swoose

Probably should have stabilized the camera for barrel rolls and pulled it out of the cockpit to somersault. This is just asking for motion sickness.

It's sobering that for as much as the gaming market has grown, it has this little influence on the world economy. Maybe it was never going to be the darling of venture capital - too much labour involved, and can't be pitched for every possible company and application.

We had all better take good care of our current devices. I hope to make mine last for as long as I'm playing games.

It'll be interesting to see what amount the console sales fall after the price hike is in effect. I think about Iwata's comment that Nintendo games are recession-proof compared to other entertainment. But this time, their game device is $500 USD and RAM is the thing getting priced the hardest.

Nintendo will still have the cheapest dedicated gaming device, when you look at the bigger price hikes from all their competitors. But maybe they'll lose some people to mobile games.

Wow, I used to watch Brandon James Greer art videos. Didn’t know he was working on a game! Look at that bike turnaround!

I’ve seen a romhack called Emerald Seaglass that really clued me into there being a lot of juice left in this kind of art style if you just… choose a cuter palette. And given the no-battle, story driven design, if any game shouldn’t be compared to Pokemon except as a subversion of it, it’s this. As noted it bears as much in common with Undertale.

This game was a fun little experiment. I know it got overshadowed by the greatness of Tri Force Heroes, but it’s still worth going back to for hardcore fans. It’s like a single player Tri Force Heroes without the costume and totem mechanics.

If I’m Nintendo, I’m looking at the Tomodachi Life sales and remembering the old two-pillar approach with the WiiU/3DS, Wii/DS etc. Rhythm Heaven could also be a tidy success. Furukawa talks about convincing customers to upgrade to the Switch 2, but realistically for many people that won’t be viable at its price point.

Would any Switch 2 owner be upset if they continued to allocate resources for new Switch 1 games? I sure wouldn’t.

Pokémon Company considering taking over the government, offering a full employment program and universal basic income to eliminate the root cause of scalping forever.

Only way out of this I reckon.

Loved this short even when I couldn’t understand a word.

The sense of speed to Dragonite’s flight is like nothing else. If Pokemon will keep trending to giant, overscaled open worlds, it would be great to have a traversal option that’s actually that fast. Or in any video game, for that matter. It would be a technical feat to load everything in fast enough, a simple art style would help.

Adding to those who are pleasantly surprised with this product. The motion sensing is so much better than the sound-sensing apps I had been using, such as in Pokemon Sleep. Those would wait until after you rolled over and got comfortable to rudely blare the alarm, because it caught you moving and decides movement = almost awake. I was always getting up grumpy.

Alarmo with my settings won't go off if you're already moving, and when it does it gets silenced with just a wave or wiggle. That's just enough to let me snooze but be semi-aware that it's my wake-up window. I'm reliably out of bed feeling rested by like 10 minutes later. It acts more like a pet or family member trying to wake you up in that way.

I thought this headline would be about Switch 2 having the diminishing returns from being just a more powerful Switch, with little other innovation.

I prefer 60fps and smooth performance, so I'm not complaining, and the Switch hardware needed a power boost just to handle its own games. But we'll see how well the $500 S2 sustains with rising memory prices and multiple N64 remakes. This would have been the perfect time for Nintendo to think more laterally.

Shocking that people are trying Living the Dream despite not being able to easily copy over their 15 year old Miis from the 3DS, or spawn them from a QR code in a game about creativity.

^Actual complaints game critics used to score the game poorly.

The game I actually want to replay is Star Fox Adventures. Wish I knew if it’s imminently going to be on Switch online, like the Star Fox direct may have foreshadowed.

It gives chills listening to this and thinking about where this melody started on the Game Boy, and how far it has come. A real butterfly effect of Junichi Masuda liking classical music and programming for a small team on a little handheld console.

I wasn't aware of online communities distributing their games, and wasn't of a mind to pirate them. But now I'll consider it! Good shout, Level-5.

It's funny how much this dwarves the standard little amiibo stand that contains the NFC chip, which they've used since the beginning. Looks top-heavy.

Bit of a visual metaphor for how amiibo have "developed".

If Sega wants to pander to my nostalgia they should make Dreamcast controllers that are compatible with Switch. They had a great feel, analogue triggers and Hall effect!

Since it incurred no costs it must not have entered a design phase. This whole sequence reads like this:

Sega - We've announced a Super Game!
Devs - OK, what's it about?
Sega - A F2P title that attracts the whole gaming ecosystem!
Devs - That's not a genre, but ok... how will it do better than the F2P battle royale with Sonic, our biggest IP, that just failed?
Sega - ... we are now cancelling the Super Game.

I get why this omission happened for brevity but it's not accurate to say all Switch 1 & 2 got a price increase in Japan. The region-locked Japanese language S2 got increased, while the standard region-free model stayed the same.

The region-locked model was by far the cheapest way to get a Switch 2. All told, it's a pretty incremental price increase that according to Furukawa, doesn't fully cover the higher component costs. My read is they're still selling it at a loss.

Not a surprise, but this also confirms more titles coming for this year that haven't been announced yet.

Coming from the 3DS, I was grousing the whole Switch generation that there weren't any more 1st party Nintendo games targeting a lower price point. I'm glad someone in the higher ups remembered they can do that. It may actually help the performance of some titles - $70 Mario Tennis appears to have landed with a thud with less than a million sales. $50 is a much easier psychological barrier for these non-tentpole games.

The game doesn’t even have backgrounds, they locked them behind a paywall! Greedy Nintendo!!!

Insert thumbnail of Wario holding a money bag

I hope the Wind & Waves devs can take some notes from these games about making a region that’s tightly scaled, with dungeons, branching paths, sense of danger, randomness to the encounters, and using your mons for them to grow. Things Game Freak got right on the Game Boy in 1996.

Modern Pokemon has moved away from those so I’m not holding my breath.

The “boring grey” comment is word for word what I’ve heard about this from multiple women in my life. Or they’re waiting for editions that actually look nice.

It’s shocking how much Nintendo has dropped the ball on offering visual variety with this product, especially after the Switch 1.

I continue to think the really objectionable part of this is Switch 1 models also going up in price. For the first time in the industry, old tech is getting MORE expensive over time and not less. Waiting, late adopting, or just aging into console purchases now is getting punished.

So what is the budget option from Nintendo? It’s “own a Switch already”, and that’s it. The 3DS isn’t in production. If they’re making something, it’s going up.

There’s a place for them both. More realistic, “gritty” animated characters with smaller features tend to not stand the test of time as well, as people find them less relatable. But I appreciate how they’re not just doing an Illumination tie-in or re-hashing the Zero and Smash Bros designs in HD.

One point is it’s not like they HAD to make them realistic to match the detailed machines and space setting. It’s a separate design choice. Simplified characters in highly detailed settings have a long tradition in comics and animation.

@AussieMcBucket God, a 2-4 player co-op campaign is such a good and simple idea that would justify this remake. It would work perfectly with their intended use of Game Chat and the camera avatars. I wouldn’t even mind the re-hashing of the same story as much.

Instead this feels like visuals over innovation from Nintendo. What happened to wanting a new idea to make new games? “More cinematic now” isn’t much of an idea…

Many of us are anime-brained, including myself in this, and we’re used to everything having huge eyes and smooth features. It doesn’t help that they showed the Illumination anime backstory from the Galaxy movie right before this reveal.

I think these are pretty ugly, but it’s a good thing. It’s different and memorable. If Illumination can make sexy anime Fox, how worthwhile is that to pursue really?

Now if only they applied the same creativity to, y’know, the game… I think another discussion is if Nintendo is disempowering newer devs by sticking them to remakes over and over. How about designing new levels?

Surely anyone at the Pokemon Company could care enough about this to provide IPA. It takes 5 seconds to look up and would even be a teaching moment for kids (and adults). This is the series that had us all read braille.

Anyway, glad to see people coming around on the latin C in Arceus, except I'm then 1 of the 10% saying the E correctly. It's not "Arcius"

The Zelda movie should have taken this approach instead of following Link. Let's see what Tingle is getting up to

I always got the sense "weird" Zelda and characters like Tingle came directly from him. And when he took over as Producer for 3D Mario, suddenly the "brand-safe" era was over and they let Mario wear different skins, run around as a skeleton, etc.

@RupeeClock All those series were actual competitors from their outset. Street Fighter II and MK came out 1 year apart. Pokemon and Digimon began a year apart, Doom and Quake 3 years. The first Monster Crown came out 25 years into Pokemon being the foremost monster-catching game.

I don't think anyone should chafe at Hollow Knight being called a Metroidvania, or any monster-catcher being called Pokemon-like. It conveys meaning to the widest range of people.

“I bet I could upgrade my suit to do Morph Ball! Wait, I’m not that flexible…”

Very unfortunate naming, as it sounds affiliated with Mr. Beast.

That said, I’ve always thought the product design of VR headsets was unviable, as most people don’t want to strap an entire console over the top of their head. The glasses form factor is a step in the right direction. I just want a company to do it cheaply and lightweight, with a streamed feed like the WiiU gamepad.

I see the point about the stadium, but otherwise the designs don’t look remotely as derivative as Palworld. Actual effort went into this.

I'm surprised to hear he thought they had a point about the first movie, because he and Illumination clearly double and tripled down on the things that made the first movie review poorly.

Movies need character motivations and some kind of emotional core. I don't even need Mario and Luigi's characters explored. This film's plot had a gift-wrapped sentimental hero in Rosalina. I've heard fans say they felt less watching this movie than they did playing the Mario Galaxy game. So forget not re-energizing the film industry, they're not even storytelling to the standard of their video games.

Don’t really understand the drab comments, it looks to be pushing the standard of the series as you’d expect. Bare Splatoon stages tend to be a little less saturated so the gameplay-critical ink can pop. They’re also much smaller in scope than this, with single player that has mostly been on floating platforms. “Looks like Switch 1” is an uninformed take when Switch 1 couldn’t handle Salmon Run without slowdown.

Salmon Run is sneakily, imo, the most varied and replayable Splatoon mode. Makes perfect sense to theme a campaign around it.

My only concern is it will lean a bit TOO far into comedy with castings like Dastmalchian, Rhodes… yes Street Fighter is funny, but also melodramatic and “rule of cool”, and a good movie can have all those in equal measure. Guile for instance is a really no-nonsense character, his hair is basically the only funny thing about him.

The director also did the Eric Andre Show which I liked, so I’ll definitely give it a chance.

The restricted sharing is a really obvious necessary evil, to have completely unrestricted user content. And I’m glad they made that choice. It’s refreshing to have zero filter on what you can draw or type in.

Add to that, if all you want to do is show your discord friends your miis, we’ve all had camera phones for ages. Pictures of the screen work just fine.

Making your own miis makes them feel more particular to your game, not copies from a QR code. I know creative tools aren’t for everyone, but that’s a big appeal of this game I reckon. And if your miis are scuffed, it’s all the better. Per the ask a developer interview, they were careful not to make the new Mii models too high quality or well-animated, or they’d lose their charm. The Switch Sports team and their cursed Mii replacements sure didn’t get that memo!

I had forgotten until reading the developer interview that you couldn't pick up Miis in the 3DS game. That feels like such a natural fit for this series.

I think one of the biggest flaws leading to the awkward touchscreen integration is that the Switch isn't a 3DS. I don't know about anyone else, but I never use the Switch touchscreen, even in handheld mode. It's just so clearly not designed for it, on the hardware or software side.

Good interview, I thought this was the highlight of the Direct it was in. And I had forgotten it launched a demo, going to download that now.

Treasure Tracker was a lovely game, almost a relic of Nintendo's tight puzzle-box design approach, before they started making everything bigger, more open-world, more marketable.

Meanwhile Toad in the Illumination Mario movies is a completely pointless character who had nothing distinctive, no motivation, no name, Peach didn't even know him, and served mostly to introduce the Mushroom Kingdom in the first movie and then randomly become "part of the group". Oh, and also provide a stunt casting slot so they can bring another actor on the press tours.

It's just funny wanting that latter thing to promote the first thing. Part of me thinks a Captain Toad sequel would be better when these dumb movies are more in the rearview.

@tseliot They just mean it doesn't have a Switch 2 Edition or upgrade announced. It will still run on a Switch 2.

@batmanbud2 As a Fire Emblem fan I also noticed the 2 Ogre games and lack of FE. In fact, lack of Intelligent Systems completely - no Paper Mario??

But as for FE, it has a great consistent quality across the series but I’d have trouble picking one that really maxed out the potential with one game. Maybe Sacred Stones? For the GBA that pretty much had it all, though it’s among the easier titles.

VGC tournaments have just kept growing in attendance even through the sloppy Switch generation of titles, so this game not even meeting the quality standards of Game Freak's output sure speaks volumes.

Competitive will always appeal to the more hardcore demographic of fans, so choosing a mobile developer and platform for this - a space known for cheaper development and less QA - was a crazy choice. Just a poor fit for the intended audience.

LONG LIVE THE $40 GAME!!!

If Wind/Waves does away with competitive battles because "it's all in Champions now!", it will be a complete disaster.

I've never thought that's actually the plan, rather they're propping up the game for these World Championships as marketing for it, more or less. But some sickos out there actually want turn-based pvp to get exiled to Champions permanently. Bugs aside, it's ugly mobile slop.

I assume Tri Force Heroes scored so low only because it doesn't need a remake, a port would suffice. It's already perfect.

At least the performance upgrade is free, unlike for Animal Crossing or Xenoblade X. You'd need a spreadsheet to keep track of which updates are paid, Nintendo's choices have been so arbitrary.

@just_another_gamer Thank you and signal boosting this comment. 1440p/120 and 4K/60 capture sound too good to be true at $90 usd. And "zero latency" is a thing they can just say.

You have to wonder what kind of weird asymmetry at Nintendo's teams led to this not launching with mouse support.

I watched a tutorial on the new Mii creator, and it's a straight-up drawing program. Complete with layers, selection tools, transforms, like a rudimentary Photoshop. So what, do I save some Mii creation for later on when/if they decide to finish the game's UX?

(Granted that stick controls haven't stopped people from making literal works of art in the demo, such as Van Gogh's Starry Night.)

I have to say it looks great in stills. Pacing is everything in animation though, moments need anticipation and follow through, scenes should follow each other in a sensible way, and we need some reason to care about what the characters are doing. I thought the 1st movie already struggled at some of those, so no surprise an overstuffed sequel would too.

Cartooning and slapstick is an under-appreciated art by critics, and I've at least seen some in previews - Yoshi eating a chain chomp comes to mind. And there are movies that offer visual spectacle that are appreciated more over time than in the moment for whatever reason (it's a visual medium!), thinking about Tron movies or Speed Racer (2008). I'll probably get some enjoyment out of this, but bad pacing and character decisions will taint it.