yas

Dandara, Dandara, they said it was in India. Oh, hold on...

Not sure timing had anything to do with it. For me the Switch is the 3DS successor which was coming naturally to the end of it's life. The hand-held market has always been huge, and always dominated by Nintendo. If they had only released the Switch Lite, I think that would have been a success as well. As it was, they released the full-fat Switch which is a blindingly good portable which has the neat trick of being able to be docked to a TV.

I've been playing Nintendo games ever since the NES days, and love their colourful cartoony (anime?) presentation. It drives me mad that many so called "hardcore" gamers dismiss the company because of this perceived childishness. I hear it all the time, especially from 15-25 year olds. Blood spatter and decapitations are what's cool apparently. The success of the Switch is certainly changing things though, much more than the DS and Wii success, which I think was driven more by the older previously non-players market rather than the younger 15-25 age group.

@h15c0r3r R Tape Loading Error!

@BulbasaurusRex Fair enough, but I obviously buy the "big name" AAA Nintendo games that do give you that kind of return. I should know, I've been doing it for years. And I'm obviously not "most people" then, because there are very few games I want to keep after playing. Too many new games published, and not enough time to keep to keep going back to so-so RPGs or Puzzlers I played a couple of years ago!

@BulbasaurusRex I hear you. Used game stores are equally ungenerous here as well. No, I was talking eBay. I recently bought FE3H from Amazon for £43. Got many hours of enjoyment out of it, then sold it on eBay for £38 (£32 after all costs taken into account). So, not quite 80% but still over 70%. Effectively played the game for £11 which was a lot cheaper than the £50 they wanted for the digital version!

@BulbasaurusRex You mean make 80% back instead of 20% I think? For instance if I buy a physical cart at £40, I'm pretty much guaranteed to get £32 back after costs. Now if that game was £8 digital then yes, would destroy the physical market.
However, if the digital game was £32, I would still buy physical at £40 because as just demonstrated, it would actually cost me £8 to play and not £32. Of course with digital you can go back a year or two later and replay it, but speaking from personal experience, there are very few I would go back to.

I used to love physical, but these days it's just a "key" that allows you to unlock the digital game. Pretty much every physical game now needs to be either connected to the internet and/or download a big patch.

However, I still buy physical because not only is it cheaper in most cases for AAA games, but on every physical purchase you can make most of your money back by selling it on. Demos are useful but very few games have them.

I still can't work out the economics of digital. They should be half the price of physical carts.

@DoomTurtle Was just about to post that. Flow Free has got all that Lines XL contains, a better presentation, and is free for your phone or tablet. I'm not normally a fan of games on phones, but this one is right at home on it.

It's ironic that a company famous (and rightly so) for some of the consistently best gaming software in the world, is pretty poor at Operating System / Virtual Console / Online Gaming software design! Both the user interface and features (or lack of).

Let me guess... the 75% will be on the Mario+Rabbids game!

Best we can hope for is £33 for something that hasn't previously been reduced.

Some of my favourite Switch games are in that list. As an older gamer, rather than telling me my tastes are juvenile, I think that list is indicating to me I'm generally rubbish at playing video games!

Looks extremely fiddly with very small text/icons. As I'm portable-only, with less than perfect eyesight, could be another one where I can't see what's going on. We need the old Advance Wars presentation!

@Kalmaro "That's certainly a danger. That's why I tend to wait until after reviews come out and see what problems folks are having before I buy games now."

Yes, research is essential before purchasing digitally. Still doesn't stop the occasional error though. Bought Cuphead as it got great reviews and I do love the presentation. But sadly it's too difficult for me. A waste of money I'll never get back. And no option to sell on.

@jamesthemagi "You can rent games at Rebox and Gamefly"

No, I meant rent games DIGITALLY, for a limited period. I would be willing to pay a small amount to have, say, a week's trial. Demos are even better as they're free, but sadly most games don't get one.

@Kalmaro Very convenient in some ways. But not so much when you realise you've made a mistake. Then you've paid £50 for a game you spend half an hour on, and no way to sell it on! It's a shame you can't "rent" games like you can do with films.

Let's be honest, game collecting is on its way out. Things are slowly going digital just like music, and later films. It's a shame, but then again, thinking back to when I had some GameBoy Colour carts, half wouldn't work, and for the ones that did, they wouldn't save because the battery was knackered! Nostalgia ain't what is used to be. I fired up and old DS game a few months ago and was shocked at how bad the graphics are compared with today's Switch. Sure there are still some classic older games that stand the test of time, but would rather play on a VC or emulator than have the original game.

I'm handheld only. But when you've come from playing DS/3DS games, there really is no "sacrifice". Everything looks pin sharp and cutting edge!

Is it April 1st?

Yeah, as others have said, it's mainly due to the price M+RKB was sold at.

Makes me laugh all the complaints about price. I remember how much SNES games cost. In today's money you're looking at £100 plus. Or $100 plus per game.

As for this game, they are obviously confident it will sell well at this price point. And I'm guessing they are right!

@RazumikhinPG @antdickens As we're into specific details here, my pedantry detector is also malfunctioning over the plural of Joy-Con. Is it Joy-Con or Joy-Cons? And if it's Joy-Con (as in the title of the post "These... Joy-Con..." , then would Joy-Cons actually be 4 of the little things? We should be told!...

@Ooyah To my shame I'd never even heard of Dizzy. But surely something like Manic Miner could better represent the spectrum? That, or a stamp with "R Tape Loading Error" written at the bottom.

Price will be the main problem.

@Toy_Link Yeah - 10-20% increase in processing power is about right. Still, if it plays 100% of Switch games, is about the same price, and runs things like Link's Awakening without the framerate issues, it can only be a good thing.

Would imagine every possible future "Pro" game would run on an ordinary Switch, just with the resolution and graphical bells and whistles turned down. There's no way they'll be "Pro only" games. Commercial suicide.

Interested in Octopath Traveler and DQXI after playing the excellent demo, but from starting points of £50, £30-£33 is still a hefty wedge. I guess DQXI is worth it, but feel £20-£25 is more reasonable for OT.

@Ruthless4u Agreed. That's a pretty poor list. Having said that, there are still several big 2019 releases that I haven't got around to buying. Link's Awakening, Luigi's Mansion 3, DQ XI, etc. So plenty to keep me going next year.

This has the potential to be really great, or really bad. Definitely going to wait for review scores first.

@retro_player_22 Nintendo exclusive!

@Galenmereth As a general point to you or anyone else, I'm amazed people buy digital for games they are unsure about. Why not buy physical, and resell for most of your money back if you don't like it. I have things like MK8 and NSMBU on digital, but recently bought FE3H on physical. I'll give it a go, and if I don't like it I'll get my money back, then use that money to get my next game. You can't lose!

Strange that people seem surprised at its success. Many people bought the full-fat Switch as a handheld-only, years before the Lite. And with the DS family ending, there's a 100 million customer base ready made, with only the Vita for competition. Some "analysts" were saying lifetime sales could be less than the WiiU's. Unbelievable.

I'd rather see something like Golf Story, Axiom Verge or Stardew Valley shoehorned into a SNES cartridge! Might be some memory challenges, but at least you'd have a classic game at the end of it.

It's a great game. Don't know what all the negative fuss was about. I think people grow up over 5, 10, 20 years, and want the game to... evolve as well. Personally I love it the way it is. As a casual gamer it's one of the few games I can actually finish. Couldn't even get past the first level of Cuphead. Grrrrr.................

Love the tagline!

As I occasionally style my life on The Diceman, I will throw aforementioned die, and...
1. Purchase Sword on physical
2. Complain bitterly about the game online
3. Get both, keeping them sealed for my Pokemon collection
4. Purchase Shield on digital
5. Buy Emerald for some retro fun
6. Get the Pokemon themed Lite console.

@invictus4000

""Relying too much on 20 year-old design choices"

"The reason I haven't touched pokemon since yellow version."

Conversely, it's the reason I've played every generation. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. I'm definitely a "casual" gamer, so this review re-enforces my opinion I'll enjoy this one.

@KitChan There's a lot of mating.

@BenAV True, but then again, a much bigger percentage of total WiiUs are still in use when compared with the percentage of Wiis in use.

Fair enough, not concentrating on mini-consoles does make sense. But not sure Nintendo realise how much demand there is for a VC store. Or failing that, adding more titles and consoles to NSO. Personally not bothered about N64 titles, but would love to see some GBA games, and would pay quite a bit to get them. It really can't cost that much for them to develop a GBA emulator can it? And once it's written, just trickling out 1 or 2 games a month would keep everyone happy.

I've had them all apart from Virtual Boy (didn't even know it was out at the time) and, bizarrely, the N64. Think I had just started work and was into handheld gaming at the time - GameBoy and GameBoy Color. Every single one has had a fair number of top games that had that Nintendo magic sprinkled on them. Pretty consistent company and ethos I would say.

@CurryPowderKeg79 Makes sense, although I would argue that the review score should also be an average of the whole staff. Just doesn't make sense otherwise, and this anomaly happens month after month.

Here's my ten cents, my two cents is free.
A nuisance, who sent, you sent for me?

@brunojenso Golf Story is pretty good.

@AndyRogan Agreed, so easy to do. And rather than dropping 20 SNES games in one go, they would have generated a lot more goodwill (and excitement) if they'd released 2 a month. That would have focussed interest on the monthly games, and would have kept them going for almost a year.

Almost every game has patches now. Everything is digital. The physical cart is no more than permission to download and play the digital version. But still, the fact that you can sell or lend this permission makes it a better bet than a buy-forever digital purchase.

To be fair I think we could do with a slowdown. So many must-buys in the last few months, and who has games bought that still haven't been played yet? Been playing for years (decades!) and this is the biggest backlog I've ever had.

A few hours of this game and a couple of select Buffy episodes will make a great Halloween.

I hope they don't copy the Cuphead difficulty level as well!

@stevep Automatic with a manual override. Most games already have this.