Glen-i

Well, seeing as NoE are going around spoiling that, I'm gonna point out that demo of Bayonetta Origins was in the game since launch. Pretty neat that they hid the reveal of a completely different game in there. This patch seems to remove the need to find the keys to open the Old Picture Book though. Also, "small" is right. It only lasts about 3 minutes, but if you're thorough in exploring, there's a costume to get in Bayonetta 3.

Insert "It's been 3,000 years" reference here. Typical, huh? I gripe for years about how I can't use the shiny Greninja I hatched 3 generations ago, but when they finally bring that Pokémon back, it's been nerfed, shinies have become so easy to get, they've become near worthless, and I no longer care about mainline Pokémon enough to actually gripe about not getting to use my shiny Greninja. That's a pyrrhic victory if I ever did see one...

A couple of hitches, but at least the matches themselves ran smooth. @Ike should've won the Brinstar Depths fight just for that bonkers Jigglypuff combo he pulled on me involving a couple of jabs, an air attack, and then finishing with a Rest. My jaw may have dropped at that!

Well, Time was up next, so that's what we're doing tonight. 8pm.

Welp, time to move on to the secret boards. And they are some doozys. You're about to remind yourself just how mean this game can be. Bowser's Magma Mountain Welcome to "Coin Flip: The Board"! Consisting of one massive winding path, this board does not mess around. There are 4 Bowser statues. The 3 green ones offer you the chance to take a shortcut up the mountain with a 50% chance of success. The purple one is the one to watch out for though, it decides which path you go down. You don't want to go to Bowser, if you lose his coin flip, he'll take a blooming Star! There is no shame in using that third shortcut to skip him. It might just decide the game! Oh yeah, and avoid the Happening spaces whenever possible, unless you're certain it'll win you the bonus star. It's no benefit to anyone! There's only one Bonus Block left now, and it's the Plus Block. What does it say about us, that we saved the block you'd be most happy to see for last? Best not dwell on that. The Plus Block is the mirror opposite of the Minus Block, it gives you coins matching the number you roll. Of course, it's MP1, so it's three times more likely to show up for someone else instead. There's probably a good reason why all but two of them never showed up again...

Welp, I'm out of my backlog of pictures referencing that. @Dcubed's not allowed to win any more games.

Player's Choice tonight at 8pm.

I probably would've been more interested in either of the games if the Rabbids weren't in it. They're just thoroughly unappealing to me. Kinda like realistic Pokémon. If Ubisoft had to do a crossover thing, I would've preferred just Rayman. Cartoony enough to not be out of place, and a million times less annoying.

Don't you dare! Most of these are difficulty adjustments. Play it. It's fun. You'll love it.

A patch for this is out now. Has some bug fixes, including a certain exploit to cheese the hardest boss in the game in about 10 seconds. Boooooo! On the plus side, you can now skip the intros to those platforming challenges and certain hidden things are easier to find. But the best reason to get the patch is because they made Viola's Witch Time mechanic waaaayyy easier to activate and notice. She essentially now has a Bat Within safety net, and the length of her Witch Time is a bit longer too. Might go and do a Hard playthrough now.

Hey, I've always maintained the physics are the one good thing about BotW.

They respawn. Also, getting EXP for catching a Pokémon has been a thing for ages.

Right, we're almost getting there. Time for the last initial MP1 board. Luigi's Engine Room Yeah, I don't remember this one much, either. It's one of those "paths change every turn" boards that everyone loves soooo much. Every single warp pipe leads to Boo, so expect a lot of thievery. It's also another board where going to Bowser is something you elect to do. Not quite sure this deserves the 3 star difficulty, but we'll see. I won the last game, so I went with the Slow Block. The Slow Block is a lazy palette swap of the Fast Block. What? How dare you!? Not every block is a lazy recolour! That kind of talk will get you banned from Mario Party, you know! Where the Fast Block only has 8, 9, and 10 on it, the Slow Block only has a 1, 2, and 3 on it. Most of the time, it's not helpful, which makes it helpful, because of the silly way special blocks work in MP1. Granted, throughout the last 5 games, our travel speed has been woeful, so I'm not sure introducing this to proceedings was the best idea...

@Dcubed might have cashed in all his MP1 luck too early... Very high scoring round throughout, which is ironic, because no-one was going anywhere really fast. @BowserBasher was really gunning for "Unluckiest Mario Party game" last night though. Don't think it quite reaches my shambolic DK's Jungle Adventure performance, but it was damn close! Some examples, after this. Some context for why he didn't nick the star, @Dcubed was right behind him, which means there was a decent chance that he would just nick the star, meaning @BowserBasher would've just wasted 50 coins. Not sure what posessed him to steal coins from 3rd place Luigi, though... BTW, that was the second time he only got one coin from Boo that game. I just knew picking the Event Block after the last game was the right choice!

I mean, I'm here now if you still need to evolve those Pokémon?

Sorry, I'm afraid I won't be able to Smash tonight. I'm far too tired.

Real life commitments are really conspiring to stop me playing Mario Kart lately... Sorry, @BowserBasher, you'll have to take over this week.

I wouldn't get Scarlet at all. There's no benefit to having both for yourself.

Those people are exaggerating the theming of the two featured legendaries. Pokémon has being doing this since the GBA games, where two usually opposing things make for the theme of the games and also the designs of their legendary Pokémon. Land and sea, truth and ideals, day and night, and so on. Past and future just happen to be the latest one. The only real substantial difference between Scarlet and Violet is what Pokémon are available. You can just trade with a Scarlet player for the ones you can't get.

Yeah, that's her. The sprites used in gameplay are the same as the DS game, so it's very odd that she got redesigned so drastically. That said, the gameplay, thankfully, is untouched, all the new stuff is optional (there's even an option, on starting a new game, to not have any new content show up until after the credits, which is cool if you want to have it play as close to the original as possible), Atlus wisely didn't mess with that, only adding some QoL changes in the menus to make it smoother. Radiant Historia is my 3rd favourite DS RPG. It's very unique, and the plot's got a cool hook to it with the heavy focus on time travel. Highly recommended.

The original art style for character portraits is one I got. Incredibly skeevy that it's locked behind a paywall, but I just don't like the redone ones. The DS portraits have this cool rustic charm to it that helps it stand out. Unfortunately, it's not consistent throughout, as the 3DS introduces some new characters, which still use the newer artstyle, even if you got the DLC, which is a little jarring once you start playing the new content. EDIT: I just booted it up to confirm this, it also doesn't apply them to the menus. No idea why, but keep that in mind. Still, anything to reduce the amount I have to gaze in horror at how much they butchered Eruca.

Do you mean which version? Because that depends on whether you have an NSO account. If you do, then it doesn't really matter. Someone here will likely help you out with any version exclusives you want. If you don't have NSO, then you should make your choice dependant on which version has the exclusive Pokémon you like. Although that depends on how blind you want to jump into it. I normally just go with the one that has the Pokémon on the cover that I like better. Which is why I chose Scarlet.

I just looked this up. Once per switch in, huh? Ouch. My Greninja gets nerfed and it's not even in the game yet!

That's been out for a couple of weeks now.

Doesn't help that the same thing happened to me with Zelda in this same generation for the exact same reason. Two of my favourite Nintendo IP's going from "Guaranteed good time" to "It's not for me anymore". Still, it's not all hopeless, the inevitable remake of Pokémon Black/White will draw me back, and PMD still does what I like about it. A fair point, and I've played quite a few of them, but no matter how many different takes I've played, there's always something off about it, and I'm not just talking about the monsters themselves. Nexomon Extinction was a good time, but the battle system felt quite shallow in comparison. It makes a great complimentary game to Pokémon, but it doesn't hit the highs of most of them. Thank god for indies, but it's like playing one of the many Smash clones out there, they never quite nail the casual fun / competitive seriousness balance.