westman98

Fae Farm legs are very strong.

One would think Microsoft would have learned their lesson after they were laughed them out of the room when they attempted to purchase Nintendo in the late 1990s.

This is especially true in 2020 when Nintendo was (and still is) far more popular and successful than they were during the N64 era.

Looks like it performs similar to MK11 on Switch outside of some glitches that will hopefully get patched out soon.

The original TTYD on GCN is 480i 60FPS, not 480p 60FPS. This means each Fram only renders at half the resolution, and every 2 adjacent frames are interlaced to form the full image.

So yes, TTYD on GCN is "60FPS", but with a big caveat.

Easily the weakest Nintendo Direct outside of 2020 when there were only Partner Showcase Mini Directs, but given that the Switch is nearing the end of its lifecycle, I don't think it was a terrible showing given the circumstances.

The big hitters are clearly being saved for Switch 2, and that's a good thing.

Not the GX remaster everyone was expecting but I can't complain about a free game to try out.

Looks like a "Barbie" Peach game where each level requires you to become a different Peach with totally new gameplay mechanics. It could work though it runs the risk of each new gameplay mechanics not being fully-fleshed out enough to be fun.

Unreal Engine is like Luigi: He is winning by doing absolutely nothing.

@GrailUK
When it comes to ray-tracing efficiency and upscaling (DLSS), Nvidia is at least a generation ahead of AMD.

Nintendo will benefit from their choice of hardware vendor immensely.

Of course, and it's probably happening this week too if that Pyoro leaker is anything to go by.

End-of-service must be coming soon. It'll probably happen by 2026 if I had to guess.

Looks like it will be all hands on deck for the development of the next Mario Kart game on Switch 2.

If true, then it's baffling that Warner Bros would fund a Switch port of Gotham Knights, a game that has big performance issues on PS5/XBS, while also refusing a Switch port of Multiversus, a game that looks like it could have run on a PS3/360.

More players per match.

4v4 is cool and could stay as the default, but it would be great if Nintendo aimed for higher player counts (like 6v6, 8v8, 4v4v4v4, 12v12, etc). Switch 1 may not powerful enough to handle more than 8 players shooting ink, but Switch 2 being more powerful should alleviate these technical barriers.

The entire shooter market has shifted toward battle royale over the last few years with Fortnite/Warzone/Apex/PUBG/etc. There is a reason: people enjoy playing with a ton of other players on a big map since it increases replayability and competitiveness. I obviously don't expect Nintendo to copy other games and make a Splatoon battle royale (even though I think that could work with good execution) but simply having more players per match and larger maps to compensate would be nice.

Probably the MasterCycle Zero and teleporting horse armor, but those things could just be free updates TBH.

@nimnio
Yeah, "comparable" does not mean "equivalent" - the VGC article even mentions that with regards to that Matrix demo.

I never play Master Mode for any Zelda game but it would suck of TOTK never got it as it has been a longstanding series staple for a while. Maybe that can come in a free update as that hardly qualifies as DLC by itself.

Other than that I think I'm okay with this. BOTW's DLC was nice and had some cool rewards (Master Cycle Zero, the teleporting horse armor, etc) but it wasn't anything super remarkable. If no DLC means development on the next 3D Zelda can start sooner, then I'm satisfied.

The ninjas keep a tight leesh.

@NorthwestEagle
Nintendo fans try not to be mentally scarred by 10+ year-old Paper Mario game challenge: impossible

Mario riding Yoshi then:

Mario riding Yoshi now:

Beyond Good and Evil 20th Anniversary Edition is real!

Sonic is not just going up directly against Matio, it's also facing off (to a lesser extent) against Spider-Man 2 which launches on the same day as Mario.

@Chaotic_Neutral
Unless you are intentionally trying to trigger it, a Blood Moon happens every in-game week which is like a bit under 3 hours of real-world playtime. You can't build something you want in that time? Must be extraordinarily complex lol

Even then, favoriting in Autobuild should be able to help.

Launching 3 days before Super Mario Bros Wonder is a bold choice.

Actual end of an era 😞.

At this rate MGS4 on Switch will run at 720p 15FPS.

Having worse performance than the initial HD releases is laughable. These are PS2 games FFS.

@Giancarlothomaz
No, that was misinterpreted. The 10-year deal between Microsoft and Nintendo only applies to Call of Duty.

And regardless, that has nothing to do with Larry Hryb/Major Nelson who is no longer a Microsoft/Xbox employee.

@Giancarlothomaz
Larry Hyrb just recently retired from Microsoft.

And even if he hadn't retired, he has nothing to do with Microsoft's 10 year deal with Nintendo, which relates to porting Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms once Microsoft completes their acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Remarkably, despite being way larger in size, it took less time for me to beat TOTK than BOTW (150 hours vs 220 hours). I assume this has to do with the faster methods of traversal: Ascend often makes climbing unnecessary, Tulin's gust makes gliding quicker, and Zonai vehicles (i.e. the fan hoverbike) are quite fast in general. Being familiar with the layout of the surface map probably also helped here too.

Curious if this applies to anyone else.

It still boggles my mind that GameFreak decided to launch Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet in the same year, with both games being quite ambitious scope-wise while also both being impacted by Covid restrictions during development. Not even the world's most talented game studio would have been able to develop two games of that scale simultaneously under these conditions without at least one of them being a buggy mess.

I actually reached the Construct Factory while exploring the Depths many many many hours before I ever set foot on Dragonhead Island. The factory didn't activate and therefore nothing happened, so I didn't think much of the area and moved on. I was pretty amazed to return to the area once I started the entire Mineru questline and found out that this was actually a 5th temple.

That VGC article about Switch 2 suggested that 3rd party developers were somewhat against backwards compatibility because they were afraid that people playing old generation games in the current generation hardware via backwards-compatibility would hurt new game sales, but here it seems like Zelnick isn't really concerned about that at all.

I guess I can't be surprised here: PS5 and XBS are fully backwards compatible but Take Two was pretty quick to resell a new version of GTAV for the 3rd time anyways. There is no doubt they'll be reselling old Switch games on Switch 2 regardless of whether Switch 2 is backwards-compatible with Switch or not.

I don't think Rockstar has the bandwidth to work on both GTAVI and a full-blown remake of Red Dead Redemption. A lot of RockStar employees were crunched to the bone during the development of RDR2 and I imagine many of them are going through the same struggles right now working on GTAVI - I can't imagine them also needing to work on a remake of the first RDR.

Also, the code of the original Red Dead Redemption is apparently poorly written and optimized (this is the reason why it has never been ported to PC even after 10+ years). The fact that a port studio was able to develop native ports of the game for Switch and PS4 is actually kind of a miracle in it of itself.

I never understood this discourse on whether the Switch can outsell PS2. Sure, it would be awesome if it did, but the Switch is already the most profitable game system in history and has (more importantly) fostered an environment where most Nintendo IPs have seen incredible record-breaking growth. That is far more important than simply being the best-selling console, which ultimately a meaningless trophy. Like, Nintendo could have cut the price of the NDS back in 2011/2012 to give it enough of a boost to outsell PS2, but they were way more focused on making sure the 3DS could succeed especially after its early struggles.

What is very important for Nintendo right now is that they ensure Switch maintains a high active playerbase and that those Switch players transition to Switch 2 once it releases. Nintendo is doing a great job at maintaining a large active Switch playerbase with big releases like Zelda, Pikmin, and Mario - now they just need to make sure the transition to Switch 2 is as smooth as possible.

Not sure why Alana Hagues thinks Nintendo will have a soft launch lineup for Switch 2 - they did this with 3DS and Wii U and things did not work out at all.

@Reztobi
Pokemon Scarlet/Violet sold faster since it was a holiday launch.

Outside of that, there are only a small handful of games that have sold faster than Tears of the Kingdom in their first ~2 months: Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, and a few Call of Duty titles.

Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD are the only games with a feasible chance of receiving Switch ports, and even then I don't think it'll happen. They'll probably be pushed as early Switch 2 games.

Disney Illusion Island is out? Seems like this game had absolutely zero marketing whatsoever.

Mickey Mouse may be an icon but he isn't a big active franchise like Marvel or Star Wars - people won't impulse buy a Mickey Mouse game based on his name or appearance alone.

There is no way any 3rd party developer knows what the actual screen on the final retail hardware will be if it is 15-18 months away from release.

There is also little evidence that any 3rd party developer would know if the new hardware will be backwards-compatible. Game console dev kits contain only the necessary hardware to run native games of that platform, and nothing else. I remember Wii dev-kits from back in the day not including GameCube backwards-compatibility...even though the Wii is pretty much just a souped-up GameCube internally ("2 GameCubes duct-taped together").

I would have been fine with more DLC fighters, but I also think 3 years of DLC support was more than enough for Ultimate. I look forward to the next Smash on new hardware, whenever that may be.

Kinda sounds like Sakurai/Nintendo are in the planning stages of the next brand new Smash Bros at the moment, and that it won't launch until several years from now (like 2027/28).

Pikmin is bigger than Final Fantasy in Japan now. Crazy to imagine such a thing just 4 or 5 years ago.

@Daggot
That's true, though it's not like Syn Sophia owns the Fashion Dreamer IP - it belongs to XSEED as far as I can tell.

Obviously they are not obligated to work with Nintendo, but working with Nintendo does come with the benefit of working on a somewhat established IP with Nintendo's marketing machine.

Fashion Dreamer is actually being developed by Syn Sophia, who developed Style Savvy. I'm actually kinda curious why they made a new IP similar to Style Savvy rather than just make another Style Savvy - the game is still exclusive to a Nintendo platform so its not like they went with a new IP to expand to PS/XB/PC.

I'm pretty close to finishing this game - I've beaten all temples + shrines, found all lightroots + caves + schematics, completed all side adventures, and fully upgraded my inventory slots + sages + Zonai battery. Just missing a handful of side quests and armor upgrades at this point.

This is easily one of the finest games ever made. I was somewhat skeptical about the map reuse and the emphasis on building things but none of those ended up being big issues. There is a ton of new areas to explore, all of the abilities are fun and intuitive (though I do miss Stasis), puzzles are as interesting and freeform as ever, and the main story is a big improvement over previous Zelda titles. Of course there are certain things to nitpick about as there will be for any game of this scope and scale - material grinding and frame rate are my biggest complaints - but none of that ever hampered my enjoyment to any significant degree. The fact that this game even functions at all given all the systemic gameplay elements and features without any major bugs/glitches is honestly pretty remarkable.

I still think BOTW will end up being the "better" game since it was a transformative new entry where everything was fresh, but this is a truly outstanding sequel.

Beyond the terrible design and box art , I'm not even sure why the JoyCons need that sliding mechanism to begin with. It's a (rather lackluster) solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

@samuelvictor
EAFC 24 is FIFA 24 with a name change.

Isn't the Switch battery relatively easy to replace (i.e. not super easy but also not a Herculean task)? I'm pretty sure all you need is a certain type of screwdriver, and that's it.

@VioletSword
Unless the game is stealing code/violating copyright or fails to pass certification, I'm not sure Nintendo or any platform holder can block games like this.

Yuji Naka should quit game development and become a politician