Nicktendo

So as the situation rapidly worsens in Europe, many of use are facing time off work, time off the streets and time spent at home. Sport has been essentially cancelled and public places like cinemas, bars and restaurants are likely soon to follow leaving us with little opportunity for fun activities and social interaction. I know the U.K. is taking a different approach to the continent for the time being, but I can see inevitable shut-downs happening as the days go by. To combat the boredom, the worry and the panic that is likely to engulf our lives over the next month, I suggest we have a place where we can share Skype / Discord information (thanks , Nintendo) and arrange online gaming sessions. I know a number of people on this forum live alone or live far away from close friends and relatives and we are all facing a period of limited interaction with other people. I think getting together a couple of times a week and just sitting down for a group chat and a gaming session would be a good way of helping each other get through this time. Ironically, we've never had a better opportunity to tackle those backlogs... I've slowly been getting down at how the situation is changing, unlikely to be going out to work for the next 4 weeks at least as all the schools will be closed, and the prospect of spending all that time at home, completely alone, is not one I'm looking forward to. We already have Mario Kart 8 on Thursday at 8pm UK, Smash Bros. Ultimate on the same day at 9.15pm UK - I'll be joining these sessions for the foreseeable future and would suggest opening voice channels if anyone else is up for it. If anyone has any recommendations for any online games, post them here. Animal Crossing launches in a week. I'm already going back on my decision not to buy it, because I think sinking hours into it will help the time pass. So, N-E, who's locked down? Who wants to join? Stay safe everybody, and let's get through this together.

AFAIK it can be wireless if there is a dongle that goes into the 3.5mm jack. Pure Bluetooth headphones aren't supported by the Switch.

Negative.

I had a letter in N64 magazine too. Unfortunately it was in the bonus letters section, the one where they take a line or two out of your letter and print it out of context so you look like a clown 👌😩

Only seven confirmed cases where I am but watching this spread across Western Europe means it will inevitably come here too soon. Looking at statistics, we’re in a better position than the U.K. to deal with extreme cases, way more ICU beds per 1000 of the population. However the population is old here, very old. Maybe not Italy levels, but it has the potential to be disastrous. We have 100s of flights going to and from Western Europe. Italian flights have been cancelled for the past few days, 250 staff at Air Baltic temporarily laid off... can’t imagine how they’re going to pay the bills. People arriving on flights from badly affected countries are being advised to self-isolate for two weeks. Whether they actually will is another question. School holidays start next week and have been extended by a week. Sensible move. In about an hour they’re going to take a decision on whether to close the border. I honestly think they should, given how few cases we have and the age of the population. As for me, I work from home most of the time but teach older teen kids twice a week in a language school. My next classes are in three hours and I think they’re going to be my last for the foreseeable future. No problems with supermarkets so far, plenty of stock, no empty shelves but that may change over the weekend. I might get stocked up on dry food, just in case. Lucky that it’s just me, can’t imagine going through this as a family. Hopefully the numbers in Europe start reflecting Korea soon (don’t trust China’s at all) and after what will undoubtedly be a tough period, we can slowly get back to normal.

I've had my fill now. My vote goes to @Glen-i, just. @RedShell's was a close second. Overall, some really cool levels. I finished five out of the seven. I enjoyed most of the gimmicks, particularly Glen's P-block maze, absolutely superb, feels so good when you nail it, excellent timing and spacing of those things. Redshell's bounce the spike ball on the trampolines was excellent, great job. Dennis's level was tough, but fun to run through a couple of times. Lee's and Morgan's levels were both good. Sorry, Lee, but Morgan has you beat on this one. His was a little more challenging and a little less frustrating, I liked that it had a bit of variety mixed in with some tough wall-jumping. Your level would be good to speed-run, but I don't have the energy now. The other two levels were good as well. D-Cubed's was great until the on/off vertical bit. Absolutely no patience for that, especially when there is no set rhythm (one spike per screen, for example). The fact that there are multiple means you have to keep an eye on all of them, and on the jumps. Too difficult and not fun after 10 miserable and failed attempts Smeagol, I got to the spike boss on your stage. It took me ages to figure out the bit before that and get it right. There are some good jumps and some good puzzles in this level, but as always, I have no energy to go through enormous sections to get back to the point where I died again, and again, and again. Having to spend time to get back to the bit you can't do just isn't fun for me. I spent an hour on it, got as far as I could. 0.25% completion rate sounds about right. Too many hard sections, punishment too heavy for messing up.

With this and Death Stranding coming to PC, there is literally NO reason for me to ever consider a PS4. These were the two games that really piqued my interest, and now they're coming to PC. Good move, Sony

Here are three different Takers...

User banned: (3 days) Perpetuating myths regarding game development. Transphobia. History of prior infractions, account in junior phase.

Good luck to him. Even though Gamestop have a horrible reputation, if anyone can turn them around, it's Reggie. He's been in the business long enough. As much as I hate Game in the UK, it'll be a sad day when they finally depart. The world is definitely better with dedicated game shops, no matter how crappy they are. I think they just haven't adjusted with the times and their pricing models certainly leave a lot to be desired. I'm intrigued how this will turn out, and slightly hopeful he can do something positive.

I don’t have anything to really say about Pokemon MD. I didn’t get on with the demo. You could argue I needed to put more time into it, but Pokemon is just something I don’t have much interest in unfortunately.

Well I’m giving my vote to anything. Want to hear any suggestions, including Lee’s list of 50+ Once we whittle it down to two or three I’m happy to make a choice.

Cross-posting from the General PC Thread as I’m guessing not many people venture in there plus I wouldn’t have had an update in here for a while otherwise. I’ve been playing Halo: Combat Evolved in the Master Chief Collection on Steam and it’s amazing. Pressing the back button switches between original and updated graphics , well... textures to be more precise (I’m guessing the updated stuff is the anniversary edition gfx). I thought it was quite ugly when I first started the campaign but ooooh boy, those original graphics are NOT how I remember them... It's aged poorly. I remember the bump mapped textures and "realistic grass" looking amazing at the time. Not anymore Amazing how far we’ve come. I'm now half way through the the Assault on the Control Room and remembering why this is one of the best FPS games of all time. I was blown away at the time and this has hit me right in the nostalgia. I haven't played this game since 2005, I think. I got it for Xmas 2004 shortly after getting a second hand Xbox. The game was in my stocking along with Michael Jackson's greatest hits album . Playing the first level to Bad and Don't Stop Til You Get Enough will forever been ingrained in my memory. Combination of a lifetime. Stuck the album on for a trip down memory lane, take me back... The game is an absolute masterpiece and it’s easy to see why it was so loved at the time. The gameplay still holds up today. Despite the corridor nature of some areas, the world is interesting, unique and tells a story without the need for heaps of cutscenes and dialogue. The way the game forces you to learn the enemies, their attack patterns and their audio cues is something that makes it very much feel like a game and not an interactive movie. Punishingly difficult at times, but never cheap, something I don’t think they replicated as the series went on.

Yeah, I do wish they’d address it though with an option to use a cropped screen size

But Ultimate really was Sora and Bandai Namco, all of the Smash games have been outsourced to BN or done by Sakurai's team internally / HAL who are independent. I honestly think Nintendo had very little input (creatively, not in terms of money). The same is true for Xenoblade 2. Although we've established that Monolith are "in-house", it's not even close to a typical EAD game. Not by a mile. Mario Kart 8 and BOTW were both in-house, of course (though the overworld in BOTW was built on Monolith tech from Xeno X and the EAD team who did ARMS worked on MK8, or the other way round, cheap and easy port). Stuff like Luigi's Mansion 3 and Mario Tennis are clearly second party. I believe it shows. Compare LM1 to LM2 and 3 and the difference is stark, in my opinion. The transition tunes, constant crashes and frustratingly long music of podcast extras were meant to be a little tribute to the game in question, but well done for guessing, the soundtrack really is amazing. I hope people were confused. If you were, well done, welcome to how I felt playing that game. It was also an excuse to fit as many tunes in as possible I honestly preferred Demon's Crest. While it was a bit awful, it was nowhere near as painful to play as Kirby, for me at least. The NES Kirby is all kinds of bad, I think the main reason I don't like it is the slowdown and that horrible articfacting on the right hand side of the screen that SM3 NES also suffers from. We need Mario Allstars on the SNES Classics. I can't play the NES version of these games.

Halo: Combat Evolved is now playable in Master Chief Collection. Downloading now Edit: It's amazing. Pressing the back button switches between original and updated graphics, well... textures to be more precise. I thought it was quite ugly when I first started the campaign but ooooh boy, those original graphics are NOT how I remember them... It's aged poorly. I remember the bump mapped textures and "realistic grass" looking amazing at the time. Not anymore I'm half way through the the Truth and Reconciliation and remembering why this is one of the best FPS games of all time. I was blown away at the time and this has hit me right in the nostalgia. I haven't played this game since 2005, I think. I got it for Xmas 2004 along with Michael Jackson's greatest hits album . Playing the first level to Bad and Don't Stop Til You Get Enough will forever been ingrained in my memory. Combination of a lifetime. Stuck the album on for a trip down memory lane, take me back.

I polished off Mario Tennis Aces last night. I hadn't done a few of the final levels and the extra content (which I'm guessing may be DLC?) in the story mode. Even though the mode itself was quite disappointing overall, the challenges were pretty fun and the difficulty level ramped up nicely towards the end. The boss battles are well implemented and I LOVE the mini-games with the rings and the gates on the opposite side of the course. I've dipped into a few games Vs. COM and the game is still really solid, plays such a good game of tennis that is easy to pick up and incredibly difficult to master. So many systems to balance at one time. I get my arse handed to me on the hardest difficulty but it's clearly because I'm not competent enough. I know what I NEED to do to win, but in the heat of the match, I make too many mistakes. The inclusion of the meter is genius and balancing it against your opponent is the key to victory. It's a shame the online died so quickly, I was ranked #1 in Russia for a couple of months, but it's impossible to even get a game now and when you do, it's against an absolute pro. Waste of time Easily the best game in the series in terms of mechanics, but it lacked the charm and additional stuff that were found in the N64 and GC versions.

I do change my region from time-to-time depending on where the better offers are. I have a bit of money on my account so won't be able to switch regions until I spend it, but if you really don't want / need the code, then I'll be happy to take it! Cheers! @Jonnas was correct, but it was painfully easy this week (if you have played the game and / or got the clues).

Pretty sure you can get a tram there from Manchester airport.

This is bang on. I've mentioned it before (and will again in the podcast tomorrow ) that Nintendo's output in 2018/2019 has been disappointing, even downright poor if compared to the 3DS + WiiU. I think something must be going on internally. Complacency is also probably a factor too. Part of me hopes they've been holding a lot of stuff back for this year and they're about to come out swinging against the new Xbox and PlayStation, but I'm not holding my breath.

Best supported Nintendo System since the SNES (excluding Wii and DS because shovelware does not = support). It's the first time in a long time that being a "Nintendo only" gamer has not left me feel like I'm really missing out. More quality content than you can shake a stick at. Shame it's Nintendo that have been slacking, their output has been rather poor in year 2 and 3. We had high hopes of WiiU + 3DS levels of output and it just hasn't come to fruition, unfortunately. Perfect indie machine, but pricing is an issue that needs to be addressed. Other consoles get lower prices and better / more regular sales. However, they have struck gold with the form factor. For the future, I'd like to see them expand on the Switch concept. The lite is a good move - cheap dedicated handheld device. I'd like to see them expand on this and experiment with a more powerful "home only" device, or a beefier Switch that switches. Of course that would need a better account / save cloud set up to support multiple systems in a more streamlined manner, so I'm sceptical. I'm still excited about the "family of systems" they talked about, so with the competition about to upgrade, I think late this year / early next is the time to take this concept to the next level. They need to raise their game in the software department, but MP4 and BOTW 2 both have me very excited. I'd like to see more in terms of new concepts / IPs going forward, along the lines of Labo and Ring Fit, but more "traditional".

My god, that song. Absolutely balls-to-the-wall incredible rendition. I really hope this game comes to PC

I'd really rather not do that

With speed it won't help too much, but it should assist them with tyre wear, which has notoriously been weaker than the Red Bull's. Saying that though, they've had problems with their engines, so they may have a few reliability problems in the early part of the season, even if they're fast. Hopefully someone else will take charge of the championship early on and Mercedes will be forced to claw their way back. Nice one, I'll have to give this a shot if Sky stop letting EU countries have access to Sky Go. It baffles me why I can't get F1TV Pro here because in the Baltic's they don't even have an official F1 broadcaster, I literally have no "legal" way of watching it on TV/Cable/Online. I know the populations are small and insignificant in the grand scheme, but you'd have thought it would be the perfect place to have an online sub Don't see the point in having the race up on access after it finishes when they could just show everything live.