Julius

Quiet in here considering the Champions League kicked off yesterday...with some superb games. Messi’s hat trick against PSV was probably the highlight of last night: The talk of tonight is probably City losing to Lyon at home and Ronaldo getting a red card for, well...I’m not really sure, to be honest...on his UCL debut for Juve. I have no idea what the ref on the byline could have seen in this to warrant a red card? It’s never fun to see footballers in tears, and I can see why Ronaldo is frustrated, because we’ve seen slowed down replays and I don’t see it either. I have to imagine that Juve will appeal that, and I’d be surprised if an appeal ended up being unsuccessful.

I don’t know if they would be...I think the original PlayStation had sales greater than the combined sales of the NES and SNES?

Uh, so Online just got announced via their YouTube and social media accounts...Online is coming in November of this year, initially as a public beta. Hmm. In addition, they had a Q&A with IGN regarding Online. What an odd way to announce it. It’ll sell like crazy, but we’re what, five weeks away? I know that they’re about to ramp it into high gear...but still, such an odd choice to leave advertising so late for such a big game.

I think I’ll wait and see what else is coming with it. I have a backlog which could fill up an entire corner of the Smithsonian, with a good number of those games being on the PS1, but I’m not really in any rush to get through it anyways, and I’m enjoying bouncing between new and old games. If it has a fair amount of the games in my backlog (like three or four), then I’ll probably pick it up, but otherwise, I might just put this money towards a PS3, which already has many of the PS1 games that I want to play as Classics. Or, unless it’s overly priced, I guess I might as well just hunt down the physical PS1 version of the game of the game instead, seeing as my PS1 and PS2 still work fine?

Up for pre-order on Amazon UK.

I mean, the SNES Classic had an original RRP of £69.99, didn’t it? £20 more for games from a generation later, many of which are visually more complex being in 3D, doesn’t seem too much for me, especially when £100+ was a number being floated around by many when speculating about a hypothetical price for an N64 Classic (some of that I’m sure down to the controller). I don’t know, I just guess it’s just a bit too soon to call judgement on the price seeing as we have another 15 games to be revealed. Yeah, I’m not too confident either, so I’ll probably wait to see all of what they’re offering before I consider picking it up. And I had no idea, that would be awesome! Now if only Konami could get to work with getting the rest of their legacy titles already found on PS3 on the PS4...hahahahaha.

I actually can’t remember a time when I haven’t seen a mini console (probably unlicensed...) packed with old SEGA games. At most, I just think that the Nintendo NES and SNES Classics proved that mini consoles produced by the original manufacturer could generate insane demand, and sell much better than slowly drip feeding the games digitally onto their digital storefronts. I just wish that PlayStation had a bit more to show us in their initial reveal, because I don’t think that anyone’s really salivating over Final Fantasy VII considering that it’s on PS4, unlike Final Fantasy VI for the SNES Classic, which had such a large gap between its last console release (Wii/PS3?) and it’s release on the SNES Classic. Revealing this with games like Metal Gear Solid or Symphony of the Night, which aren’t on PS4, I feel would have made much bigger waves.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is being remade by Netflix as a live-action series, and will be helmed by the animated show’s co-creators: Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Jeremy Zuckerman will also be returning to compose for the show. Time to make up for The Legend of Korra, guys...it’s a good thing that this is the first time that anyone had remade the show in a live-action setting. YES, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE FIRST TIME THAT A LIVE-ACTION REMAKE OF THE ANIMATED SHOW HAS HAPPENED, AND THANK CABBAGES IT IS RETURNING UNDER THE ORIGINAL CREATORS AS A SERIES AS OPPOSED TO UNDER A HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR WHO HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE IS DOING WHEN HE SETS OUT TO MAKE A MISCAST VERSION OF THIS INTO A FILM. Never happened before. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t shouting. I absolutely adore this show, having grown up with it on Nickelodeon, and it really is something else. This is another chance for me to implore you, if you haven’t already watched the animated series...do yourself a favour and go watch it. The complete series was released on blu-ray a few months back and can be had for as little as £25, and you won’t regret it. It’s basically a Western-made action-adventure anime heavily influenced by Star Wars taking place in a fictional world heavily inspired by Asia, with a loveable cast of characters and some of the greatest character arcs to be found in any medium. It’s humourous, but filled with wisdom accessible to those young and old(er), and you will likely be shedding a tear (or a waterfall) from time to time. I make a point to watch the show in its entirety every summer, and can’t recommend it enough to those who haven’t seen it.

People are going to say that they’re copying Nintendo, but I mean, if Nintendo aren’t doing it this year and next year is PlayStation’s 25th anniversary, I think they should definitely do it. They probably had a digital collection or something like that in mind until the Nintendo Classic systems were released, and I’ll take a physical console over a digital collection any day! I don’t think that any of the Crash Bandicoot trilogy will be coming (apart from possibly Team Racing?) given last year’s collection, and so I doubt that any of the Spyro trilogy will turn up either. For a similar reason, I doubt that Resident Evil 2 will be coming, seeing as Remake will be around a month away when this releases. Also, it seems a little odd to me that they chose Ridge Racer 4 over a first party Gran Turismo game? I had a PS1 when I was little (in fact, I still have it) but I was so young that, of course, I missed out on pretty much all of the critically acclaimed and “must play” games, so I’m really hoping that some more of the games that I’ve heard such great things about are on their way. I completed FFVII earlier this year, so the only game of the five that they’ve shown so far that is really catching my eye is Wild Arms, which I’ve watched and read great things about. What other games do people expect/want to turn up? I feel like Konami being in on this would be huge, of course, with games like Silent Hill, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Metal Gear Solid. I’ve also heard a lot of great things about Final Fantasy Tactics, which I think would be different enough to VII for Square Enix to consider adding it, too. It’s a bit of a shame that a lot of the games that I’d like to see are probably a bit too niche/similar/part of the same genre for me to want here, like Xenogears or Vagrant Story, but regardless, I’m looking forward to finding out more!

Yeah, I’ve got to agree, the family subscription is very good value. I have to imagine that they’ll cycle it back at some point when they realise that a lot of people are taking advantage of the family subscription, especially when SNES games hopefully get added to their classics library down the line. I still think that there’s got to be something going on that they aren’t letting us in on yet with regards to how things are being handled, because I would imagine that they would want to keep the subscription price the same, at least within the next two or three years, and it just doesn’t make financial sense for Nintendo to let us have access to everything first party from the NES to the N64 (I think anything put out on the GameCube and beyond are probably best suited for HD remasters or some sort of Virtual Console-esque, straight-to-eShop kind of thing) for such a low price per year once games from other consoles are (supposedly) added down the line. I’d have to imagine that some sort of change in plan, or some currently unmentioned quirk, is why they’ve been mum about SNES games coming to the library since it was first revealed that they were coming on the Online page last year.

The game is closing out Sony’s TGS presence in a 70 minute slot on September 23rd. Could they be hinting at a gameplay demonstration?

PlayStation’s Tokyo Game Show Lineup has been revealed (note that times below are JST, and therefore BST+8): That 70 minute slot for Death Stranding to bring an end to their presence at the show on the 23rd is obviously the thing that catches the eye most. “And then after that...” — are we about to get our first gameplay demonstration?

I get where you’re coming from, I really do, and of course I agree that Nintendo’s innovation is great for improving the industry, and one of the main ways they do this is by making gaming feel accessible to everyone (and now, with the Switch, pretty much anywhere). However, I agree with @Helmsly and @Sheikah: I do think that it is unacceptable to have a relatively poor online infrastructure (relative to that of their competitors), especially when they themselves are churning out games centred around an online multiplayer experience, such as Splatoon 2 and ARMS. Like with their often inconsistent quality of communication to their consumers, I feel like this is one of Nintendo’s greatest areas of weakness. Everyone here wants Nintendo to succeed, which I think is made evident by the frustration shared by many of us in this thread; even if you’re not a Nintendo fan, and even if you don’t own a Switch, I think we can agree that competition in this industry only benefits all of us. Does a relatively poor online infrastructure destroy Nintendo’s reputation, and mean people will stop buying their hardware and software? Absolutely not. But on the flip side, could Nintendo stand to gain (even) better footing with third parties and consumers if their online infrastructure was just as good as everyone else’s? Of course. So why shouldn’t they strive do that?

Ouch. Square Enix made two really odd decisions with putting this game and Dragon Quest XI in September. Move those games a month or two up into the middle of the summer and you suddenly have plenty more of your demographic, having taken time off from work/being on school holidays, in a position to comfortably sink tens of hours into a JRPG or spend time with the video game equivalent of a summer action blockbuster. I imagine that the summer months will slowly fill up over the next few years, but SE really missed a trick there.

This is the only one which I think I know that probably comes as a surprise to some people, so challenge accepted it’s been a very, very long time since I played Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team, but if I recall, the top rank in the game is Lucario Rank, which requires a LOT of Rescue Points (maybe double that of the previous rank, which was already quite high, but I’m not too sure?), and the reward for attaining that rank is a Lucario statue outside of your house. I don’t think that I actually got the to that rank and got the statue myself, so I might have read it in Pokémon World? Anyways, while Blue Rescue Team was first released on the Nintendo DS, it’s partner game, Red Rescue Team, was released on the Game Boy Advance. I mean, @Glen-i, I suppose that you could make a case for Lucario first appearing on both DS and GBA, in this case, because I believe that both versions were released on the same date? I might be wrong about that, though. Awesome write-up by the way, I learned quite a bit

Honestly, it feels like they’ve brushed their original “NES and SNES games with leaderboards” statement completely under the rug, and I don’t think it’s helped them in this case. It won’t be part of the service at launch, sure, but I think that mentioning that SNES games would be coming to the service in the future as part of that snippet in the Direct could have been a helpful boost for them, and any other systems with games coming to the service beyond that too, because if it’s in the works — well, why not? We’ve seen them do it with Metroid Prime 4 and next year’s Pokémon game, and I don’t think that it tarnishes the possible future “wow factor” of shadow dropping, for instance, SNES games to the service after a Direct next year. It just strikes me as odd: Nintendo has every reason to be confident in their system selling well, just given the records that the Switch has toppled alone, yet they seem a little unsure of themselves (to me) when it comes to announcing their plans for legacy titles — I mean, should we not be expecting SNES titles to come to the Switch now that they’ve seemingly shied away from that, having let it slip last year? Absolutely not, because there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll be coming. So why not just say something and give their consumers even more of a reason to be confident in their future plans for the Switch, beyond the already revealed first party software coming to the system within the next few years? I don’t mean to come across as negative, I just think that they could have handled this situation a bit better than they have. It’s not the end of the world, but I think that effectively communicating with their consumers is something that they could still wildly improve at — they did a great job with this during the Switch presentation last January, so why the change in formula since? Time and time again we’ve had some heated discussions on here about how Nintendo could handle Online for those already playing Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, etc., which I do think clearly shows a divide between what fans want and expect from Nintendo, but it really feels like a solution to this could have been as simple as offering an extended free trial period (a month as opposed to a week, for instance) or an exclusive discounted NSO pricing for those already heavily invested in those games, and we shouldn’t have needed to have such a heated discussion - as fans and consumers of Nintendo - in the first (or second, or third ) place. I’m totally going to sign up for the service once I get a Switch, just for the ease of use so that I don’t have to worry about my subscription and whether or not I will or will not be able to enjoy a game to it’s full extent, and also because I haven’t played many of those NES games. Now if only they could just start churning out those N64 and GameCube remasters, and get Square Enix to start selling some classic JRPG collections for the Switch...

If accurate, this could mean that we’ve got another five stages to go (I think?)

No-one’s mentioned it yet, but reports in recent days have suggested that Henry Cavill seems to be on his way out from his role as Superman. The spark which supposedly resulted in this was talks of him appearing in Shazam deteriorating to the point of a stand-off. WB has somewhat attempted to deny this, but their official statement seems more like a smokescreen than the genuine truth. This, of course, comes after nearly two years of rumours and speculation that Ben Affleck is on his way out from the Batman role. Rumours have suggested that Michael B. Jordan could be next in line to become Superman if Cavill does leave. There seems to be some element of truth to this, and could even be so simple as contract talks temporarily breaking down between Cavill and WB. Either way, I feel like Cavill is an excellent fit for the Superman role (beyond his obvious physique), and I have to admit that I feel like DC and WB have absolutely shafted him when it comes to his portrayal of the character.

Not too surprising, given that Kaz Hirai has mentioned wanting something to this effect in place before he steps down from Sony.

I’m indifferent to it being turn based, to be honest, though I can understand why some might have liked something else just to shake things up a little. Because, on the other hand, I have a feeling that this game was probably an outlet for Game Freak employees to let loose in a similar turn-based RPG setting to Pokémon, while becoming accustomed to the Switch and the new tools at their disposal.

As revealed in yesterday’s Nintendo Direct comes a whole new IP from Game Freak: Town (working title). Taking place in what was once a peaceful “small village with a secret to hide”, monsters attack in this turn-based RPG, which will be Game Freak’s first non-Pokémon game on a Nintendo console since Pocket Card Jockey, released on the 3DS back in 2013. The entire game will take place in this single village. This was my favourite surprise of the Direct, and I’m a fan of the quirky chibi art style they have going on with the villagers. I’ll be curious to see if, moving forwards, this game (perhaps with full camera control in the overworld?) has some hints as to what will be seen in next year’s core series Pokémon title, too.

Now that we know that they didn’t have much to show during the Direct, I have to say that I am disappointed with Nintendo with regards to Online. I do think that this would be a completely different story had it been available from the very beginning at launch, and if it had been paid for from the very start, but, because it wasn’t, I can’t help but realise that we’ve not seen or heard about anything with regards Online which couldn’t have been prepared for March 3rd of last year. That is to say that I’ll likely pick up a subscription when I do get a Switch anyways (more for the sake of convenience as opposed to popping a game in and finding that I can’t use its only functionality), but I do think that this shows poor management of the situation on Nintendo’s behalf. I would like to think that they’ve waited to listen to what customers want implemented, but there’s ultimately not much different about their service which is launching next Tuesday when compared to what we knew of it at the time of its announcement. And, if that’s the case, then why not just be sincerely honest about the situation from the start, as opposed to dancing around topics like Virtual Console, when you know full well that it wasn’t in store? I’m not upset with the situation (personally, I haven’t played many of these NES games, so I could get a few hours of fun out of them I’m sure), but I am perplexed by some of their decisions in the last 18 months.