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Absolutely baffling that this wasn't an official thing by Nintendo.

Sumo 64 JP release: 28th November 1997 PAL release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Bottom Up Publisher: Bottom Up Original Name: 64 Ōzumō N64 Magazine Score: 90% N64 Magazine gave this Japanese-only sumo wrestling a rather impressive 90%. Even so, I was surprised as to how much I actually enjoyed this. Unfortunately, there is no fan patch for this game but thankfully Google Lens did a pretty good job at translating the dialogue – it was a bit odd in places, but I got the general gist of it. And, surprisingly, there really is a lot of dialogue, as this has a fully fledged story mode – not just pitting you against other fighters like every other fighting game, but a proper story about you joining the professional Sumo wrestling and your life outside of the ring. You’ll encounter good or bad events based on how you perform in the matches. Each match is extremely short but very fast paced. The game suggests optimal moves, but you can also do your own thing. To be completely honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing most of the time and there was a lot of button mashing, but I did deduce that there was a rhythm to the fighting, and performing moves in time to your opponent’s bar flashing is what triggers your finishing moves. The matches are only on average 30 seconds but extremely frantic and they are surprisingly a lot of fun. As you defeat higher ranked opponents, you’ll gain stars which let you achieve a higher rank, with your goal being to be the best Sumo wrestler. After each tournament, you can also play a minigame. There are five minigames: sleeping, eating, training, jumping and fishing. The first four are short, enjoyable distractions while I couldn’t figure out the fishing at all. They’re a nice, relaxing change of pace for a quick breather before the next tournament. Sleeping has you rolling around a little island collecting stars, eating has a judge calling out food you need to grab before your opponent, training is a “simon says” and jumping has you moon jumping high in the air, bouncing off trampolines and clouds as you pop balloons. Between some individual matches and tournaments, you’ll progress in the story. To begin with, it seems like a bunch of random events as your character interacts with a few different girls (eventually going on dates with all of them), rivals and a few other characters. I am not sure how much your performance in the game affects the outcome, but one girl (Akira) eventually suggests marriage – which was surprising as my main character had stood her up on two dates. On one, he overslept, on another, he forgot and had a date with someone else. The only direct choice was choosing your response to the marriage, although I suspect that saying you want to concentrate on your Sumo for now has the same end result, as if you say yes, Akira suggests waiting until you’re at the top anyway. However, the encounters and dialogue are charming on their own. As you approach the high ranks, the story becomes more plot focused as you get attacked and then discover a “Dark Sumo” illegal gambling ring. You shut it down (you still have no input on this, it’s just dialogue) and the leader vows revenge – which he does on his wedding day as he kidnaps your wife. The ending is both utterly absurd and wonderfully charming at the same time as you have your final fight with this villain and his “ultimate body”. Sumo 64 is a combination of really enjoyable short fighting mixed with charming dialogue (which would probably be even better if it got a proper translation). If you understand Japanese or are willing to point your phone at your TV a lot, this is a surprisingly great game. Remake or remaster? There is another Sumo game in this series on N64, so a compilation of both with a proper translation would be grea Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Sumo 64

Aww... I actually wanna play that Sumo game now. What a shame there's no way to play it in English.

https://beckabney.com/fzerosecret.html Came across a site with the times of the upcoming ??? races. Just tested it and it was accurate. Got a Mute City variant with a massive jump section (similar idea to the arrow jump zone in Red Canyon II) where I crashed out by failing to land on the ramps for a much-needed second jump. One floated jump dropped me plum in the gap between the ramps and the track. It's hard to take everything in on these races—need them in practise mode and ??? GPs in the rotation.

Have started taking screenshots at the start of a game and looking at that in the gallery to plan my moves 😅

Just finished INTERmission this evening. Pretty cool how it has ties to Dirge of Cerberus. Yuffie still annoys the hell out of me. Hated her in the original game and still hate her now. I'm all caught up and ready for Thursday.

Couldn't let myself believe it was a goal until the match actually kicked off again. The young boys got shrugged off the ball a bit but they didn't shy away. Amazing the way the fans sung them on and then that group rendition of YNWA at the end.

Great win. So happy that we now have one trophy in the bag for Klopp's final season.

Klopp's Kids have done it again. They gave a fantastic performance against Luton in the midweek game but I wasn't expecting them to be able to overcome Chelsea and lift the cup. Our team has been decimated in recent weeks and the youth of the squad have really stepped up and played their part. How long will they be able to keep this up? Who knows but im proud of what they've done over the past couple of weeks.

Not grass type this time! Yep, Torchic wins cutest starter for Gen 3.

Man, I've always been terrible at avoiding final smashes, but last night was just ridiculous. That one as Goemon was especially embarrassing. But yeah, fun games. Cheers everyone! I really wish we always went with a 2:30 limit, for time, stock and stamina modes. The matches feel way more intense, there's less waiting for spectators, and a big increase in the amount of Sudden Deaths too! And they're always fun, unless your opponent is Charizard.

Some very fun matches tonight. At one point Samus was three for three then it went downhill. Last week I don’t think I won a single match, this week I have a good share of victories. That’s why I love the way our games are played. Anyone can win any match. (Unless it’s Samus, cause Samus always wins (almost)),

Watched the first two episodes, so really not far enough in, but some things have stood out already (both good and bad). It's a weird one where this is an adaptation of a very accessible cartoon, but I'll try to keep things in spoiler tags when comparing the two as well as for major beats in case there is anyone here who has yet to watch the original and is checking this out first. Some non-spoiler thoughts first though: Ian Ousley as Sokka is kind of nailing it to a degree which is seriously surprising me, at least so far. Some of his new lines have given me genuine chuckles and laughs. Dallas Liu as Zuko and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Iroh were great castings, and so far very good performances from the latter. It makes going between the two sides feel interesting and evenly balanced in terms of keeping my attention. There was one shot of Zuko which is going to become an overused and hilarious GIF, though All of the cast looks the part. We knew this already from casting announcements and trailers beforehand, but seriously, they've nailed the look. Not really a fan of the score so far. The reorchestrations of Jeremy Zuckerman's original score only hit because of their sheer underlying melodic quality and nostalgia, but they sound incredibly generic when compared. The new, original score so far has been flat and boring. Set design has been great. I think the pacing is a bit messy, and I do think it's down to blending and distilling three 20+ minute episodes into roughly an hour each. Some of these aren't necessarily three-episode arcs, and the gap between ending one episode in the animated series, getting the credits, then moving onto the start of the next, getting opening credits, felt like it broke it up better. Here, you're getting Appa swoop out of a shot where he'd normally be capping off an episode...but then swinging back in almost immediately after in what would introduce the next. It's the nature of the adaptation, but I'm not a fan so far – and I think this particular move to have episodes serve as condensed examples of multiple episodes is actually going to fly in the face a bit of not having filmed everything already (which is a fine decision to make in terms of finances and production, but as a story, it's going to be odd). It just already feels like it's moved on too fast once or twice already. The bending feels like it's at 0.75x speed and there has already been way too much slow-mo. Gordon's smile and goofiness as Aang shines through a lot. Perfect casting. And then to get onto some of the spoiler stuff/changes... It's solid so far. It's a weird one: my expectations are pretty low (like I said before, just want to see a few scenes realised in live-action), but some of the changes they've made so far have been drastic in terms of how they approach the underlying themes, mini-arcs and very nature of the first season. Some of the writing changes more than performances are probably my main hang-ups so far – I'm only two episodes in like I said before, though, so perhaps they're approaching certain topics at other times/in other ways. Some of the performances are a little stilted, nothing worth seriously flagging so far, but I think it's just the nature of having child actors. Looking forward to seeing how the rest pans out.

Thanks for the games. Here's a link to this week's stream... - - - - - N-Europe Saturday Smash! (24/02/2024) - - - - -

I tallied up the points for the impromptu Yoshies VS Charizards Doubles match and the Charizards won +1 to -1. That is all.

From Gen 3 onwards, my opinions aren't as strong. Still, I definitely liked Torchic far more than the others. That lil' chick is cute as heck. Combusken looks like ass, but Blaziken looks pretty dang cool, and I respect him taking up Hwoarang's moveset in Pokkén. Fire/Fighting was novel at the time, which helped. Just wish that hair looked more natural (the curtains, I mean. The drapes look bushy enough). Treecko probably has the most consistent line out of all of them, and Sceptile looks pretty cool and confident (can't get over Treecko's little stubby fingers/toes, though, are these supposed to be pods like a gecko's? They don't look right at all). I see Grovyle has gained a lot of popularity from other media I haven't consumed, which is nice, but I don't feel too strongly about him. I appreciate his excessively long teenage-metalhead-hair, though. Mudkip... doesn't work for me. Speaking as a Quagsire fan, the typing is excellent, and I think the animal is supposed to be the same as Wooper, but the design is so busy! Looks like a dog with too many accessories. Marshtomp looks a bit better, looks like he's getting his shit together... aaaand Swampert happens. I thought we were going bipedal, but then Swampert shows up with this weird-ass curved posture where we don't know if he prefers to be standing or stay as a quadruped. Looks like evolution (real-life evolution, I mean) pranked him by giving him the most uncomfortable skeleton his body could have.

Automobili Lamborghini NA release: 22st November 1997 PAL release: 1st December 1997 JP release: May 1998 Developer: Titua Publisher: Titus N64 Magazine Score: 67% Another car racing game, and this one is a mixed bag. It’s an arcade-style racer but everyone begins on the starting line (so it’s not a catchup game), and it has an “arcade” mode with a timer and a tournament without. But parts of the game just don’t quite gel with other parts. One thing I was surprised about was that, despite the name, this game isn’t entirely about Lamborghinis. You start off with two of them, plus a bunch of cars which are Lambo-inspired in different colours. However, you then unlock other cars from other manufacturers: Farrari, Bugatti, Porche, Dodge and McLaren. When playing in the Lamborghinis, I found the game to be immensely difficult, and once racers got ahead, there is generally no way to catch up. Once I’d got other cars, the game was much easier. So it seems like the Lamborghinis in Automobili Lamborghini are the worst cars in the game, which is surprising considering the tie in. The handling is very arcadey, and it felt rather nice to turn around corners. It’s possibly my favourite handling in a car game so far on the N64. This then feels really odd due to the pit stop mechanic where your tyres will wear out and you’ll need to play a pit stop minigame. This bit of “realism” feels really at odds with the rest of the game – although you can turn it off. There are only six tracks, none of which are memorable and the game overall just has a really dull feeling to it, it never feels speedy or exciting. The Japanese version (called Super Speed Race 64) has a few extra features, such as fog and night time racing, but it doesn’t help the overall experience. Remake or Remaster? Nothing really needs doing with this, it doesn’t do anything specifically interesting, although a collection of the Super Speed Race series of games would be good for preservation. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Automobili Lamborghini

That's because it's so much better, it's not even funny. Can't wait for this to get on NSO! Online on this will be great. Especially Two Player Adventure! Show me someone who insists Plane is the the best, and I'll show you someone who loses to me in a car!

Diddy Kong Racing PAL release: 21st November 1997 JP release: 21st November 1997 NA release: 24th November 1997 Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 90% Pretty much all racing games on the N64 so far have the same problem: there’s not a lot of progression for a single player, and you can do everything in a couple of hours. Some of them focused on being great in multiplayer (like Mario Kart 64) but there wasn’t a lot of choice for singleplayer. Which is where Diddy Kong Racing comes in, as it has a very meaty singleplayer campaign with an adventure mode where you find tracks within its hub world. It’s a neat area to explore, although a lot smaller than I remember it being. You’ll find four doors with balloon requirements (which you get from winning races or finding them in the world), with a fifth world hidden until you defeat five bosses. They start out simple at first: you have to win each race individually then defeat the boss in a race. Do that, and it gets much more challenging. You’ll be tasked with finding 8 coins in each race. However, finding them isn’t enough as you still have to win, and then defeat a harder version of the boss. Diddy Kong Racing is a difficult and brutal game and you’ll need to learn its tricks (such as letting go of the accelerator just before boosting) to have a chance of winning. Once you defeat a boss a second time, you then complete in a tournament across the four tracks. There’s also a key hidden in one level of each world to unlock a battle mode challenge. Oh, and also time trail challenges. Once you’ve done all that and defeated the evil Wizpig, it’s time for Adventure Two. This is a mirror mode version of the game, although the silver coins are now in more difficult places. Of course, this amount of content wouldn’t be anything if the game wasn’t fun to play. And thankfully, it is fun. Levels use three vehicles: car, hovercraft and plane. The car and plane are very easy to use, while the hovercraft is more difficult. When you repeat tracks (or choose to play outside Adventure mode), some levels let you pick your vehicle – with some restrictions on a per-level basis – and it’s great having multiple types of vehicles racing alongside each other. One let-down in DKR are the characters. None of them are bad in terms of a design perspective – and this is the first appearance of Banjo (without Kazooie, although some of his voice clips sound like her) and Conker, but they’re a bit too varied in terms of ability, so the game’s difficulty will vary a lot based on who you pick, with Pipsy being the best for hitting boosts (plus the silver coins). The weapon system sets itself apart from other kart racers. Instead of giving you random items, the balloons providing items are colour coded for specific items. Collecting one of the same type you already have will also upgrade the item. Diddy Kong Racing is still a great game, and the only kart game that’s come close to it for single-player is Sonic Racing Transformed (which also had three vehicle types, but it was specific to the part of the track you were on). It set itself apart from Mario Kart 64 and I actually prefer this one. Remake or Remaster? If not a sequel, then Diddy Kong Racing deserves a remake. It would look gorgeous with a Mario Kart 8 style sheen to it and some updates to the control and balance would be great, with some additional options. While it would be nice for all characters to return, I’d still be very happy with the game even if they had to replace most of them. The Switch seemed perfect due to the system’s portability and how it doesn’t have its own Mario Kart. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Diddy Kong Racing Re-releases 2007: Diddy Kong Racing DS (Banjo and Conker replaced with Dixie Kong and a tall, teenage Tiny Kong, coin challenges replaced with tapping balloons).

It's nonsensical, and I won't be swayed on that! Anyway, that's so 2 generations ago! We're living in the here and now! And by "Here and now", I mean 2002. Generation 3, otherwise known as Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, takes place in Hoenn. It's more of a tropical locale then the first two, but you wouldn't be able to really tell from the starter Pokémon. Being a GBA game, this is the first time a mainline Pokémon game was made with full colour in mind from the start. Treecko (TREE-ko) is the Grass starter. And it couldn't be any more different to the first two Grass starters. It's bipedal for a start, but more importantly, instead of being a slower, defensive battler, Treecko and it's evolutions are very much glass cannons. They hit hard, they hit fast. Treecko does well against the first gym, which is as good as it'll get in the early game for any starter here, actually. And then there's Grovyle (GROW-vile). Behold! This is the second of the starter middle evolutions to not be overshadowed by the other two! In fact, Grovyle may be the most popular of these three. @Julius and @Dcubed already knows why, but for everyone else... The primary antagonist of the second Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games is a Grovyle. The general Pokémon community refers to him as "Grovyle the Thief". I'm not gonna go into the details on it, because that would be spoilers for a game that has a legitmately good story. And seeing as the first PMD game got remade recently, it's not out of the realm of possibility for this game to get a remake. It is the most fondly remembered entry for a damn good reason! I defy you to find someone who prefers Treecko or Sceptile, and if they do, they clearly haven't played this game. The final evolution is Sceptile (SEP-tile). And I can only assume Game Freak felt sorry for Grass starter fans, because it's a truly excellent Pokémon on paper. It's stats are highly specialised towards Special Attack and Speed, and it's the first starter to get a signature move. Leaf Blade has 70 power, 100% accuracy, and has a high critical rate. Basically Razor Leaf, but not crap. On top of that, it can utilise TM's to learn a wide variety of moves. But it's that last part where it kinda falls apart for Sceptile. All the good moves it can learn through TM are physical based. So only Leaf Blade uses the Special Attack stat. The other moves use Sceptile's mediocre Attack stat. Despite that, Sceptile still does pretty well in playthroughs. But it desperately needs some support for Grass resistant types. The Physical-Special split in Gen 4 doesn't do it a huge favour, as it makes Leaf Blade a physical attack, but Energy Ball is a better alternative, and it can learn some good special moves through TM's. It also gets the hidden ability "Unburden" in Gen 5, which would make it a surprisingly effective Double Battler once terrain effects roll around The Gen 3 remakes, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, were released in Generation 6, and thus added a number of Mega Evolutions, including these starters. Mega Sceptile is Grass/Dragon, so dear lord, keep it away from Ice attacks! It's Speed and Special Attack are an eye-watering base 145! For comparison's sake, that's only 5 less then Deoxys! This is one scary Mega Evolution! Anyway, Mr. Christmas Tree here gets Lightning Rod (Absorbs Electric attacks, and then raises it's Sp. Atk one stage), which sounds strange, because Electric attacks only do a quarter of the damage against it. But throw this in a double battle, and it starts to make a lot more sense. Sceptile was in Pokkén. Actually, it was my favourite character in that game. But I'm rubbish at Pokkén, so don't take that as proof that it's any good or anything. I wouldn't know. You know, in most other generations, Sceptile would have been far and away the best choice for a starter. But no, it's in Gen 3, which means it's competition is... Torchic (TOR-chick) is the only Gen 3 starter to struggle with the first Gym in Hoenn. It's not the best of starts, but Torchic's surprisingly high Special Attack (Higher then Charmander's) might just carry you through it anyway if you have a good nature. Worst comes to worst though, you can always just evolve it. Combusken's (com-BUS-ken) only notable feature is that it becomes Fire/Fighting. This is an amazing type combination! If only more Fire starters had it... Other than that? Eh, it's a middle evolution. Blaziken (BLAZE-uh-ken) is the final evolution and has... EXCUSE ME!? That's pretty much the dream stat spread for casual Gen 3 playthroughs! Doesn't matter what kinds of moves you teach it. Blaziken can do it all! The Physical-Special split of the first three generations is the main reason Pokémon are quite limited in what they are able to do. But because Blaziken has amazing stats in both Attack and Sp. Atk, it can easily use Flamethrower, Brick Break, and Earthquake to full effect. Blaziken isn't good against any of the Hoenn gyms, but with those stats? Who the hell cares!? And well, things wouldn't go very well in Gen 4, as a certain other Pokémon would steal it's thunder. But then Gen 5 came along... Bit of a tangent before I explain Blaziken in Gen 5. So for some reason I can only assume was a fit of madness. Blaziken's Hidden Ability is "Speed Boost". Speed Boost is an astonishingly good ability that raises the Pokémon's Speed stat at the end of every turn! After just one turn, Blaziken becomes as fast as Sceptile, and only snowballs from there! Because of this, Blaziken became the first, and only, starter to be banned to Ubers in Smogon! Sorry to spoil that for all future starters, but Gen 5 Blaziken is the best starter ever. Competitively speaking, anyway. Oh, but it only gets better for our fiery chicken. Mega Blaziken is concrete proof that if a Pokémon is horribly broken, don't fix it! It's the only Mega Evolution that barely changes anything about the actual Pokémon. It's still Fire/Fighting, and it still has Speed Boost as an ability. The only thing that changes is it's stats, which are naturally a lot higher. Dear lord, don't let this thing get momentum, because you will lose the battle if you do! Anyway, on to the next starter... Huh? What's the matter? Oh! That... So, yes. I censored the Blaziken image. I had no choice. I didn't want parents to give my post a bad review. Yes, there is an actual reason I did that. Blaziken's in Pokkén. And when the WiiU version came out, a certain review on Amazon picked up some noteriety. Boy, it's a good thing they didn't see Reshiram... Anyway, here's the actual image. Mudkip (MUD-kip) is the water starter. What even is it anyway? I look at the Pokédex classification and it's the "Mud Fish" Pokémon... ...OK, sure. Anyway, much like Treecko, Mudkip is great against the first gym. I was hoping to avoid this, but someone mentioned it earlier. So I guess I have to talk about that meme. In case someone here somehow doesn't know of it. The meme @Ashley is referring to is "I Herd U Liek Mudkips". A glorified catchphrase that gained traction in the mid-2000's because the internet is a very silly place. The origins of that meme come from DeviantArt (Hey, the only other site I'm on!), when someone who made a Mudkip based group would go around looking for fanart of the Mudkip family, and inviting those artists to join their group like so. That's pretty much it. It caught on and everyone started posting that phrase everywhere. Geez, that meme is almost 20 years old now. Marshtomp (MARSH-stomp) is another middle evolution that has nothing much to mention. It does become Water/Ground, which is great because it becomes immune to Electric, which happens to be the third gym. Unfortunately, it's double weak to Grass now... But Grass isn't a gym in Hoenn, so it's not a huge deal. Swampert (SWAM-pert) is the final evolution here. Unfortunately, it's very much a physical based attacker, which means that half of it's movepool can't be used to the fullest potential. Still, it gets some solid attack options in Water, Ground, Ice, and Fighting. It's quite effective against a lot of gyms, but it's literally half as fast as Sceptile, and doesn't have the insane utility that Blaziken has, so it ends up being the big loser in Gen 3 (It's not much better in the Gen 6 remakes either). It's not terrible, but the competition is that fierce! Doesn't help that the hidden ability it gets in Gen 5 is utter crap. Mega Swampert has clearly been on the roids. It's got an eye-watering base 150 attack! And it gets Swift Swim as an ability! Swift Swim doubles Swampert's speed in rain, which is very much appreciated for such a slow Pokémon. Mega Sceptile is still faster then Mega Swampert, even with Swift Swim, so you need to watch out for that. And that wraps up Generation 3. What's your favourite? I'm a Mystery Dungeon fan, so Grovyle is my favourite. That's, like, the law. Even before Mystery Dungeon though, Grovyle evolving into Sceptile was the first time I was disappointed in an evolution. Sceptile just loses a bit of that sleekness Grovyle has. I still like it though. Actually, I think all the Gen 3 starters are cool designs. Solid Pokémon all round. Swampert's cooler then Blaziken, though.

Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll is brutally hard in later levels! I don’t remember it being that tough, even with the rewind feature. Although saying that, I don’t remember getting that far in the first place so I doubt I ever saw those levels before…

Here we have it: coming to everything else (and Switch, again) on June 21st.

Popped this back in for the first time since launch in order to get around to checking out INTERmission ahead of Rebirth's launch...at the end of next week?! Don't know how much I'll talk about the DLC in this thread, but I'm here to mainly heap praise on Fort Condor. I love it. Spent over 2 of the 3 hours I played tonight just having a blast with it I know we'll see them in Rebirth to some extent too, but high-res models of the PS1 versions of enemies was a stroke of genius. Incredibly charming and fun to see. Have a feeling Gold Saucer is going to cause me a lot of problems in Rebirth, seeing how much I loved the mini-games in Remake and now Fort Condor in INTERmission

Love this set. Great display set.