RedShell

Testing... Nice. Cheers.

I did, yeah. And it was indeed doomed. Hold the phone! I thought spoilers were broken since the forum got updated, they are for me. *frantically clicks spoiler button* ...nothing. Anyway, in regard to the thing I've not had much chance to mess around with them yet. I heard about how crazy it is though, so looking forward to properly checking it out.

Bloody hell! New stage is evil. The thing in the final room of the new stage? The thing that I can't specifically mention because spoiler tags still don't work? That thing?

Just a quick update to my list, before I forget what I've played. Probably have forgotten about a few already. Bramble: The Mountain King Stray Palworld Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (replay) No More Heroes III Dead Rising Stuff completed since my last post: Metal Slug (replay) Prodeus Resident Evil 2 Remake (replay) (did a playthrough on Hardcore difficulty) Paper Mario Castlevania Bloodlines Metroid: Zero Mission Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom Actually, as it's the most recent game I completed and probably something that most people here will be unfamiliar with, I will write a little bit about Tamagotchi Adventure: Was recently resubbed to Apple Arcade and this was the first game I decided to play, knew nothing about it beforehand, didn't even watch the trailer, so was really surprised when I started playing and discovered what type of game it was... Basically, if someone had told me that Palworld wouldn't be the most plagiarised game I'd play this year I'd have thought they were absolutely crazy, but well, here we are. Yep, Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom is essentially Animal Crossing: New Horizons! It's unbelievable just how blatant it is. I would go ahead and list all of the "copyright infringements" but it'll be much quicker to just mention the stuff that they didn't utilise, which seems to be limited to bug catching and changing seasons (and I won't be at all surprised if those get added soon). More or less every other aspect of ACNH has been nicked and included in some way in Tamagotchi Adventure. Needless to say, with it having so much in common with AC, I had a blast with the game. It's also this kind of unusual mix between a full-fledged home console title and a more casual mobile experience, there's an energy system in place that limits how much you can do at a time (although it becomes a non-issue with progress) and it features the daily log-in rewards malarkey as well, but then there's also a large map to uncover and explore, loads of characters, quests, items to collect or craft and a story to get through. I ended up at almost 40 hours of playtime to complete the story and obtain the maximum size house available. But there was still a lot of stuff left to be done, and I get the feeling they will be adding more content over time. Oh yeah, there was a Pac-Man event going on while I was playing too, which was cool. You'd play rounds of the classic game (recreated with the Tamagotchi characters ) to gradually unlock Pac-Man themed furniture and clothing items. Anyway, don't know if this game will remain exclusive to Apple Arcade or not, a lot of stuff on there seems to leave and end up on other platforms eventually. But yeah, if that's the case, and anyone is ever in the mood for a relaxing Animal Crossing clone with insanely cute presentation and some quite entertaining offbeat dialogue, then keep an eye out for it. Other games that I've played for a while/are on the backlog/currently playing, which may or may not get completed: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (I actually started this game in 2014 made some decent progress but then forgot about it. Started on a new save earlier this year, made some decent progress but then played everything else on this list instead. Pretty sure I'll never finish it ). Forager Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate Vampyr Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy The New Denpa Men We'll see if I can get through any of those before my attention no doubt shifts over to Bakeru next month.

Woohoo! Great news.

Whatever this is, I'd love for it to feature some form of competitive online mode. Especially if it'll be using the real-time combat gameplay, which the name at least could be alluding to. Think I've waffled on about this before, but imagine every main character plus a ton of NPCs from across the entire series, all brought together for an online version of the Coliseum! Hell, that alone could make for a complete game in itself I reckon. Choose your Yakuza legend... Train them the in the RIZAP gym... Equip gear/movesets... Fight against other players... Earn rewards and climb the leaderboard. Damn, I want that game! It really could. Let's hope it's not. Unless, of course, it's like the game I was just daydreaming about above, in which case I need it even as a mobile title. Anyway, this has reminded me that I still have to get around to picking up and playing Infinite Wealth at some point!

Yeah, I finished it pretty quickly because I've also done a lot of fishing while playing this (at Lv.60 ) and having a higher fishing level makes catching easier/quicker. Regarding bait, I haven't actually found a use for any of the different types at all! So just ended up sticking with normal type the entire time. Anyway, it's definitely possible to complete the event by only using normal bait. As for getting the required fish, I believe it's mostly down to luck (like pretty much everything else in this game ) but I did observe that rare types seemed to spawn more frequently in the northern area of the map. Also, if you're ever in a situation where a normal fish shadow has gone for your bait rather than the rare red or white shadow that you wanted to target, you can just wait until its 1-5 nibbles are over (it uses exactly the same fishing system as Animal Crossing ) and it'll then disappear allowing the rare fish to take the bait instead. I know, right? Well, if you do want to know, off the top of my head the requirements are... SPOILERS bellow, in white text as the spoiler button doesn't work for some reason. Land a critical hit on the first boss. Requires luck as critical enhancing gear is hard to obtain beforehand, you can try boosts as well. Don't allow any Denpa to get KO'd on the second boss. Kill the 3rd boss with a dark element attack. An easy way to do this one is give all your team a dark bracelet. And finish the 4th boss battle within 3 turns. Once you get all the legendary equipment you'll also be able to unlock... ...the last enemy type on stage 1. And obtaining the voucher for it (plus all the others on that stage, obviously ) will unlock the fairy gear, which is a great set to use as it increases voucher drop rate by 100%! Not that it guarantees voucher drops, far from it. But it certainly helps a lot, so I'd definitely recommend going for it ASAP. BTW, if you're ever struggling with any of the enemy voucher drops let me know and I might be able to send some your way, I have quite a few duplicates by now, especially from the early levels. Bronze vouchers only though, as unfortunately it costs jewels to send silver and gold ones. I did that as much as I could, and it can definitely pay off but at the same time you need to be careful as some of the enemies/hazards behind the level doors can be real tricky with a lower level hero/team. I lost some pretty nice items on a couple of occasions due to not being able to clear the stage. It's great going back to them now though with my almost maxed out team, enemies which were a huge threat before get obliterated in seconds! Same here, apart from 1 gold colour Denpa which I got via a rare catch. I highly recommend using 3J to get yourself a golden Denpa as soon as possible though for its +10% gold bonus skill. It's not huge amount (especially as the coin rewards are so small for most enemies) but over time it makes a difference and the cost of limit breaking gets pretty steep later on. I believe that if a gold Denpa unlocks its SP colour the bonus also increases to 20%, but can't be sure as my one unfortunately hasn't. Even so, I'm currently rocking a +39% gold bonus with my team due to various equipment unlocks. Ka-ching! 💰 It does indeed. But I get the feeling it's going to be difficult to get hold of, although perhaps not as much as the stuff in the casino.

I guess one thing for me (although, not sure if it qualifies as a major aspect of gaming ) is strategy games, but only because I really don't enjoy that genre at all. I.e., I'm too thick to enjoy them. As for consoles, a lot of the non-Nintendo stuff has passed me by, particularly in the earlier generations, so... Game Gear/Mega Drive/Saturn, PS1&2/PSP/Vita, XBox/360, etc. I've played them all (to varying degrees) but never owned any of them, so I'm sure there are still some absolute gems I've missed out on among those systems. Another aspect I can think of, that's at least partially passed me by for the moment, would be virtual reality. Other than having played a handful of the simpler types of VR games on Oculus Go, and the random things Nintendo did with Labo VR , that's currently the extent of my experience with it. Overall though, I'm very happy with the amount and variety of stuff that I have been able to experience over almost four decades of gaming.

Man, am I addicted to this. Seriously, I've not been so utterly hooked on a game since Vampire Survivors! It's not even all that good, but the quirkiness and weird vibes are just completely irresistible. The game just has such a great retro/Lo-Fi charm to it, and its incredible Engrish translation is the icing on the cake. Not sure whether it was translated using AI or done manually, but either way, it's gold. Soundtrack is great too. Check out the hyper battle theme: While the F2P setup is disappointing for sure, it's certainly not the worst I've ever seen. And in a way I'm actually quite glad it's repeatedly putting the brakes on for me (as someone who never makes any in-game purchases) or I'd be playing this even more than I already have. Even by only using the freely available stamina I'm somehow at Hero Lv. 100 and starting the post-game adventures. Still have a long way to go as far as collecting gear and items is concerned though, the RNG drop rates in this game can be pretty damn evil, we're talking Monster Hunter levels of grinding required, probably worse actually. And it looks like online battles against other Denpa Men teams will start in September, so that'll no doubt keep me glued to this, alongside the island decorating, fishing, searching for/breeding/training new Denpa, playing the slot machines at the casino, etc.

Where did that land you on the overall leaderboard? I'm not subbed to NSO at the moment so can't check my position, pretty sure it'd be nowhere near the top 999 required for the custom badge or whatever the bonus was.

Neither. I was just quitting races from the pause menu at the starting line, it never said anything about it counting as a loss though.

Well that didn't exactly go according to plan. First Glen-i's internet starts playing up, then mine drops out completely for a few hours. So my final action of N-E Smash Bros. (for the time being) was KO'ing myself as Pikachu by spectacularly missing with his final smash! At least I went out in style I suppose. Anyway, cheers for the games over the past 12 months everyone, and I'll catch you all again at some point.

Well, the video that Julius posted does seem to suggest it'll be completely focused on multiplayer. However, the same video is also a recruitment drive so there's no doubt still a lot of development time ahead and the possibility for stuff to change or get added. If I were to hazard a guess though, I reckon it's going to be multiplayer only. Yeah, given how chaotic Crazy Taxi already is as a single player experience, the addition of more players should be absolutely glorious! I suppose how unpredictable and silly it ends up being will depend on just how many players they can ultimately get into a single game, but if they're also implementing a large open-world map then it must be a fair few.

It's unpopular opinion time! Yeah... I'm actually not hating the idea of an open-world/multiplayer Crazy Taxi. Reckon it has the potential to work really well as a competitive game, even just stuff like the possibility of being able to nick other players passengers would be pretty amusing to me. The way I'm imagining it is unlikely to be the way it'll end up but I'll remain hopeful until seeing exactly what the finished product is like.

Yeah, they seem to love adding super random stuff to this for some reason. I actually started quitting out from races that didn't feature festival tracks at one point (another reason why I collected all the gems so fast ) and also prioritised the festival GP whenever that was available. I seem to do worse in team games since the 5 team change, perhaps because of being distracted by collecting gems though. I hear you. Best to keep expectations low when it comes to some of Nintendo's online strategies.

Cheers, Sam. Very kind offer. But yeah, if I don't resub right away it's just to have a bit of a break. Definitely not for as long as the last time though (it actually couldn't be, Switch 2 will probably be out by then! ) reckon I'll be back before the end of the year.

I was chuffed to at least get a KO with Mii Swordfighter's final smash! Damn that thing is bloody useless. Although as a result it doesn't bother me so much when I miss with it, which as everyone knows, happens a lot. Anyway, next week might be the last time I join you guys for a while. My NSO sub is expiring and having played most of what I wanted to on the +Expansion Pack already I'll probably just have another break from the service. Or I may resub to the standard NSO, not sure yet. Either way... ...I'll be back.

Already collected all of the required Gem Sparks for the event! Not been able to put this down since the update. Now I just need the golden Captain Falcon star rival to show up again, I encountered him once already but stupidly crashed out during that race. Man, this game is so good. Just a shame that it's probably going to disappear when the Switch successor arrives or perhaps Nintendo plan to keep this and Tetris 99 running on their next system too? They really should consider that I reckon. Or at least do a physical release for F-Zero 99 as well.

The latest update is very cool indeed. There's a new type of collectible scattered on certain tracks that is used to unlock different customisation options. They've changed team battles as well, now it's 5 teams competing against each other instead of 2. It's great they keep adding stuff to this, and it does feel like games are filling up with players a bit quicker at the moment. 👍

🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♀️ Out of nowhere! I only just played the original version for the very first time recently, but absolutely loved it. Dunno if I'm sold on this remaster though, will have better graphics and AI sure, but it'll lose a lot of its charm in the process I reckon. Can't help but feel they're also going to censor/remove stuff, will be amazed if certain aspects of the photography feature make the cut. Anyway, if it's a decent remaster I'll probably check it out at some point, and if not, well I can always replay the original so it's all good.

I ended up getting Emergency Meeting in the Steam sale a couple of days ago, so I'm all caught up with the DLC now... 🧛‍♂️🦇⚰️🦴🧄🍗🍀 *gets distracted by new forum emojis* Already finished all of the extra content it provided in both the main game and adventure mode. It was actually a bit better than I expected, but definitely not as enjoyable as the Contra one. Anyway, nice to have a fully complete Vampire Survivors once more and access to all weapons/characters, although I still don't think anything is going to replace my go-to choice of old man with stinky garlic!

Ooooh! This is very nice. 😀 New emoji too. 🤩 Is there an achievement for using those? 🤪 Oh... 💩 Anyway, great job with the update guys!

In the 2D AlphaDream games, yeah. But I don't remember seeing such expressive and fluid animation like that in any 3D character based Mario game before. Well, SMB Wonder was also very good in that regard, and another occasion where I really noticed a big improvement compared to previous games. Actually yeah, animation aside it's not particularly that impressive, especially in terms of the environments. They definitely appear to have focused mainly on the characters. Even so, I probably wouldn't describe it as phoned in. Oh it's certainly ambitious, but I think they may have been better off waiting for the Switch successor for this game. I really enjoyed Stray, but to be honest, it doesn't exactly feature the most compelling gameplay. It's slow-paced, linear and very constrictive. What elevates the game and makes it special is the high quality visual design and presentation, I'd say it's an integral part of the experience, and an aspect that's clearly not going to go unscathed in the move to Switch. That said, for those who only play on Switch and have never seen the game running elsewhere, the graphical downgrade probably won't be quite as much of an issue as I'm perhaps making it out to be.

Damn, I'd completely forgotten about the controller remapping options in the Switch system settings. After recreating a preset I saw online (with the left and right sticks swapped over and a few other button swaps) I can actually play the N64 FPS games using a standard controller without throwing up!