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6 days to go!

I must say that it's been a while. The last time that I was within the midst of N-E, the population dwindled. And now there's less. Is there some sort of Tournament of Power in progress whereby the King of Everything is erasing the losers? It's that time of the year where, traditionally, we express our hopes, dream, wishes and prophecies. Well I foretell an event multitudinous in quality: Nintendo shall announce and showcase an upgraded Switch entitled.... Switch-On Steroids. The SOS will have sufficient internal storage so as to no longer need external storage the price of half-a-console after installing only one-and-a-half of software. SOS will boast a chip efficient at running all new third party software, so that all said software could be available on the system. First party software could be enriched aswell, both visually and mechanically (such as increased A.I and graphical based rendering techniques which could be used for various puzzles etc). Overhauled online infrastructure which includes; seamless gameplay worldwide; player history list; simple friend requests on a click-and-send basis; improved communication, so can text or voice message random players who aren't on your friends list, and optional voice chat in and across software regardless if friend or not (and via the SOS itself, even inserting smartphone earphones in the SOS to use as a gaming mic). SOS homescreen modernized. More like Wiiu's Mii Plaza homescreen meets Splatoon 2's Inkopolis Plaza. Next gen immersive interaction! Classic Nintendo games from all/most/some previous Nintendo consoles available for purchase with refined visuals and full online connectivity (gameplay and communication). With service of the cloud storage and/or SD card, space of these software could be accomodate without the need for our Thanos-inspired will to erase half the population of the cursed system. Now as for software, I called go on all night long baby. Dont just bring games, or else they'll be ghastly like Star Fox Zero, Mario: Odessy and Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. I'm sorry, but the novelty of the "big" concepts of the latter two weren't big enough for big minds. Openworlds moreorless were done in the original Zelda, all it is is that today had the illusion of slightly improved visuals and things such as climbing trees, buying property and finding treasure that isn't really necessary. Look at the world in say, Assasin's Creed: Origin -- it just feels alive, organically! Authenticity and purpose is needed! Think of Windfall Island in Wind Waker, or the postman motoring across Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time.... the entire game should be filled with this on a monumental spectrum! In Wind Waker how the old dude taught you combat at the beginning, and how you explore the seven seas for forbbiden scrolls -- these should be ways how each player discovers unique techniques (some magical!) throughout the game. Heck, throw in some sort of online multiplayer so that players can combine their unique skills in puzzle based quests and war based quests, and heck, perhaps VS mode.... which sails me fishingly to my next subject -- motion commands. Skyward Sword was on the right tracks with that extremely basic sealing technique and general combat. Simply power this up. The sky is literawii the limit! Enemies should each have 2-8 attack routines and learn the defend simple routines (to counter mindless spam like in Wii Sports Resort sword duels). And various gestures whilst activating magic uses magical spells (attacks, defenses, summonings like Fi for example, sealings and so on), perhaps some foes could do this too! All with a blockbuster story that'll bring the audience to tears, full-on with voice acting (jap dub with eng subs until decent english voice actors can be found, at which point simply offer it as paid DLC). Now THIS is how a Zelda game can be powered-up with art and sheer love. Do similar to so with Smash Bros (modes damn it, modes! Tag mode switch style, team mode, GOOD adventure, splendid next-level stages where you go to different dimensions where you smash your opponent, the screen follows the one being smashed in the distance if you get what I mean.... etc etc etc), King of The Hill mode (like in Ultimate Ninja Storm) which is clan-friendly!.... Go nuts with modes! Fun modes! Conduit 3. Star Fox: Trek Wars (no more on-rails and hell no no racer [racing missions but not the entire game racing, that is what F Zero is for!], a full on exploration game similar to Mass Effect: Andromeda, Beyond Good & Evil 2 and so on). F Zero... brilliant story, ship customization, online MODES (normal 8-16 player [maybe even 32!], survival, pink slips and so on). Mario Party (in the style of #4 but bigger and better with online!). A proper Super Mario. A proper Mario Kart (sorry). Fire Emblem but next-gen (immersive story and gameplay, a SUPER rich RPG world!). Metroid next-gen (navigate galaxies, unique planets, insane bosses and environments, engaging story, perhaps some co-op etc etc etc). Give us an openworld Donkey Kong, Kirby and Kid Icarus done artistically and next gen. And all these games use motion controls to offer a deeper and wider gameplay experience. Then all third party may aswell have optional full support of motion control (to make there be a greater reason to own the Switch version). Nintendo would take over the gaming industry and Sony and Microsoft would be forced to innovate and offer motion control as the industry standard.... So technology could actually modernize and advance. Currently the industry is painfully stagnant. In short, significal improvements to hardware, software and internet functionality and services I dream to see. The Switch is a tablet so I'd like to see all sorts of apps; drawing, video entertainmemt, food delivery to celebrate gaming victories or watch E3, streaming apps for E3 and Directs/Tree House, just all sorts of apps. If this were to happen, I'd buy Switch-On Steroids for £545.99 any day of the century.

Just 1week to go for what could potentially be one of Nintendo's best E3 showings in quite some time. With a focus entirely on Switch for 2018, including of course the much anticipated Super Smash Bros., it should be a spectacular, exciting and hype inducing show!! or... you know, a ginormous disappointment with no F-Zero... again. Anyway, I'm sure you won't want to miss it, not to mention enjoy all the reactions of fellow N-E members once the direct is live. Tuesday 12th June 17:00 (BST) 18:00 (CEST) https://e3.nintendo.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/Nintendo https://www.twitch.tv/nintendo So yeah, let's get this hype train moving... All aboard! BTW, should any further rumours/leaks materialise before the direct airs, please use the following thread to discuss them:

10pm I'm afraid. Depends when I leave work and on the state of the traffic. Should know by 21.30. Edit: Damn, Russian time . By 19.30 BST I'll confirm.

Those further details being... Let the countdown begin. ~ 17 months to go

Boxart:

Some hopes/predictions of mine: Animal Crossing - it's not a game, it's therapy! Metroid Prime 4 - just looking forward to seeing it. Fire Emblem - it'd be nice to have a normal FE game on Switch. Mario Maker - I never played any previous of version of this, but would love tinkering about with designs on Switch much more than the Wii U. New Zelda - Given the presumed expense of BotW, I'm more and more convinced Nintendo will seek to recoup costs to the maximum by using the assets for an MM-style adventure.

While I agree it's far too soon to be expecting that kind of stuff, I believe @markderoos was asking @drahkon what announcements would make him excited. Doesn't necessarily have to be realistic.

My bets are: The Direct opens with Retros game, with the end of the year being it's release date. Fire Emblem shown and announced for release at the end of the year. Smash gets a September release date to launch alongside the online service. Metroid Prime Trilogy to be released on the Switch to drum up excitement for MP4. Bayonetta 3 fully shown off. Wii U ports announced, namely New Super Mario Bros U + Luigi U, Xenoblade Chronicles X and The Wonderful 101. Bravely Default 1+2 announced for the Switch. The World Ends With You gets a release date. ( given the S-E have their own presser this year, both this and my previous bet may show up there instead ) Rabbids DLC gets shadow dropped. Hollow Knight gets shadow dropped. Link's Awakening 3DS remake to be announced and shown on the Treehouse section of the show. Surprisingly strong 3rd party support is shown.

Maybe you're not weird enough for this thread?

I also had mosquito bites. I also have bloodstains on the wall. I guess me and the mosquito are even.

Splatin.

Arlo just posted this gem, which is a great reminder of how far Nintendo has come in 10 years :D.

Looks like Ikaruga will arrive on PS4 soon.

Don't ever play Pokémon Ranger.

But how am I supposed to build up a strong loving bond with my Pokémon?

This is my biggest issue with this. The EU market is getting the short end of the stick here and there has been no justification for it. Had Capcom given us a valid reason as to why this keeps happening then that would be fine. As it stands it's as if we are being treated differently for no good reason.

Even though I bought the special edition with the season pass, I haven't even bothered to install the last DLC. You fucked up, Bungie.

A couple of bits of artwork for the game have been released. I'm looking forward to seeing how the game looks and plays.

I posted this rumour in the General thread but it may be relevant to the Switch so i'll plonk it in here, as well. There were rumours of a Tales coming to the Switch and this could be it. However, Phil Spencer said that MS were looking to get more Japanese support for their console and seeing as the game was originally a Xbox exclusive, this could be a big get for them if this version is also exclusive. On the other hand, the Tales series has had great success on the Playstation platform in recent years and they may want to continue that trend. It may be that this gets a release on all 3 platforms, which would makes sense. It ran fine on the Xbox 360 and PS3 ( Japan only version ) so the Switch could easily handle the game.

It's fine, I don't need you

And it will be a Battle Royale game, right? 😭

@S.C.G

Thankfully, Sakurai has actual taste and would never let that happen. In fact, he has such good taste, he cut Squirtle and Ivysaur to make room for best water starter Greninja. I would legit love to see someone come to a competitive Smash tourney and use the Pokeball controller. I miss Squirtle and Ivysaur.

Can’t wait for Wart in Smash!

Whoops.

Can't wait. I have very high expectations. So be prepared to see me raging about everything Nintendo does at E3

I INseminated yer ma last night

I was INside yer ma last night.

Hope it involves him dressing up as Pokemon. I miss him being in the Directs.

We know where Satoru Shibata went to now! https://nintendosoup.com/satoru-shibata-promoted-to-the-pokemon-company-outside-director/ He's now the Outside Director of The Pokemon Company! (Shuntaro Furukawa's previous role before he became Nintendo's President and CEO) Congrats to him! Great to see him land a sweet gig!

So, i've been trying to add my trophy card to my signature for a week now and i've still had no luck. It used to work but now I keep getting an error message when I try to upload it. What's weird is that Map uses the same kind of trophy card and he is able to use it on his signature. Any ideas why i'm unable to get mine working?

I finally got around to starting this collection properly over the weekend. I want get through the lot of them before Kingdom Hearts 3 drops and figured I had better get a move on. I finished the first game last night. Apart from a camera that likes to fly all over the place at times, the game still holds up stupidly well. I finished it on the hardest setting to nab the trophy and I started another play through straight away, this time on the easiest setting as I have to finish the game in under 15 hours and without changing equipment. I got the platinum on the PS3 version of the game but I love the series so much that i'm gonna try and nab it for this version as well.

I snapped it up and have put a fair bit of time into it. Here are my thoughts on the game. I often get nostalgic when thinking about the Street Fighter games. Looking back at them sends me though a time warp and I can see myself through the ages, with each new iteration of the game highlighting a certain point in my life. Street Fighter II gets me thinking about playing the game in a local arcade as a kid, usually on a Saturday after a session in the swimming baths with my friends. It also reminds me of the Turbo edition that was released on the SNES. Getting the game in a special edition tin will always stick with me. Fast forward to the Saturn and Playstation era and along came the release of the Alpha series, which to this day remains my favourites out of all of the Street Fighter games. I used to play this a lot locally on both consoles with a friend of mine who still remains my best mate to this day. Lastly, the arrival of Street Fighter III takes me back to when I owned a Dreamcast and the joy that console brought to me with its arcade conversations. As you can see, I have certain amount of affection for the series. Ryu has come a long way since the original game You'll first have to decide on what mode you would like to play. Offline mode offers up things such as Arcade, Versus and Training. Local play allows you to create and join lobbies, as well as the ability to create local tournaments. Online mode lets players play ranked matches, casual matches, look at leaderboards, create lobbies or join friends. You can also select the experience level you are searching for when looking for opponents. As you can see, there are a lot of options and modes for people to play around with. However, not everything is fine and dandy with all of these modes. Over the past few days I have tried having a few online matches and the game seems to be pretty broken a lot of the time.Lobbies have a habit of hanging, meaning you have to quit out of the game, people are quitting mid-match if they are getting beat and finally, and probably the worst problem of them all, is that the game has major netcode issues. The game is VERY laggy a lot of the time, which is baffling when you consider that Capcom have already released a Street Fighter game on the Switch that played really well online. These issues aren't exclusive to the Switch version of the game. You just have to take a look around on the internet and you can see these issues cropping up on every platform the game got released on. Capcom have a lot of patching to do in order to get this in a state that is acceptable. "Do I have something on my foot?" The final mode on offer is the Museum. I love this! In here you can have a look at the Street Fighter timeline, showing when things like when the games, anime and comic books were released. There is also a characters section for you to have a look through. Here you can look at your favourite characters and read their biographies or look at each of their moves that they can pull off in each of the games they have appeared in. The music section has a cracking selection of tunes to listen to. You can go through each of the games and pick which tracks you specifically would like to listen to. The final option in this mode is a Making Of section. There is an insane amount of artwork and design documents for players to look through here and it's interesting to see what the thought process was for various designs in the series. Just one of the many amazing pieces of artwork in the museum Once you have decided on what mode you would like to play on it is time to select a game. On offer in this delightful bundle are 12 games to play, which include: Street Fighter Street Fighter II Street Fighter II Turbo Street Fighter II Turbo Hyper Fighting Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers Super Street Fighter II Turbo Street Fighter Alpha Street Fighter Alpha 2 Street Fighter Alpha 3 Street Fighter III: The New Generation Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact Street Fighter III: Third Strike Phew! As you can see, there is lots on offer and something for everyone to enjoy. While most will have their favourite and gravitate towards that, I would still recommend playing through each of them, especially the original game. It certainly has not stood the test of time, unlike the rest of the collection, but it's worth trying at least once just to see how the series began. It's a very different experience! If kind of makes you wonder how the series went from that to the masterpiece that is Street Fighter II. Once the game has loaded up you will be presented with the title screen and it will then go straight into the character selection process. Pressing the + button will load up a bunch of options for you to have a play around with. You can save the game at any point and load it back up if something goes wrong. Not one for the purists but it's certainly a nice addition. You can also change the button layout on your controller or look at how to pull off certain special moves. There are also a bunch of options for how the game will be displayed. You can have it full screen, with borders or widescreen, as well as having a couple of options for filters. These options are available for every game in the collection and can be accessed in exactly the same way. Guy putting his Final Fight experience to good use Gameplay wise all of the games play exactly as they should. If you have played a Street Fighter game then you will be right at home with all of these games...well, expect maybe the original. With these being arcade versions of the games I found them to be a little more difficult than the home console conversations, however, you can actually tweak the difficulty settings. Before you start the game if you hit the Y button you can alter things like the game speed, difficulty and damage levels. These were quite hidden ( especially when playing in portable mode ) so keep an eye out for them if you find yourself struggling. The game has practically no loading times at all, which makes starting and continuing matches very fast. Visually the game looks fantastic on the Switch's screen. The sprite work looks amazing, especially in the later games. Street Fighter III has some fantastic animations that really pop on the console's screen. While I love Alpha 3, the lack of World Tour mode in it is a bit of a downer. It was to be expected seeing as it was a home console exclusive mode but it still would have been nice to have had it in this package. It's a mode that I spent most of my time in when playing on the console versions and i'm sad that it didn't make the cut, even though it does make sense why it didn't. The graphics in the Alpha series have really stood the test of time Playing through each of these games you can see how the series has progressed over the years. More characters were introduced, gameplay styles added and graphics and animations improved. Still, outside of the original game, there is a sense of familiarity while playing each of the games, no matter what version they are. If you are an expert in one of the games then chances are that a lot of your skills will transfer over into one of the other games, providing that your character is available. This sense of familiarity makes it easy to jump between games and get straight into the action, without having to re-learn everything. The game that got every gamer hooked on the series back in the 90's Outside of the online problems, there are a few other issues with this package. Firstly, the game is very expensive compared to the other console versions. You will be looking to pay around an extra £10 for the Switch version of the game. Also, the other console got Ultra Street Fighter IV as a preorder bonus. This is something that is becoming very common amongst publishers and it's sad that Switch owners are having to put up with paying this "Switch tax". Secondly, there is an issue with the controls on the Switch. The directional pad on the joy-con isn't the best for this game, due to it requiring exact inputs in order to pull off your attacks and special moves. I found it really tricky to pull off certain moves when I needed to. This led to a lot of frustrating moments while playing the game. I can't comment on how it works with the d-pad on the Pro Controller ( apparently it's still a bit iffy ) but it seems that the best way to play this would be with either the Pokken controller or with a proper arcade stick. Either one of those should lead to a more satisfying experience. Lastly, there seems to be an issue with the audio of the game. I've been playing the game exclusively in handheld mode and the audio is very quiet in, even on max output. There doesn't seem to be a way to increase the volume, which is very annoying as a lot of the stages in the games have some fantastic music in them. Obviously, you can get around this by simply plugging in a headset but that really shouldn't have to be the case. Conclusion This is a fantastic package for those who want to relive their youth or try out the series for the first time. They are some absolute classics on offer here for players to enjoy and it's a great way of celebrating a series that has shaped the genre for 30 years now. Sure, there are a few issues but, despite these, I still recommend picking up this collection, especially if you have a controller with a decent d-pad. The Street Fighter games are a significant series in gaming's landscape and to have so many of them in a single package, and on a console that doubles as a portable system, is a dream come true.

Been married a week now... url picture We are currently in London for our honeymoon. Having a meal in the Shard tonight and then we fly to Japan for two weeks on Sunday. Cannot wait!!

Some of my earlier D.I.Y. stuff is preserved on YouTube: