Glen-i

Last time I checked, @RedShell, Red Toad wasn't in Mario Wonder! EDIT: Well, now I'm all sorts of confused.

Downloaded, but not played yet. Waiting for Friday evening to tackle it with some N-E Peeps. We have 3 currently joining in, Dcubed, me, and clownferret as a maybe. If anyone wants to join in, give me a shout.

No confirmation of platform yet, but Limited Run are doing the physical copy, so it'll likely be on Switch. Looks surprisingly decent, and the "HD Mode" is very cool. Very Wonder Boy: Dragon's Trap-esque. Slated for a 2024 release.

That's the exact same layout of coins as the underground section in 1-1 of Super Mario Bros, BTW.

Second Mana pack is out now. 3 songs each from Secret of Mana and Legend of Mana. Legend of Mana is new to Theatrhythm, while "Danger" from Secret of Mana is also new. If you played SoM, and don't remember what Danger is, it's that absolutely panic inducing music that plays during boss fights. And it makes for a really funny song to play to. Probably would've chosen the Title Theme myself, but eh. Legend of Mana's music is OK, I guess. Doesn't really stand out, honestly. Weird quirks, I noticed. "Into the Thick of It" is now a BMS instead of an FMS, and "Bejeweled City in Ruins" is the first DLC FMS to have a tailor made background. Which makes "Calling" not getting one all the weirder.

Player's Choice tonight at 8pm.

First time I've been jealous of another console this entire generation. Still, these developers seem to be cool with porting stuff, so maybe in the future, with a more powerful Switch console, it'll come to that. Have fun, the two of you! And remember the famous advice from Wind Waker, don't stay up all night playing.

I've already pre-ordered it, so I might give this a miss. No sense ruining any surprises.

It seems impressive, but for context, some psychopath at indieszero decided to have a feat (achievement) be to get 9.8 million points on this Supreme difficulty. So yeah, it was perfect, but not quite perfect enough. It's brutal.

It's one of those moments when I know full well that I got absolutely robbed, but it was so funny, I kinda didn't care!

Stock format tonight at 8pm. I've been feeling a bit drained during the night in the past few days. Not really mustering the energy to play games. Probably an after effect from my illness last week. So while I'll still be hosting the room, I may stick myself on spectate depending on how I'm feeling.

Well, at least this means Mario Party 3 has to be the next N64 game. They wouldn't be stupid enough to release two similar style of game in short succession. That'd be ridiculous... Oh crap, we're getting it last, aren't we?

I know I said this last time, but man, I hope this can get a consistent frame rate on Switch. I'll settle for 30, just be consistent!

Right, now that I'm not dying from illness anymore, this is long overdue. Well, last time I checked, Sora is still the last character in Smash Ultimate, so that's egg on my face. New Pokémon Snap is quite possibly a fever dream I had once, but for the sake of this write-up, let's assume it actually exists, OK? It's developed by Bandai Namco, the developers of Pokkén(!?) and was released on the Switch in 2021. Yeah, the Switch, not the three other consoles that actually had a bloody camera in them! It's a first person rail shooter game where the gun is a camera. And it's worth remembering that, as the name suggests, it's a sequel to a 22 year old N64 game! I still can't believe this game is a thing. Stars must have truly aligned for this one. The game follows some random nobody as they're asked by Professor Mirror to uncover the secrets of the Lental region by photographing Pokémon in their natural habitat. The Lental region is known for a strange phenomena of Pokémon giving off a luminsecent light. It's up to you to find out what this is and document it. Yeah, unlike the original N64 game, this one isn't tied to the anime at all. Most Pokémon games tend to steer clear of the anime these days, so it's not too surprising, still, it would've been nice to get some acknowledgment of the original title's existence. Holy crap! Is that Todd Snap!? It's a small thing, but I had such a massive smile on my face when he showed up. 22 years have been really kind to him. He talks about his N64 adventure, but never really mentions Professor Oak by name, which is odd, but whatever. It's cool that he exists in the Pokémon universe again, even as an NPC. The game plays pretty much the same way as the N64 game, but with the option of motion controls, so it controls a million times better. The same basic idea is still the same though, get pictures of Pokémon that provide the subject centered, large, and looking at the camera. Interesting poses don't hurt, and having multiple of the same Pokémon is nice too. Along the way, you unlock various tools that you can use to help Pokémon co-operate with you. There are 234 different Pokémon in this game, which is almost 4 times as much as the N64 game had! There's a lot more stages as well. And you can unlock variations of said stages by getting photos of a lot of Pokémon in each stage. Suffice to say, the game is a lot larger then it's 1999 counterpart. There's been 7 generations of Pokémon since then, so there's plenty of new stuff to work with. It's a spin-off game after Gen 3, of course Kecleon is in it. Did you know that Kecleon appears natively in more spin-off games then mainline ones? That's quite rare, because unless you're a cover legendary, a starter Pokémon, or Pikachu, you don't really show up in a lot of spin-offs. Everyone that isn't Game Freak seems to really like that dopey little chameleon. Now, it's worth noting that at the launch of this game, it didn't actually have everything the current game does. A few of the stages from after the credits were flat out unavailable to begin with. This is not a rare occurrence these days, to be fair, but when news of a free update that added these stages was revealed, it became apparent that the game was rushed out to meet a deadline. That's not to say what was there at launch was sparse, it still had more to it then the N64 game, and it was such a well crafted product, that free update felt like a bonus. At least, that's how I see it. I'd love to know how this game came around. Like, who put this idea forward? Did someone at Namco go up to TPC and suggest it, or did TPC suddenly remember Pokémon Snap was a thing and commission Namco for some reason? No idea, but again, I'd love to know. As of December 2021, the game sold 2.4 million copies. For comparison, the last known sales of the N64 game was 3.63 million. It's worth remembering that it's been 2 years since we saw those sale figures, and the Switch has a real knack for selling anything on it. So it's entirely possible that this is one of those rare spin-off sequels that sells better then the first game. I have no proof of that, mind. So, could we see a sequel? Oh, I don't know anymore! Why would you listen to me after this? I want to defend myself by saying that... Come on, we last saw Pokémon Snap in the 90's! This "series" was dead, and you know it! I just hope we don't have to wait another 22 years for the next one. BTW, I should mention that this game is bloody gorgeous! Namco did a really good job making this game the looker it is. I'm not particularly keen on the idea of putting Pokémon in a more realistic environment. *cough* Scarlet/Violet *cough* Because of that, I can't say that New Pokémon Snap is the best looking Switch Pokémon game, the most graphically impressive, sure, but not the best looking. No, that honour goes to next week's game.

Actually, I think I know what happened here. So, when you're creating an arena, on the screen where it asks you for settings (What rules to use, who drops out after each match, etc.), you can access extra settings by pressing Y. Where the really important stuff like lobby music is. I'm betting the Custom Stage option is defaulted to Off, and that's why people couldn't select any last week.

Player's Choice tonight at 8pm.

Seems to me that someone at Sega still thinks it's the 90's and Sonic can step up to a Mario game.

I'm dangerously close to clearing up my backlog now. SMT V and Digimon: Hacker's Memory are the only RPG's left on my Switch. And to be honest? Digimon Cyber Sleuth was a bit rubbish, so I'm not exactly eager to start the sequel. So yeah, I'm up for this... After SMT V.

Thankfully, the likes of Chris Pratt are too expensive for the average video game, so I'm not worried on that front. There's not a lot to go on from the SMB Wonder Trailer, but what little is there sounds somewhat like Mario, so here's hoping it pans out.

I mean, if you have to rip off an awful game like Final Fantasy VIII, might as well take the one redeeming thing about it.

At least it's so easy, that you can use it to unlock anything that requires you to use a character, and survive for 15 minutes. Very useful for some of the more awkward characters.

Garlic's overrated.

Yeah, can't make it tonight. @S.C.G, while in random stage select, make sure you turn Custom Stages off as well. That way, you can make the online lobby allow custom stages, but not have them show up when random is picked. You won't need to close the lobby for custom stages, this way.

Try not to ruin the secrets, because discovering them is half the fun. Just look at the unlocks menu, tackle ones that seem reasonable, and you'll naturally discover them as you go.

Geez, all of those screenshots are just beautiful. They didn't have to take it so far, but I'm glad they did.