Glen-i

Wow, that'd be kinda cool to have an official N64 controller that can work with an XBox!

You got me and you mixed up, I opted for the black and white Sora when I chose him.

This is the biggest reason why I didn't enjoy Odyssey as much as other similar 3D Marios. I never bothered with 100%, but I did enjoy it when I decided to blitz through it as quickly as possible. I put it down to the really good movement options Mario has here. It's a fun speedrun game, but I say the same about Mario 64, which is fun to 100% as well. The worlds hit the right balance of stars and world size. Odyssey's world's are mostly just too big.

Since Pokémon Home's latest update, I've been working on filling the regional Pokédexes in that app, because it doesn't sync with your in-game ones for some stupid reason. This has meant that I've had to revisit the Switch titles (Not you Let's Go! You suck!) and get some pre-evolutions to deposit in Home. Which brings me on to Shining Pearl. I think this is only the second time I've actually gotten a 5 star Trainer Card in a Pokémon game, and it's all thanks to the cutest Pokémon ever. There were no survivors... You can't argue that he isn't, he's got the ribbon to prove it. My Groudon, Speedy, is not only surprisingly effective in competitive battles, but he's the subject of my ribbon conquest. I've been trying to get every ribbon on him, which meant that I had to enter him in Pokémon contests. This, naturally, led to hilarity. That Clefairy ain't cute! Please! Get off the stage, Carly! You're embarrassing yourself! BTW, that Turtwig was also nicknamed Speedy, naturally that made it my mortal nemesis. Only I get to use ironic naming! This version of the contest has a dance sequence. Yes, it is very awkward with Groudon! But he won all 6 of them, getting me the final star, and 100%. And that ends my current stupid quest to get all the ribbons on one Groudon, well, until Scarlet comes out (Legends:Arceus doesn't have ribbons, thankfully). Anyway, Speedy is back in Galar now, where ribbons give your Pokémon silly titles. Totally worth it! BTW, if anyone has a Regice and Registeel they caught in Sword/Shield, could I borrow them sometime? I need to register them in Home, but I released mine when I brought my competitive ones in from the 3DS...

He owes me a net! He thinks 100 bells covers it, but it doesn't! He's so obscenely rich, he doesn't remember the price of the tools us little people need to live!

I can't believe the command menu lined up so perfectly at the end! I love Hero fights!

Heads up, @Ike I messed up with the format above. It's 3 stock, 5 minutes.

This game is one of the first times I witnessed the "remix with new verse" in actual gameplay, and I fell in love with it. I want loads of games that remix tunes to do it! (The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters do this a lot) It takes a decent tune and just elevates it!

Switch Wi-Fi, what are you gonna do? People have an annoying habit of using terrible connections with wireless. Especially in a free to play demo like this.

Right, I got a graphic done. So next week will be a theme night. Thursday 9th June: 8pm It kinda dawned on me that I haven't inflicted the complete insanity of Frantic Items on us all since this Get Together started, so here we go. What's that? I could've easily whipped this up before last session? Shut up!

Yo, yo, yo, it's stupid theme o'clock! This one is called... Gettting Your Money's Worth Should be obvious, but every character here is paid DLC in either Smash 4, or Ultimate. Not much else to say, really. Again, all the stages here have been DLC in 4 or Ultimate at some point. For the sake of variety, I've also included any stages that were added as part of a free update (Pour one out for the Miiverse stage). The items are the standard fare. Format - 3 Stock, 10 minutes FS Meter - On See you at 8pm.

I wonder about that. Zelda 1 has some fundamental differences from BotW that makes it more bearable for me. The first of which would be that it doesn't ever take me hours to get to where I want to go. Now, obviously the lack of the NES limitations are why BotW's Hyrule is so ridiculous in it's massiveness, but I much prefer to reach my desired destination without having to traverse big fields. It's even more annoying in BotW, because half of the time when I reached my destination, there was nothing interesting to see. Zelda 1's Hyrule is more interesting to explore because it's smaller size meant it was much more likely that you'd find something worth finding. BotW is touted as Zelda going back to it's roots, and while I certainly agree there's some merit to that with how open it is, Zelda 1 never went as far as BotW. Sure, you can visit most of Zelda 1's dungeons in any order, but do that and you'll likely find that you won't get very far because you'll be lacking an item from a previous dungeon. And you can forget about just running straight to Ganon, because you won't even make it past the second room there! Zelda 1 still has some kind of structure to it. BotW, meanwhile, feels to me, somewhat like this after the Great Plateau. Game: Good work! You're off the Plateau! Me: You know what? That wasn't completely awful, I'm looking forward to seeing how these neat rune mechanics develop over time. Game: Oh no. That's it! Four runes is all you're getting. Me: Oh... Well, what's next on the to do list, then? Game: Go beat up Ganon. Me: Well, duh! But what's the first step I need to do? Game: Go to Hyrule Castle, find Ganon, beat him up. I quickly realised that the best bit of BotW was behind me. The dungeons sucked, shrines were the only thing worth looking for, and those weren't very fun either. And there was an underlying feeling of "You know, you can just end this game now. Everything you're doing is not entirely necessary." "Linearity" has become such a dirty word in gaming. Nothing really accentuates that more then the PR for Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. Why is being told where the next step towards your main goal is such a heinous thing that a game not featuring that is a selling point? It gives the impression that Pokémon games have never had the option to "explore at your leisure". But that's been a thing since the Game Boy games! If you never explored, you certainly would never have found the Power Plant, for example. Now, BotW's massive success means that this narrative of Linearity < Open-world has really rocketed in recent times. But hey, at least it was just Zelda. Plenty of other franchises I enjoy that still, oh what's that? Mario Odyssey is about big open areas rather then tight linear levels? Well, that blows. Still, Pokémon Sword/Shield sees the benefits of, oh wait, that series is ditching that too. It's starting to bleed into everything and it's really boring.

Doubt it, I was two years old. And for the record, Zelda 1 is one of my least favourite Zeldas, so a theoretical 80's kid Glen would've said pretty much the opposite. Shaking things up is all well and good, my issue is that shaking things up these days normally means "make it open-world", and I haven't played a single game where the open-world has more benefits then cons. Mario Odyssey, BotW, Pokémon Legends, Xenoblade X, not a single one has succeeded in not devolving to me thinking anything other then "Geez, I just want this to be over!" And I like all 4 of those series! And don't even get me started on how awful Sonic Frontiers is looking. The open-world trend is starting to blur everything together into one big empty field. Sure, BotW is arguably the best open-world game of all time (I actually think Xenoblade X is, but that's not the point), but if even that can't convince me it's a good foundation for a game, well, what hope does anything else has? Silver lining, we've seen a real upsurge of smaller developers doing their own classic Zelda style games. With the biggest competition off competing with the likes of Assassin's Creed, it's not surprising. I just finished Death's Door, I enjoyed my time with it, but it did leave a bitter aftertaste that it could be quite a while since we see Nintendo make a new Zelda in that style.

A countdown to marketing countdown to marketing. You just don't get it, you're too stuck in the past while we're all in on the future's future past future.

Something must be wrong on your end. I checked a look at that video just fine.

I mean, it's basically Link to the Past, but in 3D, so no? Zelda 2 would be a better example. But I never played that when it was released. Mainly because I wasn't born.

I want that useless Mega Drive controller pillow.

- Will have 50 games, including Sega CD games, arcade ports, unreleased games and "a mysterious new work" List of games revealed so far: Silpheed Shining Force CD Sonic The Hedgehog CD Mansion of Hidden Souls Popful Mail Virtua Racing MD Bonanza Bros Shining In The Darkness Thunderforce 4 Magical Taruruto-kun Fantasy Zone (Brand new port of the original Fantasy Zone to the Mega Drive) Comes out October 27th in Japan

@Dcubed literally said the same thing to me, minus the Far Cry bit!

Welp, I finally got off my Arseus, finished off the main plot and rolled the credits. I'm gonna put this in spoilers, despite the fact that I'm the last person here to finish it, so everyone already knows what happens.

God, I love how efficient Pokémon fanart is! Hilarious!

And Zelda isn't even Zelda anymore, so... I'm confused.

Not gonna lie. Street Fighter 6 has an absolutely gorgeous aesthetic. Love me some street art! Don't care because Smash is the closest I'll get to being decent at Street Fighter, but still! Final Fantasy XVI is basically Devil May Cry. It was pretty clear that was the direction it was going, but that trailer makes it even more blatant. I thought Summer 2023 seemed pretty reasonable for the next mainline series, but whatever. I'd rather play a knock-off Devil May Cry then Final Fantasy XIII. Resi 4 is gonna be ruined because all the cheese is going to be cut out and it's gonna lose all the fun. (Also it probably won't have motion controls, so why even bother?)

And here's mine.

I started that game, but got distracted by others. I should get back to it.