Josh64

Yay! I noticed a lot of stuff is back in stock now, I'm really tempted to get another Pikmin tea towel as it is lovely!

Keep the faith, I've definitely seen things come back before so it's not a one and done run like what I think was the case with things in the Nintendo VIP days

It's cute to look at, perhaps not that practical given that it's tiny lol. My favourite 'purchase' from there has been the Pikmin tea towel, I use it as a cover for my coffee table lol. I got the GBA poster set, they're great quality posters and I especially love the Mario Kart one for that classic early 00's CG. The Mario and Luigi one is a little bit pixelated if you look real close, so perhaps that art was blown up a bit too much.

Don't forget the physical rewards! I got the calendar a few days ago, it's pretty cute https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en/my-nintendo/my-nintendo-rewards

Free trial of Fae Farm tomorrow on Switch! https://www.n-europe.com/news/play-fae-farm-for-free-with-nintendo-switch-online/

Last week was a haze, so I posted in somewhat of a daze, but luckily for me there were releases abound, and the news trickled in so I could still sleep sound. As for Castlevania, I'm not really well versed in the series so I may pick it up at that price! I have a bad habit of doing that with games I'm not too sure about though, and then never playing them! We shall see lol.

There's a boss battle on the Jimmy T set of games that is really temperamental, the one where you're a robot grilling, I wasn't a fan at all!

Yeah this time of year will be especially hard to avoid! If I still haven't told everyone by then I will use work as an excuse for not having any, sadly I don't drive so I can't use designated driver as an excuse lol. And yeah just do it on your own terms if/when you are ready, it took me over 10 years to change my habits.

Thanks so much, you've been such a positive cheerleader in all of this

Anyone get this? I got it a few days ago with the intention to play with my friend but he had to bail. So haven't tried multiplayer yet but I have played about an hour of single player. The voice acting is surprisingly great, they've really nailed it, especially Afghani's Wario! Some really fun, inventive and wild minigames too that made me smile, laugh and even gasp lol. BUT some of the poses you have to get in feel a bit too cumbersome for quick play, I'll give it more time before I fully judge it, but I feel like having dual motion controls is a double edged sword, as while it gives opportunities for inventive and weird minigames, it has the potential to overcomplicate things compared to its Wii counterpart. I'll know for sure when I've got all the poses unlocked and play all of the minigames mixed together. So far, so good, but also a little cautious.

The background is so CRISP and CLEAN, I love it. Especially compared to the particularly hideous Sword and Shield skin lol. I'm not sure why though, the blocks are quite hard to get used to. I think it may be the stars on them, I had to concentrate more than usual and couldn't quite drift off into my normal Tetris meditative state. I still played until I unlocked the theme, but it's not my favourite, but also not the worst.

229 days sober today. I've told a few, but weirdly so many people close to me still don’t know, like my parents, or the majority of my friends really, but that’s because there’s so much shame around it. I wonder if and when I will eventually tell everyone, it was such a well kept secret for so long, it was like I was reliving my teen years of being in the closet. It’s like I’m coming out again in my 30s, which is interesting as my sexuality, the anxiety caused by it, the identity issues I’ve had with how I look and sound, are what caused my slowly burgeoning love of alcohol in the first place. Physically things are interesting. I lost weight, I lost a considerable amount of weight at one point, but the last month or so things are starting to even out, I’ve got bit of a belly back and my ribs aren’t uncomfortably on show, thanks to my mass intake of chocolate and biscuits to counter the Winter blues, but I’m not the mass bloated mess I was this time last year either. If ever I’m having a bad day and have mega cravings for junk food, I just lean into them and go to town, and tell myself these are calories I would have drank anyway. The really weird physical side effects that I used to have, but ignored, are now so wild looking back. Now that I’ve had 6 months of a normal functioning body, I do cringe at just how fucked certain things were. Mentally is the most confusing part of all this. I somehow feel more clarity but also much, much more vulnerable than when I was drinking. I used drinking to mask my emotions and to feel stable, to feel normal in social situations. Now that I don’t have evenings where I can drink the night away alone, having a fun solo rave, I have to actually face the demons waiting for me. I like my own company, but I have realised there are times I feel lonely, and that’s when I would drink. I only came to that realisation a few weeks ago. It’s like alcohol gave me such insane brain fog, that even after all these months I’m only just realising certain things. I also used to see my past self, my younger self, as ‘another person’. But I feel so connected with who I once was again. It’s really bizarre, quite a warm feeling but also quite emotional, as it’s like I’m also talking to some neglected 15 year old version of myself when I’m dealing with emotions now. None of this makes any sense, but it makes a little more sense than it does when it’s whirling around in my head. Perhaps one day I can parse through this and make it comprehensible, but that will likely take another 6 months of sobriety to figure out. The last month or so I’ve been more stable emotionally, I feel like I’m starting to reach a base level which is good. There were a few times over the last few months where I felt literal despair as I had no idea how to deal with fluctuating emotions, but those random days where I feel like I need to run out of the house, strip naked and howl at the moon are getting less and less. I travelled a few hours to meet the god-daughter of Scatman John this week. No alcohol to help my fear, but also extreme excitement as John Larkin is someone I held such a deep spiritual connection with since my first bout of suicidal ideation and anxiety at 15. It sounds super cringe I know, but I have genuinely felt so connected to him ever since then. But I finally felt very validated when meeting her, getting to wear one of his jackets, and listen to some music that I was previously unaware of, I felt the kind of joy and emotion I hadn’t felt since I first heard him as a teen, and it really felt like I had finally become a full person again, and wasn’t this disjoined mix of 3 or 4 different people that had reincarnated or reinvented themselves every 5 years to try to survive, but I’m the same person that I was at 15, and that kid is losing his fucking mind at some of the very awesome things I saw that day. Again, incomprehensible probably, but it’s been a good, exhausting and very emotional week. But I’m doing things I never thought I’d be able to do even when I was on the sauce, so I’m hoping I can remind myself of days like that when I’m having one of my drowning days.

If the strike goes well I hope he comes back.

What did he do?

Cher as Great Fairy please.

New content coming soon! https://www.n-europe.com/news/vampire-survivors-adventures-update/

I have been a bit swamped this week, so was only able to do the bare minimum big news, and not as much as I would have hoped, so it certainly helped with you adding the NSO news and eShop weekly! Hopefully I shall be more on the ball this week!

That's how I felt trying to make sense of the lengthy PR message describing the million different ways to purchase Disney Dreamlight Valley lol. Think I managed to simplify it a bit.

Haha I don't own it yet but will be playing it occasionally as my friend got it and bought it over yesterday to play so we did a few worlds together. Hopefully will do a few more in the near future!

Welcome back! Hopefully you stick around. But if I've noticed anything about N-E, it's that even if you leave for years, you never fully leave. It will always drag you back in eventually.

That's my hope too, the delay is hopefully a good sign as oppose to a bad one. The screens look decent enough, the real test will be when video emerges!

I've done an abridged article featuring all of the best quotes and info from all 4 parts, in one neat package. It's on our front page now, with a new trailer and a couple of Nintendo Twitter images thrown in the mix! https://www.n-europe.com/news/ask-the-developer-super-mario-bros-wonder/

I couldn't find a thread in Nintendo chat so apologies if there is one already. The Nintendo Switch port is just around the corner! And the Nintendo eShop has finally uploaded some screenshots, which are the first glimpse of the game running on the Switch. Check out the screens on the front page here: https://www.n-europe.com/news/hogwarts-legacy-nintendo-switch-screens-revealed/ It still hasn't been shown in motion, which is slightly worrying, but I've been playing a lot of Sonic Frontiers recently, which has been great fun and runs relatively well, and gives me hope that an open world third-party title can work on the Switch if the porting process is done well.

Ok I'll admit, I completely forgot they added Excite Bike 64 So I guess it's not as terrible as I thought, but still isn't really regular enough I think. And yeah, the amount of first party stuff they should surely have lined up for the GBA and GB must be substantial! Give us more of the Nintendo owned Rare games like Donkey Kong Land 1-3 and 64!