swoose

7 seems fair to me. Visually it’s actually quite nice and polished, and the models, music and gameplay design were reminding me a lot of Splatoon, so I was very unsurprised to find Hisashi Nogami served as Producer. The main thing I wish for is some sense of progression in your rank. I think they didn’t want players obsessing over competition - another common Nintendo move for better or worse.

As I’ve approached rolling credits I agree with this site’s review that the controls - the main selling point - are about 90% there. The bunny hop really requires you to yank both joycon straight up, not the slight lift you usually do with a mouse, which makes the 100x jump rope challenge evil. And I’m at a loss for how to wheelie straight forward as required for the ‘Tilt & Run’ trial. It seems very timing sensitive and not well explained by the game. Granted you don’t need these techniques to just hop in a match and have fun.

Hopefully by fall they mean October or so, and we get a couple expansions based on Johto in the meantime.

And I’ll always be a curmudgeon about X/Y nostalgia and megas not being new pokemon. Some of my faves like Mawile and Altaria could have used real, permanent evolutions.

Really don’t see this replacing player battles in the main games. It’s more an indication that Generation 10 won’t be out before next August.

They’ll have current-gen titles eventually and would probably rather showcase those than a mobile game.

The demo mentioned a skill-based matchmaking system so I wonder if we can progress some kind of rank points that weren’t live yet for the prerelease period. I could see that keeping me coming back.

The core gameplay is clearly the draw here, and it’s a polished package just light on content so I understand the 6s. But I wonder where all the sky-high expectations beyond that come from for a $20 game with no micro transactions. Part of what makes me amenable to this game is I’m so encouraged that Nintendo will still make smaller projects, instead of feature creeping everything into $50-$80 games. We didn’t get a single $20 Nintendo game on Switch 1.

@MarioLinkSamus You can join the same park as your friends (I did it in the demo period) so I’d say that’s not accurate.

The game then sorts you randomly into squads so you may play on the same side as your friend or against them, or a game on the other court, so it’s not perfect. But games are only 3min so you play together eventually. There’s also private lobby play which can have bots.

They didn’t want teams of 3 experts sweeping a public lobby or trolling everyone.

I’m a stickler for art direction and the game is really not THAT bland. Neon lights everywhere, you slap your favourite team’s colours on your robot and a pair of cat ears, choose between shiny and matte textures, and then get into a game with a neon yellow ball and wave your goofy mitts at your teammates to clap or high five. It has charm. Some of my friends said it looked like Halo, though I see how Nintendo fans might not take that as a compliment.

The UI is snappy as well. You can’t judge everything from screenshots.

The fun I had during the 3 test jams was probably worth $20 alone, it felt like an event. I'll be there launch weekend and curious to see how long the online stays active.

Replayed it last year on NSO and it holds up just as well as TTYD in my eyes. It was a very ambitious title that had at least 4 years of development, a long time for those days, and was meant to be on par with Square’s big rpgs on the Playstation. On top of Intelligent Systems, Iwata era HAL labs worked on the writing, and there’s a LOT of character and scenario writing with not only new areas, but a changing and growing Toad Town every chapter, and Tattle entries for every npc. Fitting as it’s called Mario Story before localization. Paper was never the point, 2D was just a refreshing art style by the time it released in 2000.

I hope we get a game that returns to these roots someday. Story and original characters as the focus, not battle gimmicks and papercraft.

Played 90 minutes of the first Jam and intend to play the next two. I definitely see the depth of skill expression in the controls, the wheelies in particular. They not only give a different turning radius but also slightly change your sweet spot while shooting. And I'm very interested in the dash+hop technique shown off in that dev video, makes grabbing rebounds look much easier.

The dash speed felt slow at first, but it's better once you're on a court. They start you on a big outer track with much longer straightaways than you'll actually play on. A basketball court isn't that big, so a single dash takes you quite far.

And mind your ergonomics - I came out of it with a bit of pain in one wrist already, which I think is correctible. 90 degree angles for your elbow are supposed to be best for handling mice.

Great example of why testing is a huge part of development and shouldn’t just be shipped off somewhere to disposable contractors.

I'll be interested in seeing more of this. The inspirations are cool and isometric grids turn my brain on.

Seems really straightforward actually that the main DK games happen in chronological order i.e. arcade -> country -> returns -> bananza. Bananza happens after Odyssey and spinoffs don't matter.

That wraps it up and it doesn't take a corkboard diagram.

I normally don’t tell people how to navigate their Nintendo fandom in these times but some of the excuses I’m seeing here are the lowest of the low, even casting aspersions at this long-running charity event and invoking groomers and scammers. Seriously give your head a shake.

Anyone with half a heart or brain at Nintendo could have 1. fast-tracked permission for this event, 2. gave notice further in advance, 3. waived permission this time with an understanding of what to do in the future, 4. ignored it entirely as with every year before. Assuming none of these happened, Nintendo deserves all the negativity that will come to them for this.

@HeadPirate Yes, and selling through existing stock is exactly the phase they should be in with the Switch 1. It has been in mass production for 8 years with all the economics of scale in that time and no price drop, which feeds into the biggest margins Nintendo has enjoyed in company history. You could argue Switch 1 is more equipped to eat the tariff hike than any other consumer good on Earth.

This would be like Apple announcing they're raising prices on the iPhone 8 (2017), that is the model contemporary with the Switch 1. Switch Online is younger than the Switch 1, they could just as well double the price of subscriptions.

This is transparently a company going "well we HAVE to raise prices SOMEwhere" and picking a product arbitrarily instead of charging proportional to what things cost. And I know the incentive structure that makes them do that, but people are right to criticize it.

I’m not in a rush to defend a company raising prices on an 8 year old console that’s approaching obsolete. If “market conditions” justify this, what can’t they justify

The point where “HD-2D” overstayed its welcome was already about 3 games ago. They’re completely mailing in art direction and trying nothing new.

Sounds like an honest mistake all around and being handled appropriately. The placeholder images are pretty funny though, when these are the day 1 chase cards for everyone opening the new packs.

This overview trailer did a lot to sell me on it. Love that there are different properties for guards, forwards and centers to offer different playstyles, and that you can jump without the use of half pipes, on offense and defense.

The Switch 2 direct could’ve slipped any of that in.

People want more 3 lap tracks, so they increase their availability a minuscule amount.

People want p-switch and medallion tracking, so they… change the color of your number if you already succeeded in collecting them all.

Then the one thing you’d hope they dig their heels on, the game’s difficulty, gets nerfed because why? People didn’t place 1st on every track on the first try?

This has been one of the most perplexing post-launch support periods I’ve ever seen from Nintendo. Mario Kart 8, Arms, Smash Bros, none were like this.

I'm firmly on the side that VAs should be given more respect and retained if they can still perform the characters... except in the case of Toad. Someone doing Toad voice for years of their life can't be good for their health.

Based on math the community has done about VP costs in the trailer, it will only take about 10 battles to earn enough points to completely re-stat a pokemon. Less if the mon already has some stats you want. So maybe not the instant gratification of pokemon showdown’s simulator, but not bad at all for an official platform that wants to have a gameplay loop.

I do agree it looks ugly though, not sure what they were thinking with the mostly black playing field.

I too was surprised to see mid 30s being "average" for series like Animal Crossing and Pokemon. But then I remember it's a survey of Japan and those series took off there almost a full generation before hitting the west. Their first Animal Crossing was way back on the N64, and the Gameboy Color didn't even exist when they got Pokemon.

Also worth noting 15yo and under weren't surveyed. Fire Emblem wasn't on the survey (sad) but I bet the average age there is almost geriatric.

Thank you for specifying it’s a movie twice in the first sentence, genuinely. Because youtube recommended me this trailer for “Mortal Kombat II” and I had no idea which it was, given how games look and use actors now and how we’re coming off the game “Mortal Kombat 1”.

Makes me understand why Nintendo says “The ___ Game” before and after every game title.

We know Nintendo games won’t come on game-key cards because we eat up Nintendo news every day. How is the average person supposed to know? Where is Nintendo’s statement about it, they’re not plastering it on billboards.

Nintendo thought these were a good look for the console and “good enough” for 3rd party games, so not a stretch to think their games would also come on them.

8 frames of input lag in games like F-Zero is unplayable. I can't imagine having even a mildly positive time with this release, if the game doesn't respond when you press a button. That is the #1 thing a game needs to do.

I would take low res, visual artifacts, audio glitches all over this much latency.

Something about seeing movie Donkey Kong doing Illumination née Dreamworks face, with all its high-res and generic house style, makes me less eager to be a Nintendo fan here in the 2020s.

Throat cancer is such a cruel thing for a voice actor to get. Reminds me of Mitsuo Terada and Rhythm Heaven.

Still a long life well lived, RIP

Has anyone actually needed a replacement pro controller battery? Their batteries are ludicrously long-lived so I’m really not fussed about this. The adhesive faceplate seems like a solution for having no seams on the grips or sides of the controller, which makes it smoother to hold and picks up less dirt. There are obvious benefits to this design that you’d think a review would acknowledge, and drift is completely TBD - they’re not the exact same potentiometers and wipers.

There IS a major flaw to the controller and it’s that the Dpad still registers wrong directions constantly, making it useless for many games. That doesn’t get talked about enough and even this article calls it “strong”, it’s anything but.

This is the kind of high-falutin conception of art that you mostly get from going to art university, as Miyamoto did, where it’s defined in opposition to other kinds of creation, and purpose and authorial intent drives the definition.

To a layperson, it’s plain to see art all around them including in products, ads, comic books, cereal boxes, wherever.

You’d think this track would be a great fit for World’s wall-riding mechanics, with you racing mostly on the inside of pipes much like some 3d F-Zero tracks.

I hope they’ve considered a way to fit more tracks in World. I’ve fallen off playing it since the devs nerfed the online random option. New tracks would provide some reason to come back, until I get sick again of driving them for only 1 lap per race.

This reminds me of Nintendo packaging the Switch 2 screen directly under the box cardboard so people open it up and go “ooo, shiny”

You’re not supposed to fiddle with additional downloads, you’re supposed to seamlessly open up each GameCube game and go “ooo, my Switch Online Expansion Pass sure is valuable!” It’s presentation over function, and I’d be shocked if they compromise their precious artisan vision in changing it.

What incentive could there be for EA to act any differently? Shame? Lol

This is the logical conclusion of late… well, you know the name of the system we’re under.

Normally I’m not sympathetic to “Nintendo hates their players” grousing but oh my goodness, they must hate their players in this case. It’s such a targeted strike at the playstyle VS lobby players were choosing freely, and a change no-one asked for.

The sad thing is we can’t even hope player feedback could influence Nintendo to revert the change. The feedback was already loud and clear, both online and through play data, that we want 3 lap races. They took that feedback and gave the opposite.

The single biggest blemish on this game was how hard they made it to race 3 laps on most tracks, which caused everyone to select Random in lobbies. And now they’re saying woops, we didn’t make it hard enough.

I don’t even mind the intermissions that much, but only 1 lap on the actual track removes all sense of progression and improvement from one lap to the next, passing a shortcut then taking it later, driving with different items etc. And forget the music speeding up on lap 3 - the original music for all the nitro tracks might not even finish 1 loop before the race is over. It’s a strict downgrade in so many ways.

I’m honestly taken aback how spiteful this change is.

This is such a natural addition it's surprising they didn't have an art gallery already. Maybe some artwork originals were more dispersed before and now they're getting more staging?

The idea of Donkey Kong lore is Nintendo's version of engagement bait, and based on this comment section it's working.

She's a small teen because that better suited the gameplay and story they wanted to tell.

All this is missing is a Miiverse channel to post them on. There’s never been a replacement for browsing stuff the community makes, except when it’s in-game like Splatoon’s plazas.

I’ll eventually be in the market for a pro controller 2 to better play timing-sensitive 3D games like Splatoon, due to the better sticks and polling rate. However I’m disappointed to hear its dpad still registers false inputs, like the pro controller 1.

I was crestfallen playing Tetris 99 and seeing for the first time how innacurate the dpad was. I would actually rather use the separate joycon buttons than a dpad that bad again.

To me this is a classic Nintendo high quality feat in important areas - driving mechanics, animation, music, the sheer amount of drivable routes. But it suffers from a few confounding, stubborn Nintendo choices which these reviews have all noted. Mostly the rarity of 3-lap racing and worse grand prix format, and lack of free roam incentive beyond stickers.

I’ve come to enjoy puttering around in free roam, but it’s an acquired taste and matter of expectations. I never thought it was the main draw - there’s not even a splashy main menu button for it. It feels like a packed in debug mode. But there’s also exclusive races and some nicely twisty roads that ONLY get used in free roam, and Nintendo certainly marketed it heavily. I can see why it has a mixed response.

Genuinely one of my favorite parts of the game is exiting a mode and sitting on the main menu, where the dynamic camera shows my dumb little coin cougher or cataquack take a starry nighttime drive while jazz plays. There’s a touch of the profound to it, and it makes me think they were right to make the world so spacious. But I don’t expect that vibe to be captured in most reviews or player impressions.

For context, all pvp in Splatoon 3 normally runs at 60fps on Switch 1, but there were always certain modes and maps where you would get frame drops. Mahi-Mahi with its lowering water was notorious for it.

They would have been justified making this change ages ago to correct the issue, with no Switch 2 in sight. I know this will be an easy target for spin that Nintendo is throttling your Switch 1 games, but that’s misinformed. This is literally an improvement.

"Reminds me of the PSP over 20 years ago" is such shameless engagement bait, I'm almost impressed.

Everyone who plays their games in slow motion off-screen recordings must be very let down by this.

I didn’t notice much of a “detail” increase in the footage so I suspect that line was referring to a resolution increase, probably to 1440p

I won't be spending much time in GameChat, but mouse mode is clearly the biggest innovation. Yes it has some shortcomings which you can see by looking at it - it's not a mouse - but it beats having to pack a USB mouse wherever you go, since you have a good alternative attached to the device.

More devs will add mouse control schemes for Switch 2 than for any past console, since they know that the mouse option has a 100% attach rate.

Game Freak has always been known for strength on the creative side, not so much the technical side. A support studio is what they’ve glaringly needed. Hopefully the Pokemon Company takes the hint.

I played grand prix in Mario Kart World for around 2 hours handheld, starting from a capped 90% charge and didn’t even hit low battery range.

I wasn’t using wifi features or downloading games, and the screen is VERY bright for indoors so it’s turned way down. Maybe that helps?

You’d think maybe the people repeating “instruction manual” slander would have some circumspection and consider why the game appeals to so many people. But alas.

Very stupid for Nintendo to value packaging presentation over durability, and that contributed to this mess. Then poor Gamestop training and management to not emphasize that packages shouldn’t be damaged in any way. Plenty of blame to go around here.

I just hope those units and screens don’t become e-waste, and Nintendo can replace them efficiently.

My one question is if I system transfer do my games and save data all remain on the original Switch? So I can start using it as my “secondary” hopefully.

Edit: I did some digging and for some reason it only wipes your original Switch if you do a Cloud transfer, but not a local wireless transfer. That’s how it works for current Switch 1 transfers.

Part of me feels like I'm in a bizarro world where we didn't all play Nintendo Land and WarioWare games; an in-house developed minigame/tech game from Nintendo was always going to be a banger, that's the least surprising thing about this.

I suppose the bizarro land I actually live in was not owning a PS5 or (non-Japan) Wii which apparently conditioned everyone to expect free games. Or a Steam Deck, for the vocal 2mil people who actually bought one of those.

Then again, I did buy the WiiU bundle that came with 2 full digital games. That was at a time when Nintendo was clearly floundering. I have no doubt this would be free if Nintendo was similarly in dire straits now. But we also have no reason to expect corporations at the height of their profitability to act like that. Sony and Valve desperately need market share right now, Nintendo doesn't.

I'm digging that seagull. Is that Shimamura-san?