nhSnork

Mr Driller 2 was probably the first GBA game in my experience (as a rare one my Qtek G100 could decently emulate at the time😅), and it was enough to sell me on the franchise I proudly continue to suck at to this day.😏 More Klonoa on Switch is always welcome as well, even if my acquaintance with the character remains limited to Namco x Capcom for now.

A somewhat hectic weekend coupled with the proverbial storage space juggling requirements on both hybrids suggests that the latest Switch batch (a fairly wide range from Railgrade, Into the Breach and No Straight Roads to Gris, Lovecraft's Untold Stories and Raging Loop) may all stay in the figurative drawer for now despite the almost radiated temptation, but time will tell; some shuffling will be in order next month or so at latest anyway (in pursuit of pre-installing my Roughly Estimated™ 1900th Switch game aka Tales of Xillia👀), so I might as well ponder the necessary adjustments in advance. For now, what session time I'll ultimately manage to squeeze in is likely to be spent on the familiar lengthy playthroughs encompassing the familiar Xenoblades, Rune Factories, Ateliers, Personas, already installed Tales and their genre brethren/neighbours from Skyrim and EoW to Ys Origins and Shalnor Legends, plus other itches to potentially scratch like Powerwash, Train Life, Regency Solitaire, Layers of Fear 2, Tumbleseed and Pocket Card Jockey. NS2's native Cyberpunk alongside not-so-native Carto, Doom 3 and Pillars of Eternity are in this bingo ball machine, too, as are options on the other platforms like Dishonored, Pokemon Gold, God of War, Luigi's Mansion and Virtue's Last Reward.

$70 for two Gen 7 classics with some new bits is even worse than one new $80 game now?🤔 Who's the last in line for whatever this article and comment section is smoking? The first Metroid Prime, a Gamecube title, got recently remastered for $40 as well. And everyone "remembers back on Virtual Console", but Virtual Console's demise last gen ultimately compels one to wonder how many people actually used to put their money where their current nostalgia is. As for me, I'm on the fence about the first Galaxy courtesy of 3DAS ownership (I'll need to see the extent of the storybook's expansion and overall importance in the game) but $34 certainly doesn't sound like too much for a curated hybrid console experience instead of a dolphin-drawn emulated playthrough to alchemize manageable Deck controls for.

If not for a couple mood whiplashes (Popucom looks like an awesome action platformer mixed with Zuma legacy but is limited to multiplayer, and the wham return of the Virtual Boy library - over half of it! - threatens to lock me out with a required peripheral I can't be certain to see on local store shelves despite VB emulators and the feature-succeeding 3DS hardware making the 3D effect optional), I'd have rated it a solid 10, but even in the end I was eating good. SMG2 is finally happening, native REVII/VIII ports are finally happening with the equally cloudless Requiem on top, Fire Emblem's Echoes-style revisits have yet to resume but we're getting a whole new game with seemingly yet more ties to 3H. Fever is going "Tennis Story" with its adventure mode, Pokopia looks like an almost overdue Pokemon mine'n'crafter with vague Echoes of Wisdom vibes (on top of a couple more sims like Lynked and Human Crossing: Down Under Horiz- I mean Dinkum), Yoshi & the Mysterious Book just looks gorgeous but also promises a fantasy wildlife research expedition of sorts. Project Zero 2, Danganronpa 2 and even DQVII are all getting even more upgraded releases before I binge my way towards the previous ones... including the already purchased Goodbye Despair on Switch, but the new content sounds like a double-dip after all - and speaking of new content, there are a couple Gen 10 "upgrades" that also tempt some adjustments in my eShop wishlist (no, "more enemies" in Pirate Warriors 4 and "mouse mode" in Stardew Valley weren't among those). Add some more promising bits like Storm Lancers and a couple extras like Mega Man Star Force pack or the rest of FFVIIR subseries targeting NS2 - and bon appetit.

Yes, please. Skimming through Wikipedia, it seems like Switch will be only left missing the Legends subseries (1/2 and Tron Bonne) and a handful of spinoffs including the tactical Command Mission and the offline-revived X Dive. Hardly unrealistic to suppose Capcom could bundle both later down the road as well.

As some allege/report, the MAJORITY of these patents gets ignored (especially in Japan) and is created with as much in mind. It's doubtful Nintendo will need these anytime soon either, seeing the multitude of "other developers" they've welcomed and even published on their consoles. This whole case looks like a legal chess counterflex against a specific sassy instance of "pfff, OR WHAT?" from someone not even based in the usual suspects like the CIS or China.

@Ashfordwasp TD2 on SNES was a blast, and there's no such thing as too much first person driving on Switch(es).

@sixrings as far as production vectors go, 1440p is "straight down the budget drain", not "above and beyond".

I'd prefer Thursday where I have the slot free, but it's not like the stream won't be around to catch up with later. This year has been on a roll for my go-to Direct wishes like XCX and Xillia despite them ironically getting announced outside the thing, so I don't plan to reign in my gluttony for this one either.😈 Final Fantasies like the Gran Pulse saga, Type 0 and XV, everything Dishonored and other Arcane stuff like Prey, Eternal Sonata and Scarlet Nexus, Code Vein and Nioh series, Just Cause 4 and GTA V, NFS galore and the long-awaited TDU Solar Crown, the equally long awaited Genshin and the upcoming Neverness, the missing or previously clouded stuff from various Capcom and Ubisoft franchises, some first party hopes from Project X Zone 3 and Jugdral remakes to the anniversary-themed justice for Galaxy 2 and the Sin & Punishment bundle, the formerly proverbial opposites of first party like Gravity Rush games or even something MotorStorm, more revisited oldies like Clive Barker's Undying or pastgen-skipping indies like Starbound...

And the best part? Even if NONE of these show up, my NSW/NSW2 wishlists and eventually backlogs are pretty much guaranteed to grow bigger yet anyway. As the last eight and a half years are our witness. Here's to the same effect on everyone else's wishlists and backlogs, too!🍻

@Filthy so what are you waiting for? You have less than two days to splurge out on the Xenosagas!😸

Another weekend where I could slot a home console session (to check out the recently added Viewfinder or idly dip a toe into the otherwise naturally eShop-wishlisted Stardew Valley from the same IGC batch) but find myself more tempted by the bottomless portable backlogs. No telling if or how much the latter will grow this fortnight (although I am weighing my budget against a handful of discounts like Gris, No Straight Roads and Into the Breach), but what time I'll get to spend gaming is bound to feature the already engaged playthroughs - be it one/multiple Xenoblades/Personas/RFs/Ateliers/Tales (plus accompanying gigs like Borderlands 2, Hammerhelm, Bastion, Echoes of Wisdom, Outer Worlds and/or Layers of Fear 2) on Switch, more Tales alongside some Watch Dogs, Payback, Nioh and Morrowind on Deck or a mix of yet more Tales (the looming advent of Xillia will do that to you😆), Ciel Nosurge, EOU, Neptunia and Endless Frontier across the handheld consoles. Buggy (in a good way) metroidvanias to commemorate the release of their sequels? It's definitely a thought, but I have yet to decide what I'd be willing to bench for the needed ~5 Gb on either hybrid, and my "spotlight disk tray" of soulsvanias (comparatively smaller because I suck at them more😅) remains dominated by Ender Lilies.

I've already long restarted the game as The Legend Returns after even more time racked up on NDS prior, so the odds of a new investment and another restart (not holding my breath for save data compatibility here) will very much depend on the brand new content in question.

I'll refrain from an "outstanding" vote for now, keeping the tier for the Switch library which has long and truly reached it by now, but despite a fair bit of marketing focus on frixel-boosted crossgens and upgrades (not that the latter haven't included appreciably tangible examples like No Man's Sky, Kirby or the upcoming Disgaea 7 Complete), the new generation already shines, offering more compact adventures and grand time sinks alike. Cyberpunk, Bananza, MKW and Star Wars Outlaws alone could easily make one's backlog for the rest of the year (the term I'm already generously shortening down from my own tendency to comb through such games for even longer😆), and there's so much more where that came from (the range I'm already excluding crossgens from). The followup is off to a great start and only promising to go uphill from here.

Would have been even cooler to see it debut westside like a fair few other oldies did on NSO in the past, but it's always a much taller order with RPGs. The game did get patchlated elsewhere IIRC, though, and its NDS followup Magical Starsign was released in the west officially.

@ancientlii I think they had a spirit there, yes. SSBU gave a bit of spotlight to an appreciable truckload of games like this.

Me when a game runs at "what seems like 30 fps":

The description sounds kinda like a mix of Typoman and Baba Is You. Hardly the most confusing thing I've ever read.

"who, despite revealing that Ubisoft allowed no direct-feed capture or over-the-shoulder recording during the preview, assembled his thoughts into a YouTube video"

Well, that was one story to preface with a whole paragraph about the lack of Ubisoft's own promo footage.😅 Sounds like a bunch of "early impressions" to take someone's word for... and considering that a recent PAX video filming a handheld Elden Ring session still left me struggling to detect the very frixel woes it was intended to showcase, "there might be a good reason for that"©

Back home and back to backlogs, potentially just portable ones for now since the rest has to be hooked up and there's too much stuff I've been itching to revisit in the former field. Switch sessions will likely revolve around the familiar RPG/actventure salad of Xenoblades, Personas, Zeldas, Ateliers, Hogwartses, Rune Factories and Cyberpunks with more where that came from (like 8Doors, Astria, Bastion, Eiyuuden Rising, Iconoclasts and/or Skyrim) on top; stuff like Layers of Fear 2, Powerwash, Deliver Us the Moon, Bioshock 2, Carto and NSO's recently added Chibi-Robo are in the pool as well. The other platforms may see some FFXIII/XV, Eternia/Zestiria/Arise, Watch Dogs and Gran Turismo (both the PSP one on Vita and OG on Deck), Luigi's Mansion and Ever Oasis... a new academic year ahead means a naturally busier schedule to keep up with it all afterwards, although that's still where the proverbial portability comes in to improve the odds.

I've had Sedna on Switch for ages, but starting the respective franchise binge toward it was a different matter... which just became a fair bit easier.🍻

@The_Nintendo_Pedant I haven't dealt with many RC vehicles IRL but I credit Mike Posehn-sensei for what "tank controls" prowess I do have.😄

Pretty much my top fave in the series so far. The blend of eras in the setting, the cast, the gameplay - all summing up to an unforgettable ride.

Sounds interesting, like having a DIY version of Warframe's orbiter, although I do hope the update comes with an expanded cap for ship storage (I mean, beyond what freighters are already said to add) which can seem pretty challenged courtesy of various expedition rewards alone.😅

A free upgrade is certainly appreciated (although I don't have the game yet anyway), but the listed features don't really entice me to go for 28 Gb instead of ~9,6.

Welp, one of my most portbegged Switch releases over the years is finally happening.🍻 No sequel yet, but here's hoping it won't get ratatosked either.

Well, if the wording is literally "Nintendo consoles" (which it should be because who says "a game coming to Nintendo" in the mid-2020s?), then it sounds like a cross-gen indeed, and the series might be considered a bit too "niche" to target a 6 million userbase instead of a 153 million one. By default, I'll be aiming for the Gen 9 version in that case, too. Wish the first two games would show up as well (I haven't tried them on Deck yet and lack confidence after attempting a playthrough on an Intel HD laptop yilded actual bad graphics as opposed to what spoiled gamers like to mislabel as such😵😏), but far be it from me to look the gift horse in the mouth for now.

5 p.m. here... well, I should still be within semi-decent mobile coverage, so I'll try to catch it. The announcement has been officially summer-bound for a while and presents the umpteenth excuse to hope for Xillia dilogy on Switch even though it's more likely to be one game and more probably one of the other franchise milestones like Phantasia or Abyss. In the end, provided properly portable access (which last gen's Tales re-releases were appreciably consistent in), I'll be in the market for any of them.

This being the tail end of the streak I mentioned last time, much of the lineup remains unchanged as well, although certain items like Yumia, XCX, P5R, Cyberpunk, RE0, Azuma and Palia may get particular playtime on Switch while the likes of Lies of P, Wolfenstein New Order, Payback, Watch Dogs, Horizon, Valentia and a bunch of Tales are likely to make up the bulk of activity on the other platforms. Still got a shot at finishing Super Mario Kart and Doom 3 as well, although the former might make way for more Speedstorm (with the unlocked tour nodes to mop up because the season will estimatedly end right before I get back to the hobby in late August) while the latter still has a reported followup campaign of sorts, so I probably won't be done with it just yet anyway.

@larryisaman and games on PS5 (itself a five-year-old pastgen machine) tend to use a tenth of its power on meaningful features, so there's arguably plentiful room for compromise.

@Shade_Koopa "BL 3 skipped switch"... except it didn't. The Legendary Collection also runs fine and birdflips allegations of comparative inferiority with actually contributive stuff like motion aiming - while its optimization reportedly involved the contracted studio's proprietary tech that facilitated UE 2.5/3 game ports on Switch in general.

Never heard of the game until until this IW, but it seems to have only taken 34 (or, on Steam, 33) years for an Action 52 done right.😄

I'd prefer the ability to catch up with the previous entries first anyway (including T7 I briefly tried on PS4), but please tell me what would make porting a fighting game to a machine with NS2's already borderline excessive specs "a lot of work" is the ability to make waffles and do taxes, not 8K perspiration on the fighters' faces or crunched optimization procedures. This frixel craze has been enough of a toilet bowl to flush budgets and efforts down that even the past transition to HD graphics has long stopped seeming worth the snowballing tradeoff. This bubble is bound to burst one day, and when it does, I don't envy anyone in close proximity.

@kal_el_07241 sounds like a worthy successor to "N64 trees in Pokemon Sword". And I'm not sure if equalling NS2 to PS3 (which even the first Switch predictably ran circles around) validates one to label other people's statements as jokes either.😅 (unless Poe's law strikes again here, which I'd rather hope it does)

My schedule says I won't be trying it until the 29th at earliest, but neat nonetheless. With Wind Waker still awaiting its turn in the franchise queue, this will be the first freeroamer in the lineup that I could earnestly dig into.

It's on my radar, but sports tend to be elbowed out by other genres in terms of wishlist priority, and I have yet to clarify if it offers enough/any single player content.

"When publishers, developers, and composers choose to share and sell their music is obviously up to them"

/article

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!😄

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.

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.

@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.

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.

"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.😄

@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.

Rats, so no NFS Heat port to hope for, then.

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.