masterLEON

The intern needs time to draw the ‘Legacy Edition’ graphic on the menu screen.

As an aside, I do miss the speaker in the Wii-remote, though. Not for every game, but for games like The House of the Dead 2&3 Returns it was nice hearing the shots fire, the click from an empty clip, and the “Reload” warning sound samples for an extra level of immersion.

They were a nice touch of presentation for the time, but I appreciate the faster ‘time-to-start-menu’ we have now. A nice middle ground would be if animations and/or sound could autoplay after hovering on the icon for 3-5 seconds. Best of both worlds, there.

As long as there’s entry-level Switches that ship with 25GB(formatted out of 32GB), there will not be GC games on NSO.

@Cashews A lot of 360 XBLA games are back compatible from what I noticed. As long as a game works in XBox One you should be good on Series. But, I wonder if the SX/S can run the old Game Room. I should have paid more attention back then. It had some rare titles that never got rereleased. Like Konami’s Devastators and The Main Event. Hopefully they’ll revisit the Arcade Collection someday with a vol. 2.

@Cashews Almost 20 years of shmuppers paying dearly for our niche, yes. The peak would have been the 360-era of ports, when Sony said 2D games on PS3 were taboo.

@-wc- The 3/4 overhead horizontal games I know are Ironclad on NEOGEO, Progear on Capcom Arcade stadium, and a couple granddaddys, Magmax (Arcade Archives) and Seicross.

Quite a large gap between Series X and S. They probably just ran out of X’s.

@Arawn93 Western influenced and higher (mature) ratings, and more digital sales are likely factors, though I still feel that they’re still slower to adopt digital in Japan as opposed to EU and NA. Otherwise the PS5DE would have been doing better.

This is a great drop! Crusader of Centy is so smooth! And Revenge of Shinobi, even though Spider-Man and Batman will probably be edited or palette swapped, is also a classic, together with GnG.

@KoopaTheGamer You sure we shouldn’t be blaming Taito themselves or maybe SquareEnix (who owns them). They sure seem to love overcharging and underwhelming whenever Space Invaders or other top tier Taito IP’s are involved (Bubble Bobble and Darius as well).

Repeating ground textures, check.
Comically huge alien mushrooms, check.
Unexplained environmental polyhedra, check.

Welcome to the Fantasy Zone it is!

Is (no) joke! And they look great in the Inti art style! I’ll be sure to show my support when it comes out.

The House of the Dead 2&3 Returns would not be the best home versions of those games if it wasn’t for the Wii IR pointing capabilities. 2 on Wii is even closer to the arcade than the Dreamcast version since the Wii remotes replicated the flashlight tracking behavior in dark areas perfectly as the arcade version also used IR sensors in the guns. The Wii should have gotten more home ports of arcade light gun games while it had the chance. I wish the Switch had that option as Gyro pointing isn’t it. However, Splatoon 3 totally brings back good feeling motion aiming that’s far superior to Splatoon 2’s sloggy iteration. Both are still not as snappy as Splatoon 1, but 3 is definitely the more playable version. I should totally make that “You can’t do this with sticks” Splatoon kill compilation I’ve been meaning to do.

@Hero-of-WiiU I mean, they still own the stock which can (and will) go up in value. All they’ve wasted is time at a shareholder meeting.

Where are my full length baggy pants? I’m trying to put together a 90’s look and it’s kinda hard to pull off with nothing but shorts and capris!

@Alpha008 Apparently, but not for much longer.

@Serpenterror That’s a weird story (bro) take on 2DS hardware sales if I ever saw one. It’s been selling somewhat consistently >100 for a long time now. Now if you walk back through the charts week-by-week you’ll reach the 3DS eShop closure in March, a prime time for a rush, yet sales are average. The last time multiple hundreds of units were sold was in January, at 400 units, AFTER the holidays. Back further into the holidays, average in the low 30’s. That tells me, instead, that there may only be a handful, or less, of boutique stores left that are still able to source new stock and they’ve been selling through whatever they can get, when they get it. The demand for backup 2(3)DS systems still seems high, but the supply is definitely running out.

@tgt Japanese sales are a different beast. Look towards the UK or NPD rankings.

Another week of people shocked how well Nintendo is doing in its homeland. All’s normal, I suppose. I predict FF and PS5(disc) will chart #1 for only two weeks before dropping again. Western-style is a hard sell over there, and FF branding won’t help it that much.

@Mr_Zurkon Right? Almost double the units than last week, too.

@Simon97 I thought it sold well. But the dedicated fanbase likely already got their copies by now, so sales dropped.

Well, if they would just compress the audio on MGS4 (and I mean with care, don’t just make 128kbs mp3’s like barbarians) then you can fit that in a collection with V and GZ.

Vanilla for the free camouflage

“Hi, I’m Daisy!” Yes. Yes you are. (presses A to select)

Also, is elephant Mario a deep cut reference to something? Did I dream it? Did I touch that wonder flower?

Definitely the out of left field game of the Direct! I’d like to see where this is going!

Jump on these! They have variable difficulties for novices to experts. You don’t have to get too caught up in scoring and mechanics if you don’t want to. All 4 are great but I’d lean more towards DoDonPachi Resurrection if you’re just getting in.

Predictions: none, as per usual

Just hit me with it, I like surprises!

Meatpacking district, eh? A little upscale for a video game tour destination, but at least there’d be a ton of tourists. Might check it out if I got the time. Maybe I can make up for the Mario metal water bottle I left by mistake at the last event I went to.

I’m wondering if all the underlying game engine changes going from 2 > 3 is what was really holding 2 back from having everything in 3? Think about it, 2 was a launch year title, which was in development way ahead of the actual launch of the Switch vs. 3 which has the advantage of the team having more experience with the hardware but compounded by growing pains of a new engine (but potentially more robust one; I mean why else change it from 2 if there was no benefit, right?)

A decent chunk of my wishlist went on sale, most of which are not on this list of usual suspects^^ that we see time and time again. (Like a bunch of indie shmups and action games, for example.) For a year without E3, you’d think there was one going on with all the sales. Even though we technically don’t need E3, the summer sales that usually coincide with it are still a quite important revenue bump for the smaller publishers in the industry.

@Daniel36 Boats, or lure them with a job-granting station like a fletcher table or lectern.

@Nintendancies I’m thinking that nowadays, especially since the series is 8 years old and the player base is so huge, there should be an always-on power rank in regular Turf War. Like Splatfest Power, it’ll keep players of similar power ratings matched up. And let the ratings reset every week or so after the weekend. With that, also give the option to manually rank down if things are getting too hot, like how Anarchy/ranked and Salmon Run currently let you demote yourself. Because oddly enough, the “casual” mode is the only mode just keeps forcing you to climb whether you want to or not by taking on experience points, and once you reach a certain experience level all gloves are off as far as the matchmaker is concerned, ready or not. You get matched with stars, win streaks, teams, and everyone in between. It kinda makes me wish we could see everyone’s levels and ranks again to to prove I’m not imagining things and that matchmaker really did stick me with rank A’s playing against S+20’s when going for a rank-up series.

I wonder if the Squeezer fix will effect the S-Blast’s far range/accurate jumping shot exploit as well?

@TheBigBlue Sounds normal, players in groups are going around with whatever new weapon that has the highest meme potential.

Awful situation. Nowadays we even have to be careful who to get our physical games from as it seems we’re almost never guaranteed a copy unless they cut a deal with big box retail store to carry them.

I do recommend if you happen to have any of their games wishlisted on the eShop, take them off the list or buy them sooner rather than later as delisted games on your wishlist will appear to have “disappeared,” yet they’ll still secretly be there even though they can’t be bought, and they’ll still count towards the upper capacity of your wishlist (which is 400 games). Basically what’s left is Psyvariar Delta (and Cybattler DLC), Penguin Wars (and Hebereke/Ufouria DLC), Soldam, Daemonum, and Japanese Rail Sim: Journey to Kyoto.

Give me a shooter collection with the original Operation Wolf, Operation Thunderbolt, Space Gun, and Gun Buster then I’d be happy.

@Fizza Forgot to mention, the 3rd song is also by the same band (Yoko and the Gold Bazookas) is Three Horn Circus, which I got a lot of last night after the maintenance ended. Ironic really, because matchmaker was clowning me all night by keeping me from winning my Rank-Up battle for S+0 🤡

Man, we only had one update where Sloshing Machines didn’t get touched, but they keep finding ways to knock us down (The platform breaking nerf was necessary, of course) 5 frames delay doesn’t sound like much, but I still felt that last night after the soft update went live. My concern though is since now they’re slowing down our inking and slaying potential even further, they should also retro the 220Sp point nerf back to 210 (we originally started at 200!) because that was a part of a reaction to discourage backline Machine playstyles. We don’t have enough slots to mitigate everything they take away AND add utility abilities just to be effective. It’s beyond ridiculous at this point. Here’s hoping the new 3rd Machine (since the current kit is basically the Kensa but with Booyah Bomb replacing Splashdown, or Reefslider, logically) gives us something to look forward to. Though a Neo would probably be next and I’d be surprised if they don’t give us the throwback point sensor, Ink/Tri-Zooka combo.

@Dev9417 This would be the first time Salmon Run gets a major weapons buff. Grizzco coworkers are feasting this season!

@Fizza Machine main to Stamper main: “First time?”
I still count the Machine as a non-shooter though, so their bias against us rings true.

@Ryu_Niiyama I liked that intro, too. Looking back it was pretty effective visual and audio direction using a very limited amount of resources. The taking off (visual), the climbing and cruising (audio), and the slowly scrolling lights of the city, it was really well done. The game itself was kinda basic, but the NPC encounters made it lively and unexpected.

@KingMike That I didn’t know. I thought the slots were just for background. The game would have been more interesting for sure.

I wanted to try this back in the day but my video store never got it in. Instead I rented Sofel’s other ‘Kid’ title, Casino Kid. A story-based casino game where you play against gradually harder NPCs until you get invited by the last opponent to play Poker at a castle (what’s up with Sofel and castles?) where you can wait for the practically scripted Royal Flush to go all in and beat the last opponent. Unlike the somewhat teachable basis of the stock market in Wall Street Kid, don’t try waiting for a Royal Flush in a real casino. It probably won’t happen.

So, if Turf War is the common mode in Splatoon, what is the one in Foamstars called? Team Bathmatch? Lol!

Well this is one way to get around color blind options, not even people with good eyesight can see what’s going on!

Hugely impressive feat for a Zelda game. Over there I believe BotW helped pave the way for TotK even though that was not as popular out of the gate. It took a few years and many streamer hours to at least get people warmed up to the open world Zelda idea. That said, GTA VI might be the first one to break the 2M launch over there based on the same principle, as there are so many popular streamers/vTubers playing it. We’ll have to see.

Further interesting, not a single first party recent gen playstation exclusive on that list. It’s like the super-hyper-realistic graphics that players in the West are drooling over aren’t swaying the Japanese market, Lol. Heck, the whole list is game>graphics (as in the game itself, not necessarily gameplay), and MH World is probably the most detailed looking one on there.

@Browny I also find it curious that Final Fantasy X, XIII, and XV didn’t make it as high as the other titles (not sure where they are, they certainly did not shift over 1.84M copies at launch) Maybe they don’t like their RPG’s with too much modern/futuristic settings and realistic graphics?

Got this when I first heard about it and the Splatoon Zelda Splatfest keychains too. I knew these wouldn’t last until tomorrow,

I should probably finish BotW first, and I want to do it in under the 20 hours left on my Hero’s path timeline before it starts erasing the beginning of my adventure.

Splatoon 3 at 10.67 million and its first year isn’t even over yet, that’s really impressive! Only 3 million to go to pass Splatoon 2, we can probably expect that by the end of this fiscal year, after the expansion.

A price drop would definitely boost unit sales, that is if Nintendo needed more units sold. But since the Switch has already established a market and proven itself, the only reason it should get a drop at this point is when there is new hardware on the horizon ready to go with a street date. I mean 15 million projected is very reasonable and doable at the current price point even for the Switch at this stage (and another 15 over the next 2 years for the record if Nintendo would keep it going), with TotK and MP4, if we can get it. But basically only Nintendo can get away with that whereas Sony and XBox are overly reliant on a steady stream of flagship releases in order to sell consoles.

Really wasn’t expecting Power to come out with the win as Courage were the ones that were giving my solo queue teams trouble. That, and I had a pretty decent WR in Pro, roughly 65%, with Tricolor and Courage pulling me down to 50% by the end. GGs to Power and Courage and great efforts by my Wisdom teammates.

Special shout-outs to my solo queuers (on both sides) in my absolute banger of a Rainmaker Open session afterwards! The quick wins and sweaty firefights made that slow crawl to my next rank-up battle a blast! The synergy was there from the get-go and now I’m not dreading Rainmaker like I did before. (Splat Zones can still GDIAF though)

$40 is like the high end I’d be willing to pay these days for shmups on digital, regardless who made it. But even at that price I’d need to be absolutely convinced it was worth it. I even waited for Deathsmiles to go on sale before picking that up (it being $40 regular) and I really like the first game.

@KingMike And I bought several from play-asia with no regrets. Including my first, a Mushihimesama Futari, which I promptly knocked over my vertically standing 360 the day I got it while it was inside. Left a dense white ring on the plastic. It took a Game Dr. and a complete bottle of the included resurfacing fluid to get it back to working condition.

Cool, after that Splatfest with the ‘invisible’ White Chocolate players they needed to address visibility issues at some point.

@johnedwin I try to get physical when I can and where it just makes more sense, like if a game is known to be over 10GBs, for example. Or if it’s a title published by a mainstream company where you know you can just wait for Black Friday sales or some other holiday and you can get it cheaper. But there are certain times when the window of opportunity for sales of certain games to drop in price is absurdly tiny you might as well just buy it at full price or at a mediocre sale if you’re collecting, or settle for digital sales if you just want to play the game. What we’re saying here is Attack on Titan, vanilla 2 and Final battle, due to various factors, will not drop in price. (even though Final Battle makes vanilla 2 obsolete, it holds value just because it’s Attack on Titan, and had a small print run) Atelier Ryza 1, another KT published title, was a sleeper hit that was readily available physically for a little bit after release, then turned super extra rare seemingly overnight and was getting resold for over $100 on ebay before KT ordered the reprint. I absolutely bought Ryza 2 day one because of that. The physical and used market is nuanced heavily in that not every game you’re looking at will end up “cheaper if you know where to look or wait long enough”. Sometimes you need to do research and treat these games like a commodities market from right before the game releases, especially the niche games, so you don’t get burned by missing out on a game you want.

SquareEnix run somewhat frequent 50% off sales on older titles. And they’ve learned their lesson over the years, so to speak, when it comes to availability of Final Fantasy-related games, at least. So their physical releases will not likely become expensively rare these days unless it’s a collector’s edition (though the Dragon Quest franchise, on the Enix side of SquareEnix, is a different story). That said, I picked up Bravely II for $25US physical on clearance at Best Buy last year (in-store only, it’s not listed for that price online). That is clearly an exception where the digital price will not come close for a long time, if ever.

Same goes for Ubisoft (Rabbids, Sparks of Hope) as they run deep discounts on many of their titles if you wait long enough, or even within a couple months of release, on both retail and digital. They’re all too happy to pull the sale trigger. They are super mainstream and their games will not end up being so rare that their value exceeds MSRP/RRP.

Xenoblade 3 is Nintendo. $40US is the best you can hope for physically for maybe another year and then it goes out of print. Then it turns rare and will start going up in price. I recommend getting it while you can this year if you haven’t.

P5R is too new (for Switch), we don’t know how long it’ll take for it to join Atlus’ bargain digital sales, though chances are it will happen. SMT III and V have already touched 50% off digitally so it’s just a matter of time. That said, physical copies of Persona and SMT will most definitely hold their value for a while until extra print runs stop being made. That’s when the prices start to go up.

So in the end, if a game is mainstream go ahead and play the waiting game and score. If a game is niche and popular, it might already be too late. If it’s a flop you might get lucky and it’ll be cheap, but more than likely you’ll have to fork out the cash unless you settle for digital.

@johnedwin On the used game market, low print run NIS, KoeiTecmo, LimitedRun, Atlus JRPGs and anime tie-ins, and a handful of select shoot-em-ups can routinely break that rule. If you just want to play the game, digital is almost always the cheaper option.

CMA: It won’t be good for the fast growing cloud gaming market.

Real gamers: Oh, no! Anyway…

@Maxz I like how it keeps adding onto the end of the bar and repeating to keep building up the pressure.

I love how unsettling the Salmon Run music is. I’m not proficient in music but it seems like some odd time signatures are at work here to throw the listener off-balance, in addition to the editing.

That said, I’m still on board for a post-apocalyptic future where the sea life that has taken over the land have discovered our instruments and started to jam.