Glen-i

Who likes nerdy comparisons? I like nerdy comparisons! That's the map of the Air Continent as it appears in each game. It's nice to see they kept the detail in the remake (even the wind lines on the top left). And just for the sake of more comparison, here's the Air Continent as it appears in Super Mystery Dungeon.

Time matches tonight. 9pm. If you looked at the main thread, you would have noticed the 90's tournament announced recently. I think N-E Smash should get in on that as well, so this week, we'll only be playing with characters that were first seen in the nineties and stages from games that were released at the same time. The stages will be set to random to make sure the stages stay 90's. (Sorry @RedShell, no custom stages this week) Of course, we're N-Europe, so I'm keeping the release dates European as well. (That means no Ness, Marth, Pichu, etc)

Next League Night: Tonight 8pm Room 1: @BowserBasher is host @Glen-i @BowserBasher @martinist @RedShell @viceview51 @S.C.G

Well @S.C.G, I wouldn't mind making tonight's N-E Smash session follow that same theme if you want a taste of it without taking part in a tournament. There's enough variety there to make it fun. Although I don't think you'd be allowed to use Samus.

I can't speak for him (although I'm sure he will agree with that), but I certainly think so. I look at the big hitters of the Nintendo's Switch output and we have BotW, which was the first Zelda game where I actually fell asleep at one point. Mario Odyssey, a game that feels fun to control, but not much else and Pokémon Sword/Shield (Yeah, I know. Not Nintendo), that shows promise but blatantly annexes features from previous games for the sake of selling you a mobile app subscription or for no reason whatsoever. Fire Emblem: Three Houses lost my interest pretty quickly because of the large focus on non-battle gameplay and Xenoblade 2 was quite enjoyable, but mired in a crappy plot and unlikable characters. I look at the first party offerings I did enjoy and there's a noticeable trend with them. There's Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a WiiU port of a fantastic entry to the kart racing series, Tokyo Mirage Sessions still holds up well (Is that first party? Ah well, it might as well be, that's never coming out on another console) and Smash Bros. Ultimate is a masterpiece of a game, but it's built from the WiiU version. (Not a dig, given the sheer scope of the game, corner cutting is expected) It goes to show that the 3 Switch games I'm looking forward to most are Animal Crossing, Xenoblade Chronicles, a remaster of a Wii title and PMD: Rescue Team DX, a remake of a GBA/DS title.

The fan art that has come from the whole "Doom: New Horizons" thing has been a constant source of entertainment for me during the past few months.

Friday and Saturday evening are good for me. Just give me a time.

Oh bugger! I just remembered our co-op playthrough of Kirby Super Star! We're at Milky Way Wishes and all. That'd be a quick title to add to your (and my) list.

Yeah, I'm gonna skip this direct. I'm already getting the game, so gonna casually ignore news about it until release. Watch them reveal a Smash character just because I'm not watching...

Time Paradox is probably one of the most clever levels @Dcubed has made. Completely impossible to finish in multiplayer, but apart from that, it's tops.

I distinctly remember you dying 5 times on the same section. Anyway, for my victory speech, I will quote a very wise and humble person: My Mii. YaaaaaAAAAAAyyyyy! So I've gotta think up two fun parts to utilise by the 29th?

I think you do enough talking about that particular game for everyone.

I mean, that's a bonkers deal, you'd be mad to not jump on that if you game on a PC. Looking at you, @Dcubed

I AM LUCK INCARNATE!

Huh. Interesting. Gonna have to do that myself. EDIT: Well, I can't seem to find something on Mario Maker 2 specifically, but it seems Mario Maker 1 seemed to utilise the average number of deaths a player has before beating a level. No idea if that's the case for Maker 2 though...

I coined #NELeague! I used it for my tweets about the Mario Kart League, @BowserBasher started doing it too and now most people who take part tend to do so. Widening it to include other games is a good idea. #NEGameTitleHere is a good consistent format that works well with a lot of games. So #NEMaker would work best in my opinion.

It's based on the clear rate. Less than 1.5% is Super Expert, 1.5 to 10% is Expert and I can't be certain what differentiates between Normal and Easy. But I saw a 42% clear rate mark a level as Easy. So my guess would be 10 to 25% would be Normal. (Not certain about that one though)

Yep, Super Expert. With a clear rate of currently 1.36%, that's not surprising.

Or all weekend, whatever. Time to work on a competitive Incineroar now. Thankfully, I prefer the normal one's colours so it shouldn't take long at all.

I predict... A game will be shown. There! I win! Oh fine, It's quite close to E3 so I don't expect something like Bayo 3 or Metroid Prime 4. I think we're gonna see some kind of WiiU port. Gut feeling says Pikmin 3.

See, I looked at that layout and thought to myself "He can't really expect me to perform that jump when I could potentially fall really far down" One tile is almost no room to build up momentum, seeing that there was no way to approach that particular donut block from the left so you could build up momentum, I assumed there was something I was overlooking. Hence 15 minutes of failed attempts. Before that jump, I actually thought the level had a steady difficulty curve, even if it started quite high. But that particular jump was such a difficulty spike, I thought there must have been an easier way. Predicting player behaviour is especially hard, some people are gonna think around problems in ways you'll never imagine some people will. And that might leave some people frustrated when what is needed to be done has that little room for human error. Take @Dcubed's Cave of falling Donuts you and @RedShell mentioned about his level. You're not the only one to realise that it might be easier to just use the middle donut blocks to get across the gap. I tried it on my second run-through after he uploaded it online and it was much easier. I'll admit, despite the fact that Dcubed's intention of having donut blocks that fall at a different rate serve as the solution was quite clever. I just did that little trick instead. This is why I like the idea of having multiple routes in some of my levels, I did it quite a bit in the original Mario Maker. You don't have to be a super expert to complete my levels, but those who show a bit more finesse and skill are rewarded with more challenge and some (meaningless) 1-ups for getting through it. I find it adds much more accessibility to my levels so more people can get the satisfaction of completing my level. The downside is that it effectively cuts my checkpoints in half as I need to put one on each route. Now, that's not to say that a challenging level is inherently worse than my process, there's a kind of player for each kind of level. But don't be surprised if that clear rate gets even lower than the average clear rate.

Just wondering, did you do the bottom Route or top Route?

And that's what has some people worried. Nintendo likes to do stuff differently. Sometimes it works out well for the fans, other times it backfires and negatively impacts on a game's quality. This makes them quite volatile at times, it's what makes them interesting to me. Experimentation is exciting, but it doesn't always work.

It's probably because it can be perceived as secretive. There'll be a way to back up saves? OK, but how will it differ from the usual way of cloud saving on the Switch? Nintendo have a history of having weird caveats when it comes to online capabilities, so I can understand the concerns some people might have when Nintendo won't give details on how something works. Could be nothing to worry about, but then why not clarify that?

You've got more tolerance than I do, I'll tell you that much.