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Good article. I don't have the time to learn new games, perfect them, or trawl the internet for tips, so much prefer easier games you can dive straight into. Lost count of the number or highly reviewed games I've abandoned in the first half hour because I just couldn't work them out. Either game mechanics, hard difficulty (Cuphead!), or even text that's too small to read. In that vein, I'd like to add one to the list. If you like card battlers, avoid Monster Train First Class and Inscryption, and buy yourself Dicey Dungeons!

Hopefully it's a bit easier than Cuphead.

Seems to be a game that divides opinion. If you've played the original, you'll already know whether you'll like this one or not. If you haven't played the original, it's only £1.79 at the moment (until July 19th).

Unlike FF, DQ has stayed true to its roots. Played all the mainline games and they just keep getting better and better!

Definitive proof that size doesn't matter. Although having said that, when I started gaming, file sizes were not measured in Gb or Mb, but Kb!

In terms of value (cost / hours spent playing), Dicey Dungeons comes out top in my collection. Not the cheapest it's ever been, but still a steal at £3.37.

So many to choose from! Tempted by several old school shooter collections, but went for two off my wish list. Nexomon at £3.99 - a 2D Pokemon-lite type game, and Monster Train First Class - roguelike deck-building at £10.79. Both all time low prices.

Great games, served up with a large dollop of nostalgia (for me anyway). But way too expensive. Will wait until they're on sale. Especially as FF games usually get quite hefty discounts if you're patient.

That's a lot of gold coins!

Can't wait to play through these two campaigns again. I've pretty much forgotten everything from the originals. Will be like two new games! Although, I do remember how easy it was to pick up and start playing immediately, without sacrificing the strategy elements. So many games today put me off with needless complexity from the start. I just haven't got 10 hours to learn the rules!

Not surprised. For the first time in 5 years, me, my wife, and two kids are all agreed on what film to watch! We've all grown up with the back-flipping, ground-pounding, wall-jumping plumber.

@Poodlestargenerica I wouldn't say "most people are detached from reality". I think it's rather most people can't really see the connection between the war in Ukraine and the release of a cartoon war video game. Especially given there's a war always going on somewhere in the world, and the constant release of more realistic war video games in the same period.

When I first got SNES Punch-Out (without instructions) I just kept hitting the buttons randomly. The more I kept losing, the more I kept mashing the buttons harder and harder. Incredibly frustrating but I was determined to keep going rather than write off the game. It was only many years later, when the Wii version came out, I finally twigged it was a reaction-type game. D'oh!

Nice to see some love for the GBA FEs. I remember my first 4 carts for the GBA were Pokemon Emerald, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and FFTA. What a line-up. What a great little handheld it was!

Looks like this will more than fill the large AdvanceWars-sized hole in my games collection.

Advance Wars and Fire Emblem.

If FIFA is anything to go by, we'll just get half-arsed ports and incomplete games that run poorly.

All this Fire Emblem talk keeps reminding me Advance Wars is still in limbo!

Been keeping my eye on Tactics Ogre, but very expensive! Will have to wait for the first sale. Half price might be my biting point.

What's interesting to me is the big dip around age 15. The 13-18 age bracket. The age where it's most important to "look cool". The graph tells me that Nintendo still has a problem with its cutesy kids-only image. At least it seems that when people get into their 20s, they have the confidence to play what they actually enjoy, rather than worry about what their mates will say about them.

A Link To The Past because
1. It's an all time classic that everyone should play at least once.
2. It's an easy game to get hold of. Free if you have the online subscription.
3. It introduces so many of the standard Zelda gameplay ideas.

@burninmylight Ha, ha, yeah, I remember those days. A game on your birthday and a game at Christmas. That was it!

For the first time in a long long while, there's nothing I'm interested in. Which is just as well because my backlog is bigger than ever. Before the Switch, I never used to have a backlog of games!

Not sure why it's getting a review score at all. It's DLC. Not even all the DLC. Just one sixth! Maybe a score can be justified after all six waves have arrived? Meantime, all you can really say is - is it better than wave 1? Is it better than the existing MK8 tracks? Yes or no.

@TheMelodiusRose In this case I think "can" is meant as slang for toilet. i.e. Playing the Switch on the toilet.

@KBuckley27 Yeah, the first sale stats coming out which meant it would be a success. Don't know if most remember, but over half the Switch posts prior to launch were incredibly negative. Some thought it would be less successful than the WiiU! Most were predicting lifetime sales of between 20-50 million. Nobody seemed to realise that it would be the go-to upgrade machine for the already existing 100+ million handheld market.

There are elements of the picture that suggest "up", but there are also elements that suggest "down". Both answers are correct. For what it's worth, after my first initial glance, my brain kicked out the answer "down".

@Sveakungen At the risk of repeating myself ad nauseam, it's not the sexual content that's the problem, it's the sexual attitudes and context that's worrying.

Especially in light of the news article highlighted by @nocdaes https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62081247 which came out a couple of days ago in the UK. Can anyone read that and not think this game is anything but tacky at best.

Having said that, I've no problem with shooting games, and think Advance Wars should never have been delayed! Go figure. Double standards? Probably.

@Snatcher @eaglebob345 @EarthboundBenjy
Nah... it's not the existence of "hot guy" games I was posting about, it's the assumption that young girls with "worries" just need a good orgasm to make everything right in the world. Oh, and they'll probably fall in love with you at the same time! Reminds me of that song from the '70s - Hang On In There Baby by Johnny Bristol! Just think that we've moved on from outdated sexism like this.

Inappropriate. Surprised Nintendo have allowed it to be published. Can't imagine this game would exist at all if the sexes were reversed.

Never understood the point of "code in box". If you're a digital gamer, what's the point of an empty box lying around? If you're a physical gamer, what's the point of an empty box? Except for maybe a free spare case.

Can't believe I played through The Citadel of Chaos (book 2) about 10 times (without cheating) in order to beat it. Was genuinely scared to turn the pages in case I suffered an untimely death. The Sorcery books (4, count 'em!) were the height of sophistication back then. Nothing topped them. Shortly after, I lost interest though.

Not sure I want to go back and play this game. I have a sneaking suspicion my fond memories will be exposed as nothing more than misplaced nostalgia.

@Duncanballs The dreaded "R: Tape Loading Error"! It's the main reason I loved the NES. Carts! They were the Rolls Royce of gaming at the time. Never been bettered.

RRP is £50 for most games, so technically the sale is £15 off. However, most are usually available for £40, so it's really an extra fiver off. Anyone who's been buying physical for some time will know this anyway. But a fiver saving is still a fiver saving! Tempted by one of them myself, but will probably pass due to a big backlog.

Let me guess... SOME AAA titles 33% off. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle will be REALLY cheap. And the ones with 90% off will be games you've never heard of. Hoping to be proved wrong, but that's been the pattern of every other big sale.

Don't think Final Fantasy IV, V, VI have been mentioned.

I remember an excellent game back in the day called Chuckie Egg - a platformer where you had to collect eggs. Put a lot of time into that one. I played it on the Spectrum. But not sure it was ever available for a Nintendo console.

It goes without saying that every generation was better than the one that came before (with the possible exception of SNES to N64), but for nostalgia and time invested in the machines, GBA gets my vote, narrowly beating the SNES.
Lost count of the number of times my batteries died when playing Pokemon Emerald, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, etc)

I don't know, I think the Fire Emblem games have become a bit bloated of late. This one looks a bit simpler and I'll definitely pick it up at some stage, hopefully when it's a fiver or less.

Not the best, but from what I remember (it's been quite a few years now!) the first to perfect the immensely satisfying sliding/skidding round corners game mechanic. And for that alone it gets my vote.

Not sure why it's not been localised. Surely if it's hugely popular in Japan it will be popular everywhere else. Easy money. There can't be that many differences between Japanese and US/European gamers can there? Can there?...

@Hams96 Yep, text size adjustment would certainly be top of my list. Didn't seem to be a problem with GBA/DS games, but the increased resolution of the Switch has allowed the text to become too small. Off the top of my head FE3H suffers from this, put me right off the game. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.

@iLikeUrAttitude Would have thought they'd be sour. D'oh!

(I'll get my coat...)

@Bunkerneath I'm English but although we write 10/03/2022 or 10/MAR/2022, we can say either "10th of March" or "March the 10th". So it works for us as well. Just like May the 4th works.

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving sales that forever reappear at $39.99 (or £33).

I can remember paying £50 a time for a SNES game back in the early '90s. In today's money adjusting for inflation, that's over £100! So the less desirable games haven't really gone up by that much if we're being honest.

@Scarko His profile picture would suggest a Comic Book Guy level of sarcasm.

@Fizza What the duck?

@roboshort @Dr_Lugae @MajorTom Oh, I don't know. Early DQ and FF games have exactly the same game mechanics as Pokemon. Just a little bit easier that's all. An RPG-lite if you like. Think that's what makes Pokemon so popular. Anyone can play the games.
I think the big problem with the internet criticism is that gamers have grown up and want Pokemon to grow up with them (like the FF series), but in reality, Pokemon games just cater for the next generation of younger gamers (and casuals, like myself). Long may that continue!

Sigh. I've had a games backlog ever since the Switch launched. But during 2021 (a relatively lean year) was starting to catch up. But come March I'll be back to square one. Oh well, a nice problem to have, and means I can wait for sale prices.