Aperson

Why is it that all the runs of games I and many others are interested in are on during the midnight hours or at times between 1Am and 6am? American time zones poorly optimising the games... Anyway, the next run that I'm interested in seeing, Zelda: Link Between Worlds, is after the current Starcraft run.

While this is a good idea in theory, in practise it may not work out that way if two people are posting at the same time. At any rate, I feel ready for Mario Maker 2. Going into MM1 I had a good idea of some of the levels I wanted to make and the most prominent idea was one I eventually got around to at my 7th attempt at making a level... but I decided not to showcase it because it works better if played by the original player. Plus, I want to remake it in Mario Maker 2. So I skip it in the following video That course did get more stars than anything else I ever did, so it's on my list of course I want to make in MM2 and it will be the first one to go on there. Currently got plans for at least 5 different levels and I want to do levels based on the Forest themes in 3D World and New Super Mario Bros. U because the music in those themes are so good but I have no idea what they'll contain. And one particular level theme I have no idea if it will even work but I'm willing to experiment. Just as a warning though, I expect there will be many people trying to play multiplayer on level specifically designed with single players in mind. I'm thinking of making some levels specifically designed around multiplayer but don't expect all of the stuff that I do to be accommodating towards multiplayer.

For the record, I have decided not to buy this game out of not wanting to give money to Activision for their awful practises in spite of the fact that this game doesn't enforce any of them (yet...). I do however have CTR on PS3 and the release of the new game and seeing other people play it is making me want to go back and try and do more of the time trials.

Those were fun to watch. I don't know what the odds were that you would manage to kill yourself on that first level with the shell that just happened to bounce perfectly off the single block but it was a pretty unfortunate incident. Also, seems we have rather different level design philosophies. I came into Mario Maker with the opinion that the New Super Mario Bros games were too easy and were too forgiving with lives, so I wanted to make something a bit more challenging as well as explore the potential for unique gimmick type levels like racing Yoshi and being chased by Bowser as well as recreating levels from other Mario games but in a 2D style, I wanted to try and be inventive, whereas you seemed to be more interested in building your own Mario game with all the existing balance mechanics for difficulty in place.and being a bit more accommodating for newer players. To be honest, I don't think either of us are incorrect in our approaches. That's the thing about Mario Maker, it can give out levels for people who want to play more traditional courses but it can also allow for people to play something a bit more inventive than your traditional Mario. Although, the multitude of troll levels online are admittedly very well designed even if they aren't particularly fun to play. That being said, some Youtubers constantly play them and they make for great videos. Now we have On/Off Switches to add to the whole equation which is going to be absolutely mad. I posted two new videos recently but I didn't want to post them up here just now so that Dcubed's videos got a chance to shine. And I'm not going to be post the second one because it light of recent events it is in especially bad taste. This first one? A bit more acceptable. I have one more video after this one which should hopefully go up today and then I'm done with showing these levels.

This exactly is what I have always loved about CTR and it's sequel (though I only played the GBA version of it's sequel). Actual single player progression that makes sense AND provides variety in how you progress. Also, boss races. This is one of the best features to be in any kart game and Diddy Kong Racing is the only other notable kart game to actually do this. I also love how the battle arenas are incorporated into single player mode. You almost never see the battle arenas in Mario Kart unless you play in single player but in this game they task you with collecting all the crystals within a time limit and boy is it hard. I used to play this game a lot in multiplayer and finally got round to owning it myself, albeit via download, on PS3 back in 2017. CTR challenges are one of the better side modes that Adventure Mode gives you. Giving all the tracks replayability and a quest for 100% was a good idea and they even incorporated the traditional Mario Kart single player structure as a reward for getting all the tokens. I still find it sad to see the decline of Mario Kart's single player when they were going in the right direction in terms of single player development but I guess online play forced Nintendo to pull resources into multiplayer more since the idea that people couldn't play multiplayer no longer has any merit to it.

Made a bit more progress in Hollow Knight (Switch). I haven't played it in large bursts so far, in fact they've been rather tiny. But I did beat the False Knight the other day and got a new major upgrade in the Soul Burst or whatever it's called. Currently exploring around trying to find where I can go with my new upgrade, as is the norm with this genre of games. I am also interested in setting Catlevania: Symphony of the Night, but priorities need to be set because Super Mario Maker 2 is nearly out. @Hero-of-Time Aside from the setting and the way your character attacks are there any key differences between Castlevania and Metroid in how you gradually open up new areas?

Only 47? Yikes. If he was suffering from cancer then it's claimed yet another victim RIP Andy, thank you for your contributions towards one of my favourite games of all time.

26th June by the looks of it. And yes, I'm going to keep posting these here...

Dang, if I'd known that Super Mario 64 DS wasn't going to be up for nomination then I would have voted for the original in the N64 category. Nobody said at the time that it wasn't going to be so I held off voting for it there so that I could vote for the version I played. Put so many hours into that game on DS. Oh well, the original game still was in the N64 top 10 and still a classic. Not being able to vote for it is a bummer but there are still plenty of quality games on DS. Since we have this clarification now I will go ahead and cast my votes: Pokemon White Pokemon White 2 The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Mario Kart DS Final Fantasy IV As it turns out there wasn't enough room for all the games I wanted to nominate on DS because I really wanted to include Bowser's Inside Story and it was a toss up between that and FFIV. They were also competing with Mario Kart DS and when I think of it MKDS is a landmark DS title that deserves to be in there. For the first online Mario Kart it is surprisingly one of the best single player experiences in the entire series!

Oh boy, this is going to be tricky. I think to date the DS has one of my largest ever gaming collections as I have had 21 different games for this thing over the years. That being said, 4 of them are remakes of games from previous generations although I would like to make a case against Super Mario 64 DS not being up for nomination because I think it's more of an enhanced remake than a straight up port. You start the game as Yoshi, you have to actually rescue Mario by travelling to a brand new level after 8 stars to rescure Mario and only even then after that can you take on Bowser and the game has an extra 30 stars to collect as well as some stars being changed to new style challenges in the remake, like, there are star challenges in the original game that aren't even in the remake. I am going to hold off on my votes for now as I'm still not entirely sure which games are going in the top five apart from two or three of them.

So, I kind of tried to get around no natural way to build a vertical level in Mario Maker by going ahead and doing it anyway...

Nice. Might have to invest in a styli myself for the stage builder in order to avoid it being too cumbersome. In Smash I ended up using analogue controls to draw because 1. I suck at drawing and 2. I wanted to be very precise and using graph measurements allows for that. Oh yeah, more MM1 levels while we wait for MM2. I was on a bit of an original creative spree with some of these.

Nice to see those videos has sparked mass interest in showcase videos as a whole. Will definitely be checking out you guys' videos when they go up, I tried a few of you guys' levels recently and I like the CourseBot one that RedShell did but I never beat it because one of the blue platforms did not fall onto the track that it needed to in order to progress. I'm planning to do a video a day in regards to showcase videos in the runup to Mario Maker 2 so here's today's:

If they have worked on modelling the environments first then that would constitute some progress, especially if Nintendo wants to make sure the gameplay foundation is there before anything else. If that's the case they are probably on Retro's computers as massive grey shaped objects with no detail. A game like this probably isn't going to be out until 2022 at least anyway. Nintendo wanted to focus on things coming up this year and next year, Metroid Prime 4 was scrapped entirely and restarted again so I think that's why they didn't show anything.

I have a feeling all the Gen 1 pandering is a marketing thing. Everyone involved wants to sell this game to as many people as possible, not just for the hardcore crowd who've kept up to date with the series and not just with young kids who may be getting into the series for the first time. They also want people who haven't played since the series began to have a reason to check out the newer games and the easiest way to do that is to include some sort of familiarity to what already exists. I think this is just something that happens with all long running franchises that are big at some point. If there is any dwindling in public importance after a certain time period then while the hardcore fans will always get something new to freshen up the series, the general public will only ever remember the popular stuff from when said series began, and in Pokemon's case it was unlike anything ever seen before when it came around as a craze. It's not just Pokemon this happens with, you can look to other examples of things that were well known at one point but faded from public eye despite the fact that they never really ended. For example, Power Rangers is currently on it's 20th different version and the new toys support this, but everyone remembers the original series and the Mighty Morphin team the most so for many years new versions of those rangers have been in production as action figures under Legacy lines and Lightning Collection and all the new seasons have been referencing the original in some way, shape or form regardless of whether it's appropriate to do so. These newers shows have been similarly panned for Mighty Morphin pandering. Another example is Yu-Gi-Oh. This is a game that has changed considerably over time but in spite of the fact that decks containing the likes of Blue Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician pale in effectiveness to newer stuff like the Salamangreat family the former are still most well known to the general public. So naturally when it came to advertising the mobile game Konami referenced Dark Magician. Unless a series has managed to keep itself rooted in pop culture and the public eye for an extremely long period of time then there is always going to be that period of time where something WAS super popular that those running these franchises are always going to look back to as a means of generating more profit, so they reference such a time period. I suspect this will also continue to be the case for more modern day fads like Fortnine, no matter how long it goes on for if it fades from public eye and general mass popularity you will always have a generation of kids who grow up to be adults with nostalgia for "how Fortnite used to be". And before anyone says Fortnite sucks... you'd be right but let's not forget that the stuff we grew up with like Pokemon was not seen always with the same kind of enthusiasm among our parents or any generation over a certain age. Overtime, a new generation that grows up can change the overall historical perspective of something and all the Fortnite playing kids right now will be adults by the 2030s, Their interests may have changed significantly by then but there's always a chance they will have some nostalgia over something that used to be popular when they were young, just like what we have experienced since our generation became adults with all these 90s things becoming prominent and relevant in the modern day in some way.

I loved Tezuka's answer to all the impossible levels questions... XD Been back on Mario Maker 1 recently playing through my old levels. If there's any interest in some of these, I might remake those levels in Mario Maker 2. Not all of them though, they're not all worth bringing over.

Started playing Super Mario Maker (Wii U) for Youtube, recording myself trying to remember how levels I designed three to four years ago were built. First episode went up today. Also recently bought Hollow Knight (Switch). It was on my indie game watch list and it's gotten great reviews in the past so I thought while it was on sale I would buy the game... it is the game that forced me to delete software on Switch to make way for Hollow Knight. I have yet to start playing the game...

I've got a better in-universe explanation for why we can't get all the Pokemon which I'm amazed nobody else has thought of. https://twitter.com/GenericAperson/status/1140209391058247680

I hear the Dragon Quest composer is really finnicky about his music being used by anyone other than himself. Hopefully they put more songs in the game than just the main theme...

So yeah, finished Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (Nintendo Switch) the other day. Here is me facing the final boss: Overall a pretty solid game. If you like Xenoblade and Final Fantasy I would recommend you give this game a go, but do be warned that the story isn't particularly great and is more focused on the world around the characters than the actual characters themselves. However, the map design is some of the best in the series. I may yet go back to the game at a later date to try Trial Mode and to finish the Gilgamesh Hunt which I never finished because the second fight he's at Level 70. If anyone is curious these were my final levels that I was facing the final boss in the video above. However, I think with Super Mario Maker 2 due out it might be a good time to go back and play Super Mario Maker (Wii U) in preperation.

Fun fact, Youtuber FamilyJules was involved in the soundtrack for this game

This is the way I see it. While Pokemon is the most valuable media franchise in the world... there are a lot of different companies that the profit is divided between. With the games alone we have four different companies involved in the creation, Nintendo, Creatures, Game Freak and the Pokemon Company itself. The profits from the sale of each game would theoretically be divided between the four companies. Here's where we go into unknown territory. we don't know the profit split between the four companies. Three of these companies are only really involved in Pokemon or, in Game Freak's case, do not make the same kind of money they do from anything that isn't Pokemon. Nintendo has several IP that they can rely on to help drive sales... but who is the company that's actually acting as the publisher? I believe that would be the Pokemon Company. So, you have a company named after a franchise designed to be based around brand management. They have been responsible for the advertising of the franchise on all fronts and have been responsible for making sure everything aligned properly. All other products are designed to be adverts to sell the games. So, what if the Pokemon Company is taking the majority of the profit from the sales of the game? That would imply that Game Freak doesn't actually make as much money from the sales of the games as we would think. We also know from the games that Game Freak's office is kind of small. They are literally on a single floor in a building in Japan and if you've played Sun/Moon the Game Freak office there is modelled exactly as it was in real life. Getting a bigger headquarters might allow them more room to be able to hire more employees but it's not likely something they have the time for or even necessarily actively seeking. From interviews with Game Freak they seem to like being a small company as everyone knows everyone and gets along with each other (possibly not too much of an issue given Japanese culture demands a strong level of respect between everyone but still) They could ask for more funds and resources from the Pokemon Company to help but with the Pokemon Company involved in many different projects at once and still trying to keep making profits themselves, perhaps the amount of money they are willing to spend on each project is limited. OK, all of the above is probably a load of tosh but it does seem like the move to the Switch could be a key moment in the series' history as everyone's expectations have been raised by the game being on a console far more powerful. It is sharing a platform with games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and is one of the best selling franchises in the history of video games so should theoretically have enough money to produce a high quality title, but every time we see this game or it's shown off there always seems to be a few concessions of sorts like "you can control the camera, but only in this area (that may not actually be true but the implication so far is that camera control is wild area only)" or "you can only transfer Pokemon if they are in the Galar Pokedex" and I think this is a direct result of having multiple companies take shares of the profit. The grey area is that we don't know how much each company makes but if Game Freak really aren't coming out of the games as well off as we might think it may explain why they are having to make concessions like this. Or, they are simply too stubborn to ask for help. Possibly everything.

Do I need to have played the previous two Witcher games and have read the book to be able to understand what's going on in this game? Not much coming out is actually of interest in the second half of the year with Pokemon being the exception so I was considering picking this up on Switch, but since it's the third game in the series it kind of implies a need to have played the previous two games.

Erm, thanks for @ing me to remind me just how much I suck at this...

Wanted to post some music from an under appreciated Final Fantasy soundtrack. FFXII's soundtrack may not be as memorable as the earlier games but in a different way it's still a good soundtrack with some good music: Here's some of my favourites: