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Or for a more accurate title "Cube wants an excuse to post some of his photos from his holiday a year ago". So, holidays this year are somewhat...lacking, so what better than sharing memories of previous holidays and remembering the good times. A year ago (today) I went to Carcassonne, it started off as a joke ("lets to go Carcassonne to play the board game there") but me and my girlfriend looked at photos and it looked amazing. Our original plan was Edinburgh, but due to train and accommodation costs, the price difference wasn't actually that much, so we figured we'd go abroad. I also had an additional plan: work in a proposal somewhere. On the first day, after sorting out our apartment (which was nice and we could see some of the towers, and was cheaper than any hotel we found), we pottered around the medieval city: Then had some food at a restaurant that looked nice. We discovered the speciality of Carcassone: a, which is a sort of duck and pork bean casserole. It was amazing, and something I make at home as a treat every few months, we had another walk around at night, where they light up the city: The full day 1 album is here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8FGb81Fu8KFRJY9R8 When I got there, I was stunned by the size of it, it's an absolutely beautiful city. Does anyone else have any holidays they wish to share? I'll be making an update each day

They do have a trick up their sleeve actually.

Galaxy 2 :p?

If I had to choose I’d rather have 3D Land added to the 3D World port than Galaxy 2 added to the All-Stars collection. Not a popular opinion I guess

PS3 ended up selling more than the 360 worldwide

1) Not been playing anything since I stopped checking in to Animal Crossing regularly. Been meaning to pick BOTW back up, but haven't had the motivation or the time recently. 2) Honestly not sure. I haven't been keeping up that much, so i'm not sure if there is anything that i'd consider a must buy. It depends on whether I end up completing some of the games on my backlog and see something that looks interesting. 3) Nah. I've played all three previously, and don't have a burning desire to play any of them again. Plus, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole FOMO time-limited aspect of them. 4) If i did somehow end up with a copy - Sunshine is probably the one I have fondest memories of, so i'd probably start that up.

This: A small subsection of N-Europe provocateurs: Sane people:

Can we change "PSN Number" to "PSN ID" which you see when you click a member's name? PSN Number sounds like someone's gran referring to their PIN.

Good point. I do think though that remastering the three 3D titles into one graphical style would be a bit much to ask compared to what they did with SNES All-Stars (translating 8Bit to 16Bit graphics). If they would follow that same vision with the 3D collection, it would mean rebuilding Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy into one and the same (the Oddysey) engine. That would be epic ofcourse, but would take loads of time to develop and I guess they wouldn’t then bundle them for the same price they’re currently asking (seeing how they’re handling the Super Mario 3D World port and ask full price for that ) In the end it’s up to anyone individually if they think this collection is worth their money of course.

1) My Switch is collecting a little bit of dust at the moment, but hey, at least what I'm playing on my PS4 is also available on the Switch! Really enjoying Final Fantasy IX right now 2) On the Switch, that'd be 3D All-Stars. Haven't played any of those games before, so looking forward to it! But as the next questions are also about that collection, beyond that I have some interest in Pikmin 3 Deluxe (whether or not I pick it up largely depends on if I'm in the mood for it when the end of October rolls around), and like most others here, for me Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will absolutely be day 1! Just crossing my fingers that the PS5 doesn't drop on that same day, or I don't know what I'll do 3) Guilty as charged 4) I mean, having never played any of them, I feel like it has to be 64 first! I'm looking forward to seeing the evolution of the games, so plan on going through them in order of release. Sunshine could be a blast of nostalgia, and I would like to line it up in time for me to play Galaxy in December. Seems like such a cosy game, so should be a great time around Christmas (I hope)!

1) AllStars. Finished 1 and 2, halfway through Lost Levels, which has actually been much easier than expected. Did the 128 lives trick on 1-1 so not using rewinds, but I've only lost about 10 lives so far as of stage 5-1. The game is great to be honest, much better than I remember. It's no harder than Smeagol's Mario Maker levels Murder By Numbers is still getting rotation, the difficulty has massively spiked now, I'm close to the start of the final chapter. 2) Hyrule Warriors 2. 100+ hours in the Wii U and 3DS games. The BOTW backstory makes this even more interesting. Such a shrewd move on Nintendo's part in making BOTW into a trilogy. While I'm annoyed, to some extent, that this is an asset flip and a sequel to a game that no one really asked for, I'm super excited to play it and learn about what happened 100 years ago... Day one. 3) -1 4) I'm really keen to play both Galaxy games again, and I'd like to go back to Sunshine. I hope these games get a separate release and that they eventually port over Galaxy 2, but I'm not interested in this package as I've made clear countless times already

Yeah the game looks good, I got the press kit so I uploaded all the screenshots from it on the main site as well: https://www.n-europe.com/games/hyrule-warriors-age-of-calamity/screenshots

Someone made a mod for F-Zero GP Legend to restore/add all of the e-reader content. I'm tempted to get a GBA flash card to try it out, has anyone got any recommendations?

Ok, I need you to write down all your names for all the Links that exist, please.

Poor Galaxy 2...

Nope, Choo-choo Link is Windy Link's Descendant. There is one Link who has appeared in 3 main games. Possibly 4, depending on how you look at it. This Link (Sleepy Link, I call him) is the star of Link to the Past, Link's Awakening and the two Oracle games.

1) What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment? Paper Mario: The Origami King (early days so far, but liking the adventure part, not so much the battling) 2) What's the next game release you're looking forward to? Hotshot Racing, and it's out tomorrow, may put down that preorder price today. 3) How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? Not at all, if I can manage it. My son may have other ideas, I'll keep quiet and hope it passes by. 4) Which game are you looking forward to playing first? If I did, I'd look forward to Sunshine the most, but I'd probably play them sequentially.

You're in luck;

What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment? Mostly just Animal Crossing, but also dipped my toe into Astral Chain, Bioshock collection, Overwatch and Spellbreak. What's the next game release you're looking forward to? I’ve pre ordered All-Stars, Pikmin 3 and 3D World and will get Hyrule Warriors 2 and while I’m sure I’ll enjoy them all I’m not extremely hyped. I would be hyped by Prime 4 or BotW 2 but they seem far off. Will also be looking forward to Pokemon DLC, New Pokemon Snap, No More Heroes 3 and Bayonetta 3. Give me a new Starfox, F-Zero, Wave Race, Punch-Out!!, Excite Truck/bike, 1080, Eternal Darkness or Kid Icarus and I’ll never moan about Nintendo again for the next ten years or so. How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? Me and a lot of other people. Which game are you looking forward to playing first? I guess I’ll play them in order, so 64 first.

What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment? None, outside of the occasional bit of Mario Maker 2 and 52 All Time Classics. I’m on a retro gaming binge at the moment and have been since around April/May (outside of Paper Mario: The Origami King and Shantae & The Seven Sirens). Speaking of which, I just got myself a copy of Soul Blazer and started playing it for the first time. It’s great! Loving it so far! What's the next game release you're looking forward to? Pikmin 3 Deluxe (for the new content) How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? Guilty. Won’t be playing it for some time though most likely. Unless the urge to play Sunshine takes me (played through SM64 and SMG again not that long ago; but it has been a while since I last played SMS) Which game are you looking forward to playing first? Super Mario Sunshine. Really keen to see if they’ve addressed any of its many flaws!

Interesting. Sony are apparently doing everything wrong apart from games, yet also doing the same as Nintendo (who are the best evAr) with regards to having "no game pass". Schrödinger's Sony?

Oh damn! That's super cool! Might have to give that a go myself! I have the Everdrive X5; it's the best GBA flash cartridge currently available. All these mods work perfectly fine with it.

Monthly plans usually work out to having you pay more overall. But in this case? It is actually technically less than buying them outright. Now, you can make an argument for not wanting to sub each month (baring in mind that there is no official option to pay anything other than monthly for XBGamePass), but it is actually technically a great deal as far as these things go. It's pretty unheard of to actually SAVE money on a monthly payment scheme! Not that I'd personally advocate for it (Hell, I just gamed the system myself the other day with the current XBLG conversion offer), but I'm genuinely surprised to see some legitimate value in such an offer!

Oh, Gwendoline Christie's in this?

Yep, pretty much where I'm at. Should have a price/pre-order date announcement before Xbox pre-orders go live on the 22nd I imagine. Or hope. I mean we have to know by TGS, surely? Based on Xbox's prices, I'm expecting them to price match the Series X with the disc version at £449/$499, and £399/$449 for the Digital Edition. I don't think they'd risk going higher, but even if we saw £499/$499 ($549?), I think they're still in a fine position. People will want third party AAA experiences, and they're coming to both consoles, many of them not part of Xbox's (admittedly awesome) Game Pass - I'm thinking of Cyberpunk in particular here. A shorter AAA first party game in Spider-Man: Miles Morales is going to perform like crazy, I honestly wouldn't be too surprised if they just went with that on the first party front at launch. I think everyone forgets just how crazy well the first one sold! Question marks over Demon's Souls, feel like that'd be a great title at launch, but if not at launch, then maybe in December? There are already so many games on the way to round out the year, and I'm not confident PlayStation would release two of their big games at the very start. Would love to be wrong, but would have no idea when I'd get around to playing it, what with Cyberpunk 2077, Age of Calamity and (potentially) Spidey all so close together too

Because it also has the first party games 🤷🏼‍♂️

I was about to post the MJ one in the PS5 thread

Consider this: Sony are known for getting excellent value for money from their CPU/GPU partners, presumably as they can promise around 100M sales across a 5-6 year period. For example, the PS4's bill of materials for the GPU, CPU and RAM was estimated to be $140 per console, only $30 more than what Nintendo paid for the Wii U's, which was significantly weaker Sony's SSD has been produced internally, has it not? As it's not off the shelf, I imagine they'll simply accept that as the cost of R&D, whereas Microsoft will have purchased their own SSDs from suppliers. The XSX has much more expensive components. Additionally, as the end of the last financial year, Sony made more money from PSN than Xbox and Nintendo combined (I think that was profit, not just revenue). The margins on digital downloads are so big that I think Sony will be happy to take a small loss on each console. I'm expecting U.S prices of $399/$499 (pre-tax obv).

If Microsoft can reach 450 with a more powerful console then it doesn't seem fantasy at all that Sony could reach 400 with a digital only version which will be tied into PSN purchases for life. Microsoft are also giving the US a much better deal for the Xbox Series X (499 USD is 384 GBP) so there's definitely wriggle room there.

£449.99 is an amazing price for what this thing is packing! Fucking absurd value. Sony better be willing to bleed if they want to even come close to that price... Oh! And on top of that? Xbox Game Pass now includes the entierty of EA's catalogue, including day 1 releases of Fifa, at NO ADDITIONAL COST! Yeah, this shit is gonna be HUGE in Europe!

The Xbox Series X is officially confirmed to be $499, launching 10th November. Pre-orders start 22nd September. UPDATE: ...and coming in at £449 in the UK. Your move PlayStation.

1) I'm playing Metro 2033 now after abandoning Hellblade a couple of weeks ago. Also managed to play A Short Hike a couple of days last week, 2) BotW 2, I guess, or Hollow Knight: Silksong. Nothing much coming out aside from indies. Will pick up some games from my wishlist in the meantime. 3) Nope. I have or have played the games. 4) If I were to get it, I would probably play SM64 because it's been a while.

1) What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment? I haven’t touched my switch in quite a while, I’m not even sure where it is to be honest. 2) What's the next game release you're looking forward to? Super Mario 3D All Stars! 3) How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? Yep, already have my order in. 4) Which game are you looking forward to playing first? I think I’ll play through them in order, but I’m most looking forward to Sunshine at the moment. Not really sure why as it’s my least favourite of the three, I just really want to play it for some reason.

Yeah that's what I was going to say. But it's a side issue really. In my defence Ronnie chose those films!

Install locally

Mod note:Just to say I didn't clock this little bit of an exchange when I posted yesterday. @Sheikah I can see where Jonnas is coming from but also I can see it was from you to DCubed and so I'll leave it up to you two there as sometimes member-to-member context can be lost to others(as recently with me and Goafer to some). To pretend that the quoted statement wasn't reading baity and confrontational would be a lie - but snippets and context etc. I have edited a part of your post reply in that - as ever any discussions folks wish to have with me on this feel free to PM public wall etcetc. Not here in thread.

Can we all just step back for a moment and appreciate just how much this game's name sounds like a bad, edgelord fan game?

1) What games are people playing on their Switch at the moment? Astral Chain, Paper Mario: The Origami King and Yoshi Crafted World. I also still play Animal Crossing and Tetris 99 every day 2) What's the next game release you're looking forward to? Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury. I can never decide which is my favourite 3D Mario game; it changes from one of the two Galaxy games to this. So the idea they its getting released again with extra content is fantastic news for me, I just wish it was out this side of Christmas. I can't think of anything else for the Switch I want outside of that. 3) How many people are actually picking up Super Mario 3D All-Stars on day one? I can't make up my mind on it. I think more should have been done with these titles other then upping the resolution and and improving the odd texture (which they kind of had to do anyway). I played Mario 64 so many times when it came out because of how much I enjoyed it, but the last few times I went back I seemed to get bored. I strongly dislike Mario Sunshine and the only way I'd play it again if it was completely remade, which it isn't. So the only game in the collection that I truly want is Mario Galaxy. Funny enough, had this just been Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 instead, I'd be getting this day one. 4) Which game are you looking forward to playing first? If I bought it, Super Mario Galaxy.

Our pleasure, and thanks for promoting it again, Sam.

I really meant to play The Messenger before this weeks episode, that definitely didn't happen though.

Listened to the rest: nice hearing those thoughts on The Messenger, I feel like I have a clearer idea of that game's appeal. Last PodPals, I threw Halo under the bus for no good reason. This time, @drahkon did the same with Super Metroid I hope this is the start of a trend.

Me neither, but I stupidly thought, "hey, the first novel was good, so...!" I mean... they weren't terrible or anything. They just felt unnecessary and didn't reach the heights of the first novel. Oh well.

68 mins in, I don't actually have anything to add, other than mentioning that "The NES couldn't even run NES games" is one of the best lines I've ever heard.

Sooooo... is anyone else excited to play Sunshine again?!

Ok, that's enough. I ignored your previous egging, because I figured it was a question (if an aggressive one), but please don't ask other forum members to take a stand, or have the same opinions as you. It's been pretty clear nobody in this forum is particularly happy with the collection, and there's a multitude of reasons for that. Don't go around demanding they show the same level of indignation that you do. It's bad enough faith when politicians do it, don't bring that habit here.

Finished New Super Lucky's Tale. While it all feels derivative of other platformers and doesn't really do anything new, what it for do is really good. Very entertaining to play though and to collect everything. It does bring level styles from different platformers together, so you get a bit of 2D Mario, 3D Mario, Spyro, Modern Sonic, so there is variety.

As part of our efforts to crank up the activity here on the forum I thought it might be a good idea to get to know each other a little. I think we have an idea of each other’s forum personalities but what about real life? This is partially inspired by a very old thread we had, almost to the day, ten years ago. My previous reply is in the spoiler. I think following the same format of some key information about ourselves would be a good way to reacquaint with each other. Who I am now: - I’m Will - 36 years old - Born in Stourbridge but I’ve spent more than half my life in other places - Have a Business degree from Bournemouth - I live in Singapore having spent 4 years in London, 4 years in San Francisco and 2 years in Tokyo - I work as an Operations Director for a video games company - I still love F1 as my main sport but I also love any live sports event I can attend in person - I legally got married in 2017 but we didn’t have our wedding until last year - I have a two month old son - I speak decent conversational Japanese from my time in Japan - I love video games but don’t have much time to play them, usually I stick with the PS4 F1 game - I love Japanese food and try to eat out as much as possible - I travel a lot, both for work and pleasure, usually to Japan or back home. My record was something like 53 flights in a year - I like model trains and have a small collection of n-scale Shinkansen and steam trains - I’ve met a couple of celebrities - I’d like to move back to Japan in the future I’ll leave it there, but if you want to know more about me just ask. Tell me about yourselves, I can’t wait to hear about everyone.