masterLEON

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.

@Anti-Matter Yes, these three, plus a 4th character, Nell, represent the Orange Star nation, one of several nations in the game (none of which are ‘bad guys’ per se, they’re merely opposing territories; just throwing that out there because you get to play all of them throughout the Campaign). Andy is the ‘normal’ Commander Officer. All stats and rules for his units are baseline, making his missions beginner-friendly for learning the game mechanics. Good thing as he’s the first CO the game sets you up to use in the Campaign.

Max’s direct contact vehicle units, tanks mostly but also units like Anti-Air cannons and jet fighters, do extra damage. His CO power can allow one of his units to wipe out a full health unit in one turn instead of two if you play to the unit’s advantages, like Anti-air canons vs jet fighters. Otherwise it just does extra damage. His ranged units, such as the artillery cannons and missile launchers do less damage and also have less range, if I recall correctly.

Sami is more technical in that her play style goes for the win by controlling more resources first before your opponent. Sending out more infantry units to more cities (that generates more money) and factories and airports, etc. (where you build vehicles and planes with money) is her basic strategy. And with her special CO power, Double Time, her soldiers can travel farther and secure cities/factories/airports in one turn instead of two. Then with the extra income, you build more units to swarm the opposing Commander’s units while they can only build a little bit because you took all the resources (kind of like a game of Monopoly where you control more properties and one of each color, preventing the other players from building houses and hotels).

CO powers will charge up over several turns then you can use them, a lot of the gameplay revolves around using the powers wisely. The beginning missions are structured in a way where you can expect to activate your CO powers regularly as they become available. So planning your moves around when your powers become available, and the opponent’s powers as well, is a key for victory.

Much of the first game’s Campaign is tightly designed around the story, which introduces new characters, new units, and new gameplay mechanics gradually. So you don’t really get to choose a Commander freely until later in the game, story permitting. The second game has more freedom after the beginning/re-introductory missions. Again, story permitting. There are challenge maps and head-to-head versus maps, in the War Room, where you can choose whoever you want, but those are separate from the story/Campaign mode.

Great theme, even if it is a cross-promo. Though I think Power will get most of the votes. I’m leaning towards picking Wisdom in honor of the first LoZ game.

@Vortexeo Squid Sisters vs Off the Hook vs Deep Cut, eh? That’ll be the most divisive Splatfest ever! Make it 72 hours, add a Tri-Color Shifty Station, it would be so insane!

Still probably getting this, but down the line. Gonna see about getting Swiss for my GB player for my original carts. The art on the remake is really crispy though, not gonna lie.

@Joeynator3000 I thought pipes were part of the 2nd game as I somehow associated them with certain Black Hole missions. I could be wrong, though.

@Koda1000 Pro only means that they use the Splatfest Power system (from Splatoon 2) for matchmaking. The results of your preliminary first 7 matches will determine your Splatfest rank. So if you did well on your first 7, you’re going to start at a higher rank. Of course, it’s sort of a bell curve now since the game is still new, so what seemed mid rank in Splatoon 2 is now a bit higher with a bigger player base.

Great job Team Nessie! Shout-outs to those poor, poor handful of Bigfoots out there who carried their entire team. They’re so elusive, just like the real thing. Hm, real thing? Well, anyway. Gg’s to Aliens. (Even to you Tri-Sloshers, enjoy your buffs while you still got them.)

@AstroTheGamosian The fan is on its way out. That’s what happened to mine. Not much you can do other than ease up on games that stress the system until the OLED comes in.

@Rika_Yoshitake Quite literally Monsters (Nessie) vs Aliens in this splatfest. I lucked out and got 1 real Tricolor early on, the rest was all mirrors. After that I just went to normal battles so I could battle Aliens.

(Insert name of one of Rusty’s 10 kids, from Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball): Way to go! But I think you can do better than that.

How many donuts is it gonna take, Bethesda? Let’s get that price parity with other platforms already!

@daveMcFlave I’m thinking XIV was more divisive as it wasn’t as fast as XIII and previous entries, they introduced a questionably designed new series protagonist, and the character modeling and lighting was not too great (poor Andy). XV definitely fixed a lot of things. Still not as fast as older titles, but the new game mechanics add a lot to the game.

@Vyacheslav333 They’ve been going back and adding rollback to previous titles. KoF 98 Final Edition and ‘02 Global Match on PS4 have rollback. KoF XV just added it in February. Even Samurai Shodown 2019 (7) is getting it soon (but not on Switch).

@Selim The PS5 can play the PS4 version. There’s no 120FPS mode unlike KoF XV, so it shouldn’t need a native PS5 version. Unless SNK would go back in and give us the pre-pixelated versions of all the sprites, but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. And most likely the input latency versus a native PS5 build is going to be lower as the community has been finding out. Series X has the XB1 back compat version, so we’ll have to see if they’ll do anything with that.

@HeeHo Right? Since 3 didn’t get the Untold treatment, might as well just get it separately.

Opening gambit ability changes are crazy! I see it being huge in Tower Control and Rainmaker for getting to the objective and seizing control first, but also for supporting whoever’s running for the tower and Rainmaker by clearing out the enemy team. And then continuously splatting the other team as they respawn, adding 15 seconds to the effect per pop.

Rusty took too much of my time while I was trying to rush through buying all the baseball minigames that I couldn’t get the Mega Man themes before the servers went offline. I was right on the theme and hit purchase but it was seconds too late.

@majoko It may help understanding the world of Hyrule and how things got this way since this is a direct sequel. But they’ll most likely just give us flashbacks in the intro or at some point in the game, so probably not. For backstory, the BotW’s DLC and the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity tie-in game is pretty much full of the current game’s lore.

I’m looking forward to MacGuyver-ing Link out of no-win situations with a stick, a salmon, an eyeball, a chest, and a lightning wand.

@Cashews Unless the squid language in the BG secretly says PAX East, which it doesn’t look like it does, then I’d say you’re good. (my guess is North American Championship 3323)

I got 4. Original Cosmo Black, a white Mario 3D Land New 3DS (original release with colored ABXY, not the Black Friday special) EDIT: which got swapped with an Animal Crossing one because the R button stopped working. I put the Splatoon theme faceplates on it and vinyl stickers. An official Nintendo refurb red N3DSXL for backup. And a white Japanese New 3DS just for the SEGA 3D Archives (Classics) Final Stage, but I found a few hidden DSI gems like Space Invaders Extreme Z and a bunch of themes. Good thing I’m not that into Hatsune Miku, she’s got a million themes based on Vocaloid songs on the JP theme shop.

I gotta order some new original 3DS batteries since my Cosmo Black is running out of charge time, and also I believe the Switch Pro Controller uses the same battery.

With only a week left, and it being Tuesday now, I’m doubtful that any new sales would start. I’ll be wrapping up my progress-locked DLC buying and start tossing eShop money to devs on my wishlist.

Then, maybe start prepping my old unused Cosmo Black for…a new adventure. Which is already color coordinated for the occasion.

“When breeding horses, the baby Horse now has a chance of being better than its parents in speed, jump strength, and health. This change is intended to make Horse breeding a viable way of getting great Horses, if a player starts with good parents and puts in enough time and Golden Carrots”

Time to make MC Derby Owner’s Club a reality, then.

Apparently I didn’t update my Shovel Knight on 3DS so I did and got it upgraded to Treasure Trove, sweet! I forgot they did that.

I’ve had it parked on Space Harrier for the longest, though i’ve had the Dreamcast, Calamari Inkantation, and regular Splatoon, before.

@westman98 @JohnnyC If they really do get a version up and running on the current Switch, it’ll be even smaller since it won’t need the highest resolution assets and audio data. That’s where the bulk of the storage requirements are, textures and audio.

@conditionals @AlexOnley It’s minor, but I see there being disconnects of the visual kind if we had Splatoon 1 versions of the Grizz, Co. and main lobbies since we have to share those area with our squadmates or solo queue players who choose to “keep going” who may or may not have the Expansion. When you have 1 person in S1 and 3 in S3, or vice versa, or 2 and 2, you have to be able to see what the other players are doing. Sure, unique versions of the lobbies might be doable if the S1 versions keep the same dimensions and layout, and just remodel everything else. I don’t see it as laziness or missed opportunities. But from a game dev standpoint, since it’d be a whole new can of worms to troubleshoot and bugfix an entirely new room with new geometry and collision boxes that needs to be 95-ish% the same thing as an already existing asset for parity reasons, why not just reuse the same assets and save the time for the meatier parts if the DLC since they’re claiming it’ll be massive? With so many other tiny nods and details in place already, there’s no way they didn’t think about S1 unique versions of the shared lobbies in the planning stages of the DLC. And then, just speculating, what if the future DLC plans, post-Side Order, involves Inkopolis Square? If that’s the case, making and balancing out yet another unique version of the main lobby starts to become taxing. That’s the point where I start thinking that maybe the Jelly construction guys have figured out the concept of cookie-cutter construction.

As for Hotlantis there’s only one Harmony. If we’re to follow the established lore, some of the items we’re buying from there are one-of-a-kind designs (technically, I guess) that Harmony made herself. So it make sense that she’s still the only point of contact for them. Now maybe if she had another friend, maybe a bandmate, open up an Inkopolis branch that still sells Harmony’s merch. Having identical items in both locations (potentially 3) at the same time would break the lore. And adding flags for items that’s specifically handmade by Harmony versus manufactured items like the video games and magazines so they don’t show up at more than one location could be a logistical nightmare. So that’s pretty much that.

@Fizza That’s probably likely, going by the the final shot in the trailer was in a dreamlike version of the Square.

I just a little throwback thing. It would have been nice as a free bonus with NSO or with the new season, but it is what it is. Even though some work was done to it (rebaking the shadows, new trees, more posters and graffiti, remodeled shops and new shopkeeps, adding the rail station, etc.) the bulk of the DLC price is still the Side Order episode, I feel. And for those who never saw the Plaza, it’s a curio, for sure.

@sixrings Honestly no one should prepay for digital anything blindly. New IP’s, especially. (I’m also looking at you, Star Citizen) But here we’re already on the 3rd mainline game with one DLC campaign to base the new DLC’s expectations on. Since it’s already been announced that the story will revolve around Pearl and Marina’s current tour, and presumably their past (as far as I can gather from the trailer). We should probably expect the same format of stage progression set by all 3 Splatoon story modes and Octo Expansion as well. So we already have a good idea what to expect in the new DLC…more canon Splatoon lore and challenging stages. And that’s enough for me. (I also kinda needed the ability chunks for builds and game currency, but that’s besides the point). It’s not even about being a Nintendo fan, but just as fans of an IP in general. Look at all the Marvel, LotR, Harry Potter, SquareEnix, FromSoftware fans out there preordering and buying up every official thing from their fandoms. We’re just spending the money ahead of time because we know we’re getting more content, and we would have bought it anyway. For everyone else, absolutely wait for reviews and such. No one’s being forced to preorder or for FOMO. Also if this DLC was advertised as a spinoff or non-canon side story, then they can keep that because it’s unnecessary or at least wait for a sale. Alternatively, one could wait to watch someone’s playthrough or read a walkthrough or strategy guide before playing, I mean go ahead if you’re ‘that’ type of person, I’d rather play it myself.

@Nua I just bought the 2 map packs for roughly $25 and they covered all the DLC, everything was marked as purchased including the free stuff. Well, I assume the free stuff was included as the game told me I had already downloaded some of the content when buying the packs but I actually went for the free downloads first.

This is beyond Taito-tier levels of overpricing.

Splatfest tee XP adjustment is great! We can finally take better advantage of Murch’s shirt-scrubbing service.

“Addressed an issue that sometimes caused slowdowns to occur when players regained control of their characters after finishing a battle and returning to the lobby.”

I always assumed the stutter/slowdown post-battle was loading or something. Okay, then. Kudos!

Also, it’s nice to see an update where the Sloshing Machine didn’t get any additional nerfs. My anxiety is subsiding.

Eh, Tokyo Game Show in September is more important anyway. There will still be a June Direct and multiple fall presentations as usual.

@Teksetter The camera’s too high and wide also. There’s no way to convey hulking mecha if they’re using a standard 3rd person camera or a top-down view, no matter how small you make the trees and terrain. But yeah, if they slow all the movement down to about 1/3 to 1/4 speed, then it might work. Might even improve the framerate, too.

@ATHFjman18 I’ve rented it a few times back in the day. I finally beat it, but had to cheat so much. Not codes, but a ton of out-of-bounds jumping so I didn’t get caught and thrown in jail so much. It was a ton of pain but the ending was not worth it. I might try it again to see if it can be beat without boundary breaks.

Splat Zones and Tower Control gonna be crazy! Clash Blaster Neo’s and balloons everywhere!

Just want to point out something. The reason why Nintendo stock values are so low right now is that they did a 10 to 1 stock split back in September after announcing it early last year. Their shares have historically been expensive, and they also only sold in blocks of 100 shares, the value of which roughly equated to sending a kid to college in Tokyo for the whole 4 years! The move to split has been proposed for years. So this whole thing was an opportunity for SA to swoop in and get some Nintendo Stock.

@ComfyAko Nintendo, or any other publicly traded company, doesn’t have control over who buys open shares.

@TYRANACLES The difference is that was a deal SNK let through. Here, these are shares on the open market. No one can take over a company by buying open shares. There’s generally not enough shares to go around because the guys at the top hold the majority, as well as everyone else who own shares.

@Teksetter No chance as they just split in September to encourage investment. But as sure as Nintendo remains a traditional Japanese company we can be safe in knowing that they won’t give up the company to foreign powers so easily.

@Dev9417 EDIT: scratch that, I forgot it’s one of the WiiU tablet games.

@Yosher White chocolate’s ink color was the meta and most veteran players, presumably, played it. So they countered whatever ‘popularity curse’ it would have brought on by being the popular choice. What makes it worse is the ink has a glow in the dark effect now, which basically eliminates shadows on the ripples as they swim through it. If it was mint chocolate, for example, and they went with a light green, then the balance would predictably switch back to milk chocolate, but be less likely to sweep. The way I figure it if they want to avoid obvious sweep potential, don’t use any variation of white as an ink color. Another way is to choose themes with less obvious dominant favoritism. Aside from that, simply being a popular choice is never a guaranteed win.

@Yosher How would that be done, exactly? Add more categories? Having 3 battle categories and 2 swing categories at the current point values seems fair already. There’s no ties for 1st place. By the final battle percentages, the other two teams clearly really did not win enough games.

So in other words. NSMBU Deluxe outsold GTA V last week. That’s wild!

I should have seen this coming. Playing against white chocolate is like playing against Team Mayo or Team Egg..or John Cena.

I actually found out what the bonuses are from a YouTube short, Lol! Someone should have just bought it and then write the article. It’s still pertinent info for whoever’s going to buy the pass. Y’know, investigative reporting and all that.

It’s a roundabout way of saying “we have nothing to announce at this time” That is also not saying that they have nothing they’re working on. Nintendo always has new hardware in development, they’re just waiting for the right time to announce it. And right now still isn’t the time to them, I guess. Maybe because of parts, technology, market, maybe all 3? Once sales drop to, say, 12 or 13 million we might get a teaser. Then a full blown announcement definitely when it’s below 10. But 18 million is still damn good for a 7 year old system.

@Limberlost This is low-key the most likely answer. There is a ridiculously huge Harry Potter following in Japan. So if you add PS5 availability, no physical games in the Top 10, the Hogwarts Legacy release tomorrow, and an army of streamers and VTubers currently posting up preview videos and gameplay (influencers, another catalyst to this craze), you get PS5 hardware sales numbers. Easy.

@ATaco They could pick up a Series S. 14k units and no Top 10. All signs are pointing to a huge multi-plat release that is probably doing huge pre-order numbers and preloads. I’m thinking Hogwarts.

@Vyacheslav333 It’s really not hard to understand, MK8 has been one of the widest reaching IPs Nintendo has because it’s simply fun. It’s a formula that just works, full stop.

@rjejr Extra cash to buy clothes and weapons…if you don’t already have everything. One of each ability drink ticket, for a chance to unlock that ability on an open ability slot on a piece of gear. 3 XP up tickets, which basically has no value unless you’re below level 30 and are still trying to unlock weapons or you REALLY need a free roll at the shell-out machine when you level up.

Now, if they gave out ability chunks straight out instead of drink tickets (for a chance to unlock that ability on an open ability slot), then ok that may be slightly pay to win. But trust, the bonus is more like a “gee, thanks” kind of bonus unless you’ve just started playing or don’t play a lot.