Julius

First trailer for Jim Henson Idea Man: That song gets me every time

This is on sale on the PlayStation Store for the first time since launch, down to £10.71 from £15.99.

Heads-up, Hi-Fi Rush is on sale on PlayStation for the first time in the May Savings since it's small PS+ launch discount - it's currently down to £19.60 from £29.99. Pleasantly surprised by this, as I was a bit worried Xbox might've gone the route of avoiding putting the game on sale on other console platforms for a while.

Haha yeah why would anyone buy physical? (call me Ki-Adi Mundi because I'm just catching strays at this point)

Welcome back @somme Reading it back, I actually think that post holds up surprisingly well, all things considered. To be clear: I was totally wrong, I (for the most part) love Star Wars live-action shows and (generally) find them a great addition to the franchise. It's been an excellent avenue to onboard new talent into bigger and more noticeable roles. To have it happen, though, it took a major tech breakthrough in film (The Volume/StageCraft) to make it an affordable production prospect, and the creation of an entirely new streaming service in the form of Disney+ to actually have some reasonable level of ROI. And the episode runtimes are still all over the place, and the quality of the shows is a bit all over the place, though the same goes for the films by the end of 2019, and, well, after what we've seen happen to the MCU since then...maybe this is just a feature of being owned by Disney these days? Goodness knows Though, I will say, even with as much as I've enjoyed some of the shows? I cannot wait to sit myself back down in a packed cinema to watch a Star Wars film. There's a certain energy in that room when Star Wars flickers on that I don't think the TV shows will ever benefit from while being watched from home, and getting the chance to watch a bit of Mando S3 with a huge crowd last year at Celebration is enough for me to want to scream from the rooftops that they need to start having these shows get some limited runs at cinemas! Anyways, just looking back through this thread, while I'm here: In terms of ranking those seven films? Still accurate for me other than TFA dropping down the pecking order, probably 4th firmly behind the OT and on par with Revenge of the Sith maybe? Attack of the Clones is certainly dead last of the seven listed, still, that much is for sure... *shudder*

Extreme-G and Iggy's Reckin' Balls are joining N64 NSO...today!

Trailer from tonight's event: Demo dropping in June, probably an Xbox Games Showcase shadow drop? Still so funny to me how they've got their name all over this game to the extent that they have, such as having them as the only console in the title for the above trailer: Box art is a bit busy, very art school-y with how it utilises the title I feel, but idk, I kind of like it? The top part especially. Think I'm going to need to spend this summer making sure I'm caught up on JRPGs ahead of this launching in October

October 11th! Confirmed during the livestream: As someone who has fallen behind on the slate of newly released RPGs already this year... (please be a relatively quiet summer pleaseeeeee)

Trailer for Season 7 of My Hero Academia, which kicks off 4th May (there have been new recap episodes releasing this month): The quality of the show may falter at times but damn if I'm not just as excited to hear what Hayashi has cooked up in the soundtrack this time around!

Few more scattered impressions after a bit more time with the game: The lack of an easily accessible quick/manual save and only being able to save at inns/dungeon save points feels a bit on the archaic side. The bosses so far being these 3D models vs your party's 2D sprites is great for providing a sense of scale. I mentioned before that it was pretty snappy, but the game's presentation in battles really turns it up a notch with just how well your party's attacks flow into your opponent's and back again. I'm not really a fan of the party info placement during battles, especially when attacks start to shoot off and you can only see the chain of events. I think a nice workaround would've been some sort of colour coding of or depleting glass-looking health pool laid over the character circles in the chain – just feels a bit unnatural to look to the right when so much of the battle info is on the left/centred. Heck, could've just stuck some green bars under those there sprites and it would be fine. I'm sure I'll adjust but it's odd in a JRPG to not be fully aware of how your party's doing during attacks Y'all are going to probably love Francesca. Mellore is going to be the marmite of these early recruits, I'm sure. I found her charming but I'm sure some will be tearing their hair out! Big fan of completing the requirements for a recruitable character, such as slaying a certain number of a certain type of enemy, before meeting them and then just being like "oh, you've done that already? Nice, I'm all yours!" That's always a win in my book. Somehow didn't mention it before, but the sprites!! I highlighted Suikoden II specifically when I played it as having some of my favourite sprites with how many unique ones there are, and that thankfully carries on here. One of my favourites so far is from the opening 5 minutes where you see some village folk picking crops in the background, it's such a small thing but adds so much. So, Suikoden generally lacked the sound of footsteps when moving around, but it was often because music was blasting, and at the very least small dust clouds often followed your footsteps. Here there's a bit of a lack of connection to the world when the music gets a bit more ambient, there's no dust clouds, and no footsteps to be heard. Just seems an odd choice. No small jingle for a weapon upgrade - even just a single "da-dun!" - feels kind of criminal. As with seemingly every HD-2D styled game, the depth of field is cranked up maybe just a little bit too much at times. It's weird walking into a shop which is just a guy and a desk some 5m away from your character and him looking a bit out of focus. Unless maybe that's why so many of these early recruits have Rune of Blind Resistance equipped, because visual impairment is so common in Allraan... Feels like the first time in a minute I've played a new JRPG where NPCs are just talking about the mundane or silly things going on to provide a slight grin and quickly move on. Still very much enjoying my time with it! It's these I did pass on Rising myself in the end purely because I didn't want it to potentially hinder my desire to play Hundred Heroes after seeing just how mixed reactions to it were getting and how a select few started to worry about HH would turn out because of it, so I'm glad to see it's got some people here who got on with it!

Aye, saw this going around the other day. Based on my time with Suikoden I can't stress enough, if you're trying to get everyone, even if you track down a guide to do so: there are 20 save slots besides your auto-save slot; use them! Yeah, it looks mighty rough on Switch at the moment, and that feels like a massive understatement; definitely makes some sense why they originally had it labelled as gunning for the Switch successor until it decided to not turn up to the party. A few updates have dropped throughout the week as I've been chipping away at it, don't mind the locked 1080p at all on PS5. Important to remember that some people who have their hands on the game might have got them a bit earlier than the devs expected, but in the case of the Switch, physical copies obviously are being saved until next month, so what we're seeing on the Switch is people who likely got the game in the last day of so via their digital Kickstarter code. Very unlikely anyone (besides maybe press?) got that code early. Fingers crossed they've been plugging away and some of the early updates at it's official launch put the game in better shape, but man, this blows HARD for people who backed the game on Kickstarter and decided to pick up a Switch version of it in particular.

Totally missed this: a Reddit AMA held earlier this week in r/JRPG by Rabbit & Bear Studios revealed that Murayama had started planning the game's sequel and that R&B will be moving ahead with a sequel. Direct link to question. Very happy to hear this. The original Suikoden was positioned more as a setting up of Suikoden II mechanically, technically (in terms of development), and as a story; with Eiyuden being a Kickstarter project, it's hard to imagine Murayama would've approached this much differently. A real shame that he won't be able to spearhead whatever comes next, especially after being away from this particular type of JRPG for so long, but I'm happy R&B are planning to carry his legacy forward, and from what I've read about Murayama when researching Suikoden in the past, he seemed to me like the type who would be flattered by them doing so and be happy that the team he helped put together would get a chance to continue making games together.

DK must've slipped on a banana or something, because the opening of the Donkey Kong Country section of the park at Universal Studios Japan has been delayed to "late 2024". As Miyamoto once totally and famously espoused: