Glen-i

And that's Tony Hawk's Underground done. All 126 goals and every secret tape found as well as the 3 old skool levels. The first thing that stuck out to me was how much quicker everything is. Less waiting around, more skating. I get the feeling that this game was actually optimised for the Gamecube, because the loading times are more than twice as fast as previous entries. They're so fast that the loading bar never actually gets full. It rarely even makes it halfway. Now, I've never played the PlayStation version, but I can't imagine it's bigger discs helped matters there. I mean, why make a loading screen with a bar if all the versions loaded as quick as the Gamecube one? The second thing was that I still enjoyed the plot, you create a skater and control him/her as they team up with their best friend, Eric Sparrow, to get sponsored by the local skate shop and eventually turn Pro. It's a pretty straightforward concept, but there's enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. The big mechanic addition is being able to get off your board. Apart from the obvious benefit of being able to quickly regain control of your movement, it can also help you to regain speed mid-combo for longer combos. You can't do this too often because of a "walk timer" that ends your combo if it runs out. I dig it. There are less goals compared to THPS4, I guess something had to give for there to be, you know, an actual plot. On the plus side, there's actual difficulty options, which is nice and can help with repeat playthroughs. Half tempted to play through Sick Difficulty. So yeah, I still think this is the best Tony Hawk game, at least on Gamecube. Haven't actually played the 1+2 remaster. I was hoping for that to come out on Switch, but with the latest Activision acquisition, I'm not too hopeful there...

I finished all 190 goals on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 yesterday. This game was the first to ditch the arcade style 2-minute sessions in favour of freely skating around each level, looking for goals to complete. I like this entry better than the previous for quite a few reasons. - The 'Goal' system is vastly preferable to the old arcade style. Apart from the fact that each level has over double the amount of things to do compared to THPS3, it also allows a lot more set pieces and interesting twists to the gameplay. - You don't have to do every goal with every character any more! You clear it with one skater, you clear it with everyone. - That said, each skater does have a "Pro Challenge" which tends to be a hard-to-pull-off stunt based on that Skater's specific accomplishments. For example, Tony Hawk transferring between two disconnected half pipes while 6 stories up, Bob Burnquist skating through a loop with the roof taken off or Bam barreling downhill in a shopping trolley in an attempt to launch himself as far as possible into the sea (Because, of course he does). - It's nice to have voice acting from the actual Pro Skaters. Tony and Bam really get into it, but others do sound a bit dry. Still, nice that they went there. - Custom Restarts are amazing, and you really miss them when you play an earlier entry that lacks them! Anyway, next up will be Tony Hawk's Underground, which was my personal favourite before starting this Tony Hawk-athon. It'll be interesting to see if it holds up.

I was really hoping for Tony Hawk's 1+2 to come to Switch. Even more so since @Dcubed gave me all the GameCube entries.

I've been busy. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is 100% complete! You'd think that the Tunic of the Wild would be your reward, but nope! You get the Hyrule Warriors outfit instead. Which is a million times better. Badass scarfs are better than awkward shorts! Even more impressive is that I've uncovered every ? Panel in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX. That previous picture ended up being the run and I've got a newfound respect for Heracross. I might go for every shiny Pokémon at this point. Might as well after coming this far.

146 times? I mean, you know that's practically just begging me to boot up the game and see what my score is on that, right? Now show me someone who can full chain Dark Domination and then I'll be impressed! Song's effing impossible...

See, I've played the DS remakes of IV, V and VI, so the 2D mode kind of appeals to me. Very similar style. And I wouldn't be so quick to play down how much effort the 2D one has put in. Very little is compromised there. You can still have alternate outfits and the sprite work for enemies is exceptional! The FMV's are still in 3D, but if you're playing 2D mode when one starts playing, it actually turns the voice acting off to maintain consistency with the game. It's a really small detail that shows real thought went into it. It's not purely visual though, the 2D mode tweaks some mechanics to make XI more like the retro games. Changing to random encounters, for example. Either version of DQ XI is impressive on it's own, but the fact that they made both of these is a testament to how good of a job the developers did on this game. I can imagine it really helps with the replay value.

Not really, the Great Deku Tree is a character. Think how it shows up in Wind Waker.

Do not neglect training a character up, you'll be forced to use everyone eventually for side missions. Try and keep everyone at a similar level. I wouldn't worry about weapons too much until the endgame where you have way more freedom over building a weapon for your playstyle. Just use whatever one hits hardest for now. Strangely enough, Daruk is one of the few characters who I didn't opt to give a speed boost seal. The guy is already crazy good at stunlocking enemies once you unlock his later moves. He also gets invincibility frames when he uses an attack that uses his Power of Protection. That's very useful. He can even get some easy headshots by pressing X after four Y presses. (You might not have unlocked this move yet) Zelda missions will start showing up soon, she's one of my favourite characters and she's an absolute beast in the endgame thanks to her crazy powerful rune attacks! I have a build with 4 attack speed seals on her and she just decimates everything. Fun thing I noticed with her. If you use her Remote Bomb rune, the one that lets her control a walking bomb, all enemies will completely ignore her and she'll be invincible as long as you're controlling it. So you can use it as a panic button if you start to get overwhelmed.

I mean it's a kids show in the 90's, butts are normally involved. Because when you're a kid, butts are hilarious!

I have never wanted a Heracross to succeed as much as I have right now. So yeah, in the middle of Purity Forest with a run that hasn't ended before floor 20 like most of them do. Got real lucky with finding Joy Seeds early on and now have 4 multi-hitting moves. Basically, I'm trying to one-shot everything before they can retaliate. That said, my equipped item isn't great. Immunity to confusion is nice and all, but I'd sacrifice all 7 of those temporary recruits for an X-Ray Specs! An Empowerment Seed for Mega Evolving would also be very much appreciated.

Huh... I never thought of it like that. That's messing with my head! Now I'm even less confident about my "No". And don't worry, I have a veritable smorgasbord of unimportant questions covering a wide range of (mostly) Nintendo series.

Ah well, silver linings and all that. Kecleon is definitely up there in the "Most forgotten by Game Freak" category. I honestly think that the only one more forgotten is the Shinx family. 3 generations on the trot that they've been absent from a mainline game. (Sword/Shield finally fixed this in it's DLC)

See, I played through the entirety of DQ XI in 2D mode and my plan for when I have little to play is to replay it again entirely in 3D mode. Even without voice acting and SNES style sprites doing the action, I very much enjoyed the story. It'll be interesting to see how 3D changes things. I have high hope for the voice acting considering how good the DQ VIII 3DS port was in that regard.

I'm sorry, where does it say Double Cherry? You can't just lump 1-up Mushrooms in with Double Cherries willy nilly! That just causes anarchy!

When you have woefully low base stats of 440, no evolution and get shafted by not getting a Mega Evolution in the remake of the generation that you debuted in, drink is the only answer.

Yep, also this. Everyone is just saying what I'm thinking currently. Nintendo just aren't gonna chase the performance, because that would make their consoles more expensive. When your main competition are expensive, power-chasing consoles, why give up your cheaper alternative niche?

So... That's a No? And also the SMB Super Show was set in the future all along? Wild! See, this is why I can never fully commit to my No answer before. Mario as a concept still exists and no-one will ever notice because in essence, that's still Mario. He still beats up Bowser and shouts wahoo a lot. But in that specific scenario, didn't the Mario that didn't walk off a cliff see it happen? That has to have left some impression. And wouldn't that Mario remember that? And coincidentally, wouldn't all future Marios share the same memory? I know that would haunt me for the rest of my life if it happened to me.

This discussion is now closed. Don't bother talking about it, we won't listen to you. Look at the first post for the current question. With Mario 3D World getting released on the Switch soon, I'll start this thread off with a doozy of a philosophical question. First of all, watch this 23 second video. Now then, after seeing that, I have to ask... Does Mario Still Exist? I don't think anyone has managed to play through the entirety of 3D World and managed to keep the original Mario intact. (This happens at the Flag pole as well, only the Mario that touches it stays, every other one disappears) Where your answer lies will depend on your philosophical viewpoint, I guess.

Welcome to a stupid thread idea I had that I'm calling Gaming Questions That Don't Matter. Simply put, I think about things in games way too hard at times and end up with questions that I'll never actually find the answer to and I think you should all join me in my torment. Each week, I'm gonna post a different question like this in the hopes of starting deep, meaningful conversations on stupid crap. This week's question is one that's bubbled up for me quite recently. And it involves the Zelda timeline. Yeah, that hot mess. But we're not here to debate whether it's accurate and we're certainly not here to debate on why the hell the Oracle games got moved to after Link's Awakening. For the sake of this question, let's just assume that this is the timeline and that anyone who diverts the discussion towards what goes where will get pointed and laughed at for not reading this post. OK? Cool. So, we can all agree that Breath of the Wild happens sometime after all of this, which has puzzled me for quite a while. Because... OK, so Zoras exist in BotW, must be somewhere in the middle or the left timeline. OK, now I'm lost. Somehow, Rito also exist in this world. Which would place it on the right hand side of the timeline, but that can't be, because Zoras exist and Wind Waker established that Zoras evolved into the Rito to adapt to the now flooded Hyrule, but they're right there on the other side of Hyrule in BotW, and oh no, I've gone cross-eyed! This isn't the only case of stuff from different points in the timeline showing up in BotW. There are way too many references to locations from all sorts of games and it makes no damn sense! A popular theory is that all three timelines somehow merge together to make the world of BotW. That would conveniently solve a lot of the problems here, but it does leave one major concern of mine. How? And then an idea started to bubble in my mind, which forms the basis of a theory that has led me to finally ask this week's question. Is Hyrule Warriors Canon? For clarity, I'm not talking about Age of Calamity (Nintendo has already confirmed that as canon), I'm talking about the original Hyrule Warriors, specifically the 3DS and Switch version. If you don't know the plot of that game, basically some evil sorceress gets the Triforce and uses it to smash different Zelda games together. These include Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker. You can play as Ruto (a Zora) and Medli (A Rito) in this game. I think you can see where I'm going here. Now, obviously Ruto and Medli went back to their respective worlds once everything was fixed, but you can't honestly believe that any Zora or Rito didn't take the opportunity to explore this strange new Hyrule where Link has a scarf and rock music is everywhere? What if said Zora/Rito got left behind once everything went back to normal? Suddenly, we have a world where both Zora and Rito exist, which would mean that Hyrule Warriors is this grand timeline unification, BotW can start making sense and I can stop giving myself an aneurysm thinking about it. I think you all know my view is that Yes, Hyrule Warriors is Canon. Now, obviously, there's bound to be something out there that's still unanswered despite this, but what do you think? Am I on to something? Or am I just barmy? (Don't answer that one, I already know) Discussion starts here

Yay? Seriously though, this cartoon is like a freaking drug trip! It's just at the point in history where any CGI was considered good CGI and it's aged about as well as you'd expect.

Oh, I hated this decision for the 3DS games. Everything looked so pale compared to Black/White Sword and Shield thankfully dialed back to more colourful models. Yes, I know Kecleon is not in Sword/Shield, that model's from Home.

I'll tell you this now. Trial & Error is the name of the game. You're never gonna finish it without first failing hundreds of times. Night Trap is a pretty crummy game. It's more valuable as a piece of gaming history.

Absolutely this. Gameplay over graphics any day.

See, I'm not surprised. The card mechanic was designed for a game that has a mostly fixed camera for battles so you can see almost everything at once. It allows the player to more easily manage their deck and dodge attacks when you don't need to control the camera. The people behind the original version went on to make The World Ends With You, BTW. You can kinda see some similarities between the two. That GIF also reminds me that Chain of Memories is a drop-dead gorgeous GBA game!

Yeah, HoT pretty much nailed it, add to that the sudden mood shifts Peach goes through to use those powers and that's the kind of PR no-one wants to go through today, especially Nintendo. Of course, all the inevitable detractors would conveniently ignore the fact that pretty much every character and enemy in the game has mood powers. Not just Peach. That's not to say that another Super Princess Peach can't happen. They'd just have to give it a mechanic with a context that doesn't invite problems. Weirdly enough, the same issues that the DS game would face today could also be used to make a new Super Princess Peach game be a PR home run.