Played it for a couple of days and I found it impossibly boring. The "keep your finger on the pill to drag it through other pills" mechanic creates a ton of problems in VS mode, especially when the board scrolls down all of a sudden and you find yourself with your finger at the top of the board like an idiot. And the whole gatcha thing is possibly the slowest "get a new character" mechanic I have encountered in a mobile game so far. Disinstalled after two days, like all the other stuff Nintendo has made for mobile, so I can make room for mobile games that don't actually treat the player as an imbecile...
I prefer physical whenever possible. I still haven't converted entirely to the digital age: I tend to forget usernames and passwords, I always run out of storage, I risk on buying the same game twice or simply forget what I already bought. I wonder what will happen 10 years from now if I plug the PS3 and want to re-download all the games I bought in 2010...will they still be there? I know the physical games I own will be there, but I can't bet the digital copies will be there. That said, I also like to get things on a discount, so if I can get a very good deal, I'm all for digital. However, I wouldn't spend more than €15/€20 on a digital game, even if it's the only way to acquire it - it kinda makes me feel like I'm giving my money away for nothing...
@Indielink yeah, that depends on how smart of a consumer each individual is. Would you trade one fundamental consumer right (changing your mind once you gather enough information on the product) for a small discount and the luxury to play a game 5 hours before somebody else who didn't pre-order?!
The fact alone that a company is willing to offer their game on a "pre-order discount" says a lot about the quality of the game and the confidence of the developers. What, they want you to buy it before you find out it stinks?!
Dear people: don't pre-order digital games. It's a scam as much as gambling and it exploits your impulse to buy on a whim before you really make up your mind (and before you have enough information to make up your mind). The eShop won't run out of digital copies, so there's no need to reserve yours (for full price and with no going back) weeks in advance.
Another thing I want to add - many translators today use "tools" to assist them with the translation of large bodies of text - basically they feed the text into the machine and the machine translates it roughly - then it's up to the individual to refine that into a more natural language (I've never used these tools personally but I've been lectured about them at the Uni). What are the chances of both of these translators using the same tools, thus producing similar results?
But really, before any further investigation, somebody should check who is credited for the italian translation in the Switch game (if it's credited at all). I can't find the credits anywhere.
As an italian and professional translator myself, I guess the only way to know would be to compare the full fan-made translation with the full official translation and see if they match in the "unique touches" and quirks each translator naturally adds to the text. Common parlance will always be translated as common parlance - you can't claim originality on that!
I've never played the game, but if it's really all made of short lines of text like it appears in the screenshots...well, there's only so many ways you can translate "You said you need no friends" to another language - you could virtually ask 10 different translators and most of them will come up with the same translation, because in short sentences you can't paraphrase much.
Not saying any of the two parties is wrong, but IF Square hired a professional translator, I see no reason for him/her to "steal" somebody else's work - it looks like a rather straightforward game to translate, it's certainly not British pastoral poetry. However, many companies don't want to hire translators and end up using other means - but I can't tell until I read the text.
@Frendo Yeah I'm aware of his history but again, I think it's kinda fair that a small number of WiiU owners developed a hate for the Switch. After all it's Nintendo that mismanaged the transition from one console to the other. In 2015 they said the WiiU wasn't going to be replaced by the NX and one year later they said the opposite thing. The people who got the console in 2014-2015 basically got less than 2 years of support. That might be a huge minority compared to the people who are happy to move on, but they are still entitled to their opinion, no matter how unpopular. I think people have the right to complain if they feel they didn't get their money's worth with the whole WiiU to Switch debacle. And certainly seeing most of the people happy to throw money at Nintendo for yet another console kinda exacerbates the frustration.
@Frendo @ilikeike I actually think people do have the right to complain if they feel like doing so...the game (actually, a huge number of games) was promised from a certain platform and was cancelled from that platform and moved to another one. It's kinda fair to complain. People might not own that new platform, they might not be interested in purchasing one or might not have the money to do so. It's not like if you had a WiiU you magically got a free Switch aswell.
Not sure what's the matter with you guys and why you think somebody should be happy to move on and spend the money on a new console just because Nintendo decided to ditch the previous one prematurely because they couldn't sell it. Have we reached the point where companies are always right and people who complain are always wrong??
The MeToo thingy has certainly helped bring to the forefront a lot of dirty stuff that needed to be changed, but also proved to be a platform for attention seekers and people who have exploited that system for years and are now finding lucrative to rebel to that system.
A few months ago a young american actor accused an italian actress of abused him and forcing him to have sex with her. Now, I don't know much about the distorted world of celebrities but I find it very hard to believe that a popular and attractive 35 year old woman could abuse a 19 year old not-as-popular not-as-good-looking kid. With that I just want to say that it's very hard to tell what's reality and what's imagination, and the line between sexual consent and physical assault is getting twisted and turned.
On Ronaldo I don't know. I personally thought he was gay.
While I am a big believer that videogames are affecting our society in a negative way, I find the case for violent games = violent behaviour to be rather silly. The point is that videogames are very popular and most people between 15 and 40 play them, and the mainstream genre of choice is of the violent/military/shooting variety. It's very hard and almost impossible to find videogamers of that age that have never played a videogame that depicts violence. A bit like back in the 50s every anti-social behaviour was blamed on rock'n'roll - but rock'n'roll in itself was harmless - it just happened to be the most common genre of music amongst youth culture.
What these studies don't get is that the people who behave violently have been, before videogames, alienated from society in one way or another - abusing violent games is just their answer to that. So, a much better research would be to investigate what makes some people retreat in their dark cave and play videogames all day, rather than analysing what kinds of videogames they play...
That's baffling, because in the previous comment section, according to NintendoLifers, there were millions of people who were going to buy FIFA19 on Switch!
@maruse good point - who the heck would buy this game? I mean, it made sense with PS2/Wii to re-skin the same version of FIFA and PES over and over because they could sell it in Central/South America where there was a good market for it (and the latest PES on Wii are still phenomenal games), but this has literally no commercial appeal beside the occasional british middle class white guy who buys it as an amusement...
Well Atari and Commodore have been doing these little consoles for ages - the only thing Nintendo can take credit for is that they made it popular - and they made it popular because Nintendo IS popular. And people genuinely want Sony to do something like this - just because Nintendo took an idea that existed and popularized through marketing, doesn't mean that idea has to be exclusive of Nintendo. It's like saying that all mp3 players are a rip off of the iPod, even though the iPod wasn't the first mp3 player - it just happened to be the most popular among the mainstream crowd. I'm sure the main difference between this PSX mini and NES mini is that I will actually be able to walk into a shop and buy one.
How is this a "strange comment to make"? Every console manufacturer says their console is the best console for your money. I don't see Nintendo going around recommending people to buy consoles other than theirs...
@AlexSora89 Hey Alex, long time no see - hope you're doing well. I completely agree with what you're saying.
I will also add that emulation is the fundation of good journalism. A good journalist has to research and play games to make connections, draw comparisons etc, basically to know what they are talking about...emulation is the only effective way to do it. Just think of how little we would know about videogame history without MAME.
...and all of this will be available on WiiU too!! I can't believe these guys kept all the crazy promises they made. Shovel Knight is seriously one of the most pleasant surprises of this generation!
This is a free-2-read website that gets paid though advertising just like F2P videogames, correct? Then why the heck are all these people reading this website if they are against F2P?! Or watching Youtube?! Or reading online newspapers?!
I don't really understand what's with the current obsession for licences and especially this bloody Champions League licence - as if playing a game that calls it European Clubs Cup makes it automatically an inferior experience.
For 25 years the best football games have been the ones WITHOUT a licence and all of a sudden people can't stand the idea of playing something that doesn't have an official brand attached to it, as if it changed the actual quality of the gam?!
@electrolite77 I simply stated facts. The guy said that his WiiU was collecting dust. He now has a Switch and he's excited for exactly the same games he could have got on WiiU.
Games are interesting or not interesting regardless of the machine they run on. As a matter of fact, 4-5 years ago when most of these games were released, there wasn't a more practical, engaging, quick and fun way to play them.
I am not interested in which method of injecting games into your brain you find most enjoyable. What I'm arguing against is that the substance itself (the actual games) hasn't changed. So reading that people who couldn't be arsed before are now going bonkers for the same stuff makes me laugh, and makes me realise that the way things are marketed and the way the audience is spoonfed things is way more important than the actual thing itself.
@Alikan "I had a Wii U, but it was a glorified Zelda HD and Mario VC player. The Switch floored me with great games like Breath of the Wild, Shovel Knight Treasure Trove, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Odyssey, Enter the Gungeon, Bayonetta 1+2 and a trove of Neo Geo titles. I look forward to Kirby, DKC Tropical Freeze, Hyrule Warriors and the Mega Man sets as well as the next direct/E3 hopeful for a Nintendo future."
I think this guy sums up the whole WiiU/Switch debacle quite nicely. He had a WiiU and he didn't like it. He bought a Switch, and 80% of the games he's excited about are games that were also available on the console he didn't like in the first place.
This is literally a perfect example of "marketing".
This is as true as them saying "Don't worry guys, the NX won't replace the WiiU"! Usually, when they say they are not going to do something, that's exactly what they are going to do.
Digital pre-order is inherently stupid anyway. The whole point about pre-order is to reserve a copy for yourself before the shop runs out of copies, which you don't need with digital content.
Buyers who use digital pre-order are stupid just as well. They trade their right to change their mind for the luxury of playing a game the second it gets officially released (as opposed to 5 hours later).
I'm sure many have pointed this out already, but this is really an unfair comparison. Indie/eShop games (which constitutes the big bulk of this stat) didn't really take off on WiiU until much later in its lifespan. There wasn't that kind of scene in the first year of WiiU. So yeah, this article is true, but the stat itself demonstrates nothing.
I could produce an article in the same vein that says that WiiU had 1560 games available on launch date and it would be as unquestionably true.
@frogopus you're asking me how much money IS it okay to steal? It depends who, why and whence. That's why we have a system based on judges, juries and executioners rather than computers and calculators, right? Of all the possible degrees of theft, this would be pretty low on my list.
The guy stole 3 videogames from the richest company in the universe. Doesn't matter how much you dramatise it, to Amazon the loss equates to stealing a rubber band from the United States Postal Service.
Seeing the photo of the "loot" (three videogames that Amazon probably pays less than 20 bucks each) at the police station is particularly disheartening considering the pictures of loots I am accustomed to usually involve huge piles of money, jewelry, bags of drugs and guns.
And it's a sad picture of our time when a guy who stole 3 videogames makes the news, but a company (Amazon) that has been evading the taxes for over 10 years and notoriously treats their employees like dirt doesn't.
@frogopus considering he stole 3 videogames worth €160 and not Rolex watches worth 20 grand each, I would say he wasn't the kind of thief who would sneak into Amazon's bank vault to steal all the personal details of Amazon's customers and then re-sell them to the north-korean mafia.
You have to see things in contex dude. Just because somebody, somewhere, might start a new nuclear missile crisis by stealing a slip of paper from his company, doesn't mean this guy would, or could.
As far as I'm concerned this was just a kid (or an adult who is a kid at heart, as Nintendo would say) who stole 3 games from a shelf. Big deal. If he stole 3 poetry books, nobody would have given a flying damn.
@Nintendoforlife well, the fact alone that police was involved (the picture in the article was taken at the police station, you can tell by the hats), the story is in the newspaper and we are talking about it means the guy is under public scrutiny. This is basically plain shoplifting, nothing more elaborate than that, and shoplifters do not go in the newspapers unless they nick gold or something.
As for the strike, I'm not sure they reached any significant conclusion as of the latest strike of Dec.20. There has been a lot of coverage on national TV, and before the strike a few journalists managed to sneak in hidden cameras (entering and shooting is highly forbidden in these facilities, for obvious reasons). They discovered that the employees are constantly timed. Basically every time they pick an object, there's a countdown to pick the next, as in a collectathon from the 90s. If they don't pick a certain number of objects from the shelves within a certain time frame, they get penalised. For this, they are requested to "fast walk" (basically run) an average of 12 miles a day. There's also a timer that keeps track of how much time they spend in the bathroom. And this is a tough job where all you do is basically lifting objects. It really must get on your tits after a while, hence the strike.
So yeah, I'm not saying the guy's a martyr or anything, but a multi-billion colossus such as Amazon could have handled things differently without alerting police, press and stuff. I mean, somebody stole my car a few years ago, worth much more than €160 (but not "that" much) and when we found it, it didn't even get mentioned in the local news, let alone in a foreign website of car fanatics.
@Nintendoforlife Amazon treats their employees like scum, and this is further proof. In any civil country, a kid caught stealing €160 worth of goods would be given a good old bollocking, maybe sacked but that would be it.
You don't get arrested and go in the newspaper for nicking 3 games. You simply don't. Not in a civil society.
This particular Amazon distribution centre in Piacenza has been in the papers for months for the awful working conditions and shifts they force their employees to work in. As a matter of fact, there was a huge strike there on Christmas season, and rightfully so.
Sacking, arresting and publically humiliating a young guy for stealing a grand total of €160 is absolutely horrendous. It's not the guy who should be ashamed.
Those are the middle men gamers were so happy to cut out of the equation when digital distribution became a thing. The general consent seemed to be "why should I give my money to these middle men if I can give it all to Nintendo, Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Activision etc (companies that clearly don't have enough money already)?". You " support the industry" and reap what you sow.
@k8sMum you know, learning music or creative writing can have tremendous impact on the brain and on quality of life in general.
Unfortunately, music teaching or writing aren't "packages" that can be sold for 50 quid a pop. I like videogames as a hobby but I don't want games to be sold like Grandpa Simpson's miraculous tonic.
I loathe a future where all people do is playing videogames - no art, no sports - but that's where we are heading at the moment.
Oh god, the usual load of bollox about videogames curing cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer - why? Cos we can sell some more videogames. Like in the 50s when there were proper doctors praising the therapeutic potential of cigarettes and heroin.
We know that any kind of mental excercise (simple maths, puzzles) can keep the brain fit, but Alzheimer is one of the worst and darkest mysteries of the human brain and certainly won't be cured by playing a 3D platformer from the mid-90s. Grandma died in 2008 of Alzheimer after spending 20 years watching me playing games all day - she would be still alive if this were true.
After videogames almost becoming part of the Olympics and videogames curing fatal deseases, I wonder what else they'll come up with to make videogames even more central and sellable in our society. Perhaps the next stupid research will prove that videogames can enlarge your genitalia, who knows.
Not a big fan of these limited releases to be honest. Wherever I read, there seem to be more people unhappy because they couldn't get them than people happy because they got them.
I don't know, but making things purposedly limited just to make them a "hot item"...I think it's going to work against them in the long run. People are eventually going to get tired of not getting this stuff.
I've seen countless companies do the same thing with vinyl in the past and they all died out after a few years cos people stopped supporting them.
@Yorumi thing is, people thought services like Wii Shop Channel, WiiU eShop et al would have lasted for 100 years. This event is a major blow to digital distribution and shows that any company can erase its entire catalogue and your purchases with the flick of a finger.
Not only it is a huge loss for game preservation - it's also an enormous step backwards in terms of consumer rights.
Unfortunately, people seem to be okay with that. We'll get to the point of old consoles self-destructing to force you to go out and buy the newer model.
"I've not lost a single digital game since I started downloading games in 2006. I've had to redownload a few games due to corruption, but have never lost any"
You say you never lost a game but also say that you had to redownload a few because of corruption. Jesus Christ, If the service hadn't been up, you would have lost those games!!
Once the service will be down, if any of your files gets corrupted again, you won't be able to redownload it. The only reason you haven't lost a single game in 10 years is because the service has always been up and allowed you to redownload the corrupted files. But once it's down, good luck to you!
@antdickens I'm an english to italian translator. No need to come round and take what you want without paying - NintendoLife has already reviewed a couple of games I worked on - games obviously acquired through free promo codes so......NintendoLife kind of already took something from me without paying!
Even leaving my own work out of the picture, I'm sure you're aware of WiiWare's Minimum Sales Threshold and the fact that Nintendo is likely taking the lion's share on work that is NOT theirs.
You can manage a Nintendo-centric website even without defending every single choice Nintendo makes. Fact is, in a few months if you lose all your games in an system/HD crash, you have no way to get your purchases back. If this sounds "fair" to you fine, but doesn't sound fair to me.
Don't waste time buying the games you missed guys. The moment the service shuts down, those games will have zero value. Just buy a cheap Wii, hack it and download all the digital games for free. If Nintendo doesn't want to distribute these games anymore (making it impossible to buy them legitimately) then I see no problem in pirating them.
I'm not against having 3DS Themes as rewards because at least you get to use your coins, but those MyNintendo themes are simply ugly looking. With the wealth of artists and illustrators they have, you would think they could produce something more exciting than a sprite of an 8-bit character pasted onto a white screen...
I'm sure if they released a 3DS Theme Maker, people would come up with stuff that would blow the official themes out of the water. So much for "Nintendo quality"...
Another proof that if you try and do something different, you cut yourself out of the market with your own hands. Deal with it people, unified consoles are the only true solution to all the problems, including religious wars, world hunger and AIDS.
I think this is a "golden era" too. Videogames come in virtually any price and you can game on any budget. Anybody can play videogames, and even if you don't want to invest half a grand on a console, you can play on devices you'll likely already have, like smartphones and tablets - and still have a blast for a few quid a month.
Companies have started creating large archives of videogames from the previous generations, which means that if you want to play a game that is not available in the stores anymore, you'll likely be able to download it anyway. The worst thing about videogames back then was that stores only stocked games from the current generation, but having large Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, SNK, Williams etc archives solves the problem (only partially though, because these archives are mostly incomplete and often poorly emulated).
There are 2 things that prevent this from being the "perfect age" though. One is, obviously, the disappearence of arcades, which were the heart and soul of the videogame scene. It's understandable because they may not be as financially viable as they were 30 years ago, but as gaming becomes more and more of a lonely/sociopathic thing, I think we need arcades more than ever.
Second thing is that the videogame industry is still fragmented into different consoles that play the same version of the same game on different supports. At this point, it makes very little sense to be divided into five or six "factions". Videogames should be like CDs or DVDs, with console manufacturers simply making "universal players" and developers developing just one version of a game (rather than 6 versions with tiny differences). You buy a player and it can play everything. Just think of how much money you waste in buying multiple systems to get a handful of games each a year and all the resources spent on porting, adapting, upgrading, downgrading etc.
It would be much easier to have one device that plays 100% than four devices that play 25%.
Okay cool, the selection of games is still poor but at least we're getting closer to a modern idea of "reward system" that isn't a total rip-off. It only took a couple of years to get to this point. Here's hoping by 2020 Nintendo will start to give their customers games they actually want to play.
Comments 206
Re: Review: Dr. Mario World - A Fun Puzzler That Really Comes Alive In Online Multiplayer
Played it for a couple of days and I found it impossibly boring. The "keep your finger on the pill to drag it through other pills" mechanic creates a ton of problems in VS mode, especially when the board scrolls down all of a sudden and you find yourself with your finger at the top of the board like an idiot. And the whole gatcha thing is possibly the slowest "get a new character" mechanic I have encountered in a mobile game so far. Disinstalled after two days, like all the other stuff Nintendo has made for mobile, so I can make room for mobile games that don't actually treat the player as an imbecile...
Re: Feature: Digital vs Physical - What Is Your Preference for Nintendo Switch?
I prefer physical whenever possible.
I still haven't converted entirely to the digital age: I tend to forget usernames and passwords, I always run out of storage, I risk on buying the same game twice or simply forget what I already bought.
I wonder what will happen 10 years from now if I plug the PS3 and want to re-download all the games I bought in 2010...will they still be there? I know the physical games I own will be there, but I can't bet the digital copies will be there.
That said, I also like to get things on a discount, so if I can get a very good deal, I'm all for digital. However, I wouldn't spend more than €15/€20 on a digital game, even if it's the only way to acquire it - it kinda makes me feel like I'm giving my money away for nothing...
Re: Nintendo Will Be Taken To Court Over Its "Illegal" eShop Pre-Ordering System
@Indielink yeah, that depends on how smart of a consumer each individual is. Would you trade one fundamental consumer right (changing your mind once you gather enough information on the product) for a small discount and the luxury to play a game 5 hours before somebody else who didn't pre-order?!
The fact alone that a company is willing to offer their game on a "pre-order discount" says a lot about the quality of the game and the confidence of the developers. What, they want you to buy it before you find out it stinks?!
Re: Nintendo Will Be Taken To Court Over Its "Illegal" eShop Pre-Ordering System
Dear people: don't pre-order digital games. It's a scam as much as gambling and it exploits your impulse to buy on a whim before you really make up your mind (and before you have enough information to make up your mind). The eShop won't run out of digital copies, so there's no need to reserve yours (for full price and with no going back) weeks in advance.
Re: The World Ends With You: Final Remix Might Have Borrowed An Italian Fan's Translation
Another thing I want to add - many translators today use "tools" to assist them with the translation of large bodies of text - basically they feed the text into the machine and the machine translates it roughly - then it's up to the individual to refine that into a more natural language (I've never used these tools personally but I've been lectured about them at the Uni).
What are the chances of both of these translators using the same tools, thus producing similar results?
But really, before any further investigation, somebody should check who is credited for the italian translation in the Switch game (if it's credited at all). I can't find the credits anywhere.
Re: The World Ends With You: Final Remix Might Have Borrowed An Italian Fan's Translation
As an italian and professional translator myself, I guess the only way to know would be to compare the full fan-made translation with the full official translation and see if they match in the "unique touches" and quirks each translator naturally adds to the text. Common parlance will always be translated as common parlance - you can't claim originality on that!
I've never played the game, but if it's really all made of short lines of text like it appears in the screenshots...well, there's only so many ways you can translate "You said you need no friends" to another language - you could virtually ask 10 different translators and most of them will come up with the same translation, because in short sentences you can't paraphrase much.
Not saying any of the two parties is wrong, but IF Square hired a professional translator, I see no reason for him/her to "steal" somebody else's work - it looks like a rather straightforward game to translate, it's certainly not British pastoral poetry. However, many companies don't want to hire translators and end up using other means - but I can't tell until I read the text.
Re: Team Cherry's Decision To Cancel Hollow Knight On Wii U Was Hard, But Ultimately For The Best
@Frendo Yeah I'm aware of his history but again, I think it's kinda fair that a small number of WiiU owners developed a hate for the Switch. After all it's Nintendo that mismanaged the transition from one console to the other. In 2015 they said the WiiU wasn't going to be replaced by the NX and one year later they said the opposite thing. The people who got the console in 2014-2015 basically got less than 2 years of support. That might be a huge minority compared to the people who are happy to move on, but they are still entitled to their opinion, no matter how unpopular.
I think people have the right to complain if they feel they didn't get their money's worth with the whole WiiU to Switch debacle. And certainly seeing most of the people happy to throw money at Nintendo for yet another console kinda exacerbates the frustration.
Re: Team Cherry's Decision To Cancel Hollow Knight On Wii U Was Hard, But Ultimately For The Best
@Frendo @ilikeike I actually think people do have the right to complain if they feel like doing so...the game (actually, a huge number of games) was promised from a certain platform and was cancelled from that platform and moved to another one. It's kinda fair to complain. People might not own that new platform, they might not be interested in purchasing one or might not have the money to do so. It's not like if you had a WiiU you magically got a free Switch aswell.
Not sure what's the matter with you guys and why you think somebody should be happy to move on and spend the money on a new console just because Nintendo decided to ditch the previous one prematurely because they couldn't sell it. Have we reached the point where companies are always right and people who complain are always wrong??
Re: FIFA 19 Cover Star Under Fire Following Serious Allegation, EA "Closely Monitoring" Situation
The MeToo thingy has certainly helped bring to the forefront a lot of dirty stuff that needed to be changed, but also proved to be a platform for attention seekers and people who have exploited that system for years and are now finding lucrative to rebel to that system.
A few months ago a young american actor accused an italian actress of abused him and forcing him to have sex with her. Now, I don't know much about the distorted world of celebrities but I find it very hard to believe that a popular and attractive 35 year old woman could abuse a 19 year old not-as-popular not-as-good-looking kid. With that I just want to say that it's very hard to tell what's reality and what's imagination, and the line between sexual consent and physical assault is getting twisted and turned.
On Ronaldo I don't know. I personally thought he was gay.
Re: New Study Suggests That Playing Violent Video Games Leads To Increased Physical Aggression
While I am a big believer that videogames are affecting our society in a negative way, I find the case for violent games = violent behaviour to be rather silly.
The point is that videogames are very popular and most people between 15 and 40 play them, and the mainstream genre of choice is of the violent/military/shooting variety. It's very hard and almost impossible to find videogamers of that age that have never played a videogame that depicts violence.
A bit like back in the 50s every anti-social behaviour was blamed on rock'n'roll - but rock'n'roll in itself was harmless - it just happened to be the most common genre of music amongst youth culture.
What these studies don't get is that the people who behave violently have been, before videogames, alienated from society in one way or another - abusing violent games is just their answer to that. So, a much better research would be to investigate what makes some people retreat in their dark cave and play videogames all day, rather than analysing what kinds of videogames they play...
Re: UK Charts Reveal That Just 1% Of FIFA 19 Sales Were On Switch, Physical Launch Sales Tumble
That's baffling, because in the previous comment section, according to NintendoLifers, there were millions of people who were going to buy FIFA19 on Switch!
Re: FIFA 19 - The Best Soccer Game On Switch, But It's Hard Not To Feel Short-Changed
@kobashi100 I'm talking about this Switch version. Nobody in their right mind would go with this version over the PS4/XB1 version.
Re: FIFA 19 - The Best Soccer Game On Switch, But It's Hard Not To Feel Short-Changed
@maruse good point - who the heck would buy this game? I mean, it made sense with PS2/Wii to re-skin the same version of FIFA and PES over and over because they could sell it in Central/South America where there was a good market for it (and the latest PES on Wii are still phenomenal games), but this has literally no commercial appeal beside the occasional british middle class white guy who buys it as an amusement...
Re: Feature: 5 Times Sony Shamelessly Copied Nintendo
At least Sony doesn't kill you if the console you're responsible for fails. RIP Yokoi & Iwata!
Re: Sony Responds To Nintendo's Success With Its Very Own PlayStation Classic Mini Console
Well Atari and Commodore have been doing these little consoles for ages - the only thing Nintendo can take credit for is that they made it popular - and they made it popular because Nintendo IS popular.
And people genuinely want Sony to do something like this - just because Nintendo took an idea that existed and popularized through marketing, doesn't mean that idea has to be exclusive of Nintendo. It's like saying that all mp3 players are a rip off of the iPod, even though the iPod wasn't the first mp3 player - it just happened to be the most popular among the mainstream crowd.
I'm sure the main difference between this PSX mini and NES mini is that I will actually be able to walk into a shop and buy one.
Re: Video: What Monster Hunter Gubbins Have Capcom Sent Us?
And this is how you buy good reviews, positive articles and top spots in "Monster Hunter Games Ranked Worst to Best" lists!
Re: Sony Won't Allow Fortnite Cross-Play Because "PlayStation Is The Best Place To Play"
How is this a "strange comment to make"? Every console manufacturer says their console is the best console for your money. I don't see Nintendo going around recommending people to buy consoles other than theirs...
Re: Illegal Game Sharing Site Mocks Nintendo's Recent Legal Actions With Trolling Video
@AlexSora89 Hey Alex, long time no see - hope you're doing well. I completely agree with what you're saying.
I will also add that emulation is the fundation of good journalism. A good journalist has to research and play games to make connections, draw comparisons etc, basically to know what they are talking about...emulation is the only effective way to do it. Just think of how little we would know about videogame history without MAME.
Re: Shovel Knight Is Getting Two DLC Packs, A Physical Edition And amiibo All On The Same Day
...and all of this will be available on WiiU too!! I can't believe these guys kept all the crazy promises they made. Shovel Knight is seriously one of the most pleasant surprises of this generation!
Re: Miyamoto Calls On His Industry Peers To Deliver Games At Fixed Prices
This is a free-2-read website that gets paid though advertising just like F2P videogames, correct?
Then why the heck are all these people reading this website if they are against F2P?! Or watching Youtube?! Or reading online newspapers?!
Re: FIFA's Rival Pro Evolution Soccer Takes Another Hit With Loss Of Dortmund License
I don't really understand what's with the current obsession for licences and especially this bloody Champions League licence - as if playing a game that calls it European Clubs Cup makes it automatically an inferior experience.
For 25 years the best football games have been the ones WITHOUT a licence and all of a sudden people can't stand the idea of playing something that doesn't have an official brand attached to it, as if it changed the actual quality of the gam?!
Re: Nintendo Download: 17th May (Europe)
@heathenmagic @Monkey_Balls forma.8 has been discounted just now, go get it lads
Re: Soapbox: Nintendo Switch Learned A Lot From Wii U’s Struggles During Its Own First Year
@electrolite77 I simply stated facts. The guy said that his WiiU was collecting dust. He now has a Switch and he's excited for exactly the same games he could have got on WiiU.
Games are interesting or not interesting regardless of the machine they run on. As a matter of fact, 4-5 years ago when most of these games were released, there wasn't a more practical, engaging, quick and fun way to play them.
I am not interested in which method of injecting games into your brain you find most enjoyable. What I'm arguing against is that the substance itself (the actual games) hasn't changed. So reading that people who couldn't be arsed before are now going bonkers for the same stuff makes me laugh, and makes me realise that the way things are marketed and the way the audience is spoonfed things is way more important than the actual thing itself.
Re: Soapbox: Nintendo Switch Learned A Lot From Wii U’s Struggles During Its Own First Year
@Alikan "I had a Wii U, but it was a glorified Zelda HD and Mario VC player. The Switch floored me with great games like Breath of the Wild, Shovel Knight Treasure Trove, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Odyssey, Enter the Gungeon, Bayonetta 1+2 and a trove of Neo Geo titles. I look forward to Kirby, DKC Tropical Freeze, Hyrule Warriors and the Mega Man sets as well as the next direct/E3 hopeful for a Nintendo future."
I think this guy sums up the whole WiiU/Switch debacle quite nicely. He had a WiiU and he didn't like it. He bought a Switch, and 80% of the games he's excited about are games that were also available on the console he didn't like in the first place.
This is literally a perfect example of "marketing".
Re: Nintendo Has No Plans For A Switch 2.0, Sources Claim
This is as true as them saying "Don't worry guys, the NX won't replace the WiiU"! Usually, when they say they are not going to do something, that's exactly what they are going to do.
Re: Random: Nintendo Lands Itself In Hot Water With Norway
Digital pre-order is inherently stupid anyway.
The whole point about pre-order is to reserve a copy for yourself before the shop runs out of copies, which you don't need with digital content.
Buyers who use digital pre-order are stupid just as well. They trade their right to change their mind for the luxury of playing a game the second it gets officially released (as opposed to 5 hours later).
Re: Switch Now Has Three Times As Many Games as Wii U Did At This Point In Its Lifecycle
I'm sure many have pointed this out already, but this is really an unfair comparison. Indie/eShop games (which constitutes the big bulk of this stat) didn't really take off on WiiU until much later in its lifespan. There wasn't that kind of scene in the first year of WiiU. So yeah, this article is true, but the stat itself demonstrates nothing.
I could produce an article in the same vein that says that WiiU had 1560 games available on launch date and it would be as unquestionably true.
Re: Random: Amazon Employee Gets Caught Trying To Steal Nintendo Switch Games
@frogopus you're asking me how much money IS it okay to steal? It depends who, why and whence. That's why we have a system based on judges, juries and executioners rather than computers and calculators, right? Of all the possible degrees of theft, this would be pretty low on my list.
The guy stole 3 videogames from the richest company in the universe. Doesn't matter how much you dramatise it, to Amazon the loss equates to stealing a rubber band from the United States Postal Service.
Seeing the photo of the "loot" (three videogames that Amazon probably pays less than 20 bucks each) at the police station is particularly disheartening considering the pictures of loots I am accustomed to usually involve huge piles of money, jewelry, bags of drugs and guns.
And it's a sad picture of our time when a guy who stole 3 videogames makes the news, but a company (Amazon) that has been evading the taxes for over 10 years and notoriously treats their employees like dirt doesn't.
Re: Random: Amazon Employee Gets Caught Trying To Steal Nintendo Switch Games
@frogopus considering he stole 3 videogames worth €160 and not Rolex watches worth 20 grand each, I would say he wasn't the kind of thief who would sneak into Amazon's bank vault to steal all the personal details of Amazon's customers and then re-sell them to the north-korean mafia.
You have to see things in contex dude. Just because somebody, somewhere, might start a new nuclear missile crisis by stealing a slip of paper from his company, doesn't mean this guy would, or could.
As far as I'm concerned this was just a kid (or an adult who is a kid at heart, as Nintendo would say) who stole 3 games from a shelf. Big deal. If he stole 3 poetry books, nobody would have given a flying damn.
Re: Random: Amazon Employee Gets Caught Trying To Steal Nintendo Switch Games
@Nintendoforlife well, the fact alone that police was involved (the picture in the article was taken at the police station, you can tell by the hats), the story is in the newspaper and we are talking about it means the guy is under public scrutiny. This is basically plain shoplifting, nothing more elaborate than that, and shoplifters do not go in the newspapers unless they nick gold or something.
As for the strike, I'm not sure they reached any significant conclusion as of the latest strike of Dec.20. There has been a lot of coverage on national TV, and before the strike a few journalists managed to sneak in hidden cameras (entering and shooting is highly forbidden in these facilities, for obvious reasons). They discovered that the employees are constantly timed. Basically every time they pick an object, there's a countdown to pick the next, as in a collectathon from the 90s. If they don't pick a certain number of objects from the shelves within a certain time frame, they get penalised. For this, they are requested to "fast walk" (basically run) an average of 12 miles a day. There's also a timer that keeps track of how much time they spend in the bathroom. And this is a tough job where all you do is basically lifting objects. It really must get on your tits after a while, hence the strike.
So yeah, I'm not saying the guy's a martyr or anything, but a multi-billion colossus such as Amazon could have handled things differently without alerting police, press and stuff. I mean, somebody stole my car a few years ago, worth much more than €160 (but not "that" much) and when we found it, it didn't even get mentioned in the local news, let alone in a foreign website of car fanatics.
Re: Random: Amazon Employee Gets Caught Trying To Steal Nintendo Switch Games
@Nintendoforlife Amazon treats their employees like scum, and this is further proof. In any civil country, a kid caught stealing €160 worth of goods would be given a good old bollocking, maybe sacked but that would be it.
You don't get arrested and go in the newspaper for nicking 3 games. You simply don't. Not in a civil society.
Re: Random: Amazon Employee Gets Caught Trying To Steal Nintendo Switch Games
This particular Amazon distribution centre in Piacenza has been in the papers for months for the awful working conditions and shifts they force their employees to work in. As a matter of fact, there was a huge strike there on Christmas season, and rightfully so.
Sacking, arresting and publically humiliating a young guy for stealing a grand total of €160 is absolutely horrendous. It's not the guy who should be ashamed.
Re: Feature: Rare's Local Game Shop Faces An Uncertain Future, Like Many Indie Retailers
Those are the middle men gamers were so happy to cut out of the equation when digital distribution became a thing. The general consent seemed to be "why should I give my money to these middle men if I can give it all to Nintendo, Capcom, Ubisoft, EA, Activision etc (companies that clearly don't have enough money already)?". You " support the industry" and reap what you sow.
Re: ESA Attacks World Health Organisation's Decision To Classify Gaming Addiction As A Mental Disorder
I mean, who would you trust? The World Health Organisation or the Medellin Cartel of videogames?!
Re: Site News: Thanks For Playing, Thomas Whitehead
For what it's worth, @ThomasBW84 was my favourite writer on this website and the only one I wouldn't have strangled in these 7 years. Good luck mate.
Re: Video: It's Time to Look at the 31 Best Nintendo 3DS Games of All Time
I decided to take a sip of whiskey each time an RPG was mentioned in this list. I woke up in the hospital just now.
Re: Playing Super Mario 64 Could Help Fight Off Alzeimer's Disease
@k8sMum you know, learning music or creative writing can have tremendous impact on the brain and on quality of life in general.
Unfortunately, music teaching or writing aren't "packages" that can be sold for 50 quid a pop. I like videogames as a hobby but I don't want games to be sold like Grandpa Simpson's miraculous tonic.
I loathe a future where all people do is playing videogames - no art, no sports - but that's where we are heading at the moment.
Re: Playing Super Mario 64 Could Help Fight Off Alzeimer's Disease
Oh god, the usual load of bollox about videogames curing cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer - why? Cos we can sell some more videogames. Like in the 50s when there were proper doctors praising the therapeutic potential of cigarettes and heroin.
We know that any kind of mental excercise (simple maths, puzzles) can keep the brain fit, but Alzheimer is one of the worst and darkest mysteries of the human brain and certainly won't be cured by playing a 3D platformer from the mid-90s. Grandma died in 2008 of Alzheimer after spending 20 years watching me playing games all day - she would be still alive if this were true.
After videogames almost becoming part of the Olympics and videogames curing fatal deseases, I wonder what else they'll come up with to make videogames even more central and sellable in our society. Perhaps the next stupid research will prove that videogames can enlarge your genitalia, who knows.
Re: Limited Run Games Will Publish Physical Copies of Indie Titles On Switch Next Year
Not a big fan of these limited releases to be honest. Wherever I read, there seem to be more people unhappy because they couldn't get them than people happy because they got them.
I don't know, but making things purposedly limited just to make them a "hot item"...I think it's going to work against them in the long run. People are eventually going to get tired of not getting this stuff.
I've seen countless companies do the same thing with vinyl in the past and they all died out after a few years cos people stopped supporting them.
Re: Nintendo Has Announced the End of the Wii Shop Channel
@scamander this is not how I understood it. If the channel shuts down for good, how on earth will you be able to re-download your games??
Re: Nintendo Has Announced the End of the Wii Shop Channel
@Yorumi thing is, people thought services like Wii Shop Channel, WiiU eShop et al would have lasted for 100 years. This event is a major blow to digital distribution and shows that any company can erase its entire catalogue and your purchases with the flick of a finger.
Not only it is a huge loss for game preservation - it's also an enormous step backwards in terms of consumer rights.
Unfortunately, people seem to be okay with that. We'll get to the point of old consoles self-destructing to force you to go out and buy the newer model.
Re: Nintendo Has Announced the End of the Wii Shop Channel
@Bass_X0
"I've not lost a single digital game since I started downloading games in 2006. I've had to redownload a few games due to corruption, but have never lost any"
You say you never lost a game but also say that you had to redownload a few because of corruption. Jesus Christ, If the service hadn't been up, you would have lost those games!!
Once the service will be down, if any of your files gets corrupted again, you won't be able to redownload it. The only reason you haven't lost a single game in 10 years is because the service has always been up and allowed you to redownload the corrupted files. But once it's down, good luck to you!
Re: Nintendo Has Announced the End of the Wii Shop Channel
@antdickens I'm an english to italian translator. No need to come round and take what you want without paying - NintendoLife has already reviewed a couple of games I worked on - games obviously acquired through free promo codes so......NintendoLife kind of already took something from me without paying!
Even leaving my own work out of the picture, I'm sure you're aware of WiiWare's Minimum Sales Threshold and the fact that Nintendo is likely taking the lion's share on work that is NOT theirs.
You can manage a Nintendo-centric website even without defending every single choice Nintendo makes. Fact is, in a few months if you lose all your games in an system/HD crash, you have no way to get your purchases back. If this sounds "fair" to you fine, but doesn't sound fair to me.
Re: Nintendo Has Announced the End of the Wii Shop Channel
Don't waste time buying the games you missed guys. The moment the service shuts down, those games will have zero value.
Just buy a cheap Wii, hack it and download all the digital games for free. If Nintendo doesn't want to distribute these games anymore (making it impossible to buy them legitimately) then I see no problem in pirating them.
Re: The Latest European My Nintendo Rewards Have A Retro Theme
I'm not against having 3DS Themes as rewards because at least you get to use your coins, but those MyNintendo themes are simply ugly looking. With the wealth of artists and illustrators they have, you would think they could produce something more exciting than a sprite of an 8-bit character pasted onto a white screen...
I'm sure if they released a 3DS Theme Maker, people would come up with stuff that would blow the official themes out of the water. So much for "Nintendo quality"...
Re: Feature: Exploring The "Switch Tax" And Why Nintendo Was Right to Use Game Cards
Another proof that if you try and do something different, you cut yourself out of the market with your own hands. Deal with it people, unified consoles are the only true solution to all the problems, including religious wars, world hunger and AIDS.
Re: Soapbox: The SNES Classic Edition Pre-Order Farce Proves Nintendo Hasn't Learned A Thing
You should simply download all these roms and play them on your PC for free. If only out of principle.
Re: Editorial: Is This a Golden Era of Gaming? Absolutely
I think this is a "golden era" too. Videogames come in virtually any price and you can game on any budget. Anybody can play videogames, and even if you don't want to invest half a grand on a console, you can play on devices you'll likely already have, like smartphones and tablets - and still have a blast for a few quid a month.
Companies have started creating large archives of videogames from the previous generations, which means that if you want to play a game that is not available in the stores anymore, you'll likely be able to download it anyway. The worst thing about videogames back then was that stores only stocked games from the current generation, but having large Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, SNK, Williams etc archives solves the problem (only partially though, because these archives are mostly incomplete and often poorly emulated).
There are 2 things that prevent this from being the "perfect age" though. One is, obviously, the disappearence of arcades, which were the heart and soul of the videogame scene. It's understandable because they may not be as financially viable as they were 30 years ago, but as gaming becomes more and more of a lonely/sociopathic thing, I think we need arcades more than ever.
Second thing is that the videogame industry is still fragmented into different consoles that play the same version of the same game on different supports. At this point, it makes very little sense to be divided into five or six "factions". Videogames should be like CDs or DVDs, with console manufacturers simply making "universal players" and developers developing just one version of a game (rather than 6 versions with tiny differences). You buy a player and it can play everything. Just think of how much money you waste in buying multiple systems to get a handful of games each a year and all the resources spent on porting, adapting, upgrading, downgrading etc.
It would be much easier to have one device that plays 100% than four devices that play 25%.
Re: Nintendo Download: 3rd August (Europe)
@Sinton it's rubbish, don't buy it.
Re: European My Nintendo Rewards Bring 3DS And Wii U Games You Can Buy With Your Gold Points
Okay cool, the selection of games is still poor but at least we're getting closer to a modern idea of "reward system" that isn't a total rip-off. It only took a couple of years to get to this point. Here's hoping by 2020 Nintendo will start to give their customers games they actually want to play.