WackerJr

Haha, of course penalties! I wouldn’t want to look up and see the size of Donnarumma though!

I agree completely! Italy like to counter, so go for England, but just be ready for that counter-attack.

It really has been a tournament for players to embarrass their critics. Sterling has been immense, as have the likes of Shaw & Pickford.

I was just lamenting at home that we looked really nervous & then that happened! I thought this could be a 0-0 game beforehand so I’ve been wrong on a counts! Great start.

It does sound as though they are thankfully training up and giving opportunities and experience to staff (see BotW, Mario Maker, etc). It feels as though Nintendo do seem to have fewer internal development teams, although I’m sure someone knows for sure? There seem to be more remakes or updating previous games than larger new titles. I wonder if this is part of the development plan for staff?

This was new to me too! When they said they were only a few minutes away yet had this battle still to go I thought they’d made a mistake!

Same situation here... Although from reviews plus I am a big fan of the other Spike-Chunsoft titles I’m confident I’ll enjoy it, and with this excitedly being revealed it seems a good time to finally play the original!

I recall Sakurai suggesting a couple of years ago that the final roster had been decided and that it was Nintendo themselves who chose the actual characters (Sakurai would report back to Nintendo’s suggestions as to whether he could make them work in the game). Trying to then think like Nintendo would think sadly though, is nigh-on impossible! I think the Halo team are trolling with all the Master Chief hints. I could see a Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton, even though I’m not sure they’re big enough reveals to leave until last. I’d be ok with either. I can imagine Disney being difficult in allowing Sora & MGM with James Bond (both would be popular enough reveals though). I don’t think Nintendo would relent with Waluigi so my more realistic expectation would be a mascot such as Rayman or Crash. Like others have said, I can’t think of any single announcement that would avoid mass disappointment.

Being a fan of the original, I was really excited for this, what with the promise of enhancements and new levels. Seeing the footage and disappointing review on Nintendolife has given me second thoughts sadly...

I feel better that others are struggling as I don’t have the foggiest! I’ve no reason to ever doubt Jonnas’ guesses, so in case it’s somehow not right, I’m going for: Good discussion about E3 overall and the Nintendo Direct. I agree with the description “solid” that was used, and no doubt helped in part by the lack of huge announcements throughout the rest of E3.

I’m assuming they’ll combine the ‘Map modes’ (can’t remember the name, but the non-story battles). I recall Advance Wars 2 included most of, if not all, of the maps from the first game. This was one of the those moments when originally playing it that it dawned on me just how large the game was & what great value it was!

I’ve just finished the Danganronpa trilogy on PS4 and really enjoyed it. I guess it’s a little like Phoenix Wright with a Hunger Games / Battle Royale-style twist. If you enjoy the Phoenix Wright gameplay or ‘whodunnit’ stories then you’ll probably enjoy it.

Thanks @Glen-i and @darksnowman I’ll keep persevering. At least I’m not alone!

I could see this as a real possibility. While I predict just a non-gameplay trailer, they weren’t ready just a couple of months ago and preparing something for E3 isn’t a 2-minute job. Combined with them wanting to create a strong impression along with the potential to overshadow any other Zelda remakes coming this year, they may not want to. If that was what they’re considering, I don’t think my own personal disappointment in that decision would make much difference to them...

Has anyone else been having issues downloading updates or software recently? For the past few days I get an error message on any download or when attempting to update a game. I’m getting error code 2123-1502. A quick search suggests there could be an issue with the latest Switch ‘stability’ update. Is anyone else getting this? If so, has anyone found a solution?

I agree completely! While it may take a while to put together an E3 demo, these games were fantastic examples of how to get positive promotion for your games, from both the media & public. Both games had a lot of expectations riding on them, BotW especially with it’s emphasis on updating the Zelda gameplay, and it worked to win people over & get a hugely positive buzz around it.

The first E3 press conference I really remember was 2001 and the GameCube reveal, and being stunned by the graphics (including the short but sweet Link vs Ganondorf showdown). 4-minute highlight reel of Nintendo E3 2001 For years after that I was always confused as to why these conferences were filled with charts and explaining how their company had performed so well, when all people wanted to see were games! It may have taken a few more years but thankfully they all finally cottoned on! I’m often excited and regularly disappointed when these conferences don’t live up to the hype (see E3 2010 Microsoft’s Kinect demo, E3 2008 Wii Music, E3 2003 Pac Man Vs, E3 2002 Miyamoto lost Link’s sword during Wind Walker demo). My fondest memories though, as others have said, include the incredible reaction to the Twilight Princess reveal, Reggie’s introduction, 2017 and Michel Ancel showing genuine appreciate to the audience response to Beyond Good & Evil 2, and 2018 with Grant Kirkhope playing DK live.

I’ve predominantly managed to avoid leaks so far, as you can probably tell by my predictions: I sadly think the pandemic will still have had a massive affect on the state and numbers of games revealed and I expect very little on some of the big titles previously announced. • Metroid 4 / Splatoon 3 = nothing • Bayonetta 3 = a brief character shot to show “yes it’s still being made!” • Zelda: BotW2 = a few seconds of non-gameplay trailer. And the gameplay: • Mario Golf, No More Heroes 3, Pokémon Legends, Great Ace Attorney = lots of gameplay. • Smash Bros character reveal = surely a certainty, but the surprise of who... I’m going with Professor Layton at the start, then concluding with Sora, which will also then lead to a final bonus slot of Mickey Mouse! • New DK, Advance Wars & F-Zero. • Zelda Oracle games, which will disappoint us all by being ports as opposed to using the new Link’s Awakening art style. • Ring Fit Adventure 2 & Mario vs Rabbids 2 (not in the same game though!) • The Mother logo, but teasing us by not revealing if it’s finally the Mother 3 port, Mother 4 or making us all worry it’ll simply be Earthbound 0... then revealing all will be coming to Switch! I’ve gone too far into the world of unrealistic expectations now haven’t I....!?

Paw Patrol Mighty Pups: Save Adventure Bay (Switch) Please don’t judge me! [emoji1] I feel the world is split between those who have never heard of Paw Patrol & those like me that, due to having or working with young children, know way too much about the ridiculously popular group of rescue pups and their dictator-come-leader Ryder. Unlike the first Paw Patrol Switch game, which was a 2D platformer, this is a basic 3D platformer & actually enables 2-player co-op so my wife & I could play with our 4 year-old Paw Patrol fan. There are no health bars to worry about, nor can your character fall off the playing area. There are always 2 characters on screen, so when playing co-op you each take control of a pup, with everything on one playing area on screen so no split screen here. While I preferred this, it inevitably leads to times where you’re both stuck at opposite ends of the screen with the camera refusing to pan out any further. As you can imagine, when playing with a young child this happens all too frequently & invariably there were tantrums when one of us (guess!) couldn’t move further at times. It looks & sounds just like the show when it boots up. Sadly I assume the budget didn’t allow any more official music beyond the title screen, plus only one of the characters was voiced. It didn’t spoil the game for my daughter, but was really noticeable. This was a little odd considering we have countless toys that all recite lines of dialogue from the show, yet the game is probably the most expensive Paw Patrol ‘toy’ we own and yet the developers couldn’t even include ANY other speech!? Look, everyone knows it was never going to be Game of the Year material, nor does it set out to be. The main gameplay & mini games are suitable for much younger gamers & to this extent I actually think they do a good job with that target audience. I was very disappointed with the shortcuts taken though, such as the lack of voices, official music, and with only 7 levels this is still a very disappointingly short experience.

Danganronpa V3 (PS4) With this I complete the full series to date. Gameplay doesn’t deviate from the established routine of the previous games, which sees another set of students involved in a deadly ‘killing game’. You explore the school setting & further the dialogue in the story before someone suddenly meets an unfortunate demise, at which point you search for evidence before entering a courtroom to try and deduce who the culprit is. The courtroom gameplay feels particularly Phoenix Wright-esque, where the majority of times you are trying to present evidence that contradicts somebody’s statement. To mix things up though during the trials, sometimes you’ll have to complete a minigame to solve a particular problem. There are more mini games then the previous titles, including a basic racing game or a Minesweeper-style one. For me these games, in the most part, are the best in the Danganronpa series. The presentation as a whole has been more refined, plus the twists, turns & revelations in each case still felt fresh & continually surprised me. Despite this, I still came away slightly disappointed. The humour was frequently more juvenile than the first two games, which fell flat a little too often for me. I won’t spoil anything, but I found the story to be the least satisfying out of the series so far. Not to say it was bad, far from it. The mysteries and murders were still excellently done, I just preferred the overall stories in the previous two games. Although of course I may have been a little fatigued from the 50+ hours of this visual novel series beforehand... I enjoyed the trilogy and I’m now ready to move on from the series & maybe take a short break from the visual novel genre.

I’ve never been a fan of their “New” branding (“New Nintendo DS”, “New Super Mario Bros”, etc), but Nintendo do seem to be fond of that naming convention so I agree it does seem plausible. When this new model is finally revealed I initially thought they’d need to have software to demonstrate why we need to buy this new model over the current one, and this was the reason they were putting off the reveal (that, plus the fact they’re still selling bucketloads of Switches every week!). I’m now not sure as this is the difficult one, since I assume they wouldn’t want to make a game that only runs on the new model & alienates the user base of millions. So how do they market this?

Was I the only one disappointed by this Sonic Direct? While with Sonic Colours it’ll be nice to have a remake of a game with an ok reputation, the rest didn’t really warrant the Direct for me. The Sonic model in the Tokyo 2020 games freaked me out rather, and the ‘reveal’ of the new Sonic game for 2022 revealed, well, nothing else. Although strongly hinted that Sonic would be running perhaps...?

Part-Time UFO (Switch) A fun diversion for an evening. I played it in both solo & co-op modes for a few hours, which was enough to complete the game. Essentially you controlled your UFO & used it’s extendable claw (think Nintendo Badge Arcade’s fairground-style claw but without Arcade Bunny, the most unscrupulous Nintendo character since Tom Nook!) to pick up objects & pile them up into a specific form of tower. Objectives varied from forming a tower of cheerleaders to balancing monkeys on an elephant that’s riding a unicycle on a tightrope (yes, really!). I enjoyed HAL’s sense of humour with these bizarre scenarios & it created some memorable moments. The floaty controls were just fine, making precise lifts & drops challenging but not impossible. It also added an edge of unpredictability, without being too frustrating, as to whether the objects were going to go exactly where you wanted, slightly out but enough to keep your tower erect, or whether it was simply going to crumble to the ground! There were bonuses & small cutscenes to unlock by completing the added objectives in each level, but to be honest I didn’t see the appeal in spending hours mastering the levels to get a few seconds of cutscenes. Overall, not a long game & not one I’ll return to, but the few hours I had with the game were thoroughly enjoyable.

Well I didn’t see this coming! The variety towards the end of the trailer really has me interested. I guess ultimately how easy will this be & how much leniency will the player have to create their own game from it? What age are they aiming this at? Lots of questions, but I’m excited by this!

I agree. I really didn’t like the Game Gear version, due to the reduced screen size & some of the buggy changes they made to some of the boss battles. The Master System version remains one of my favourite games on the system though. I remember the music for all of the zones, and the location of the hidden emeralds & 1-ups is still imprinted to this day! Great challenge @Cube and good luck with the 8-bit Sonic 2 & it’s ridiculous difficulty spikes! If you have the choice between Game Gear & Master System versions then pick Master System, if nothing else then for the first boss alone!