Messages

51

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: May 07, 2023, 11:04:49 AM »

It's kind of amazing Nintendo hasn't done enormous price cut's to boost sales and it's still one of their best of all time.

Well that's what happens when Nintendo combined their home and handhelds divisions to create a system that has all the strengths of both, with none of the weaknesses.  It also helps that Microsoft and Sony aren't even trying to compete with the Switch, giving Nintendo a complete monopoly on a hybrid gaming system.  Also the rest of the industry isn't even trying to compete with Nintendo in terms of the games they develop.  People love to bitch about Pokemon but both games on the Switch were 20 million plus sellers.  What are Microsoft and Sony trying to do that could appeal to that Pokemon audience?  They ain't doing anything so if those 20 million plus people want an experience like Pokemon, you have to buy a Switch.

Also helps that Nintendo made a system that was easy to port this time as well.  That's why the vast majority of indie games hit the system, and even a good number of major triple AAA titles have been ported to the Switch, despite originally being developed for more powerful hardware.  So not only has Nintendo been able to provide a constant supply of their own unique games, but they have a ton of third party as well.  Because of this there hasn't been any droughts in the systems lifespan, which has given it insane momentum.  Even now when the year to year sales have been declining, it's still been a small decline, which Nintendo has even said some of that decline is do to supply issues as well.

When you add this all up, the system is an unstoppable monster.

52

General Gaming / Re: 3rd Annual NWR Four on Four

« on: May 02, 2023, 02:05:18 PM »

Mario Galaxy 2
I played two of the green star mission then after that decided hell nah, that's going to be incredibly tedious. The green stars seem to be designed for kids in 2010 who had nothing else going on.

So it isn't just me that feels that way.

As someone that actually 100% Galaxy 2 back in the day, I'm going to have to push back.  Yes a good amount of Green Stars are just find the star hidden somewhere in the stage, but a lot of them are also in plain sight and require either doing tricky platformer challenges or climbing up area's you wouldn't even think you could in the base game.  It made replaying the game again as Luigi more interesting since his higher and longer jumps were put to good use in getting them.


For the month of April, I did get at least 4 games crossed of my backlog, but they were all on the Switch.

Astalon: Tears of the Earth

Now this was an amazing Metroidvania game.  Unlike a lot of the indie titles that just follow the IGA formula of copy and paste long hallways with some vertical rooms with platforms, this castle is filled with so many unique rooms and layouts.  Definitely something more people should try.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I beat the game on Normal mode last year and found it pretty meh.  Decided to play it again on Hard mode to see if I might enjoy it more.  Nope, it's actually worse since the sluggish controls and terrible hitbox detection, now combined with harder hitting enemy and bosses that all take more hits to kill, a truly miserable experience.  I looked up Youtube video's to see how people actually played this **** and of course they just grind to max out their souls early on to curbstomp everything.  Pretty much proves what I was thinking when I played it last year, this game was pretty much made for the IGA vania fans who love to grind to completely negate any challenge, while anyone that doesn't like to grind will be stuck with a mediocre to outright terrible action game.

No More Heroes 3

Well that was pretty fun, probably my favorite game in the series.  Story had me laughing most of the time and a lot of the boss fights were actually pretty good.

Another World

Played Flashback back in 2021 and really loved it.  Now I thought this game came after but it turns out this was the one that came before.  So yeah it was a shorter game that lacks the gameplay variety of Flashback, but it was still pretty fun.  For a game that I've seen many consider pretty hard, I did pretty good.  I played for a few hours before finally hitting a part that I had to look up, and when I looked it up it turns out that was literally the last puzzle of the game.  It's funny since I did the same with Flashback, where I managed to go through the game without having to look anything up, until I finally hit a puzzle that I just couldn't figure out and in both cases, the ending was literally about 5 minutes away.

53

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: May 02, 2023, 12:31:45 AM »

So the game has been leaked.  Anyone trying to avoid spoilers should just turn their computers off for the next 2 weeks because shits spreading like wildfire.

Not going to say anything in particular but Holy **** this game is massive.  For all the people wondering why it took 6 years for this to come out, your about to find out in a really really really big way.

Seriously, **** ****, holy **** this game is going to be beyond insane.

54

General Gaming / Re: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

« on: April 20, 2023, 10:29:36 PM »

"Gotcha" secrets like that make me glad both 2d and 3d series evolved to explicitly mark items on the map.

This is something that drives me crazy about a lot of these indie Metroid/Metroidvania titles.  They love to copy the map system of Super Metroid, but refuse to mark items or tell you if you've found all the items in a certain area, something all the 2D Metroids after Super did.

It's like seriously, this was such a great QOL improvement that actually makes it fun to get 100% completion in later Metroid games because it removes much of the tedium in trying to find everything.  If I beat the game with 91% completion, it's nice to know what parts of the game I found everything in so you don't waste time looking in those again.  This is something that should be standard in every Metroid style game and yet it seems to be the opposite from most of the ones I've played.

55

TalkBack / Re: Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection (Switch) Review

« on: April 13, 2023, 10:12:33 PM »

I would highly recommend anyone playing these games for the 1st time to start with Battle Network 2, as I did way back when. The 1st game is very rough, and it's missing features like style changes that the series would add from the second game onwards that helps to lesson the repetition somewhat. Absolutely nothing of story significance happens in the 1st game that isn't recapped in the 2nd. Naturally, the reviewer made little to no mention of any additions the sequels made.

These games are extremely similar to each other, but judging the entire series by the mediocre first game is a mistake.

Seriously, especially when the Mega Man franchise became a hit in the first place because of how big an improvement Mega Man 2 was over the original.  Mega Man and Street Fighter are basically the prime example of series where the sequels basically started the franchise, so for someone to judge an entire Mega Man sub series by it's first title is extremely laughable considering the franchises history.

56

TalkBack / Re: Metroid Fusion Launching Into Game Boy Advance Expansion Pack Library March 8

« on: March 04, 2023, 11:36:05 AM »

Anyone who wants to play this should download the Japanese version of the GBA App, since the Japanese version of the game has more content then the American/PAL.

For anyone that doesn't know, the Japanese version of Fusion was released at a later date and included a Hard mode and the Gallery that saved the ending photo's after you unlocked them.  Both things that many thought were introduced in Zero Mission, where in the Japanese version of Fusion.

To give you an idea, the American/PAL verions of the game has 5 different ending photos, while the Japanese version has 11 ending photo, with an actual Gallery that saves them.  So the Japanese version of the game has a lot more replay value to it.

57

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Xenoblade chronicles 3 music is sick

« on: March 01, 2023, 10:55:55 AM »

I agree.  The music in the Xenoblade games is great and Xenoblade 3 has some great tracks as well.

58

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Switch Game Library Adds Game Boy Color, Expansion Pack Game Boy Advance Games

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:29:12 PM »

Not going to lie, this was the part of the Direct that got me the most excited.  The OG Gameboy is a very underrated system so it's great to see some of it's best games will now be on the Switch.  It's also great to see they'll be giving the option for the Gameboy Color palette options to all games as well.  That's the thing that was disappointing about the 3DS GB emulation is they didn't offer that for all the games, even though they were releasing GBC games along side them.

Now I would have liked Super Gameboy options as well, but I'll be grateful for the GBC ones.  Seriously, playing OG Gameboy games with the GBC palettes improve them since the added different colors makes enemies and environmental hazards easier to see now.

Oh and with GBA games being added to the Expansion Pack, that $50 price tag is almost a steal with the amount of games available on the service now.

59

TalkBack / Re: New Tears Of The Kingdom Footage Shown, Limited Edition And Amiibo Announced

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:18:26 PM »

Well that's one way to change the map of the first Breath of the Wild.  Ganondorf just nuked the **** out of everything.

And that extra $10 is the Game of the Decade tax.  

I mean, Nintendo must be feeling pretty good about this game if they think this is the best game to start increasing the price.  They could have tried that last year with Pokemon since that would have been guaranteed to sell as well since it's Pokemon.  So they must feel Tears of the Kingdom is going to be pretty mind blowing to do it now.

So yeah, can't wait to see more of the game.

60

TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime Remaster Available Now

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:10:37 PM »

I'm kind of surprised Nintendo is only charging $40 for it.  They released Skyward Sword HD for $60 and that game didn't have the graphical enhancements this one does. 

Well no one can say Nintendo isn't trying to make Metroid more popular.  A remaster of one of the high rated games of all time, with better graphical enhancements then most other remasters have gotten, being sold at a lower price kind of shows Nintendo is really trying to get more people to give this game a shot.

61

TalkBack / Re: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective To Revive This Summer

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:04:52 PM »

Nice, another game I was interested in but never got around to buying.

62

TalkBack / Re: Pair Of Baten Kaitos RPGs Being Remastered For Switch In Summer

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:03:00 PM »

All you uncultured swine (  ) who played the 1st Baten Kaitos but didn't play the superior Baten Kaitos Origins have no excuse now.

**** Yes, this is exactly what I was hoping to see. Nintendo has historically refused to acknowledge their GameCube games, so this needed to happen. These are 2 exceptionally unique RPGs more people should play.

Well Nintendo has basically ran out of Wii U games to port so now it's time to raid the Gamecubes lineup of games less people played so they can basically advertise them as new games to the larger gaming audience.

Either way this is great news since I was always interested in both Baten Kaitos games but never got around to buying.  They came out in my late High School and Early College years were I just bought one game at a time and played that game as soon as I bought it.  So naturally I missed out on a lot of titles that way.

Now I'll these remasters and they'll go into my backlog and eventually be played in 2035.

63

TalkBack / Re: First Nintendo Direct Of 2023 To Air February 8

« on: February 07, 2023, 08:55:53 PM »

Wooo! Always great to check in and see the news of a Direct about to happen. And tomorrow afternoon. I don't know if I can get myself properly hyped up enough in time so that I can be disappointed by it when it's over. Quick! Start posting all the wildest fantasy stuff you can. I need to get that pure hype coursing through my veins!!

Xenoblade Chronicles X2! F-Zero Battle Royale!! GameCube app for the Switch!!! 1080 Avalanche & Ice Climbers crossover game!!!! Nintendo buys Sega and takes over all their IP!!!!! Aw yeah!! That's the hype I neeeeeeeeeeeddd!!!!!!

That rumored Metriod Prime 1 remaster will probably be shown so there's your Gamecube game.

64

TalkBack / Re: First Nintendo Direct Of 2023 To Air February 8

« on: February 07, 2023, 12:54:14 PM »

Here we go, it's finally Zelda time.  We're only 3 months away from release so it's now within the normal Nintendo hype cycle for releases.  No more teaser trailers, tomorrow we finally will get the real deal.

65

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: February 07, 2023, 12:26:39 PM »

The results of the last fiscal quarter are out, and the Switch has officially passed the Game Boy to become Nintendo’s second-highest selling system ever at 122.55 million units. It has a real shot to be #1, needing 31 million and change to pass the DS, which seems doable at this point. 

At this point it's pretty much guaranteed.  As we see from the recent hardware and software sales, the system still has a lot of momentum yet.  Nintendo says the main reason for hardware sales being down last year was because of supply chain issues, and the software sales were pretty much flat from the previous year, which is pretty insane for a system that was in it's 6th year on the market.

Seriously, if Pokemon Scarlet/Violet could sell over 20 million in less then 2 months, and it was the sequel to Sword and Shield which did over 25 million, then Tears of the Kingdom is going to be just as big since Breath of the Wild did 29 million on Switch, with another million plus on the Wii U.  Tears of the Kingdom will pretty much dominate all gaming conversations in May and June giving the Switch a lot of attention again.

I also think there's a good chance we'll be getting a new 2D Mario at the end of this year that will be huge.  Seriously, NSMB U Deluxe is now close to 15 million on the Switch.  If we get a brand new 2D Mario that's seen as the next evolution for the franchise, you're looking at an easy 30 million seller, like NSMB DS and Wii were.

Plus they still have the price cut card they can play, to give them a boast.  The Switch is still $300 with it's best selling games from launch being sold for $60.  If Nintendo decides to cut the price to $250, or hell, down to $200 and games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Breath of the Wild are now being sold for $20-30 that right there will get a lot of people to finally jump on board as well.

66

General Gaming / Re: Games Beaten, Completed, or Played in 2022

« on: January 15, 2023, 03:48:36 PM »

It looks like Luigi Dude and broodwars both played all the TMNT games. I am going to start that collection soon, but will just be playing one game every once in a while I wanted to start with Turtles in Time, but and deciding between the SNES version and arcade version. I am guessing the arcade version looks nicer, but the SNES version is better balanced for completing without needing unlimited lives/credits. What are your thoughts on the better at home experience?

The SNES version is better.  It's got an extra level, and is much better balanced game.  For one, the SNES version lets you actually do the move where the Turles grab an enemy and smash them left and right, which is great for handling situations when you're being swarmed by enemies.  In the Arcade version that move just randomly happens.  The SNES version also lets you double tap to run in the options menu, while in the Arcade version you have to move for a while before you start to auto run.  The double tap to run is a much better option for trying to get away from bosses attacks and larger groups of enemies.  It also adds some new boss fights that are better then what's in the Arcade version as well.  You'll need to beat Hard mode to get the ending, but you can set the game to let you have up to 7 lives and 5 continues so even Hard mode is still very beatable.

The Arcade game is cheap, even by Arcade standards.  The better you're playing, the more enemies will keep spawning on screen until it reaches a point where you'll be overwhelmed.  If the Arcade version let you do that enemy slam move at will this would make it more doable, but since that move just randomly happens in the Arcade, it pretty much means you have to rely more on luck then skill.  This is why the games pretty notorious for being almost impossible to 1CC, even among the very hardcore.

Of course since you can just keep spamming credits to win, the Arcade game will take less then an hour your first time through so it'll still be worth playing just too see the differences between it and the SNES version.  The sprites and animations are better so it's worth a playthrough to see what a pretty version of Turtles in Time looks like.

67

General Gaming / Re: Games Beaten, Completed, or Played in 2022

« on: January 15, 2023, 01:32:02 PM »

Alright, finally got time to look back on what I played.

Games beaten in 2022

3DS

Shin Megami Tensei IV
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation

Switch

Gato Roboto
Oniken
Turok
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
Timespinner
Gunbird
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Journey to Silius
Shadow of the Ninja
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Doom Eternal
Panzer Paladin
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country
Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1
Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2
Steel Assault
Demons of Asteborg
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (SNES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Back From The Sewers
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue
Blasphemous
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist
Mechstermination Force
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles: Shredders Revenge
Super Earth Defense Force
Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors
Wallachia: Reign of Dracula



Games played but not beaten

3DS

Rhythm Heaven Megamix

Switch

Danmaku Unlimited 3
Super Bomberman R
Samurai Aces III: Sengoku Cannon
Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Xenoblade Chronicles 3


Xenoblade 3 is on the not finished list since I started the game in mid November and am still playing it.  I've currently at about 120 hours in the game so it's pretty much been taking up my time the last 2 months.

68

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: January 14, 2023, 07:52:23 AM »

I imagine we'll still have Shrines or something similar to them since those were great rewards for exploration and were mostly well liked.  The biggest complaints were too many Test of Strength shrines and the music and look of the Shrines being the same.  I'd imagine Shrines in Tears of the Kingdom will probably have a variety of looks and music to help make them feel more unique, and the Test of Strength Shrines will either be greatly reduced, or have a much larger variety of enemies to fight so they don't all feel too similar as well.

69

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: January 13, 2023, 11:00:37 AM »

The size of any underground area will probably depend on how big the Sky sections will be.  If the Sky Islands end up equaling a size similar to Hyrule then I have a hard time seeing an equally large underground section.  Even if normal Hyrule has remained mostly unchanged, creating all those brand new area's in the Sky is still a large task for the developers.

Even though they've been working on this for close to 6 years, that would still be a massive undertaking to create 2 completely new worlds and still update the existing Hryule.  Now I imagine new caves will have been created for the original Hyrule to give new things to find there but I don't know how doable it will be to have a giant underground section comparable to other area's.

I think part of the reason for this game taking so long is because we'll be getting some massive dungeons this time.  The biggest complaint about BOTW was the Divine Beast weren't a good substitute for traditional dungeons, so I think the Zelda team has found a way to make some massive dungeons like the previous games, but still make them work with the open world gameplay of BOTW.  That's the part I'm most interested in seeing what they've done for this game.

70

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Upcoming Switch games! What's on your wishlist

« on: January 12, 2023, 11:00:04 AM »

Well out of the games on the list.

Fire Emblem Engage
Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection
Octopath Traveler 2
Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe
Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom


Of course Zelda is the only one I'll be buying at launch for full price since I still have a huge backlog.  Hell, over the holiday season I won a $500 gift card at work and bought about 20 games on the eShop holiday sale using that thing, and I still have about $300 left on it.  I still have over 60 games on my wish list I haven't bought yet.  This is why I don't give a **** what games come out what year since there's so many games to play I'll never run out.

Oh and this list is missing a ton of indie games.  I mean just today Vengeful Guardian Moonrider came out and looks amazing.  I'll probably take a break from Xenoblade 3 to play this since the developer, JoyMasher, previous games, Oniken, Odallus and Blazing Chrome were all great as well.

71

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: January 09, 2023, 06:48:35 PM »

Don’t really think anyone is anticipating this game at all, honestly.

…okay, so jokes aside, I’m pretty stunned at how little we actually know of the gameplay and narrative for this game. We didn’t really know much about the original BotW prior to launch but we had some idea of what gameplay would be like. I think the excuse for this is very similar to Super Mario Galaxy 2: this game is a sequel. Because it is not a “new” title, it will rely heavily on the gameplay functions of its predecessor and maybe add some new, minor elements. I imagine this game will be about vertical exploration in comparison with BotW’s horizontal traversal. Which is fine.

We do know about some of the new gameplay from Nintendo's patents they filed for the game over a year ago.  One patent allows Link to phase through platforms from below the surface which they showed in one of the trailers.  Another patent showed the ability to rewind time on objects, which was also shown in a trailer when Link has a bolder move back up a hill.  The last one was for Link to be able to move into different positions when aiming the bow while free-falling.

72

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What will Nintendo release in 2023?

« on: January 03, 2023, 02:30:36 PM »

Jeez I screwed myself out of points last year once again by going into too much detail.  Seriously, need to be brief this year to get the win.

1.  No Switch successor will be released in 2023
2.  A new 2D Mario game will be revealed
3.  A new 2D Zelda will be revealed
4.  A DLC expansion for Pokemon SV will come out
5.  The rumored new Donkey Kong platformer will finally be revealed.  Not going to predict if it'll be 2D or 3D though since I think it could go either way.
6.  Kid Icarus Uprising HD remaster announced
7.  Regular Gameboy and Gameboy Color get added to basic NSO, while Gameboy Advanced title will be part of the Expansion Pack.
8.  The Metroid Prime 1 HD remaster is finally announced
9.  An HD remaster of F-Zero GX will be announced
10.  A new Wario Land from Good Feel will be announced

Prime 4 is turning into Duke Nukem Forever

Not exactly.  The original developer was Bandai Namco who screwed things up so badly, the entire project had to be rebooted from scratch.  Retro themselves have been working on the game since late 2018/early 2019, which is only 4 years now.  The game will probably be out in 2024 which would give it a 5 year development cycle from Retro which is pretty normal from some of the more ambitious 3D games Nintendo releases.

The only reason I didn't predict a Prime 4 trailer this year is because part of my does wonder if the game might have been moved to the Switch successor.  The Switch successor is probably coming out in the 2nd half of 2024, so if Prime 4 has been moved to it, we won't see any trailers until early 2024.

73

TalkBack / Re: United States Federal Trade Commission Suing To Block Microsoft Acquisition Of Activision Blizza

« on: December 11, 2022, 10:44:07 PM »

Microsoft has a ton of their own IP's they don't do anything with.  Anyone who thinks Microsoft will care about the more obscure Activision properties is going to be very disappointment.

74

TalkBack / Re: United States Federal Trade Commission Suing To Block Microsoft Acquisition Of Activision Blizza

« on: December 08, 2022, 05:55:50 PM »

Good, companies like Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to buy up large sections of the industry.  Yeah everyone talks about how great Phil Spencer is but he's not going to be head of Microsoft's gaming division forever.  As we've seen time and time again, large Western companies love to do complete 180's when someone new is in charge. 

Does anyone want Microsoft owning half the industry when some like Don Mattrick is in charge again who will have no problem gutting many of the studio's they've bought these last few years and pushing crap like always online, mandatory Kinect and no used games.

Hell, what's to stop Phil Spencer himself from doing this a decade from now if Microsoft gets to a point where they own so much of the industry he doesn't have to pretend to be a nice guy anymore.  Seriously, Microsoft history is filled with so much shady **** I don't trust anyone from that company. 

75

Nintendo Gaming / Re: 2022 NWR Forum Awards - Best Nintendo Game

« on: December 05, 2022, 06:05:55 PM »

In that regards, I decided to tackle my first Fire Emblem game with Fates: Birthright earlier this year. I was playing it pretty steady at first and then slowed down and trailed off around Chapter 21. The story became pretty filler after a strong start and I was trying to keep partnering people to progress the little conversations they can have with each other and ended up just killing interest in it.

However, I'm not too concerned with playing the Fire Emblem games in order of North American release. But this does remind me that I should get Revelations before the eShop closes in the hopes Conquest and Revelations are indeed better than Birthright.

The gameplay in Conquest and Revelations is indeed better then Birthright.  If I had to score the 3 Fates games they'd go like this.

Conquest - 9/10
Revelations - 8/10
Birthright - 7/10

Conquest in particular is easily one of the best games I played this year.  I was playing the game on Hard mode with perma death turned on and lost some of my best characters right before the last chapter.  Beating the last chapter alone took me about 10 hours, and for awhile I thought I was completely screwed but eventually I created an epic suicide charge that basically cost the lives of almost my entire team, but I was able to protect my main character and his wife who was paired with him, with their stats boasted by every item I had left so that they could successfully kill the final boss.

That was probably my top gaming moment of the year.