Hero-of-Time

Or a Saturn. Worked well for Sega.

Standard practice for all these lot. Eurogamer used to do it all the time. Nobody wants to go first.

From Nate, who is usually pretty decent with info.

Let's say they don't and they do start charging £60+ for each of their games. Would you still be willing to cough up the money for day 1 releases?

Aye. That's the fella.

Probably a factor. A lot of their game sales are front loaded and then fall off a cliff.

Aye. He kept diving way too early.

Arsenal were shocking. 60 minutes against 10 men and at home and they still couldn't finish the game off. Man U played stupidly well and they probably should have won it in regular time.

This is no doubt completely fake but it does have me thinking about the price of games. Current Switch retail titles usually go for £40-£45. Do we think this will go up, just like what Microsoft and Sony have done? Needing to pay £60 to play a game at launch is something I've refused to budge on when it comes to the PS5. What would your stance be if Nintendo start charging the same for their games? It's not as if they drop in price much either.

I finished off Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition. It didn't take long to grind the coins I needed to purchase everything I was missing. Many people said playing one of the Super Mario Bros. 2 stages was the quickest way to earn money but I found this way was far more lucrative. 60 coins every few seconds. It was definitely the way to go. With the Switch 2 being released this year, I need to try and get on top on my original Switch games. I decided to crack on with Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol.1. I played Metal Slug: First Mission a year or two back but didn't really play around with any of the other titles. This was pretty fun. I loved the chunky sprites on show here, which is something that I love about this handheld system. It's quite amazing how the game plays when you consider there are only a couple of buttons to work with. I went through the game with all of the characters (ending shots below) and unlocked the hidden character and I have no idea who he is. Shout out to Billy Kane who was a thorn in my side in every single playthrough that I done. Dude kept battering with his stick combo and seemed to be always one step ahead of me. I'd rather have fought Geese Howard another round than take on Billy again. Next up... I enjoyed this one a lot more, purely because it allowed you to turn the speed up. The previous game was a little slow and here I was able to crank things up to the speed I preferred. Once again, I went through the game with each of the characters and unlocked all of the secret ones (ending shots at the bottom). The endings are pretty funny, with each of the girls winning the tournament and getting to make a wish but most of the time the wish goes wrong. A neat feature in the game is the ability to unlock items. You can equip one of them to help give you the advantage in a fight but if you lose the battle then you also lose the item. These are obtained by doing certain things in a match, like getting a perfect victory of finishing an opponent with a special move. What I did enjoy when playing through both of these games is the tasks you needed to do to get extra fighters. Remember when a fighting game wasn't sold off to the players piece by piece and you could actually earn extra fighters by doing various things in game? Happy days. Ending screens for both games

Yeah. There are only a few missable trophies, the biggest being finding all of the Mana Eggs.

Absolutely

Played some more Grandia today. I've just realised I can set the battles to auto. This means I can farm exp and do other stuff at the same time. It works a treat. Thanks to the grinding I've done, I came across a boss and just set it to auto while I made my breakfast. Came back and the boss was dead. Tactics? Don't make me laugh. Still very much enjoying my time with it and is far better than Secret of Mana.

I've never liked you, drahkon. You know that, right?

With me looking to do the same this year,I've been looking at prices and it's crazy how little you get for Wii U games. Sure, one or two have held their value but most have just hit rock bottom levels. Probably due to most of them being ported to the Switch.

No. Just...no.

I've been enjoying my time on Grandia this evening. I've left the first area, set sail on a ship, fought on a ghost ship, stopped a wedding and picked up another party member. I love the interactions between Justin, Sue and Feena. The banter is great and the sprite work gorgeous. I took a screenshot of just how adorable the Sue sprite looks whilst sitting in a box. There was also a hilarious moment involving panties. The whole adventure so far has a wholesomeness to it and it reminds me very much of Skies of Arcadia. Both give off the exact same vibe. Looking forward to playing more of this over the weekend.

It depends what you're looking for. Plenty of AAA and indie stuff to buy. There's usually always something to snap up in their sales.

I fired up this game this evening. I remember when the original game was first released on the Sega Saturn in Japan. The official UK Saturn magazine was hyping it up as the Final Fantasy VII killer, obviously because that games wasn't making an appearance on the console. They kept raving on about it, only for the game to never get a Saturn release in the West. Ironically, it wasn't until it was released on the PS1 that UK JRPG fans would get to play it. I've not done much on it yet (clock says I've been on over 4 hours but I fell asleep for a while after work, with the PS5 pad still in my hand ) but I am enjoying the cozy vibes of the game. Justin seems to be a bit of a cheeky git and Sue is adorable. I've just been kicking around the first area (Marna Road) to do some grinding. The exp is a bit rubbish but I'm getting plenty of levelling done on my weapons. I keep chopping and changing them in order to unlock some new moves. Doing this has meant I've obtained plenty of cash and have been able to buy all weapon and armour upgrades in Parm. It's a bit of a shame that there are no random battles though and instead you have to walk into enemies. It means I have to concentrate a little bit more when farming exp, as opposed to just being able to walk around in circles using controller. This is my progress for the day. Another thing I'm not keen on is the item limit. Having a character being able to hold just 12 items seems a bit limiting. I've already stashed a load of stuff in the chest at home to free up space. In all fairness, it shouldn't really matter. I'm the type of player who when playing JRPGs hordes items for a rainy day but never actually uses them. One more thing, Sue has that little creature on her head and when she runs she looks like she's rocking the novelty breasts from Blackadder.

We've been a bit rubbish for the past couple of weeks. We seem to have hit our rough patch, whereas others have already been through theirs.

My first gaming purchase of the year was Thank Goodness You're Here. It's a game that has been in my wishlist for a while and it was now on sale. I remember @Happenstance playing and enjoying it last year. If it was a game that kept his attention enough for him to see it through to the end I figured it must be worth playing. The game is great! As a businessman, you're tasked with speaking with the mayor of the town. The problem is that he's unavailable for a while and so to kill some time you set out and about the small, nothern town to meet the people and help them with their tasks. The game is absolutely hilarious and VERY British. I'm not sure if players from other countries will get a lot of the references but those of you from the UK will certainly enjoy the charm and banter between the characters. The gardener and Rog the veg store owner are two of may favourites, with the latter having nightmarish flashbacks about his youth and the size of his head. It's all very wacky and a bit crazy but it never failed to make me smile. I feel @Dcubed and @Glen-i would get a kick out of the British humour. The gameplay itself is very basic, with only jump and slap actions being used by the player. Both of these are enough to engage with the world and lead to some funny moments. It's basically a series of fetch quests and small tasks but the game and town are short and small enough so that doing these things doesn't get old. Unlike the game I played before this, this one is definetly worthy of the praise it got and I can see why many reviewers raved on about it and had it as one of their best games of 2024. To end with, here's a scene that had me howling.

A second beta has been announced for Feb.