@Naughtyottsel92 it's mostly ridicule for related awkward marketing stunts and attitudes as of late. The console's own legacy, from truckloads of amazing games to affordable movie playback for its day and age, remains undeniable.
155.37 million means the industry's best-selling console of all time, not just Nintendo's. Even NL itself evidently can't disclaim this here without making a "back of the couch" joke, so why beat around the bush. The queen is dead, long live the queen.👸
Plenty, but within the given limits... might as well list Fortune's Weave, Pragmata, Orbitals, Fatal Frame II and Pokopia. Resident Evils, especially the finally justice-done Biohazard and Village, bear mentioning as well.
"We're sure you're all as jazzed as us (read: this writer) to play Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, but that's a Switch 1 game"
I mean, so are Layton and DQVII, among many others.🤔😅 But then again, I don't usually look forward to crossgens' NS2 versions myself.
EDIT: perhaps I'll also move Pokopia to the honourable mentions (busy with the same team's DQB dilogy for now anyway) - the poll seems to be missing Fallout 4 and it's definitely a high priority on my 2026 hybrid wishlist.
Done with Sparkle Unleashed this week (the game encourages a higher difficulty NG+ but even the standard one's last dozen stages or so had me running through my less publicly usable vocabulary several times - at least I'm glad I didn't get stuck at the end for months like back in Luxor😅) and almost done with Vice City (a second 100%... and short of one Social Club achievement once again, although this whole radio station deal is reportedly more tedious than bugged, so perhaps I'll humour it once again before clearing up the space), potentially focusing on Wreckfest and Saints Row 4 now, but other hybrid stuff from Cyberpunk, Danganronpa, Powerwash, Ball x Pit and Lapis x Labyrinth to the good ol' rotation of xenoblades, ateliers, tales, personas and rune factories remains on the menu as well, while the other platforms may also elbow in with sessions like the first Tomodachi Life (yeah😆), Dr Mario: Miracle Cure, Xenosaga, FFXIII/XV, SotN and Odin Sphere.
Between last December and January 2020, I've only picked up a total of four vouchers - but they were converted to four of the best Nintendo-published JRPGs this side of Xenoblade series. Neat while it lasted.
I haven't watched the Direct yet (the game's been on my wishlist since announcement anyway), but this is one Balatro crossover that practically writes itself.
@ThatOnePenguin because this site is full of millennials and zoomers who, unless stuck in edgy puberty, are variably too old to be bothered by and celebrate their options to evade so-called "wokeness". Whether your comments are coming from bigotry or poseurship, I wouldn't bet much on finding them widely echoed here.
Some of the best licensed games in history here. And the added titles are exciting in more ways than one since they also suggest The Little Mermaid isn't necessarily off the table either. But I'm not going to look this belated horse in the mouth for now either.
Astrologers proclaim the week of eShop sale sprees, Switch backlog increases population. Adventure Academia and Valthirian Arc 2, Faerie Afterlight and Olija, Die After Sunset and Serious Sam Collection, El-Shaddai (the game I previously uninstalled the SMTlicious Lost Child in hopes of playing first) and Soma... not gonna lie, I'm particularly stoked to restart this formerly PC-reliant playthrough... checks filesize ...iiiiiiiin the future.😅 Granted, Switch may see some freed-up room soon as well, with GTA III behind me (100% this time and almost all the achievements, although I gave up on the 100 taxi fares one after it refused to register even at the 160th) plus a few other items like Vice City, Sparkle Unleashed and Wreckfest variably close to their own respective wrap-ups that this very weekend is likely to tend to among other stuff... but while their total "weight" sums up to suffice for the Frictional Games masterpiece, I will be equally tempted to spend it on reinstalling FFXII, one of my most begrudgingly shelved hybrid playthroughs to date.
Other than the mentioned handful to try or get closer to finishing? Probably the usual RPG buffet (with potential emphasis on XCX, Xillia, Yumia, P5R and Sandrock) and some other familiar names from Danganronpa, Powerwash and Mudrunner to Ball x Pit, AC2 and Hogwarts. And outside Switchland, stuff like Xenosaga, Nioh, Luigi's Mansion, God of War and/or Pursuit Force.
This weekend's plans traditionally include the familiar RPG franchise salad of tales, ateliers, personas, factories, fantasies, castles, blades, times and lives, but I'm also finding myself apparently just a handful of story missions (plus rampages and stunt jumps) away from completing GTA III, and it's not uncommon for my backlogs to zoom in on something specific when the finish line is in sight. Of course, yet other playthroughs from Powerwash, Baba Is You and Skyrim to Doom 3, Forager and Danganronpa keep beckoning as well, as do the other portable storage residents like Cyberpunk, Xenosaga, Payback, Neptunia, Strange Journey and Luigi's Mansion. Business as usual, really.
"Lightning does not discriminate between the living and the dead" almost asks for a Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde joke reference, but the trailer looks pretty neat and I don't see anything particularly confusing or hard to parse about the combat and UI.🤔
No luck this morning either, including home wi-fi and VPN. Alas, poor server; I knew it, Horatio.😆
Not that the stats are a big mystery to me (by nature of attendance alone, the top 3 will likely be the usual freemiums like Speedstorm, Warframe and Guardian Tales), but how long do these pages usually last, again?
"An unexpected error occurred" (all relevant settings enabled and never changed since the 2024 summary anyway). Either server overload or the "bowsillion bouncy objects" scripts have finally exceeded the capabilities of middle class mobile internet. I also love these messages in general because they seem to imply the existence of expected errors.😆
@TensuraFan7 the links are easier to overlook now, but check back with the "available in Europe and North America" part.
Crystal clear evidence of the investors objecting to Nintendo's Anti-Consumer Policies™ and definitely not just pulling up their resources to try and capitalize more on the AI pyramid instead.
@ArthurFan1998 Fire Emblem can seem more likely after already having a Shadow Dragon OVA (and Echoes cutscenes courtesy of Studio Khara) in its portfolio, although that OVA was technically greenlit by a fairly different Nintendo.
The week has seen another handful of Switch library recruits (from Valfaris, Senran Kagura Peach Ball and Demon Gaze to Floppy Knights and For the King which, alongside Path of Radiance arrival, are probably cementing a record number of turn-based tactics I've ever procured over a single month if not mere fortnight😆), but cramming them onboard is a different story, so chances are I'll be sticking to the already installed stuff. Namely? Well, the usual franchise buffet (Xenoblades, Rune Factories, Tales, Ateliers, Personas, Castlevanias... now also gluttonously joined by the Portia/Sandrock combo) and other variably familiar faces from Fantasy Life i, Unicorn Overlord, Ghost Trick, Remnant and Chasm to GTA 3 (a tank just obtained for the vigilante mission but I forgot how slow the thing was in that game😅), RE0, Powerwash, Civilization 6 and Hogwarts Legacy. The handhelds will likely see more Fantasy Life (OG), EOU, Gran Turismo, Xenogears/Xenosaga and Nioh, and if I find more time for PS4 before shelving it once again, chances are it'll be spent on Wolfenstein: New Order where I somehow made more progress than on the laptop (the OC version sadly refuses to work on Deck).
@mlt yeah, Ball x Pit may channel a fair bit of hoard surgical subgenre, but it's a classic brick breaker at its core. Even the base building segment turns stuff like resource gathering and infrastructure upgrades into ball bounce minigames that encourage a thoughtful approach to shot trajectory and base layout alike.
Everyone seemingly homing in on an awkward thumb angle that multiple people in the spawned discussions on Reddit have already replicated with their own photos in response. This cry-wolf mentality is probably among the worst effects of last year's neurofad.🙄
One of the most anticipated ones in my book for sure! Might even dip a toe again regardless of binge queue position. I actually saw the OST news first and couldn't but wonder if that spelled a Classics update proximity.
@LinktotheFuture among the stuff I have, I've only properly unbacklogged Pixel Cafe and Knights & Guns so far but found them worthwhile. The briefly tasted Urban Flow seems promising as well, and I reckon World of Solitaire should at the very least get its titular job done.
Need for Race Street King & Formula Auto Sport Racing Pack: Say That Ten Times Fast Edition. And of course, what gamer can pass up on AAA Games Ultimate Collection?😎 (besides yours truly who already owns more than half of the lineup😄)
First one I ever beat, my perennially gitguddery-averse posterior likely drawn in part by what, IIRC, was the franchise's first homing weapon and allowed you more focus on trying not to die in the genre that consistently wiped the floor with me otherwise.😄 And indeed, seeing all of that run'n'gun action happening on Game Boy has always been impressive in general.
I don't suppose it's fruitful to ask the name of the "senior Nintendo employee" (someone having nieces/nephews in their family circle perchance?😏) from a source that barely even cites basic sales numbers outside Famitsu, but in the end, the quoted article essentially admits a slight increase in Europe and declines in the two more economically stormy regions as compared to the respective environments in 2017... and yet maintains the tone of what sounds like another doomer bait. As for first party "system sellers", the new generation has the first respective Mario Kart and Donkey Kong entries I'm actually compelled to buy and play ahead of any binge queues, so the whole rhetoric sounds as trite as the fandom's autopilot "third party games better played elsewhere" fallacies (the Cyberpunk port alone is literally the only version with gyro support, Carl). The broader audience does flock to keywords, but I somehow doubt Nintendo is worried about that too much, seeing as they chose not to hold off TotK for a crossgen release like its predecessor and let the Odyssey team work on Bananza (which ticks pretty much all the quality boxes of a "new 3D Mario game" sans marketability😏).
In the end, people could have just kept buying Wii Us for BotW as well, so any possible "wowser deficit" compared to Switch's appeal boils down to the core feature iteration akin to the likes of SNES and 3DS. Even Nintendo has yet to have two equally industry-defining generations in a row, but NS2 is likewise poised to have its own solid impact, legacy and lifetime sales overall, and even sensationalist tabloids are forced to footnote as much through their teeth.
You'd think "bustling city environment" would be the last phrase to describe the 21st century RC.😅
@Pillowpants with no obligatory reliance on ink ribbons, OG RE4 suffices for me (I'd rather have Code: Veronica remade in that context), although I've been reading that RE4R features gyro, and that's an admitted chinscratcher. Time will tell; I still have RE0 to get through.
@schmauz "A technological upgrade for Switch 2 should be an absolute standard for larger games"
Right, to make them even larger, and on a console limited to MSDExpress memory expansions at that. I'm scratching my head about where to cram THL's current 13 Gb as it is, thank you very much - and I still remember the No Man's Sky upgrade (which I humoured for its actual extra content) quintupling the port's original size. Yikes.
Back from the internet-lacking but festivities-abundant countryside New Year's Eve with my family and straight into a weekend that almost seamlessly links with the next one into a relative bana- er, bonanza of backlog time, so which playthroughs to invest it in? You'd think over 350 items added last year to Switch library alone would suffice for the answer... yet here I am, with the visibly emptier hobby fund coffers and the first hybrid splurge of 2026 to sort between the benches and the storage space (which also means deciding what already installed stuff to part with for now). A few titles like Pedestrian and Alice Gear may wait alongside Quake II for now, and The Hundred Line beckons but simultaneously scares with its 13-something gigabytes, but that still leaves the gluttony catalysts like Fantasy Life I (I'm tired of manually correcting the last letter's case😅), Unicorn Overlord, Labyrinth of Zangetsu, the first Quake, Astroneer, Chasm, Slay the Princess, Baba Is You and another dive into the hoard survival genre with the steampunk (edit: make it solarpunk) Luminaria... even My Time At Sandrock is tempting me to go Xenoblade/Atelier/RF/Persona/Tales on its series (if the witnesses of my previous Saturday comments know what I mean), so perhaps a very "gruesome" storage overhaul is in the cards anyway.🙀
Needless to say, none of that means I'll readily give up on glancing towards the already established playthroughs, especially when the timeframe actually encourages it once in a blue moon. Be it the aforelisted and simultaneously engaged series, relative recents from Remnant, Rogue Legacy 2 and Ghost Trick to Ball x Pit, Railgrade and Gnosia or the proverbial longplays from Forager, Borderlands 2 and BotW/Echoes to First Departure, Danganronpa and GTA Trilogy (and all of that with some Cyberpunk, Palia and Chibi-Robo on NS2), this is guaranteed to be one memorable week. Various handheld stuff like the first Fantasy Life, Neptunia, Xenosaga, FFXIII/XV and Death Stranding isn't off the table either (unlike the likewise newly procured Edge of Eternity and Elex which look like even bigger tricks to cram on Deck for the time being... but who knows), and I've even gone as far as to unshelve and plug in PS4 just in case - Lord knows how long it's been. Should the stars align, some of this mostly TV-chained library (NFS 2015 and Crew 2, Lies of P and Bloodborne, Sakura Wars and Star Ocean IaF - you name it) might just see some action, too.
Happy New Year, merry Christmas to everyone potentially celebrating in a few days like I do, and here's to many positive memories and times to decidedly outweigh their opposites.🍻
@Zeeba ports like that don't sound like their point in this case, but in general I've been keeping my fingers crossed during 8+ years of Directs. And, FWIW, a few other top priority Direct finger-crossers on my list (like Xenoblade X and Tales of Xillia) have actually happened while Square Enix spent the generation unshelving a lot of their own stuff, so...
Exclusives can motivate additional hardware investments indeed, but only either among platforms of equal accessibility or for a user with the luxury of spending time with any given platform (the latter being commonly reduced or even denied over the same period when you have the most disposable income to invest in stuff like video games). To this day, I only have a PS4 courtesy of owning a Vita whereas even a whole bunch of PS5 games (either still exclusive or allegedly beyond Deck's capabilities) haven't succeeded in making me a PS5 owner because what's the point in buying a gaming machine you have no confidence in being able to use? Busy work/life schedules including but not limited to a teacher's downtown downtime are harsh masters and, unlike the aforementioned Vita, the Portal with its higher resolution and more restrictive network requirements threatens to be just as useless depending on your local communication services.
Games like BotW and Xenoblade can come to PS5 and XBS tomorrow (no subreddit puns intended) for all I care - I'll still buy and play them on Switch or Switch 2 whose format can feel like peak game accessibility to a busy adult gamer. And same goes for Nintendo's own exclusives like Tokyo Mirage Sessions or Xenoblade Chronicles X which alone could have long driven me to buy a Wii U ASAP... but never did, for contextually evident reasons regarding Wii U itself. Heck, a mere couple indies from a Humble Bundle back in 2016 sped up the introduction of 3DS to my gaming arsenal - but the enclosed Wii U titles from the same bundle gathered dust for years until the respective eShop was scheduled to stop processing purchases and I just gave both codes away on Reddit.
The notion of exclusives tailor-made for the hardware at hand is something to get behind, but context matters here. If the exclusive pushes the machine's unique features and pragmatic strengths, it sounds worthwhile indeed - but if the proverbial lever's "11" means 4K skin pores to peruse at 120 fps, then the "lowest common denominator" has all the odds of overlapping with highest common sense. We're long and well above the technology levels required to create a looker of a game - if your platform and its exclusives flex the excess specs, I would much prefer it to contribute to the more meaningful aspects - as long as we're talking a piece of interactive fiction and not just a glorified audiovisual tech demo.
"Different approach" doesn't sound like covering the Gran Pulse saga and other veterans on modern platforms, but perhaps a Final Fantasy Warriors is finally happening?😆
"AI might produce plagiarized content if misused, but if used properly, it has the power to enrich the creative world even further."
So it brings us back to the same consensus: the legendary path of Donut Steel. If your assets are your own (or legitimately commissioned) and you fully curate the output, few people will have questions about the compiling tools.
Last weekend of the year and the tail end of the first relatively generous backlog time streak to afford (the other estimated to be even longer but scheduled to follow a couple days' hobby hiatus while celebrating New Year in the family circle). At the cost of shelving Sailing Era (which, FWIW, I do have NS2 room for in the meantime), I've installed half of what will probably be my last eShop spendings in 2025 (namely Remnant: From the Ashes, Rogue Legacy 2 and Nova Lands, with the Accidental Queens bundle awaiting its turn for now), but the hybrid library is also likely to see more action in the already present stuff from Xenoblades, Ateliers, Tales, Rune Factories and Personas (the latter with a side of TMS and Nocturne as well) to Forager, Langrisser, Swindle, Doom 3, Gnosia, Theatrhythm and Cyberpunk. The other platforms? Highest odds for Death Stranding, Xenosaga, Valentia, Fantasy Life and God of War, but you never know what else might just elbow in. Here's to everyone's holidays and the rest of the new year offering enough time with their interactive fiction journeys, too!🍻
12/17 which somehow included correctly guessing the baseball team of all things. On a side note, who needs Welcome Tour to know NS2's internal storage capacity, especially in the age of still rare and eye-wateringly priced Express cards?
I may celebrate in January, but as a bank holiday, today is usually something to look forward to regardless of traditions (unless it falls on a weekend, but you can't win them all).😆 And to everyone the occasion concerns now - merry Christmas!
Tools should be tools, "intelligent" or not. There's no talking robotic "creators" until we enter the actual age of artificial sentience - which I doubt my own generation ever will. And as far as human creations go, automation has been applied to authored asset pools for ages, so the line remains drawn at that. The core of the commotion around GenAI is its shamelessly paraded penchant for "training" on everything not nailed down and then trying to mishmash it into something hopefully legit in the prompter's eyes. If it's done for whatever "concepts" never leaving the studio's grounds, it can be "just" an eyebrow raiser; if it permeates the final product in the original work's stead, then we may well have a controversy of the same kind as any olde plagiarism suspicion, and "my tool stole from too many people to track down or single out the exact origins" doesn't necessarily sweeten that pill.
Not much free time this weekend, but you can't win them all and I'd be a douche to complain on the eve of what's been shaping up like an ideally hobbylicious half-WEEK (and, if the stars align, an even longer streak in early January afterwards). The preceding week has been fairly eventful on the nerd front as well - I've managed more eShop investments from the Arkham and Monster Hunter Stories packs to my second voucher pair (first one dating all the way back to early 2020 or so) which helped me overduly equip my Switch backlog with the two flagship Fire Emblems. Incidentally, Engage became the estimated 2000th item in my biggest single platform collection - a milestone only somewhat dampened by actually running into the long but vaguely rumoured "All Software" icon cap after all. The ones "pushed out" from the end of a currently sorted list (a different sorting doesn't reapply the "disappearances" to other stuff) won't even leave the affected icons in the arranged groups. FWIW pestering the support again reaffirmed that no, it's not how the All Software screen is officially supposed to behave, so it looks like a bug unaccounted for due to a likely low number of reports (read: of digital hoard maniacs insisting on archiving everything like myself😈😆). The very helpful support guy documented the case with a few photos I submitted, so perhaps we'll even live to see a hotfix of some sort; for now, besides obvious reliance on the VGC menu (thankfully handier for redownloads than eShop profile's title salad ever was), my solution in the light of a still humongous wishlist has been to clean out the icons for finished games and defunct freemiums, although if/when that stops being enough, I may just dedicate a separate folder to affected icons on NS2 - even if the latter faces the risk of a similar bug, it'll take a fair few years to bring its native game collection near the "trigger threshold" anyway.😏
Oh, and to share some game session plans before this comment qualifies as "unconstructive feedback" for the post's intent (none of the aforementioned acquisitions are compact enough to become such a plan in themselves just yet)... well, it's just the hybrids for now, so any combination from the oft-eyed stuff like Cyberpunk and Doom 3, PowerWash and Wreckfest, Xenoblades/RFs/Tales/Ateliers/Personas, Terraria, Little Noah and Tallowmere 2 to some finally initiated or finally revisited playthroughs like Athanasy, Don't Starve, Need a Packet, Shovel Knight and Retro City Rampage.
"Today is Bubble Trouble Adventures. Peculiar that they didn't start with the (seemingly) preceding trilogy unless the latter is the very three games we're getting on the last event day."
Can I channel some of that power into the next Direct day?😅
@Sambuc OK zoomer.😄 To me, 30 fps at 720p will be most sufficient and preferable over the bloatedly doubled respective numbers even in a 2030 non-stop action title, let alone in a 2026 game of Telltale's effective core genre and pedigree.
Yes, please. I went through the main campaign back when the game hit PS+ and had a blast with it but predictably never invested in the DLC, all the platform specifics considered. This'll be a definite double-dip.
Comments 6,084
Re: It's Official, The Switch Is Nintendo's Best-Selling Console Of All Time
@Naughtyottsel92 it's mostly ridicule for related awkward marketing stunts and attitudes as of late. The console's own legacy, from truckloads of amazing games to affordable movie playback for its day and age, remains undeniable.
Re: It's Official, The Switch Is Nintendo's Best-Selling Console Of All Time
155.37 million means the industry's best-selling console of all time, not just Nintendo's. Even NL itself evidently can't disclaim this here without making a "back of the couch" joke, so why beat around the bush. The queen is dead, long live the queen.👸
Re: Poll: What Nintendo Switch 2 Games Are You Most Excited For In 2026?
Plenty, but within the given limits... might as well list Fortune's Weave, Pragmata, Orbitals, Fatal Frame II and Pokopia. Resident Evils, especially the finally justice-done Biohazard and Village, bear mentioning as well.
"We're sure you're all as jazzed as us (read: this writer) to play Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, but that's a Switch 1 game"
I mean, so are Layton and DQVII, among many others.🤔😅 But then again, I don't usually look forward to crossgens' NS2 versions myself.
EDIT: perhaps I'll also move Pokopia to the honourable mentions (busy with the same team's DQB dilogy for now anyway) - the poll seems to be missing Fallout 4 and it's definitely a high priority on my 2026 hybrid wishlist.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (31st January)
Done with Sparkle Unleashed this week (the game encourages a higher difficulty NG+ but even the standard one's last dozen stages or so had me running through my less publicly usable vocabulary several times - at least I'm glad I didn't get stuck at the end for months like back in Luxor😅) and almost done with Vice City (a second 100%... and short of one Social Club achievement once again, although this whole radio station deal is reportedly more tedious than bugged, so perhaps I'll humour it once again before clearing up the space), potentially focusing on Wreckfest and Saints Row 4 now, but other hybrid stuff from Cyberpunk, Danganronpa, Powerwash, Ball x Pit and Lapis x Labyrinth to the good ol' rotation of xenoblades, ateliers, tales, personas and rune factories remains on the menu as well, while the other platforms may also elbow in with sessions like the first Tomodachi Life (yeah😆), Dr Mario: Miracle Cure, Xenosaga, FFXIII/XV, SotN and Odin Sphere.
Re: Reminder: Today's Your Last Day To Buy Switch Game Vouchers
Between last December and January 2020, I've only picked up a total of four vouchers - but they were converted to four of the best Nintendo-published JRPGs this side of Xenoblade series. Neat while it lasted.
Re: Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream Moves In On Switch 1 This April
I haven't watched the Direct yet (the game's been on my wishlist since announcement anyway), but this is one Balatro crossover that practically writes itself.
@ThatOnePenguin because this site is full of millennials and zoomers who, unless stuck in edgy puberty, are variably too old to be bothered by and celebrate their options to evade so-called "wokeness". Whether your comments are coming from bigotry or poseurship, I wouldn't bet much on finding them widely echoed here.
Re: Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9 Studio Comcept Is Finished
@KoiTenchi or a Switch one, for that matter. A Deck playthrough it is, I guess.
checks Steam page
Aaaand sideloaded at that.
Re: Disney Afternoon Collection Pops Up On Switch 1 & 2 eShop, Includes Two Additional Games
Some of the best licensed games in history here. And the added titles are exciting in more ways than one since they also suggest The Little Mermaid isn't necessarily off the table either. But I'm not going to look this belated horse in the mouth for now either.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (24th January)
Astrologers proclaim the week of eShop sale sprees, Switch backlog increases population. Adventure Academia and Valthirian Arc 2, Faerie Afterlight and Olija, Die After Sunset and Serious Sam Collection, El-Shaddai (the game I previously uninstalled the SMTlicious Lost Child in hopes of playing first) and Soma... not gonna lie, I'm particularly stoked to restart this formerly PC-reliant playthrough... checks filesize ...iiiiiiiin the future.😅 Granted, Switch may see some freed-up room soon as well, with GTA III behind me (100% this time and almost all the achievements, although I gave up on the 100 taxi fares one after it refused to register even at the 160th) plus a few other items like Vice City, Sparkle Unleashed and Wreckfest variably close to their own respective wrap-ups that this very weekend is likely to tend to among other stuff... but while their total "weight" sums up to suffice for the Frictional Games masterpiece, I will be equally tempted to spend it on reinstalling FFXII, one of my most begrudgingly shelved hybrid playthroughs to date.
Other than the mentioned handful to try or get closer to finishing? Probably the usual RPG buffet (with potential emphasis on XCX, Xillia, Yumia, P5R and Sandrock) and some other familiar names from Danganronpa, Powerwash and Mudrunner to Ball x Pit, AC2 and Hogwarts. And outside Switchland, stuff like Xenosaga, Nioh, Luigi's Mansion, God of War and/or Pursuit Force.
Re: Random: Mario Wonder's New Box Art Might Be The Ugliest 'Switch 2 Edition' Cover Yet
People unable to google what Wii U was really seem to have left Nintendo blowing on water.
Re: Former Nintendo Of America President Doug Bowser Joins Hasbro's Board Of Directors
Obligatory:
(Seems like I misblamed Reddit in this case earlier - does this "revision" link thing stump half the internet by now?)
Re: Mystery Product Code Sparks Rumours Of A New Switch 2 Model
Switch Pro 2 U Advance featuring Knuckles from Devil May Cry leaks started in 2018, so it tracks.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (17th January)
This weekend's plans traditionally include the familiar RPG franchise salad of tales, ateliers, personas, factories, fantasies, castles, blades, times and lives, but I'm also finding myself apparently just a handful of story missions (plus rampages and stunt jumps) away from completing GTA III, and it's not uncommon for my backlogs to zoom in on something specific when the finish line is in sight. Of course, yet other playthroughs from Powerwash, Baba Is You and Skyrim to Doom 3, Forager and Danganronpa keep beckoning as well, as do the other portable storage residents like Cyberpunk, Xenosaga, Payback, Neptunia, Strange Journey and Luigi's Mansion. Business as usual, really.
Re: Random: Disney's Terrible DS Game 'Cory In The House' Is Now Selling For Hundreds Of Dollars On eBay
I mean, the referenced Time Extension article itself includes an eBay link. Complicit much?😜
Re: A New, Gothic Title From 'Eternal Darkness' Creator Has Re-Emerged
"Lightning does not discriminate between the living and the dead" almost asks for a Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde joke reference, but the trailer looks pretty neat and I don't see anything particularly confusing or hard to parse about the combat and UI.🤔
Re: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy Is Now Being Marketed As Two Games In One
Todd Howard:
Re: Feature: Nintendo Switch Year In Review 2025 - Our Most Played Games
By now, the page is struggling to so much as get to the "unable to display content" screen.😆
Re: Nintendo Switch 2025 'Year In Review' Is Available Now
No luck this morning either, including home wi-fi and VPN. Alas, poor server; I knew it, Horatio.😆
Not that the stats are a big mystery to me (by nature of attendance alone, the top 3 will likely be the usual freemiums like Speedstorm, Warframe and Guardian Tales), but how long do these pages usually last, again?
Re: Nintendo Switch 2025 'Year In Review' Is Available Now
"An unexpected error occurred" (all relevant settings enabled and never changed since the 2024 summary anyway). Either server overload or the "bowsillion bouncy objects" scripts have finally exceeded the capabilities of middle class mobile internet. I also love these messages in general because they seem to imply the existence of expected errors.😆
@TensuraFan7 the links are easier to overlook now, but check back with the "available in Europe and North America" part.
Re: Nintendo's Investors Are Reportedly "Spooked" As Stock Slides
Crystal clear evidence of the investors objecting to Nintendo's Anti-Consumer Policies™ and definitely not just pulling up their resources to try and capitalize more on the AI pyramid instead.
@Strawblaze define "we".
Re: Nintendo's President Remains Coy On Potential Price Increases
@ArthurFan1998 Fire Emblem can seem more likely after already having a Shadow Dragon OVA (and Echoes cutscenes courtesy of Studio Khara) in its portfolio, although that OVA was technically greenlit by a fairly different Nintendo.
Re: GameStop Kicks Off 2026 By Reportedly Shutting "Hundreds" Of Stores
How to Redefine Your Brand Name
Re: Tales Of Berseria Remastered - Switch Performance And Resolution Detailed
@kmtrain83 suit yourself, I got the PC version on Deck for dirt cheap, and I still see the point clearly.😄
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (10th January)
The week has seen another handful of Switch library recruits (from Valfaris, Senran Kagura Peach Ball and Demon Gaze to Floppy Knights and For the King which, alongside Path of Radiance arrival, are probably cementing a record number of turn-based tactics I've ever procured over a single month if not mere fortnight😆), but cramming them onboard is a different story, so chances are I'll be sticking to the already installed stuff. Namely? Well, the usual franchise buffet (Xenoblades, Rune Factories, Tales, Ateliers, Personas, Castlevanias... now also gluttonously joined by the Portia/Sandrock combo) and other variably familiar faces from Fantasy Life i, Unicorn Overlord, Ghost Trick, Remnant and Chasm to GTA 3 (a tank just obtained for the vigilante mission but I forgot how slow the thing was in that game😅), RE0, Powerwash, Civilization 6 and Hogwarts Legacy. The handhelds will likely see more Fantasy Life (OG), EOU, Gran Turismo, Xenogears/Xenosaga and Nioh, and if I find more time for PS4 before shelving it once again, chances are it'll be spent on Wolfenstein: New Order where I somehow made more progress than on the laptop (the OC version sadly refuses to work on Deck).
@mlt yeah, Ball x Pit may channel a fair bit of hoard surgical subgenre, but it's a classic brick breaker at its core. Even the base building segment turns stuff like resource gathering and infrastructure upgrades into ball bounce minigames that encourage a thoughtful approach to shot trajectory and base layout alike.
Re: Nintendo Accused Of Using AI Images In New 'My Mario' Marketing
Everyone seemingly homing in on an awkward thumb angle that multiple people in the spawned discussions on Reddit have already replicated with their own photos in response. This cry-wolf mentality is probably among the worst effects of last year's neurofad.🙄
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch 2's GameCube Library With Another Game
One of the most anticipated ones in my book for sure! Might even dip a toe again regardless of binge queue position. I actually saw the OST news first and couldn't but wonder if that spelled a Classics update proximity.
Re: Nintendo Download: 8th January (North America)
@LinktotheFuture among the stuff I have, I've only properly unbacklogged Pixel Cafe and Knights & Guns so far but found them worthwhile. The briefly tasted Urban Flow seems promising as well, and I reckon World of Solitaire should at the very least get its titular job done.
Re: Nintendo Download: 8th January (North America)
Need for Race Street King & Formula Auto Sport Racing Pack: Say That Ten Times Fast Edition. And of course, what gamer can pass up on AAA Games Ultimate Collection?😎 (besides yours truly who already owns more than half of the lineup😄)
Re: Anniversary: The First Handheld 'Contra' Is 35 Years Old Today
First one I ever beat, my perennially gitguddery-averse posterior likely drawn in part by what, IIRC, was the franchise's first homing weapon and allowed you more focus on trying not to die in the genre that consistently wiped the floor with me otherwise.😄 And indeed, seeing all of that run'n'gun action happening on Game Boy has always been impressive in general.
Re: Switch 2 Sales Reportedly Struggled Over The Christmas Period
I don't suppose it's fruitful to ask the name of the "senior Nintendo employee" (someone having nieces/nephews in their family circle perchance?😏) from a source that barely even cites basic sales numbers outside Famitsu, but in the end, the quoted article essentially admits a slight increase in Europe and declines in the two more economically stormy regions as compared to the respective environments in 2017... and yet maintains the tone of what sounds like another doomer bait. As for first party "system sellers", the new generation has the first respective Mario Kart and Donkey Kong entries I'm actually compelled to buy and play ahead of any binge queues, so the whole rhetoric sounds as trite as the fandom's autopilot "third party games better played elsewhere" fallacies (the Cyberpunk port alone is literally the only version with gyro support, Carl). The broader audience does flock to keywords, but I somehow doubt Nintendo is worried about that too much, seeing as they chose not to hold off TotK for a crossgen release like its predecessor and let the Odyssey team work on Bananza (which ticks pretty much all the quality boxes of a "new 3D Mario game" sans marketability😏).
In the end, people could have just kept buying Wii Us for BotW as well, so any possible "wowser deficit" compared to Switch's appeal boils down to the core feature iteration akin to the likes of SNES and 3DS. Even Nintendo has yet to have two equally industry-defining generations in a row, but NS2 is likewise poised to have its own solid impact, legacy and lifetime sales overall, and even sensationalist tabloids are forced to footnote as much through their teeth.
Re: Resident Evil Requiem's Latest Trailer Teases Bustling City Environment
You'd think "bustling city environment" would be the last phrase to describe the 21st century RC.😅
@Pillowpants with no obligatory reliance on ink ribbons, OG RE4 suffices for me (I'd rather have Code: Veronica remade in that context), although I've been reading that RE4R features gyro, and that's an admitted chinscratcher. Time will tell; I still have RE0 to get through.
Re: Random: Speedrunner Becomes First Person To Complete 'Super Meat Boy' Deathless
So this is what it's like to develop lasting skills in a video game.😳 No sarcasm implied, just honest envy.😄
Re: One Of 2025's Standout Switch Releases Could Get A Switch 2 Edition Upgrade
@schmauz "A technological upgrade for Switch 2 should be an absolute standard for larger games"
Right, to make them even larger, and on a console limited to MSDExpress memory expansions at that. I'm scratching my head about where to cram THL's current 13 Gb as it is, thank you very much - and I still remember the No Man's Sky upgrade (which I humoured for its actual extra content) quintupling the port's original size. Yikes.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (3rd January)
Back from the internet-lacking but festivities-abundant countryside New Year's Eve with my family and straight into a weekend that almost seamlessly links with the next one into a relative bana- er, bonanza of backlog time, so which playthroughs to invest it in? You'd think over 350 items added last year to Switch library alone would suffice for the answer... yet here I am, with the visibly emptier hobby fund coffers and the first hybrid splurge of 2026 to sort between the benches and the storage space (which also means deciding what already installed stuff to part with for now). A few titles like Pedestrian and Alice Gear may wait alongside Quake II for now, and The Hundred Line beckons but simultaneously scares with its 13-something gigabytes, but that still leaves the gluttony catalysts like Fantasy Life I (I'm tired of manually correcting the last letter's case😅), Unicorn Overlord, Labyrinth of Zangetsu, the first Quake, Astroneer, Chasm, Slay the Princess, Baba Is You and another dive into the hoard survival genre with the steampunk (edit: make it solarpunk) Luminaria... even My Time At Sandrock is tempting me to go Xenoblade/Atelier/RF/Persona/Tales on its series (if the witnesses of my previous Saturday comments know what I mean), so perhaps a very "gruesome" storage overhaul is in the cards anyway.🙀
Needless to say, none of that means I'll readily give up on glancing towards the already established playthroughs, especially when the timeframe actually encourages it once in a blue moon. Be it the aforelisted and simultaneously engaged series, relative recents from Remnant, Rogue Legacy 2 and Ghost Trick to Ball x Pit, Railgrade and Gnosia or the proverbial longplays from Forager, Borderlands 2 and BotW/Echoes to First Departure, Danganronpa and GTA Trilogy (and all of that with some Cyberpunk, Palia and Chibi-Robo on NS2), this is guaranteed to be one memorable week. Various handheld stuff like the first Fantasy Life, Neptunia, Xenosaga, FFXIII/XV and Death Stranding isn't off the table either (unlike the likewise newly procured Edge of Eternity and Elex which look like even bigger tricks to cram on Deck for the time being... but who knows), and I've even gone as far as to unshelve and plug in PS4 just in case - Lord knows how long it's been. Should the stars align, some of this mostly TV-chained library (NFS 2015 and Crew 2, Lies of P and Bloodborne, Sakura Wars and Star Ocean IaF - you name it) might just see some action, too.
Happy New Year, merry Christmas to everyone potentially celebrating in a few days like I do, and here's to many positive memories and times to decidedly outweigh their opposites.🍻
Re: Back Page: Every Game Should Have A Cow
I was going to ask about Fire Emblem, but come to think of it, IntSys got us covered long ago.
Re: Square Enix Teases More For Dragon Quest, NieR and Final Fantasy In 2026
@Zeeba ports like that don't sound like their point in this case, but in general I've been keeping my fingers crossed during 8+ years of Directs. And, FWIW, a few other top priority Direct finger-crossers on my list (like Xenoblade X and Tales of Xillia) have actually happened while Square Enix spent the generation unshelving a lot of their own stuff, so...
Re: "If Mario Starts To Show Up On PlayStation, That's The Apocalypse, Right?" - Ex-PlayStation Boss Thinks Console Exclusives Are Still Important
Exclusives can motivate additional hardware investments indeed, but only either among platforms of equal accessibility or for a user with the luxury of spending time with any given platform (the latter being commonly reduced or even denied over the same period when you have the most disposable income to invest in stuff like video games). To this day, I only have a PS4 courtesy of owning a Vita whereas even a whole bunch of PS5 games (either still exclusive or allegedly beyond Deck's capabilities) haven't succeeded in making me a PS5 owner because what's the point in buying a gaming machine you have no confidence in being able to use? Busy work/life schedules including but not limited to a teacher's downtown downtime are harsh masters and, unlike the aforementioned Vita, the Portal with its higher resolution and more restrictive network requirements threatens to be just as useless depending on your local communication services.
Games like BotW and Xenoblade can come to PS5 and XBS tomorrow (no subreddit puns intended) for all I care - I'll still buy and play them on Switch or Switch 2 whose format can feel like peak game accessibility to a busy adult gamer. And same goes for Nintendo's own exclusives like Tokyo Mirage Sessions or Xenoblade Chronicles X which alone could have long driven me to buy a Wii U ASAP... but never did, for contextually evident reasons regarding Wii U itself. Heck, a mere couple indies from a Humble Bundle back in 2016 sped up the introduction of 3DS to my gaming arsenal - but the enclosed Wii U titles from the same bundle gathered dust for years until the respective eShop was scheduled to stop processing purchases and I just gave both codes away on Reddit.
The notion of exclusives tailor-made for the hardware at hand is something to get behind, but context matters here. If the exclusive pushes the machine's unique features and pragmatic strengths, it sounds worthwhile indeed - but if the proverbial lever's "11" means 4K skin pores to peruse at 120 fps, then the "lowest common denominator" has all the odds of overlapping with highest common sense. We're long and well above the technology levels required to create a looker of a game - if your platform and its exclusives flex the excess specs, I would much prefer it to contribute to the more meaningful aspects - as long as we're talking a piece of interactive fiction and not just a glorified audiovisual tech demo.
Re: Square Enix Teases More For Dragon Quest, NieR and Final Fantasy In 2026
"Different approach" doesn't sound like covering the Gran Pulse saga and other veterans on modern platforms, but perhaps a Final Fantasy Warriors is finally happening?😆
Re: "A Knife Can Be Used For Cooking Or As A Weapon" - Level-5 Boss Defends GenAI In Game Development
"AI might produce plagiarized content if misused, but if used properly, it has the power to enrich the creative world even further."
So it brings us back to the same consensus: the legendary path of Donut Steel. If your assets are your own (or legitimately commissioned) and you fully curate the output, few people will have questions about the compiling tools.
Re: Square Enix Wants Feedback About The Final Fantasy Series In Its New Survey
Link followed, questionnaire filled, FFXIII trilogy and a bunch of other entries (like Dissidia 012, Type-0 and full-fat FFXV) portbegged.
@UsernameMayne it's at the end of the article in the "sources" part.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (27th December)
Last weekend of the year and the tail end of the first relatively generous backlog time streak to afford (the other estimated to be even longer but scheduled to follow a couple days' hobby hiatus while celebrating New Year in the family circle). At the cost of shelving Sailing Era (which, FWIW, I do have NS2 room for in the meantime), I've installed half of what will probably be my last eShop spendings in 2025 (namely Remnant: From the Ashes, Rogue Legacy 2 and Nova Lands, with the Accidental Queens bundle awaiting its turn for now), but the hybrid library is also likely to see more action in the already present stuff from Xenoblades, Ateliers, Tales, Rune Factories and Personas (the latter with a side of TMS and Nocturne as well) to Forager, Langrisser, Swindle, Doom 3, Gnosia, Theatrhythm and Cyberpunk. The other platforms? Highest odds for Death Stranding, Xenosaga, Valentia, Fantasy Life and God of War, but you never know what else might just elbow in. Here's to everyone's holidays and the rest of the new year offering enough time with their interactive fiction journeys, too!🍻
Re: How Well Do You Remember 2025? Nintendo Life's Gaming Quiz Of The Year
12/17 which somehow included correctly guessing the baseball team of all things. On a side note, who needs Welcome Tour to know NS2's internal storage capacity, especially in the age of still rare and eye-wateringly priced Express cards?
Re: Feature: Nintendo Life's Alternative Awards 2025
The article is interesting but feels incomplete without runner-ups in all categories.😉
Re: Editorial: Happy Holidays From Everyone At Nintendo Life
I may celebrate in January, but as a bank holiday, today is usually something to look forward to regardless of traditions (unless it falls on a weekend, but you can't win them all).😆 And to everyone the occasion concerns now - merry Christmas!
Re: Talking Point: Does It Bother You That Big Games Companies Are Using GenAI?
Tools should be tools, "intelligent" or not. There's no talking robotic "creators" until we enter the actual age of artificial sentience - which I doubt my own generation ever will. And as far as human creations go, automation has been applied to authored asset pools for ages, so the line remains drawn at that. The core of the commotion around GenAI is its shamelessly paraded penchant for "training" on everything not nailed down and then trying to mishmash it into something hopefully legit in the prompter's eyes. If it's done for whatever "concepts" never leaving the studio's grounds, it can be "just" an eyebrow raiser; if it permeates the final product in the original work's stead, then we may well have a controversy of the same kind as any olde plagiarism suspicion, and "my tool stole from too many people to track down or single out the exact origins" doesn't necessarily sweeten that pill.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (20th December)
Not much free time this weekend, but you can't win them all and I'd be a douche to complain on the eve of what's been shaping up like an ideally hobbylicious half-WEEK (and, if the stars align, an even longer streak in early January afterwards). The preceding week has been fairly eventful on the nerd front as well - I've managed more eShop investments from the Arkham and Monster Hunter Stories packs to my second voucher pair (first one dating all the way back to early 2020 or so) which helped me overduly equip my Switch backlog with the two flagship Fire Emblems. Incidentally, Engage became the estimated 2000th item in my biggest single platform collection - a milestone only somewhat dampened by actually running into the long but vaguely rumoured "All Software" icon cap after all. The ones "pushed out" from the end of a currently sorted list (a different sorting doesn't reapply the "disappearances" to other stuff) won't even leave the affected icons in the arranged groups. FWIW pestering the support again reaffirmed that no, it's not how the All Software screen is officially supposed to behave, so it looks like a bug unaccounted for due to a likely low number of reports (read: of digital hoard maniacs insisting on archiving everything like myself😈😆). The very helpful support guy documented the case with a few photos I submitted, so perhaps we'll even live to see a hotfix of some sort; for now, besides obvious reliance on the VGC menu (thankfully handier for redownloads than eShop profile's title salad ever was), my solution in the light of a still humongous wishlist has been to clean out the icons for finished games and defunct freemiums, although if/when that stops being enough, I may just dedicate a separate folder to affected icons on NS2 - even if the latter faces the risk of a similar bug, it'll take a fair few years to bring its native game collection near the "trigger threshold" anyway.😏
Oh, and to share some game session plans before this comment qualifies as "unconstructive feedback" for the post's intent (none of the aforementioned acquisitions are compact enough to become such a plan in themselves just yet)... well, it's just the hybrids for now, so any combination from the oft-eyed stuff like Cyberpunk and Doom 3, PowerWash and Wreckfest, Xenoblades/RFs/Tales/Ateliers/Personas, Terraria, Little Noah and Tallowmere 2 to some finally initiated or finally revisited playthroughs like Athanasy, Don't Starve, Need a Packet, Shovel Knight and Retro City Rampage.
Re: No Gravity Games Is Giving Away 10 Free Switch Games This Month (North America)
"Today is Bubble Trouble Adventures. Peculiar that they didn't start with the (seemingly) preceding trilogy unless the latter is the very three games we're getting on the last event day."
Can I channel some of that power into the next Direct day?😅
Re: Dispatch Switch 2 And Switch Frame Rate & Resolution Officially Revealed
@Sambuc OK zoomer.😄 To me, 30 fps at 720p will be most sufficient and preferable over the bloatedly doubled respective numbers even in a 2030 non-stop action title, let alone in a 2026 game of Telltale's effective core genre and pedigree.
@syrupdash "but they only ever buy Maaaarioooo!"
Re: Rumour: Bethesda's Newest IP Is Still Reportedly On Course For Switch 2
Of course we can! At this point, Bethesda will clearly port everything but Dishonored. /jk
Seriously, though, we don't even know the exact date for the actually coming Fallout 4 yet.
Re: GRID Legends: Deluxe Edition Is Racing Onto Switch 2 In Early 2026
Yes, please. I went through the main campaign back when the game hit PS+ and had a blast with it but predictably never invested in the DLC, all the platform specifics considered. This'll be a definite double-dip.