molkom

This game to me shows just how great the GameCube was. To me the graphics "feel" the same (great), and combined with the music and pacing the atmosphere is just stellar. But imagine this game had beam shots illuminating walls/dark rooms etc before, 20 years ago!

The GameCube deserved better commercial success I always felt. Glad to have this remaster as a kind of revival of its all-too-niche glory days.

Kudos for new controls and new difficulty setting. Wish the "casual" mode was harder though, think my current preference would be just slightly easier than the original. I beat the original, but I lack the time and patience now to restart from save stations too much after a death and I'm sure I'd die at least once or twice (getting so lazy 😂)

I must say that video makes it look stellar? So crisp for being on the Switch, clearly beating PS4 on some textures and fire/lighting effects, and the low texture ground areas seem to be mostly visible on closeups (which is not how you play).

Of course, the comment, "framerate issues make the character hard to control" has me worried. Need to know how frequent that is actually an issue and for those sequences how prolonged it is. Edit: read the EG/DF review and also waytoomany.games review, and they don't agree with each other hehe. Both mention framerate issues, but one says it doesn't have an impact on the ability to control the game. Interestingly, wtmg says portable holds up better.

"marshland areas in Fallgrim + entire sections across one later dungeon" are apparently worst off due to too many enemies on-screen.

Will be very interesting to read the NL review on this one.

I've been a gamer, and particularly a Nintendo gamer, all my life but I've never played a mainline Pokemon. (Only Snap and such.)

Which one is the best game for me? I get so confused by all the entries with variable scores but also by texts saying Scarlet is a step in the right direction while scoring it lower. So is this it, or should I backtrack to Arceus or Sword and Shield? (Wanna play on Switch.)

I only played demos, never got hooked. My guess is it is a similar type of game as Devil May Cry which also never hooked me. A 10/10 makes me wanna try again though, but Sky: Children of the Light eats up most of my time

A note about the voice acting debate:
15,000 dollars for 20h of recording speech is good pay I'd say. That's almost 800 dollars per hour. I'd do it So yeah, the first video released about that was very misleading...

In the case a developer has a feature for screenshots without UI showing - like in e.g. Sky Children of the Light on mobile - would it be Nintendo or the game developer that needs to fix so we can take screenshots without the UI showing also on the Switch version? My guess is the game developer, but thinking it'd be nice with a Nintendo supported two-second press on the capture button or similar for non-UI screens for devs supporting it

OKish song but that's one of the best music videos I've seen 🥰 Cute, well animated, stellar effects, just great. Enjoyed it and gosh would my kids be proud if I'd been in that video instead of Ed ;D

Maybe someone mentioned already, but this poll would have benefited from grouping the same game/different versions under one option I think Like why would it matter if starting with an HD remaster or the original, plus it splits the votes when I'd really like to see which game is voted on the most. Yes, I can sum it up manually but I'm old and tired ;D

As a father I really want this to be good. But seems like a wait and see if they patch it out. The recent patch was hopefully an improvement!

As for free to play games, Fortnite is good I think even if I only played it 5 times or so. But my fav free to play of the last years has to be Sky: Children of the Light. I fly around in that game almost daily since over a year

Thanks. To me, shouldn't that depend on the quality of said side quests, since they by nature are optional? If "easy to get sidetracked" that sounds to me as if the side quests are so engaging/alluring to take you away from the main path like in e.g. Morrowind. The generic negative label thus still confused me.

However, I reread the review a few times and got stuck on this sentence, which might explain it:

"each level ends with a cinematic development of the tale, which helps make sense of the occasionally frantic and often unrelated content of the chapter"

Sounds like maybe the content being bashed is not optional, which would make sense of the negative listed.

"Cons: Easy to get sidetracked from the main campaign"

Since when is this a negative? Would love an explanation regarding what about the side content is disappointing. Seems like a cool game!

I remember well Ogre Battle 64, the game I always wanted when younger but never got my hands on and also never played. For some reason I didn't pick it up when it became available much later on Wii or on Wii U. So looking forward to this Tactics Ogre even if slightly different gameplay from Ogre Battle - in fact I prefer this style I think

Blast Corps, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Smash, and Goldeneye would be games to make me upgrade

Also wouldn't mind Excitebike 64, Wave Race and 1080. Pretty please?

Tricky one...

First played (and remembered) might have been California Games on Commodore 64 or Last Ninja, but before that were some Space invaders/Galaga or Galaxian possibly on an intellivision? Can't remember... At the same time also played Greenhouse as a game & watch, and got to test my sisters' Parachute before that as well as Donkey Kong II

First owned - together with sisters - was a used NES for Christmas 1986 with 5 games: Mach Rider, Excitebike, Soccer, Duck Hunt and Tennis. Soon thereafter we got Super Mario Bros. and gaming as I know it was born (7th game was Zelda about one year later, thereafter Pro-Am Racing)

Ahh this game and Ooendan were great! I still wish for Gitaroo Man on Switch but yeah that's a hopeless dream for so many reasons lol

@seaboyluca

Kinda agree. I can't decide. It frustrated me but also when beating them gave a great deal of satisfaction. I can't decide if the satisfaction makes the frustration worth it - I lean towards not (meaning I'd prefer them slightly easier to not feel like banging my head against the wall as many times)

Surprised by Double Dash so high but won't hate on it even if not a favorite..

MK:DS was amazing for me, was my first ever game where I competed on a world leaderboard and competed for the top on many tracks (early on). So yeah I did do the snaking bit but the journey to mastering that and squeezing in just one extra boost along certain passages was so rewarding. Also had a blast joining my first ever Mario Kart online sessions with friends from the NintendoExpress site.

I loved this one surprisingly much. Interesting story, fab looking, combat didn't bore me (which from my PoV is not a given in jrpgs), and good conclusion. They shouldn't have made the ending so "hidden"/optional though I think.

I loved Wipeout 2097 back in the day. Maybe this is the game that could get me back into the groove

@steventonysmith I fall in the camp of waiting to upgrade to expansion until I can get the controller. One more here stated the same. So there are likely many in the same situation.

I still haven't started paying for the expansion. I guess I have too many N64 games on WiiU to get excited, like Excitebike 64 - wish they'd make an HD remake of that one someday (will never happen).

Someone who has played all 3 games? How would you rate this compared to the others: same or better?

Liked most bongo drum games, Jungle Beat and Donkey Konga were well loved at uni with GFs and friends alike

I'd almost say this deserved a bigger announcement. Both here on Nintendolife but also from Nintendo's side, can't understand why they didn't do an exclusive Nintendo Direct episode for the reveal what with the Megaton news 😂

In all seriousness, though, I'm very very happy 🙏 It has been a mess to find stuff at times by now...

@metroid02

Thanks for sharing that. I learned more about Austrian culture Didn't know about the "jokes that could be seen as racist" part, could explain how the founders inappropriately joked with each other.

The Gamesbeat writeup was extensive, but eye-opening. I think they went beyond normal behaviour so seems to have been quite dysfunctional culture they had going there.

Long rant above aside, just read the original article. Forget what I said. These founders seem bad

Some comments:

"Moon Studios' almost entirely remote and "anti-corporate" culture has supposedly led to cases of casual racism, sexism and bullying."

Lots of businesses run remote, and being "anti-corporate" to me suggests a more flat, transparent organisation and could easily be seen as a positive. I don't see how remote and anti-corporate has anything to do with what makes a workplace toxic. There must be other factors that have led to these things otherwise someone needs to write a book warning about this organisational setup The blame must surely lie elsewhere.

"The founders also allegedly used an "open and honest" workplace structure to openly criticise the work of employees, and would very rarely praise work."

First, this should be viewed separate from the sexism and racism since the two are not related.

Second, this seems cultural (apart from the lack of praise which I'd say is individual), since Austria and Germany are known for open, direct communication that other cultures can see as rude. Read e.g. Hofstede, Trompenaars or the Globe study on culture. This doesn't mean these founders are bad people (which they might be, how would I know), but more likely other cultures clashed with their type of communication and saw it as a negative (where others would see it as simply honest).

My semi-educated guess would from above have been that the remote and anti-corporate structure led to less governance (nice for me) but with the added risk of not having as much insights/control/transparency of interactions between coworkers. If you then hire a few bad eggs they would have an easier time operating with bullish, sexist comments and spreading toxic feel. This is why recruitment is such a key factor for a company: mess up there and you can mess up the whole company culture no matter your intentions (good or bad, likely good since it doesn't benefit a founder to have a non-working environment).

At least above was my guess before reading this in their letter:
"We are not perfect but we deeply care about our talent"

The way they phrased this suggests to me they care more about the performance of their coworkers rather than them as human beings. Then again, maybe they tried to be nice and call their coworkers "talent", but to me it implies how you view your coworkers: as people that should perform or they're "waste", or as people to help have a fulfilling work environment where you help get their life balance right and care for the individual.

Edit: I wrote, "If you then hire a few bad eggs".... After reading the original article on Gamesbeat, the founders seem to have been the bad eggs. I still stand by the points above in general, but in this specific case they seem to have been the main perpetrators of the toxic culture and their behavior had gone beyond the cultural norm.

To me, "to finish" a game is to get to the credits, but that's also when you finish the main quest so I couldn't distinguish between those two options.

I mean, in Zelda the main quest is to beat Ganon and save Zelda, if you do that in 30 min or 200h who cares. (But I doubt anyone playing the game for the first time would do it in a short time.)

However, for a game to "be finished" (to me I see a difference between to finish and to be finished), that's totally subjective in most cases, but should be agreed by most that if you've 100% a game then yes it's finished. But still, some games have high replayability by other means and are they thus ever finished? At least you as a person are not finished with them (you still say you've finished the game, but you're not finished with it).

BotW to me took maybe 180 hours but I did the full story and explored the map to find all shrines etc before almost reluctantly realising I was out of things to do and then went to beat the final boss.

And to me, I could never say to someone I've finished a game and not having beat it, but I CAN say I'm finished with it. Peace.

OK, this game just dropped to a few bucks. I'm gonna jump in, never tried this game series before. Thanks for the review and comments helping me decide.

And here I thought this would be a great gift for my son to run around with. Then I saw it wasn't a shield to pick up and play with... Pity

Funny, I had an exact 50/50 split of portable and docked.

Most played game... Sky. Apparently almost 10 times as much as any other game this year haha. I think I've left it on a lot to collect "light".

Second/third game: Metroid Dread with 20+ hours and Super Mario Deluxe likewise (playing with son). Quite a gap.

Those are good suggestions. I still have a hard time with the grays (strong yellowish tint) of the OLED however compared to the old version that nailed the gray. Just check out the base menus in dark theme and you'll see what I mean.

Huh, that's a tough sell. Whomever thought up the pricing wasn't in touch with reality it seems.

I'd way prefer old VC pricing, but that's the same for most on here I guess, but becomes even more obvious now; I don't care about Genesis/Mega Drive games etc and would normally purchase max 3-5 N64 games (only 2 of the ones on offer here), but I already have Mario 64 from the Mario Collection so the value for this is low for me.

With this kind of pricing I'd expect GameCube on there or at the very least discounts on normal games.

Not buying.

Wired? Is that still a thing?

I liked the designs, thought it was an official Pro controller... Bummer

For startup sounds on actual console I have to go GC, but I feel the Switch has the perfect soundbite for starting commercials that's short enough but very distinct.

I remember covering the launch for an obscure trade magazine (Insert Coin) and for IGN at the time. I know many of you dislike the outlet, but I liked it a lot there back then.

My highlight was attending ECTS in London and getting to play Wave Race, Star Wars, Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin etc for the first time. The games blew me away and it surely was a hit for me even if the general public didn't celebrate the console as much. Eternal Darkness might have been on display at the launch event as well but I could be mistaken... Loved that game too at the time.

Later nostalgic moments are playing Donkey Konga and that Jungle Beat (or what the platformer was called) with kongas. So unique and fun without feeling gimmicky to me. Ahhh... and winter spent with Animal Crossing with an ex, and Resident Evil 4 kicking a$$. Good times.

I just want Nintendo for the love of gamers to please let us file/label our games somehow. Folders would be the obvious and supposedly easy way. Can't believe it's not been done yet It's such a mess when you get past a certain number of games.

With that many options you could have included some lower I think, felt skewed very high.

But of course, that's because I'm in the mindset, "not to be purchased as an investment/being resold but to own myself." It felt like you asked the Q like that. If so, depends on availability of the game but I wouldn't pay more than maybe a few dollars more than another version just because I like "new" a bit more than "used", if maybe 10 bucks or so would be price for the generally available versions then 14$?

If it was as an investment that becomes like predicting the future and I don't try to do that much. Max 1000 or so.

Not a collector as such, but have 100s of games (500? Never counted.) and also platforms like Dreamcast and odder ones like Nokia N-Gage beside the regular Nintendo/PS/Xbox.

I missed the option "Buying what I think would be games I enjoy, keeping them around after in case I want to replay them or find the time to finally try them out"

I stopped buying as many "whatifs" games, meaning I try to only buy games when I actually wanna play them as opposed to "sometime in the future when maybe time for it", which rarely happens so a waste of money and space.

Wasn't sold before (well, would have bought it still ), but this trailer was just terrific and showing off way more ambition than I expected for this title. Cool

I’ve always wanted to play the original, but this will do nicely instead. Glad to hear it has reviewed well.

Also glad that a less favorable review was included; I like to read those to get a different perspective on a game before buying when on the fence.

Less happy to see such a trading of insults on here, what’s up with that… come on peeps. First what I personally feel was overly harsh criticism of the writer of the article and the IGN quote (I think it is an OK quote to sum up the IGN view, and a 7/10 does imply the reviewer was indeed less impressed overall), and then a retort that was overly defensive. Nothing wrong with “standing up for the writer/article” on here, but hey keep it nice please

And while I normally try to steer clear of commenting on such: calling out if someone knows of a game from 1983, influential game or not, is not a mark of “being a gamer” to me. To place such importance on it in a conversation like this feels misplaced, and not to be rude but feels more “gamer snob” than inclusive of all gamers.

Hope to see us all play more “nice” in other threads

I sold some GameCube games a few years back while moving. Can't say I'm happy about selling off Path of Radiance etc and not realising the games were worth quite a lot more than I was charging. Sucker = me

I loved Octopath, finished all the paths and directly wanted to play more. Gimme

@Crono1973

I get the disappointment. To me, it's still an "updated model", the naming "Pro" comes from the press and speculators since Nintendo never has mentioned such. To me this is the rumoured "Pro" one, but of course I am as likely to be wrong as those who say the opposite. And the 50 bucks: you got a shiny new screen, gotta charge for that somewhere

This is a "Switch Pro" as far as I see it. Pro as in a new version with a more expensive screen.. not my cup of tea but yeah. If we by Switch Pro mean "a more powerful SKU" instead then, yes, that's a possibility in the future, but I don't see it as a given. Are we sure there's no expansion slot for RAM like on the N64 though?

I dled this on Tuesday and played for about 2 hours and like it a lot, but! The multiplayer aspect while charming hits an early ceiling for me when trying to interact beyond holding hands. Why? Typing on a docked Switch is a paaaain

I dled on phone and considering playing there instead just to be able to chat, but I really prefer my games on the tv, what to do... likely scenario: will try to play through on tv while ignoring the companionship, failing, becoming frustrated again, and stop

I tried to buy it almost a week back (Friday or Saturday) after an article and was already out of stock then. Bought another book there though so you/they managed with the marketing ploy

The SNES compilation looked nice but also out of stock for now.

This is odd: I never even heard of Newgrounds and was at the time a hardcore gaming editor. Shame on me 😅

Of course, even though I had all consoles I was heavily Nintendo biased in my consumption (I spent my days on Nintendoexpress, IGN, Nintendojo etc - thanks Nintendoexpress for publishing my first ever editorial btw, if you the founder is still around somewhere I owe you a beer or two.)

Metroid Dread did for sure pump me up as well. Hope it can live up to the hype in my head hehe.

@Loon_Call
I so miss the VC It would have been so so perfect for the Switch. Sad it didn't get the Wii U treatment. I also think they could have kept more of the Mii focus, was kinda cool and original but got mostly scrapped due to the obscurity of the Wii U I bet.

I loved these games on my old PS, can't wait to play!

Also glad to hear that the game is playable without a download, even if the big patch makes it sound like it won't run as well without one.

I'm both excited to see the sky opening up and slightly disappointed at the same time; I would have preferred dungeons etc being more "naturally" placed under a mountain, or behind a waterfall, playing a flute at a lake etc without having to go through an actual door/temple to load into. Seems the sky might just be a way to get lots of temples into the game without the effort of moulding them into natural locations. It's smart to bring down complexity for them, but not ideal for me