psyraven76

@mjharper I'm pretty sure this counts as parody, so they wouldn't have needed permission from anyone, legally speaking. Still pretty brave, though, given how litigious the big N usually is!

Considering how much it threw me out of the story when Ciri's eyebrows changed colour between the final scene of season 1 and the first of season 2 (a time-span of around 5 minutes within the show), I don't think I'll be able to adjust to a new Geralt...

It's really sad, as (unlike many here) I haven't read the books or played the games yet, so I've actually really enjoyed both seasons of the show.

@daggot It's the first one, I believe. I've spent a crazy number of hours on TV2 on Steam, so I prefer that one myself, but the first one was still a nice little game (and I think they've included more game type options to extend replayability a bit)

Does this mean Unlimited SaGa might also appear one day? (fingers crossed) I had that on PS2 and it's slot-machine style battle system confused the hell out of me at the time because it was so different than Square's usual turn-based battles. Would love to give it another go, though...

Strong Fox and the Hound vibes from this one. I'm just really hoping that you can also play it on your own (maybe controlling both animals with different sides of the controller, like they did with Brothers). I have no-one to play co-op with and I hate it when I miss out on great games as a result...

Weirdly, this was one of the most unexpected highs of the Direct for me - I've put a ridiculous number of hours into Train Valley 2 on Steam and this looks like it might scratch the same itch... Intrigued to see more

I just assume it's like the Hemsworth brothers, where two of them are famous and adored, while the other one is just left as a jobbing plumber, up to his elbows in bathroom sludge. Poor Pablo.

@frabbit It really doesn't look that bad! I'm struggling to see what all the negativity is about, to be honest... maybe I'm just not that shallow. It's not the same polish as BotW, but it's not the same graphical style, either, so I think of it more like playing a reasonably pretty anime show.

Started playing it just after midnight last night when my digital version became playable. Eventually dragged myself away at 2am after completing the first couple of missions. I absolutely LOVE it so far - head and shoulders over the usual Pokemon formula. Going to go and play another bit now on my lunch break...

You had me at 'crafting'... LOL

@wazlon I can actually answer the name question. It wasn't referring to RAM (16 vs 64), but was basically a Commodore 16 that came preloaded with what was essentially the Microsoft Office of its time - four business programs (word processor, spreadsheet, database and graphs), which I'm pretty sure almost nobody ever used.

My parents always seemed to buy the wrong thing when it came to technology - we also had a ZX81 at the time that everyone had moved on to the Spectrum, and we bought a Betamax video recorder instead of VHS... I'm only amazed they never bought a HD-DVD player!

@wazlon Wow, I found the other person who bought a Commodore 16 +4!! My parents were fooled into thinking it would be more than just a games machine by the pitch about spreadsheets - ha!

I remember it came with 10 game cassettes and several of them were actually good, with soundtracks that were real bangers for the time - Treasure Island, Icicle Works, Exorcist all spring to mind. The latter is arguably a better version of Pacman, yet no-one remembers it now...

I also remember playing Fire Ant on a black and white telly, where you needed to see what colour the scorpions were flashing to know if it was safe to go past them. As you can imagine, that went really well!

I would play all of those games again happily on my Switch, given half a chance. I've tried browser emulators before for a couple of them and they hold up surprisingly well.

@Ralizah I love when games have cool gimmicks like this. Vib Ribbon did a similar thing where every music CD created its own unique 'track' - whiled away many an hour working through my music collection!

Added this to my wishlist a couple of weeks back based on the premise and art style alone - was hoping it would turn out to be a good game, so really happy to see this review!

@Greatluigi I wouldn't say it's an RPG, really. More of a simple strategy game with RNG elements and a roguelike structure. Your character does make progress and 'level up' in a way, but not in the way they would in a regular RPG. If you like games like Slay the Spire, or even some of the more active 'idle/clicker' games, you would probably enjoy this one, too (you lay down tiles to map out a route of monsters for your hero and all battles are then automated rather than being directly controlled by you, the player). It is weirdly compelling and easy to lose a few hours sending your little chap round and round an increasingly difficult route until he is ultimately overwhelmed (or you send him home to recover with all his loot).

Can't believe you brought up Lost Kingdoms and didn't mention that there were actually TWO games. Lost Kingdoms 2 was also exclusive to Gamecube, I believe, and while not quite as good as its predecessor, it is still a pretty good game.

I have my treasured copies of both games still sitting on my shelf, and only recently learned they were made by FromSoft... felt really silly for not knowing that earlier.

@Moistnado Now you're just being deliberately obtuse. If someone stole a crate of Switch consoles off the back of a lorry, would you say they weren't stolen just because there were other shops still selling Switch consoles?

@Moistnado If you haven't previously purchased a copy of the game then yes, theft is exactly what it is.

While I can see the value of emulation for those who have vast libraries of physical games they can't play any more due to issues like incompatibility between old and modern hardware, I suspect there are a very large number of people who use it to play stuff they haven't paid for, including for games/platforms that are pretty new and still able to be purchased easily. They are making a choice to steal that content instead of paying the creator/owner.

@BenAV I enjoyed the demo, but was holding off on buying it at launch in hope of a sale later on - glad I did now! I'll probably still get it at some point, but at least I'll have realistic expectations...

@BenAV You're almost done with Voice of Cards already? Is it that short?

Just to counteract all the negative comments about the pricing of this, I just upgraded my membership and actually saved myself £7 a year compared with what I was previously playing!! I'd foolishly kept to a monthly payment instead of yearly until now, meaning this was a better deal for me - it's nice when things work out...

(Looking at that list, though, I'm a bit sad we won't be getting Snowboard Kids - I remember quite enjoying that on my N64. I can't wait for F-Zero and Banjo-Kazooie, though... hoping we get a couple of new games a month for the next little while)

Well, I, for one, welcome our new Tiny Crab Overlord. ♥

Mostly, I'm embarrassed to only realise today after 20 years + of playing Pokemon that Ekans is snakE spelled backwards... I feel like an idiot.

@hyperballad Yeah, I feel like Nintendo really missed a trick there... if they'd had a collection of the first four Metroid games ready to go as a shadow drop on the eStore when Dread was announced, it would basically have been a license to print money for all of us who missed out on getting one or two of them at the time.

Been carrying on with my first ever Metroid playthrough on the NES online service. I have all the power-ups now and just beat Kraid, so it will be on to Ridley tomorrow.

I've also just bought Ring Fit Adventure, so I did my first world this evening - it's a pretty good workout for a couch potato like me and I'm hoping it will help me get out of my current lack-of-fitness rut.

Finally, I downloaded the Trials of Mana demo to see whether I want to take advantage of the current sale on that one. It's promising so far, and the music alone is gorgeous, so I suspect I will bite on the sale.

Non-Switch-wise, I've been playing the original Suikoden on my Vita and I really need to get back to my Horizon: Zero Dawn playthrough...

@the_beaver Yeah, I would probably enjoy that more, but without having a Wii U to get it on Virtual Console, it's really hard to get hold of that one. Luckily, I do have a copy of Fusion, but Zero Mission is one I didn't get on GBA... regretting that now...

So I figured I might as well give the original NES version a go, at the low, low price of free

I've never played much Metroid, but all this excitement around Dread has made me go back to the beginning and try out Metroid on the NES online service. Turns out I am terrible at it (even with the rewind option), but I have to admit, it's amazing what they were able to pull off on that console - the core elements of the Metroidvania blueprint are definitely there all the way back in 1986. The lack of a map and save rooms is rough, though... and will all of these flying monsters please stop hitting me in the face?!!

All that part of the show did was make me sad that it's been so long since Wave Race: Blue Storm. Man, that game had pretty water graphics... way ahead of its time. ♥

Had a bit of a panic this evening when a new purchase refused to download. Turning it off and on again did nothing. Connecting to BT Wifi instead of my Hub, then reconnecting to my Hub seems to have fixed it finally.

The really annoying thing is I'd deliberately been cancelling any prompts to update because I wasn't convinced they'd fixed the issues, but it must have gone ahead and installed it while the console was sleeping today... Not cool, Nintendo!

@MisterMan I bought it in the recent sale and have played it a bit in handheld mode - the performance seems fine to me, although I'm still just as crap at the game as I was on PC so I've not gotten very far yet...

The text is a bit small in handheld, which is a common problem with PC ports, but it's just about legible.

While I do like the 'Fight of the Concord' subtitle, I shall be very disappointed if no one uses 'The Grape Escape' in some future article about this game...

Definitely keeping an eye on this one. It looks charming.