Julius

Yeah, unfortunately it's one of those where you have to do more than just keep your ear to the ground if you do want one at the moment. There are Twitter accounts to follow which might help you keep track of when and where stock goes up, but like the others have said, they're stilling selling out almost instantly. It's unfortunate, as the more people playing these games, the better (for the community, for the game itself, and the developers and publisher too), but like Happenstance mentioned, there's not much else they can do about it. While PlayStation have been trickling them out as and when they are shipped and make it to shelves, Xbox were supposedly taking a different approach, saving stock and having large shipments in June and having a smaller number trickle out until then, but I haven't been following that too closely. I've helped a few people get them, but to be honest, I can totally understand those that don't want to keep their ear to the ground on this one. I was drained just tracking it for myself and others the day pre-orders went up initially, don't want to imagine what that's like for months on end. Why there isn't an option to stick a pre-order in to get a ticket, with these retailers knowing full well that there will undoubtedly be stock at some point, is beyond me. Sticking the onus on the consumer to be tracking this stuff 24/7 just to be in with a shot of getting one is one of the most stupid things to come out of this.

Well, that didn't take too long! Back up to 9.5 hours of progress and have all 36 characters that I did before - having seen the cutscene I needed for the 37th - even stumbling across some rare items I didn't get the chance to go back for in one of the dungeons on my previous save. Think that says a lot about smelling the roses and talking to NPC's in JRPG's, but I love it, text speed is back down to Normal There's a weird silver lining to this, in that I found myself wanting to pay attention during cutscenes, despite having already seen them. Some of the character interactions, animations, and story beats are absolutely top tier. Speaking of which... And then one of my favourite cutscenes so far... And then there's Heart-Softening and Heart-Softening BGM2. This game's music is seriously something else. Glad to be back to where I was, going to take a short break, sort out my runes and equipment, then venture forth

Oh yeah, for sure. And then you hear about games like Earthbound where it essentially came with a guide to some of it's more confusing mechanics, and I can understand why many of these games end up being cult classics rather than big hits. I was listening to a podcast the other day about how Final Fantasy XI is practically impossible to return to now without a guide, which is even more silly considering how it's an MMO and would have been in a position many of these others game wouldn't have been where it could get patches and updates. I don't really mind it in a lot of games, I'd heard about some of the stuff in VI and IX ahead of time so had a rough idea of what to do in certain situations without having things outright spoiled for me. Missing rare items, weapons, and secret bosses isn't too big a deal for me as someone who is coming to many of these games for the first time, but knowing how integral finding and recruiting all 108 Stars of Destiny was to capping off my experience with Suikoden with the much better (and canon) ending, it's something I knew I'd have to do for Suikoden II as well. At least it's better these days for the most part. I'm all for secrets in games, and to be honest I don't mind returning to older games and having to look something up like this on the odd occasion as it adds to it a bit, but the more obstacles you put in the way of uncovering those secrets these days, the more and more likely it is that you're going to put off the potential for a wider audience. Then again, the same can also be said for some trophies/achievements, so maybe to an extent that stuff still persists, it's just in a way where it isn't likely to impact the average player's experience?

Yeah, it sucks. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that I had to go back to what was my earliest save! And even after triggering the cutscene I was questioning if I'd seen it...but thankfully I've since got to the city where I'll eventually recruit him, now I just need to wait to get my boat (again). I put an hour or so into getting caught up last night as soon as I figured out what I'd done, and don't think it will take me too long to get back to where I was at in the story. Knowing where to go, setting text speed to Fast, not speaking to every NPC, setting my team's runes up earlier than I did before (Nanami + Double-Beat is OP and I love it)...I'm kind of surprised how quickly you'd get through this game if you were to speedrun it. I've definitely been smelling the roses and talking to everyone (as you should, there's some great flavour text in this game!). I think this does give me a pretty clear idea of what I want out of Eiyuden Chronicle, though: no missable characters (having several opportunities to recruit in different locations and points in the game, as is the case in Suikoden and Suikoden II, I think is fine, so long as their levels scale up nicely!), and a better way to track where you are with each recruit. That private eye I mentioned before, Richmond, can actually be paid to learn secrets about your friends/recruits, which is a lot of fun, but more importantly can be used to gather info on potential recruits, such as where they are and how to recruit them. Unfortunately the process isn't that quick, so it could take a while to get them, so what I think might be better in Eiyuden is if your character keeps some sort of recruitment book which gets filled out as you speak to NPC's in the game and learn more about potential recruits, such as what they look like, where they can be recruited, etc. These are things we're going to be doing in a JRPG anyways, so it would feel like a natural and rewarding way to end up with a complete army without needing to resort to a guide. It's tough, because the recruitment is so integral to the story in Suikoden, and it's genuinely great seeing your castle fill up. But realising you've lost a lot of progress because of the guide you're using can definitely sting On the topic of speedruns, while figuring out where I went wrong with recruit #37, it turns out that there's an entire missable quest line revolving around him which depends on how quickly you get through the game. You need to get to a certain point within 20 hours, which I doubt you're doing on a first playthrough as you take in the sights and talk to everyone. It doesn't need to be done for a recruit (thankfully), so I'll probably just look it up on YouTube, but yeah... ...what was up with some of those SNES and PS1 JRPG's?! Also some pretty obtuse ones which could be easily missed in the heat of the moment (*cough* FF VI *cough*).

Remember the other day when it was revealed Nike and PlayStation were teaming up to put out a shoe? Well, now Adidas and Xbox are too. More fuel for the console wars Nintendo x Puma when?

I've been loving my time with Suikoden II up until now, but the recruitment guide I'm using - the one from Suikosource - has managed to make me miss the only missable recruitable character in the entire game. Basically it's stuck him in at a point in the guide where you recruit him, but fails to mention that there's a cutscene you have to trigger 20+ recruits before. Edging towards 13 hours in, looking to recruit #37, it says "Speak to ______ in [city we left a while ago in the story]." Uh-oh. Maybe I triggered that cutscene in that alleyway without realising? I go to the place to recruit #37 and he's not there, so yeah, I missed that cutscene. Yeah, I've been keeping saves from each session...but this has just taken me back to the 6 hour mark. I've down a few dungeons since then, recruited 36 characters in total, and now I'm back down to 10. It's extremely frustrating, especially seeing as I've been loving the game so much, but this is the second time I've had to go back (to be fair, the first time was kind of my own fault due to the memory card situation, but still). Guess I'm just lowering the volume and sticking on some podcasts as I rush through back to where I was, recruiting everyone again. I was seriously considering just playing something else for a moment as I went back through save by save attempting to trigger that cutscene, and it was on my earliest one that I was able to trigger it. Gosh dang it Suikoden II. I had my castle, I just got a boat, you've been killing it. And then this happens. I'll update the original post with this info, hope it doesn't happen to anyone else. It's been a good guide otherwise, but it seriously should have had a note under the 10th character saying to trigger that cutscene when you got to that city, rather than squeezing it in and being like "hey, you did trigger that cutscene, right?".

Season pass details courtesy of The Tojo Dojo's translation of the Japanese PSN details for the game: Day 1 DLC and substory DLC isn't great, to be honest, though the additional story stuff has me the most intrigued. I had wondered if they might have some substories as part of the DLC, but didn't want to put that out there, and well...I think that part sucks, to be honest. Connecting over substories is such a huge part of the conversation around these games I feel, and locking some behind a season pass fragments a pretty dedicated audience. Guess I might end up waiting until a complete edition down the road

Watched the second episode of The Bad Batch, and think it was a very solid second episode, though it definitely hurts going back to a more typical episode length after a glorious 70+ minutes on Tuesday. Whereas the first episode spent a lot of time setting the scene and the overarching narrative for the rest of the show, this episode did a very good job of making me care more about the cast, and added some valuable emotional depth to them. Really solid episode, so glad The Clone Wars effectively gets to live on through this. Roll on next Friday!

Wow. Epic offered $200 million to get some first party PlayStation games on the Epic Games Store. They aren't wrong at all about Nintendo, but that doesn't make it any less funny

Oh man, you're in for a treat when you get to the latter half of the season, I'm getting chills now just thinking about it And yes, the movie is canon, which I think is such a great move - hope we see other anime follow suit. It adapts the Mugen Train arc which starts at chapter 53, so where Season 1 ends leads straight into it

Honestly, same. I'm really excited for the new content and that Photo Mode, but with Rift Apart releasing the day after (seriously don't understand what they were thinking there) and me up to my neck in games these days anyways, it's not like I'm starving for it. I'll probably save the new content and my Platinum run until further down the road. Got loads of other Final Fantasy games to play for the first time too, so there's that Say what you might about Square Enix not being the smoothest-sailing ship out there, but they seriously know how to put together great trailers. I still watch the trailers for Remake every now and then, and feel like I watch the XVI trailer on almost a weekly basis! It's unfortunate a lot of the spinoff stuff goes over my head as I've not played them and the only other real alternative is to watch videos on them. Sucks there aren't easy ways to access some of them now, so hopefully Ever Crisis gets completed and comes out sooner rather than later, but with how they've talked about it, I imagine it'll probably finish up not too long before Part II is out

Launching worldwide on 24th September 2021 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles. Stream was a good watch, worth checking out in my opinion: Instantly the best-looking school in a video game? And so, so close to being one of the greats... Also, in this interview with IGN, Nagoshi confirms that Yakuza will remain turn-based and Judgment will continue down the action route.

A new trailer for Intergrade was shown during today's stream for The First Soldier. Would be wary though, feels like the last shot might have been hinting at a bit too much from the Yuffie stuff? Though I guess it could be a little predictable, so maybe not. Looks like it will be PS5 exclusive for at least six months: Do feel a bit sorry for Xbox players at this point, but as I've posted before, I thought something like this might be going on where Intergrade would be considered a new version with its own marketing and exclusivity deal. Got to imagine it might end up on Game Pass when it does make its way over to Xbox on day 1, seeing as most of the sales for the game will have been made by then, and that'll be yet another deal. Square Enix would be cashing in big time three times on this game (PS4 exclusivity window for base version of 1 year, PS5 exclusivity window for Intergrade of 6 months, and potentially Game Pass day 1 when it does go over to Xbox). Crazy! Also, it seems like we were very close to getting some sort of announcement on Part II today, but I guess this little tidbit will have to do: Interesting that Nomura wanted to announce something now. If I'm remembering correctly, I think some of the leaks pre-release for Remake, from the demo, hinted that they'd already started work on some moments in Part II, so I guess it might be further along than we might think? Think it was smart of Kitase to not give the go-ahead, though, just given their history of long waiting periods between first trailer and release, especially since moving over to Unreal Engine 4 for a number of major releases. Once they brought these games back to show them off, it wasn't too long a wait, so I think they've learned their lesson. I thought we'd get them focusing on XVI until release either later this year or early next year, give it a few months, and then potentially see something from Part II next summer. Nomura seems to be itching for it, so maybe there could be a trailer at this E3, or at The Game Awards to finish the year off? You'd think the smart move would be to hold onto it until after XVI is out, but this is S-E and Nomura, so...

So according to this screen grab, it looks like there will be a season pass? Question is, is that going to be additional story content, or will it be like DLC in previous games aimed at a mini-game, like the Clan Creator Cards in Yakuza 6? I'd guess it's something along the lines of the former, I think a detective story just hands itself to being updated with more story content in a way which wouldn't necessarily impact the game in a major way. RGG have shown that they can pump great content out at a nice clip (now that I think about, surely they have to be one of the best managed teams in the industry?), so I'd always be down to supporting them through a season pass. I also wonder if this hints at either needing to stagger content somewhat as a result of COVID impacting development (maybe something originally planned as part of the base game was moved over to a season pass?), or if this is a way of elongating this game's presence to bide time for their next project? Or maybe they just realised they have earned a seriously loyal audience (case in point: how many of us here have Judgment on our shelves off the strength of our experience with Yakuza but have yet to play it?) and want to milk it a bit more considering just how quickly these games go down in price and what great value they would be even at full price, I wouldn't blame them! But it could also just be a weird translation looking forward to finding out what the deal is, either way!

As was previously leaked, LEGO sets coming for The Bad Batch: Shame about the shuttle, looks pretty rough (and is tiny). Echo's helmet looks great, weird decision to not give him the kama cloth though, and I really miss the old accessory holes the helmets used to have. At this point it's been a very long time since I've bought LEGO, and it would take something awesome to bring me back, but looks great all the same!

Considering how they started teasing it a couple of weeks ago, I'm kind of surprised it took until the day before the announcement for something to sneak through, just given how many leaks there are these days. Still sucks that it leaked at all, but I'll take a genuine mistake by a store like this over some journalist trying to steal their thunder. I've got to play the first Judgment, so I'll see when this lands, but no doubt I'll end up playing it at some point. I would assume based on their past announcement to launch windows that this would be coming late 2021 or early 2022? And for the love of all that is good, RGG, I love what I've experienced of your games and want to support you on day 1, but the insistence of launching with steelbooks is killing me. I'm still waiting for the standard PS4 version of Yakuza 7

The game is big, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it were bigger to be honest, given that it's the trilogy and the DLC? Though, I don't think this includes the 11GB day one patch! EDIT: update on this. Those EU language options are costing us! In all seriousness though, a little weird that the other languages aren't optional installs.

I was going to wait on this game once it became apparent it was a bit longer than what I was looking for, and I'm kind of glad I did having heard of this and the update issues. A simple quick save which erases itself after opening the game back up would be ideal I think, it keeps the core of the game, but doesn't force you to stick with it until there's a point where you can save. Feel like From Software should probably consider doing something similar to that with Elden Ring, if that game is as open as calling it open world would seem to suggest?

Super Animal Royale is coming soon to Switch (and PlayStation, and Xbox), and has to have one of the funniest turns in a trailer I've seen for a while

The more the merrier - Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Banco and more are coming to this year's E3: Can't believe they used a Ghibli GIF. There's going to be a Ni no Kuni mobile game here, isn't there?

Something else worth noting about today's report is that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 10.6 million copies over the course of FY2021. For comparison, we learned Ghost of Tsushima had sold 6.5 million copies back in March, just under 9 months after release. By all accounts, the Mario Kart figure also seems to be higher than the sales of many other AAA titles released last year, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake. We haven't had an update on The Last of Us Part II for a good while now, so we can't compare there, but the fact that it's still going toe-to-toe with some of the biggest new exclusive releases just speaks to Nintendo's success in pumping out evergreen titles. It's pretty crazy! In terms of other titles still going strong released before last year, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 5 million copies over the course of the last fiscal year, Breath of the Wild sold 4.86 million copies, Super Mario Party sold 4.69 million, Pokémon Sword & Shield sold 3.73 million, and Super Mario Odyssey sold 3.42 million.

Yep, combined. A breakdown of the 84.59 million sold is 69.89 million of those are Switch consoles, and the remaining 14.7 million are Switch Lites

Also found some graphs to look at: Ouch at that Wii drop-off. I don't think we'll see anything like that with the Switch, considering there is no direct console hybrid competition like there was for the Wii and the Kinect/PlayStation Move, and back then their handhelds were clearly under threat from mobile gaming. But I think the Switch's performance in the next FY is kind of out of Nintendo's hands, so it would take a lot of optimism for me to say it hasn't peaked in fiscal year sales yet. Even if they manage to ship the Breath of the Wild sequel, the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl remakes, and Pokémon Legends Arceus by March 31st 2022, I think it's more a question of maintaining stock than anything else, because everyone's being hit by the chip shortage. Then again, even with knowledge of the ongoing shortage, they're forecasting 25.5 million hardware units sold for the next year to their investors, and they've likely left space for that forecast to be bumped up every quarter (as we saw at this point last year - they were only forecasting 19 million hardware units sold for FY2021!), so they seem very confident that they won't be impacted, because we would have seen that factored into their projections otherwise. I think the takeaway here is obviously that the Nintendo ninjas caused the chip shortage Pretty crazy that it's still tracking just below the DS on there. I really have no idea where the Switch ends up when all is said and done a few years from now, Their weakest quarter for hardware sales for this past fiscal year (this past quarter) was just below the hardware sales of their second best quarter of the previous year. Their next weakest quarter, thanks in large part to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, sold nearly triple the hardware units that they would normally sell at that time of year. That's pretty insane!

Nintendo's FY3/Q4 2021 earnings report is out, covering the period of 1st January 2021 - 31st March 2021. It's an extra special one as it's their End of Year earnings release! The Big Takeaways - 4.73 million units sold this quarter between the Switch and Switch Lite, with a total of 28.83 million units sold throughout the fiscal year, bringing the overall tally up to 84.59 million units sold to date for the Switch. - Total software units sales from the past fiscal year are 230.9 million, just under 40% of the console's lifetime software sales of 587.12 million. - Off the back of this, Nintendo is forecasting sales of 25.5 million Switch consoles for the next fiscal year, FY2022, ending 31st March 2022. They are also forecasting a decline in both revenue and profit over the course of the next year when compared to the last year, likely due to the positive impact of the COVID-19 stay at home period on sales, and not expecting an Animal Crossing: New Horizons-sized hit. - These sales have has seen it sail by the official sales figures of the Game Boy Advance family (81.51 million units sold) and the estimated sales figures of the PSP (80 - 82 million units sold). The Xbox 360's sales are a bit tougher to nail down, as some cite it as being a pretty nebulous 84+ million, whereas Statista cites it as being 85.8 million. Going with the latter figure, the Switch has entered the list of top 10 best-selling consoles of all time for the first time, sitting tight at number 9. Next on its hit list would be the Xbox 360 and then the PS3 (reported as being more than 87.4 million units sold) - which it will likely surpass by the end of this quarter - and after that is Nintendo's own best-selling dedicated home console, the Wii (101.63 million units sold). - Nintendo has had broken their own record (set in FY2009 off the back of the Wii and the DS, when they recorded an operating profit of ¥555.26 billion) for highest operating profit in a fiscal year by a console manufacturer, with an operating profit in FY2021 of ¥640.63 billion. - Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury sold 5.59 million units in its first six weeks since launch. This means that it nearly outsold the Wii U release of the game (5.89 million units sold) in that timeframe, and has more than likely surpassed it in the month or so since March 31st. - In just over a year since it launched, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has managed a figure of 32.63 million units sold. Good lord. - Ringfit Adventure has passed the 10 million units shipped mark, with 10.11 million units out in the wild, after shipping 1.43 million units in this last quarter, just missing out on a place in the top 10 list of best selling Switch titles. - Super Mario 3D All-Stars has sold 9.01 million units since its release in September, up less than 1 million units over the course of this quarter. Top 10 Best-selling Switch Games as of 31st March 2021 1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 35.39M 2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 32.63M 3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 23.84M 4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 22.28M 5. Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield - 21.10M 6. Super Mario Odyssey - 20.83M 7. Super Mario Party - 14.79M 8. Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!/Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! - 13.28M 9. Splatoon 2 - 12.21M 10. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 10.44M