Topic: NWR Chat Season 1, Episode 2: The Fire-Type Strikes Back

[NWR_Lindy]

Jon's reign of terror continues as we talk Pokemon Sun/Moon, Excitebike 64, and more. You may want to wash your face afterwards.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/43695/nwr-chat-season-1-episode-2-the-fire-type-strikes-back

James continues to wander abroad, and has almost certainly married a life-sized Gundam during a sake-fueled bender by now. While he sorts out his pending annulment, we present you with another episode of NWR Chat. Jon brazenly assumes the hosting chair yet again, with Pokemon superfan Alex Culafi joining us along with the baleful stares known as Gui and Greg. This week New Business features Alex with a ton of thoughts on Pokemon Sun/Moon, Gui giving us a LEGO City Undercover update along with initial thoughts on Excitebike 64 on VC, Jon finally trying out Super Mario 3D World, and Greg offering "early" thoughts on Dragon Quest VII.

On the other side of the break is Listener Mail. This time around we discuss Switch, unsurprisingly; its price vs. handhelds, the potential for Wii U games to be ported for launch, and why you might buy a Wii U after Switch releases. You can experience your own release by sending any and all questions to our inbox.

Episode 500 is near and still yearning for more RFN Episode RetroActives. Deconstruct your favorite RFN episode from the past and make us laugh, cry, and feel shame. In short, it'll be just another day at the RFN office.

[Wanderlei]

I think Wii U is pretty good in terms of the 'pick up and play', especially with the gamepads new quick start menu where can boot straight into game. The other consoles feel opposite of 'pick up and play' convoluted menu systems, bombard you with ads, and multi gigabyte day one patches before they let you boot the game.

[Lemonade]

I was very surprised to hear Gui managed to get 100% in Lego City.
I love the lego games, but Im not a completionist, so I have never got 100% in any of them.

[Rodrigue]

Can't say I understand the hype around the new Pokémon games. I played the demo, and found it very disappointing. Setting the camera so close to the models seems like a mistake, since they look like crap, and the demo still suffered from some noticeable frame rate drops despite taking out stereoscopic 3D. No one seems to be talking about that, but I really wish they'd stuck with 2D environments. It's not like they had to move to 3D graphics to remove the grid. I wonder if they didn't develop it with the Switch in mind rather than the 3DS. since the "third version" of this set is rumored to be coming to Switch. Either way, considering it is coming out so late in the 3DS' life cycle, it's one of the worst-looking games I've seen on the system.

The demo was a bit too hand-holdy to me, but I guess it should be expected from a demo. The problem is that the whole thing feels too gimmicky, from the special moves to the riding Pokemon thing and the silly (and frame rate-killing) photographing minigame, which seems to be a growing issue with Pokemon games.

I can believe it's better than X/Y and the Ruby/Sapphire remakes, but playing the demo made me want to replay RGBY more than spend 50 Trudollars on the new ones.

[lolmonade]

Anecdotal, but count me as one person who will not buy ports of Wii U games to Switch game if there either isn't an upgrade path or heavy discount on the titles.  Re-buying $5-10 virtual console games is a whole different ballpark than full-priced console games.

[ejamer]

Anecdotal, but count me as one person who will not buy ports of Wii U games to Switch game if there either isn't an upgrade path or heavy discount on the titles.  Re-buying $5-10 virtual console games is a whole different ballpark than full-priced console games.

I'm in the same boat - in fact, the rumored Switch lineup (which includes more ports of old games than new content) has me question if Switch is worth buying into at all for the first year.


But Wii U had a lot of ports too, and ended up being a fun console. It'll probably just take some time for compelling exclusives to become available.

[Kobeskillz]

Exitebike 64 controls are amazing. It is far more of a sim than you would think so it throws you off but once you put in practice and know what you are doing it's amazing.


How you land is a huge deal cause you lose momentum so you need to land going downhill or you're in for a rough race.


Anyways in short the controls are great just have a deep learning curve.


Greg - The 3D in Mario 3D land wasn't a marketing gimmick imo. It really is a LOT easier to judge distance and know where you are going to land compared to world.


Play both back to back and you'll be shocked how much 3D makes a difference.

[ClexYoshi]

Can't say I understand the hype around the new Pokémon games. I played the demo, and found it very disappointing. Setting the camera so close to the models seems like a mistake, since they look like crap, and the demo still suffered from some noticeable frame rate drops despite taking out stereoscopic 3D. No one seems to be talking about that, but I really wish they'd stuck with 2D environments. It's not like they had to move to 3D graphics to remove the grid. I wonder if they didn't develop it with the Switch in mind rather than the 3DS. since the "third version" of this set is rumored to be coming to Switch. Either way, considering it is coming out so late in the 3DS' life cycle, it's one of the worst-looking games I've seen on the system.

The demo was a bit too hand-holdy to me, but I guess it should be expected from a demo. The problem is that the whole thing feels too gimmicky, from the special moves to the riding Pokemon thing and the silly (and frame rate-killing) photographing minigame, which seems to be a growing issue with Pokemon games.

I can believe it's better than X/Y and the Ruby/Sapphire remakes, but playing the demo made me want to replay RGBY more than spend 50 Trudollars on the new ones.

Funny thing about that. All the 3DS Pokemon games have a filter on them that purposefully makes the graphics look chunky because I guess they still kinda wanted the sprite work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbxQXwwURPY This is what the game looks like when you remove the filter. this is of course footage from the demo.

also, the reason the 3DS Pokemon games run so bad? http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c305/Mikimaru_/VolcanionWire3_zps74db405a.png this is the wireframe for Volcanion's model. in an effort to future-proof the models so they don't have to model 800-ish pokemon again any time in the near future, the models are ABSURDLY HIGH QUALITY and would probably look good even if you used them in a game that was 4K. Don't get me wrong, it's a DUMB decision that I don't like and it lead to the removal of hoarde battles, triple battles, and rotation battles, but... they really didn't want to go back and scale down the model quality for the sake of performance and just keep the higher quality models they made archived.

[Enner]

This is a great new show, gents. I dare say it's better than the old one!