Glen-i

Why not leverage that hatred into bait? It's good business!

Funnily enough, @Jonnas. You left out the one Sun/Moon remix whose original song I actually like (VS Island Kahuna). The rest of the soundtrack ranges from eh to forgettable. Battle of the Summit is especially egregious, because that's the Champion battle. And it's a remix of the main series theme? Laaame! Blatant nostalgia baiting that sums up the 3DS games very well. When Pokémon games remix a battle song, it usually has a good reason, normally they only remix a song when you fight a character from a previous game. Because of that, Sun/Moon's Champion effectively has no theme.

N-Europe Review

Why would you ever choose anything else!? OK, there are a couple of entries where setting the healer to act automatically has them actually react to sudden health drops in the middle of a turn. Seeing as most DQ's have you input everyone's actions before the turn starts, the player can't do that. One of the rare cases where "The Computer is a cheating *******" can work in your favour. It's a very niche boss-only use, mind. And some entries AI isn't smart enough to do that, so yeah. Follow Orders 99% of the time! Anyway, I'm buying it immediately, but when I get around to playing it depends on how long M&L takes me.

I'd buy the hell out of that! I love it when a game has concept art hidden in-game. It's the best kind of collectible. Because it's endlessly fascinating, and I love seeing ideas form and change over time before we get to the final product. And yeah, I do have a right giggle at some of the really early-in-development designs, but I do so because the actual used monster designs in Pokémon are so excellent, and it's great to see what could've been. OK, beta Hydreigon was never ever gonna look like that in the final game. But now I'm tempted to draw actual final design Hydreigon wearing bright red pyjamas. The mental image is just so funny to me!

Hell, we saw this with the online gaming community once Palworld's plagiarism flared up. People deemed it was fine, because it was Game Freak and they deserve it because they make successful games, and are "lazy" and such. Hell, a couple of people here said as much.

Ah, great! I was hoping there'd be some of that here. Far more exciting! That beta Lickilicky is wild! EDIT: Wow, some of the scrapped designs in the Gen 5 section look downright horrifying!

I mean with how much the two latest games have been deemphasising battles, I'll take it at this point. Although, then again, with how much of a bloody grind Scarlet/Violet is to get TM's, I don't think I'd bother getting a team ready if the mainline series doubled down on boring grinding for crafting purposes. God, it absolutely killed my motivation to keep up with the meta. Massive regression from how easy Sword/Shield made things. Not to mention how the series seems to be slowly disincentivising actual battles. Watch any speedrun of Scarlet and Violet, and marvel at how easy it is to do the bare minimum of trainer battles and still end up overleveled.

"What the hell is Mother 3!? This kid looks like someone from that EarthBound thing!" - Me playing Smash Bros. Brawl.

I think the stage where I was Lucas and couldn't wake up in time was my favourite.

Ah, but now you can play them online. Including stupid custom stages. Seriously, the GBA app alone is an absolute treasure trove of 4 player nonsense, add on N64 (Mostly Perfect Dark and Mario Party) and yeah, NSO Fridays has become a staple for us for good reason.

I think I'd be reasonable in guessing that he was busy making custom stages in a different game, a game that might have been the reason he suddenly renewed his subscription.

Oh, that is more then enough notice! OK, @BowserBasher, and @S.C.G. Heads up, slight change of plan. Custom Stages from 7:30pm. Normal stages from 8pm.

I must give my thoughts on this very important subject. I mostly agree with that list, but I would swap "But...Why?" and "Fweet!". I would also bump "There it is!" up a tier. Other then that, yeah, pretty accurate, exciting times coming though. Hopefully, a whole bunch of Boo stickers are incoming!

Just a heads up, "Disaster Relief Done Quick" started a few hours ago. A shorter GDQ event to raise money for relief from the recent Hurricanes that hit America. You can find it here. Some of the highlights are, but not limited to; Saturday Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Resident Evil Survivor Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Final Fantasy XVI Diddy Kong Racing Sayonara Mario World The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Octopath Traveler II Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Sunday Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster F-Zero AX Star Fox 64 Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Super Mario Galaxy Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition Super Metroid The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Echoes of Wisdom is a pleasant surprise with how recent it is, that game has potential for some mad speedruns! Lightmatter is up next, with TMNT (2 player, Arcade Mode) in about an hour at time of posting this.

Bandai Namco? That's the closest we're ever getting to a Digimon and Pokémon crossover, huh?

Catching up on some speedruns from the Games Done Quick channel, and man, while I do think it's a pretty lame soundtrack as far as Pokémon games go, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon gave us some absolute great remixes! And yes, the fact that I think these are the better songs of the game goes to show how much I dislike Sun/Moon's soundtrack.

Insomnia struck, and I thought "You know what? It's about time I gave Gnarly Arcade an attempt!" I did it! I went with Mondo Gecko Hey, remember this? I know that the image above implies that I played through with 5 other people, but up until Shredder, it was only me and one person playing as Karai. That Karai player was amazing! Totally made me look amateurish! MVP for sure, but they disconnected during stage 14. Thankfully, their expert skills got me to 7 lives, so I was probably set for the rest of the game. Once I got to Shredder, everyone else in that image magically started joining (Except the Leo player, he joined at the start of that stage). Bunch of vultures! Literally would've preferred to play with the Karai player, they weren't the best players... Super Shredder was an absolute massacre. Everyone kept trying to revive people, and that's basically impossible during that fight, dragged the fight way too long with me being the only one taking the opportunity to do damage. Anyway, thank you, random Karai player, couldn't have done it without you! Only achievement left now is to get the base 7 characters to max level in Story Mode.

Time matches from 8pm tonight.

Multiplayer in GP Legends is a tad... let's go with unbalanced. I'm no F-Zero expert, but even I know the side attack shouldn't do that much damage. But yeah, it's fun. Kinda have to put up house rules to punish blowing up in some way, otherwise people will just boost all the time, because boosting until you blow up is still quicker then driving in a way that prevents exploding. Which I can't help goes against the risk/reward thing the boost system is supposed to do.

Phew, unlocked every stage (and variant of every stage, think Wave Race 64) just in time. Not every machine, mind you. That takes a lot more time, and skill. Doubt I could pull that off. See you at 8:30, @BowserBasher, and @S.C.G

I mean, REALLY!?

Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that! It's quite remarkable how disinterested he is! Not a fan. And he's back in Climax, but now he's annoying because he keeps telling me how I'm about to lose the lead! Anyway, I actually kinda really like GP Legend so far. I haven't touched Story mode yet, but this is the first F-Zero game I've played where the "Easy" difficulty actually is easy, and not just "Still hard, but at least the CPU doesn't cheat". Also, Grip actually has a tangible effect! I don't really dig F-Zero X or GX, because grip might as well not exist, you still slide everywhere. But here, there's a noticeable improvement between Blue Falcon's "B" and Space Angler's "A". Taking 90 degree turns at full pelt is very satisfying! Climax is a little more slippery, but not too much. CPU's are a bit more cheaty there, even on easy. They take turns at speeds that I know is impossible. And finally, the tracks in GP Legend are positively insane! And I mean that in a good way. One track, I think the fourth one, has a speed boost leading right into a jump panel. Obvious shortcut opportunity, right? Except that it was a complete trap, because there's absolutely nothing out there! The tracks love this, but there are also proper shortcuts, alternate paths, choices between healing and speed. It's all so exciting. This game's great, and there's still two modes I haven't touched.

Right, that's 15 tracks in GP Legends now. There's a secret cup, but I'm gonna leave that for now, and switch to Climax and rack up the tracks there before I attempt that. I guess if James McCloud can be in F-Zero, why not Wolf O'Donnel as well? Yes, that's totally Wolf! He can dye his hair all he likes, but he ain't fooling me! Anyway, PSA for F-Zero Climax, the controls are proper weird. They're fully customisable, but in a bizarre move, you can't have all of the controls active at once. What does this mean? Well, as an example. By default, you cannot brake in this game! You have to assign it to a button! And that means giving up a different feature! However, it's in Japanese, but someone thankfully made a handy chart so you can figure out what it all means. Oh, did I mention there's unlockable controls? Because there is! This game is wild!

Nope, gonna have to quickly run through Grand Prix so we're not stuck with 3 tracks per game tonight. Anyway, finding it difficult not to burst out laughing in the middle of the night at the "Crash Out" music in GP Legend. Was not prepared for how melancholy it is! It's hilarious!