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Was watching the newest episode and right at the end this thread is discussed. We made it I guess!

I did a thing!

ShopTo, you brilliant bastards, it's turned up a day early! (and yes I did finally break the Skyward Sword Joy-Cons out of their box just for this game ) Looks like my amiibo isn't arriving until tomorrow, but other than that, think I'll take my leave from this thread until the end of the weekend (in terms of talking about my time with the game) so that I can share some more cohesive thoughts once a few more of us are playing, and not to fill the thread up with spoiler tags and me going "OHMUHGOSH DID THEY DO IT DID THEY OR DID THEY NOT GO ALL THE WAY AND FIX THE PRO HUD?!" (also don't want to hint at anything else I might find) Hope everyone has a great first experience with the game!

A new Wednesday, a new game announcement – and a pretty neat one at that! Here's a bit more of an overview from Modus Games:

I would love to start this post by saying you can count me in for this evening... But, unfortunately, I'm unable to do it for the foreseeable future. 😔 I'm now a 3 month old, and quite happy, dad; at this stage I don't have a fixed schedule at home and the freetime is spent doing house shores. I've only been able to put an hour or so into the switch in the last few months very late in the evenings where my own batteries are almost done for the day. I hope that soon enough, when Mario Kart 9 or 10 is out, my baby girl 👶 will be able to join for a few races. 😊

Kirby and the Forgotten Land It's Kirby's first full 3D adventure! You'd think that would be enough of a selling point, but nah. This game also features Mouthful Mode, a slightly disturbing ability Kirby gets where he can wrap his body around inanimate objects and gain new abilities depending on what he tries to swallow. This is the game with "Carby", and that's all you need to know. Unlike Star Allies, this Kirby game is much more recent, so the rest of this post will be behind a spoiler tag.

WARNING: once again, in this Chapter, the developers start to talk about aspects of the game NOT shown in its marketing up to this point; a truly bizarre decision, and given they've spoken about it, I imagine tomorrow's reviews likely have the go-ahead to talk about it too. You have been warned. ETA: It's official news but an interview, and this close to launch and not in marketing, figured I'd still throw it in a spoiler tag. The follow-up tweet quoting the interview confirms something we haven't seen in the game's marketing... Chapter 3 of the Ask the Developer interview for TotK is up. Final two chapters arrive tomorrow saving actually reading through these for when I'm done with the game, but hopefully make a good read!

Yeah I think self-policing will be required and in fairness I think collectively we're good at that. I did think of how you'd cover mechanics because there could be spoilers with that (particularly certain slates if not yet revealed) but some people may think a post explaining how it's been used is a spoiler, others not. I think we'll have to make it clear to act out of caution and if in doubt, use the spoiler tag. Happy to go with a month and then after that move to a courtesy kind of thing because not everyone will play at the same pace, or even get it at launch Update Now that I'm in my hotel room rather than on a train; so shall we say until June 9th (4 weeks) all narrative spoilers in spoiler tags. Following this common sense discretion (e.g. late game story beats etc tagged as courtesy). Gameplay/mechanics use discretion and air on the side of caution but if there's any new items etc that were not revealed pre-launch (or if you cannot recall) then use tags during that time too. That sound good?

He's exaggerating a little with the blood curdling screams bit, but you do hear Haltmann's screams during the last True Arena fight. It's very subtle. And disturbing. But that's in the past, so we're moving to, well, the less distant past. Kirby Star Allies I was considering putting this in spoilers, but then I realised this game is 5 years old, so if you get spoiled by this, that's on you. Kirby Star Allies' big selling points (apart from the jump to HD), are the heavy focus on multiplayer, and the ability to combine certain abilities with elemental effects which changed how those abilities work. This game is also noteworthy for getting significant updates which exponentially expanded the game with extra modes and playable characters ranging from a wide variety of past Kirby games. On a space station far from Dream Land, a crystalised heart explodes, the fragments of which scatter throughout Dream Land, causing Kirby's friends, such as Dedede and Meta Knight, to embrace their darker tendencies. One of these hits Kirby, but because he is literally incapable of being evil, it instead gives him the ability to befriend enemies by throwing hearts at them. He travels through Dream Land, brings Dedede and Meta Knight back to the side of happy rainbows and sunshine, and makes his way to the Jambandra Space Station. The villains of this game consist of various residents of the Jambandra religion. The most recurring one being three generals named Francisca, Zan Partizanne, and Flamberge. These three have been tasked with collecting the many shards of the crystal heart that are around Dream Star. Of course, Kirby will end up meeting the man behind the minions, which is where the special screens start to become interesting. I couldn't find a decent screenshot, so have some concept art instead This is Hyness, and if you're thinking he looks a bit deranged, that's because he is. Does he succeed in summoning that "deity of destruction"? Well, every Kirby game needs some sort of eldtrich horror for Kirby to blow up. So, you tell me. This is Void Termina, and for the sake of understanding scale, it's around 4 meters tall, which in the world of Kirby, is effing massive! Yes, some nerd actually calculated it's height. No, it wasn't me! I'm not that bored! These special screens are structured a bit weird, the fight is 4 phases long as Kirby gets bounced back between Void Termina pictured above, and an inner core. So I'm gonna post the ones specifically about Void Termina first. I bet he's loads of fun at parties. Before we really get stuck in on this thing, I'll go ahead and show the core of Void Termina, because they're intricately linked, and it'd be easier to treat them as one entity from here on. ...Huh... OK then... There's a very specific reason why throughout this entire topic, I've refrained from referring to future Kirby games. Because, at the risk of sounding dramatic, this changes everything. My head hurts. And I'm afraid I'm going to have dedicate 90% of the remaining post to talking about Void Termina, because there's a metric ton of things to unpack with it. Starting with this. That gold thing at the top of the screen, it kinda looks like the Master Crown from "Returns to Dream Land" What the hell does that mean!? I mean, it's not the first time a Kirby final boss has made nods to previous final bosses, but that one is pretty blatant. I'm in the camp that it's not the same Master Crown, but some kind of recreation of it. Which makes a good case of how strong this thing can be if it can just conjure up one of those for the sake of firing massive lasers. But yes, fine. The core looks disturbingly like Kirby. There's no getting around it. The "face" of it contorts throughout the fight, which is more then a little creepy. But what exactly is it? Well, playing through "The Ultimate Choice", this game's take on The Arena, give us some more special screens that provide some more details. The first one courtesy of the Hyness fight. Wait, now there's an ancient scroll? And who are these four heroes? Yeah, we're not getting any more clarification on that, sorry! Getting to Void Termina on the Infernal Crisis difficulty gives you a harder version of that fight with different screens. There's actually a harder difficulty in "The Ultimate Choice". Soul Melter difficulty gives you a different final phase, against the predictably named "Void Soul" OK, so what we have here might possibly be some kind of explanation of the origin of Kirby. Yes, really. That last special screen in particular, combined with what Void Termina's core looks like, really hints at this being the case. As far as I can tell, Kirby's entire species is born through the process of absorbing positive and negative energy from it's surroundings. It kinda checks out because Kirby, being born on Planet Popstar, is made of literally nothing but good vibes. Remember Amazing Mirror? Remember how it turns out that Shadow Kirby is trying to help you all along? I mean it, Kirby literally cannot be evil. Jury's still out on Meta Knight, mind. This might imply he wasn't born on Planet Popstar, but there's no confirmation of that, but it's generally accepted that Meta Knight's a good guy, all in all, so it still checks out. Huh? What happens when negative energy is absorbed? Well... I'll direct your attention to the Dark Matter Trilogy in the first post. At this point, I can't see how all the various Dark Matters can be anything other then a Kirby that has absorbed mostly negative energy. That goes for Zero as well, BTW. Hell, that even goes for Gooey. Who's Gooey? He's that blue blob on the box art of Dream Land 3. The instruction booklet for that game says Gooey is made from the same stuff as Dark Matter, but lacks an evil spirit. Which checks out with how Void Termina works. And just to hammer this point home, the last update for Star Allies added an even harder difficulty to "The Ultimate Choice", dubbed "Soul Melter EX" which gives more special screens. This information on what Kirby is does provide a different spin on a lot of the final bosses in previous games. But let's not overlook the bit about "...The ancients to transcribe his mysteries..." in that first special screen. Now who are the ancients? I don't think I'm really spoiling anything at this point by saying that's gonna be showing up in the future. But I've been at this for about 1 and a half hours now, so I think it's about time I wrap up Star Allies. A pretty amazing reveal that is sure to have lasting impacts on.... Geez! It's 5 o'clock in the morning, I'm starting to get bloody tired, Galacta Knight! So, he's back... Yay... He shows up at the end of the "Guest Star ???" mode. What's with the butterfly though? Well, yeah, uh... In a pretty amazing fake out, that butterfly absorbs Galacta Knight before you even start the fight. Instead, you fight... Yes, it's bloody harder then Galacta Knight! It's bordering on ridiculous at this point! Actually, now that I think about it, haven't I seen that butterfly before? Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me! Welp, chalk that up on the "HAL planned that all along" board. And yes, that's true, we've since learned that the cancelled Kirby game for the Gamecube was going to have a boss that looked a lot like Morpho Knight. They've been sitting on that one for a while. Note the sword, it doesn't look like that in Star Allies I'm going to bed. More next week!

A nice little recap video by Nintendo of the events of BotW

Paging @bob

Right, I'm bored with Ultimate now... Let's Play Smash for 3DS! Remember a time when we thought this was a lot of characters? How quaint! In case it wasn't obvious, this is almost every character that was in the fourth Smash installment, including the DLC ones. There are some costume restrictions in place Mario - No Wedding or Builder outfit Link - Classic Tunic only Yoshi - No crafted texture Ike - Older versions only (Not the default style) Yeah, nothing I can do about Zelda or Ganondorf, they'll just have to be incorrect. Also, there is one character missing, Charizard. But with Pokémon Trainer absorbing it back into himself, I didn't include it in the screenshot. If you really want to though, you can use Pokémon Trainer, but you'll have to restrict yourself to only using Charizard. Format: 3 Stock, 10 Minutes FS Meter: Off See you at 8pm.

Good idea for a thread! Here are a few off the top of my head: Sonic Adventure 2 DX (GameCube) That camera! Oh, that camera! Sega were still getting to grips with how to get Sonic to work in 3D (some would say they still are…) but this was a huge improvement over the first Sonic Adventure game. While the speed of the Sonic / Shadow levels were the better ones, the mix of gameplay types for the different characters added variety, but every good idea was completely ruined by a terrible, TERRIBLE camera and the frustration it caused. Star Fox Adventures (GameCube) I was excited when this was first shown as Dinosaur Planet on the N64. A Zelda-esque adventure from a games developer on great form sounded like a sure-fire win. When development moved to the GameCube and the Star Fox crew were swapped in, the game looked wonderful (the fur, look at the fur!). The linear gameplay though, was just so dull though. I didn’t mind the flying sections, which were short and broke things up. It was just the on-foot action, which had little flexibility and just had something missing. Smash Bros 3DS (3DS) Cramming everything onto the small 3DS was a monumental achievement! Before the Switch was a thing, being able to play Smash on the go was a marvel. I found it a real shame that they removed so many of the single player features from previous games in the series. Smash Run couldn’t fill the void left by the lack of other modes. Local multiplayer I’m sure would’ve been a blast, but sadly I didn’t have other friends with the game, so I was left with the lack of single player modes. Settlers IV (PC / iOS) I loved Settlers. I spent hours playing Settlers 2, and Settlers 4 seemed to play similarly, but improving the interface and ease of placing buildings. The Dark Tribe was where the game shifted down into mediocrity and frustration for me though. It was tough, very tough! Settlers was never an easy game, but the relentlessness and volume of Dark Tribe enemies obliterating any plans was soul destroying. In a game where you had to trust the CPU pathfinding skills, the game created a element where if any characters came into close contact with bad terrain they were killed instantly, meaning you lost many of your characters when you simply had no control. I feel I’ve used my reply to simply vent about some games I had such high hopes for, and ended up so disappointed with the experience I ended up having! Thanks! [emoji23]

What an absolute bastard

This is spin doctor for "didn't want to put it up against Kirby and the Forgotten Land." Oh, not you and the great fairies too... Sounds like, on the whole, you're having a decent enough time with it. Promising.

Metroid Prime Remastered is... well, the clue is in the name, isn't it? It's an adventure game played from a first person perspective made by Retro Studios. It was released back in March. You don't need me to tell you that this is one of the critical darlings of the Gamecube Era. Loads of people speak highly of it. Me? It's good, but I feel it's the weakest of the Metroid Prime games. I prefer 2 and 3. For the sake of not repeating myself, because I have definitely talked about this game before, I'm gonna focus on the differences that this remastered version offers. The game features more standardised controls that you'd expect from a first person game. Thankfully, the game also offers gyro aiming options, so that's me satisfied... Mostly. You see, because the right stick handles where Samus is pointing her arm cannon, it's no longer used to change what beam you're using, instead you hold X, and then press the corresponding direction on the D-Pad. Visor switching is still done by just pressing the D-Pad. This just doesn't feel as fluid as how the Gamecube game handles it. It also doesn't feel nearly as fluid as how the Wii Trilogy handles it. (Holding - or +, then moving the pointer towards what you want to switch to) It is an unavoidable situation here, but I never got used to it, it feels clunky. A weird thing that is omitted from the Trilogy that would've helped was the ability to tap the beam/visor button to revert back to the Power Beam. It wouldn't completely solve it, but it'd help. The other thing that irks me is the brightness of the game. It's really dark. Like, really dark. Even in rooms that aren't meant to be hard to see in, I found it hard to see at times. Shooting your beam doesn't light up the environment in this version, so you can't do that to help things. Other then that? It does look gorgeous. It's a really massive glow-up compared to the non HD versions. But I can't really see myself choosing to play this version in the future. The Trilogy version on WiiU will still be my preferred method of playing it. I mean, come on, Remastered doesn't even have the Fusion Suit. Xenoblade Chronicles still holds the "Switch remaster" crown. That's a really great example. Also, I played through Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap after @Dcubed booted up the Master System version, which is literally the worst thing you can do.

Sounds like a skill issue.

It's crazy that we are here now, two days before release, and how much time has passed since the release of BotW. Since then I have got two kids and a third on the way, two new jobs, and a house. And my oldest kid is just about to start school in August.

Spoiler Policy: Until June 9th please include all narrative spoilers in spoiler tags. Following this we ask for common sense discretion (e.g. late game story beats tagged as a courtesy to other visitors who may not have finished). When it comes to gameplay/mechanics use discretion and air on the side of caution but if there's any new items, slates etc that were not revealed pre-launch then use tags during that time too. If you can't remember it it was in the pre-launch material than please air on the side of caution and tag them as a spoiler. --- I've "recommended" this post so now a preview of it should appear at the top of each page. It's a feature we've not used before but I played around with it a while ago.

It's my favourite time of the Financial Year once again, with Nintendo's earnings report for Q4 FY 2023 covering the period of 1st January 2023 - 31st March 2023 dropping today, meaning it's the end of the fiscal year and once again time for their annual report! The Big Takeaways In terms of hardware, the Nintendo Switch across its different SKUs sold 3.07 million units in Q4 (1st January 2023 - 31st March 2023), bringing annual sales up to 17.97 million units sold for the fiscal year (1st April 2022 - 31st March 2023), meaning it missed it's projection of 18 million units sold for the fiscal year (previously revised from 21 million units). This gives the Switch a lifetime haul of 125.62 million units; in case you missed it last quarter, this means that the Switch is the third best-selling console of all-time, behind only the Nintendo DS (154.9 million units sold) and PlayStation 2 (157.68 million uniys sold). For hardware, this marks the first fiscal year since FY20 (1st April 2019 - 31st March 2020) that the Switch has not surpassed the mark of 20 million units sold. Nintendo are projecting a continued drop-off in hardware sales, going into FY24 forecasting sales of 15 million hardware units for the Switch. This isn't surprising given how late we are now into the Switch's life cycle (somehow and some way, 2017 was 6 years ago!), but expect to see that number wind down over the next few years - especially with the Switch's successor likely to release within the next 18 to 24 months. In terms of software, the Nintendo Switch has now sold 1.036 billion units, with 213.82 million software units sold in the year (that's right - 20.6% of the Switch's lifetime software sales have taken place in the last 12 months!); this sees it extend its lead as the Nintendo platform with most software units sold to date (this was previously held by the Nintendo DS - 948.76 million software units sold). Per VGC, President Shuntaro Furukawa has confirmed that there will be NO new hardware releases from Nintendo within the next 12 months. Additionally, he seemed to hint that they aren't confident of hitting their FY24 projection of selling 15 million Switch units. Top 10 Best-selling Switch titles as of 31st March 2023 (new Top 10 entries in bold) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 53.79M Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 42.21M Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 31.09M Breath of the Wild - 29.81M Pokemon Sword/Shield - 25.82M Super Mario Odyssey - 25.76M Pokemon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10M Super Mario Party - 19.14M New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 15.41M Ring Fit Adventure - 15.38M Sales figures for other titles of note released this Financial Year (FY23) Pokémon Legends Arceus - 14.83M Splatoon 3 - 10.67M Nintendo Switch Sports - 9.60M Kirby & The Forgotten Land - 6.46M Mario Strikers: Battle League - 2.54M Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 1.86M Fire Emblem Engage - 1.61M Metroid Prime Remastered - 1.09M Bayonetta 3 - 1.07M

One week to go! Brad Ellis from Easy Allies spent an hour the other day thinking back to Breath of the Wild and his history with the Zelda franchise, a fun watch I'd recommend that'll shave an hour off the next week while you wait for Tears of the Kingdom to drop

Thanks for the games. Here's a link to this week's stream... - - - - - N-Europe Get Together! (04/05/2023)

Pen and paper at the ready! @martinist finish that song on Theatrhythm and get Mario Kart on.

Theme Night Tonight Blatantly nicking @Dcubed and @BowserBasher's casual suggestion for a night time theme, and luckily, there's exactly 12 tracks that fit! The other 2 Rainbow Roads explicitly take place in space, so... See you at 8! Also, shout-out to @martinist in the hopes that it reminds him to join.

I thought we were going Mario theme with the courses and then Tokyo snuck in there. Good theme would have been great with a set kart like the some street racer kart. Anyway fun night of races here are the highlights, and one very lowlight lol And the lowlight of the night.

So, uh, yeah, I guess it's Dragon Quest Day, so for the 25th anniversary of the series this video was put out – ending with the reveal that a new entry in the series is in development for the Nintendo Switch! That music is charming as all heck, as is what I've seen and heard about the Monsters games. Definitely going to be keeping an ear to the ground on this one!

I was watching this video which featured some Super Mario Odyssey concept art and I know I've seen the stuff before but was struck by how much I like it. It taps into the kind of things I like (bold colours, simple shapes, stylistic design etc) so thought why not make a thread where we share some concept art we enjoy.

Nintendo eShop new releases (week 21) The twenty-first week of releases. A selection of new titles are now available on the Nintendo Switch eShop. Check the article for the full roundup. - - - - - Thanks to @Josh64 for the recently posted articles, which include... The Super Mario Bros Movie Available now in the UK and Europe Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS Confirmed for Switch Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection Arrives June 1st Puzzle Bobble Everybubble Release Trailer The Plucky Squire Gameplay Trailer Farming Simulator 23 Available Now The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Updated to Version 1.1.2 Quite a busy week for the eShop, and the Switch in general, nice to see a gain in momentum.

The key features from a fact sheet doing the rounds for the upcoming HD remaster. It'll be out on the 30th of June but £24.98 seems a bit steep, imo, so hopefully it'll get a good sale before too long. However, reading back through the enthusiasm in this thread makes it sound worth the asking price and then some.

OK, these are nice. These are the regional reversible covers, but you can grab them as "downloadable" posters.

I own the Fire Emblem Awakening artbook. Naturally, that's a game with gorgeous art behind it, so it's worth looking at, for sure. Even though I find most armour designs to be garishly awful, there's a lot of material as to how they were designed and conceptualized. The most interesting thing about it, is that there are a lot of developer notes actually left a few notes here and there. For example, they redesigned the Falchion only after finding a random piece of Archanea lore that said it was possible, they intentionally made Priam's Ragnell look old and cracked, stuff like that. Anyway, the real gem for me is found in concept artwork for the final boss, that is, the gigantic dragon known as Grima This page right here is how I learned that Grima's forehead... is actually a helmet! And it has a frigging human face underneath it! What the hell!? (Sadly, the only pictures of the book that I can find are these tiny pics from the FE wiki. Uploading pics of my own is troublesome right now, it's frustrating that Google can't help me more than this)

Kinda crazy how hard this game fucks. Like it's actually too good.

Yeah, I broke it. What are you gonna do about it?

Looking real fun!

So I had a thought (I know, very dangerous thing to do), and I was thinking about some games I love certain parts of, but ultimately they just don’t come together to make a truly great game. This could be a game that you generally really enjoyed, but is let down by one critical flaw that ruins it for you. Or a game which you don’t generally like as a whole, but really like certain parts of, or games that are almost really fantastic? But ultimately just don’t quite hit the mark for various reasons… … and I’m gonna kick this thread off with one of the first examples that springs to mind for me… What’s up motherfucker!! I utterly adore the dialogue, characters and story in HOTD Overkill. It’s a brilliant Grindhouse Comedy Horror that leaves me in stitches any time I watch its cutscenes. But if you strip all of its presentation away and look at the gameplay alone as a HOTD game? Ehh… Ultimately, once you look past the brilliant grindhouse presentation, it’s just not a very good HOTD game. The pacing is completely off, it’s ridiculously slow, the enemies and set pieces just aren’t very interesting and are sparsely laid out across each level (which all just drag on and on), and the boss battles are utterly uninteresting from a mechanical standpoint. Unlike all of the other HOTD games (which were all built for the arcades), this was designed from the ground up as a console game, and unfortunately it really shows in the final product; as it’s painfully obvious that the developers felt the inevitable need to drag out the game’s running time with tons of bloat in order to justify the full priced retail purchase. What should be a snappy 30-45 minute roller coaster ride ends up being a 4-6 hour long slog. And it’s a goddamned motherfucking shame, because I bloody LOVE the dialogue and characterisation in this game. If you’ve never played it? I would still recommend playing it the once, or at least watching someone else play it, because it’s actually one of the most well written comedies that the video game industry has ever seen. I’d totally watch the crap out of it if it were remade into a movie! But sadly, I can’t bring myself to ever play it again; the gameplay just isn’t good enough, and it has no replay value inherent to the gameplay. So what other examples spring to mind for you? Post ‘em here! I might even agree with some of them if I’m feeling generous

Ah, stuff 'em if they can't be bothered! EDIT: One moment from me. Mario Kartma is totally real and does not appreciate certain things.

Nintendo eShop new releases (week 19) The nineteenth week of releases. A selection of new titles are now available on the Nintendo Switch eShop. Check the article for the full roundup. - - - - - Thanks to @Josh64 for the recently posted articles, which include... Nintendo Switch Has Sold Over 125 Million Units, Nintendo Warns Loss of Momentum Sonic Frontiers Becomes Best Selling 3D Sonic Game Ever A late posting for the eShop news this past week, I'm sure some big game just got released... Ah well, onto next week soon enough.

Is it just me or do the enemies hit really hard? I started out on the main island with 4 hearts and it feels like pretty much everything hits you for at least 3.

Just a heads up. Real life commitments mean I won't be able to Smash this week. I suppose I'll get my chance... another day...

Hmm, OK well assuming @BowserBasher is playing this week... on his profile he hasn't been on the forums today... maybe he got Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom early? Or might just be avoiding spoilers... Ah well, we shall see, but I'll see if I can get on a bit earlier, set the stream up, if it gets to 19:55 and BowserBasher isn't on, then I can host. 150 CC, All Vehicles, CPU on and... custom items set to Lightning bolts and Blue Shells only... right? - - - - - Updated - 19:25 - OK, it looks like I'm hosting then, I should have the room open, half an hour from... now! 150cc Grand Prix, No Teams, Normal items, CPU (possibly), All Vehicles, 4 races... 19:55 room opening time. It'll be interesting in the Discord chat this week then if no one else is in there... Me - "Blue Shell" ... Me - "Well, don't say I didn't warn you!" Annnd BowserBasher is here! Wahey! I'll join the room in a few minutes.

Star Wars Visions Volume 2... much, much, better than Volume 1 imo. I watched all the Shorts over the past few days and really loved the majority of them, which I don't think I could say about any in the first season. Beautiful visuals and good story-telling. A couple in particular were just stunning to look at. Only negative is that, once again, each Short tends to retread the same ground. Eight of the nine shorts in Volume 1 were Jedi v Sith stories, and whilst it's definitely not as samey as that this time around, it's similar. Hoping volume 3 keeps the focus on telling stories from around the world. Been great to see various cultures interpretation on Star Wars themes. Please, no more Jedi/Sith though...

Yeah, going to agree with @drahkon and recommend Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood too. It's my go-to series recommendation for anyone new to, or diving further into, anime, because it's a complete story with little filler (at 64 episodes long it's just one episode longer than Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the shows are very comparable), feels familiar enough to a Western audience to get comfortable with it but has hints of (and then fully dives into) glorious anime weirdness, feels like it hits on a glut of anime tropes you'll see crop up in most shows, an amazing cast of characters, great music, and is just an overall masterpiece. For something a bit on the shorter side (26 episodes), Cowboy Bebop is another shout I feel. The soundtrack is whacky and jazzy, the characters are fun, but it can get a bit heavy at times, so it's not recommended for a binge over a weekend if that's your sort of thing. And I mean the anime here (we're in the anime thread after all!), not the live-action remake Beyond that, as a film recommendation, my go-to is Your Name. It's another one that feels familiar enough in that it's basically Freaky Friday, but then that awesome anime weirdness turns up and well...just watch it. It's also jaw-droppingly beautiful, which doesn't hurt it as a viewing experience at all! If you enjoyed the first season, I would recommend picking it up again later this year, as the anime is finally due to end this September/October and has been a great ride. I'm of the opinion the second season is a little bit of a step down, but from the second half of the third season onwards, it's been nothing short of brilliant. Oof, I was actually listening to a podcast talk about horror anime the other day, and honestly? There aren't many - if any - traditional horror anime that I'd say are worth checking out. Which is okay, because I find that anime - thanks to its medium already having you suspend your disbelief - is perfect for psychological horror, which typically comes paired up with being a bit of a thriller, and for that I do have some recommendations. The first season of Psycho-Pass is 22 episodes long and is basically Criminal Minds meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, with futuristic guns that don't fire until they decide, through an algorithm, whether or not someone is likely to commit a crime based on how psychopathic they are. But what happens when someone learns how to play the system? Watch to find out As an anime film recommendation for psychological horror, Perfect Blue is the be-all and end-all of recommendations in this space imo. It's not just a great anime film, or a great film for its time, it is a perfect example of a creator having their finger on the pulse – it basically predicts modern idol culture, the effects of social media and the internet on celebrities, and the boom we've seen in parasocial relationships. Perfect Blue follows an idol as her career progresses, but when she starts to get stalked, the lines between her life as an idol/aspiring actress and her personal life begin to blur. It can be a little hard to follow the first time around, but trust me, it makes the second time around all the sweeter when you start to pick up on so much more of what's going on. Satoshi Kon, the director, in my opinion is one of the greatest modern directors when it comes to purposeful edits, the way scenes and shots flow into one another - or abruptly half, in other cases - is unmatched, for me. Of course they count! Out of curiosity, which have you watched? There might be one or two left for you to love (if you haven't watched all of them already, that is! Because if you have, fair play in advance, I still haven't! )

Two days until a guaranteed masterpiece. I haven't been this excited for a game since... well, BOTW.

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I'm happy the merger has been blocked. Thing was smelly af. I don't care that they did it via cloud gaming, anti-monopoly law can be that weirdly specific. As for the debate regarding the future of cloud gaming... I'm sure the technology will make it viable soon, but it's likely to be limited in scope regardless (beyond the obvious geographical limitations). By definition, it's going to be less reliable than an actual file/download. Anything that's fast-paced and dependant on precise controls (such as a fighting game) is likely to avoid that route, as will many things handheld/portable. But that doesn't mean it can't be useful as its own marketplace. You can have slower games (such as turn-based strategy, farming sims, etc.) run on it without latency/slowdowns ever causing much issue, for example. I can see streaming platforms adopt videogame libraries in the near future, even (just not very well curated ones).

Mark Brown has recreated a talk Nintendo gave back in 2017 (in Japanese) discussing creating their first open world game for Breath of the Wild:

Great fun tonight, lots of close races there. Lots of funnies tonight.

Some figures (well, they were bought for me). Got a couple left to collect.