with Xenoblade X.
I can't wait. Holiday 2022 sounds about the right timing for release, if it's not already occupied by Zelda (and here's hoping Zelda will be a mid-2022 title).
This is exactly what I want from an initial Mario Bros. movie.
Have Mario and Luigi working for Foreman Spike's Wrecking Crew, then have Mario have to save his girlfriend Pauline from an escaped Cranky Kong (DK Sr - or I guess they could streamline the story by removing the Kong generations and just making OG Donkey Kong into modern DK). And then have the brothers get a new job cleaning toilets before they get sucked down a sewer pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom. Maybe Wario and Waluigi can be other workers for the Wrecking Crew who torment Mario & Luigi.
I've never understood why people mispronounced her name.
Her Japanese name is clearly written Fai not Fi.
And do people really say Why-Fee for Wifi? Like, they wrote it this way in English because they wanted to reflect the English spelling of WiFi. She even communicates with Scrapper and the Goddess Hylia via WiFi signals - that's the whole point of her name!
Agreed. Look at Disney and the fiascos they've wrought because they're trying to make the most profits for their shareholders (shareholders apparently want investment in D+ full stop, screw the talent and everything else the company does).
Wait, why are people saying it's the Olympic athlete's good luck charm? This is clearly the coach's charm.
Also, that pink bit is the start of whatever they've tied to it to attach to the yellow string on the back. So that it works as a pendant. Don't know how they fastened it as this is clearly a 30th anniversary OT Link amiibo without the digital parts and sword and shield…
Feels a bit more like Link's Awakening HD on Switch if the character designs were in the "toon" style. That is, everything has a plastic or wooden or toylike sheen as if it's a diorama or something.
It's quite cute, but it also doesn't feel like Wind Waker to me. There's something about stripping away that "realism" and the contours and leaning into just what is necessary to deliver emotions. It feels a bit more like when the HD version of the game bugs when you get a treasure item and suddenly the cel shading is stripped away (you can get this effect somehow in Breath of the Wild, too, and it's a bit disturbing).
I'm not saying it's bad by any means. I just think there's purpose in WW's cel shaded, cartoony art style. If I wanted a more rounded, polished, diorama-y version of the game, I want them to replace the characters with versions that look more like Link's Awakening HD - it's a very different cartoon style, so to speak, and the merging between the two is a bit uncanny for me.
This is coming from someone who was taken aback in 2011 by SS's more cartoony style after TP's "gritty realism" and early posters of SS showing a TP-like Link, of course. It may be that I just need time to get used to it (the half-step between style works REALLY well for SS, and then BW is a half step again between SS and TW and that works really well for that setting). I certainly don't want a Skyrim-style work for a Zelda game (even TP is far from TES' artstyles). But each Zelda game also has themes and motifs and I just don't think this necessarily works for WW.
But still, hats off to the artist. As a famous dark lord once said, most impressive.
I'm not sure I could go back to black and white 8-bit graphics at this point when considering buying a new console. Sure, I'd buy the classic titles again on a virtual console (and did on the 3DS), but I just don't think 8-bit and greyscale are really good "restraints" when it comes to game level design. 16-bit or 32-bit and colour (2D PCEngine/SNES/Genesis/PSX/GBA titles come to mind) seem to be the sweet spot when it comes to nostalgia and creative restraints for a new handheld game. Sure, I played and enjoyed Shovel Knight, but I still think it would have been a better game if utilising 16-bit pixel art rather than 8-bit pixel art. And there is no part of me that wants a grey and green version of the game - OG Game Boy was just entirely outclassed by adding a modicum of colour and literally nothing else in 1998.
So am I excited for the Playdate? Not really. Especially not when it's so "exclusive." The FOMO is not real. Can it deliver good play experiences? That's the reason to get one. Not because of the potential due to the signing on of famous designers. Even the greatest game developers have a series of duds in their portfolio. So I'd caution waiting, and I'm just not excited about this device.
I say all this, but I'm still going to camp out to get a Zelda 35th Anniversary Game & Watch (despite having all three Zelda games on 3DS AND Switch and having the first two on Wii and Wii U and GBA and GameCube as well…). I just like the idea of the clock and the Vermin minigame with Link in the protagonist role. And we haven't had a re-release of the original GB green-and-grey version of Link's Awakening in the US since ever. There were a few narrative changes between the GB and the DX versions of the game, so just having it for archival purposes alone is worthwhile. It's my favourite game of all time, though I have to say that as I said above; I just don't see myself playing the GB or DX versions on any console very much anymore given that there's an brilliant HD remake on Switch. I still want to have it though because LA is SPECIAL.
I'd also argue that Twilight Princess was not devoid of jokey content but it definitely was a bit more serious. Still, Skyward Sword was still in that split handheld and console era, and as new players are now seeing too, it's a bulk load more jokey than Twilight Princess, and feels kinda like halfway between TP and WW. So to that end, I'd argue it's not about handhelds being more jokey or kiddy and consoles being more hardcore; it's about the specific tone a specific game is going for. And on the Switch, they've been able to dial the tone to the game. There's no issue of different audiences between handhelds and consoles because it's a device that tailours to multiple audiences and doesn't need to worry too much about marketing to the wrong audience. At least, no more than Nintendo always has.
Zelda, Metroid, Starfox, and F-ZERO would all make great anime as well.
Personally, I'd love a Super Smash Bros. / Nintendoland-esque Nintendo Animated Universe (NAU) of anime; do what Marvel did but as a series of anime film (or OVAs or half season anime) crossovers.
Start with DONKEY KONG featuring Mario having to save Paulene from Cranky in his youth, and end the movie/series with the Mario Bros. doing various jobs for people like Wario as construction and wrecking crews, plumbers, and soda Bottlers, before ending up in the Mushroom Kingdom, setting off SUPER MARIO BROS. Then jump over and do a Zelda anime and a Starfox anime and a Metroid anime. Have Samus encounter Captain Falcon on a bounty hunter mission and then have Fox McCloud have to take up his dad's role in the F-ZERO races against Cpt Falcon. Then jump over to Onett and do an Earthbound anime, and promote a re-release of all three MOTHER/Earthbound games while you're at it by getting people invested in the show. Then you can just pull Pikachu (and Jigglypuff) and Kirby from their classic animes. And finally announce a Super Smash Bros. crossover series.
The thing is… GO doesn't need to listen to fan feedback.
It's the biggest money maker for The Pokémon Company there is, and it's Nintendo's biggest success in mobile gaming (though Fire Emblem Heroes isn't too shabby either).
Pokémon mainline games do make gazillions of dollars, but they've also got high competition to live up to - other versions of Pokémon. So they need to keep selling as well or even better than their predecessors. And that means listening to fans.
Pokémon GO sells more and more continuously than any Pokémon mainline game. If a Pokémon game cart is $60.00, that's the amount many players spend on a monthly basis in the game just to buy more in-game currency to spend on egg incubators and stardust and whatnot. There's a feedback loop with the constant events that drives people to spend more and more money in the game. And because creatures can now be sent to Pokémon HOME - albeit at a variable but relatively slow rate, unless you spend money - there's an incentive to keep catching more and more and not just dump all your creatures.
It's really kinda insidious, and the eggs are a sort of loot box. I've sunk way too much money and time into the game and am currently on a break. I'm also a little indignant because several months ago I bought a ticket to the annual event that happened in July, only to find out that the very days it was happening was when my grandfather's funeral was set for… so I'd be missing the event. It's nobody's fault but myself for buying the ticket to the event over a month in advance, before I knew about the funeral. But the whole game just seems a little money grubby, so I'm on a pause. But why shouldn't it be? It's an outright capitalistic success.
Moral of the story: screw capitalism, embrace socialism; abolish loot boxes and gambling in video games
Isn't it possible that Nintendo's defending their patents here (and is right to do so) while also finding the pettiness of dragging out a lawsuit over patents that they don't use anymore is a bit silly while also thinking that Nintendo is probably throwing their weight around as a big corporation while Colopi probably doesn't have nearly as good lawyers while ALSO recognising that tons of small upstart patent troll operations exist soley to try to poach money from companies like Nintendo whose gold standard fun-making devices are all about their patents while ALSO recognising that the law only exists as it does because companies like Nintendo have been fighting tooth and nail to protect their generic patents alongside their specific ones while ALSO recognising that a very specific patent like the layout of the SNES controller can become generic and semi-public domain due to very slight variations that succeeded at calling themselves different and now are so prolific within the industry that you can't really call it Nintendo's patented controller design anymore when every other company is using a slight variation of the SNES or its little sibling the Sony Dual Shock and calling it a Pro Controller?
My point by all this is that it's likely more complicated than Ninty good, Colopi bad or Colopi good Ninty bad. That doesn't mean it's not worth parsing the information to produce a defined narrative about the situation - that's what all reporters have to do if they're worth their salt - to cut through the jargon and deliver a message that distills it down to why this matters so much that a company paid another company 3.3B-en in damages. But it's just as important to not lose that complexity as we search for a narrative. And I'm afraid there are two developing factions of commenters above me that seem to jump over that complexity and just choose a side (pretty common for comments sections of a Nintendo news website when Nintendo is in the news regarding lawsuits - you'll have the fans of the company and the people who love the product but hate the makers and people who just want to see the the commenters consume each other and light a match in the comments.
We don't have all the facts here. But the narrative being driven about this case is that Nintendo's patent lawyers are once again triumphant, but perhaps this time it wasn't necessarily a good thing. Some folks will say it's never a good thing and others will say it's always a good thing. I think there's room for shades of grey.
There's specifically a single truck in Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow (Pikachu) versions. It's impossible to view without either trading for a Pokémon that knows CUT prior to gaining HM01 from the S.S. St. Anne captain or using some sort of cheating device. This same truck is viewable in Fire Red and Leaf Green versions of the game, and rewards the players with a Lava Cookie if inspected for having had the ingenuity to perform the trick. In Let's Go! Pikachu and Let's Go! Eievui versions of the game, you can still visit the (now empty) harbour after the cruise ship leaves and once your Partner Pikachu or Eievui know how to Surf on water, you can visit the truck for a nice Easter egg moment. The Lava Cookie is replaced with a revive, which respawns every so often.
There are additional trucks in later games - such as the moving truck that you move from Johto to Hoenn via in opening scenes of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald versions.
I've had a Day 1 launch switch 2 and it's been 4 years - only marginally shorter than the length of time from my Wii U to my Switch.
And my switch must have an issue with it's ability to connect wirelessly to joy cons and the pro controller - the only way I can play with a TV screen is using a wired controller like the hori pad or standing right next to the switch with the controllers in hand (beyond 3 feet they drop off).
I've resisted sending it in for repairs because worried they'll erase my Pokémon - that's save data that isn't backed up.
So it's probably time for an upgrade for me anyway.
I see that it's still available in UK, but still not in US.
I really think I'm going to take the day off work and camp outside Nintendo NY for this release. Want the amiibo double pack and the special edition, maybe even the OLED…
It's not PokéDollars. That's the currency used in Orre.
It's just 1,000,000-en. I.e., roughly 10,000.00 USD. For some reason, the English-language version of Pokémon replaced the Japanese symbol for their currency (which is NOT ¥; that was made up by the Americans in analogy to $) with a symbol analogy to ¥ and $ only with the lines going through a P for Pokémon. In Japan they just used the en symbol, so we know exactly how expensive the bike was.
10k for a bike is still outrageous and impossible for a 11-year old kid. But now you can imagine why Youngers and Campers are forking over hundreds of cash - because the last two digits in Japan are not decimalized. So roughly 100-en = 1.00 USD, exchange rates changing to anywhere from half to double that rate, of course. But the important thing is not so much the exact equivalence as much as the magnitude of it.
It built strongly on the foundations of Awakening, If, and Echoes.
Which of course built on the foundations of the games that came before, but the 2013-onward titles really have a new feel to them.
Awakening made supports more critical and versatile than ever before letting the players create their own ship pairings (something viable in a few other games, but usually for only a limited number of units and each unit with only a very limited number of pairings); it also revived the repeatable and explorable world map from Gaiden and TSS which would lay the foundation for the games being a bit more open world. And it introduced children, a real consequential choice for pairings.
If gave us a three-way story fork that vastly changed the nature of the game, while carrying over the pair supports systems from Awakening and the children (while jettisoning the explorable map to an extent).
Echoes revived the dungeons and explorable towns that had been missing since Gaiden (which Echoes was a remake of). In that sense, Three Houses learns the best lessons from its direct predecessors (minus maybe Heroes and Unrivalled, which I still think probably influenced it). It still has some shortcomings (Crimson Flower feels like it's missing several chapters for the end dealing with TWSITD, for example), but most of its initial shortcomings were rectified by DLC (like adding Jeritza as a PC unit in Crimson Flower.
I do agree that LGBTQ+ reps were the biggest shortcoming. Crimson Flower is my favourite route because Beles x Edelgard is my OTP ship for the game. But there should be more. The only option for Beleth in the base game is Linhardt. Claude WOULD have been a wise choice. I also think Dimitri and Seteth should have been available as love interests for Beleth too. But beyond the PC, there should be more romancing in general, and every LGBTQ+ character in this game is Bi or Pansexual. Echoes at least got it right with having at least one character who was solely gay (though he was relegated to the poor longing gay boy pining over straight man trope). And it's far bettern than the situation with Nils in If. We need LOTs of options in the next main series title, and if they remake Genealogy+Thracia or Blazing+Binding, I should hope at least some of the Gen I pairings are allowed to be opened up to non-reproductive pairs. Or let them adopt and find alternative family styles! Holy Blood lines of descent are part of the problem, and 3H makes that clear in its narrative. I should hope that would mean that they recognise that you don't need to be able to have different reproductive organs to have a good story ending or successors in the next generation of the game. Maybe they adopt a successor nephew or niece or apprentice instead to take up their combat style and inherit their abilities.
At the very least, we shouldn't have to choose between having LGBTQ+ supports and having all the characters possible in the game. That was one place 3H really learned from the errors of If (please also: don't screw us out of a child unit by choosing to pair up two obvious story characters like Kamui and Aqua just because you're short on units of "one gender").
I think Metroid 5's reveal could only have been better if they hadn't said we're sorry, no Metroid Prime 4 information at this time before the trailer, and kept that to be AFTER the reveal of Metroid 5 and it's release date. But otherwise, Metroid 5 is on track to be the biggest Metroid release since Prime, if not ever. They just stuck the landing with this reveal (other than what I said above). People are hungry for Metroid on its 35th anniversary, and they not only surprised us with something nobody thought would ever happen but really wanted to happen, but they also revealed "and it's coming out this fall" - exactly how they surprised us with Origami King last year. It's Nintendo's cagey-ness at its best. The trick is actually getting the game to come out in that intended release window.
Zelda has had similar release widow and announcement timing woes, it just has a large enough audience to gobble it up even if delayed. But Skyward Sword is a great example of how even a titan of a franchise like Zelda can face this issue. SS's first trailers were revealed with HD graphics and better framerate because it was developed on HD devices. Then the gameplay demo failed horrendously. And then the game was shown running on an actual Wii and people saw how fugly it could look. They claimed the pointillism-style artwork would make that 460p resolution pretty, and it helped mitigate the issues, but showing what it could be and then giving us something worse was a huge mistake. And then it came out at the tail end of the Wii's lifetime, and required a the Motion Plus Wiimote or Motion Plus adaptor to old Wiimotes, and still had problems. And ultimately, it wasn't the open expansive game Zelda had previously sold us on, and the game had a lot of bugs and frustrating QoL issues, and people felt let down by all of these issues. So its marketing and design flopped hard, and the game sold poorly despite being on the most successful home console Nintendo has ever produced. But now the HD remaster on the Switch has resolved all of the issues above that it could resolve, is released at a time when tons of new players brought into the franchise by BotW are hungry for more Zelda, and has no competing Zelda games to buy (or download from 3rd parties like AM2R was for Samus Returns & FF), so the release was massively successful, amiibo supply and scalper fiascos aside.
It's just… Zelda could bounce back from multiple release fiascos like SS. Nintendo seems to have enough belief in the Metroid team to know it's not MercurySteam's fault that M:SR on 3DS underperformed. I doubt they'd bring back Next Level Games to make another Metroid game, though. More likely to let them focus on making future Luigi's Mansion, Mario Strikes, and Punch-Out!! titles.
1986 to 1991, 4 year gap 1991 to 1993, 1 year gap 1993 to 2002, 8 year gap 2002 to 2004, 1 year gap 2004 to 2007, 2 year gap 2007 to 2010, 2 year gap 2010 to 2016, 5 year gap 2016 to 2017 , no gap 2017 to 2021, 3 year gap
Biggest gaps were between Metroid 3 and Metroid 4, and between Other M and Federation Force. No drought as long as the one in the N64 era, for sure (though I believe Metroid Prime was originally planned for the N64DD before moving to the Gamecube). But it's also clear that they WANTED to get The OFFICIAL Metroid 2 Remake to come out in 2016 (just as they wanted to release Federation Force in 2015 alongside the new Nintendo 3DS), but they just couldn't close the deal. And pushing it back a year was a big problem for the franchise - it caused the outrage over Federation Force being Nintendo's only offering for the 30th anniversary, and their simultaneous shut down of AM2R when we had no idea they were going to release their own remake the next year (because of Nintendo's standard cagey-ness around game reveals).
I can only imagine that Metroid Prime 4 reveal at that first Switch E3 of 2017 was an attempt to ameliorate the burnt fanbase, but the fact that Samus Returns was released AFTER people tossed their 3DSes for Switches was a further blow to the franchise. And then the production woes of Metroid Prime 4 came to light, and these past 4 years have felt like a real drought.
It's clear that Nintendo was satisfied with the product and decided to keep MercurySteam on for Metroid 5, but it's also clear that the WAY Nintendo markets Metroid has been a big issue for their sales.
Re that quote about the X on ZDR; I read the report too. I don't trust the narrator; they could be Federation scum. Even if they show Samus the footage, it could be doctored by inserting digital scans from the BSL into footage of Planet ZDR. It's something the Galactic Empire could do easily (and did many times, doctoring Holonet broadcasts, I mean), so I have no doubt that the Galactic Federation here could do it, too.
@Stubborn_Monkey Compared to the audience of Smash, Metroid is small potatoes. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has outsold the entire back-library of Metroid's games.
Metroid is one of those game series that Nintendo cares about, believes can be a winner, but keeps getting bad draws when it comes to release windows, marketing, etc. Samus Returns was clearly targeted for a 2016 release but couldn't make it in time. The whole delay a game until it's good schtick that Miyamoto waxes on about. But by rushing a spin-off to release for the anniversary instead, while delaying the game fans would ACTUALLY enjoy playing, while simultaneously shutting down the fan-remake of the same game they were secretly remaking (for good reason, mind you), they lost a lot of good will.
I'd imagine that both Metroid Prime 4 and Metroid 5 were targeted for 2021 (35th anniversary) release window, but Prime 4 had to be delayed because of starting over from scratch. Notably, Metroid Prime 1 had similar issues where it was restarted from scratch and then rushed (cutting out boss fights with Kraid and an Ice Titan, and moving Thardus from Magmoor to Phendrana, leaving Magmoor pretty empty…). Luckily, they were able to dual-release Prime with Fusion and had such success that year greater than Metroid has ever experienced before or since.
They need to recapture such a market with Dread. It doesn't have to be an Animal Crossing or a Smash or a Zelda game, but it has to do at least as well as say, Fire Emblem Awakening did, since its success justified that series' survival and continuation onward to the present day.
Is that your speculation, or do you have information that I lack? The article itself made the report sound fishy and a trap for Samus, the only person capable of hunting the X…
Comments 800
Re: N64 Gems Custom Robo And Its Sequel Are Coming To Nintendo Switch Online In Japan
Also, Nintendo's released a bunch of Super Famicom games "as is" on the North American NSO SNES app. It's very likely that the "future games" list is not the be-all and end all, but rather just the tip of the iceberg. Custom Robo could come to western regions' NSO N64 as-is in the future.
Re: Bayonetta 3 Finally Gets A New Trailer, Out In 2022
@rjejr
I agree that the graphics look old and bad, but they're not THAT bad.
It's more like they just used the exact same engine from Bayo 2, which was a Wii U game and had similar power to the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Methinks you forget how bad the PS2 really looked in comparison.
It also makes a lot of sense. Bayo is a performance heavy franchise, and the Switch doesn't handle a lot of things going on at once much better than the Wii U does, nor is its graphical engine that much better. But if you seriously think this looks like GameCube or PS2 graphics, then you have no clue what you're talking about.
Re: The Super Mario Movie's Release Date And Cast Are Revealed
I actually think this is a pretty cool cast for it. And using Charles Martinet for random cameos is pretty smart.
I like that it's unifying Donkey Kong, Wrecking Crew, and Super Mario Bros. into a single story. Telling the tale of the start of Mario's career!
It's either going to be genius or worse than the 90s movie. We'll see…
Re: Bayonetta 3 Finally Gets A New Trailer, Out In 2022
Was that Dante at the end? Or maybe Virgil?
Re: Review: Active Life Outdoor Challenge / Family Trainer - Fit Enough For Purpose
@LinktotheFuture Thanks for the clarity!
Re: Review: Active Life Outdoor Challenge / Family Trainer - Fit Enough For Purpose
Is it even possible to buy the leg strap without buying Ring Fit?
If not, they're entirely reliant on Ring Fit install base wanting to "switch" it up and play something different on leg day.
Re: Random: Waluigi "Invites Himself" To Super Smash Bros. In This Emotional Fan-Made Trailer
Yeah, I saw this video last week.
It's cute and it's amazing that Project M is still going so strong.
I highly doubt anything like this would happen in Ultimate, but it's a good moveset idea for the next Smash title, if they finally want to upgrade him from Assist to Player Character like they did to Little Mac.
Re: Back Page: The Video Game Characters That Snuck Into The 2021 Met Gala
@jrt87 You keep telling yourself that.
Re: Back Page: The Video Game Characters That Snuck Into The 2021 Met Gala
AOC's outfit was the only acceptable one in attendance.
#TaxTheRich
Re: Best GameCube Games
It's hard to imagine how Resident Evil 4 beat out EVERYTHING else.
And yeah, no Custom Robo? No Star Fox Adventures OR Assault? No Final Fantasy: The Crystal Chronicles? Boo.
Re: Feature: Ranking The Playable Instruments Of The Legend Of Zelda, From Worst To Best
@KateGray No worries! Just was wondering why they were omitted!
I agree with you on the Spirit Flutes though! I've got good pipes myself (trained singer), but I couldn't for the life of me get those to work right!
Re: Feature: Ranking The Playable Instruments Of The Legend Of Zelda, From Worst To Best
Why no Ocarina from A Link to the Past and the summoning of the Loftwing/Duck?
Even if it's just literally the same thing as the Ocarina of Winds?
And why no Bell from A Link Between Worlds? And what about the Harp of Ages!!?
What about the Spirit Train's steam whistle? What about Ganondorf and the Happy Mask Salesman's Pipe Organs?
What about the various instruments in Cadence of Hyrule!?
Also missing are the higher level harps used by Sheik in Hyrule Warriors:
Lv-2 Typhoon Harp
Lv-3 Triforce Harp
Lv-* 8-Bit Stepladder
Lv-4 Triforce Harp+
Lv-4 Shining Harp
Re: Platinum Really Wants To Show You Bayonetta 3, But It Can't
“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”
Re: New PEGI Gambling Criteria Means Remakes Of Old Pokémon Games Could Be Rated 18+
This provides a decent explanation why the remakes of Pokémon games remove the Game Corners, while the re-releases of those games to VC do not.
Re: Random: Have You Seen This Hidden Dialogue In Zelda: Breath Of The Wild?
@UglyCasanova
You mean all the things it ripped off of BotW?
Or are you referring to its copious microtransations and gatchagame mechanics?
Or perhaps you're referring to the ridiculous fanservice?
Or maybe instead you're referring to the games' entirely different genre of party-based console roleplaying game?
Re: Fantastic Metroid Dread Trailer Shows Off Frantic Gameplay And A New-Look Kraid
@Friendly
Every ability they've shown off seems to be used both in combat and in exploration. I'd say this looks Metroidvania to its core, not Contra-ish in the slightest…
Regarding Pulse Scan, I'd argue that it's a more limited version of the X-Ray Scope from Super Metroid, since it runs on your precious Aion meter.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (August 28th)
Finishing up Skyward Sword HD, then it's back to Metroid timeline binge. Currently on Metroid Prime 2.
Has anyone mentioned yet how gorram annoying it is to beat Paeter's high score of 43 bamboo cuts with a pro controller or in handheld mode? I feel like every time I want to just slash back and forth, I just end up spin-attacking. Finally beat it today (got to 52 cuts), but it took over 500 Rupees of tries and this was my 6th round of attempting (this time with the Master Sword).
I think the one issue I have with the classic controls set up of SSHD is how spin attacks and ending blows are performed. I think it's just too finnicky to input Street Fighter-level of directionals to get this right when it really matters (like the bamboo game or when the game surprises you with an enemy you can ending blow). Otherwise, I'd say this is my favourite Zelda control scheme EVER.
Re: Nintendo's Share Value Trends Downward As Investor Analyst Gives 'Sell' Advice
There's something also to be said about the ecological value of NOT going for the most powerful, energy-consuming hardware.
Switch might be based on decade-old hardware by now, only slightly more powerful than an Xbox 360, but reduces the number of systems a given family has in their home (one console instead of a console and a handheld) and it uses vastly less electricity resources than the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5.
Nintendo's corporate environmental commitments are piss poor compared to Microsoft's, yes, but Nintendo's hardware alone is a better investment BECAUSE it delivers high-quality games without needing to always have the best graphics money can buy.
When will graphics be good enough? How long can we ecologically sustain more and more energy-consumptive hardware? At some point, we need to plateau or make a managed retreat, and say that we don't NEED better graphics; fun doesn't require them.
I'm all for a Switch Pro if it can solve the stability issues, mind you. But I'd far prefer a stable console with amazing game experiences based on old hardware than continuously trying to push hardware to its limits and face stability issues because the graphics were too good for the ancient hardware, or continuously trying to race to an impossible finish line of "more realistic" graphics.
Re: Nintendo's Share Value Trends Downward As Investor Analyst Gives 'Sell' Advice
@spacemoe505
I would assume the reason is that the financial endurance of Nintendo as a company has a direct impact on the quantity, quality, and continuity of Nintendo games and consoles.
Re: UK Newspaper Comes Under Fire For Hinting That Video Games Are "The Next Global Pandemic"
I think it's worth noting that video games play to our dopamine receptors and really can be addictive and drug-like. My youngest sibling had to go to a detox boarding high school with a bunch of drug-addicted youth due to his video-game addiction that was ruining his life.
The thing is… video games aren't necessarily worse than other addictions. But because it's a business, they can work on malicious pathways. The app creators of microtransation loot-box games in particular know how to keep feeling the dopamine and FOMO brain chemicals to keep people paying more and more money. It works along the same addiction pathways as gambling.
But this is hardly different from how Facebook or Twitter use brain chemical reward systems to keep people interacting with their platforms, or how Netflix tries to keep you binging shows when you run out of episodes. Video games are not uniquely a problem in this sphere.
They are an interactive medium, so that works on different neuropathways than a purely visual medium like an addiction to watching porn or something. But they are not uniquely worthy of damnation, and video games can also be a high art form.
The struggle is really more one of balancing art with capital - how do we raise up the art form while pushing back against the business that is not there for our benefit but rather for their shareholders, and will do anything to keep us hooked and paying them money?
Piracy of course is not the answer - that just leads to the art form collapsing as the artists lack the ability to maintain their output. But blind embracing of the corporations publishing these games isn't helpful either. We need reasonable restrictions on what sort of things can happen in games. Banning loot boxes is a great start, maybe governments should also ban microtransactions in games. Time management is the other piece of this, and maybe there's a way to incentivize game developers to create experiences that aren't "binged" but rather explored in small bites. Nintendo's old "hey listen! you've been playing for over an hour now, maybe you should take a break?" doesn't help - it just makes the player indignant against the game. But designing the game around smaller chunks of play, and letting players drop off and pick up at any time helps a lot (as opposed to say, Majora's Mask where my mom was demonized by our "we can't turn off the N64 now, we have to get to an owl statue or the end of the 3 day cycle!"). 3DS and Switch have helped with that, since you can just put the console to sleep and pick up later. But designing the game's chucks helps with it more so too. Breath of the Wild's shrines are a good way of designing over small chunks, though Breath of the Wild is a very "bingeable" game since there's always something new to discover and rarely a clear threshold of "we accomplished this, better call it quits for now."
It's a tough nut to crack.
Re: The Voice Of Mario From The Early '90s Has Passed Away
@CharlieGirl
Nintendo needs to start thinking about a successor for Martinet. Maybe even have Martinet start training a replacement...
the Nintendo way would more likely just be hire someone who sounds "close enough" and not care though...
Re: Metal Slug Tactics Is Blasting Onto Switch Next Year
Perfect combo of Metal Slug and FFTA. Looking forward to it.
Re: Chrono Faction, An Intriguing Collectible Card Game, Targets Release This Year
Yeah, like others… I saw Chrono and got excited and then immediately was deflated.
This is like stumbling upon Chrono Crusade thinking you found an anime sequel to Trigger and Cross only to discover that it's completely unrelated.
Le sigh. At least we have the Xeno series, Baten Kaitos, and I Am Setsuna & Lost Sphear as spiritual sequels…
Re: Community: What Was Your First Ever Nintendo Game?
Wow this site's readership skews oldest Millennials / cusp Gen X.
I was born in '89 and grew up with a Game Boy, but it looks like a lot of folks here played NES prior to SNES (my first home console was a N64 though that was because my mom was a holdout against the video game craze of the 90s and didn't like what it was doing to folks).
Re: What Do You Want To See From The Dragon Quest Series In The Future? Square Enix Wants To Know
I took the survey and let them know that I still desperately want a localization for Terry's Wonderland 3D and Iru & Luca's Marvellous Mysterious Key 3D - doesn't have to be on 3DS, mind you, but a modern remake of the original two DQM games on Switch or something would be Day 1 purchases for me and I'm still furious they didn't localise them when 3DS was in its heyday.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles Voice Actor Says She 'Thinks' Another Game Is On The Way
@Matl Future Connected is as fully new as Torna is.
Re: Xenoblade Chronicles Voice Actor Says She 'Thinks' Another Game Is On The Way
Future Connected seemed to set up the next game - either a crossover between the two games' settings or even a crossover with Xenoblade X.
I can't wait. Holiday 2022 sounds about the right timing for release, if it's not already occupied by Zelda (and here's hoping Zelda will be a mid-2022 title).
Re: Stand-Up Comedian Reveals His Role In The Upcoming Super Mario Bros. Movie
This is exactly what I want from an initial Mario Bros. movie.
Have Mario and Luigi working for Foreman Spike's Wrecking Crew, then have Mario have to save his girlfriend Pauline from an escaped Cranky Kong (DK Sr - or I guess they could streamline the story by removing the Kong generations and just making OG Donkey Kong into modern DK). And then have the brothers get a new job cleaning toilets before they get sucked down a sewer pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom. Maybe Wario and Waluigi can be other workers for the Wrecking Crew who torment Mario & Luigi.
Re: Poll: Zelda: Skyward Sword HD's Biggest Question - How Do You Pronounce Fi?
I've never understood why people mispronounced her name.
Her Japanese name is clearly written Fai not Fi.
And do people really say Why-Fee for Wifi? Like, they wrote it this way in English because they wanted to reflect the English spelling of WiFi. She even communicates with Scrapper and the Goddess Hylia via WiFi signals - that's the whole point of her name!
Re: Nintendo To Spend Up To $900 Million To Buy Back Its Own Shares
@mr_benn
Agreed. Look at Disney and the fiascos they've wrought because they're trying to make the most profits for their shareholders (shareholders apparently want investment in D+ full stop, screw the talent and everything else the company does).
Re: Random: Zelda Lucky Charm Helps Olympic Gymnast Win Gold
Wait, why are people saying it's the Olympic athlete's good luck charm? This is clearly the coach's charm.
Also, that pink bit is the start of whatever they've tied to it to attach to the yellow string on the back. So that it works as a pendant. Don't know how they fastened it as this is clearly a 30th anniversary OT Link amiibo without the digital parts and sword and shield…
Re: Ninjala's Spooky Season Begins This September
Is it bad of me that I can't keep straight the differences between Ninjala, Ninjara, and Ninjago?
Re: Zelda: The Wind Waker Reimagined Inside Unreal Engine Is A Sight To Behold
Feels a bit more like Link's Awakening HD on Switch if the character designs were in the "toon" style. That is, everything has a plastic or wooden or toylike sheen as if it's a diorama or something.
It's quite cute, but it also doesn't feel like Wind Waker to me. There's something about stripping away that "realism" and the contours and leaning into just what is necessary to deliver emotions. It feels a bit more like when the HD version of the game bugs when you get a treasure item and suddenly the cel shading is stripped away (you can get this effect somehow in Breath of the Wild, too, and it's a bit disturbing).
I'm not saying it's bad by any means. I just think there's purpose in WW's cel shaded, cartoony art style. If I wanted a more rounded, polished, diorama-y version of the game, I want them to replace the characters with versions that look more like Link's Awakening HD - it's a very different cartoon style, so to speak, and the merging between the two is a bit uncanny for me.
This is coming from someone who was taken aback in 2011 by SS's more cartoony style after TP's "gritty realism" and early posters of SS showing a TP-like Link, of course. It may be that I just need time to get used to it (the half-step between style works REALLY well for SS, and then BW is a half step again between SS and TW and that works really well for that setting). I certainly don't want a Skyrim-style work for a Zelda game (even TP is far from TES' artstyles). But each Zelda game also has themes and motifs and I just don't think this necessarily works for WW.
But still, hats off to the artist. As a famous dark lord once said, most impressive.
Re: Soapbox: Playdate Sold Out In 20 Minutes - Is It Time For A New Nintendo Handheld?
Are the games fun?
I'm not sure I could go back to black and white 8-bit graphics at this point when considering buying a new console. Sure, I'd buy the classic titles again on a virtual console (and did on the 3DS), but I just don't think 8-bit and greyscale are really good "restraints" when it comes to game level design. 16-bit or 32-bit and colour (2D PCEngine/SNES/Genesis/PSX/GBA titles come to mind) seem to be the sweet spot when it comes to nostalgia and creative restraints for a new handheld game. Sure, I played and enjoyed Shovel Knight, but I still think it would have been a better game if utilising 16-bit pixel art rather than 8-bit pixel art. And there is no part of me that wants a grey and green version of the game - OG Game Boy was just entirely outclassed by adding a modicum of colour and literally nothing else in 1998.
So am I excited for the Playdate? Not really. Especially not when it's so "exclusive." The FOMO is not real. Can it deliver good play experiences? That's the reason to get one. Not because of the potential due to the signing on of famous designers. Even the greatest game developers have a series of duds in their portfolio. So I'd caution waiting, and I'm just not excited about this device.
I say all this, but I'm still going to camp out to get a Zelda 35th Anniversary Game & Watch (despite having all three Zelda games on 3DS AND Switch and having the first two on Wii and Wii U and GBA and GameCube as well…). I just like the idea of the clock and the Vermin minigame with Link in the protagonist role. And we haven't had a re-release of the original GB green-and-grey version of Link's Awakening in the US since ever. There were a few narrative changes between the GB and the DX versions of the game, so just having it for archival purposes alone is worthwhile. It's my favourite game of all time, though I have to say that as I said above; I just don't see myself playing the GB or DX versions on any console very much anymore given that there's an brilliant HD remake on Switch. I still want to have it though because LA is SPECIAL.
I'd also argue that Twilight Princess was not devoid of jokey content but it definitely was a bit more serious. Still, Skyward Sword was still in that split handheld and console era, and as new players are now seeing too, it's a bulk load more jokey than Twilight Princess, and feels kinda like halfway between TP and WW. So to that end, I'd argue it's not about handhelds being more jokey or kiddy and consoles being more hardcore; it's about the specific tone a specific game is going for. And on the Switch, they've been able to dial the tone to the game. There's no issue of different audiences between handhelds and consoles because it's a device that tailours to multiple audiences and doesn't need to worry too much about marketing to the wrong audience. At least, no more than Nintendo always has.
Re: Feature: Fire Emblem And 8 Other Nintendo Franchises That Need A TV Series
Zelda, Metroid, Starfox, and F-ZERO would all make great anime as well.
Personally, I'd love a Super Smash Bros. / Nintendoland-esque Nintendo Animated Universe (NAU) of anime; do what Marvel did but as a series of anime film (or OVAs or half season anime) crossovers.
Start with DONKEY KONG featuring Mario having to save Paulene from Cranky in his youth, and end the movie/series with the Mario Bros. doing various jobs for people like Wario as construction and wrecking crews, plumbers, and soda Bottlers, before ending up in the Mushroom Kingdom, setting off SUPER MARIO BROS. Then jump over and do a Zelda anime and a Starfox anime and a Metroid anime. Have Samus encounter Captain Falcon on a bounty hunter mission and then have Fox McCloud have to take up his dad's role in the F-ZERO races against Cpt Falcon. Then jump over to Onett and do an Earthbound anime, and promote a re-release of all three MOTHER/Earthbound games while you're at it by getting people invested in the show. Then you can just pull Pikachu (and Jigglypuff) and Kirby from their classic animes. And finally announce a Super Smash Bros. crossover series.
Re: Pokémon GO Reduces PokéStop Spin Distance In America And New Zealand
The thing is… GO doesn't need to listen to fan feedback.
It's the biggest money maker for The Pokémon Company there is, and it's Nintendo's biggest success in mobile gaming (though Fire Emblem Heroes isn't too shabby either).
Pokémon mainline games do make gazillions of dollars, but they've also got high competition to live up to - other versions of Pokémon. So they need to keep selling as well or even better than their predecessors. And that means listening to fans.
Pokémon GO sells more and more continuously than any Pokémon mainline game. If a Pokémon game cart is $60.00, that's the amount many players spend on a monthly basis in the game just to buy more in-game currency to spend on egg incubators and stardust and whatnot. There's a feedback loop with the constant events that drives people to spend more and more money in the game. And because creatures can now be sent to Pokémon HOME - albeit at a variable but relatively slow rate, unless you spend money - there's an incentive to keep catching more and more and not just dump all your creatures.
It's really kinda insidious, and the eggs are a sort of loot box. I've sunk way too much money and time into the game and am currently on a break. I'm also a little indignant because several months ago I bought a ticket to the annual event that happened in July, only to find out that the very days it was happening was when my grandfather's funeral was set for… so I'd be missing the event. It's nobody's fault but myself for buying the ticket to the event over a month in advance, before I knew about the funeral. But the whole game just seems a little money grubby, so I'm on a pause. But why shouldn't it be? It's an outright capitalistic success.
Moral of the story: screw capitalism, embrace socialism; abolish loot boxes and gambling in video games
Re: Five Years Later, Nintendo's Lawsuit Against 'White Cat Project' Has Finally Been Settled
Isn't it possible that Nintendo's defending their patents here (and is right to do so) while also finding the pettiness of dragging out a lawsuit over patents that they don't use anymore is a bit silly while also thinking that Nintendo is probably throwing their weight around as a big corporation while Colopi probably doesn't have nearly as good lawyers while ALSO recognising that tons of small upstart patent troll operations exist soley to try to poach money from companies like Nintendo whose gold standard fun-making devices are all about their patents while ALSO recognising that the law only exists as it does because companies like Nintendo have been fighting tooth and nail to protect their generic patents alongside their specific ones while ALSO recognising that a very specific patent like the layout of the SNES controller can become generic and semi-public domain due to very slight variations that succeeded at calling themselves different and now are so prolific within the industry that you can't really call it Nintendo's patented controller design anymore when every other company is using a slight variation of the SNES or its little sibling the Sony Dual Shock and calling it a Pro Controller?
My point by all this is that it's likely more complicated than Ninty good, Colopi bad or Colopi good Ninty bad. That doesn't mean it's not worth parsing the information to produce a defined narrative about the situation - that's what all reporters have to do if they're worth their salt - to cut through the jargon and deliver a message that distills it down to why this matters so much that a company paid another company 3.3B-en in damages. But it's just as important to not lose that complexity as we search for a narrative. And I'm afraid there are two developing factions of commenters above me that seem to jump over that complexity and just choose a side (pretty common for comments sections of a Nintendo news website when Nintendo is in the news regarding lawsuits - you'll have the fans of the company and the people who love the product but hate the makers and people who just want to see the the commenters consume each other and light a match in the comments.
We don't have all the facts here. But the narrative being driven about this case is that Nintendo's patent lawyers are once again triumphant, but perhaps this time it wasn't necessarily a good thing. Some folks will say it's never a good thing and others will say it's always a good thing. I think there's room for shades of grey.
Re: You Can Now Own The Bike From Pokémon Red, But You're Not Allowed To Ride It
@ShadowSa
There's specifically a single truck in Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow (Pikachu) versions. It's impossible to view without either trading for a Pokémon that knows CUT prior to gaining HM01 from the S.S. St. Anne captain or using some sort of cheating device. This same truck is viewable in Fire Red and Leaf Green versions of the game, and rewards the players with a Lava Cookie if inspected for having had the ingenuity to perform the trick. In Let's Go! Pikachu and Let's Go! Eievui versions of the game, you can still visit the (now empty) harbour after the cruise ship leaves and once your Partner Pikachu or Eievui know how to Surf on water, you can visit the truck for a nice Easter egg moment. The Lava Cookie is replaced with a revive, which respawns every so often.
There are additional trucks in later games - such as the moving truck that you move from Johto to Hoenn via in opening scenes of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald versions.
Re: Round Up: Here Are The First "Hands-On" Impressions Of The Nintendo Switch OLED
@Mr-Fuggles777
Ah, but a 360 and a PS3 aren't apt comparisons, as they are sedentary to the couch and TV.
A switch is more properly compared to a PS Vita - PS Television communication situation, and there it's miles ahead of what the Vita offered.
Re: Round Up: Here Are The First "Hands-On" Impressions Of The Nintendo Switch OLED
I've had a Day 1 launch switch 2 and it's been 4 years - only marginally shorter than the length of time from my Wii U to my Switch.
And my switch must have an issue with it's ability to connect wirelessly to joy cons and the pro controller - the only way I can play with a TV screen is using a wired controller like the hori pad or standing right next to the switch with the controllers in hand (beyond 3 feet they drop off).
I've resisted sending it in for repairs because worried they'll erase my Pokémon - that's save data that isn't backed up.
So it's probably time for an upgrade for me anyway.
Re: Metroid Dread Samus And E.M.M.I amiibo Available To Pre-Order At Nintendo UK Store
I see that it's still available in UK, but still not in US.
I really think I'm going to take the day off work and camp outside Nintendo NY for this release. Want the amiibo double pack and the special edition, maybe even the OLED…
Re: You Can Now Own The Bike From Pokémon Red, But You're Not Allowed To Ride It
It's not PokéDollars. That's the currency used in Orre.
It's just 1,000,000-en. I.e., roughly 10,000.00 USD. For some reason, the English-language version of Pokémon replaced the Japanese symbol for their currency (which is NOT ¥; that was made up by the Americans in analogy to $) with a symbol analogy to ¥ and $ only with the lines going through a P for Pokémon. In Japan they just used the en symbol, so we know exactly how expensive the bike was.
10k for a bike is still outrageous and impossible for a 11-year old kid. But now you can imagine why Youngers and Campers are forking over hundreds of cash - because the last two digits in Japan are not decimalized. So roughly 100-en = 1.00 USD, exchange rates changing to anywhere from half to double that rate, of course. But the important thing is not so much the exact equivalence as much as the magnitude of it.
Re: Soapbox: In Praise Of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Two Years On
It built strongly on the foundations of Awakening, If, and Echoes.
Which of course built on the foundations of the games that came before, but the 2013-onward titles really have a new feel to them.
Awakening made supports more critical and versatile than ever before letting the players create their own ship pairings (something viable in a few other games, but usually for only a limited number of units and each unit with only a very limited number of pairings); it also revived the repeatable and explorable world map from Gaiden and TSS which would lay the foundation for the games being a bit more open world. And it introduced children, a real consequential choice for pairings.
If gave us a three-way story fork that vastly changed the nature of the game, while carrying over the pair supports systems from Awakening and the children (while jettisoning the explorable map to an extent).
Echoes revived the dungeons and explorable towns that had been missing since Gaiden (which Echoes was a remake of). In that sense, Three Houses learns the best lessons from its direct predecessors (minus maybe Heroes and Unrivalled, which I still think probably influenced it). It still has some shortcomings (Crimson Flower feels like it's missing several chapters for the end dealing with TWSITD, for example), but most of its initial shortcomings were rectified by DLC (like adding Jeritza as a PC unit in Crimson Flower.
I do agree that LGBTQ+ reps were the biggest shortcoming. Crimson Flower is my favourite route because Beles x Edelgard is my OTP ship for the game. But there should be more. The only option for Beleth in the base game is Linhardt. Claude WOULD have been a wise choice. I also think Dimitri and Seteth should have been available as love interests for Beleth too. But beyond the PC, there should be more romancing in general, and every LGBTQ+ character in this game is Bi or Pansexual. Echoes at least got it right with having at least one character who was solely gay (though he was relegated to the poor longing gay boy pining over straight man trope). And it's far bettern than the situation with Nils in If. We need LOTs of options in the next main series title, and if they remake Genealogy+Thracia or Blazing+Binding, I should hope at least some of the Gen I pairings are allowed to be opened up to non-reproductive pairs. Or let them adopt and find alternative family styles! Holy Blood lines of descent are part of the problem, and 3H makes that clear in its narrative. I should hope that would mean that they recognise that you don't need to be able to have different reproductive organs to have a good story ending or successors in the next generation of the game. Maybe they adopt a successor nephew or niece or apprentice instead to take up their combat style and inherit their abilities.
At the very least, we shouldn't have to choose between having LGBTQ+ supports and having all the characters possible in the game. That was one place 3H really learned from the errors of If (please also: don't screw us out of a child unit by choosing to pair up two obvious story characters like Kamui and Aqua just because you're short on units of "one gender").
Re: Random: The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Opening Ceremony Showcased A Ton Of Game Music
@sixrings
I'm assuming this is sarcasm too, right?
Re: New Metroid Dread Report Outlines 7 Points That Define The 2D Saga
@Stubborn_Monkey
I think Metroid 5's reveal could only have been better if they hadn't said we're sorry, no Metroid Prime 4 information at this time before the trailer, and kept that to be AFTER the reveal of Metroid 5 and it's release date. But otherwise, Metroid 5 is on track to be the biggest Metroid release since Prime, if not ever. They just stuck the landing with this reveal (other than what I said above). People are hungry for Metroid on its 35th anniversary, and they not only surprised us with something nobody thought would ever happen but really wanted to happen, but they also revealed "and it's coming out this fall" - exactly how they surprised us with Origami King last year. It's Nintendo's cagey-ness at its best. The trick is actually getting the game to come out in that intended release window.
Zelda has had similar release widow and announcement timing woes, it just has a large enough audience to gobble it up even if delayed. But Skyward Sword is a great example of how even a titan of a franchise like Zelda can face this issue. SS's first trailers were revealed with HD graphics and better framerate because it was developed on HD devices. Then the gameplay demo failed horrendously. And then the game was shown running on an actual Wii and people saw how fugly it could look. They claimed the pointillism-style artwork would make that 460p resolution pretty, and it helped mitigate the issues, but showing what it could be and then giving us something worse was a huge mistake. And then it came out at the tail end of the Wii's lifetime, and required a the Motion Plus Wiimote or Motion Plus adaptor to old Wiimotes, and still had problems. And ultimately, it wasn't the open expansive game Zelda had previously sold us on, and the game had a lot of bugs and frustrating QoL issues, and people felt let down by all of these issues. So its marketing and design flopped hard, and the game sold poorly despite being on the most successful home console Nintendo has ever produced. But now the HD remaster on the Switch has resolved all of the issues above that it could resolve, is released at a time when tons of new players brought into the franchise by BotW are hungry for more Zelda, and has no competing Zelda games to buy (or download from 3rd parties like AM2R was for Samus Returns & FF), so the release was massively successful, amiibo supply and scalper fiascos aside.
It's just… Zelda could bounce back from multiple release fiascos like SS. Nintendo seems to have enough belief in the Metroid team to know it's not MercurySteam's fault that M:SR on 3DS underperformed. I doubt they'd bring back Next Level Games to make another Metroid game, though. More likely to let them focus on making future Luigi's Mansion, Mario Strikes, and Punch-Out!! titles.
Re: New Metroid Dread Report Outlines 7 Points That Define The 2D Saga
@Stubborn_Monkey
1986 to 1991, 4 year gap
1991 to 1993, 1 year gap
1993 to 2002, 8 year gap
2002 to 2004, 1 year gap
2004 to 2007, 2 year gap
2007 to 2010, 2 year gap
2010 to 2016, 5 year gap
2016 to 2017 , no gap
2017 to 2021, 3 year gap
Biggest gaps were between Metroid 3 and Metroid 4, and between Other M and Federation Force. No drought as long as the one in the N64 era, for sure (though I believe Metroid Prime was originally planned for the N64DD before moving to the Gamecube). But it's also clear that they WANTED to get The OFFICIAL Metroid 2 Remake to come out in 2016 (just as they wanted to release Federation Force in 2015 alongside the new Nintendo 3DS), but they just couldn't close the deal. And pushing it back a year was a big problem for the franchise - it caused the outrage over Federation Force being Nintendo's only offering for the 30th anniversary, and their simultaneous shut down of AM2R when we had no idea they were going to release their own remake the next year (because of Nintendo's standard cagey-ness around game reveals).
I can only imagine that Metroid Prime 4 reveal at that first Switch E3 of 2017 was an attempt to ameliorate the burnt fanbase, but the fact that Samus Returns was released AFTER people tossed their 3DSes for Switches was a further blow to the franchise. And then the production woes of Metroid Prime 4 came to light, and these past 4 years have felt like a real drought.
It's clear that Nintendo was satisfied with the product and decided to keep MercurySteam on for Metroid 5, but it's also clear that the WAY Nintendo markets Metroid has been a big issue for their sales.
Re: New Metroid Dread Report Outlines 7 Points That Define The 2D Saga
@Stubborn_Monkey
Re that quote about the X on ZDR; I read the report too. I don't trust the narrator; they could be Federation scum. Even if they show Samus the footage, it could be doctored by inserting digital scans from the BSL into footage of Planet ZDR. It's something the Galactic Empire could do easily (and did many times, doctoring Holonet broadcasts, I mean), so I have no doubt that the Galactic Federation here could do it, too.
I've got a baaaaaaaad feeling about this…
Re: Cute Zelda: Skyward Sword Bomb Bags Are Being Given Away On My Nintendo Australia
Darnit, I want that. Hope NoA gets them.
That would be a really epic dice bag for my D&D games. Also a useful prop!
Re: New Metroid Dread Report Outlines 7 Points That Define The 2D Saga
@Stubborn_Monkey Compared to the audience of Smash, Metroid is small potatoes. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has outsold the entire back-library of Metroid's games.
Metroid is one of those game series that Nintendo cares about, believes can be a winner, but keeps getting bad draws when it comes to release windows, marketing, etc. Samus Returns was clearly targeted for a 2016 release but couldn't make it in time. The whole delay a game until it's good schtick that Miyamoto waxes on about. But by rushing a spin-off to release for the anniversary instead, while delaying the game fans would ACTUALLY enjoy playing, while simultaneously shutting down the fan-remake of the same game they were secretly remaking (for good reason, mind you), they lost a lot of good will.
I'd imagine that both Metroid Prime 4 and Metroid 5 were targeted for 2021 (35th anniversary) release window, but Prime 4 had to be delayed because of starting over from scratch. Notably, Metroid Prime 1 had similar issues where it was restarted from scratch and then rushed (cutting out boss fights with Kraid and an Ice Titan, and moving Thardus from Magmoor to Phendrana, leaving Magmoor pretty empty…). Luckily, they were able to dual-release Prime with Fusion and had such success that year greater than Metroid has ever experienced before or since.
They need to recapture such a market with Dread. It doesn't have to be an Animal Crossing or a Smash or a Zelda game, but it has to do at least as well as say, Fire Emblem Awakening did, since its success justified that series' survival and continuation onward to the present day.
Re: New Metroid Dread Report Outlines 7 Points That Define The 2D Saga
@Stubborn_Monkey
Is that your speculation, or do you have information that I lack? The article itself made the report sound fishy and a trap for Samus, the only person capable of hunting the X…