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I had an idea to chat about an old Nintendo game, with a new thread every Friday morning. I'm going to take a game that came out a significant number of years ago close to this date, or something we were chatting about on N64-Europe/Cube-Europe etc. Talk about your memories of the game, waiting for it to arrive, where or when you played it. How much you anticipated it, whether it lived up to your expectations, if you ever beat it, if you've ever been back to it since. Many of these games you may have replayed on Virtual Console or remakes, but try and stick to your first experience of it. So where to start? Well I may be 12 days off a 32 year anniversary, but I couldn't think of anywhere more ideal than to go than back to the beginning with... Super Mario Bros (1985). It might not be Mario's first appearance (as Jumpman in Donkey Kong) or where he got his name (his next outing in Donkey Kong Junior). It's not even the first "Bros" game, which would be the arcade title that this is technically a sequel to. However, for me and probably many others, this was our first experience of Nintendo, and a game that changed everything for us and paved the way to where we are now as gamers. Too young to play DK at the arcade, my first experience of Mario was at the house of one of my Mum's friends, down the street. Her son Jason had a NES. Up until this point, my only video game experience had been on an old Commodore 64, so I was blown away by how smooth and colourful it all seemed. By this point the game had been available for quite a long time, but at that age it was all a bit more transient, you didn't need or even know about the newest and best games, but what was new to you could change everything. Although Sonic would come later and redefine speed, Super Mario Bros. employed an impressive running mechanic, which immediately put it streets ahead of anything I'd played to this point. Frankly, if you weren't holding B down all the time, you were doing it wrong. The tight NES controller was a million miles ahead of the clunky, clicky joystick I had been used to, and you could use it to sail through levels, bouncing with satisfying 8-bit sounds on a huge variety of fun enemies that behaved in many different ways. And the power ups! They didn't just appear, they tried to get away. Grabbing a mushroom gave you a second chance, grabbing a star made you feel like a super hero. Discovering all the secret routes and shortcuts could only be done with effort or word of mouth, as there was certainly no internet to aid me, and at this age video game magazines weren't even something I knew existed. At the time I wasn't one to appreciate a soundtrack, but that doesn't mean that the expertly crafted tunes haven't stuck with me nearly 30 years later. It was probably another couple of years before I got my own NES, a second hand gift from a family friend who was upgrading to a Mega-Drive. When I did I would sit in front of this game for hours, restarting if I failed, flying through the warp zones and bouncing over every bullet bill and lakitu with muscle memory that my older self is now envious of. I would play with my Sister, it was the game we could play without having to swap at "levels or dying", because it had a built in mechanic for multiplayer (although one that would leave you hoping your sibling would plummet to their doom, as control only swapped when you failed). And she always thought she was winning being Mario, but I always secretly kinda liked Luigi's green duds, he looked super cool in white when he picked up a fire flower. I was guilty of "thumbing" the controller which meant to press the appropriate buttons on the second pad, even when I wasn't the one playing. But this was all part of perfecting your reaction times. On the other hand, my Mum was guilty of leaning half way out the door in order to aid making a particularly difficult jump. Years later Shigeru Miyamoto would look back at comments from Mario players and worry that games were too easy. That you needed infinite lives or save points or magic golden feathers to get people through a level if they were stuck. This just breeds weak gamers. But Super Mario Bros made us strong. It was difficult, punishing, and if you got to World 8-3 and lost all your lives and continues well, you just didn't try hard enough, time to start again. But I wouldn't say it was brutal, but certainly unforgiving. Remember that one block ledge you had to land on? The first few times you did it, that was a slow precision jump. Then you realised that you were better letting instinct take over and leaping in two quick taps while never releasing B. Super Mario Bros redefined gaming in a way that I wouldn't experience again until the same frontman entered 64 bits. From this point onward I was well and truly a gamer. I coveted nothing as much as the second and third titles, getting lucky and scrounging SMB2 from a car boot and begging Santa for SMB3. The latter of which may have taken the format to its perfect form in the NES era, but it was the original that set the standard for 2D gaming for years and years to come.

Announced for the Switch during the indie showcase the other day, more details about the game have now surfaced. Suda also confirmed that Shovel Knight will be one of the six worlds based on indie games when he showed up to the show and done this.

I swear this is what y'all are like.

Super Play is back! I need to nab a copy of this. What a blast from the past.

Far too soon imo - especially with many Wii u's and particularly 3DS's out there and games integrated into it. Massive fuck you to the fans imo - why shut it down so soon? Enough people were fucked off with the Wii u as it was - give them some support for another year or two at least until Switch has a more than solid foothold? Big slap in the face imo - also big loss to a game like Mario Maker. Another example of Nintendo not learning lessons and repeating mistakes imo - it's the same as the Wii servers shutdown(who's gonna give me the excuse of hosting being out of their hands again this time??) as I see it, and not necessary quite right now. They obviously seem to have implemented something without forethought to real long-term sustainability - the crux of most of what I end up finding criticism against Nintendo for. It's a choice they're making here imo, and I think it's a terrible one that someehat harshly disrespects the loyalty of some of their fans and consumers.

I believe you are already a member of the N-E Destiny Clan. To complete, i believe you just need link your Companion profile to the clan.

What a world we live in.

Square Enix's TGS 2017 line-up has been announced, which includes a Project Octopath Traveller presentation on September 23rd at 09:55 JST. Definitely one I'm excited for, the art style looks great!

31st of August Switch eShop releases; Nintendo Switch Retail Download Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Ubisoft, €59.99 / £49.99) Azure Striker Gunvolt: Striker Pack (Inti Creates, €34.99 / £31.49) Switch eShop League of Evil (Ratalaika Games, €7.99 / £7.19) Zed Blade (HAMSTER, €6.99 / £6.29) Sky Ride (Mutan, €6.99 / £6.29) Switch DLC Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle Season Pass (Ubisoft, €19.99 / £15.99) Shantae: Half-Genie Hero – Pirate Queen’s Quest (WayForward, €9.99 / £8.99) Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – Biome Settlers Skin Pack 3 (Mojang, €1.99 / £1.59) Switch eShop Demo VOEZ (Flyhigh Works, free)

OK, I'm done. Thanks for the games! See ya tomorrow.

WE'RE DOING SO WELL!

Only just saw this, I've opened a room now.

I'm taking your like as a "yes", so I'll see you, and everyone else who wants to join (comment here so we'll wait!), at 10. I'll open up a room unless you open up one first.

Ya, Salmon run! Taking a shower first.

I'm fine for the 6pm Saturday slot but I won't be playing in the 11pm games as I usually settle down for the night at around 10pm.

Righto then, let's get some scheduling done. Looking at the people who we have here. I think it'll be best to have two separate group sessions on both days. Saturday 6pm @Hero-of-Time, @dazzybee, @martinist, @Nicktendo (Backup player - Meeeeeee) 11pm @Phube, @Glen-i, 2 other blokes Sunday 10am Nicktendo, Hero-of-Time, martinist, dazzybee 12pm @Ugh first aid, Hero-of-Time, dazzybee, martinist So let me explain a few things, when I say "back-up player" I mean that if one of that group decides to drop out and the other three still want to play, than I'll jump in to fill the group out. As for the late group, I'll let Hero-of-Time, dazzybee, martinist and Nicktendo decide which two will join that group. Preferably people who won't mind playing until 1am so Phube can get the most out of it. That said, Phube did say his time wasn't a sure thing, so it might not even happen. We'll have to see. I'd also like to apologise to Sméagol and Londragon, going by the times, there seems to be no way to get three other people who have the same circumstances as you to join in. Thanks for showing your interest though, maybe next time. If anyone is unhappy with this schedule, let us know and suggest an alternative. Don't leave it until the last minute.

IT.IS.DONE! Man, what a challenge those Ultimate stages are. I think I know the final one like the back of my hand due to how many times I had to repeat the thing.

It's almost as if the men on reddit haven't had much experience with women.

Can confirm women get wee shivers. If you've found this on reddit (saw it a few days ago), quite a few women seemed to confirm this as well. Where people get this from I don't know!

Pre-load is available on PS4. I have to say, I'm very excited now that I bought the game

Ah, the game that started my love for Nintendo games and systems. Like Shorty, my main gaming as a kid was done on my C64. I didn't get to play on a NES until one of my friends from school was given the console as a birthday present. I remember a bunch of us always used to cram into his small bedroom in order to have a go of this new machine. We would play for hours on end just trying to make it to the end and take turns every time someone would lose a life. Over the course of many sessions across many months we did eventually beat it. I'm trying to remember just how in the heck we found out about the hidden warp pipes in the game. Obviously this was well before the internet so I assume it was through magazines. It was probably through some kid on the play ground but then where did he get the information from? I wanna say it was through something like this. The level design of the game is something that I didn't appreciate until MUCH later in my life. The way the game teaches you how to play without using any text or guide character is just genius. By todays standards to might seem a little nuts to just let a player get on with it without telling them what is what, but the game is so well crafted that you don't need to be told what to do. Here's a great video on explaining what I mean. The game, as did many at the time, taught us to persevere with the challenges that it laid before us. You would get so far, die, lose all your lives and then start from scratch but each time you would see that you were learning from your mistakes and getting better and further each time. I think growing up with these types of games helped make me the type of gamer I am today. This is sometimes something that I miss about modern day gaming and why I think the likes of the Souls series/genre has carved out a market for itself.

Did anyone else use the warp zones so often that you barely played half of the worlds? Did anyone have a rare copy without Duck Hunt? This is one of my fav videos to get you back in the mood, two speed runners racing through the game side by side

What confused me about the mother/son team was that they were clearly competent Lego'ers, and she said she did all this planning and none of it was working. I think she was lying and didn't do any planning.

I like the duo behind the pirate theme park. I was impressed by how they made a smooth cylinder out of lego for that wave ride. I think the mother and son team won't get through to next stage next week since they struggled with the technic bricks and their flower park is so boring unlike other people's builds.

Wow. The speed of this isn't too shocking looking at the gc and wii support once the next generation launched... but with those two consoles, the online wasn't really all that present. The Wii was more palatable given the circumstances too... but.. yeah this really affects my decision making process about how worth while getting a switch may be. Maybe switch will be better supported as it is paid for, but who knows. Maybe this is simply to make segregating the paid for online services from unpaid services more easily? I certainly hope basic online functionality (ha.. I know it already was fairly basic!) remains for the most part...

Yeah they don't let you have a hyphen in the clan name much to my annoyance!

Looks like I'll be popping into WH Smiths in a weeks time then.

Retro Gamer is published nationwide, so any good book or magazine store really (I know that WH Smiths stock it).

I'll be playing Destiny 2 from the beginning this time so should be able to join you guys. Is there a link to the clan so I can join it? EDIT: I think I found it. I was searching for "N-Europe" and not "N Europe".

Sooo, there is an NE-Clan I assume? How can I join? May I join? I want to join!

Bungie have announced a few dates for things in the game.

Preorder goodies.

I missed the first episide but watched last nights. Some of the shit they built was incredible. Although those two little shits need to be kicked off. The missus cracked up when that mother got all anal on the flower colours for the theme park.

What a great surprise to wake up to. Lovely stuff. These will look great on the shelf alongside Shovel Knight himself. Here's some details about what they do.

@BowserBasher How can you do so well on the first two GPs and then fall so far on the last. This is becoming a bit of a habit

Thank God for that. The players Chelsea are going for make no sense.

Holy crap! @S.C.G actually made it IN! on time! What kind of bizzaro world have I fallen into!?

Live action trailer

Hold on, did you just Dazzybee truth itself?

I haven't joined a team yet, will do some time either later today or tomorrow. EDIT: Joined Team Flight

Much like Wind Waker and Skyward Sword (and unlike Twilight Princess) I think the cel shaded art style they went with will age far better than the plastic look from this weird bug.

Indeed. Hilarious stuff but also not surprising, either.

The best way to do that is to have Miiverse and allow people to link their Facebook account to also post there. While the shutting down of Miiverse is expected, them not patching certain games is downright disgusting and is a bad sign for Switch owners, a sign that Nintendo don't care about fixing things that can easily be fixed. The YouTube feature in Smash/Mario Kart could easily be kept by puling out the "posting to Miiverse" part of it, Tipping Stars could give you enough free stars (perhaps on completion of all levels) so you can unlock everything, and Splatoon/Smash could have a "best of Miiverse" selection of posts to populate the hub/Miiverse stage.

I think it's quite disgusting that they're shutting it down just over half a year after the Switch launches!

Jesus, this looks like shit.

There's absolutely no denying that Red/Blue were incredibly important. It's basically the defining game of my and probably many other's childhood. But it's been improved on since then, quite a few times. My issue is not with the games themselves. Hell, I rebought Yellow on 3DS VC without a second thought the day it got released. My issue is the people who crave the same old 150 Pokemon over and over again. It's this attitude that they're the only important Pokemon so let's just focus on them. The attitude that I've seen a few people claim that Ultra Sun is only note worthy because they're might be an explorable Kanto, where before that possibility arose, they weren't interested. It's actually one of the things I think Pokken does well. Double Mewtwo and Pikachu aside (Hawlucha got robbed) it's got a nice mixture of Pokemon from all sorts of different games. And it's more interesting because of it.

Nice demo, shame they had to put their banner right over the health meter but good coverage in any case. I'm at that impatient stage where the game could arrive right now and I'd jump right into playing it, I've seen enough video footage to confirm that it's probably going to be amazing. Anyway, only half a year or so to go...

https://twitter.com/Lythero/status/892580204174082050

If you liked the 8-bit Mega Man, Zelda II, Duck Tales, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros 3 type games you'll love this. It's easily one of my favourite games of recent years. Top notch gameplay, beautiful visuals, amazing sound, great humour, basically the complete package.