#its actually really fun to play local multiplayer; go give it a shot if you have a wii or a pc that can run dolphin well

[anonmonitor]

It's pretty odd that wii evolution lets you jump over the light trails. Like it seems pretty counter intuitive to the whole concept of the lightcycle games in basically every other format where the aim is to trap other players in to get them to run into the light walls, which is pretty pointless if you can just jump over them??? So you only end up crashing into them if you make some sort of mistake (which depending on the speed is either very hard to do, or reasonable). Maybe it's compensation for almost the entire game using motion controls? Which I honestly don't think are that bad (although I actually like motion controls on the wii so idk other people may find them horrible)

Maybe it's because it's set when the games were still for fun? It's been a WHILE since I've gotten to the few lightcycle sequences in x360 evolution, but I'm pretty sure it's not present? Lemme check the ds and psp versions to verify the for fun thing (they're also pre-betrayal but post MCP)

[linuxgamenews]

Create the Ultimate Caravan in Pako Caravan

Pako Caravan is a vibrant arcade game that combines the classic snake gameplay on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Thanks to the talented team at Tree Men Games for bringing their creativity to life. Available now on Steam with a launch discount. We all know how serious things have been lately, and sometimes you just want a break from all the intensity. Enter Pako Caravan — a game that’s all about lighthearted fun. Where the only real goal is to see how long you can make your car’s caravan before you inevitably crash. Think of it as a cross between the classic snake game and the original Pako vibrant arcade games. With its own little twists along the way. Here’s the basic idea: you start off with a car and begin adding trailers to your caravan. But here’s the catch—you need to keep driving around, grabbing even more trailers, while avoiding crashes with yourself and all the other stuff that shows up on the map. It sounds easy, but as that caravan stretches out, things get hilariously tricky. Each stage has its own surprises, so you’ll never really know what’s coming next. And they’ve added a bunch of fun twists, too. Like, you can actually jump over obstacles to avoid a crash, mow down grass for some laughs, and even tackle different tasks as you move from one level to the next. These little features keep things fresh and fun, giving you plenty of reasons to keep coming back and trying for a longer caravan every time. So get your DualShock USB controller and enhance your gaming experience.

Pako Caravan out now

What makes Pako Caravan great is how it’s built for everyone. If you’re just looking for quick, mindless fun, you can totally just play to see how many trailers you can add before your caravan becomes an absolute mess. But if you’re a bit more competitive, there are challenges and high scores to keep you hooked for hours, trying to master every level and max out that caravan. The Steam version kicks things up a notch, with a brand-new level you haven’t seen before, local multiplayer for some shared-screen chaos with your friends, and a custom mode where you can tweak the settings on all the levels and vehicles. It’s like the ultimate playground for anyone looking to mix things up.

Let’s talk features:

Addictive Gameplay: Stack trailers, jump over obstacles, and keep that caravan going as long as you can!

Unique Levels: Every stage comes with its own car, tricks, and missions—no two rounds feel the same.

Colorful Vibe: Expect bright, cartoon-style graphics that’ll keep you smiling, with music to match.

Endless Fun: Compete for high scores, tackle over 100 different tasks, and challenge yourself not to crash!

Local Multiplayer: Grab a friend for some split-screen fun—last one standing wins!

Bonus Goodies: Once you’re through the main game, switch things up with customized settings.

Imagine a wild conga line arcade title that combines the classic snake, but with cars. So if you’re up for some goofy, high-speed fun, give Pako Caravan a shot and see how long you can keep it together. Available on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Priced at $4.49 USD / £3.86 / 4,49€ with the 10% discount on Steam.

[sweetjekyll]

Under The Same Roof, part 1 — BBH

pairing: Byun Baekhyun x Reader

genre: Roommate / Flatmate AU, one-shot, friends to lovers rating: teen and up warnings: none! tiny bit of fluff if you squint your eyes really hard word count: 1.2k 

summary: Baekhyun and Y/N have been flatmates for a while and romance is in the air.

Requested by anonymous: keyword “roof” + sentence “Oh my God. You’re in love with her.” from this writing game post.

Masterlist — PART 2

A/N: this was supposed to be a drabble, but I told you I couldn’t contain myself once I reached the 600 words I went over lol. this may as well have a part 2 if many people request it, but for now I left it as it is cause I like the suspense. I edited the pic for this but I didn’t add a watermark, it took me a while to find something that sparked my imagination.

⟶ To my dear readers: feedback is highly encouraged and important! as it gives me motivation to write with more passion, knowing that you like what you are reading. Please LIKE and REBLOG so more people can find this and read it. ❤ My askbox is always open for questions or to chat ❤

Enjoy! ❤

You and Baekhyun have been flatmates for about a year now, he needed someone to help him pay rent after his previous flatmate moved in with his girlfriend last minute and you needed a roof over your head since you didn’t want to live in the dorms at your university… Too expensive. The apartment on the other hand wasn’t anything luxurious either, just a two bedroom, one bathroom and a combined kitchen and living space area, enough to house 2 people, even if it wasn’t exactly that cheap yet quite affordable.

Baekhyun was trying to save money from his full-time job as a barista and bartender in the local university cafe, serving coffee by day and alcohol bar by night, meanwhile you were a majoring student who was mostly focusing on her studies but worked part-time at the same cafe Baekhyun did. It had its perks choosing you as flatmate, Baekhyun already knew you were a good person and that you were in need of a place to stay, plus you got along well on the job too. It’s not like you could exactly sleep over at one of your friend’s places forever so when he offered to take you in you accepted without second thought.

But boy, oh boy, was Baekhyun ever the loud type; some days you thought you were going to march out of your room and smack him on the head cause you could not concentrate on your textbooks while he was playing games with his friends, others you actually joined him when you two were alone. As loud as he was, he was also a sweet introverted guy with a tendency to be a social butterfly despite his reserved nature, in fact, you were surprised to meet so many of his friends you could barely remember all of their names. Two hands weren’t enough to count them all.

You considered him a close friend, after all, you were living together under the same roof, Baekhyun was there for you when you needed a friend and you were there when he wasn’t feeling like going outside to meet with anyone else. He wasn’t sure when or how it happened, but at some point he started liking you more than just a friend. He liked everything about you, from the way you bickered about the smallest of things in the apartment such as not leaving dirty mugs in the sink after breakfast, the way your voice was barely above a whisper in the mornings with pouting lips and sleepy eyes, the way you smiled at him after a long tiring day of classes and work, the way you sometimes managed to keep up with his high energy, your friendly and caring personality… Only a few times has he truly seen you mad like a beast, but thankfully it was never directed at him.

Baekhyun was sitting crosslegged on the brown two-seater in the living room, playing some shooter multiplayer game on the PlayStation with some friends of his you’ve met before plenty of times, Chanyeol and Sehun. You let out a quick sigh as you hurried across the living area from your bedroom to the front door, dressed in your work attire, you scurried to put on your shoes. “Okay, I’ll be at the bar the whole night,” you said as you grabbed your coat, ready to walk out before you were late. “Have fun, don’t wait up for me.”

Baekhyun’s eyes quickly moved from the television screen as he paused the game, earning groans and scowls from his friends sitting on the rug with each their back pressed to the sofa. “I’ll come pick you up, just call me when you close down.”

You smiled at Baekhyun’s offer and pointed a finger at him playfully. “I swear if you fall asleep, Byun Baekhyun—“

“Promise I won’t.” He held out his right pinky finger for you and you moved closer to close your pinky around his, a small gesture of friendship you came up with when you once came home a bit tipsy from a night out with all your friends.

“Alright, good night. Bye Sehun, bye Chanyeol!” And just like that you closed the front door after yourself as you went to work.

Chanyeol exchanged a silent yet teasing look with Sehun but it didn’t last long as Baekhyun unpaused the game to resume from where they left. “Dude,” Chanyeol begun after a few minute of resuming the game, he wanted to make sure that you weren’t going to come back for something you forgot, “are you two like… Together?”

“What!?” Baekhyun exclaimed, but he got distracted from the question and barely safe one of his opponent taking down his character. “Me and Y/N? No, we’re just friends.”

Sehun put down his controller and turned his torse to look up at his older friend. “But you like her, right?”

Baekhyun had to pause the game again quite annoyed and this time looked at the two guys sitting on the floor. “We’re just friends.” He stressed on the last two words. He couldn’t really hide it, they could hear the disappointment in his tone even if he was trying to not give it away. “Nothing more.”

“Oh my god.” Chanyeol’s eyes widened, he too discarded the controller on the coffee table and turned his whole body to face Baekhyun from his spot. “You’re in love with her.”

“I’m not!” Baekhyun scoffed as he tried to resume the game but Sehun snatched the controller from his hands, holding it away while his friend protested with a whine. “Okay! Fine! I am head over heels for her.” He confessed as his body slumped against the backrest. “I just don’t want to ruin the friendship we have if I ask her out on a date.”

“You’ve been grocery shopping together, buying clothes and furniture, all of our friends think you’re together.” Sehun pointed out as he got up from the floor and sat on the two-seater next to Baekhyun. “You act like a couple any time you’re in the same room.”

“So why didn’t you guys say anything?” He asked seriously confused. Yes, you and him got along very well, but he didn’t think you were getting along too well in the eyes of your group of friends.

Chanyeol shrugged. “Cause we thought you wanted to keep it private until you felt like telling us.”

Sehun laughed softly, earning a glare from Baekhyun since he didn’t know what was going on in the head of the younger guy. “So that’s why you haven’t shown any PDA! I was almost beginning to admire your self restraint from kissing her or holding her hand when you’re in public.”

“Hey!” Baekhyun slapped him on his chest, earning a pained chuckled from Sehun. “Look, it’s just that I don’t know how to tell her…”

“Just ask her on a date,” Chanyeol said while giving one of Baekhyun’s knees a soft slap. “If you don’t I’ll ask her for you. Who knows, maybe she reciprocates your feelings?”

“That’s a strong maybe.” Baekhyun shook his head as he reached forward to grab his controller from the coffee table.

“I’m pretty sure she reciprocates.” Sehun added as he too turned his attention back on the game, meanwhile Chanyeol just smirked as his brain devised a plan. It would work out, Baekhyun and you just needed a little help from Cupid.

[everygame]

Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime (PS4) 

Developed/Published by: Asteroid Base Released: 09/05/2015 Completed: 10/07/2020 Completion: Beat it! Didn’t collect *all* the friends though admittedly. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

I’ve written about a few Toronto games before (Super Crush K.O., Capy’s output, of course They Bleed Pixels) and this is one a bit close to my heart in that these fellas were working on Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime around about the time I was working on my own post-Sound Shapes project and, years later, I have to tip my hat to them, having finally played through the entire thing in local multiplayer as god intended. This is brilliant.

It’s a nice simple idea: you team up with someone else to control a space ship by actually moving around in it, and you have to deal with moving a shield, firing guns, and moving around, all of which you can’t do without moving behind different stations. In practice, this usually means (or at least, it meant for me) one player takes control of movement and maybe shields while the other one dashes between guns (unless there’s a chance to let the ship stay still so you can blast something) but there’s just such a wonderful co-oppy co-op experience here as you both frantically try to do slightly too much. It’s joyous.

The art is adorable too, and the sound is great (well, the terrified screams of the trapped friends is too much in my opinion, but the soundtrack has some amazing standout tracks.) It’s just long enough too to feel substantial without overstaying its welcome, plus it has some light rogue-like touches if you want to replay levels.

If I had some issues, it might be that there were a few sections where it felt like that rogue-like level design made things occasionally unfair, and you could definitely get the ship trapped frustratingly… but then, also, it’s pretty easy to panic. And the single player mode is more fun than I’d have thought (there’s no real AI to it, I’d say thankfully) but it’s really not the same at all, so keep that in mind too.

Anyway. I loved this. If you’re locked down with a loved one or someone you at least tolerate give it a shot (there’s a fair chance you added it in PlayStation Plus and forgot about it, and if you don’t, it’s on Switch. Everyone loves co-op games on Switch!)

Will I ever play it again? I didn’t get all the trophies, but co-op games are a bit weird in that I feel like I’d rather just experience them rather than try and max them (which can lead to too much quarterbacking, I’d say) and as I said above the single player is alright, but you’re probably going to struggle to do the more complex achievements. Which is my way of saying I had a lovely time with this so I’m happy moving on.

Final Thought: Here’s a nice wee blog post from Asteroid Base talking about their sales numbers, and I’m warmed to discover that the game has done well for them across the long tail, especially what with a Switch launch and that.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi.

[battlersexual]

Board Game Showcase #2: Cosmic Encounter

(Note: Cosmic Encounter has been reprinted and re-released many times since the original was published in 1977. This showcase will only be covering the most recent version of the game, the 2008 Fantasy Flight games printing, and it’s associated expansions, since that’s the version I’m actually familiar with.)

Ah, Cosmic Encounter. This game has a legendary reputation in the board game community. It’s not hard to see why: it combines an extremely solid and simple gameplay loop with quite possibly the most replayability of any game ever made. Unlike my previous Tragedy Looper spotlight, this is not a game that needs more love; it’s about as popular as can be without being Monopoly, Cluedo, or Risk. Strictly speaking, I don’t really need to make this showcase. But I’ll do it anyway, because aside from being an immensely popular game, Cosmic Encounter has legitimately brilliant design and is one of my personal favorites.

Story:

Cosmic Encounter isn’t really a story-focused game; it’s closer to the aforementioned Monopoly and Risk in being a fully competitive multiplayer experience. The only real “story” as it is, is that you and up to 4 (seven counting expansions) other players, are alien races trying to get a foothold in an unnamed galaxy. You start with five colonized planets in your home system, and your goal is rampant space colonization: I.E. going to other races’ systems and setting up foreign colonies, with or without the cooperation of the locals.

Mechanics and more under the cut.

Mechanics:

Cosmic Encounter is played on a component board, I.E. a bunch of small cardboard sections that can be arranged in whatever configuration you choose. This makes it ideal for small and oddly-shaped tables.

The basic gameplay of Cosmic Encounter involves a player being matched up against another player to have an “encounter.” The attacker (player whose turn it is) then points a warp gate at the defending player’s planet and sends some ships over. At this point, the players ask the other players at the table for backup in the form of temporary alliances, then each chooses a card from their hand; either a red “attack” card with a number printed on it, or a green “negotiate” card. When these cards are revealed, three possible outcomes occur:

1: Two attack cards. In this case, a battle occurs, and the players add the number of ships on their side of the conflict to the number on the card. Higher number wins. The loser loses all ships to the warp, including allied ships. The winner either lands on the planet and establishes a foreign colony (along with any allies) if they were the attacker, or drives away the invaders if they were the defender. Defending allies get to draw cards

2: Two Negotiate cards. The players choose to talk things out, all allies go home, and a three-minute timer starts. The players must come to some sort of agreement by the end of the timer, or negotiations break down and each side loses three ships to the resulting hostilities. There can’t be no deal at all - something must change hands for the negotiation to be valid.

3: An attack card and a negotiate card. The player with the attack card wins the fight, but since they shot down diplomatic ships, the player who tried to negotiate gets to collect reparations, in the form of taking one random card from the war criminal’s hand for each ship lost.

Lost ships go to the warp in the middle of the galaxy, and can be retrieved at the beginning of a player’s turn, but only one per turn. Each player starts with 20 ships. Once any player has five foreign colonies, they win the game. Multiple people can win the game at once, if they get winning foreign colonies at the same time.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, here’s where we get into the big draw of the game...

Flavor:

Oh boy, this is gonna be a big one. This is one of those rare cases where flavor crosses over with mechanics in a really cool unique way. See, aside from a color to indicate which player you are, in Cosmic Encounter you randomly choose an alien race. Each alien gives you a special power that breaks the rules we just established in some way. Here’s an example.

This one lets you completely ignore the manpower cost of fighting, allowing for reckless behavior and an incredible advantage in any wars of attrition. Or maybe...

Your opponent seems confident about their card they’ve put down, and you’ve only put down a dinky 08 attack? Just go ahead and turn your 08 into an 80, and their powerful 20 into a pathetic 02. This might backfire on you though, turning their middling 29 into a near-unbeatable 92, so be sure to use it carefully!

Torment your opponents with mind games, making them SURE you’re lying about the card that beats theirs, only to reveal that you were telling the truth and they’re now going to lose TWICE as many ships as before.

As you can probably see, the theming of these abilities is fantastic. Other favorites of mine include the Humans, who are really good at pulling a last-minute win out of nowhere with some superscience nonsense, and the Will, who have the unassuming power to shake off destiny’s chains and choose for themselves who they want to fight each turn. Not only do these abilities make every game of Cosmic Encounter different and dynamic, but combined with the little blurbs covering the history of each race and why they have their particular powers, it really adds to the feeling of going out into a cosmos with diverse and strange alien creatures.

Replayability:

Arguably more than any other game I know of. While there’s already a lot just from it being a strategic, competitive game, the fact that every alien race changes the rules of the game, and you’ll be seeing somewhere between 3 and 8 every single time, makes each game unique. The base game has 50 different aliens, and the expansions each add at least 20, up to a total of 195. I actually calculated this: assuming 8 players per game and using all the expansions, there are 44,831,263,318,920 different combinations. That’s over 44 trillion different unique games, assuming my math is right, and that’s not even counting alternate player numbers or optional expansion rules like Hazards, Space Stations, and Technologies. Speaking of expansions...

Expansions:

There are six expansions as of now, and it doesn’t seem like they’re making any more any time soon. Each added somewhere between 20 and 30 new aliens to the game, as well as some optional bonus rules. Since they’re more like expansion packs than entire game-changers like the Tragedy Looper expansions, I’ll go over each one in release order, showing you one of the coolest (in my opinion) new aliens from each and quickly explaining any added rules, as well as giving my general opinion on each one.

COSMIC INCURSION:

The Leviathan are fun for spectacle alone. Rules-wise it’s really just a 20-point boost, but it’s hard to argue against the coolness factor of seeing an entire planet bearing down on its enemies through a warp gate.

Cosmic Incursion was the first expansion, and introduced the Rewards deck, a special deck that defensive allies get to draw from with a lot of fun new cards. It also added a sixth player color to the game. Unfortunately, the new aliens were kind of boring for the most part, and this is the least well-liked expansion.

COSMIC CONFLICT:

The Saboteur are amazing. They’re the Cosmic Encounter version of Killer Queen, turning planets into bombs that activate on touch and destroy everything on them. You can use this power as an amazing way to bargain with other players, trading cards or favors for knowledge of which planets are safe to land on.

Cosmic Conflict added the Hazard deck, meaning certain Destiny cards now cause meteor storms, black holes, and other space oddities to affect all the players until a new hazard is drawn. It also added a seventh player color. Conflict is a massive improvement over Incursion, really leaning into the wacky sci-fi themes and including some of my favorite cards (You have no idea how hard it was to decide whether to show you the Saboteurs, the Invaders, or the Claw.)

COSMIC ALLIANCE

The Horde are pretty simple, getting a lot of free ships, but it’s still hilarious to see the galaxy overrun by marshmallow peeps. It’s like fighting the Tribbles from Star Trek.

Cosmic Alliance added the eighth and last player color to the game, as well as some extra cards to put in the main deck for 7-8 player games. Other than that, there’s not much to say about this one. It’s kind of similar to Incursion, in that it feels very safe and restrained, a little too much if you ask me.

COSMIC STORM

The Outlaw is that one guy nobody wants to ally against, which makes them really fun to play; you either get a bunch of cards for free, or you get an easier fight to win. Bonus points for looking like the Lorax’s violent sci-fi cousin.

Cosmic Storm added Space Stations, which give each player a weaker second ability that’s tied to controlling a specific planet in your starting system. They’re fun to play around with, and make up for the aliens in this set being... less than impressive, shall we say.

COSMIC DOMINION

The Joker can be good for some psychological manipulation since the opponents can see what moves you have available, and if they assume you’re going to use a wild card, you could bait them into an unfavorable match. Also, the six Attack tokens the Joker uses are numbered 4,8,15,16,23, and 42. Someone was a fan of Lost.

Cosmic Dominion was actually designed entirely by fan submission, so you got a lot of super creative aliens in this one. It also added a second reward deck that could be combined with the one from Incursion. Overall, it’s one of the best sets.

COSMIC EONS

...do I even need to say anything? Look at it. In a game all about crazy off-the-wall aliens, the Alien is a stereotypical Grey who abducts other aliens in flying saucers and traumatizes them with probes. It’s amazing. The trauma cards are fun too, ranging from making the target hear voices to giving them a victim complex.

Cosmic Eons was made by the original designers of the 1977 edition of the game, Eon Publishing, with input from the fans. It added Alliance Dials, allowing players to secretly ally without seeing who’s already ganging up on people. As far as I’m concerned, that rule isn’t optional. It makes the alliance phase so much more dynamic and fun. The aliens are great too, really hitting the peak of creativity and absurd sci-fi wackiness. Highly recommend.

Criticisms:

As you might have started to realize halfway down the expansion list, getting this game in full is an expensive prospect. While I love the wide variety of aliens, it definitely feels like quantity over quality sometimes, with some aliens having very similar powers or just being not fun to play. It’s also an extremely difficult game to store, since there’s a lot of cardboard bits and huge stacks of cards.

Games of Cosmic Encounter can also be long and boring if some players aren’t into it, or feel like they can’t win. Eight-player games tend to drag on, as the novelty of some of the aliens wears off. I recommend sticking to 3-5 players most of the time.

Availability:

Cosmic Encounter is pretty much always in print in some form or another. The 42nd anniversary set was released last year, and comes with an extra promotional alien, so if you want to get the base game, that’s your best option.

Unfortunately, Cosmic Encounter is one of the few board games that is actually considered “DLC” on Tabletop Simulator, meaning you have to pay ten bucks extra for it. In addition, all the expansions save for Eons are ALSO sold separately, at 3 bucks a pop. So to get this on tabletop sim, on top of TTS’s own $20 price tag, you have to shell out an extra $25. It’s really not worth it.

Buuuut... Here’s a little tip. You didn’t hear this from me, but if you buy the base game (preferably on sale), go ahead and download this workshop project. It’ll only load if you own the main game, but for some reason it doesn’t check to see if you actually own the expansions, so you just get them for free. Just be quiet about it, and hopefully they won’t notice the issue and fix it.

Conclusion:

I love Cosmic Encounter, and that’s saying something since I’m not normally a fan of competitive multiplayer games. Something about the wackiness of all the alien powers just makes the game interesting even if you’re losing, and even losing players have a role and can piggyback off stronger allies to make a comeback in the late game. The basic rules are simple enough to quickly internalize, and teaching the game is pretty easy, but the alien powers make the skill ceiling very very high in a lot of cases. As a general test, new players tend to dislike the Will’s power for being useless, while veterans will understand why it’s one of the best powers in the game. I can wholeheartedly recommend you try out Cosmic Encounter the next time you have at least two friends to spare.

[eggoreviews]

E3 2019 Nintendo Direct - BREAKDOWN

Oh wow. That big ol direct sure was something. So now I’m here to break down everything that happened in unnecessary fashion and give my personal reaction to everything that happened with my tried and true Excitement Rater. Want to see my heavily scientific and not at all arbitrary process? Then click down to see the deets.

Before we kick off my (very very scientific) breakdown of this year’s packed direct, I thought I’d briefly go over how I rate things:

A random string of letters/numbers = Immeasurable excitement

YEEHAW BABEY = Big excitement

Heck Yeck = Vague excitement

Yeah! = Not really excited, but still could be good

Sure, why not? = I’m more confused than excited but sure

Oh = The excitement isn’t there

Oh no = Used on the rare occasion I really don’t like what I’ve seen

The Hero from the Dragon Quest series in Smash!

After a brief montage of some games that already came out I guess, the direct jumps straight into an ominous shot of World of Light baddie Dharkon, followed by a seemingly hopeless fight between Link and one very possessed Marth. Then the Luminary turns up gloriously on his horse. With all the leaks that had been flying around for so long, I think pretty much everyone had accepted the presence of Dragon Quest at this point and I was totally stoked when this happened! I love Dragon Quest! And my boi from 11 is here, along with a few other DQ veterans as alt swaps and a pretty awesome looking stage overlooking what seems to be the land of Erdrea and the World Tree. Now to wait until summer and hope the Smash team have some sick ass remixes for us when the time comes!

Excitement Rating: YEEHAW BABEY

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

In a move that makes it a lil obvious that DQ’s Smash addition was more than a little commercially minded (not that I really care I’m still big hyped), a trailer for the expanded edition of the series’ latest installment follows. Seeming as I’ve already played this, I doubt I’ll be picking it up again but I still heartily recommend the game to any JRPG fan. Admittedly, the fact you apparently get to explore worlds from past games is pretty exciting.

ER: Heck Yeck

Luigi’s Mansion 3

In a way I thought was surprising, Nintendo’s first proper focus of Luigi’s Mansion 3 actually took up more time than Animal Crossing, but I guess that’s because it’s further along in development. We now know that the game is set within a haunted hotel and had some new gameplay features shown off, including the various ways Luigi can succ a ghost. Most exciting I think for me was the various multiplayer aspects, such as the local co-op option to play as Gooigi and the seemingly challenge and minigame-based ‘Scarescraper’ which I think incorporates online co-op too. Overall, this is looking to be a creative and well thought out entry in the series and I’m here for it.

ER: Heck Yeck

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - Tactics

A licensed tie-in game for a thirty year old film feels a little odd, but I suppose stranger things have happened. This looks to be a sort of top-down tactical thingy involving the various characters from The Dark Crystal and for some reason Netflix is involved, I don’t know, but I guess it could be interesting.

ER: Sure, why not?

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

The adorable remake of this classic Game Boy title seems to be coming along great and this direct’s extended trailer gave us a good look at what we’ll be exploring come September 20th. The overhaul Koholint Island has had is phenomenal, giving us designs for Link and various other characters that we’ve never seen before and that makes this remake look especially unique. Another very exciting aspect for me was the dungeon builder that looks like great fun! You collect different dungeon parts as you go and then you can build and explore your own! Am I a goblin child or does that sound like the best thing ever?

ER: YEEHAW BABEY!!

Trials of Mana / Collection of Mana

I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with the Mana series, but from what I was shown in this direct, it looks to be a fairly standard JRPG. That’s definitely not a bad thing, as most JRPGs are amazing, but nothing in this trailer really stood out and came into its own. That being said, the gameplay and graphics look pretty solid and I’m sure the Mana fans have been fairly starved for content for a while so that’s something to look forward to. On top of this remake/new game with the same title as an older game (I really don’t know), the Collection of Mana containing the series’ first three games is being released real soon on the eShop.

ER: Yeah!

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

Following a few scattered rumours, we finally have confirmation that a Witcher 3 port is in fact in the works, coming packed with all the game’s DLC. This basically legendary RPG is not one I personally had a great experience with, but I’m sure a lot of people are gonna be happy to play this in handheld. I’d keep expectations tempered however, with the likes of Assassin’s Creed 3 and Saints Row the Third proving that these ports don’t always function brilliantly on this platform.

ER: Yeah!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Yet another and probably our last Fire Emblem trailer was shown in this direct, giving us a better look at how the story might play out and what our villains are going to be. With most of the gameplay features explored in the previous February direct, it’s good to have a slightly better idea as to what’s actually going on in terms of story and, to me, the results seem pretty damn good. Definitely one to keep an eye on!

ER: Heck Yeck

Resident Evil

In a slightly unnecessarily convoluted advert, we were given a two minute reel of two teenagers playing the original RE in tabletop mode in an abandoned house (??), along with the kind of less than exciting announcement that we’re getting the two weakest entries in the series for Switch, RE 5 and 6. I probably wasn’t the only one who felt a little passive about this whole thing. That being said, definitely not complaining about 1 & 4 being ported over.

ER: Oh

No More Heroes III

After the very slightly disappointing Travis Strikes Again, I really wasn’t expecting them to drop a trailer for the series’ third mainline installment so soon after. What we’ve seen looks pretty much like classic Travis, with a smidge of gameplay seen that looks just a bit more like what we’re used to. Of course, with this being the first reveal, there’s still a lot to find out but this looks very promising.

ER: Heck Yeck

Contra: Rogue Corps / Contra: Anniversary Collection

I’m not gonna pretend to be familiar with the Contra series, but this doesn’t at all look like what I’ve seen in the past. Honestly, this seemingly tactical shooter didn’t elicit much excitement from me and neither did its rushed character drops or its oddly rough textures. I’m unsure of actual fan reactions to this, but in my mind this one kind of sits in the ‘guess this exists’ category. As well as this, we got a shadowdrop for the Contra Anniversary Collection, whereas Rogue Corps comes on September 24th.

ER: Oh

Daemon X Machina

In what seems to be almost a mainstay in Nintendo directs, we’ve got another vague trailer for this mech shooter that finally has a confirmed release date of September 13th. The gameplay looks harmless enough, with the mechs seeming to be a blast to pilot, but beyond that, I can’t really see a lot of substance that would draw me in beyond the cool robots. I’m sure it could be good, but not really one for me.

ER: Yeah!

Panzer Dragoon

I was completely unsure of what this one was, but it looks a bit like a cross between The Last Guardian and those bullet hell sections from Kingdom Hearts 2. They’ve certainly nailed the smooth graphics and the cool looking creatures, but this one is mostly a case of needing to know more.

ER: Yeah!

Pokemon Sword & Shield

This one’s obviously a title so monumental that it consistently needs its own directs, but there wasn’t any *real* news about it in this direct. We were given a brief explanation as to how the Pokeball Plus works in conjunction with the games (something to do with taking your Pokemon for a walk) and the fact that we’ll see more gameplay during Nintendo’s Treehouse streams. Still, excitement remains pretty high for these titles.

ER: Heck Yeck!

Astral Chain

This game, to put it bluntly, looks awesome. The newest Platinum Games IP seems to be set in Blade Runneresque futuristic city with an alien threat and some cool ass looking fighting police people. Our second proper look at this game has cleared up a few murky doubts as to what exactly is supposed to be happening, so now we’ve got a much better idea of what this game is going to be. The story seems pretty full and polished, the gameplay looks like brilliant fun and I’m definitely not mad at the cool monster designs. This is one I’m definitely watching.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!

Empire of Sin

I know very little about what this game is supposed to be, but it looks to be a 40s gangster XCOM, substituting alien fighting marines with gun toting mafia dudes. The trailer went for style over substance, giving us an edgy visual thing of some burning playing cards and broken bottles, but the little gameplay we saw looked decent enough and may just end up injecting more variety into this genre.

ER: Yeah!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

An obvious pick for any Marvel fan, this hack-and-slash is jam packed with various heroes and villains from the comic series’ rich history. Ghost Rider and Elektra were among those revealed to be playable, while the likes of Mysterio, Hela, the Destroyer, Doctor Octopus, Surtur and MODOK are seemingly part of growing cast of villains. Looks like a good bit of fun if nothing else, though the immediate presence of a season pass is a tiny red flag.

ER: Yeah!

Cadence of Hyrule

In an unexpected but greatly welcomed crossover between Nintendo’s RPG titan Zelda series and the indie developed Crypt of the Necrodancer, a new rhythm based dungeon crawler with some brand new Zelda remixes and the presence of Link and Zelda as playable characters. This game’s retro graphics look totally adorable and the addition of the Gohmaracas were a definite highlight.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!!!

Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Tell you what, this definitely looks like a Mario and Sonic Olympic Games game. There looks to be a decent amount of variety in terms of what sports are involved and with its online multiplayer, there’s no shortage of vaguely cartoon sportyness to be had with friends both real and virtual. I’d be lying if I said I was totally disinterested because it does look a bit fun, but we all know it won’t be anything groundbreaking.

ER: Yeah!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

In a fairly drastic formula change, Nintendo have decided to strand us on a desert island rather than move us innocently to another village, but Tom Nook is still here and oh yes he’s coming to collect his bells. From this surprisingly brief trailer, most of Animal Crossing’s core gameplay seems to be intact, with the return of craftable items from Pocket Camp, and the sudden bombshell that the game has been pushed back to March next year. Never going to be a bad thing if the finished product is all the better for it, but I guess that just means more info is to come!

ER: Heck Yeck

Highlight Reel

In what looks like a list of honourable mentions, Nintendo gave us a laundry list of other titles coming to the system:

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is joining Crash on the Switch with his acclaimed remaster trilogy.

Hollow Knight: Silksong, the prequel to the original game, looks just as charmingly dark as its predecessor.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is showing up I guess, but I’ll come out and say I know nothing about it except that it looks cute.

Minecraft Dungeons looks better than it has any right to be and looks a bit like blocky Diablo I guess

The Elder Scrolls: Blades sure exists and I’m unsure of what it’s trying to be, but whatever quells off the need for Elder Scrolls 6 I guess.

My Friend Pedro, another strangely unique title from Devolver Digital, looks like it somehow incorporates banana peels into its combat system.

Doom Eternal looks like Doom always does, but a distinct lack of gameplay may put its dual release with the other consoles into question.

The Sinking City with its Lovecraftian inspiration looks totally brilliant and looks to be a unique experience for sure, so eyes firmly open for this one

Wolfenstein Youngblood definitely looks all Wolfenstein-y, but rumours of Dishonored-like sandbox levels has definitely piqued my interest.

Dead by Daylight still looks unfortunately a bit eh, with its slightly not great graphical quality from what we’ve seen in the trailers.

Alien Isolation was an extremely odd one, but I’m not gonna say no to more good horror content on the console.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles seems to be continually delayed, but they’ll probably get round to it eventually.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 looks adorable and I’m very into the idea of Dragon Quest Minecraft, so sign me up.

Stranger Things 3: The Game looks a little more SNES-like in terms of graphics than its 8 Bit mobile predecessor, which is definitely a decent step. An obvious pick for fellow fans of the show.

Just Dance 2020 is definitely a Just Dance game. Yep, sure is. I even checked. And it is.

Catan is a tabletop game of sorts, but I really couldn’t figure out what kind from that few seconds of vague footage.

New Super Lucky’s Tale looks like Bubsy, but actually good and worth real money

Dauntless looks like a bit of a Monster Hunter clone, but you know, doesn’t look terrible.

And lastly, Super Mario Maker 2 was tacked on the end there to remind us all that Nintendo is taking our money in 2 weeks.

Banjo-Kazooie become Smash Ultimate’s 3rd DLC Fighter

Just when we all petering out a little and the hype seemed all but dormant, they go and drop this on us out of nowhere. While I personally don’t have an attachment to the bear and bird, I’m fully aware of their significance and how much they mean to a lot of people out there. And that excitement ended up being contagious, so this fact coupled with a pitch perfect reveal trailer has got me hugely hyped to see these guys join the fight come autumn.

ER: YEEHAW BABEY

Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

And now, dear reader, for the reveal that removed my scalp and cut out my eyeballs. At first, I was totally confused as to what this could be. And then I recognised the symbols, and then my perfect lil Hyrule eggs come on the screen and it’s all spooky and there’s dead Ganondorf and I don’t clock the fact that I’ve just screamed out loud. A direct sequel to my absolute favourite game of all time is happening and it’s real and I get to live another adventure in the best game world ever crafted all over again. I think it’s safe to say I have transcended the definition of hype when it comes to this one.

ER: AAA!!! AA!!! GFFGF!!! THIS!!! ZELDA!!!! HGGGG!!!!

So there’s my probably a little stupid breakdown of everything Nintendo bestowed upon us this E3. Guess I’ll jump in after the next direct to give you yet another heavily scientific analysis of its events. Or I’ll babble at you until I start punching the keyboard. Either way, happy trails my dudes. Don’t let the hype bugs bite.

[thomcoldman-blog]

My 10 Favourite Games Of 2017

This list was originally posted on the forum Resetera, but I felt like putting it up here too, with a little more insight into why I liked these games so much, and so they don’t get lost in the muddle of forum posts. Enjoy!

10. Snake Pass (Sumo Digital; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Sumo Digital has been a developer I've admired for years, particularly for their work on the Nintendo-tier kart racer Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Snake Pass is their first independently-produced title, and it has a great hook - the player controls a snake in much the same manner as a real snake might move. There's no jump button, no Earthworm Jim spacesuit, just the power to raise one's head and the strength to grip tightly to any object you've coiled around. There's no timer or enemies; Snake Pass is content to let you explore its levels at your own pace, letting you getting used to its unique feeling and take in the calming David Wise soundtrack. It's a game that feels like learning to ride a bike again, and the progression in ability over time is such a pleasing sensation that it earns it its place on this list by itself. The good use of collectables and generous helping of levels is icing on the cake.

9. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (MachineGames; PS4, Xbox One, PC)

B.J. Blazkowicz returns and he's lost all meaning of subtlety whilst he's been out of action. Wolfenstein 2 shoots all of its shots - the action is bloody, explosive carnage, and the subject matter isn't satisfied with just skewering Nazi idiocy and narcissism, taking time to shine a light on White America's love affair with sitting back and reaping the rewards of compliance under fascist rule. Whether it's exploring B.J.'s broken psyche, giving Wyatt a crash course on hallucinogenics or putting you under the spotlight in a terrifying audition, MachineGames refuse to pull their punches, each great moment coming swinging like B.J.'s Nazi-reprimanding fireaxe. The combat encounters are far from polished, with stealth being heavily nerfed from The New Order and the half-way shift in tone from borderline-satirical diatribe on mortality and American race relations to comic-book capers is incredibly stodgy, but Wolfenstein 2 leaves a hell of an impression all the same. Shame about that credits music.

8. Gorogoa (Jason Roberts; PC, iOS, Nintendo Switch)

A good puzzle game can make a really strong impression, guiding you subtly by the hand to make you feel like a member of MENSA just for pressing a few buttons or prodding at a screen. With Gorogoa, I can't even begin to describe how the puzzles actually work. Imagine a window segmented with 4 panes of glass, and now imagine you can drag elements out of those panes and into other panes, or over where there isn't a pane to create a new pane... See, it’s hard! In as simple terms as I can muster, it’s a game about taking the world apart and putting it back together again to create paths and progress for your anonymous young hero. It’s intensely abstract, yet the South Asian aesthetic feels like a living locale, an exploration of a boy's days-to-come. It's a short experience, but with each puzzle solved making me feeling smarter than Albert god damn Einstein, it's one that will stick with me for a long time.

7. Splatoon 2 (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

Like pretty much everyone, I didn't own a Wii U, but the sting of that decision never really happened until the arrival of Splatoon - Nintendo's first proper new "core" universe since what felt like Pikmin. It instantly looked like sheer fun - and as a big fan of both Jet Set Radio and The World Ends With You, it was clear as day Nintendo's younger designers were picking up the Shibuya fashion torch those games dropped behind them. Put simply, it's totally my shit. Splatoon 2 confirms my suspicions and then some, being the first multiplayer title I've enjoyed online in forever. I can't get enough of the soundtrack, the sound effects, the amazingly catty banter between Pearl and Marina, and just the feeling of dropping into ink, strafing around a sucker and blasting them straight between the eyeballs with my N-ZAP '85. 20% of Switch owners in the US can't be wrong.

6. Yakuza 0 (SEGA; PS4)

The only games I've played previously by SEGA's Toshihiro Nagoshi are the brilliant arcade/Gamecube bangers F-Zero GX and Super Monkey Ball 2, plus his one-off PS3 sci-fi shooter Binary Domain. Loving those 3 wacky games, I always felt a little put-off by his regular gig nowadays being a series about Japan's most decorated crime organisation, and a bare-knuckle brawler at that. Yakuza 0, the 80s-set series prequel that serves as a perfect entry point for series newcomers, proved my suspicions ill-founded. It's a game which instantly casts the majority of the yakuza as control freaks and bullies, pits its protagonists Kiryu and Majima as their unfounded targets and pawns... and then lets you fight your way out of hell via brutal finishing moves, bizarrely complex business management sidequests and, if you're so inclined, a gun shaped like a giant fish. It's that kind of game that always keeps you guessing whether or not you should take it seriously, and so it wins you over with its best-in-class action choreography, astonishingly good direction and a never-ending deluge of sidequests, minigames and challenges. Don't sleep on Kamurocho.

5. Sonic Mania (SEGA/Christian Whitehead/Headcannon/PagodaWest Games; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

If you’re reading this, you probably know I'm a Sonic apologist. I don't really stand by the 3D entries - bar Sonic Generations, which I genuinely love - but the narrative that "Sonic was never good" is some ridiculous meme that I can't stand. They were genuinely fun games, albeit far from perfect; every game can use some improvement. Sonic Mania is that improvement, spinning the level themes and gimmicks from the original Mega Drive (and Mega CD) games into vast new forms, with myraid routes, tons of secrets, an astonishing sense of speed from beginning to end and fairer, more agreeable, more exciting level design. Old locales, new levels - oh, and some new locales as well, one of which (Studiopolis Zone) is an instant classic. 16:9 presentation, all new animations and crazy levels of animation detail, and a mind-blowing soundtrack by Tee Lopes - Sonic Mania is the perfect Sonic game.

4. NieR: Automata (Square Enix/PlatinumGames; PS4, PC)

For my first foray into the sunken mind of Yoko Taro, he couldn't have left a better impression. NieR: Automata uses Platinum's engaging-at-worst, thrilling-at-best melee combat as the language to tell his new story of how pointless it is for anyone to even bother throwing themselves after ideals of society or humanity, and why it's worth trying all the same. Every inch of this game feels crusted in Taro’s sensibilities, with the no-bullshit 2B and her curious whiny partner 9S running into robots waving white flags, avenging fallen comrades, establishing monarchies, throwing themselves to their deaths, and coming to terms with their crumbling existence in apocalypse.  It's crushing, it's raw, it's often dull, but its uniquely bleak vision of AIs breaking free of their programming has a grip as powerful as a Terminator's. And when it’s ready to let you go, it has you send it off with the most memorable credits sequence in history. Glory to Yoko Taro, glory to PlatinumGames - glory to mankind.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch, Wii U)

Standing in the centre of a bridge connecting Hyrule’s broad, emerald green fields to the desert mountain approach, a bridge overlooking the still Lake Hylia, I fire an arrow into a lizard bastard’s head, or at least I try to. He dodges it and rushes me, forcing me to jump away and retaliate with my claymore. Out for the count, I resume looking for the lost Zora wife I’ve been asked to seek out, who apparently washed all the way downstream in a recent downpour. I can’t see any wife - my entire view is dominated by the giant green dragon snaking across the night sky above me. The wind picks up, but I am too awestruck by its presence to take note that I could glide up to it and shoot off a valuable scale. Instead, I just stand and stare, this utterly unexpected moment happening before my eyes. Friend or foe? A boss monster, perhaps? A vital story element later on? The answer ended up being none of the above: in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there be dragons, and that fact in and of itself speaks volumes about what this game is about. After 30 years, Hyrule finally feels alive.

2. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall; PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

Very few games instil a genuine emotional response within me, but the story of Mae Borowski's no-fanfare return from college to suburban gloom resonates hard with me. It's an expert at the little touches - the needless-yet-fun triple jump, the not-so-starcrossed rooftop musicians, the impulsive reaction to poke a severed arm with a stick - and woefully precise with its big swings, like an upsetting cross-town party, a wave of violent frustration amongst the townspeople, and the inability to just lay it all on the table with friends and family when you need to most. In the cosmic dreams of shitty teens, Night in the Woods finds an ugly beauty in depression. 

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

It’s impossible to deny 2017 has been the year of Nintendo. There’s plenty of celebrate elsewhere, but the Switch’s rise to prominence as the machine to be playing ideally everything on, and the amount of absolute smash hits Nintendo has producing this year makes it hard for the narrative to focus elsewhere. The epitome of all this is their final killer game of 2017: Super Mario Odyssey, the grand return of a more open-ended style of Mario platformer. A true blue achievement in joyous freedom, it brings together everything from Mario's history of 3D platforming - 64's freedom, Sunshine's other-worldliness and sky-high skill ceiling, Galaxy's spectacle, 3D World's razor-sharp platforming challenge - and throws into one big pot, creating a Mario where both the journey and the destination are one and the same, and exciting to the very end. In a year of amazing games that hit upon horrid, upsetting themes with delicate, pinpoint accuracy for tremendous success, I’m not sure whether it’s a shame or an inevitability that such an unapologetically surprising, happy game made the biggest mark on me this year, but either way, I’m welcome to have Mario be truly Super once more.

[nintendroid]

Nintendroid and Retro Cat VS Wrestling #3: Title Match Pro Wrestling for Atari 2600

A competitor well past its prime looking for a title shot. Unfortunately, the old vet just can’t keep up with the bigger, badder new guys.

Title Match Pro Wrestling is an Atari 2600 game release ten years after the debut of the console in 1987. It’s a port of the Atari 7800 version, designed by Alex DeMeo for Absolute Entertainment, whose other works are Pete Rose Baseball and Keystone Kapers. Title Match Pro Wrestling isn’t good but you feel that they really tried to make this into something worthwhile. Unfortunately with the rise of the NES, Title Match Pro just feels clunky and dated by Nintendo’s rewritten standards.

While boasting decent visuals and those famous Atari sound effects, Title Match Pro Wrestling hits a unforgiving stiff clothesline with it’s control setup.

It’s easy to over-complicate controls for a system that has a joystick consisting of a single button. Things as simple as a “punch” or a “kick” require moving the joystick up or down and hitting the button. Where it gets complicated is that your movement is also mapped to the joystick, so in my playthrough I couldn’t stand still and just knock my opponent's head in.

With controls that require a bit of practice just to master the basic gameplay, you have an unforgiving computer opponent that doesn’t care if you can play or not. You are his enemy and his sole purpose is to put you through that ring. Jerk.

Starting off, you have a roster of four wrestlers. This isn’t a licensed title so it’s all generic characters whose only differences are cosmetic with no difference in playstyle. The “manual” gives them all backstories totally worthy of a better game (there’s a CAW challenge for all my Fire Pro and WWE 2K players out there)

Your goal is to simply pin your opponent once you deplete his stamina meter located at the top of the screen. If you’ve played Wrestlemania for the NES, you’ll be familiar with Title Match Pro’s setup. Coincidentally, both games have similar flaws in that you have overbearing computer opponents who are hard to pin. 

You can kick and punch your opponent until the cows come home, but the only way to put them on the mat to set up for a pin is to body slam them. This requires you to grab your opponent by directing the joystick in their direction and to slam them, you point your joystick down and press the button. Using the same combination, you can go for a pin but I feel like it just worked when it felt like it.

Giving credit where it’s due, Title Match Pro has a couple of nifty features. One of them is “muscle mode”, which basically works like a quicktime event, requiring that you move the joystick back and forth as fast as possible. I didn’t get to take advantage of the feature much, since I was playing the computer, but I can see how this would be fun against a human player. You can also climb the top rope and jump on your opponent. While falling from the top rope, your character looks like a paper doll and falls with the grace of a dead leaf hitting the fall ground. Sounds beautiful doesn’t it?

Given that this is a 2600 game, there’s no campaign or anything like that. It may be a fun multiplayer game, but the single player mode only works as a time waster if you absolutely have nothing else to play. I wonder if anyone in gaming history has only had the option of just playing Title Match Pro for the 2600?

My rating for Title Match Pro Wrestling for the Atari 2600 is… Jobber.

While the game has some innovations, and sports satisfying presentation, it’s terribly dated, even by 1987 standards. If this game were an actual wrestler, he would be a mid-carder in a bush league promotion, feuding with M.U.S.C.L.E for the NES in front of a capacity crowd of 10 people in the local VFD in Bumblescum Nebraska.

[postgamecontent]

The RPGs of the Super NES Classic #3: Secret of Mana

Original Release Date: August 6, 1993

Original Hardware: Nintendo Super Famicom

Developer/Publisher: Square Enix

Nintendo's 16-bit hardware had a lot of great action-RPGs, but perhaps none were as significant as Square's Secret of Mana. This was particularly the case in the West, where Japanese action-RPGs hadn't caught on quite as they had in Japan. The action-RPG label has always been a fuzzy one, with most of the games in the genre leaning pretty hard on one part of the label or the other. For many a player in the West, however, Secret of Mana was one of the first such games out of Japan that felt like it could satisfy both RPG fans and action game fans in equal measures. It also got considerable promotional support from Nintendo, which surely helped the game find its way into the hands of many young players. Adding to its legend is the fact that Square was never really able to make another game in the series that had the same appeal. With no rights issues holding it back, it's easy to see why Secret of Mana was chosen to carry the action-RPG flag for the Super NES Classic.

This is the first follow-up to Seiken Densetsu, otherwise known as Final Fantasy Adventure, Mystic Quest, Sword of Mana, and Adventures of Mana in its various forms. Secret of Mana is somewhat infamous for its tumultuous development, most notably its late shift from being a Super NES CD-ROM game to having to fit on just a regular cartridge. Apparently, a great deal had to be cut from the game and as a result, the final product feels a bit disjointed and buggy at times. Of course, this shift was only necessary due to Nintendo deciding not to pursue their plans for a CD-ROM add-on. While you obviously won't hear any official word about it, I've heard rumors to the effect that the debacle around Secret of Mana was one of the reasons why Square jumped ship from their previous Nintendo-exclusive status. Still, in spite of all that, Secret of Mana is a really enjoyable game, with a unique feel all of its own.

Or perhaps I should say "because of all of that"? I think I've mentioned before on this site that I believe the reason why Secret of Mana is the crowd-pleaser that it is comes down to those required cuts. Series creator Koichi Ishii is a developer along the lines of his former co-worker Akitoshi Kawazu. He favors ambitious ideas and doesn't seem all that interested in being tied down by the conventions of the genres he works in. Like with Kawazu, this has resulted in most of Ishii's works being love-or-hate affairs. He's even had his name attached to some genuine clunkers. His most widely-appreciated game is Secret of Mana. I can't imagine it's a coincidence that it's also the game where he had the least amount of freedom to pursue his ambitions.

Thanks to those restrictions, Secret of Mana ended up being not much more complicated than the Game Boy game that spawned the series. It's a much bigger game, and the presentation obviously blows its Game Boy predecessor away, but the weird and woolly sub-systems that would come to characterize the Mana brand are in short supply here. You can move around and attack with your weapon, charge up for a stronger attack, and cast magic or use items from a menu. Most of the weapons have a secondary use for navigating the world, and each weapon levels up individually as you vanquish foes with it. Magic similarly becomes more powerful the more times you use it. This probably sounds a lot like the much-maligned Final Fantasy 2, but the system isn't quite as broken here. Unfortunately, you'll probably still want to sink some time into grinding levels, particularly for magic spells. One nice point is that the weapons actually change form as you level them up. You only need to get each weapon type once.

One big change is that rather than playing as one character with a rotating guest controlled by the computer, you'll end up with a permanent three-character party. You can only control one of them at a time, of course, while a fairly stupid AI controls the other two. If you happen to have a couple of friends, a couple of extra controllers, and a SNES multitap, you can swap out that silly AI for some real humans. Square did this sort of thing from time to time in the 16-bit era, and while I'm not sure they really thought of it as more than a fun extra, it ended up being a major point in Secret of Mana's favor. People with multitaps were few and far between, but you could at least enjoy the two-player mode even if you didn't have one or know someone who had one. For its time, Secret of Mana was one of the best multiplayer RPGs you could find. The Super NES Classic unfortunately preserves that "missing third player" experience, but it's still a good time.

Truth be told, though, I think the game is a little too long and leisurely to play through completely with other players. Pulling your friend in for a boss fight is a good time, but it's not quite the same joyride when you're just parking yourself outside of a town, casting magic to raise levels. If you were a kid with a brother or sister who maintained a similar schedule to yours and liked playing this kind of game, then you were set. Otherwise, it's a fun thing to do now and then but you'll be thankful that it's basically drop in and drop out. I remember the first time I beat the game, I did it with a friend controlling the Sprite. In hindsight, that was definitely the easiest way to tackle that tricky situation. The computer AI really isn't up to doing what needs to be done in that particular fight.

There are a lot of weird moments in Secret of Mana that help lend it its flavor. I've written elsewhere before about the bizarre out-of-nowhere appearance of Santa Claus partway through the game, and while that's about as strange as the game gets, there's nevertheless a lot of instances of similarly unexpected gags and references. I remember finding out from a magazine that the possessed books that populated one dungeon had a small chance of flipping open to a naked woman and being shocked that Nintendo didn't force that to be removed from the English version. There are a couple of mysterious faces carved into the world map that don't have any explanation. Then there's the Ancient City, which flips your whole image of the game's setting upside-down. You go to the Moon, you travel by cannons, and you visit an island that sits on the back of a giant turtle. It's all very quirky, if a little scatter-shot in its tone.

The game on the whole is just as patchy as its eccentricities. It does a lot of things well. The variety of locales lends the game the feeling of a true adventure. The selection of weapons gives you some interesting combat options, and it's really satisfying when you land a solid blow on an enemy and thwack them into oblivion. The story may not flow well but it's interesting enough in the moment. At the same time, there are definitely areas that feel like they needed more thought. Having the player charge up an attack only serves to lengthen combat artificially, and when that attack misses because of the dubious collision detection, it's quite frustrating. The translation was done in a hurry and it shows. The game is very terse, and there's little room for proper characterization. The computer AI isn't up to snuff in many situations, which can be frustrating. There are bugs a-plenty, and there are plenty of places where you can feel the editing scissors in action.

Happily, the good parts of the game handily outweigh the minor annoyances. I don't find Secret of Mana nearly as interesting as some of Koichi Ishii's other games, but it's probably the easiest game of his to enjoy. I keep hoping to find another layer to the game whenever I come back to it, but it genuinely just is what it is. I thought I might find a new angle this time, having finally played Legend of Mana. All the context which that really provides, however, is to underline the rather obvious fact that Secret of Mana wasn't so much finished as it was buttoned up. Frankly, it's something of a miracle the game turned out as well as it did. Almost as unlikely as Square's seeming inability to satisfy players in the same way again, I suppose.

This was a game that I actually picked up around its original release date. I can't remember what exactly pushed me into it beyond being a general fan of Square by that point. I remember enjoying the Nintendo Power coverage of the game, and I recall that one issue came with a poster of the gorgeous cover art depicting the Mana Tree. That poster was hanging on the wall of my bedroom for quite a while, and I still think it's a great piece of art. The game's art design is excellent overall. The sprites are extremely expressive, with great attention paid to the enemies especially. The backgrounds are nicely detailed and always fit the intended atmosphere nicely. It's lush and verdant when it wants to be, cold and mechanical when it needs to be, and just all-around nice to look at.  

The music is also superb. You have to believe this was one of the areas that took the biggest hit from the shift from CD to cartridge, but I can scarcely imagine how it could have been better aside from being played back at a higher quality. Composer Hiroki Kikuta's soundtrack has a very different feel from other Square games of the period, with a certain organic quality to it that almost perfectly matches the game. Even small things like the whale sound that plays when you power on the game help make this game sound different. The tunes shift from breezy to oppressive depending on the situation, but all of them are good at doing what they need to.

Above all, I think it's fascinating that Secret of Mana has been able to hang on to its legendary status over the years. Unlike contemporaries like Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, or Earthbound, Secret of Mana doesn't transcend its genre in any meaningful way. It's just a really fun game, one that Square has been decent about keeping in circulation for old fans to enjoy again and new players to discover for the first time. While none of Square's follow-ups have managed to capture a similar level of success, the company seems to understand that this game in particular is a favorite classic. The game has been re-released on the Wii Virtual Console, smartphones, as part of a Japan-only collection on the Nintendo Switch, and of course as part of the Super NES Classic Edition line-up. Secret of Mana is also getting a full remake that is due early in 2018.

As the sole representative of its genre on the Super NES Classic, Secret of Mana serves its purpose quite well. It's also one of the better multiplayer games in the package, albeit one that requires a fair bit of patience. It's unfortunate that Nintendo couldn't find a way to include the three-player mode, but I suppose it would be a lot of trouble to implement for just one game. Whether you go solo or with a friend, Secret of Mana is certainly worth playing again. Square hasn't managed to top its wide appeal with another Mana game in nearly 25 years, and it may well be another quarter of a century before they do.

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[entergamingxp]

Meet the Final Fantasy 14 players who marry in the game

It all starts with a ritual called the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding, a special rite of passage for two individuals who wish to pledge to each other a lifetime of devotion in massively multiplayer online role-playing game Final Fantasy 14.

Players venture to the Sanctum of the 12, where they are permitted to host a matrimonial service accessible to any in-game friends they’d like to invite. From stunning flower arrangements to special ceremonial chocobos, these in-game marriages often result in quite the party. So much so, that players sometimes seek to replicate them in real life – eternal bonding and all.

Final Fantasy 14 player marriage isn’t as uncommon as it may seem, and in fact it’s gone on for years. But it’s rare that two players who marry in the game go on to marry in real life. One player, named Andrea, intends to do just that. She met her real life fiancé in Final Fantasy 14, married him in the game, and now intends to get married in real life next year.

“He ended up helping me get some weekly clears and I remember picking on each other constantly about our performance and teaching each other,” Andrea remembers. “It got to the point we were doing everything together.” Eventually, they started making silly excuses to keep playing together long after everybody else logged off.

Six months later, Andrea told him she was going to be in town for E3 2017. They arranged a meetup ahead of time, and as they booked plans for LA, they decided to get married in Final Fantasy 14 – something all of their friends were already encouraging.

After a while, the in-game marriage – or Ceremony of Eternal Bonding – started to lead to some exploratory conversations. Andrea says it started to feel like they were officially dating. “It’s weird to feel that close to someone without having met them yet, but there’s a closeness that happens when you’re talking to someone on Discord for hours every single night for months that doesn’t happen with casual dating,” she says. “We didn’t have the option to grab coffee or meet for a quick lunch, so we did all of these activities together that require spending way more time with each other than quick dates.”

Andrea recalls times when the pair would talk until two in the morning, half-asleep, waiting for a dungeon to reappear so they could complete it together. Even after being on a call for eight hours straight, they would sit somewhere in the city of Ishgard and take cute screenshots together, hanging out with one another as if it were real life.

Then came the in-game marriage. “The ceremony made me weirdly emotional, like a total doofus, because it felt like a way I could tell everyone this was a thing I was proud of and happy about,” Andrea adds. “It was a way to share with friends that we considered ourselves to be dating at that point.”

Andrea says it felt slightly awkward telling friends they were going to give it a shot after only having met in person once. “But it felt right,” she explains. “When we finally met, it was like seeing someone I’d known for years. We instantly clicked. Our meeting at E3 2017 changed my entire life, and I’m so happy I got over my initial fear of jumping into this. I’ve moved on from feeling embarrassed or silly to thinking it’s super cool.”

Eventually, Andrea and her partner decided to one-up their in-game marriage. Andrea packed her things and booked a one-way flight from Mississippi to California. “It stunned my parents, but they love him now too and support it,” she says. A year later, the couple got engaged at Disneyland. They plan to marry in 2021, and Andrea already has some ideas for incorporating Final Fantasy 14 into their real-life wedding, including inviting in-game friends, ordering His & Her cakes, and playing tracks from the game’s soundtrack.

Andrea isn’t alone in finding real love in the virtual fantasy of Final Fantasy 14. Another player, who goes by the Reddit handle legenddairybard, actually married someone she married in the game. “Over time, we just started hanging out and playing the game more and I eventually gave him my phone number,” she explains.

“He was very kind, funny and supporting,” she tells me. “He asked me if I wanted to do the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding. I told him sure, it looks fun. Plus the rewards are really helpful.”

Legenddairybird remembers joking with friends who had never played the game about the whole situation. “I’m getting married Saturday, you should come,” she told them. “Needless to say, no one showed up.”

Six months later, legenddairybird flew cross-country to meet her in-game husband. “The first time meeting him, I had that feeling, and it grew even more when we got to hug each other for the first time,” she recalls. “I remember him shaking really badly, I thought he was going to faint.” They spent Christmas together that year, and met up again for Valentine’s Day, at which point the topic of real-life marriage came up.

Legenddairybird recalls her family’s excitement when she flew home and told them, although notes they initially had a different reaction when she suggested meeting up with him.

“At first, people looked at me like I was crazy,” she says. “It’s funny to look back at, but in hindsight I understand why they felt like that. I know there’s a stigma when you meet people you’ve been talking to online, especially with people making up personas. We don’t always quite know if people are who they say they are on the internet.” But after legenddairybird’s family and friends realised her Final Fantasy 14 love genuinely cared for her, they lightened up, and the pair got hitched – in real life this time – in October 2019.

“At first we thought, big wedding, both families, everyone there! We’ll have a Final Fantasy wedding with Moogles and Chocobo decorations everywhere and we’ll walk out to the Prelude!’ legenddairybird says. Instead, they went with a different approach.

“We kept it a secret from everyone for months,” she says. “The day was coming up and we had to sell a story so no-one suspected anything. We told his parents we were going to a music festival in the city and he needed the days off work.” They got married in a private ceremony with only a reverend in attendance, and had a cake that was half-vanilla, half-chocolate. “Our topper was the A Realm Reborn meteor, with bard and white mage soul crystals,” she says. “While it wasn’t exactly a Final Fantasy-themed wedding, I made us small badges to put on during the ceremony, since I was a bard and he was a white mage.”

“After the wedding, we told his parents we wanted to show them photos of the festival we went to,” legenddairybird jokes. “It was a photo of us holding a sign that said Just Married with a paopu fruit [from Kingdom Hearts] behind it, and their initial reaction was, ‘Wait, where’s the festival you said you were going to?’ “

After announcing their marriage, her husband’s dad asked, “… like, in the game, right?” However, legenddairybird quickly confirmed it was the real deal. “His parents both cried and told us how happy they were,” she says. “They were still initially upset because there wasn’t really a music festival,” she jokes.

This phenomenon is double-sided, however. Some couples have rekindled their real-life relationships in Final Fantasy 14 – or even replicated past video game marriages in the game. A Reddit user who goes by the handle “LollipopTechno” tells me when Final Fantasy 14 2.0 launched, she rebuilt her 2009 guild from Ragnarok Online with her real-life boyfriend in-game. Interestingly, that very guild was where they’d met. “I was browsing the market area of a city, window shopping, and I received a private message from someone, asking if I had a certain hat that was recently released in the game,” she explains. “I did not. But I offered to help him comb through the market to find someone with it.”

They found the hat, he thanked her, and they went their separate ways. However, they stayed in touch and eventually became friends. A few months later, LollipopTechno took a nine-hour trip up to California, where they spent their first few days together. “He refers to it as ‘trial by fire,’ ” she says. “We got some really bad food poisoning for a few days, thanks to some pizza we picked up right after he got me from the train station, so we both looked our absolute worst on day one. We did our best trying to take care of each other, and after I had finally recovered, I was like, yeah… I like this guy.” Two years later, they were living together.

Despite already having been married before – in Ragnarok Online – conversations about the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding in Final Fantasy 14 cropped up. “We redid the marriage just to get our actual anniversary dates on our rings, making them more special,” LollipopTechno says. They plan to get married in real life someday, but are in no rush at the moment. Weddings are complicated, according to LollipopTechno, and they prefer to keep things simple.

When we think of married couples renewing their vows, we often think of holiday hotspots, such as at a castle, a hotel or even at a ranch. But couples are finding the exotic locales of Final Fantasy 14 just as sweet a destination. Redditor sUnit_Alpha tells me after his wife fostered her own interest in Final Fantasy 14, the couple replicated their real-life marriage in its virtual world.

“It was similar in that our real wedding was also small, just close family and friends,” Alpha says. “In Final Fantasy 14 we didn’t have anyone attend because we don’t know anyone else who plays, so we kept it just her and me and focused on our love for each other. We always glamour our wedding rings onto our left hands with every single outfit to show our commitment.”

It’s lovely to see stories such as these, where people meet their partners-to-be in Final Fantasy 14, or reinforce an existing bond by spending time together in-game. And the developers of the game have taken notice. Naoki Yoshida, creative director of Final Fantasy 14, is well aware his game and other MMOs that came before it are capable of bringing people from all over the world together.

“Back when I was playing Ultima Online, I actually attended a wedding ceremony for two friends who had met in the game,” Yoshida tells Eurogamer.

“In Japan alone I have received reports about over 80 couples who met in the game getting married and have sent out many messages of congratulations.” In fact, Final Fantasy aficionados in Japan are now able to have officially licensed Ceremony of Eternal Bonding weddings. You even get a prop weapon for the reception.

“There is no real difference between people who hit it off when they meet through other hobbies such as surfing or snowboarding and then go on to get married, and those who meet and hit it off in online games,” Yoshida continues. “However, I often do think that something unique about meeting in online games is that because you cannot see the other person’s real face or appearance, you are not swayed by unnecessary information and can understand their inner values and intentions more directly, making it easier to make a mutual personal connection. Either way, I am always delighted when two people who have met in the world I created come together in this way.”

It’s an important detail to consider, especially in these troubling times. With most social gatherings deemed off-limits for the foreseeable future, virtual meetups are more important than ever. For some this amounts to an upsurge in wine parties on Zoom. For others, this means traversing boundless fantasy worlds together, exploring bottomless fonts of magic and mystery while overcoming divine adversaries against the will of destiny. And, if you’re so inclined afterwards – or during! – it means getting married.

Speaking of Final Fantasy 14’s Ceremony of Eternal Bonding, Yoshida says it’s a way for people to come together and pledge their bonds to one another “regardless of race or gender”.

“I am overjoyed to see it being used in this way and can only wish these two players every happiness in future!” he says. “I think it is great!”

“I don’t think there is anything particularly special in there, but the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding moves away from real world value systems, religious and educational perspectives, and was created with the idea that I wanted the intentions of the two people involved in the ceremony to be more free and more down to them,” Yoshida continues. “That it has been accepted by many different people from around the world makes me very happy as a game designer and I am very proud of it.”

Andrea, too, is proud of the ‘how we met’ story of her relationship. “I spent the longest time awkwardly confessing to friends how I met him and even lied to some about our story,” she says.

“If you’re talking to someone online, of course be safe about it,” she adds. “But for us, we realised that not physically meeting for six months wasn’t the big deal we originally thought it was. We spent hours talking to each other every single night up until that point because Final Fantasy 14 was part of our daily ritual. You learn about someone’s likes, dislikes, happy memories, trauma, childhood, career, everything, when you spend time together like that. We covered it all.

“It was such an incredible rollercoaster, and for a girl living in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, it’s not often I run into someone I’m compatible with. I’m so lucky I found him. The best thing that ever happened to me also just happened to be waiting for me in my favourite game. I hope other people can find the courage to take the plunge and don’t be embarrassed about it.”

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/meet-the-final-fantasy-14-players-who-marry-in-the-game/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=meet-the-final-fantasy-14-players-who-marry-in-the-game

[recentanimenews]

Sega Ages Brings the Arcade Glory Days to Your Switch

  Growing up in Puerto Rico, arcades were pretty scarce, with only a few real options available to me when I was a kid. Sadly, none of them ever really carried the great Sega arcade games like Out Run, Space Harrier, Super Hang-On, and the like. In fact, before I moved from Puerto Rico to the United States, the only Sega game I got to experience in arcades was Virtua Fighter! I’ve always loved arcades, and was even more heartbroken to realize that the heyday of arcades was long past by the time I was able to go out on my own as an adult.

While there are certainly many great places today to find arcades, from retro-revival places to big arcades like Round1 and Dave and Busters, it’s still hard to find a place to play those great games from years ago and experience them in their former glory. Well, for Sega fans at least, the SEGA AGES line is here to try and save the day; while these games don’t come with their own unique arcade cabinets or that sultry allure of arcade atmosphere, they are quite affordable and portable. We were graciously given copies of both Space Harrier and Puyo Puyo for the Switch to review by the fine folks at Sega, so let’s get down to whether or not these titles are worth your combined quarters or not!

One of the first things that needs to be addressed when it comes to reviewing revamped or re-released arcade game ports, however, is the fact that arcade games were generally made with one goal in mind: separating you from your quarters. To this end, arcade games were generally pretty difficult, and sometimes cheap and unfair as the difficulty would ramp up or spike in order to keep you inserting your (or your parents!) hard earned coins in the hopes of getting just a bit further, or just a bit closer to getting your three initials into the hi-score rankings!

In a lot of cases, this means that when revisiting arcade games without the limit of time and money in play, a lot of earlier games tend to fall noticeably flatter; when they aren’t entirely centered around score and money, some games reveal themselves to have little else to offer but nostalgia. It may even be fair to say that much of the attitude around gaming being a skill based hobby, in which one’s supposed level in a hobby based around amusement is how “good” you are at games, probably originates from simply justifying how much money many players threw into arcade machines over the years. So how do the SEGA AGES versions of Space Harrier and Puyo Puyo deal with this legacy? Well… it’s complicated. 

On the surface, both of these games are pretty barebones, with Puyo Puyo have the added benefit of online multiplayer to give it quite a bit of extra life and longevity to play. In a previous review of another Puyo Puyo game, I mentioned how the recent energy surrounding the online and competitive Puyo Puyo scenes have really helped breathe life into the series again between Puyo Puyo Champions and Puyo Puyo Tetris. In the SEGA AGES version of the original game, the online mode again gives you the ability to try your luck against online opponents, and you can also play the game locally against your friends and foes offline. The Switch is great for this, since the ease of multiplayer anywhere allows you to throw down in some Puyo battles pretty easily. As a single player experience, you’ll find yourself fighting increasingly difficult stages of the original arcade version of the game, and to be honest the CPU doesn’t mess around! I was actually caught off guard at first by how difficult the CPU was at times before reminding myself that getting you to use more continues was part of the arcade game lifecycle.

For the unfamiliar, the Puyo Puyo series is a VS. Puzzle game in which you make attacks against your opponent by clearing various colored puyos from your side of the screen; however, unlike a game such as Tetris where the goal is to simply clear the board, the Puyo Puyo series has always relied on building chain combos to do the most damage. This unique take on puzzle combat means that your decisions need to be long term, rather than simply worrying about clearing the board, and a single wrong move can cost you dearly. You have the ability to choose between a simplified or original version of the game that changes how many colors of puyos you’ll need to deal with, meaning if you’re totally new to the game (or, apparently, rusty like I was!) you can ease yourself into the game by switching between how many color combinations you’ll need to keep track of.   

That said, there really isn’t a whole lot to do in Puyo Puyo other than that. You can play online, you can play your friends, and you can play against the CPU in the absolutely bonkers single player mode (if anything, buying this game just to see the very weird dialogue is maybe worth the price of admission alone), but right now the market for Puyo Puyo series titles is actually quite crowded. If you’re looking to scratch that retro-puzzle itch, then this version will likely give you some good entertainment, but sadly a lot of the value of this game will rest on whether or not you will find online opponents (always a crapshoot to predict), or have local opponents to play against… and that you also don’t want to just play either of the other 2 more modern versions of Puyo Puyo.

For those who like to recreate that sense of nostalgia or emulate the games you only played a few times in arcades and movie theater lobbies, however, this is a fairly strict arcade to console port with little loss of sound quality, with the charming digitized voices and soundtrack intact, and the graphics, while not outstanding, look as bright and colorful as they likely ever have. The controls on the Switch are also spot-on, and there are a few gameplay tweaks made to the game for some slight quality of life improvements, such as the ability to spin Puyos counterclockwise, and the ability to quickly spin Puyos right before placing them for some Tetris T-spin-esque antics. For my money, I’d guess these changes were made to fall more in line with how modern Puyo players likely understand the game, and I did appreciate them while I played the game, as I would probably have found myself utterly confused by why I couldn’t do what I’m used to!

Of the two, Space Harrier may be the less familiar title to many players, and some of you probably played this game in other Sega game collections or games like Shenmue or Yakuza 0 than in the arcades themselves; that’s how I ended up encountering it first before finding an original cabinet during an arcade trip! Taking place in the “Fantasy Zone”, Space Harrier is a behind the back shooting game that takes place on an auto-scrolling plane, giving off a pseudo-3D vibe. Perhaps one of the main reasons Space Harrier has always been so fondly remembered is due to the unique visuals and fun, fast shooter action, and the SEGA AGES version really helps make that visual appeal shine.

While Puyo Puyo doesn’t really have a lot of moving parts, so to speak, Space Harrier really shows off some of the amazing emulation qualities that the SEGA AGES renditions have taken advantage of, with the game running in an amazingly smooth 60fps just like its original arcade incarnation. The game looks absolutely fantastic and feels like you’ve been transported right back in front of that gorgeous cab, although you’ll have to recreate the leaning chair sensation yourself (don’t do this, please play responsibly!). Compared to versions I’ve played emulated in other games like Yakuza 0, I’m actually shocked by how much smoother this version of Space Harrier looks and plays compared to those; by far this is one of the games that has really been served best by the framerate being able to match its original arcade incarnation. 

Like Puyo Puyo, however, there really isn’t much here other than just playing Space Harrier. The game never featured a multiplayer mode, and there’s no real online component other than score uploads. That said, you do get two ways to play in this version: regular, which gives you a limited 3-continue run to defeat the challenging 18 stages of the game, and the new KOMAINU Barrier Attack mode, which not only gives you unlimited continues, but also provides you with 2 komainu buddies (komainu are lion-dogs that appear in pairs near shrines and other Japanese locations as guardians) that protect you from one of the most common Space Harrier deaths: collisions with objects. One of the downsides of the auto-scrolling action madness in the game is the fact that sometimes you’re so busy dodging bullets and trying to plan your shots that you forgot all about that tree, and… Game Over. Here, your Komainu friends will protect you from collision deaths, only going offline if they are shot, and shortly recharging the barrier after a small amount of time has passed.

  There are also some small text blurbs that add a bit of flavor and character to the overall game, which I found to be kind of charming and cute (they are also really supportive of you, which is nice after you die three times in a row…) but not really a huge addition in any way. The biggest addition to Space Harrier is a rapid fire button, which helps make the need to predict and aim after troublesome enemies less of a hassle, and is available in both versions of the game available to play, making the regular mode just a bit smoother in terms of playing through it on 3 continues by alleviating some of the difficulty against particularly annoying enemies and patterns.

    Overall, I really enjoyed my time with both SEGA AGES titles, but I will admit that they are exactly what they say on the box and little else. If you’ve always been curious to try these games, or are simply a fan of older arcade games, then the $7.99 US price-tag per game is a pretty easy selling point, and you’ll certainly get your money’s worth even if you only play through the games a few times. Of the two titles, Space Harrier really impressed me with how gorgeous it looks in motion on the Switch, and the KOMAINU mode really does make the game more approachable and inviting. Puyo Puyo is no slouch, though, and while it doesn’t have the graphic pizzaz to take advantage of the framerate and smooth quality, the online and offline multiplayer give you and some friends the ability to duke it out in some retro puzzle glory. Either way, if you’re itching to get some arcade action in while on the go, in your bed, or anywhere you might play your Switch, then the SEGA AGES line seems like the perfect way to scratch that itch and get some solid play time in!  

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Arcade perfect ports, especially in the case of Space Harrier.  

+ Controls on the Switch are great, and in some cases improved from their original arcade incarnations.

+ KOMAINU mode in Space Harrier makes the game less frustrating to beat.  

+ Puyo Puyo’s online mode gives some extra life to the game.

+/- Games have little to offer other than their stated modes; don’t expect more than that.  

- Puyo Puyo suffers from having 2 newer and more robust versions available, making this an odd choice. 

  Do you have any fond arcade memories? What’s your favorite Sega game? Let us know what you think of the game in the comments! 

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Nicole is a features writer and editor for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

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By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[zydrateacademy]

Review - Monster Hunter World (PC)

This review contains spoilers. The benefit of playing a port months after the game initially hits consoles is that there are a host of guides available, which I recommend if you want to take this game moderately seriously (bit of an oxymoron there but bear with me). I don’t typically like games that require you to have extra study material to understand but to its credit, all I had to do was watch one video guide about the mechanics of my favored weapon, the Light Bowgun. After which I was probably fifty percent better every hunt after that. So I certainly recommend looking into that.

The story begins with your highly customize-able character on a ship to a ‘new world’, previously undiscovered in other games of the franchise. Your ship gets waylaid by a mountainous “Elder Dragon” who came up from sea. His back is full of magma and volcanic spouts and you climb his back in order to escape. Once you’re in safety, you find out he’s one of many that have migrated to this place for mysterious reasons. Typically one every few hundred years, now it’s one every decade and that has caused some turmoil in the ecosystem. Your job is essentially research. Kill monsters, stabilize the ecosystem, and arm yourself while doing so.

Eventually there is an extended epilogue. Once you discover that Elder’s goal and what it might mean, you enter a “High rank” hunt mechanic because the ecosystem has changed and you react accordingly. Monsters in these quests are tougher and more aggressive, and you continually work your way up.

This review may maintain some comparisons to Dauntless. As I mentioned in that very review, my only experience with MH as a franchise was during a brief road trip with my friend back in the PSP days. I have little memory of it and I doubt I was any good or understand any of the minutiae of mechanics. As such, a majority of my experience in this genre comes from Dauntless, the free-to-play variant with more dumbed down mechanics than you couldn’t shake a stick at. Veterans of MH are calling World dumbed down, ha. If only they knew how far that could actually go. My immediate first impression of MHW was actually quite positive. There’s something I can do here that I never really could at Dauntless; actually solo monsters. Dauntless was fairly unforgiving, only giving you five (count them: five) potions per hunt. You burn through those without burning the monster down properly, and you were done. Mercifully here, you not only get dozens of varying degrees of usefulness, you can also craft more on the fly or withdraw some from your loot in various camps set up around the impressively large zones. While some monsters give me more trouble than others (most flying types can do a one-two knockout by rushing me, putting me in a twelve hour stun animation, then merely swipe at me for an instant death), I’ve been in awe at what I’ve actually been able to accomplish on my own. ...And unfortunately, I am forced to do a handful of things on my own. Let me tap into some of the problems I have before diving back into the meat and mechanics of the game. Steam reviews are mixed for a couple of reasons. Bad controls and connectivity issues. The bad controls are a remnant of the fact that it was originally a PS4 game and the menus really show that. The UI itself is very controller friendly while the M/K is barely given a second thought. I had to rebind my weapon draw to left click like it is with melee because I’d find myself engaged in too many fights, frantically clicking only to find out I was actually just using my slinger and tossing useless rocks at the monster. In addition, the radial menu might as well not exist, as it is bound to your various F1-F4 keys. It’s very clunky and not at all the “quick” menu that it’s supposed to be. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing “just get a controller” from my friends. I don’t think I’ve touched a controller since 2008. Next is a problem that Capcom and Steam are already looking into. While I’ve been able to progress, just last night I lost out on three high ranked hunts because it kept dropping me from the group. From what I’ve read, the monster’s hitpoints balance towards groups (instantly doubling when a second person joins your hunt) but doesn’t at all go back down if anyone leaves. At the time I was replaying what was basically the main story’s ending, fighting the last boss over and over. Thankfully his mission doesn’t have a lot of open combat and is mostly just firing cannons and ballistae at him over and over. Still, it dropped me three times and had little to show for it overall.

There’s no direct party system, just player listings and hubs. You have to find a convoluted “Session ID” in the menus for your friends to copy and eventually join together. Someone posts a quest and everyone joins it. You won’t physically see anyone outside of a hunt unless you visit the gathering hub on top of the main town. The whole Session ID is just a pointless extra step that the likes of Capcom just love throwing in there. I am reminded of Black Desert Online. Despite being a different country, it still has the same idea behind its mechanics. One does not simply just craft or buy potions. First you have to press thirteen buttons just to get a stack of them. Then they might be put in your storage box, not personal pouch so you have to remember to take them out before your hunt. Then there’s the canteen mechanic, where you’re encourages you to eat to gain decent buffs before every hunt. Why not make that a single item you can use midhunt? Like Dauntless, pretty much every important thing in town is far apart and forces you into miniature loading screens. After every hunt you’re plopped on the bottom level but you still have to run up to the Blacksmith to fetch some upgrades. One does not simply make armor, too. In the higher levels you have to micromanage “decorations” to socket into your arms and armor to increase various passive skills. Why not just make those skills up-gradable like the armor itself? Indeed, one does not simply upgrade their armor! You have to collect “spheres” that you get from bounties and hunts in order to do so. Everything just has a pointless extra step, but I admit these are all nitpicks in what I do believe is a pretty damn good game. I have adjusted to the controls (even though it takes twelve clicks to get anywhere in the menu, but the combat is fine) and I can stomach the connectivity problems... for a time. Everything else is just a niggling annoyance that I have to deal with before I get to the real heart of the game: Expeditions and hunts. To its credit there’s a lot to do. Expeditions are the closest thing this game has to an “open world” setting. You will keep everything you acquire, gather materials and hunt the local monsters at your own leisure (though once you attack, they enter a sort of timer where they will flee the area if you fool around too much, but the mode itself will never kick you out). You can pick up quests on-site and continually remain in the zone you’ve chosen. Admittedly I haven’t explored expedition mode to a severe degree, as doing the various optional quests and bounties give me more than enough gameplay on their own. I never really need to piddle around the same zone for that long.

I mentioned earlier that I was happy that I can actually solo a handful of monsters in this game as opposed to Dauntless. There’s a lot more to that, the “simplest of MH’s” claim be damned, I embrace convenience if it comes hand in hand with actual fun. You can farm the same monster a few times but I found that the game offers you a handful of armor sets that can be crafted from bones and minerals alone. You can pick up bones from piles around every map and mine at little alcoves and continually gain materials to sets that will be perfectly passable for a time. I wore the basic “bone” armor for a while before getting into the more specialized stuff. Revered is the Anjarath, the game’s T-Rex who has a fire breath attack that will absolutely one-shot you and serves as the game’s first difficulty wall. His armor, however, gives fire resistance so if you can stomach fighting him a couple times (ideally in multiplayer), then you can likely build yourself up to handle him properly. Fun fact; I’ve yet to solo him myself. Other monsters have given players trouble that have instead given me more fun. The Radobaan for example, a sort of mid-game encounter in a zone called the Rotten Vale. It is a place where many monsters go to die and their essence feeds the Coral Highlands above it. The Radobaan covers itself in the bones of dead creatures and is thus highly armored, and you must burn through that in order to do some raw damage. I know of players who find this armor annoying but his movements are highly telegraphed and he’s a fan of stumbling himself which gives me a lot of free shots at him. So far he’s honestly been one of my favorite monsters to fight.

I did not realize this was the franchise’s first foray into big name consoles and even PC, the rest were evidently all handheld games. The intro into this hardware allows for a lot more powerful mechanics to come into play. New to the franchise, as far as I’m aware, is animal behavior. I can’t speak for the other games but I noticed a few things. There’s a turf war mechanic where two big bad monsters will encounter each other and start their own duel regardless of your presence. Each monster has its own “rating”, and I doubt a Great Jagras (the first and easiest monster) ever wins any of those.

In addition to that, I’ve found that docile animal mechanics can occasionally tip me off. You see it in a cutscene a time or two but even before my scoutflies (the game’s justification for a “go this way” mechanic) start tracking the monster, I’d be going down a path and find herbivores running the opposite direction. Sure enough, down that path was a large monster. Part of the hunt or no, animals do react accordingly. Sometimes they’ll take defensive positions as you initiate combat, or sometimes they’ll fly down and knock you over in a moment of monster camaraderie that I wish they hadn’t bothered with. Still, its moments like this that help the world feel like an actual world, appropriate for the game’s namesake. I know I droned on a bit about the problems the game had but some of them (the controls) can be mitigated. I’m enjoying myself, spending a good majority of my time responding to SOS flares or pushing myself in the high rank hunts to see what exactly I might be able to handle. I rarely push myself to see what exactly I’m capable of in gaming, but MHW pays that off so well. Maybe I can’t handle that flying Rathian on my own, but managing to take down a tunnel dwelling Diablos was a thing of beauty. The hunts can be long and exhausting but finally watching a beast get taken down after a couple of deaths can be very exciting. The genre may not be for everyone. If you’re story driven, you’ll find the one here is short and weak and mostly just serves as a framework for the gameplay. If you like content, then there’s plenty to do that should be varied enough to keep you around, and I’m sure they’ll update more monsters in as time goes on. Even after I get my fill, I’m sure I’ll keep an eye on this one.

[press-a-repeatedly]

Why Mario Tennis Aces Isn’t Fun

By Alaina Tomasello | @LaneyLynnT

Another July 1st, the day I was born, has flown by in a blink. It feels like just yesterday I was blowing out the candles for my 21st birthday and celebrating my entrance into adulthood. Three years later, 24 doesn't mark any type of particularly special celebration, but this birthday was truly gratifying. I’m reminded of how thankful I am for my friends and family.

This time, I received a lot of video games I’ve been anxious to play for some time now from my parents, my brother Louis (frequent guest on the pod) and Chris (co-host to the pod). Among this collection of goodies was Mario Tennis Aces, a title I was hopeful would be another great addition to my beautiful and beloved Nintendo Switch.

The Nintendo Switch is truly the best gift we’ve received from Nintendo yet

This might come as a surprise to you, but I am actually a big fan of tennis RPGs, a feature promised in the new Mario Tennis Aces. To be completely honest, I’m really just a fan of an incredibly underrated but fantastic game called Everybody’s Tennis Portable. For those who don’t know, the Everybody’s franchise has been around since the late 1990’s, but was once known as Hot Shots. They are mostly known for their fun and cartoony style but precise gameplay mechanics featured in their line of mini golf games.

For whatever whacky reason, the Everybody’s franchise created a tennis game in 2006 that diverged from their existing line of golf titles, and in 2010, they once again released a tennis game that went by the title Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip (this title would later be changed to Everybody’s Tennis Portable). In this game, Camelot Software experimented with incorporating a linear storyline, where the player’s mission was to recruit players from all around the world into their Tennis Club. It’s an RPG-lite for sure, but the gameplay was incredibly enjoyable. You could explore an open world, complete tasks, acquire costumes for your character, upgrade your racket, gain experience, and of course, play and win lots of tennis matches. In every new area, you were tasked with defeating a new boss who (with increasing difficulty) taught you different mechanics of the game of tennis. And once you finally defeated that boss you could add them to your club, now having them at your full disposal. And with the addition of all the special items, you can modify your characters’ stats to reach unlimited potential.

It might be a little dated now, but Everybody’s Tennis was ahead of its time

I preface this article with this information about Everybody’ Tennis because it really highlights my disappointment with Mario Tennis Aces and it’s missed potential. So much so to the point that I even hesitate to advise people to pick up this title from Nintendo at all. Especially if you were looking forward to any of the in-depth gameplay I described in my experience with Everybody’s Tennis above.

Here’s the truth. I really, truly, honestly went into Mario Tennis Aces with very little expectations. Despite all the cool features we got in Mario Odyssey which would be contrary to this belief (costume changes, collectibles, a complex story, open world elements) I just never imagined Mario Tennis would deliver the same amount of depth. I expected another RPG-lite story with the overworld map, lined with a bunch of different tennis matches Mario would need to traverse through along the way.

But it’s clear once you dive into adventure mode that a lot of corners were cut and a lot of ideas were sacrificed or left unfinished. What’s worse, Mario Tennis Aces is tedious, filled with way more tennis mini-games and “challenges” than actual tennis matches. It commits the ultimate crime that any game can make: Mario Tennis Aces is just not fun.

I know I need to be a little more specific, so I’m going to go into some more detail. In Mario Tennis Aces, you play as Mario, who (assisted by toad) is off on a quest to find Luigi after Wario and Waluigi steal an ancient, cursed tennis racket. In story mode, you can only play as Mario, going up in levels and increasing your stats as you beat each dot on the overworld map. As far as I (and other reviewers) can tell, your experience affects very little in the way you play, rendering this mechanic kind of worthless. In contrast, Everybody’s Tennis shared these ideas, but they made a lot more sense because you can play with different characters. Each character had their individual stats and their traits were stronger and weaker in different areas. You see, a character might be really speedy, but have a weak swing, and in Everybody’s Tennis playing more matches might increase that character’s strength stat in time. You could also give them a racket that helped increase their strength stat, improving their abilities. Instead, Mario is a well-rounded character with no real flaws or hang-ups. He’s not particularly good or particularly bad to play with, but nothing you do will make him great either.

Photo proof that Mario has his own line of sneakers, making sweet coins off his brand

Then, more egregiously, there are very few tennis matches in adventure mode to even compete in. I can almost put the stat thing aside if I was having a lot of fun winning and playing tennis matches, but they are surprisingly and disappointedly rare. Instead, each time I progress I’m smacked in the face with these pointless, lonely mini-games where I’m forced to hit things with my ball and racket. In one game I’m hitting back fireballs from piranha plants, in the next, I’m hitting the ball on some trampolines. Sure, Everybody’s Tennis had tasks to complete too, but they usually involved a lot of fun tennis matches along the way. Even with fetch quests thrown in, there was always the option to stop and battle a passerby with a tennis match. What I’m saying is tennis is a competitive, two-player sport, and if I have to hit one more anatomic object with my ball and racket I’m going to scream.

In Mario Tennis Aces adventure mode there’s no ranking system, and nothing gained from getting a perfect game either. When you win you move on, and when you lose you just. Don’t. Occasionally you’ll be presented with the opportunity to win yourself a racket and that’s about it. No fun clothes or collectibles here. When you’re done playing a game, you’re not even rewarded with a cutscene.

Then, the tennis games themselves are very easy. With the exception (at least in my experience) of sometimes unreliable controls, the computer characters aren’t hard to beat at all. Once, in a game, I just kept serving the ball to one corner of the court and then hitting it back to the opposite corner to score. The computer character never adjusted for my actions, and I played the shortest tennis match in history. I’m not even going to begin to get into the differences between this and Everybody’s Tennis, which constantly presented the player with difficult-to- beat, challenging opponents.

As my mother used to say: I’m not upset, just disappointed

And here’s the thing: I want to say that adventure mode doesn't matter. That Tournament mode and Multiplayer mode alone is worth your purchase. And for some avid tennis fans, it very well might be. But avoiding talking about Mario Tennis Aces’ adventure mode is like avoiding staring at a giant pimple on the face of a game that yes, is plainly underdeveloped. These other modes are still missing elements to make them worth your money as it is- and Nintendo’s “stand out feature” is sorely lacking on multiple fronts. I haven’t even explored how easy it is to beat Tournament mode in a single afternoon, and how local co-op has no modes of playing outside of a standard doubles match. Online multiplayer is okay, but characters like Bowser Jr. are overpowered.

After a game like Mario Odyssey, Mario Tennis Aces really stands out as a title that completely missed the mark. With a little bit more time and less cutting corners, I believe some of Nintendo’s ideas here could have been great. But honestly, it’s hard to justify the sheer amount of mistakes made when the team put together Ace’s adventure mode. And considering games like Everybody’s Tennis and even Mario Tennis for Gameboy (also partially made by Camelot I just learned) were made several years’ prior, creating the RPG-lite elements should’ve been a no-brainer. Instead, we are stuck with a lackluster experience that forces the player to stick it out in hopes of getting their money’s worth.

[hmsbeefnuts-blog]

All about Nintendo.

As I write this, I'm listening to Nintendo Voice Chat, a podcast from IGN that deals with Nintendo. They are currently doing a roller coaster of Nintendo good and bad points about the Switch. As a massive Nintendo fan, it's hard to admit that your favourite company in the world may not have created the greatest piece of hardware in the world with Switch. But, it's a something worth considering. I've been a Nintendo fan since I first saw Super Mario Bros on a family friends tv in the late 80's, I can't remember exactly when, but I do remember what that experience made me feel. I had never wanted something more in my life than a NES, Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, that red blaster was so cool! I was lucky enough to get one, again I can't remember exactly when, but I remember that I felt like this was the greatest thing ever. As a kid, games were few and far between. Birthdays and Christmas were always game getting opportunities, as were good school reports, nothing makes you work harder in school than the possibility of obtaining a Nintendo game. I don't actually remember owning that many NES games. But around the corner was something way more exciting. I first saw a SNES in Toys R Us. Super Mario World and F-zero were the demo games, and I couldn't believe the graphical jump. Graphics couldn't get better than this, I was sure that this was the future. I was never a SEGA Kid. I knew in my heart that Sonic was trash. He wasn't even a poor mans Mario. He was a poor mans poor mans Mario!! Nothing on the Megadrive interested me, the graphics looked terrible, the sound awful, it only had a 3 button joypad!! It was at this point in my life that Nintendo became my first love. Sure I liked Dinosaurs, He-Man, WWF, Transformers and a million other things, but they weren't as cool as Mario riding Yoshi, or playing Battle mode in Super Mario Kart. Then one day, in a local department store where I live in Barry, I saw The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. I had to do all in my power to obtain this game, I pored over screen shots in magazines, the internet wasn't around then. I still remember the feeling of picking up my copy, paid for with what felt like years worth of pocket money, but time feels different when you're younger. Playing Link To The Past was magical. It was at this point that I began to understand who Nintendo were, that they made this and Mario, and Metroid and Star Fox, Mario Kart, Pilot Wings, F-Zero, and a myriad of others. I knew then that no one makes games quite like Nintendo, and that Zelda and Mario were created by the same man!?! How? How was this possible? Magazines let me in on who Shigeru Myamato was and he quickly became one of my heroes. Sony entered the console wars and I didn't care, I cared that they had seemingly turned their back on Nintendo and a possible joint CD system, which became the PlayStation. Screw those guys! Turns out nothing is as black and white as that, and for the full story, I would recommend Console Wars, by Blake Harris, which is a brilliant account of Nintendo vs SEGA and how Sony jumped into the market. Nintendo aren't always the good guys! N64 was the next thing to dominate my life. Mario and Zelda were in 3D now and holy shit how could anything be better? It quite literally blew my mind how this could even be real. The N64 is probably my favourite console of all time. Not only did we have masterful titles from Nintendo, Mario 64, Mario Kart, Ocarina of Time, F-Zero X and Wave Race, Rare, a British game company, absolutely killed it on N64. Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong and Perfect Dark could all hold their own against all but the very best of Nintendo!! The N64 was couch multiplayer heaven. Something that they tried again with the GameCube. Again I loved the Cube and it's weird and very Nintendo library of games. This was a console that had raw power but looked like a toy, something that didn't bother me, but Nintendo now had to contend with Microsoft and its Xbox, Sony was still there too, but SEGA was dying. The Dreamcast couldn't compete, although it was a totally decent console. I had a Cube and Xbox at this time, as I felt I needed both to experience all that console gaming could offer. I couldn't buy Sony at this time! The Cube had great exclusives, but third party seemed to be slowly abandoning Nintendo, thus Xbox was my way of filling in the gaps, plus I really dug the Xbox and its exclusive games, PG Racing and Halo etc. The Wii was the first time I thought Nintendo had made a huge mistake. I tried to get one at launch, it was Nintendo after all, but this whole motion control thing worried me. Wii Sports was fun, but not mind blowing, and although we still had some amazing games on Wii, like Mario Galaxy, for the first time I felt like my 360 was my console of choice. Wii U came next, and although it was all in all a failure, I think it was Nintendo back to being its quirky best with some fabulous games and easily my favourite game of the generation Mario Kart 8. The Wii U was weird, but Nintendo is weird, and it is really worth checking out a great collection of exclusive games, even though, at this point, most third party developers had abandoned Nintendo. So that's my Nintendo history so far. I think Nintendo have been dropped to one knee, they are no longer in the console wars, in truth they haven't been there for quite awhile. However, I don't think they need to be in the trenches. Nintendo, for me make the greatest games in the world. Their franchises are magical, and I know that I want to experience these games for the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to Switch more than anything else I can remember in quite sometime. As much as I was looking forward to Link to the Past,or playing Mario in 3D. Switch isn't perfect. It's not the most powerful, it probably won't have a huge amount of 3rd Party support, and I don't give a shit. You buy Nintendo consoles to experience Nintendo magic. Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart Deluxe, Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey, will no doubt justify my purchase, and I have preordered all of these and more. I'm lucky enough to have an Xbox One to play all the non Nintendo games and Xbox exclusives that I want, an increasing amount these days. It really is a great time to be into gaming. There are so many great games out, and a load of very cool looking games on the way. Nintendo will never again be the gaming Emperor they were in the 80's and 90's, and I don't think they need to be. They need to be Nintendo. Maybe they could update a few of their video sharing policies and some other things, but the power of Nintendo has always been magical games. The Switch so far looks to be a console that will be able to deliver some magical gaming experiences. The portability of it, in my view, helps me share my love of these games with friends and family. It's really giving me the feelings of the first time I saw Super Mario Bros. Playing Goldeneye with 3 friends around my tiny tv for countless afternoons. Of holding that Legend of Zelda box in my hand and dreaming of the adventure to come. It is a golden age of Nintendo fandom. Never before has there been such a wealth of merchandise, toys, books and trinkets for Nintendo fans. I definitely spend too much on my Nintendo love, but I love it, and I don't care. March 3rd can not come quick enough. Who knows, maybe Nintendo can rule the world again? It happened with the Wii to a certain extent. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter to me. I love Nintendo, I will always love Nintendo. The Switch might not be the best selling console ever, but it certainly has a chance to be my favourite console ever. That's it for this week, until next time, it's dangerous to go alone, read this!!!