This weekend starts another generous streak of days with extra allocatable gaming time (followed by an almost equal period of barely having any until borderline September, but that's a relative staple and the two periods weren't even anywhere as "balanced" in the previous years), which certainly does little to keep my backlog gluttony in check. Franchise-wide itches on one or across multiple platforms (Xenoblades, Rune Factories, Personas, Ateliers, Tales, Final Fantasies, Castlevanias - you know the bunch) go without saying, and there's plenty that might or might not hit the spotlight on top, possibly including a few more eShop discounts I've decided to pull the remaining funds' trigger on after all (particularly House of the Dead and Astria Ascending, and perhaps Röki as well). Beckoning en masse are more Switch items already installed across the two hybrids (from Great Ace Attorney, RE0, First Departure, Immortals, Monster Hunter Rise and PowerWash to Outer Worlds, Crisis Core, Doom3, Echoes of Wisdom, Skyrim and Golf Story), and the mixed feelings about the Skyforge EoS announcement seen this morning (of course the game is on its way out now that I've finally got room to reinstall it😏) include the relative appreciated flipside of having 30 Gb cleared on NS2 again. Time will tell what they get promptly filled back with (maybe revisits of ongoing playthroughs like Palia, Devil May Cry or Sakuna, maybe taps into still not properly sampled stuff like AI: The Somnium Files, Gamedec or Port Royale 4), but I certainly don't expect the console's more native Cyberpunk to gather dust beyond all that either.
There are ambitions regarding the other platforms (in addition to their part in the aforelisted franchise binges), too. PS4 may see some action (of having my derrière served to me) in Lies of P and Bloodborne besides other stuff like inFamous, Hundred Knight, NFS2015, Saints Row '22 and Wolfenstein New Order; Deck, more Watch Dogs, Nioh, Morrowind, Dishonored, Horizon and Nights of Azure plus emulated sessions like Ar Tonelico, Xenogears and Gran Turismo; the handheld consoles, a familiar range of playthroughs like Endless Frontier, Valentia, God Eater, Fantasy Life, Chase Begins, Neptunia and Gravity Rush. Perhaps even some GTA 5, Witcher and/or Grid 2 on the laptop. And for all I know, even Yoshi's Island might see end credits over the course of the next ten days, paving the way back onboard for 3D All-Stars afterwards. And also finishing Super Mario Kart while I'm at it? It's the franchise anniversary, after all!😄
Short but juicy - easier to say what I didn't wishlist, and even then I still might. Neverway, Well Dweller, Glaciered and Herdling look especially promising.
It's one of the select few NS2 versions I'm motivated to get courtesy of actual added content. I don't have the original to upgrade, so it's just an item swap on my wishlist.
So basically just more red tape as a side effect from status change. The timing is a SNAFU indeed, but it might drive the orgs to reach out to and check back with other involved publishers in advance rather than wait until the air of silent benevolence proves to be the respective sluggish legal teams only just catching up. And if there weren't any other apparent issues with streaming Nintendo games prior to 2020, then the air should be clear by next year again. But we wouldn't be a fandom without writing another epitaph for the cancerous myth called "customer goodwill" upon this prompt anyway.
A game newsblog isn't happy to get two Nintendo showcases in eight days? The things this year does to people...😏 Anyhoo, my deficient knowledge of what and when this industry calls an "indie" prevents me from forming long wishlists tailored to IW lineups (general and partner Directs are easier in that regard), but there's always the long-awaited stuff like Heart Forth Alicia and Resistor to keep awaiting on Switch, and NS2 might finally relieve my Deck of Starbound (inb4 the port only supports mousecons and a finger on the monkey paw curls😜). And IWs always deliver a bunch of cool new stuff I'm not even accounting for.
P.S. Not really expecting it, but Nintendo crowning this streak next Thursday with a general Direct would be rich.😄
@RupeeClock well, to maintain the universal balance, I am demonstrating an u willingness to purchase these upgrades and upgrade paths (with currently rare exceptions). These glorified facelifts look redundant on a backward compatible console. Sure, I would have preferred the NS2 screen to retain its size and resolution myself (both for BC output consistency and for the uselessness of having 1080p on a portable screen where even 720p was an overkill), but the picture stretch is hardly any more of a hindrance than it used to be in the NDS/3DS or PSP/Vita cases. And how is 30 fps supposed to be detrimental in the first Dragon Quest of all games? These HD2D games hardly seem to warrant Switch 2 versions at all - IMHO the respective budgets might be better off contributed to the proper revisits of games like Kingdom Hearts whose own Switch "ports" are likely to drop to 1-2 fps (or birdflip your ongoing session completely) if you so much as pass through a subway tunnel.
I'll probably regret asking, but what the heck is wrong with the game's title in the first place? This nitpicking is getting a bit too first world even by the already unflattering first world standards.
@Max_the_German the joke's on you - my four teenage years spent as a "Sega boy" had Zelda-flavoured adventures with this much dialogue (some of it from similarly outspoken fairy companions) like Landstalker and Crusader of Centy among their biggest highlights.
An expectedly limited range of hardware to use this weekend... which sounds fairly dramatic when the range in question includes a few thousand installed Switch titles.👀 Stuff like Carto, Doom 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur may see some playtime on NS2 besides Cyberpunk as well, but the main Gen 9 stash will likely pinball around playthroughs like Skul, No More Heroes, Deliver Us the Moon, Pixel Cafe, Theatrhythm, Skyrim and RE0 besides a bunch of Rune Factories and Personas. Some Ciel Nosurge, Fantasy Life, Eternia or Luigi's Mansion may happen elsewhere, too.
@StewdaMegaManNerd and many folks also attribute PS2's legs to second world markets like my own country... except not only official distribution was rather wonky here until Gen 8 or so, but over the last 10-15 years a negligibly higher pricetag could net local buyers a chipped second-hander with an added HDD and even service like thermal paste replacement. Like I have often commented before, there's little to doubt about people still buying PS2s during the period Sony eventually pulled the "extra 5 million" bunny from, but there's a fair bit to doubt about these PS2s all being off-the-shelf statistic contributions.
@Andee personally (no pun intended), I can't imagine what there could be to "remake" in the already fantastic Golden beyond the routine visual facelift. A Persona 3 remake was at least something anticipated for years as a definitive merger of FES and P3P contents; after Reload completely abandoned the latter and had to go the DLC route to so much as bring back the former, I can't claim to expect any tangible additions in the recently announced Revival. In fact, the one actual "addition" listed on the game's Steam page so far is the fan-favourite Denuvo.😛 Not that it would concern consoles like Switch 2, of course.
Yeah, a 50% quarter YoY decrease can make for a good nintendoom clickbait, but pushing another million in one's ninth year during the backward compatible successor launch quarter is but another testament to Switch's objective lasting appeal. Even with yet lower results during other quarters (and a likely relative spike back to 1-2 millions during holidays when a cheaper console with a larger-than-life library will naturally seem even more attractive on the gift front), the hybrid queen has all the potential to chug on to even more legendary heights over whatever remaining production time Nintendo still plans for it. The prized 155+ million pedestal is in the bag, although I reckon some people would also want to see the console hit the memetic "160 million" goalpost solely for an extra snicker at the company who managed to make the mundane procedure of hardware sales updates memetic in the first place... and indeed, the funniest thing is that the numbers in question remain legitimately achievable as well.
@Andee Persona 4 only got one upgrade, Golden - which debuted on Vita's more powerful hardware and didn't drive the studio to rework and "compress" its PS2 original's environments P3P-style. Now Golden is on Switch with all of its QoL stuff, all of its extra content and two voice-over languages on top, making it even more definitive (it seems that a couple live performance clips may have gone poof from the extras section, likely due to license expiry and whatnot, but that's not much to mourn).
It may also bear mentioning that P3P and P4G hit Switch well before P5R and have a separate eShop bundle to themselves besides the later three-pack, so you could home in on it if you wish - it has its own recurrent discounts, too.
An expected basketful to wishlist from it, although I was admittedly a bit salty about NS2 upgrades taking up a bunch of slots (you'd think people hungry for "improved resolution and framerates" already camp out at the relevant social media PR accounts for the relevant news as it is), and Persona 3 Reload trailer put the final nail in the already half-buried coffin of Kotone's comeback odds. Still, there's more Yakuza, Monster Hunter Stories and Octopath, the return of classic Plants vs Zombies, a brand new Katamari title, a new horror game from Bloober and a new "HD2D" JRPG triggering vague but welcome flashbacks of early Mana games and even Landstalker. Hela and Goodnight Universe look interesting as well.
I did hope for a bit more from a showcase like this, with the autumn Direct destined to spend a fair chunk of its own runtime on the first party stuff that tends to be half a franchise binge away from me (I mostly make rare gluttonous exceptions for Xenoblade these days, but I also don't expect anything else on that front so soon after XCX DE), but far be it from me to pretend that even the factual highlights here wouldn't keep me busy for months to come on their own.😸
@Andee it does, which leaves it as my own preferred version to date. P3P lacks a followup episode and an exclusive dungeon from FES (which reappeared but were oddly relegated to DLC in the remake here), but it has a separate female protagonist option (with some dedicated music to go with it, including Wiping All Out that remains one of my fave MegaTen battle themes overall), an extra character and an extra dungeon of its own, so a pretty generous tradeoff as far as I'm concerned. P3L mostly just seems to have remade the PS2 original out the box, although it reportedly does at least inherit direct party member controls that P3P also introduced.
I got through the campaign and a fair bit of extra unlocks back on NDS, but unlike the cases like Flashback where I picked up the Switch port mostly to add a proper receipt into my relationship with the game, this one might just tempt me to do another run from scratch. And couch co-op can come in handy, too.
I humoured the trailer with a sliver of hope defying the previously read interviews - after all, it's a new port targeting a literal portable platform, if not here, where? But tough luck in the end, and it looks like I'll be sticking to P3P indeed. Like I said elsewhere, this may well become an anomalous case of me turning to a PS4 version over a hybrid one, waiting for the base game to hit PS+ Catalogue and just buying the FES content DLC to skim through (and even that much is for time to tell).
Fingers crossed for Metaphor, Soul Hackers 2 and perhaps the earlier Persona ports alongside a possible Tokyo Mirage Sessions and followups down the road (what? Even Katamari just got a new game announced before our eyes!), but I have truckloads of dungeon crawling and social link raising in my backlog until then.
@SearchingS I mean, all games are pretty much guaranteed to happen on Switch 2 here, one way or another.
@Fiergala I finally got GR2 earlier this year myself, which I lowkey hope should help increase the ports' odds.😆
@Nintendo_Thumb IIRC Enter the Gungeon 2 was announced way back in the console's premiere Direct, although its trailer fell prey to the stream hiccups at the time.
Time to roll out the usual wishful thinking scroll with the likes of Jugdral remakes and Project X Zo-
reads announcement more attentively, shrugs, folds the scroll back up a bit
...like I was saying - the likes of Gran Pulse Saga (and full-fat FFXV for NS2 while we're at it), Xillias, Dishonoreds, Mass Effects and Watch Dogs, Soul Hackers 2 and Metaphor, Just Cause 4 and - assuming there's anyone left to port those - Volition's swan songs Agents of Mayhem and SR22, Niohs and Code Veins, GTA V and Elder Scrolls Online (Oblivion is naturally welcome, too), proper ports of everything "clouded" last gen, proper localisations of existent Switch titles like Nosurge duo, OG Neptunia trilogy or Girls und Panzer, the long-awaited stuff like Genshin, Resistor and TDU Solar Crown (Neverness to Everness and more NFS for the god of NFS as well!)... oh, and in the light of recent porting trends, I'd be remiss if I didn't add a ritual summoning image courtesy of r/gravityrush:
@illmatic20xx if people with multiple consoles/PC buy Nintendo hybrids for a grand handful of plumber/elf adventures over 5-10 years, good for them, but that doesn't mean portability doesn't remain topical for countless older and fully employed gamers out there. It's especially amusing to read the zoomer detractors' comments when they claim that everyone has long finished every possible pastgen port elsewhere - do these lucky couch warmers even leave their homes at all?😅😏
@SpacedDuck $20 for 20 sessions a year but with blackjack and frixels. chef's kiss
A typical bunch of playtime ambitions spread across Xenoblades, Tales, Ateliers Rune Factories and Personas (particularly the latter under the influence of chugging through the mobile Phantom X this week) plus other hybrid sessions like Cyberpunk, Immortals, Skyrim, RE0, Deliver Us the Moon, 13 Sentinels, Tallowmere 2 and Doom 3. Handheld stuff from Dishonored, Nioh and Ar Tonelico to Endless Frontier, Valentia and Neptunia as well. More stationary sessions up in the air but definitely ruled out for next weekend, so perhaps I'll spare some time for the likes of GTA V, Hundred Knight and Crew 2 after all.
At least they're not leaving clueless SMM interns to scratch heads at inquiries like in the case of Robocop Rogue City, but "canceling" a port a month before release like that can feel not dissimilar otherwise. Ironically, the game is published by Saber Interactive whose own dev side is behind third party Switch juggernauts like Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come Deliverance, so the situation can also partly remind of Firaxis who crammed two full-fat Civilization experiences on the hybrid but threw the towel on Marvel's Midnight Suns of all ports (a stone's throw from the general release date, too).
Guess this will be one to target on Deck someday, if at all. Nothing in the trailers suggests any more hardware taxation than in the likes of BotW, Darkstalkers, Immortals or Genshin (let alone the aforementioned examples with comparatively more "photorealistic" artstyles), so if the studio made the difficult decision to skip a 150+ million userbase, there's not much breath to hold among a ~5 million one necessitating allegedly elusive devkits.
@Whirlwound we must have starkly different Switches. This machine has one of the most insane libraries in Nintendo history (including Gen 3/4, yes) and in portable console history.
Well, if their alternatives were digital only (which many a gamer have spent last gen bellyaching about) or not porting the game at all (which definitely benefits no one at all), guess the logic is there.😏 Nobody in this food chain is eager to tank the medium format costs as the last eight years have already shown, and nobody is making another disk-based portable console after PSP.
@HingryHuppo oh, I'm gradually getting there already, hence the deficit of interest in an inferior Borderlands 4 product (the one lacking portability and expected to lack motion controls despite the hardware supporting them out the box).😉 The frixel snake oil doesn't quite register among quality criteria with me.
@Wood_Stick or GTA SA whose save file my home desktop saw reach 98% (plus all the hours of just cabbing around to the sound of user tracks) at 20-25 fps tops.
I'm certainly in the market for Shadows overall (Japan was pretty much my biggest AC setting wish this side of of something inspired by my own country's past like the Grand Duchy and the Commonwealth periods), although I dare hope such a possibility wouldn't rule out the older batch from Unity to Mirage and side stuff like the side-scrolling "Chronicles" that were even on Vita. And there are even higher priority open-worlders from the company that I would still welcome in a proper hybrid format, including all the series with the relative industry-rare first person driving (Watch Dogs, The Crew, Far Cry and whatnot). That said, I'm not about to indulge in equine dental inspections - more portable ports is more portable ports regardless.
2017 called and it wants its dev polls back.😅 Any game in a natively portable (let alone hybrid) format is an exponentially higher investment possibility and priority for me than its TV/display-chained incarnations.
(Posting the comment mid-type while simultaneously sending me to an Ori game page? God bless Hookshot and capacitive screens😏)
Pokemon rhythm game confirmed (and could be a blast, with Game Freak already boasting HarmoKnight in their portfolio). But that won't stop me from hoping for a new Pokemon Pinball (or at least a new match-three puzzler to succeed Shuffle) either. With Legends Z-A still on the way, I doubt we're getting news of anything comparatively more flagship anyway.
The familiar Switch hodgepodge drawn from installed series (Xenoblade, RF, Atelier, Persona, Castlevania, Tales) and standalone games (Little Noah, Skul, Grammarian Ltd, Bastion, Hogwarts Legacy, Wreckfest) with the probable addition of transferred items like Doom 3, Carto and Outer Worlds alongside their current base's [variably] native Cyberpunk and NMS. The other platforms might well see more FFXIII/XV and Watch Dogs, Ciel Nosurge and God of War, inFamous and Sakura Wars, Valentia and Etrian Odyssey Untold... so business as usual.
@thenikdavies Ape Out is actually six years old, but better late than never!
"And for every participant who squeaks, we will postpone the actual release another month away so they can't farm any immediate street cred with their big mouths. See y'all on Switch 5"
@Sindayl quite literally, through a window and with the aim befitting a ninja.
"while Bananza seemingly takes us "right back to the same types of Switch-like compromises"
Good, that means they'll have something to put the bread on their tables with the advent of Switch 3, too.😜
But seriously, in the light of the dev team's voiced priorities (ones to salute as they nurture confidence that the console isn't just turning into an nVidia frixel showcase), I wouldn't count much on "addresses in later updates". My thoughts go to the friends amd families of everyone subjected to 30 fps boss battles, but personally, I'm still waiting for the atrocious performance in Echoes of Wisdom or that one BotW forest to come my way.
@johnedwin that's the thing - the game DOES continue to exist on the server, the same one that eShoppers like myself use to reinstall owned games. It's only the delisted item's respective digital store page that goes poof, preventing new purchases. That was a moot point for second hand markets with codes-in-a-box since those only enabled redownloads for the account that redeemed the code, but a key-card's entire marketing schtick is that any player can download and play the game as long as they have the card slotted in. And the downloads will work as long as the dedicated servers do - the latter still being the reported case even for NDS and Wii downloads.
Sounds like a heap of hearsay which is Tuesday at IGN. "Hentai Girls/World/Golf/whatchamacallit] series (likely singled out for the very clickbait naming it consciously went for) is alleged to be renamed to "Kawaii Girls" henceforth although I could swear I've seen both brands coexist for months if not years by now, and none of the interviewed devs seem confident about what to make of the new guidelines either. But it scored both IGN and NL a click from me, and I guess that's what currently matters?😏 Only time will tell the rest, including whether new policies will be able to weed out blatant ripoffs and Artificial Ignobility products.
@Debo626 this stuff seems to slip through because the thumbnails in question have nothing to do with hentai (and in even more irony, so does the multitude of swimwear jigsaws/qix/solitaires behind them), although I reckon parents like yourself aren't thrilled about the prospect of having to explain the fancy word in question anyway.😆
@Coalescence personally, I just occasionally browse through releases/announcements on Deku (courtesy of its unlimited wishlist) and mark another batch of what piques my interest. I don't need tags, ratings or guidelines to curate what I [window-]shop for.
"The joys of gaming"? What to say about the joys of game publisher SMMing, then? A three days' notice sounds like a new record, and the game hasn't been on sale since April. Although like I've bellyached before, the latter part just brings us back to the former one - delisting doesn't necessitate a discount if the eleventh hour buyers can target the full price investment in advance. FOMO is a potent seller, but if the industry is losing its collective grip on the very notion of customer budget planning...
@johnedwin except you aren't? Key cards license you to access redownload servers just like digital purchases, and delisting only prevents new purchases. In fact, not being a one-use code in a box, GKCs appear comparable to full physical editions in the potential to "outlive" the delisted digital eShop entry in stores and second hand lots alike.
@ShieldHero the classic "img" and "/img" in square brackets around the image link that I assume you've read about. But in my own experience, some images can refuse to show up (oftentimes the ones with stuff like "?blablablabla" or "&yadayada" after the file extension, so removing it may or may not help), and then some work but won't appear immediately although reloading the comment section does the trick.
Comments 5,954
Re: Talking Point: Where On Earth Are The Switch 2 Soundtracks On Nintendo Music?
"When publishers, developers, and composers choose to share and sell their music is obviously up to them"
/article
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (9th August)
This weekend starts another generous streak of days with extra allocatable gaming time (followed by an almost equal period of barely having any until borderline September, but that's a relative staple and the two periods weren't even anywhere as "balanced" in the previous years), which certainly does little to keep my backlog gluttony in check. Franchise-wide itches on one or across multiple platforms (Xenoblades, Rune Factories, Personas, Ateliers, Tales, Final Fantasies, Castlevanias - you know the bunch) go without saying, and there's plenty that might or might not hit the spotlight on top, possibly including a few more eShop discounts I've decided to pull the remaining funds' trigger on after all (particularly House of the Dead and Astria Ascending, and perhaps Röki as well). Beckoning en masse are more Switch items already installed across the two hybrids (from Great Ace Attorney, RE0, First Departure, Immortals, Monster Hunter Rise and PowerWash to Outer Worlds, Crisis Core, Doom3, Echoes of Wisdom, Skyrim and Golf Story), and the mixed feelings about the Skyforge EoS announcement seen this morning (of course the game is on its way out now that I've finally got room to reinstall it😏) include the relative appreciated flipside of having 30 Gb cleared on NS2 again. Time will tell what they get promptly filled back with (maybe revisits of ongoing playthroughs like Palia, Devil May Cry or Sakuna, maybe taps into still not properly sampled stuff like AI: The Somnium Files, Gamedec or Port Royale 4), but I certainly don't expect the console's more native Cyberpunk to gather dust beyond all that either.
There are ambitions regarding the other platforms (in addition to their part in the aforelisted franchise binges), too. PS4 may see some action (of having my derrière served to me) in Lies of P and Bloodborne besides other stuff like inFamous, Hundred Knight, NFS2015, Saints Row '22 and Wolfenstein New Order; Deck, more Watch Dogs, Nioh, Morrowind, Dishonored, Horizon and Nights of Azure plus emulated sessions like Ar Tonelico, Xenogears and Gran Turismo; the handheld consoles, a familiar range of playthroughs like Endless Frontier, Valentia, God Eater, Fantasy Life, Chase Begins, Neptunia and Gravity Rush. Perhaps even some GTA 5, Witcher and/or Grid 2 on the laptop. And for all I know, even Yoshi's Island might see end credits over the course of the next ten days, paving the way back onboard for 3D All-Stars afterwards. And also finishing Super Mario Kart while I'm at it? It's the franchise anniversary, after all!😄
Re: Nintendo Announces New 'Hello, Mario!' App For Switch And Mobile Devices
Not the Galaxy 2 port we expected but the one we deserved.😜
Jokes aside, though, fascinating to see even this bit of the franchise's legacy get its own spotlight.
Re: Nintendo Indie World Showcase August 2025 - Every Announcement, Game Reveal & Trailer
Short but juicy - easier to say what I didn't wishlist, and even then I still might. Neverway, Well Dweller, Glaciered and Herdling look especially promising.
Re: Poll: So, Will You Be Getting The Switch 2 Upgrade For Kirby And The Forgotten Land?
It's one of the select few NS2 versions I'm motivated to get courtesy of actual added content. I don't have the original to upgrade, so it's just an item swap on my wishlist.
Re: Nintendo Won't Let Charity Speedrunning Event Use Its Games Without Permission, Because Of Course
So basically just more red tape as a side effect from status change. The timing is a SNAFU indeed, but it might drive the orgs to reach out to and check back with other involved publishers in advance rather than wait until the air of silent benevolence proves to be the respective sluggish legal teams only just catching up. And if there weren't any other apparent issues with streaming Nintendo games prior to 2020, then the air should be clear by next year again. But we wouldn't be a fandom without writing another epitaph for the cancerous myth called "customer goodwill" upon this prompt anyway.
@Johnny44 as per the article, because they "transitioned into a legal entity". "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy"©, and the new status may lead bystanders to presume the featured content publishers' approval for everything that transpires during the event, which means those publishers might as well demand that at least the respective plans aren't something they'll be the last to read in the news about.
Re: Anniversary: No Way Is Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 30 Years Old Already
Might be my sign to get down to finally finishing it. But even in advance, it's already THE Mario game on SNES in my book.
Re: Surprise! Nintendo Announces Indie World Showcase For Thursday 7th August 2025
"Folks, we've just had a Partner Showcase"
A game newsblog isn't happy to get two Nintendo showcases in eight days? The things this year does to people...😏 Anyhoo, my deficient knowledge of what and when this industry calls an "indie" prevents me from forming long wishlists tailored to IW lineups (general and partner Directs are easier in that regard), but there's always the long-awaited stuff like Heart Forth Alicia and Resistor to keep awaiting on Switch, and NS2 might finally relieve my Deck of Starbound (inb4 the port only supports mousecons and a finger on the monkey paw curls😜). And IWs always deliver a bunch of cool new stuff I'm not even accounting for.
P.S. Not really expecting it, but Nintendo crowning this streak next Thursday with a general Direct would be rich.😄
Re: Nintendo Sends Out Second Game-Key Card & Physical Game Survey
@RupeeClock well, to maintain the universal balance, I am demonstrating an u willingness to purchase these upgrades and upgrade paths (with currently rare exceptions). These glorified facelifts look redundant on a backward compatible console. Sure, I would have preferred the NS2 screen to retain its size and resolution myself (both for BC output consistency and for the uselessness of having 1080p on a portable screen where even 720p was an overkill), but the picture stretch is hardly any more of a hindrance than it used to be in the NDS/3DS or PSP/Vita cases. And how is 30 fps supposed to be detrimental in the first Dragon Quest of all games? These HD2D games hardly seem to warrant Switch 2 versions at all - IMHO the respective budgets might be better off contributed to the proper revisits of games like Kingdom Hearts whose own Switch "ports" are likely to drop to 1-2 fps (or birdflip your ongoing session completely) if you so much as pass through a subway tunnel.
Re: Just Like With Switch 1, Nintendo Warns Against Using Switch 2 In Extreme Heat
Rats, so no NFS Heat port to hope for, then.
Re: Rumour: Three Games Were Pulled From Nintendo's Direct Partner Showcase, According To Veteran Games Journalist
Re: Hands On: Forget The Name, Square Enix's New Action RPG Is A Lovely HD-2D Take On SNES-Era Zelda
I'll probably regret asking, but what the heck is wrong with the game's title in the first place? This nitpicking is getting a bit too first world even by the already unflattering first world standards.
@Max_the_German the joke's on you - my four teenage years spent as a "Sega boy" had Zelda-flavoured adventures with this much dialogue (some of it from similarly outspoken fairy companions) like Landstalker and Crusader of Centy among their biggest highlights.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (2nd August)
An expectedly limited range of hardware to use this weekend... which sounds fairly dramatic when the range in question includes a few thousand installed Switch titles.👀 Stuff like Carto, Doom 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur may see some playtime on NS2 besides Cyberpunk as well, but the main Gen 9 stash will likely pinball around playthroughs like Skul, No More Heroes, Deliver Us the Moon, Pixel Cafe, Theatrhythm, Skyrim and RE0 besides a bunch of Rune Factories and Personas. Some Ciel Nosurge, Fantasy Life, Eternia or Luigi's Mansion may happen elsewhere, too.
Re: Switch Is Now Within Touching Distance Of The DS' Lifetime Sales
@StewdaMegaManNerd and many folks also attribute PS2's legs to second world markets like my own country... except not only official distribution was rather wonky here until Gen 8 or so, but over the last 10-15 years a negligibly higher pricetag could net local buyers a chipped second-hander with an added HDD and even service like thermal paste replacement. Like I have often commented before, there's little to doubt about people still buying PS2s during the period Sony eventually pulled the "extra 5 million" bunny from, but there's a fair bit to doubt about these PS2s all being off-the-shelf statistic contributions.
Re: Persona 3 Reload Is Making The Jump To Switch 2 This October
@Andee personally (no pun intended), I can't imagine what there could be to "remake" in the already fantastic Golden beyond the routine visual facelift. A Persona 3 remake was at least something anticipated for years as a definitive merger of FES and P3P contents; after Reload completely abandoned the latter and had to go the DLC route to so much as bring back the former, I can't claim to expect any tangible additions in the recently announced Revival. In fact, the one actual "addition" listed on the game's Steam page so far is the fan-favourite Denuvo.😛 Not that it would concern consoles like Switch 2, of course.
Re: Switch Is Now Within Touching Distance Of The DS' Lifetime Sales
Yeah, a 50% quarter YoY decrease can make for a good nintendoom clickbait, but pushing another million in one's ninth year during the backward compatible successor launch quarter is but another testament to Switch's objective lasting appeal. Even with yet lower results during other quarters (and a likely relative spike back to 1-2 millions during holidays when a cheaper console with a larger-than-life library will naturally seem even more attractive on the gift front), the hybrid queen has all the potential to chug on to even more legendary heights over whatever remaining production time Nintendo still plans for it. The prized 155+ million pedestal is in the bag, although I reckon some people would also want to see the console hit the memetic "160 million" goalpost solely for an extra snicker at the company who managed to make the mundane procedure of hardware sales updates memetic in the first place... and indeed, the funniest thing is that the numbers in question remain legitimately achievable as well.
Re: Persona 3 Reload Is Making The Jump To Switch 2 This October
@Andee Persona 4 only got one upgrade, Golden - which debuted on Vita's more powerful hardware and didn't drive the studio to rework and "compress" its PS2 original's environments P3P-style. Now Golden is on Switch with all of its QoL stuff, all of its extra content and two voice-over languages on top, making it even more definitive (it seems that a couple live performance clips may have gone poof from the extras section, likely due to license expiry and whatnot, but that's not much to mourn).
It may also bear mentioning that P3P and P4G hit Switch well before P5R and have a separate eShop bundle to themselves besides the later three-pack, so you could home in on it if you wish - it has its own recurrent discounts, too.
Re: Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase July 2025: Every Announcement, Game Reveal, Trailer
An expected basketful to wishlist from it, although I was admittedly a bit salty about NS2 upgrades taking up a bunch of slots (you'd think people hungry for "improved resolution and framerates" already camp out at the relevant social media PR accounts for the relevant news as it is), and Persona 3 Reload trailer put the final nail in the already half-buried coffin of Kotone's comeback odds. Still, there's more Yakuza, Monster Hunter Stories and Octopath, the return of classic Plants vs Zombies, a brand new Katamari title, a new horror game from Bloober and a new "HD2D" JRPG triggering vague but welcome flashbacks of early Mana games and even Landstalker. Hela and Goodnight Universe look interesting as well.
I did hope for a bit more from a showcase like this, with the autumn Direct destined to spend a fair chunk of its own runtime on the first party stuff that tends to be half a franchise binge away from me (I mostly make rare gluttonous exceptions for Xenoblade these days, but I also don't expect anything else on that front so soon after XCX DE), but far be it from me to pretend that even the factual highlights here wouldn't keep me busy for months to come on their own.😸
Re: Persona 3 Reload Is Making The Jump To Switch 2 This October
@Andee it does, which leaves it as my own preferred version to date. P3P lacks a followup episode and an exclusive dungeon from FES (which reappeared but were oddly relegated to DLC in the remake here), but it has a separate female protagonist option (with some dedicated music to go with it, including Wiping All Out that remains one of my fave MegaTen battle themes overall), an extra character and an extra dungeon of its own, so a pretty generous tradeoff as far as I'm concerned. P3L mostly just seems to have remade the PS2 original out the box, although it reportedly does at least inherit direct party member controls that P3P also introduced.
Re: Plants Vs Zombies: Replanted Coming To Switch 1 & 2 This October
I got through the campaign and a fair bit of extra unlocks back on NDS, but unlike the cases like Flashback where I picked up the Switch port mostly to add a proper receipt into my relationship with the game, this one might just tempt me to do another run from scratch. And couch co-op can come in handy, too.
Re: Persona 3 Reload Is Making The Jump To Switch 2 This October
I humoured the trailer with a sliver of hope defying the previously read interviews - after all, it's a new port targeting a literal portable platform, if not here, where? But tough luck in the end, and it looks like I'll be sticking to P3P indeed. Like I said elsewhere, this may well become an anomalous case of me turning to a PS4 version over a hybrid one, waiting for the base game to hit PS+ Catalogue and just buying the FES content DLC to skim through (and even that much is for time to tell).
Fingers crossed for Metaphor, Soul Hackers 2 and perhaps the earlier Persona ports alongside a possible Tokyo Mirage Sessions and followups down the road (what? Even Katamari just got a new game announced before our eyes!), but I have truckloads of dungeon crawling and social link raising in my backlog until then.
Re: Feature: Nintendo Partner Direct Predictions - What Do You Expect To See?
@SearchingS I mean, all games are pretty much guaranteed to happen on Switch 2 here, one way or another.
@Fiergala I finally got GR2 earlier this year myself, which I lowkey hope should help increase the ports' odds.😆
@Nintendo_Thumb IIRC Enter the Gungeon 2 was announced way back in the console's premiere Direct, although its trailer fell prey to the stream hiccups at the time.
Re: Feature: Nintendo Partner Direct Predictions - What Do You Expect To See?
I won't repost the entire comment from earlier, but spamming the ritual picture shouldn't hurt.
Re: Forget Flowers, Date Everything Devs Have Delivered A "Mega Patch" On Switch
A mega patch for such a game is good and all... but can you date it?
Re: Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase Announced For Tomorrow, 31st July 2025
Time to roll out the usual wishful thinking scroll with the likes of Jugdral remakes and Project X Zo-
reads announcement more attentively, shrugs, folds the scroll back up a bit
...like I was saying - the likes of Gran Pulse Saga (and full-fat FFXV for NS2 while we're at it), Xillias, Dishonoreds, Mass Effects and Watch Dogs, Soul Hackers 2 and Metaphor, Just Cause 4 and - assuming there's anyone left to port those - Volition's swan songs Agents of Mayhem and SR22, Niohs and Code Veins, GTA V and Elder Scrolls Online (Oblivion is naturally welcome, too), proper ports of everything "clouded" last gen, proper localisations of existent Switch titles like Nosurge duo, OG Neptunia trilogy or Girls und Panzer, the long-awaited stuff like Genshin, Resistor and TDU Solar Crown (Neverness to Everness and more NFS for the god of NFS as well!)... oh, and in the light of recent porting trends, I'd be remiss if I didn't add a ritual summoning image courtesy of r/gravityrush:
@YunoboCo hear, hear! who in their right mind buys portable multiplats anyway?
@illmatic20xx if people with multiple consoles/PC buy Nintendo hybrids for a grand handful of plumber/elf adventures over 5-10 years, good for them, but that doesn't mean portability doesn't remain topical for countless older and fully employed gamers out there. It's especially amusing to read the zoomer detractors' comments when they claim that everyone has long finished every possible pastgen port elsewhere - do these lucky couch warmers even leave their homes at all?😅😏
@SpacedDuck $20 for 20 sessions a year but with blackjack and frixels. chef's kiss
Re: Hollow Knight: Silksong Will Be Playable At Gamescom 2025
@RupeeClock alongside more Metroid Prime 4 footage, and then NEITHER will get a release day specified again.😈
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (26th July)
A typical bunch of playtime ambitions spread across Xenoblades, Tales, Ateliers Rune Factories and Personas (particularly the latter under the influence of chugging through the mobile Phantom X this week) plus other hybrid sessions like Cyberpunk, Immortals, Skyrim, RE0, Deliver Us the Moon, 13 Sentinels, Tallowmere 2 and Doom 3. Handheld stuff from Dishonored, Nioh and Ar Tonelico to Endless Frontier, Valentia and Neptunia as well. More stationary sessions up in the air but definitely ruled out for next weekend, so perhaps I'll spare some time for the likes of GTA V, Hundred Knight and Crew 2 after all.
Re: 'The Knightling' Has Gone Gold, But The Switch Version Has Been Axed
At least they're not leaving clueless SMM interns to scratch heads at inquiries like in the case of Robocop Rogue City, but "canceling" a port a month before release like that can feel not dissimilar otherwise. Ironically, the game is published by Saber Interactive whose own dev side is behind third party Switch juggernauts like Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come Deliverance, so the situation can also partly remind of Firaxis who crammed two full-fat Civilization experiences on the hybrid but threw the towel on Marvel's Midnight Suns of all ports (a stone's throw from the general release date, too).
Guess this will be one to target on Deck someday, if at all. Nothing in the trailers suggests any more hardware taxation than in the likes of BotW, Darkstalkers, Immortals or Genshin (let alone the aforementioned examples with comparatively more "photorealistic" artstyles), so if the studio made the difficult decision to skip a 150+ million userbase, there's not much breath to hold among a ~5 million one necessitating allegedly elusive devkits.
@Whirlwound we must have starkly different Switches. This machine has one of the most insane libraries in Nintendo history (including Gen 3/4, yes) and in portable console history.
Re: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Rating Spotted, Fuelling Nintendo Direct Hopes Again
It's only getting rated now?🤔 Or does each trailer get a separate rating ahead of release?
Re: NIS America: Trails Beyond The Horizon Switch 2 Game-Key Card Release Is "Most Beneficial Option" For Fans
Well, if their alternatives were digital only (which many a gamer have spent last gen bellyaching about) or not porting the game at all (which definitely benefits no one at all), guess the logic is there.😏 Nobody in this food chain is eager to tank the medium format costs as the last eight years have already shown, and nobody is making another disk-based portable console after PSP.
Re: Nintendo Download: 24th July (North America)
A new Somnium Files, a new Mado Monogatari, Wild Hearts, Soma, Tales of the Shire... quite a week across both hybrids.🍻
Re: Random: DK Enthusiast Breaks Switch 2 In Bananas Spray Painting Job Gone Wrong
"I just am unable to play Bananza knowing that I’m putting a red cartridge in my Switch"
ends up unable to play Bananza after putting a yellow cartridge in his Switch
Netflix should scoop the adaptation rights while they're hot.
Re: Borderlands 4 On Switch 2 Will "Mostly" Run At 30fps
@HingryHuppo all good, and I wouldn't be in a position to complain about snark and sarcasm in the first place.😄
Re: Borderlands 4 On Switch 2 Will "Mostly" Run At 30fps
@HingryHuppo oh, I'm gradually getting there already, hence the deficit of interest in an inferior Borderlands 4 product (the one lacking portability and expected to lack motion controls despite the hardware supporting them out the box).😉 The frixel snake oil doesn't quite register among quality criteria with me.
Re: Borderlands 4 On Switch 2 Will "Mostly" Run At 30fps
@Wood_Stick or GTA SA whose save file my home desktop saw reach 98% (plus all the hours of just cabbing around to the sound of user tracks) at 20-25 fps tops.
Re: Borderlands 4 On Switch 2 Will "Mostly" Run At 30fps
...oh wait, I'm a millennial and an eShop customer.😅
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Switch 2 Rating Spotted Online
I'm certainly in the market for Shadows overall (Japan was pretty much my biggest AC setting wish this side of of something inspired by my own country's past like the Grand Duchy and the Commonwealth periods), although I dare hope such a possibility wouldn't rule out the older batch from Unity to Mirage and side stuff like the side-scrolling "Chronicles" that were even on Vita. And there are even higher priority open-worlders from the company that I would still welcome in a proper hybrid format, including all the series with the relative industry-rare first person driving (Watch Dogs, The Crew, Far Cry and whatnot). That said, I'm not about to indulge in equine dental inspections - more portable ports is more portable ports regardless.
Re: Ori Dev Asks Nintendo Fans If They Want 'No Rest For The Wicked' On Switch 2
2017 called and it wants its dev polls back.😅 Any game in a natively portable (let alone hybrid) format is an exponentially higher investment possibility and priority for me than its TV/display-chained incarnations.
(Posting the comment mid-type while simultaneously sending me to an Ori game page? God bless Hookshot and capacitive screens😏)
Re: Switch Port Specialist Virtuos Confirms 270 Layoffs
And that's at the start of a whole new hybrid generation.
Re: Pokémon Is Teasing Something Ahead Of Next Week's Showcase
Pokemon rhythm game confirmed (and could be a blast, with Game Freak already boasting HarmoKnight in their portfolio). But that won't stop me from hoping for a new Pokemon Pinball (or at least a new match-three puzzler to succeed Shuffle) either. With Legends Z-A still on the way, I doubt we're getting news of anything comparatively more flagship anyway.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (19th July)
The familiar Switch hodgepodge drawn from installed series (Xenoblade, RF, Atelier, Persona, Castlevania, Tales) and standalone games (Little Noah, Skul, Grammarian Ltd, Bastion, Hogwarts Legacy, Wreckfest) with the probable addition of transferred items like Doom 3, Carto and Outer Worlds alongside their current base's [variably] native Cyberpunk and NMS. The other platforms might well see more FFXIII/XV and Watch Dogs, Ciel Nosurge and God of War, inFamous and Sakura Wars, Valentia and Etrian Odyssey Untold... so business as usual.
@thenikdavies Ape Out is actually six years old, but better late than never!
Re: Nintendo Still Doesn't Want You To Talk About The Switch Online Playtest Program
"And for every participant who squeaks, we will postpone the actual release another month away so they can't farm any immediate street cred with their big mouths. See y'all on Switch 5"
@Sindayl quite literally, through a window and with the aim befitting a ninja.
Re: "Somewhat Mixed" - Digital Foundry Delivers Its Technical Analysis Of Donkey Kong Bananza
"while Bananza seemingly takes us "right back to the same types of Switch-like compromises"
Good, that means they'll have something to put the bread on their tables with the advent of Switch 3, too.😜
But seriously, in the light of the dev team's voiced priorities (ones to salute as they nurture confidence that the console isn't just turning into an nVidia frixel showcase), I wouldn't count much on "addresses in later updates". My thoughts go to the friends amd families of everyone subjected to 30 fps boss battles, but personally, I'm still waiting for the atrocious performance in Echoes of Wisdom or that one BotW forest to come my way.
Re: Rumour: Guilty Gear's New Game Has Been Cancelled, It's Claimed
@Samalik like wishing I had a dollar for every franchise it's said about.
Re: PSA: You Only Have A Few Days To Buy This Bithell Games Title Before It's Gone
@johnedwin that's the thing - the game DOES continue to exist on the server, the same one that eShoppers like myself use to reinstall owned games. It's only the delisted item's respective digital store page that goes poof, preventing new purchases. That was a moot point for second hand markets with codes-in-a-box since those only enabled redownloads for the account that redeemed the code, but a key-card's entire marketing schtick is that any player can download and play the game as long as they have the card slotted in. And the downloads will work as long as the dedicated servers do - the latter still being the reported case even for NDS and Wii downloads.
Re: Nintendo Has Seemingly Taken Further Steps To Combat 'eSlop' On Switch 2
Sounds like a heap of hearsay which is Tuesday at IGN. "Hentai Girls/World/Golf/whatchamacallit] series (likely singled out for the very clickbait naming it consciously went for) is alleged to be renamed to "Kawaii Girls" henceforth although I could swear I've seen both brands coexist for months if not years by now, and none of the interviewed devs seem confident about what to make of the new guidelines either. But it scored both IGN and NL a click from me, and I guess that's what currently matters?😏 Only time will tell the rest, including whether new policies will be able to weed out blatant ripoffs and Artificial Ignobility products.
@Debo626 this stuff seems to slip through because the thumbnails in question have nothing to do with hentai (and in even more irony, so does the multitude of swimwear jigsaws/qix/solitaires behind them), although I reckon parents like yourself aren't thrilled about the prospect of having to explain the fancy word in question anyway.😆
@Coalescence personally, I just occasionally browse through releases/announcements on Deku (courtesy of its unlimited wishlist) and mark another batch of what piques my interest. I don't need tags, ratings or guidelines to curate what I [window-]shop for.
Re: PSA: You Only Have A Few Days To Buy This Bithell Games Title Before It's Gone
"The joys of gaming"? What to say about the joys of game publisher SMMing, then? A three days' notice sounds like a new record, and the game hasn't been on sale since April. Although like I've bellyached before, the latter part just brings us back to the former one - delisting doesn't necessitate a discount if the eleventh hour buyers can target the full price investment in advance. FOMO is a potent seller, but if the industry is losing its collective grip on the very notion of customer budget planning...
@johnedwin except you aren't? Key cards license you to access redownload servers just like digital purchases, and delisting only prevents new purchases. In fact, not being a one-use code in a box, GKCs appear comparable to full physical editions in the potential to "outlive" the delisted digital eShop entry in stores and second hand lots alike.
Re: Rumour: A Nintendo Direct Is Set To Take Place Later This Month, It's Claimed
@ShieldHero the classic "img" and "/img" in square brackets around the image link that I assume you've read about. But in my own experience, some images can refuse to show up (oftentimes the ones with stuff like "?blablablabla" or "&yadayada" after the file extension, so removing it may or may not help), and then some work but won't appear immediately although reloading the comment section does the trick.
Re: Rumour: A Nintendo Direct Is Set To Take Place Later This Month, It's Claimed
Predicting a summer Direct? In July after June has been crossed out?
Re: FBI Shares Official Statement After Seizure Of Major Switch ROM Site
"nsw2u.com, nswdl.com, game-2u.com, bigngame.com, ps4pkg.com, ps4pkg.net, and mgnetu.com"