Glen-i

Let's Go/Sword+Shield/Brilliant Diamond+Shining Pearl

The software numbers are utterly ridiculous. It's even more impressive because outside of MK8 and Smash Ultimate, I don't consider any of those games to be even close to the best their respective series has to offer. That Switch Effect is a powerful force. It can pretty much sell anything!

Sign-ups for the first International Challenge are now open until the 17th of February. As mentioned before, the participation gift for everyone who completes 3 battles, win or lose, is a Shiny Galarian Articuno. Get on that now, @Ike. The competition starts on the 18th of February. EDIT: In other news; This means that Sword/Shield are now the second best selling Pokémon games, knocking Gold/Silver out of that spot.

I thought Shantae: Risky's Revenge was a great little DSiWare title. Probably the best DSiWare game outside of Photo Dojo. But compared to later titles, you can tell this was before WayForward became more known. The lack of budget shows at times. But it's good despite the lack of cash. Pirate's Curse is proper good though! Defo my favourite in the series. It's a good thing you played Risky's Revenge first @Hero-of-Time, because while most Shantae games are stand-alone affairs, Pirate's Curse retroactively spoils the end twist in Risky's Revenge.

To be fair, Shovel Knight 2 was more of an alternative Shovel Knight. A Shovel Knight Remix if you will.

I doubt that. I've only just beaten the second noble Pokémon! (Got Seventh Star rank and 100 Pokémon though) But yeah, Mean Look got the boot. The horrible irony being that this is the game that Mean Look (and similar moves) would be nothing short of the most useful move in the game if it was in. That's probably precisely why Game Freak ditched it.

Oh right... My apologies then.

None of your Pokémon can learn False Swipe? It's available at the Training Hall. Sure, it's not much use against Ghost Types, but it'll save you a lot of time with aggressive Pokémon.

You're kidding, right? You've been moaning for ages that Yacht Club is too focused on Shovel Knight, and when they reveal something new, you react with sheer indifference? Anyway, I think it looks great! Loads of games go for the NES vibe, but the Game Boy Colour aesthetic is very rare to see these days. And the amount of different intriguing items that trailer shows promises some really elaborate techniques to learn. I'm very much sold!

The sidequests are probably the best thing about this game. They're surprisingly interesting. (Not the Buizel and Spiritomb one though, they suck)

I imagine it's the same reason why they chose it for the Mega Drive Mini and why Ninty went with Final Fantasy VI for the SNES mini. It's the better game. Personally, I'm hoping Shining Force II comes soon. Been dying to play that after playing the first on the Mini.

You should throw it out with ZR and watch its idle animation. It's great!

I'd be amazed if that didn't happen eventually. It even got mentioned in Smash Ultimate.

Ha-de-ha-ha. You know I meant Rare games that Microsoft own the rights to.

Oh, I never use autosave in Pokémon. I'm the kind of nerd that resets all the time chasing a good nature.

That works!? I guess that I just assumed it would reroll the spawn if you did that. Cheers!

Different strokes, I guess. Because I do the exact same thing to kick back with the Battle Tower I mentioned before. In comparison, I can't relax with encounters in this game. Stealth is an effective tool, and that really stresses me out in games. When I found that Shiny Kricketot, I don't think I've been that panicked since, well... Metroid Dread. With the amount you've found in such a short time, I'm convinced they've upped the chance of it happening here.

If there was any game I expected him to come back for, I had a feeling it would be this one. Quite surprised you actually dig the open world aspect of it though, @Hero-of-Time I don't think the lure of rare Pokémon is enough for me. I'm still getting annoyed with how long it takes to get anywhere. Much like Xenoblade X, the battle system is the only thing keeping me chugging along. The first noble Pokémon fight was legit fun though. That said, I'm really missing the more varied options I'm used to from battles. Legends has dumbed down the battles, no doubt about it. The moves are severely cut, a lot of secondary effects are removed. Stealth Rock is basically just Fire Spin now. Stat boosting moves can't stack and can only raise stats one level. (This might be due to how wild Pokémon choose random attacks, this stops them from stacking loads of Defense boosts and becoming almost impossible to kill) Status Effects are only temporary and not as effective as they were before. Abilities are gone, hold items aren't a thing, and the Let's Go EV system, while not as broken as it was in that game, still strips the ability to specialise a Pokemon's stats for it's role. It all just got me jonesing for some proper battles and I booted up BDSP and managed to get to 49 straight wins in the Battle Tower. So kudos to Legends for getting me to do that, I suppose... I'm getting that sinking feeling I had with Let's Go again. Some things I would like to see from Legends in a more traditional game, but there are also some things I really don't want to see.

I made quite the achievement this morning. There you go, @Dcubed. The rarest of Pokémon. An Ice type that doesn't suck! 49 wins in the Battle Tower. Anyone who's tried a similar feat can tell that it's bloody hard!

@Jonnas. Interesting that you mention Samus and her Dread characterisation. Because I'm not super keen on it.

As soon as I saw mine evolve, I knew people wouldn't like it. See, the problem with the choices of starter this game has is that all three of them evolve into their generations "badass" Pokémon. Every generation has at least one starter like this, and it tends to contrast nicely with the more serene (Meganium, Serperior, and Primarina) choice or silly, dopey one (Feraligatr, Emboar, and Incineroar). But what happens when all three starters become badass? Well, it just looks one-note and boring. This was another reason I suspected regional variants for the starters. There's no variety in the three original starters when put together. Now, I've not seen Decidueye or Samurott in this game, but I expected at least one of the starters to get a controversial personality change, and it seems like Typhlosion is that Pokémon. I'm actually OK with it. Not the best regional form I've seen. But it's not awful.

I forgot to actually answer this. Sorry. Now, this is just going from my experience, and @Dcubed set up my TV to minimise input lag. (He's a whiz with that kind of stuff), so your mileage may vary, but the first thing I noticed playing Paper Mario was that the input lag was much better then the WiiU version. I've never noticed any input lag from NSO. There is likely some, I don't think you can ever completely remove it, but it's unnoticeable to me. Then again, I'm the kind of person who wasn't that bothered by the common frame rate issues of games like Age of Calamity. I put that down to growing up with the N64, frame rate issues were part of the norm there. So I might just be more tolerant of it. Now this is just me speculating, but quite a few N64 games can feel a bit stiff compared to modern equivalents, so that might give the impression of unresponsiveness. But unless you're splitting a family plan with a few others, it's a very expensive ask. Portable N64 games with the possibility of previously impossible Rare games is really nice, but paying all that by yourself is probably not worth it. Unless of course, you were one of those people who was planning on getting that Animal Crossing DLC anyway. Then there's an argument for it being worth it.

I'm not quite sure what happened to Birdo's egg there near the start! Glad I got to saw that match. It was tight!

I... Have never run out of space in my satchel so far. And I collect everything in sight. Glad I saved up enough money that by the time I could upgrade it, I got around 12 extra spaces straight away. Probably helps that I only ever bring one type of potion, revives, and each type of ball I have each time I venture out. That's a habit I've had from PMD. It took me a while to properly realise it, but try to remember that you can press R on the item menu to cycle to your Key Items and use that portable crafting kit to free up space in your satchel, if you're desperate. The next upgrade costs 7,000 for me. I've got over 17,000, so I might as well. I'm just thankful you don't have to look for Zygarde Cells 2.0 to do that. I would've gone nuts. I knew this game would do that again. Definitely just gonna look up Serebii for that once the credits roll. EDIT: BTW, @Mokong. That Link Cable item? You can thank Mystery Dungeon for that. That's how they got around trade evolution in a series that has no trades. It's staggering and really surprising how much Legends has taken from Mystery Dungeon. I mean, I like to joke about how the Delta Episode in ORAS is literally one of the plot points of the first PMD, but a part of me always thought that it was possible that it was a coincidence, but after playing Legends? Nah, it's definitely intentional, and it's great. PMD has some great stuff in it I always would've liked in the mainline series.

Have you gone to the second area yet? The resources you get there are more generous compared to the opening area. Also, just making sure, but don't forget to sell Stardust and Nuggets. That's what they're for.