Messages

1176

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: May 05, 2017, 07:11:09 PM »

There's a reason I nominated Black and White for retroactive. I'm just going to say that now.

Off-topic, but I really want a side-by-side comparing retroactive of Black & White and Doshin the Giant.

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General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: May 05, 2017, 07:08:11 PM »

Play P.N.03, Khushrenada. I have a feeling you don't quite have enough craziness in your life.

Seconding this. Also the game is secretly pretty decent and has style for days. I got it for 5 bucks so it's probably the cheapest one to find of those too, although why anyone is hanging on to Shadow the Hedgehog is beyond me haha. Is it genuine curiosity, or does your interest stem from that B-movie appeal of wanting to see just how bad things can get?

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General Chat / Re: Free Comic Book Day 2017 - Includes A Zelda Comic

« on: May 05, 2017, 06:59:49 PM »

That's neat, thanks for the heads-up! A while ago I found a reprinted volume of that Super Mario Adventures comic, collecting the strips from Nintendo Power. Really nice looking stuff, very funny too. Didn't know there were Zelda comics out there, but it makes sense to do so. Don't suppose anyone ever made a Metroid adaptation?

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: May 05, 2017, 06:55:45 PM »

"23./19. [PS4] Winning Eleven 2017 [Konami the Best] <SPT> (Konami) {2017.04.13} (¥3.980) - 2.597 / 9.192 <40-60%> (-3%)"

Please tell me this is actually subtitled "Konami the Best", that's amazing. My favourite film of the year was Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales [DISNEY DA BEST UNIVERSAL SUX].

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: May 04, 2017, 08:08:56 PM »

Wrapped up Back To Bed on Wii U today, a short puzzle game for fans of Dalí.



So this is a really short 30-level puzzle game developed by what looks like a group of students from Denmark, hope I'm not slighting another Nordic country now haha. This was a late release for Wii U, from December 2016.

Most striking here is obviously the presentation. With its gorgeous surrealist art style that feels very reminiscent of artists like Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and maybe some Giorgio de Chirico in there. I can imagine this being a visual treat for any art schoolers out there.

What you do in that gorgeous setting is playing as the subconcious of Bob, a narcoleptic dude who sleepwalks around and needs guidance to find his bed again. Bob behaves pretty much like a Lemming or one of those Mario vs. DK automatons. You roam over floors and the occassional confusing wall (can I namedrop M.C. Escher here to up my cultural cred? Oh hey does anyone remember Roberto Matta?), placing apples and fish in Bob's path to make him change direction or help him cross gaps.
While you do this there's some soothing soundscapes happening, and occasionally a down-pitched voice gives you instructions (or tells you that apples are the same as hats?). It all has a suitably dreamlike atmosphere going, and the visual style is consistent from menu to "cut scene" to gameplay, very nice.

The puzzles themselves are on the simple side, they never go complete crazy with intersecting impossible corners and stuff. I ran through the the whole "story" in 1.5 hours. That does unlock all levels in a hard mode which does require you to make more elaborate paths and collect keys, but still.
I have a few more complaints: who maps "cancel/back" to the A BUTTON?! And why is the Y button accept/pick up? If you're not gonna let us remap buttons, at least offer a conventional layout.

Load times are a bit too frequent as well, especially when Bob gets hits by an enemy (dogs or clocks are conspiring to wake him up). When he falls off the ledge the game seamlessly continues, but if you get hit, or run over by a whale-train (don't ask) it suddenly has to load the level all over again. Bit inconsistent and it frustrates when you've been trained to just let him walk into every hazard to see what your options are.

On the whole, Back To Bed offers a polished, if short puzzle experience. If you go in expecting a budget Captain Toad of sorts and have an appreciation for this era of visual arts, I imagine you'll have a decent hour or two. It's current sale price of 5$ feels right to me, not sure if I would've been as positive if I paid full price (10$) for it, since I don't see myself re-doing all the stages in Nightmare Mode. Rating 7/10

1181

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: May 04, 2017, 07:14:34 PM »

It isn't just you, GameCube prices in general have been on the rise for at least a few years now. It seems to start once a system is two generations old, which for GCN happened back in 2012. It's a shame too, there are still a few more games for GCN I wouldn't mind having, but the prices are beyond what I'd be willing to pay.

So by that logic, Wii and DS prizes are set to rise in a few years for sure? Makes sense I guess. Luckily I've picked up pretty much everything on GameCube I have an interest in over the years. Only Chibi-Robo and Cubivore are missing really, but I've given up on those. There's a few more like that Mario Baseball game, Chaos Field (a shmup) and TubeSlider (worst name ever) which I've always had a passing interest in, but not enough to really pony up the cash. Especially with Baten Kaitos 1, Skies of Arcadia, and Lost Kingdoms 2 still sitting untouched.
GC was such a great system, even third party support was decent!

At this point, there are only about 7 GameCube games I'm still looking for and would want to add to my collection. I've found the secondhand used market to still be pretty reasonable in price compared to eBay but I have made a few eBay purchases in the past for games I just couldn't find secondhand like Ikaruga and Cubivore.

Out of curiosity, what're the last few you're eyeing? I've still not gotten past level 4 in Ikaruga by the way, that game is DIFFICULT haha. F-Zero ditto, but at least I was able to finish the cups there. Story mode be damned.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: NBA Playgrounds

« on: May 04, 2017, 06:59:55 PM »

Umm...is it weird that NBA Playgrounds might be the second game I buy for the switch?

That's not weird at all! When I finally cave in and buy a Switch the first game I'll get for it will be Disgaea 5, and Bomberman R will be right behind it. What's Mario Kart anyway?

Liking the look of this NBA game, it's a shame arcade style sports games have largely died out it seems. I still have NBA 2k13 largely untouched, but honestly this pick up & play style suits me better than those endless simulations.

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General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: May 03, 2017, 09:50:00 AM »

So I'm not sure how many people still care about GameCube, but for whatever reason prices for both GC soft and hardware have been steadily rising in my area for a while now.

A year or two ago I had to get a new Cube because the purple one was getting antsy and found a silver one for about 15 bucks (no cables). I've been meaning to get a back-up one for a while now, since there's a few large RPGs on the system I still wanna complete one day. Picked up a neat set today, it's one of those newer Pearl coloured ones, when they took off the digital output. That one cost me 25$ but it's missing one of the bottom lids and obviously no cables/controller etc either.

Figured I might as well get a game along with it to chuck on the backlog pile since they also had a nice copy of Soul Calibur II laying around. Tried it for a bit and it plays pretty well. Remember how Mortal Kombat V on the GameCube didn't support the analog stick, so you were stuck with the GC's awful d-pad? Luckily that's not the case here, plus the character designs are just a tad less ugly. Looks like a decent timewaster.

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TalkBack / Re: Details For First Breath Of The Wild DLC Pack Announced

« on: May 02, 2017, 08:33:19 AM »

I like the idea of the game tracing your footsteps, that's really neat. You could really easily see where you've fallen down too. And the free language update is welcome too, I think I'm gonna set it to Russian to see how Zelda sounds then. Heck and then I'll set the subtitles to Japanese, I'll fill in the story myself.

Fun features to have imo.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: May 01, 2017, 03:45:10 PM »

Whispering Willows now officially on my radar. I love puzzle adventure games like this one.
Thanks for the review, Steef!

No problem, definitely check out some recorded footage first though. For one it's not a point & click adventure deal, you actually control Elena's movement. Its puzzles are also very much on the easy side. Personally I didn't mind, but Tengami is a bit more challenging for example. That's a straight point & click title though.

Feel like Willows only works if you're interested in the atmosphere, so try to see if it grabs you before purchasing I'd say.

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NWR Forums Discord / E3 2017: REGGIE GOES MEGATON

« on: May 01, 2017, 08:59:20 AM »

Here's what my uncle who works at Nintendo told me:

They [Nintendo] go to E3 anyway and are just denying things to make a giant surprise out of it, a surprise to outdo the Sega Saturn even! It'll be just one not-too-long video, tailor-made for screaming Youtube "reaction channels" stuffed to the brim with announcements.

First they show off ARMS again with some graphics claiming how alive the online community is, ends with a slow-mo punch and cuts to a character in Spla2n flying away into a pool of ink! "Oh dang son those transitions, we in for a good one", the entranced audience collectively realises. Swoosh out from some ink-looking goop out comes.... Mario Odyssey! There's goop in that game too!

Mario runs over some grassy fields, camera pans up to the Sun, pans a bit further... two suns?! Pans down... ohhhhh it's Xenoblade! Releasedate is Thanksgiving, surpreso h8rz! Images of swords clashing in Xeno... or is it... Fire Emblem Warriors y'all! Camera zooms into the face of Marth, we see the sword in first person now but, oh heckity yeah it's Skyrim!

Skyrim Dude looks at the ground at some leaves, those details! Wait, are the leaves alive? It's a new type of Pikmin with "2018" on a can next to it, awesome! A giant alien herbivore makes its way towards the trembling Pikmin... and explodes in a blue flash?! SAMUS ARAN REPORTIN FOR D00TY, PEW PEW PEW lasers fly everywhere, the orchestral music has changed to tacky dubstep now, wait hang on... some of those blue lasers look like... blue arrows! Kid Icarus confirmed?! (They don't show anything else to send messageboards into meltdown), but the camera races along with the arrows and lasers... they're targetting an Arwing!

Team Star Fox appear in hot pursuit of an unknown vehicle in the distance, the tacky dubstep gets an even tackier 90ies rock guitar on top, camera catches up... it's the Blue Falcon ooooooohhhh duuuudeeesss but who's inside? WHAT THE ICE CLIMBERS THAT'S SO CRAY

The audience is allowed to catch its breath as the camera moves to a birds-eye view... hang on a sec... all the characters we've seen so far are converging, they're all headed for a single place that looks suspiciously like an item-less Final Destination. SMA5H CONFIRMED MEGATONZZZZZ

Dozens of mics are dropped from the ceiling, in health & safety concerning fashion, people look under their seats AND it's the first issue of a newly relaunched Nintendo Power! eBay crashes instantly.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: Why is Justin Bieber pretending to be eminem?

« on: April 30, 2017, 07:15:29 PM »

Haha yeah they really look alike. Eminem time traveller confirmed!

Sidenote, that "for the record I knew Khaled from when we both was spinnin' records" is the most Lil Wayniest line I've heard in quite a while haha.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: April 30, 2017, 06:57:44 PM »

Let's talk Whispering Willows on Wii U, a "5 out of 10" game if ever I've seen one. Apparantly this was ported over from the Ouya of all things... From one doomed console to the next?



So here's another Wii U indie game I don't hear anyone talking about, ever. It's an adventure game of sorts with a supernatural/horror theme going on. In terms of gameplay, you're this girl called Elena who has to find her lost father in/around the grounds of a giant mansion where spooky stuff has gone down in the past.

A Native American spirit teaches you to astrally project, which helps you solve little environmental puzzles and interact with spirits of dead people. Solve their murder, return their spirit to their lost corpse, help ghosts find peace so they can move onto the afterlife, that sort of stuff.

So you're walking around the catacombs, garden hedge maze, tool shed, mansion, etc. trying to find keys and occasionally push items, deliver things to ghosts, or (rarely) avoiding evil beings. It's pretty light stuff, and since you can only run when outside it can drag a bit when you're plodding from room to room, but it's not too bad I guess.

Presentation is all over the map, the in-game stuff looks pretty sharp and nicely drawn and there's some decently spooky piano music going on. But then there's "cutscenes" which are like a Powerpoint slideshow of DeviantArt pictures which clash with the game's art style.
In addition the load times are super frequent and surprisingly long, which cut out the music very sudden and drastically. This is a particular problem during the ending, when spooky music and in-engine cutscenes (thank God) constantly get interrupted to load the next 20 seconds of the scene.

Gamepad integration is nicely done, displaying Elena's occassionally updated diary as well as notes/letters from the various deceased you find. You tend to find those out of sequence, so the story has some non-linear elements of delivery to it, which is nicely done.
At the same time however, Elena seems to learn facts MUCH later than you do. There's an annoying point in one of her latest diary entries when she's "very confused and doesn't know what to believe" when all evidence, both written accounts and her own experiences at that point, seems VERY clear already.

Clocking in around 3 hours, Whispering Willows isn't the worst of its kind. It's very light on gameplay, but does set a nice mood throughout, looks mostly great and sounds pretty good too. The story also isn't awful, even if it does rely on some well-worn tropes like Native American spiritualism. At least they attempt to handle that respectfully though, this ain't Pocahontas.
If you're looking for a creepy adventure game on Wii U, try Year Walk instead. But if you play this with snacks to pass the loadtimes, I think you'll have a decent enough evening. 5/10

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General Gaming / Re: International Tabletop Day

« on: April 26, 2017, 09:01:47 AM »

Didn't know there was an "international board game day" haha, but I'll shoot my friends a message. We're pretty casual though and mostly default to Catan. Occassionally Risk or Monopoly will happen, but I'm convinced everyone secretly hates Monopoly, and Risk is much more of a mixed bag it seems.

Should maybe look for something new and similar someday, just to shake things up.

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General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 26, 2017, 08:51:30 AM »

When your weapon is drawn, hold R to block.

If I recall, the only thing that ZR and ZL are used for is during swimming, to move directly up or down.

Ah okay thanks! Weird, you'd think I would've figured out the shield at least. There was no water in the demo level I don't think, so that explains not figuring out the triggers. Pretty cool that they let you swim and presumably hunt for oceanic monsters?

And yeah I mean it was more about just trying out something that's popular for me. I'm not really the type of person to regularly play online with friends, so Monster Hunter just isn't very suited to the way I play videogames. Can deffo see why it took off on portables, the relatively short and sectioned off quests probably make it much easier to dip in and out of for short periods of time.

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General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 25, 2017, 11:38:29 AM »

Figured I'd kill 20 minutes by trying something new, so I downloaded the demo for Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate on Wii U. Well, I've heard on the RFN podcast how awful these demos supposedly were, and I can confidently report that they indeed are. Allow me to describe its crapness.

The demo gives you 2 quests to try, an easy one and a hard one, you select a class/fighter and then you're off. No explanation for controls, no way to check the button mapping, the options screen only lets you switch controller and language. Great start.
So there's like 30 classes it seems (not at all overwhelming), I just picked the top one (swords & shield) since I figured it'd be a nicely average class. They send you off with 2 lil' Turtwigs to find what turns out to be a giant gerbil, and you need to kill it in 20 minutes.

So while I'm sure/hopeful this is just a demo thing, the controls are pretty awful here. Why is the camera mapped to D-Pad and right stick? Why is the X-axis not inverted like it should? Why does moving the y-axis just toggle between three levels of zoom (ranging from decent to awful)? And why do we also have the L button to center camera behind our dude? Seems like overkill.
Could've really used the d-pad to cycle through potions, instead of the weird "hold L, then cycle left or right with the Y and A buttons" thing they have going on now. For those keeping track, yes the L button serves two purposes, but we also have two trigger buttons doing nothing it seems?

Furthermore you sword & shield dude appears to have no way of defending with his shield, so that's great. Attacks are really slow, and although there's some heft behind them, I just can't see myself getting into such a slow system. Especially since thanks to the fast enemy monster and slow camera you'll frequently miss too. It just feels a tad sluggish sadly.


Then the world the quest is set in is pretty sparsely populated with just a few animals, and like 9 different zones all connected through brief loading times. Really annoying because the monster runs away every now and then so you gotta chase it through these loading barriers, ugh.
Lastly I wasn't sure what your little animal buddies are supposed to be doing, sometimes they create puffs of green smoke or suddenly disappear, other times they spout "cutesy" dialogue boxes that already felt grating after the demo was over.

TL;DR: I think I can see the appeal of Monster Hunter, with its crafting and very frequent bossbattles. The slow combat is probably meant to be quite deliberate instead of the Soul Calibur button mashing approach I was going for. But this demo really solidified why it isn't for me, which I'd already expected. If there's gonna be one on Switch I hope for any new fans trying out that demo that Capcom puts more effort into it though, I can't really see anyone being won over by this demo... Rather the opposite in fact. But I'm glad it gave me the opportunity to try out a popular franchise at no cost, even if it didn't sell me on the game.

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Reader Reviews / Re: A Review of Breath of the Wild: DLC RELEASED!

« on: April 25, 2017, 11:17:50 AM »

Haha nice, DLC for a review, there's a novel idea. Will read everyone's thoughts here on the game at some point, but I've yet to get it so tryna swerve around some spoilers.

Your best-of Zelda list is interesting, I'd have Wind Waker much higher for example, although I've not played a lot of them to be honest. So it'd be high up by default haha.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: April 24, 2017, 02:59:32 PM »

Axiom Verge Physical Release is Coming to Nintendo Switch

I guess I'm finally buying this. No date or price. I'd bet on the Nintendo Switch tax.

Don't wanna rain on any parades here, but feel like this needs to be pointed out: the link you posted sources a NeoGaf thread... Which sources a Tweet that has already been deleted. Apparantly in the podcast that tweet was from it is said that a Switch version is "being looked into".

Not doubting it'll see release on Switch at some point, and physical would be cool, but I wouldn't take this as confirmation quite yet.

The Wii U physical release hasn't gotten a date yet has it? It's slated for Q2 this year, so I suppose that gives them at least 2 more months if they'll be able to make that window.

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TalkBack / Re: Switch First Month Sales For United States Announced: Fastest Selling System In Nintendo History

« on: April 16, 2017, 03:17:01 PM »

Splatoon is much like what Ian's describing with BotW.  It's the direction that the rest of the industry went (team based shooter with online focus), though with the Nintendo touch (the objective isn't to kill your opponents) that makes it unique (fresh) and, frankly, better (game award for best shooter).

Yeah that was the point I was trying to make, but just worded very poorly haha. I got the impression Ian was saying Nintendo hasn't been innovating and keeping up with the rest of the industry. Personally I would point to Splatoon jumping on the teamshooter bandwagon and Mario Maker as their answer to Minecraft/Terraria as good examples of Ninty following popular concepts and putting their own twists on it.

Which I'm glad they do, because I'm not really interested in direct clones of Assassin's Creed or Splinter Cell and stuff. So while I do hope they keep pushing themselves with new interesting concepts (I like the potential of ARMS a lot as a mashup of those Pokken Tournament esque fighters and Wii Boxing), I'd rather they don't copy the other big companies too much. It'll be interesting to see how Ever Oasis compares to other popular RPG series for example.

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General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: April 16, 2017, 03:10:42 PM »

Had never seen these coins either, the Wario one is my favourite! Really cool haul , you could fill a big shelf with all of that haha.

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TalkBack / Re: Switch First Month Sales For United States Announced: Fastest Selling System In Nintendo History

« on: April 14, 2017, 05:29:38 PM »

Breath of the Wild is, frankly, the first Nintendo game aside from the Xenoblade titles that actually feels modern since the Gamecube era.  Nintendo has been sticking motion controls into game templates from the GC/PS2/XB era and passing that off as "innovation" for ten years.  Breath of the Wild is more the direction that the rest of the industry went, though with the Nintendo touch that makes it unique and, frankly, better.  It's where I wanted Nintendo to go in 2006 but they didn't.

This seems a bit harsh to me? Splatoon really fits with the whole Team Fortress/Overwatch thing that's popular, and I'm not sure the motion controls there are shoehorned into an early 2000s concept. With Star Fox Zero I could see that comparison perhaps... But I mean, Nintendo have been bankrolling pretty complex HD games: Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2, and none of those sold well. The motion controls in Metroid Prime 3 were hailed as great for immersion, and maligned in DKC Returns (not a "gimmicky/casual" title either), and those are from the same studio.

If I was a business and I see triple-A game production sales down across the board, then chasing other crowds seems more logical right? And you could argue Nintendo's recent best-sellers were titles with broader, more casual appeal (Yoshi Woolly World cracked a million sales) - the hardcore gamers aren't there in terms of sales it seems.

Idk, I'm not saying you're wrong, but just because Nintendo aren't showing the type of innovation that many gamers want (more titles like BotW), doesn't mean there's just zero innovation happening. For what it's worth, I don't really wanna see Nintendo follow the whole Dark Souls/Monster Hunter trends or whatever too much, so I hope Zelda's success lessons will mostly stay within the Zelda and Xenoblade franchises. Bad example, but I don't really want Mario Odyssey to suddenly ramp up the difficulty because "it worked for Zelda".

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Official Sales Thread

« on: April 13, 2017, 05:52:22 AM »

Breath of the Wild could still crack the 100k mark on Wii U with a week or two more of similar sales, neat. Even if it is getting outsold almost four to one by the Switch version.

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TalkBack / Re: The Positives and Pitfalls of Review Democratization

« on: April 10, 2017, 06:33:42 PM »

If I'm on the fence about a game, I'll read a few reviews conveniently compiled there.  I pick some of the higher scores, some of the middle scores, and some of the low scores to get a wide variety of perspectives.  I then decide whether or not the good outweighs the bad.


But I don't do things based on an aggregate score alone!

Such an informed consumer! And hey even if someone went by numbered scores alone, if it works for them I won't knock it. But thanks for weighing in, I guess many people use it like you do.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Direct To Air Wednesday

« on: April 10, 2017, 02:22:34 PM »

They might also namedrop Fire Emblem Echoes Valentia again, tie it in with some update to the mobile game perhaps, I don't know. It's due for a May release isn't it?

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TalkBack / Re: Release Dates Announced For Multiple Switch And Wii U Games

« on: April 10, 2017, 09:48:13 AM »

Hey neat to see some more Wii U support! We haven't heard anything about the Axiom Verge disc release yet have we? Kinda hope they're still doing that, though it'd be understandable if it got cancelled. I guess there's some sort of cosmic poetry to the original Wii having a Cars title in the launch line up, and the Wii U's final(?) disc release being Cars 3.