S.C.G

@Hero-of-Time Happy Console Gamer is back. Good to see him back on YouTube after the rough time he's been having since late last year.

I completely forgot about the spoiler tags, I'll remember to use those from now on, I'll have another listen and a proper think about what game it could be.

Might as well start guessing... Xenoblade Chronicles 2?

N-Eaction: A New Season Pass Approaches! With the recent announcement of the Fighters Pass Vol.2 for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate plus other DLC we thought it was time to talk about DLC and season passes. In it we look at what we don't like about DLC in general, what are the best ways of adding more content to games and why Smash seems to be in its own category alltogether. Thanks to @Glen-i @Vileplume2000 @Jonnas & @Nicktendo for their contributions and @RedShell for making some excellent graphics with just the right amount of intrigue. Enjoy and let us know what you think about Nintendo's current approach to Season Passes and what you think about DLC in general.

I sincerely hope that quote makes it into the N-Europe review. (it might even have to be the pull quote) Really looking forward to this game.

Excellent podcast this week, I very much enjoyed listening to your thoughts on Animal Crossing in particular. Thanks for answering my listener question as well, always nice to hear about which games everyone plays on the big screen or portable. Got a laugh out of me at the end as well with that sly 'Ninten-doomed' comment there Greg, plus the Podcast Extras. No idea on the transition tune... but I'm guessing it's an RPG?

Thanks for the games everyone. Some really close matches there tonight, and some... not so close ones. Great fun though, as always.

New mythical Pokémon to be added into Sword and Shield It's Pokémon Day and GameFreak have shared a brand new mythical Pokémon to be included in Sword and Shield; meet Zarude. Check the article for the Press Release info and the reveal trailer.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate spirits event themed around the colour Black launches this Friday The latest spirit event for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate goes live on Friday, from February 28th for five days you can get black spirits. This might be a good time to get back into playing some single player SSBU and nabbing some spirits but... I say that nearly every week and it never happens. I think for this event, clearly they were going to add Lotus from Warframe and then thought... 'What's the theme going to be?' Lotus... Black... ah Black Lotus! I mean, it's not a bad theme and they've clearly done their best, it's just a bit tenuous compared to the previous events, anyway I'm not complaining, it's more content.

Platinum Games news roundup The Wonderful 101 release date and Project G.G. announced Platinum Games news... get your Platinum Games news here! Two pieces of news relating to Platinum Games on the same day, what better opportunity to put two press releases and trailers into one article? And it's efficient... as you only need to check out one news piece, I'm saving you clicks here. (OK, I just didn't want to post another article) Anyway, Project G.G. looks like a potentially Good Game.

Yacht Club Games Presents 26 02 2020 Roundup Here's our roundup of Yacht Club Games' latest presentation. Press release info for most of it including the release window for Cyber Shadow, an update on Shovel Knight Dig plus some new annoucements. A couple of relevant trailers are in there for the bigger announcements but there's a link to the entire presentation in there and the whole thing was only 12 minutes. But they certainly got a lot of announcements in during that limited window of time, they even seem to be presenting in more of a Nintendo Direct fashion as well. Pretty decent stuff all round considering it's only their second presentation with more to come throughout the year.

Streets of Rage 4 trailer debuts final playable character Floyd and Four Player Local Co-Op Floyd looks like Max and Zan from Streets of Rage II & III respectively plus Jax from Mortal Kombat combined. Two player online is nice but Four Player Local Co-op!?! That's a huge addition right there. No confirmed release date but it is coming out in the Spring which isn't that far away. I just hope the gap between the initial release and the Limited Run Games physical release isn't too long.

Continuing the GBA theme... I just watched a great video about The History of 3D Graphics on the Gameboy Advance by minime who has covered these kinds of titles in the past in smaller subsets such as FPS or Driving games in 3D on the GBA but this one is really quite an in-depth history when it comes to 3D games on Nintendo's portable system. Back when the system was on the market, I can remember seeing a lot of these titles for the first time and being suitably impressed by them, so it was nice to see footage from some of these titles again as I don't actually own that many 3D titles for the system, bar the ones by Shin'en which I intend to play properly one day, namely the Iridion titles and Star X. It's just really interesting to see what could be done with the hardware, especially with some of those racing games.

I doubt that the Xbox Series X will be priced at any more than £499.99... If that happens, then the PS5 probably won't be any more than £549.99 and it would likely need an extremely compelling feature to 'justify' that extra £50. Personally, I'd love it if both consoles were £400 or less because I still think that's a significant sum on money to spend on a games console in 2020. I think generally, it's getting to the point now where you really have to sell a console with some kind of unique feature which makes it worth purchasing in addition to the games. For the Switch it's the ability to play full consoles games either on the go or on the big screen... With the Xbox Series X, Games Pass will likely be a significant and tempting prospect for those who want the machine, want to play the games but don't care about owning them... While the PS5 looks set to offer potentially one of the largest back-catalogues in gaming ever, if the PS5 ends up reading all discs somehow, plus quick game loading... That's the way I see it at the moment but who knows what 2020 will bring? Whenever these new machines launch, I'm sure plenty of people will buy them and 2021 would make more sense if it wasn't for the fact that the Xbox One X seems to be a certainty for the end of this year and you have to wonder if Sony will want to wait that long to get their next machine out there, as they'd miss out on those crucial end of year sales. It's better to get a console launch right from day one rather than having to refocus and backpedal for a significant amount of time following a botched launch; there's no indication that this will be true for either console manufacturer but it will be interesting to see how all of this pans out.

I finished listening to the podcast late last night, a nice bit of discussion on there; I enjoyed hearing about Nick's thoughts on Super Mario Maker 2 which I largely agree with, though I will try and make the effort to get into playing other peoples levels on it as well because I think that will make it well worth revisiting even if I don't end up making any levels myself, but you never know. Bomb Chicken has been on my to play list for a while, I already know that the game is good thanks to Hero's excellent review (also I really can't believe that was over a year and a half ago) but listening to Lee talk about his time with the game just further cements in my mind that this game is clearly worth making time for, I haven't had the game for that long because like with many titles... I waited for the physical version but I might just take it off the shelf and play it soon. A question for next weeks podcast... When it comes to the thought of playing new games on the Switch in portable mode versus old classics, which is more appealing to you? For instance, with the upcoming Doom Eternal do you find that's a game which you'd tend to want to play in portable mode or on the big screen? Personally, I tend to save playing newer games for on the TV but if there were suddenly N64 games available on the Switch, I think those are something which I'd tend to play in portable mode; perhaps due to the novelty. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as it's always interesting to hear about the different ways in which everyone tends to play on their Switch. I've no idea if this has been asked before but I just thought I'd get the question down while I was thinking about it. Personally, I just need to play my Switch more, that would be a good start for me.

Thanks for the games, I had a great time Smashing like it's 1999.

We've got one which we mainly use for A Smashing Cast.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct 20.02.2020 Roundup Full press release and link to the video up on the main page. A reasonable presentation overall, it gave much of the expected information in many areas and moreorless what we already knew in others. I'm still looking forward to it as the game does look fantastic but I'll be equally interested to hear about the save data program at a later date. Also... I'm almost certain that there was something related to certain content being unlocked with amiibo and K.K. Slider was eluded to... called it.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate hosts a 1990's tournament, starting on Friday The latest tournament for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is based around videogames of the 1990's! God damn! The nostalgia is strong for this one. And again, some really nice promotional art produced for the tournament. I often miss out on these tournaments, maybe I'll go in for this one? Or just appreciate the moment and move on... Either way, I really like the concept for this tournament as the Nineties was such a great time for me personally and for videogames in general.

Nintendo Switch Online NES and SNES applications have recently been updated Yep, it's that infrequent time of the year again when Nintendo update both the NES and SNES apps with a couple of games for us to play. Fair play though, some good titles in there but we could easily be getting eight titles every month or so and it wouldn't feel like too much surely? I can remember some weeks when writing VC Weekly, there would be eight titles in one week alone. Still, it is nice to see the library slowly expanding.

Yacht Club Games Presents video annoucned for February 26th Yacht Club Games Direct Presents video will be shown in just under a week. Expect some Cyber Shadow, a bit of Shovel Knight Dig and a few surprises... (amiibo?) One to watch, and as always N-Europe will have the full Roundup article written up shortly after the video has aired.

Dangerous Driving 2 announced for the Nintendo Switch I'm personally very excited for this one as I loved the first game. While it wasn't quite that well polished at launch, the team at Three Fields Entertainment did an excellent job at bringing the Burnout spirit to the first game. Here's hoping that they can work wonders again with the sequel Dangerous Driving 2 which will be appearing for the first time on the Nintendo Switch in 2020. Check the article on the main page for a little bit of info from the press release and a write-up of reasonable length owing to my time spent with the first game.

Streets of Rage 4 'Behind the Art' video Another behind the scenes video from the developers this time focusing on the art. Well worth checking out.

Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition is coming to the Switch on March 26th Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition is a 16-Bit style JRPG which is developed by Stegosoft Games, published by Dangen Entertainment and is coming to the Switch on March 26th, 2020. Stela will be released on the Nintendo Switch eShop on March 13th Stela is an atmospheric action-platformer which is developed by SkyBox Labs and is coming to the Nintendo Switch eShop on March 13th, 2020. Check the articles on the main site for details and trailers.

@LazyBoy That sounds like a great idea and it will be nice to finally try out some N-Europe made levels on Super Mario Maker 2. @Dcubed If we can make it work then it would make for a great episode, I suppose on a technical level we would all talk on Discord while playing your levels and then there would be video of your levels playing constantly while you tell us about how you went about making the courses, kind of like a Director's Commentary for part of it perhaps? I'm interested either way and can take part on either Monday or Tuesday. Edit - wait... I'm missing something pretty major here I think, did I imagine it or is it now possible to play simultaneous four player co-op online on Super Mario Maker 2? If that's the case then it could work rather well, I've probably forgotten something technical though, maybe it's local only? I haven't played it since launch.