Nicktendo

I finally 100%'d* Banjo-Kazooie! Took me an embarrassingly long 11 hours of game time, taking me a couple of goes at the quiz (got an instant death question wrong) and then about 10 goes at the final battle, where I kept falling off the edge after getting hit... But what a great game this is, so much character and charm. An absolutely wonderful nostalgic trip to a time when games were just pure fun and not much more. Click Clock Wood is such a joy to beat, I think it might be my favourite level in any platforming game. Just filled with fun challenges, plenty of variety and compact worlds which are full to the brim with interesting stuff to do and find. Once they started to get much bigger, these sorts of games just became a chore to play at times. BK strikes the perfect balance. Great dialogue, witty British humour and a soundtrack I don't think has ever been topped. This is easily in my top 10 games of all time. Moving on to Tooie in time, once I've had a little break from the series. * My save file suffered the XBLA arcade glitch where if you do Bottles' puzzles before the final few worlds the notes he collects in the jigsaws disappear from the game. I'm at 96 notes in Mad Monster Mansion and Click Clock Wood with no way of ever getting them... Going to have to play through the game again to 100% it fully!

Time for a mini (not mini) update from me. I've played through and beaten a couple of games in the past couple of days: Streets of Rage 4 (again) In celebration of buying myself an Xbox Series S and subbing to the evils of Game Pass, I decided to test out SoR4 on the new hardware. The shocking thing was that it is basically identical to the Switch version! No noticeable improvements in visuals or performance. I beat the game on Normal difficulty as Axel, taking a whopping 2 hours 40 mins to do it, and dying on numerous occasions, damn I'm rusty. I played through the entire game as Blaze on easy in about an hour this morning and managed a couple of solid S ranks, so I'm getting my groove back. The game is still superb, and arguably the best release of 2020. I could play this for hours. The added bonus of achievements has sunk its hooks into me, and I'm tempted to 1000G it. I'm already on 300+ in a couple of days, but beating the game with every character and *shudder* arcade mode is quite daunting. Sans what looks like HDR (could just be my TV emulating it), the game is identical to the Switch version, which is mighty impressive for Nintendo's little handheld. Tetris Effect Boy, was I not ready for this! A truly mesmerising experience. It's classic Tetris but the music and the visuals are on another level. I could only describe this as a psychedelic experience. I beat the Journey mode and had an absolute blast. I love Tetris 99 and Puyo Puyo Tetris, but this is truly something different. Amazing what simply adjusting the visuals can do completely change the atmosphere of a game. I thoroughly enjoyed the single player campaign and have a couple of levels to get an A rank in before I move on to the harder difficulty. I haven't ventured online yet, but it seems like the game has a decent amount of content. I've flicked it on for 10-15 mins since starting it, it's very addictive even though it's the same core game I played back in 1992. Superb. ---- Some other bits and bobs - I'm up to Click Clock Wood on Banjo-Kazooie. It's been 15 or so odd years since I played this and my memory has well and truly failed me. I've died countless times, which is annoying. I've got 4 notes to find in the haunted mansion and have no idea where they are. I've missed a honeycomb piece in Clanker's Cavern, Bubblegloop Swamp, Gobi Desert and said Mansion. I'm missing a Jinjo in Rusty Bucket Bay, can't find him for the life of me... I beat this game in 6hrs 3min in 1999 or somewhere in that ballpark. Remember it like it was yesterday, and I'm already up to 7 hours this time round. The game is just a masterpiece though. I've had a constant smile on my face. I think it's up there for the best OST in gaming history. It's a joy playing it free of the N64 hardware and with a smooth framerate. I've also booted up Perfect Dark and have reached Chicago. Again, it's just pure joy. I'm so glad this game got a HD remaster, it looks and run sublimely. I'm playing through on Secret Agent against my better judgement. Why? Because I beat the game 100 times on agent and I have no idea what to do for the majority of these extra objectives. I've failed Chicago a couple of times because I keep "raising the alarm" and can't figure out how to do the objectives without doing it. Gonna jump into the multiplayer mode with bots soon and go for those extra gamerscore points. Disappointingly, Halo: Master Chief Collection is only 1080p on Series S, and my PC runs it in 4K. On top of that, there's a mandatory 100gb install, whereas on PC, you can install the single player and multiplayer of each game individually, so it looks like I'll be sticking to the Steam version, really was not expecting that as even Series S is quite a step up from my PC. I downloaded Microsoft Flight Simulator on Game Pass for PC but it crashes every time I start a flight Desperate to play this, but it's not complying. I've started Conker's Bad Fur Day, but will leave it til Banjo is done. I've dabbled in a little bit of Forza Horizon 4 and it seems to be packed with content. Hard to say after only an hour of game time, but I've got a Subaru Impreza and am able to powerslide to my heart's content. The handling in this game is absolutely top-tier. It also looks incredible. Look forward to bombing round the English countryside, time permitting. I played a bit of Skate 3 and remembered fondly back to when EA were a half decent company (Burnout Paradise was episode 1 of the redemption arc). Loved the original, never played the other 2. I can already see I'm gonna love this game. Historians of N-E will also be repulsed by the fact I've downloaded Star Wars - Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars: Squadrons, but I need to put my new hardware though its paces and these both seem like well-received games. Plans to play Madden '21, Outriders and Sea of Thieves with my buddy back in the U.K. over the next couple of days. Honestly loving my Series S. Game Pass is just just astonishing value. I have 81 games downloaded, will probably not even touch half of them, but I can't argue against the choice I have at my fingertips. I've bought a 12-month sub to Ultimate on hotukdeals for £102. The price of a couple of Nintendo first party releases. Yes, I'm aware I don't own anything, but I'm still having a lot of fun! Not downloaded Monster Hunter Rise on day 1, but I do have World ready to go on my Series S, so it looks like I'll have a proper go at that first, free of 900p and 30fps on the PC.

I just joined the Game Pass party! Picked up a Series S on a whim this morning for around £280, which is pretty cheap for here, don't know the U.K RRP. Was hoping to upgrade my GFX card to a 3080 this year for my PC, but I don't think prices are going to normalise any time soon, so I took the plunge with MS. That's coupled with the fact that 1st party games are super expensive on Steam. Singed straight up to Game Pass and I'm currently downloading Rare Replay (FINALLY!!), Forza Horizon and some other stuff. Amazed by how small it is! HDD size is a massive concern though, already filling up fast. Hopefully it'll give me a nice little boost over my current PC set-up anyway in the mean time and it means easier couch / bedroom gaming without pissing about with wires and switching monitors. Impressed with the OS, it's silky smooth - all positive so far. First non-tendo system since 2009! Had to make a new Gamertag because my Microsoft Account is tied to an unsupported region. Add me at NicktendoLV.

Extra kudos for anyone who can decipher the music tracks behind the big topic this week!

Thanks for the great mini-review! I really need to get around to playing this. Had it on my PC since it launched and just haven't put the time into it.

This looks incredible. Dotemu have more than proven their worth to me. Easy day 1 purchase! So pleased to see the beat 'em up genre get its revival having largely missed out on it in the 90s.

Why any new Switch screen will be and should be 720p. Good thread.

This was great to read. I also felt similar about the hotel / Noki Bay, but I still enjoyed the latter just for the scale of it. Really enjoyed my time with Sunshine too. I think it's my favourite of the three overall.

I've been hot and cold on the Switch since launch. The first 18 months were mesmerising, Nintendo at their very best IMO. The last couple of years I've complained a lot, but I've been forcing myself to play a lot of the backlog games recently I have and slowly picked up some of the big Nintendo published games I'd ignored at launch in the past few months. Overall, I think I've been too hard on them at times. Everything I've played has been a joy. Yes, we have a lot of ports, but even replaying some of them has been a lot of fun. I definitely love the Switch more than the Wii. As it is right now, it's one hell of a proposition with a truly outstanding library of first party, indie and retro games. I do not miss the additional stuff that came with the 3DS and Wii and definitely prefer the simplicity, speed and execution of the very basic menu system. It's a great machine for playing TV and handheld games and it just works. The joy-cons are by far the biggest disappointment, but I think this machine and these four years as a whole have been an amazing turnaround for the company, and I hope late '21 / early '22 they give us another period like 2017. A new, more powerful system would be nice, but I'm perfectly happy with my Switch and, at times, I haven't had as much fun with a Nintendo system as I've had since the late 90s and early 2000s.

5.5.4 obviously wasn't stable enough so they skipped right over it. Any excuse to crack this out though and remember the good old days...

Six hours into this and I have to admit, I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Haven't even made it to the first gym battle yet. Just going around hunting out new pokeymans and trying to get used to the mechanics again. Have run through the wild area and first cave with three different teams now. The one thing I'm worried about is the game being far too easy, so I'm going to keep myself under-levelled and try out multiple combos of old and new 'mons. The game looks fine, feels old school in it's design and I am yet to decide whether that's good or bad. I can still feel the influence of the GB games, but that has been mostly warm and nostalgic so far. Looking at the map in SwSh, it looks pretty small and that has me worried in some aspects. However, coming out of the first cave and seeing the town / gym in the distance surrounded by yellow and green rolling hills is pretty sweet - definitely feels like a step up in that respect. The music is also really good, especially during the final battle at the cave exit. I booted up my 3DS today to start Oracle of Seasons and noticed I'd put 44 hours into Pokemon Y. I had no idea I'd played the game that long and have no memory of it to be honest, but I haven't beaten the game. Hopefully I'll manage it this time round. Overall positive so far. Motostoke is the shittest name for a town in any video game I've ever played. WTH were they thinking?

What is this black magic?

God bless you, brave soul Well, we know Splatoon 3 exists now. Metroid is also definitely going to be 2022 or later. Zelda, like you say, end of this year / early next. EAD has been pretty quiet since 2017, so I do think a blow out of 2017 proportions is more than feasible. Monolith are likely well down the road with their next project too. As for MK9 and a new Mario, I think both are well within reason and are guaranteed sellers, even more so in support of new hardware. Triangle Whaddyamacallit is an interesting one as Octopath did support higher res on the PC as Dennis said, but I can't imagine that being accessible in the Switch version of the game. So if the data miners have found this in the Switch version's demo, that either points to the fact it's going to be available on Switch, or that they are simply laying the groundwork for a future PC / next gen port. I wouldn't take it as red quite yet. As for the console itself, DLSS seems logical as we've discussed before. CPU being as powerful as PS4 is a tough one, but given that launched 9 years ago, I would say it is also within the realms of possibility if $299 with profit is the goal. Do we start to dream already?

Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. Family of systems. An OG and a lite does not a family make.

A slow start to February for me. I've been enjoying Super Mario 3D World but have only just reached World 4. Taking my time and letting it all sink it. Had fun with Dennis and BowserBasher playing online over the weekend and as I've mentioned in the OT, I'm struggling to get to grips with the pace of the game. Still, the music and the level design is filled with charm and I'm having a great, if leisurely time. As I mentioned in the eShop thread, I've picked up 3 new games which were all on sale - Habroxia hasn't been touched yet. Like H-o-T, I wanted to support Colin and Lillymo Games and picked up the original. I'll get the sequel when I beat it. Super Punch Partol has an excellent look but I've found it pretty underwhelming so far. Not a patch on Streets of Rage 4 for obvious reasons, but I just can't seem to really get the hand of the mechanics. Might have to come back to that one later. The final game I picked up was A Short Hike, which Lee had praised on the podcast and Greg had seemingly not hated Praise enough for me to also give it a go. I was expecting something quick and easy, but I was truly taken aback by just how much I enjoyed this game. It is simply wonderful. I stuck it on yesterday morning at 9.30am for a mess about before I started work and I ended up glued to the screen for an hour and a half (almost missing my 11am meeting). There's something I can't quite put my finger on with this game. It really feels like a Nintendo game, purely down to how easy it is to play, it's unique look and its quirky cast of characters. You start out at the bottom of a huge mountain with the simple aim of going for a relaxing stroll to the top. As you make your way from base camp you meet other animals going about their business and can interact with them. It's this interaction that really sets this game apart for me. The dialogue is absolutely fantastic and filled with tons of charm. If I could summarise it in a sentence it would be "side quest- the game". As you listen to each of their problems, they ask you little favours or ask you to collect stuff for them to help them out. This is when I completely forgot about the goal of actually reaching the top of the mountain and got to work helping my new pals. In a way, it almost feels like a Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley type experience where you can go around collecting stuff like shells, digging for treasure or fishing. There's a whole lot of other stuff you can do too, but I won't spoil it. Some of the animals reward you with cash or Gold Feathers. These gold feathers increase your ability to climb or give you an extra flap of your wings to gain a little air. It's a genius system which means helping people out greatly improves your ability to get around and scale the mountain. Along your way you'll find treasure maps and notice little islands in the distance. Exploration and experimentation are the name of the game here as you try to build up your collection of feathers. The mountain itself feels enormous at first, and because the game is relatively short, it is hard to really learn it quickly, which keeps it feeling a little daunting. I lost my way quite a few times until I was really able to float around it from on high. As you've maybe seen, the game has a DS visual style, with blocky textures and flat colours. It works really well and helps to really get the charm across. You can adjust the blockyness in the options if you want it a little sharper, but from a pure artistic point of view, the devs have hit a home run here. As stuff fades into the distance, it loses its colour and has an almost pencil like outline. I can't stress enough how nice it looks. The music, which is location specific, also fits extremely well with the atmosphere and vibe of the game, going from relaxing in tone to more menacing as you make your way up the mountain. I reached the top in about 2 and a half hours, which I think is probably quite slow as I managed to get 17 of the 20 Gold Feathers on my run. I could have got more, but wanted to see the end. I've not budged from 17 in the extra 30 or so minutes I've played, and this is where my only real complaint about the game comes in. I really want to 100% this, but there is very little to tell me what I have to do to get there. The only thing I can do really is look up and down until I find those one or two tiny things I'm missing to go for full completion. The journey down is not quite as fun as it was on the way up. Feels a bit aimless. Anyway, I can highly recommend this game, even at full price. I have a real soft spot as some of you know for quite a few indie games from the last 5 or so years. This one firmly deserves it's place among them. As unique as it is charming and definitely not one to ignore.

Transition tunes challenge! There are 12 transition tunes this week (including intro and outro music). If you're feeling brave, write down the name of each game and we'll see if we can announce a winner + prize in two weeks. One of the transitions is not a tune, but comes from something related to the N64. You have to get where that's from as well to be in with a shot of winning. No Shazam allowed (I'll know ). PM me the answers by the way, so no one can steal them! We'll put all correct answers into a hat and draw the winner live on the show.

@nekunando and @Londragon were both positive on it, so I thought I'd complete the trifecta. The art style is also super cool.

But seriously, why did you beat a game you hate 100% twice? I managed a few hours with Donkey Kong 64 and then gave up, and that wasn't even that bad...

I guess you never owned an N64 or PS1 then. "In my opinion, one of the worst 3D platformers that I've played." would be much less hyperbolic. Remember, you are on a Nintendo forum, and we all have a tendency to fan boy at times. People have just started playing this over the weekend after having spent their 50 quid or whatever on it. Maybe you "can't be arsed" to spend the money in it, which is fine, that's your choice. But barging into the thread, with no real intention, that I can see, of actually discussing the game and edgelording out a hot-take like you did is not going to endear the people currently enjoying playing through the game to want to share their opinions with you, especially having just dropped their own hard-earned money on it. Putting on the victim suit was just the icing on the cake. Would have been better if you could have just said why you think it's bad, seeing as how you're not getting it this time. I dunno, pick two of the things that made it one of the worst 3D platformers in existence and get some actual discussion going instead of this pointless exercise

"One of the worst 3D platformers in existence" is not an opinion. Have you even played the game? I don't remember you owning a Wii U. I've enjoyed reading your takes on the Switch, regardless of where you land on liking or disliking games. I also don't see anyone calling H-o-T out for not enjoying his second playthrough of the game. Don't try and play the victim and spout utter bullshit like "it's not allowed to dislike any Nintendo game". I don't give a fuck if you don't like it, but there is no way it is objectively one of the worst 3D platformers in existence. That's just childish nonsense. If you post like a child, be prepared to be responded to like one, or run along back to Other Consoles.

Want a glass of water for that hot take?

Just picked up Habroxia (60% off), Super Punch Patrol (50% off) and A Short Hike (with a few gold coins) for under a tenner! Great value to be had this week in the e-Shop.

Just blasted through the first world. What a game this is - by far the best aesthetic Nintendo has come up with for a Mario game. OST is God-tier. Surprised by just how fast it feels now, almost too fast even! Grinning from ear-to-ear. I'll also give Bowser's Fury a go later, but really enjoying going through 3DW again.

I spent a good 10 or so hours over the past week finishing Super Mario Galaxy to 100%. A game that is definitely better in the back half than it is in the first, much like many modern Mario games, I suppose, but there are still a few annoying stars that were tough to get. I think I can come to the final conclusion that Galaxy is the best Mario game when it's at its best - i.e. 2D like levels that are liner and play around a lot with gravity. Some of the more open levels suffer from serious issues with the camera, when it is sometimes controllable, and sometimes not. Frustrating. The swimming is also terrible in this game, especially after Sunshine. I was constantly fighting the controls and the camera to get Mario where I wanted him to go. Overall, I'd put this game firmly behind Odyssey, 3D World and even Sunshine, I had a better time with that game as a whole. And so the Mario 3D All Stars collection is done (bar the Blue Coins in Sunshine, but shhhh). Excellent value for money from the £37 I ended up playing. Lasted me a good few months and it was super fun revisiting all these classics. Almost 60 hours of gamepley is nothing to be sniffed at considering the price I ended up paying. Would have liked it physical, but at least it's sat on the Switch for when I decide to go back and do a Luigi run of Galaxy in a couple of years or so. All finished just in time for Super Mario 3D World which I'm picking up on Friday. Parting ways with my Switch copies of DOOM, Wolfenstien II and Civilization VI, but I have them all on PC now, where they all play infinitely better so no loss, I suppose. Two dungeons to go in Link to the Past, so I'll probably finish that off this weekend before starting one of the Oracle games.