swoose

So if games sold in Japan in September were the Earth's surface, all other games would be the land and Splatoon 3 would be the ocean.

I've mostly stopped playing my Switch handheld, not because I don't love handheld gaming, but because it's simply not a very good handheld experience. Too heavy, too rickety, screen needlessly big, poor battery life, not comfortable in the hand. Granted I have the base model and not the Switch Lite.

My DS Lite backlog is my go-to for gaming lying down. Now that was a nearly perfect handheld. I wish Nintendo hardware could progress to a point where the next console is both more powerful AND lighter than the Switch and OLED.

I wish the whole game could look like that pre-rendered Marth cutscene, he looks absolutely gorgeous. And I'm not usually a Marth fan. But we're not quite there yet I guess.

I've been against the idea of GBA remakes in 3D because I think those games already had the perfect style. But I see what people are saying that this is carrying on that spirit. And I feel bad for anyone finding this "too colorful". Go look at a dusty field on an overcast day to cleanse your palate I guess.

It's such a perfect series, my question has been: why ISN'T Splatoon so popular in the West? Japan gets it, my friends in the fandom and I get it, the Switch install base is gargantuan, so what's missing?

This article answered it partially with the focus on marketing and merchandising. It's just not pushed as much here. Marketing in the West is expensive and dominated by mobile/F2P games, or outright legalized gambling in NA.

I don't think aesthetics or culture are a big barrier. Fortnite and Among Us are colorful and stylized. We know what anime and squids are. The basically $80 entry cost could be a factor though.

I'm triggered by how this is called a ranking of each region's pokedexes, when it's actually a ranking of new pokemon introduced each gen. Those aren't at all the same thing.

Zero complaints with the demo performance, it's a competently designed game where you get hit if it looks like you got hit and hit the opponent if it looks like you hit them. 16 updates a second is more than enough for the game to interpolate movement and shot time.

If you're going to be angry at something, be angry that most of the Western world is lagging behind Korea and Japan in internet infrastructure to a pathetic degree. It took 5 apartments in my adult life until I lived in one where a wired connection was even possible. And even then our regional telecom monopolies in NA are a joke.

The single player being a tutorial mode on floaty platforms with the same enemies again - that is a disappointment. But the brief words here on the multiplayer changes are underselling it, and you don't have to be a hardcore fan to understand them.

New movement options, new weapon types, and new stages are huge for Splatoon. Unlike some shooters, Splatoon weapons actually play very differently from each other. There are long-ranged and melee weapons balanced against each other. The squid surge, respawn launcher and invulnerable dodge roll look to make rushdown better. The special weapons are mostly new and appear less toxic.

Splatoon's multiplayer is so accessible in the genre because you can care about kill/deaths, or you can avoid danger and paint the stage to contribute. It's the core of the series and why I suspect they don't want to invest in lengthy, one-off single player set pieces.

@claypool 9 years? It been not quite 7 years since Tri Force Heroes.

I unironically had a blast with it playing online with randos, so it's your loss if you don't consider that a new top-down Zelda. It's hard to replicate that experience nowadays though.

Agree with most of the list. Though I would move up Sword and Shield and put Sun and Moon much, much lower. USUM is the only main series game I had to put down without finishing, the pacing was just so terrible. Not that I play Pokemon for the "plot" but in this case the frequency of cutscenes actually turned me off the game.

I liked Sword and Shield not so much for Chairman Rose but moreso for the gym challenge and the sports anime-ness of it all. The gym battles felt meaningful with the great scene-setting, music, and everyone using dynamax. Bede, Marnie, and Leon were memorable. And I liked the final Eternatus raid-style fight with the box legendaries on your side.

@Moistnado Well there are definitely no reliable regulatory bodies. It's America.

What a rip-off, obviously they should have added NPLN-only matchmaking features and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 as a free update to Splatoon 2. It's easy

Every one of the sober "there's always a war somewhere" comments here, while correct, would have gotten blasted, downvoted, moderated, and possibly banned if it was made in February of 2022. Tension was very high in all realms of commerce and media in that moment, even if it was performative or self-serving. Politicians in my area managed to get vodka pulled from the shelves of liquor stores to punish Russia. Vodka!!

So Nintendo read the room, is what I'm saying. Now it's a tricky matter of fitting the game into a release schedule somewhere such that they still maximize its sales. I won't pretend to know what the best time for it is.

Personally I'm glad when Kaga games get covered on Nintendo sites, so I can appreciate how much better off the Fire Emblem series is without him. This looks like an indie studio's first attempt at map design.

All of these have felt impermanent from the jump. Even the regional forms. I love Alolan Sandshrew, but when is Alolan Sandshrew going to be in a regional dex again? Never, because "Alolan" is right in the name.

Mega Evos were especially infuriating because half the pokemon who got them sorely needed REGULAR evolutions, and the mega designs would have been perfect for those - Mawile, Banette, most of the gen 3 ones really. But of course they also had to give megas to pokemon that were already OP, so no sweeping change to make permanent mega evos is possible.

Good pokemon games aren't complicated. Make new pokemon that can appear in other regions. Make lots of them, like Gens 1, 3, and 5. Make them able to EVOLVE. And if a new mechanic is needed, make it something that will also improve future games.

The only thing that looks disruptive about this is the item menu pausing both players. The BotW engine was built around that, but probably some non-pause menuing would have to be implemented if it was going to be multiplayer.

Actually the series that most came to my mind while watching this is the Warriors games. After googling it, apparently Age of Calamity and Fire Emblem: Three Hopes have split screen multiplayer like this? But you have to progress in the game to unlock it, and I've never once seen it advertised for any musou game. That formula, arcade-y hack n' slash button mashing, seems like a good successor to the beat-em-up genre and could really do with better multiplayer integration.

I don't have any nostalgia for this era and I generally feel N64 games have aged like milk. But this looks great. It makes a big difference to keep all the colours bright, the framerate high, and hopefully the controls smooth and responsive.

If there is a Shovel Knight-ification of low poly graphics, i.e. making them look better than they were rather than authentic, it's a welcome trend in games' visual designs.

As a big Splatoon fan, the only thing I don't like about this is the paint splatter graphic they slap everywhere. Splatoon has some great stickers, graphics, and fake brands, and they're all so clean. Covering them up with the Nickelodeon style blots is a waste and SO much physical Splatoon merch is like this.

The joycon are the best looking part of this bundle because they were spared.

It's going to feel wild learning new stages in Splatoon again. It's been 4+ years since the ones in Splatoon 2 were new.

@Flint Maybe you should elaborate on how people in fandoms are "basing one's personality almost exclusively around the products they purchase" and how it relates to this article. Because otherwise I agree with Gorlokk that it sounds like you're making baseless assumptions. How the hell do you know the breadth of someone's personality outside of their visible fan engagement?

@blindsquarel Not sure if you're being sarcastic or hyperbolic or what, but they've revealed new movement options, a new weapon type, a new single player campaign, new stages, and new Salmon Run bosses/events, which I'd rank all ahead of customization features.

Anyone who plays WarioWare: Twisted! with a GBA player by tilting their GameCube around is all right in my books

The 1st episode is in a western 1940s style. The other 7 are very much not so. And as @Fizza said, some of them are among the best animated Pokemon content I've seen. The Nidoran and Slugma shorts in particular are almost Ghibli-esque in their pacing and sense of place.

I'm glad they're getting an English dub, but they're already very watchable without it. The originals have English captions and aren't heavy on dialogue.

This does indeed sound fanservicey. But maybe there's a more tasteful way to pull off crossover summons than what we've seen in Heroes and Fates. The characters from the past actually reacting to the game's world and having a reason to be there would be a start, in terms of feeling like part of the game. I am tired of the protagonist being descended from gods or dragons and having superpowers though.

A release before holidays '22 would nice since there's no Zelda this year.

I hope these come to North America too. And that cabbie list shirt would be great in a unisex size, it looks awesome.

@Yosher Ugh, I hadn't fully thought about the limitations the gear system places on the character roster. Mario has so many characters with different body types, number of limbs, etc. I guess I won't wait for Chain Chomp to be playable either.

@LordPieFace If all you want is a news aggregator of announcement trailers filtered by: on Nintendo Switch, I don't know why you're reading a blog. The author made it clear what the connection to Nintendo is.

Very curious to see how the synchronized multiplayer works. Can you battle the same wild pokemon? Who gets to catch it? What about NPC battles? I hope this game doesn't continue to de-emphasize NPC battles like Legends Arceus did.

I could see things like battles, events, and spawns being locally instanced, and then you just see your friends running around the overworld after. That would probably feel underwhelming.

I'm liking the new legendaries, they remind me of Reshiram and Zekrom but more colourful and lizardlike.

Goodness gracious, do some of you need more sunlight or something? Are you watching this video in a darkened room with the windows blacked out? It looks gorgeous. I much prefer this to a screen full of black like in Triangle Strategy. That game puts me to sleep.

This is EXACTLY what I'd want from a Pokemon remake - actually adhering to an art style. If Legend Arceus with all its empty space had gone with the painterly style of its reveal video, including plenty of white space, it would have done wonders for that game.

"The best option by far, though, is to link your Nintendo Account to the old Nintendo Network ID; that way all funds added to your Switch account will also be available on the Wii U and 3DS eShop."

This really should be signal boosted more. Everyone who had a 3DS/Wii U should also link those consoles to their Nintendo account. I've been sharing funds between platforms this whole generation without even thinking about it - whenever I add funds to buy a Switch game they're also available on my 3DS.

That's not to excuse Nintendo for shutting the storefronts down. But the workaround (for now) is really easy.

@Link-Hero The issue isn't solved by having full-throated Japanese voices coming out of the pixels instead. All voice acting is a bad fit for this presentation style. The characters' faces are barely on screen, so there's no recognizable features or emotions to match the performances.

I've played plenty of voiced games, I realize the localizations have lower budgets and direction quality. That said, I enjoyed the English cast of Fire Emblem: Three Houses recently. That's a game that has every speaking character's face on screen TWICE, both on their 3D model and in their 2D portrait, both of which with changing expressions. This recent run of Square-Enix retro games has bizarrely refused to even use character portraits in gameplay. That's a feature that comes standard in visual novels, because it just works.

They're not trying to make these games look like CD-i or early Playstation games, which had even lower voiceover budgets than today. They're specifically evoking a platform that had no room for voices on the sound chip, but still told great stories. They told SUCH good stories that Square-Enix was reluctant to include voiceover long after they left Nintendo consoles, up until FFX and Dragon Quest XI.

No other visual medium asks actors to give dramatic life to characters at a 16x24 resolution. I don't think that's ever worked. Give them portraits like a visual novel, or keep them silent like a SNES game.

I wish Square would stop putting full-throated voice acting over pixel art characters. It's a complete anachronism and it never lands, especially after localization gets a hold of it.

Beautiful HD visuals in those pixelated twitter videos.

@AlexanderDaniels I agree, I think the Point Sensor is easier to use than this. But it would be simple to buff the duration, damage, range, or ink cost on this later if it's performing poorly.

I saw a commenter on here recently trying to argue that merging the handheld/console divisions hasn't produced a steadier flow of releases. Ridiculous. The Switch is getting around 8 1st party titles a year in year 5, go look at the WiiU and 3DS release schedules and tell me the pace hasn't increased. Sure we could hope for more like 10-12 a year, but I'd also factor in some increased complexity, some sub-studios developing for consoles for the 1st time (ILCA and Pokemon BDSP), pandemic delays, and a war starting recently (Advance Wars remake).

Though I will say I miss the smaller, more experimental games the 3DS would get at the $40 USD price point. WarioWare is the only game to approach that legacy so far.

They are thirst trapping so hard with these design updates. Dedue getting a fresh lineup on his beard is hilarious

They done got furries in muh sports game

If WATA wanted to manipulate a market and do money laundering for a few rich sellers, they should have just gotten into NFTs

I wonder what he's alluding to with "we will also provide services that also use Nintendo Accounts and other IP outside of gaming software".

Could just be the same service as NSO launching on the Switch 2. What I'm hoping for is a unified storefront to avoid the 3DS/WiiU debacle. But it sounds like he's not even talking about videogames.

Very sad state of affairs. If there's one upside to this, it's that the real Fire Emblem games have gotten more tasteful after Fates, like they exiled all the horniness to the waifu gatcha money printer.

It's not only the cars for me, it's also the missing arches on the jump before them, which would have provided a reason to actually steer your glider to avoid them.

This isn't a technical problem, it's a poor design choice. Between Coconut Mall and the missing turns on Sky Garden, it's like they're trying to make some tracks as frictionless as possible. That's boring. Auto-steering already exists if a track is too difficult.

Yeah, is there any good way for a westerner to play eBaseball, or a reason why it's never gotten an english release? Is it really geared towards NPB? The games look super charming and simulation sports games are a drag.

If nothing else, it makes you appreciate game productions where everyone involved appeared to be on the same page at the end. Many people have their hands in games and may have totally different goals from one another.

Here's something that would make sense for the player: you exchange money for a game. Then you own the game. The End

Gamers can correctly recognize NFTs for what they are because we've seen it all before: glorified microtransactions, now with artificial scarcity. And on top of that crypto is threatening to make PCs unaffordable for the rest of all time. Great

Sunshine is 1st place in the series in terms of vibes, that's for sure.

Yes you could just not shoot at it, but forcing your opponents to not shoot in a specific area is very strong. I'm also very interested to see how this works against other specials. It might basically cancel out an opponent's crab mech or inkzooka.

The part of this report that most caught my eye was the latest updates to the emulator being from 2020. Two full years ago?? If this was something intended to be released, then where is it? If there's a more current version, why was this one leaked?

This sure doesn't sound like an imminent release to me. It sounds more like vaporware. Maybe even leaked by someone disgruntled that all their work was for nothing.

If they were ripping off Fire Emblem, they forgot to rip off the map designs and units with different silhouettes.

I guess people don't grasp the mountains of signage and packaging retail chains like this order, ship, and throw away every month. Not to mention fully functional product. And at the office supply store I worked at, we did literally zero recycling. These Kirby bollards are a drop in the ocean to them.

From the sounds of it, this was another mobile experiment by Nintendo to see if they could make the gacha RPG formula less exploitative of its players, and still be successful. And of course they couldn't. The formula is rotten to its core, as is the market for it.

As for people wondering if it could make it to Switch in some form, I wouldn't hold my breath. The acquisitional part of a mobile game - the randomized gacha - is half the fun. The daily rewards and timed promotions keep players coming back. You remove those, and there's not much meat left on the bone.

I do think the characters and art style are appealing so it would be nice if they're seen again, beyond just cameos. Granblue has its 2nd spinoff console game in development, which was initially linked to PlatinumGames. But without a huge playerbase, doing something similar for Dragalia would be risky.

I try to be open-minded about different gameplay styles, but I really think there's not much salvageable about mobile gacha games. Whenever I try one and my screen is filled up with 8 different timed promotions and 12 different resource types, I just want to throw my phone in the ocean. It's the opposite of good game design. I think the main reason people give them the time of day is for convenience, because their phone is already on them at all times.

I've been advocating for Whispy Woods in Smash Bros ever since Ridley made it in. He's easily one of the most-seen and iconic bosses in all of videogames.