wollywoo

Man, I had no idea who this guy was before the announcement. Crossing my fingers for Rayman!

Seems a bit harsh! I generally hate minigames and would've skipped them all anyway, so I don't see what the harm is in including them. Leaderboards? Don't care at all if they are even included. Bad bosses? Okay, dock them for that because those are presumably required for progress. But if the core game loop is fun, that's all I care about.

They really need to iron out the performance. Certainly nothing gamebreaking, but absolutely noticeable. Really don't see any reason for a remake of a GameBoy game to drop frames.

Still a great game!

Okami still stands as one of the best looking games ever made. I'd love to see what they could do with modern hardware.

Dig 2 is one of the best games on the Switch. Considering the Switch's amazing lineup, that is high praise! Dig 3, pretty please!

I bought Quest and really tried to like it, since I love Slay the Spire. Gave up on it after a few hours. Just found it more frustrating than fun.

Hope this game continues to sell well! It's absolutely worth it for me. I haven't played the original since the 1990's, but it was one of my favorite games at the time - even better than Link to the Past! This version absolutely holds up. I was worried that I was remembering it through rose-tinted glasses, but the core gameplay loop here is just delightful.

Everything about the game seems expertly tightened - nothing is haphazardly slapped on, and everything somehow fits together into a whole. Pacing is excellent - nothing feels like a chore. There are no moments, as in most Zelda games, where it seems like some extra challenges are being dumped on you to pad out the length. It's more linear than any of the previous three entries in the series, but it still somehow feels as if you are choosing your path - the devs already know what you want to do before you do. It feels like this was the point where the Zelda formula was cemented into the linear lock-key gating the franchise followed up until 2017. That formula started to feel a little stale at some point, but here it still seems fresh and exciting.

Voted JP, but NA is also respectable. If you voted EU, I question your life choices.

A 9 huh? Might have to pick this up then! I looove challenging platformers.

The Lair is an interesting idea. But what if I am a completionist who wants all the bees AND I want the biggest challenge at the end? I guess I can see how few bees I can kill. But as in BOTW, I definitely wouldn't take on the end before finishing everything else.

@JaxonH Wow, man, and I thought I buy a lot of games.

This is a great month for sure. Will definitely pick up A Hat in Time - been waiting for that forever! I love 3D platformers and there are so few. Also interested in Yooka-Laylee - but we'll see how the review pan out. The teasers have seemed a bit lackluster compared to Tropical Freeze or Rayman. Baldur's Gate II is one of my favorite games of all time (although I don't feel the urge to play it again.) Have been very curious to see how Little Town Hero turns out. And meanwhile, I'm being kept very occupied with Link's Awakening and Ori.

Wow, Death seems to have a surprisingly thin waist for his size. Good on him, I guess...?

I love platformers and I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Looks amazing!

Zelda Maker could be fun, but designing a good Zelda dungeon is way harder than making a good Mario level, and I think they would be pretty bad on average. It's all about the puzzles - 2D Zeldas aren't fun to traverse the way Mario is. It would need a huge suite of options to create unique puzzles, and you probably wouldn't be able to have the cool events that alter the whole dungeon like in Link's Awakening or Majora's Mask.

Mario Maker 3D, though... bring it on!

Hmm. I think that, to the extent hese games have a bad reputation in Euro/NA, it is not due to general prudishness about sexuality. Look at Game of Thrones, for example, which would have to be censored in Japan. I think it's more a reaction to the general silliness and outlandishness around sexuality on display - and especially that it's a cartoon.
This is all equates to "perviness" in mainstream Western culture, even more so than actual porn.

I don't find this sort of thing sexy, myself, but I don't particularly have anything against it. I'd be entertained if some funny people streamed it.

I almost forgot how many great games there were on this system.
My own list would go...

8. Wave Race: Blue Storm
7. Rogue Leader
6. Wind Waker
5. F-Zero GX
4. Resident Evil 4
3. Smash Melee
2. Super Mario Sunshine
1. Metroid Prime

Now when are we going to see a new Wave Race? And what about Rogue Squadron? Doesn't Disney like money?

Another Metroidvania? As if the platform wasn't saturated with them already...

Just kidding, I love Metroidvanias and I will always take more if they are good enough! A 9 huh? You have my attention. Although, it seems to be trying a bit hard at the whole grimdark thing for my taste. I'll have to look into this one.

I had no clue who this guy was either, and I'm 32. But then I was never into fighting games at all (except Smash.) I know we already have two Street Fighter characters, but I'd love to see Chun Li.

Predictions (/hopes):
(Less likely marked by ??)

• Release of B-K and announcement of another Smash character. Rayman??
• DLC announced for Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Free DLC dropped for Mario Maker
• One big new game hinted at. Super Mario Odyssey 2??
• More ports coming: Borderlands, Overwatch. X-Com??
• Some new mobile nonsense.
• 3D World??
• Zelda or Mario Galaxy HD remasters??
• Absolutely no sign of Meyroid Prime 4. (Seriously, it's going to be a while, have patience everyone.)

I hope this is good! I love platformers. The gameplay here seems a bit run-of-the-mill so far, though, I'm not seeing anything too crazy.

Played another half-hour. It's growing on me but I doubt I'll continue much further. The voice acting is surprisingly good - I just assumed it would be bad like many JRPG's. The writing is very cliched - very typical JRPG stuff. Not sure about the translation - "This quest was transgressed with finesse"??? Hmm. But it's all very charming and endearing somehow.

Played about a half-hour. Never played a DQ game before so I have zero nostalgia. Hard to judge how good the game is without getting deeper into the combat. Not a huge fan of the music - why does it sound like a marching band? Isn't it supposed to be medieval? Also not big on the art style - never liked Akira Toriyama's big goofy faces. But I have a feeling it would grow on me if I keep playing. Not sure if I will or not.

WOW, there's so much negativity on this game. It is one of my all-time favorites! There's so much creativity. The iconic Delifino Plaza that was so much fun to jump around and explore, the stingrays on the beach, the sandbird, the beautiful Noki Noki Bay - it's all so memorable. Not to mention the brilliant FLUDD-less platforming challenges that were so good they could be made into their own game.

That said, if they're going to re-release / re-make these, they should start with SM64 and work their way up!

So it has bad combat, bad music and a bad story? Uh... what other reasons are there to play a JRPG?

I got pretty tired of Slay the Spire (200+ hours...) and I wanted something in the same vein so I picked up Steamworld: Quest. I only played it for an hour or so before getting bored. Battles go on for too long, and re-spawning enemies are a pain. And the interface is annoying in various ways - e.g. why won't it tell me how much damage an attack will do? I'd need to do the mental math myself, multiplying stats just to figure out what is the most effective. I'm too lazy for that. I may or may not keep playing this one.

Good for her. 755 hours is a really long time, longer than I would have expected, but I can definitely see why it could take someone a very long time if they are new to video games and if they are elderly, so they don't take to new things as rapidly. You might this is an easy or average-difficulty game, but the controls are quite a lot to take in if you haven't played something like it before. And the puzzles in particular can be quite difficult. I remember them being fairly easy, but that's because I've been playing these types of games for decades and I know what things to expect and look out for, and the unwritten rules of Zelda dungeons. Like: an object you can interact with will be colored to stand out from its environment. Or: A puzzle will never become unsolvable, so you don't need to try things like dying on purpose to reset a room. I never thought about these rules until playing games in front of my Mom, who would offer these kind of suggestions that would never occur to me as options. If you don't know the basics of video game logic, it's going to be pretty challenging. Especially since the dungeons in Twilight Princess are so friggin' huge.

Let's hope she skips Skyward Sword and moves on to BOTW. (There's a nice interview at GameXplain with Andre's dad who finally beat BOTW after a similar ordeal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMFAD5Wsr4)

Man, I loved the look of Lurelin Village. Too bad there was... almost nothing to do there. I wonder if there was more content planned for this area that was cut. It seems on par with the other villages that are near Divine Beasts.

Love this! If you like my levels, let me know and I'll try yours out!

Great interview! Seems like a nice man. If there's one game I'm sure people will still be playing in 50 years, it might be this one. Myself, I never knew what the big deal was... until I ended up spending 70 or so hours playing Tetris 99 while listening to podcasts.

That is... a stretch. I doubt they had even finalized the ocarina-playing mechanics at the time of Mario's release, or that this tune had been written. It does make me wonder about cut Mario 64 levels, though. I think I remember hearing somewhere that they had planned for several more stages. Please release an HD remake with new content, Nintendo... I would buy it in .001 ms as that is my favorite game of all time.

@KingKRoolMain You must be real fun at parties. I for one enjoyed the silliness (however obvious). Nintendo, don't ever stop the Bowser jokes.

You can hear the new track at https://www.smashbros.com/ja_JP/sound/index.html

I love the references to other stages! I hope there's a chance for B-K HD on Switch.

I mean, I'd kill my own mother for a new Banjo if it lived up to the original.

So excited! I’d like to see a smaller, more dense world with a deeper story, but one that is just as open as BotW. It looks to me like they are teasing co-op, but who wants that? I just want to finally play as Zelda. I’m also getting some real Twilight Princess vibes. I hope they bring back Midna, aka, the best Zelda character. (Screw the timeline.)

HYPE

Huh. I watched some of the stream and was incredibly entertained by it! I loved the very clever new Mario levels, and the Smash tag-team finals were exhilarating. I skipped the Splatoon part because I don’t care about Splatoon. But I would definitely not sit through several hours of this.

I have no idea what kind of game this is, but the art style is amazing. I am intrigued.

Well now. That is the only thing that could possibly make me watch a MS press conference. Well... that, or a Banjo-Kazooie sequel anouncement.

Could be good! I love 2D platformers. It looks a little by-the-book, though, compared to the brilliant craziness of recent DKC and Rayman games. I'm a little sad that they didn't make another attempt at a 3D platformer -those are pretty rare now, and I bet they could improve a lot on the first game based on feedback.

Also, I totally knew that music had to be by David Wise before his name popped up. Very similar to the Tropical Freeze soundtrack.

Looks fun! But that music... is not great.

@TAndvig Same. I was hoping for a real change. Seeing the return of random encounters made me lose a lot of interest.

Getting back into Smash after abstaining for awhile. Man, that game is good! I am mostly switching between Kirby, Ness and Simon, occasionally trying some new ones. I didn't play any Smash since Melee so I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of learning characters. I just wish the smash points weren't so off-base. For some reason it gives me a way higher score with characters than I've ever played than with the ones I am decent at. I feel like I am being punished for playing with characters I haven't used much, since my opponents are better. Strange. But it's still very fun. Online has some hiccups but is generally fine.

Also playing a ton of Tetris 99. I didn't expect that game to make the splash it has, but judging by the poll results it is doing well. I never really understood all the praise for Tetris before now, but it really sinks its claws into you. I managed to make #1 exactly once, but it may have been a fluke because I don't feel that I am that good.

I picked this up and played for an hour or so. It's fun! It's starts off very easy and takes quite a while to get challenging. It's weird that the rewards for staying under par and for getting the crowns are separate, so you can cheese it by doing one and then the other instead of both simultaneously (which I imagine (?) is always possible.

I also love that these sorts of 3DS-style games are coming to Switch now. With the combined libraries of a portable and a home console, with significant third-party support, Nintendo is pretty well set to dominate.

This was a good ad. Really sells the portability aspect of the Switch. I don't think it has anything to do with ASMR.

I was looking forward to this, but it seems like random battles are making a return, which kills most of my excitement. It looks like they're not doing much new. The three starters are very similar - small body, big round head - and do not seem nearly as iconic as the original three from red and blue. Still, I think it looks very pretty. I haven't played Pokemon since Silver, so if this gets good reviews I might pick it up.

Dig 2 was amazing, so I have faith that these guys can do something special with this.

Man, that big green guy looks exactly like a cross between Frog and Robo from Chrono Trigger.

I've heard a lot of good things about this one. Would definitely buy it on Switch!

They really need to fix the enemies' movement-preview shading. Many times I would put a unit just out of an enemy's range, only to see them get destroyed by that guy anyway. I think it's because other units have been destroyed/moved out of the way, but it's not made clear. There should also be an option to see all enemies' range simultaneously, and your units should be shaded differently when in range. It's a real pain to have to check back and forth between different enemies' attack ranges and memorize them before making your move.

@gamekill There's been some amazing work done on this game recently using deep learning to upres the backgrounds. See https://steamcommunity.com/id/thepilot/screenshots/

I liked the original game a lot, but the encounter rate was way too high and the load times for battles were glacial. Not sure if they fixed anything or if it is a straight-up emulation. Would be more interested in this if they had a speed-up mechanic ala FFXII: The Zodiac Age.

Nintendo is making all of my wishes come true! I never got to play the original because I didn't have a Wii U or 3DS. I will definitely buy this.

OMG. Link's Awakening is my favorite 2D Zelda and one of the best games of all time. I remember I played it before LTTP, and I was actually slightly disappointed in LTTP because it didn't quite live up to Link's Awakening's pure charm! I will definitely play this. Love the art style, too. I hope they add a bunch of content in the same quirky style as the original.

And those notes of Ballad of the Wind Fish at the end... amazing.

I am not sad to see no characters coming frI wom Xenoblade Chronicles 2. There are already way too many anime sword guys. I love Piranha Plant because it's something unique and wacky, and it fits better with the goofy Smash vibe.

I wish I could see the full interview translated. Even better, I wish Iwata was still with us so I could see the Iwata Asks for this game. Those interviews were treasure troves of game design tidbits that you rarely see from Nintendo.

I'm surprised to see such a high score. Just from watching the gameplay it looks.... not great.