Julius

From Stephen Totilo’s most recent interview with Reggie for Kotaku: I understand that Reggie wouldn’t come out here, of all places, to outright reveal the future of classic games on NSO, but it still strikes me as odd just how non-committal he and Nintendo remain to classic games from other legacy systems coming to the service, especially after the service was originally described as being home to some SNES titles, too. I don’t think that they can drip-feed NES games for too long, and would be genuinely surprised if we didn’t have some SNES games on the system by the end of next E3, but it’s this sort of language and quiet which results in consumers becoming heavily invested in the idea of, say, a Virtual Console type of service, and being disappointed if it doesn’t come to fruition. We’ve been saying it for a while now, but they can’t keep us waiting for news on this too much longer...right? Because I genuinely can’t think of too many good reasons (from a corporate perspective) to keep all of this under wraps.

From Stephen Totilo’s most interview with Reggie Fils-Aime for Kotaku:

A belated thanks for the name change

According to Variety, Pedro Pascal has been offered the lead role in The Mandalorian, with negotiations reportedly underway. This comes after weeks of him being rumoured for the role.

It grows on me the more that I watch the trailer, but Bulbasaur and Charmander are the two Pokémon that stand out to me in particular as having transferred very well into this art style from the trailer. I mean, look at these Bulbasaur. Just look at them. They look as good as I think they could in a live-action setting. Morelull actually looks quite good in this shot, too.

PUBG is coming to PS4 on December 7th:

While as a franchise it is a brilliant example of that @Glen-i, as someone who attempted to get into the competitive scene back in Gen VI — which, at least at the time, was viewed at the time as the easiest way to get into competitive battling — I do still think that there is a barrier to entry which is too high for most Pokémon players, and a large part of that barrier is time. After spending 20 - 50 hours completing the main game and post-game, the problem is that the Pokémon you used during your playthrough most likely aren’t viable in competitive battling — which, at least to me, comes across as disrespectful of a player’s time. Hours and hours of breeding, EV/IV training, etc., just isn’t a low enough barrier for most players. There are plenty of players in the competitive Pokémon scene, but there could easily be many more — honestly, who wouldn’t want to battle Pokémon competitively? — if TPCi and Game Freak further streamlined and reduced the barrier to entry. Of course, I know that conversations like that have been met with backlash elsewhere on the internet, because changing the system now would seem disrespectful of the time that veterans in the competitive space have already put in. With regards to Let’s GO, I think my only problem — if it really is a problem? — with it is that they seem to be going for an incredibly niche corner of the Pokémon community with these games. Sure, there are millions of Pokémon fans, but the core series games prior to this didn’t have the highest barrier of entry, and many joined/returned to the franchise’s core series games when GO first released over two years ago, so I still think that the games are stuck in some middle ground: most GO players will have played a core series game by now, so this is aimed at the extremely small minority of GO players that haven’t? Seems...an odd business decision. Regardless, I’m sure that it will sell incredibly well by the standards of a core series remake, and I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s reactions here (and gauging my own when I eventually get my hands on a Switch).

Those viewing numbers are strong, though are they really all that surprising? The first live-action Pokémon film — and a witty and high budget one at that — up against an entry in a franchise which wasn’t really asked for...and didn’t show much of anything in their teaser trailer. Toy Story 4 will likely pass $1 billion anyway when all is said and done, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves when it comes to Detective Pikachu. It could easily end up being the best performing video game movie (assuming that it is actually a good film in the first place) when all is said and done, and very well could end up surpassing $1 billion itself, but let’s not forget that it’s coming out in a prime time summer blockbuster spot: it releases one week after Avengers 4, two weeks before Aladdin, etc. And I hope your $1 billion [worldwide] opening weekend was hyperbole @Dcubed, because that’s currently an impossible feat if they do keep trailers coming out like this, and it critiques well, then I’m sure that it will end up performing great at the box office.

Gave me a chuckle:

That is a gorgeous poster. Totally with you on the nods to the games You might be right. I’m watching this on my phone, so it looks to me like there’s a bit of both - scales on his wings, and fur elsewhere - but I’m not too sure. And you're right about it being subjective. I imagine the redesigns/texturing will grow on some of us by the time that the film releases, it’s just that there’s an initial shock after decades of acclimatising to the designs as we see them in the anime/games; I think that that was going to happen regardless of art style (unless we got Sugimori-inspired art as part of a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style live-action/2D animation hybrid).

Principal photography wrapped in January and additional photography wrapped last month I believe, so unless they leave it incredibly late to shoot his cameos, he will more than likely be present in Avengers 4.

May he rest in peace. It goes without saying what he did for comic books, and through his influence (and creations) television and film, is something that few creators can stake a claim to, and I hope he’s proud of all that he managed to accomplish in his 95 years — and I hope that he didn’t lose any site of his accomplishments during the troubles he had to work through in his final few years. There have been numerous reports in recent years of him being recorded against a green screen and having recorded numerous lines just for this, so I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Not to mention the potential for fitting him in other, perhaps increasingly creative ways, such as on a television in the background, in the Marvel Studios fanfare at the start of the MCU entries, etc.

The writing seems good from the trailer (though that’s not exactly a great identifier), but I’m at least partly with @Dcubed on this: some of those Pokémon just do not look right. It seems that they’ve taken the Pokkén route of making non-furry Pokémon, well...furry. Charizard towards the end of the trailer, for instance, looks like it has the texture of a thinly furred rocking horse more so than a lizard/dinosaur/dragon.

Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying. I didn’t mean that the stuff in Crait was related to what Ben said, it was more that it was an odd juxtaposition, I think: we’re made to entertain an intriguing notion which could take the story in a completely different direction, but then we end up with the typical good guy v. bad guy battles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just made some people sit back and go “oh, okay, so I guess we’re not doing that other thing?” Sure, his suggestion wasn’t going to happen in the space of the remainder of the film, but I do think it could have been toyed with a bit more as a concept — some doubts in Rey’s mind about the direction that a war would take the galaxy in, for instance, or how history will just repeat itself again (like it already had done at the point; the senate created a divide between Populists and Centralists in much the same way as it did between Separatists and the Republic, and happened to bring about the growth of another hidden army). The thing is, Luke was basically going to commit the Star Wars version of seppuku (his white robes in the film, worn at the end of TFA/start of TLJ and when he goes to burn down the tree, are part of a ritual for the ending of the Jedi Order), which would have ended the Jedi. It’s what he wears at the end of the film, too. But the tree burning doesn’t contribute much to that, other than in symbolism, simply because Rey already has the ancient Jedi texts stowed away aboard the Falcon. And the thing is, people keep asking for “Grey Jedi” or “Bendu”, but the truth is that the Jedi just became disillusioned, and as I’ve mentioned previously and as is implied in TLJ, this came to a head in the prequels, when the Jedi had begun sorting potential by midichlorian count, for example. I think that the Jedi are simply going to be redefined and reborn as what they were originally intended to be. And honestly, the film has a lot of messages, many of which I think were put across well. Though I do take issue with Rose crashing into Finn, as many people do. No, my problem isn’t that it was a rehash, it’s more that it was going “Hey, look guys, here’s something you’ve never seen before” to accomplish something that we have already seen before. I do think that Obi’s sacrifice and duel with Vader bought them some time - as made clear by Vader taking time to stamp on his cloak before the doors seal on him after Luke shoots the control console as he attempts to enter the hangar, or how the stormtroopers make their way over to the scene of the duel to watch, which clears the way for Luke and the group to make it to the Falcon. I don’t really take issue with Star Wars referencing itself and “rehashing” certain elements, though it was a bit jarring to hear some musical themes again - TIE Fighter Attack when down in the crystalline depths of Crait, for example, and I was completely taken out of the film when I heard The Emperor’s theme used for Snoke’s torture of Rey. I’m very interested to see how IX will perform next year. Sure, I will probably see it five times in the cinema like I did TFA and TLJ, but I think it’s the first time when the majority weren’t (immediately) fans of the film. I knew going in that we were in for a shock, and I still had to see it again a few hours after the midnight showing to help me make my mind up. Though, sure, Infinity War was more of a popcorn flick than TLJ, I disagree that you could turn your mind off during it, and it did some extremely interesting things narratively (in how it handled Thanos, for example) which we haven’t seen much of before, and it very easily has the best MCU score. I haven’t seen anything mentioned about X-XII (and I am vehemently against it: I want to see some other stories told; George’s plan was only ever for a trilogy of trilogies; it still centres around Anakin the way that Lucas wanted to; etc.), but I do think that it’s worth mentioning that III was treated much in the same way that I expect to see this film marketed: “The Saga is now complete”, etc. Plus, if Disney ever starts to go bankrupt and/or Lucasfilm needs a cash injection, then you just know that they’d bring the Saga back in a heartbeat to do so. Which I think is sad. If anything deserves an actual ending, it’s this Saga. Also, that sounds awesome. Have a great time! I agree that ROTJ has a better final act (man, that emotion up in The Emperor’s throne room), I just think RO executes the action side of things better (for obvious special effects reasons). Actually, I do believe that I read that that TIE was going to fire at Jyn, not save her, and then an X-Wing was going to swoop in and take out the TIE to save her. The reason that it was cut was largely because they thought that it was too similar to the X-Wings coming in and saving the day when those AT-ACTs were beginning to take aim at Chirrut and Baze. I do wish that we got to see the deleted footage from the original cut of the film as we saw in some of the behind-the-scenes features and trailers, like Jyn running across the beaches of Scarif with the data-take clipped to her belt. I actually didn’t mind the characters dying (though I disagree with the general notion that we would have seen or heard of them in another film, so they had to die) that much. I do think that a Chirrut and Baze TV show would be much better than a Cassian one, though, especially after the nudges and winks we got regarding their history.

The thing is, I go back and forth on The Last Jedi every time that I watch it. I think it is home to some of the best and worst moments in the Skywalker Saga, at least from a storytelling perspective, and I think a lot of that conflict stems from the film being caught in a middle ground between doing something totally new and rehashing some of the same old elements. For instance, Ben offering to do away with the Sith, the Jedi, and the Resistance had every Star Wars fans’ ears perking up, and got us asking the question of what a GFFA like that would be like; but then, not ten minutes later, we return to the typical good guys v. bad guys affair down on Crait. Another example is when Luke uses something potentially new and exciting (if a little drawn out and confusing on first viewing) in a Force Projection...only to offer his life to buy time for the few remaining members of the Resistance/Rebellion (I mean, yet another prime example: halfway through the film we switch back to calling them the Rebellion, for some reason) attempting to escape Crait, just like Ben Kenobi did back in A New Hope. I think that a lot of the criticism for the film is somewhat unwarranted (and admittedly kind of bizarre), but I do believe that it has the largest contrast between its highs and lows of any Star Wars film to date. Plus, it’s never easy to watch Mark Hamill break down in tears because he was worried that this was the wrong path for Luke to take. I’m certainly with you on missing a Star Wars film this Christmas. My birthday is next month, and for the past three years, I’ve gone to see it with my family, which has always been fun. I think that Abrams has an opportunity to do something great with IX, and my only real worry is that, if another Skywalker trilogy (i.e. X - XII) is already being talked about internally, that he’ll adhere to his mystery box methods of storytelling, which is what caused a lot of the backlash for TFA and TLJ. And, honestly, I still think that Rogue One has the best third act of any Star Wars film from the perspective of an action-centric culmination. The last forty minutes or so of that film are just perfect.

Eh...I currently don’t really care for this new show. However, if they throw in K-2 and some characters from other media (can we finally get a live-action Hera please? They seem to love passing on these chances, for the most part) then I might be up for it. My problem with this is that, once again, it’s one step forward and two steps back for Disney’s and Lucasfilm’s handling of the property. The message of The Last Jedi was clear and obvious from the film’s second trailer (and of course the film itself) — Let the past die. We’re going to start taking some risks that might not be in-line with everything that you know and love about Star Wars, but we’re going to start to freshen things up. But then the irony, of course, is that this is a sentiment which only rings true for about a minute in the film itself, and Solo — which I have now seen and quite liked, but again, didn’t really ask for — was released a few months later. Talk about some convoluted messaging to your fans: casual or hardcore. By the way, when I say that I didn’t ask for it, I don’t mean to sound like a fan who wants LFL to do everything that we want (because collectively, this fan base really isn’t the best for that), but how about giving us something that we didn’t ask for, but which is a total surprise? A Taika Waititi film about a stand-up comedian trying to make his way in the lower depths of Coruscant; a Martin Scorsese film about Jabba the Hutt’s rise to prominence in the galaxy’s criminal underbelly, spoken entirely in Huttese with the most subtitles of any film produced in the West to date; or a romantic comedy between a Kaminoan and a clone. They keep passing on these opportunities to explore more of the universe, and everything still seems to centre somewhat around the Skywalker timeline/original trilogy era. I’m super excited for Rian Johnson’s trilogy and Benioff and Weiss’ saga, but why does it just feel like we’re going to get those films and then have even more stuff deriving from the films, as opposed to making things which stand on their own legs? It’s why I’m so excited for The Mandalorian: it takes place in an era we still don’t know too much about, and apart from the odd cameo here or there, we’ll likely have an entirely new ensemble cast to find ourselves engrossed with. To bring it back around to Cassian’s show, though: if we get a unique perspective on his life as a member of the Separatists well before Rogue One takes place, then neat. If not...meh. Also, with regards to The Mandalorian, all I’ve seen is that it’s having an initial ten episode season; I haven’t read anything (I don’t think?) to suggest that there are plans for only one season.

Sure, but they weren’t introduced mid-generation alongside two competitors’ other wildly successful online services. I think that’s why there’s that expectation for Nintendo to be delivering much more relative to what Sony and Microsoft had to offer in the early days of PSN/+ and XBL. Is it particularly fair to do so? Perhaps; perhaps not. But then again, Nintendo have had plenty of time to form a plan for this service — Xbox Live has been around in some form or another for over 15 years, and PlayStation Network for over 10 — and if anything, having that time and the opportunity to look at how others have gone about it should (hypothetically) be advantageous to their efforts in constructing a worthy online service.

Urgh, don’t get me started on Sylveon...I’m still miffed that we don’t yet have a Dragon-type Eeveelution, which we really should have got in Gen VI alongside Sylveon

Yeah, there are actually quite a few references. Off the top of my head, there’s Yellow, and now these titles, serving as something of a tribute to the anime; Pikachu’s moves at the end of HGSS mirroring Ash’s Pikachu’s D&P anime moveset; Steven referencing Alain and his shiny Charizard from Mega Evolution Act II in ORAS; multiple references (through character names, teams, etc.) to characters from the anime and the films, and so on. There’s also a Gary Oak reference in X & Y in a Pokémon Centre, in which an NPC is talking about how Professor Oak’s grandson had passed through and is studying to become a professor, or something to that effect — I mean, I’m going to assume that it’s a reference to Gary as opposed to a Blue/Green reference, anyway, because I don’t remember his video game counterpart ever showing any interest in following that path. But I’ll stop there, because that last one can start the conversation about the video game timeline, which is (perhaps unsurprisingly) something of a jumbled mess I’d love if they refreshed the video game canon by effectively rebooting it in a similar way to how the films have been separated from the anime and exist in their own space. The references to the anime and movies are pretty cool, but I absolutely adore the in-universe references to the other games.

ILM are opening up a new division with a sole focus on television: Just keeping that The Mandalorian hype train rolling...

@Hero-of-Time @Ike @Glen-i

Great write-up @Glen-i! The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles hold a special place in my heart too - now that I think about it, these were probably the first remotely mature (in a storytelling sense) video games that I played growing up. Despite them clearly having sold so well, I still feel like they are - by far! - the most underappreciated Pokémon games, and I never deny myself the opportunity to urge others to play these games. It easily has some of the best characters and storytelling associated with the franchise. Game Freak should really start taking some notes... I still remember picking up Blue Rescue Team from Cex for having done well at primary school, and pre-ordering Explorers of Time with the Explorer’s Guide from GAME. I also remember that around halfway from my playthrough of Explorers of Time, I found the hinge on my first generation DS was broken after returning from a school summer fair (so probably in July?); not wanting to damage the console further, I glued the hinge in order to the game, and didn’t get it replaced until December of the following year (which is probably why I stopped taking it into school). I think I got Explorers of Sky for a birthday? I’ve actually yet to play Super Mystery Dungeon, despite it being on my shelf, so I’m curious as to what people think about it compared to the previous games. Oh, and I completely skipped the earlier 3DS entry (Gates to Infinity, I think?) because that released during my break from the series - in which I missed both it and White 2 - and those Wiiware titles which I read about in Pokémon World and on Serebii, though I guess those probably end up being Japan exclusive..?

That list is a real letdown; the only game that I would the Classic it for, really, is Metal Gear Solid...in which case I’ll just wait until I have a PS3 and purchase it digitally, or pick it up on a disc and play it on the PS1 or PS2. I think that an indicator of the problem with this lineup is that Final Fantasy VII is already available on PS4 - has been for a while - and is coming to Switch next year. Compare that with Final Fantasy VI on the SNES Classic, which I don’t believe had been released on console since the Wii (via Virtual Console). There’s just no real demand for VII to be on here over some other games other than it being as popular as it is, because everyone who has wanted to play it recently likely already has; if this were Final Fantasy VIII, then I think you’d see more people biting, because it’s still not available on current generation consoles. PlayStation really could have done so much to differentiate this from the Nintendo Classic systems, and arguably even improve on how these types of systems are done. Sure, there were more than likely licensing issues for some games, but why not do your best to accommodate every game that you possibly can? A digital storefront for the largest collection of PS1 games on a modern console might have helped them to grab some more games in this case, and allowing publishers to decide on how they price their game between a reasonable range could have motivated them to do as much as they could with regards to licensing. Perhaps even physical Memory Cards packed with a small collection of games could have been released every few months; a JRPG Collection with Final Fantasy VII - IX, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, etc., for example, could have been a great selling collection if reasonably priced. Trophy support of some manner linked to our current PlayStation accounts, I’m sure, would have helped move more units. It just feels a little half baked to me, because there’s so much more that they could have done. Instead, this is inevitably going to become a housing unit for a much greater collection of games which will be available online for free in a few weeks.