Glen-i

Welp, here we are. 27 boards done, and we're here for the final N64 one! You thought it'd be a Bowser themed one? Well, too bad, Waluigi Time! Waluigi's Island This board is chaotic! Very fitting for Waluigi, there's a lot going on. So I'll go through each thing of note. The first thing is Dynamite Island on the bottom of the board. It's quite similar to the Coin Beam in Mario Party 2's Space Land. The countdown begins on 5 and goes down every time someone lands on a Happening Space on the island. When that reaches 0, it blows up and anyone on that circle will lose ALL OF THEIR COINS! Be very careful when traversing this place. It would be relatively easy to leave this place if it wasn't for the next gimmick... Right above Dynamite Island, there's the Junction Roulette. When you try to leave Dynamite Island, you'll be forced into Action Time. Each arrow will flash clockwise and the one you land on is the direction you'll go. The speed at which the arrows cycle is random. And yes, you can go back down on to Dynamite Island. Here's the trick though, it can be timed. Press A right when the arrow you want is lit up, and you'll land on it every time! This can be tricky if it goes really fast, but remember this, it's a huge help! At the top right of the board, near Boo, there's a bizarre junction, when you get there, you can choose which path to take. There's a 50% chance that you'll fall into a booby trap, and get sent back to the start. This makes going to Boo an unreliable tactic. Don't count on it too much. Finally, there's the island on the top left. Notice how, apart from the Bank space, it's all red spaces? Well those spaces change every turn! They could be blue! They could be Battle Spaces! They could be Game Guy! This island is chaos incarnate! To get on to the island you have to use one of those bridges. Only one is down at a time, and which one is down changes when someone lands on a Happening Space near a bridge. Oh, and just a final note. Going into any red pipe will take you to the green pipe near the start. Phew, a lot to take in there. Mushrooms and Golden Mushrooms will help you get through dangerous areas quickly, while Reverse Mushrooms can get you back on track if the Junction Roulette messes you up. Skeleton Keys aren't very great, as the gates are a bit situational. Warp Block, on the other hand, is dangerous. It's awkward to get around, and a well timed Warp Block can really ruin someone's play. I don't know when @Dcubed will be available next week, so we'll see.

Hooray! The most amount of coins held by any player in all of our games. (602) Pity I still almost lost! A massive lead, and then I couldn't do anything for 12 turns. Backtrack sucks. The game was good, but Backtrack still sucks.

I dunno, that bit was pretty cool in Sea of Stars.

Done, reminder for anyone to get it done, as it's up now. Not gonna lie, feels weird having a Pokémon spirit fight and not immediately getting the reference the conditions are referring to. Terapagos and Ogerpon thoroughly in "I don't get it" territory. Very sad. Might have to resign as "N-Europe's Massive Pokénerd" soon. Not now though, still know more then all of you losers with an actual life. Terapagos ended up making me use something other then my "Shulk + Fiora + Xenoblade support" for the first time since these anniversary spirits started (Technically, Koraidon/Miraidon would've forced that because of Zap Floor, and no Xenoblade spirit giving immunity to that, but that doesn't count). Was not expecting that, considering it was meant to only be an Ace spirit. Blatant lies! Easily the hardest fight of this lot. Still, nothing "Young Link + Skull Kid + Loftwing + Wind Fish" couldn't fix. That combo might be the most broken of all. Basically makes any decent Young Link player impossible to kill.

NO! OH MY DAZE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?

Don't let DCubed hear you say that...

OK, @S.C.G. 8pm. And then you'll realise why Backtrack is the worst board in Mario Party history.

Really? Have you played Perfect Dark Zero!?

Yes, I should iterate, that we're not limited to Mario Kart 7, I'm up for a lot of other games depending on what's available.

DK 64 was the start of the old Rare staff leaving. Not the actual quality of games. That's what I meant. We know very little of the development of Dinosaur Planet, so we'll never quite know what kind of possible development hell the project was going under for Nintendo to make the decision to move it to Gamecube and make it a Star Fox title. But clearly, Ninty decided that investing in Rare wasn't worth it anymore. I look at Rare's output since, and a part of me, kind of agrees. I don't think they would've kept that quality up. And I don't believe for one second that Rare would've helped the Gamecube much. The PS2 was too much of a juggernaut.

The thing is, that Rare's output had declined a lot since Donkey Kong 64. A lot of the people who made those games happen had left and moved on to other ventures at that point. Rare didn't really resemble themselves in the past. I'd argue that Nintendo made the right call in the end. It sucks, but that's what it is.

Anyway, this is what my above GIF is referring to. Yeah, @lostmario totally deserved the win that time. He had the defense up, and was too far ahead for me to catch up. Mario Kart don't care sometimes. And one more happy coincidence.

@lostmario

OK, now we're doing a theme night. In less then 2 months, you won't be able to play Mario Kart 7 online anymore, so all the tracks here are ones that were in Mario Kart 7. For that extra authenticity, I suggest using a character that was playable in Mario Kart 7. No-one cares about Honey Queen. See you at 8.

Nope, didn't own either of those games!

Found the other guy who wants the Banjo franchise to die again!

For once, I want TPC to go the route that costs people more. FR/LG are the still the best Gen 1 experience, so if they can't, or won't, have Transfer Pak support, then I'd rather just play the remakes. And seeing as the Golden Sun update adds the ability to have people link two different games together (Booting up The Lost Age while with a second player asks if you want Player 2 to use the first Golden Sun), it's now perfectly possible to trade in between versions. No excuses now.

Uhhh... You don't actually need Lash until after you've done all you can on that continent. Once you've beaten Briggs, and completed Air's Rock, you have to go back to the first continent anyway. Then you'll need Lash. So you don't actually have to backtrack too far. For god's sake though, don't forget Tremor Psynergy! It's in the caves underneath the second town. It's very easy to miss!

Yeahhhhh, gonna have to snuff that beacon out. The Mystery Dungeon team have only just released the latest Shiren the Wanderer game in Japan. I'd be surprised if they were working on two titles at the same time.

27th of February, yep. That's when Pokémon Day is, so expect something then.

Found the person who wants to kill the Banjo series again!

Nope, nuh-uh, I'm not standing for that. Do give your impressions! If you can't give thoughts about a playthrough of a game in a thread dedicated to said game, then what's the bloody point of this forum!? You're not declaring the game irredeemable rubbish because of some frame rate hiccups like a lot of internet discourse, so your opinion has some value. I wanna know!

Is that the sound of someone confused about what The Pokémon Company is? So @Ike is the more accurate of the two, but even he's overstating how much influence Nintendo have over the development of a mainline Pokémon game. Nintendo publish and distribute the mainline games, while also providing stuff like dev kits, and some funding. But they barely participate in actual development these days. We are far away from the days of Iwata coming in and shoving an entire second region into a Game Boy cartridge. With something like Link's Awakening, Nintendo will have someone closely overseeing the project, because Zelda is an IP that is entirely under their ownership, so they have incentive to make sure it meets their guidelines. As far as Nintendo is concerned, Scarlet/Violet's atrocious performance is nothing to do with them. They published and distributed the game. People were able to buy it, so they did their job. And it sold gangbusters, so why should they care? Have you ever wondered why we got Pokémon Stadium and Puzzle League on NSO, but not a single mainline game? It's because Nintendo developed those games, so they don't have to get the go-ahead of The Pokémon Company to put them up. Long story short, Cadence of Hyrule is more of a first party game then Pokémon.

Actually, he does. You just have to not move upon landing.

Eh, it was Time. Everyone dying at the start made no difference. Well, I'd say that, if it wasn't for @S.C.G getting a very cheeky K.O!