Dcubed

It could well be, but this news tells us literally nothing about what the system will or will not be able to do (outside of 4k visuals). It could be a mindjacking matrix device and we'd be none the wiser.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-29/nintendo-switch-4k-developers-make-games-for-nonexistent-console Looks like developers are just starting to get early Switch 2 dev kits now... For reference, this happened with the Switch/NX around October 2015... https://www.wsj.com/articles/nintendo-begins-distributing-software-kit-for-new-nx-platform-1444996588 Strongly implies that Switch 2 will be coming out March 2023 (as I previously predicted).

Reviews are coming out now. Sounds like the main game is actually pretty well represented, with the physics being mostly faithful to the original (though slightly off still; they're close enough that few outside of the hardcore SMB crowd will likely notice), but the mini games lost a lot in the translation... Not gonna lie, this video comparison is pretty impressive... But yeah. The loss of lives, the crappy new sound effects and the removal of original game structure really stings.

Kleavor looks dumb. I approve.

Poketch is back! And HM Slaves are no more! Graphics also look a LOT better than before (Mario WiiU will be especially impressed by the upgrade to the water from previous builds!).

The theme park hasn't even been released worldwide yet and they're already peddling DLC? SMH...

It does. Both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark both have the same controls as Turok when you select the "1.2" control option (and it is the far superior choice BTW).

There are TONS of issues with the XBLA ports of BK, BT and PD that make me absolutely hate these ports. Just a few that immediately spring to mind... All of the new re-drawn HUD elements are ugly as sin and are not accurate to the original at all. The camera system has been reworked and all for the worse. 4J Studios tried to make it work like a "modern" game, but it actually works significantly worse than the original as it loves getting stuck and never gives you a decent view of the action. All of the game's cutscenes are broken and none of the timing matches up correctly anymore. The enhanced draw distance completely breaks the level design with a lot of the hidden items since you can now see them from miles away (the Honeycomb in the ocean in Treasure Trove Cove immediately stands out to me in that regard). All of the music has been pre-recorded and has been given a massive dose of reverb for some godknowswhat reason; making all the music sound like it was recorded in an underground cave. The absolutely cack-handed and disrespectful change to the music note collection system by 4J Studios completely breaks the intended gameplay loop and level design; especially in the later stages (Rusty Bucket Bay and Click Clock Wood are supposed to be gruelling gauntlets and tests of endurance where you have to struggle to stay alive long enough to collect all 100 notes in a single life... now all of that is gone, rendered limp by the fact that notes stay collected on death/exit from the level)... As an added bonus, this stupid change also introduces a nasty bug whereby any notes collected in the Attract Mode & Bottle Bonus Challenge videos remain collected PERMANANTLY; forever locking you out of 100% completion. Great job! All of the new re-drawn HUD elements are ugly as sin and are not accurate to the original at all. While not AS big a problem as in BK, the reworked camera is not as good as the original N64 version. All of the game's cutscenes are broken and none of the timing matches up correctly anymore (this is especially noticable and egregious in Tooie, which has a lot more cutscenes, which are all a lot more dynamic than the original BK). Like with BK, the enhanced draw distance completely breaks the level design with a lot of the hidden items since you can now see them from miles away (the Honeycombs in Cloud Cuckoo Land immediatley spring to mind). Sound in general is pretty glitchy overall in this version; the stereo balance constantly goes haywire whenever music transitions take place (especially underwater). It also has the same crazy reverb problem as in BK XBLA. The first-person section controls are, in two words, completely fucked. For some idiotic reason, 4J Studios thought it'd be a great idea to have the aiming reticle snap back into the centre whenever you let go of the stick. This makes strafing impossible now and makes these sections an absolute nightmare to play as Banjo now aims like a drunk who can't keep himself from flailing around uncontrollably (the final boss is almost totally impossible now as a result of this!). For all intents and purposes, the cheats have been removed; as they ALL disable saving now! No more SUPERBANJO The Banjo Kazooie carts were all removed in favour of having the BK save file enable the Stop N' Swop features. While this sounds like a good idea on paper, it actually renders these hidden areas completely pointless now (also the additional unlocks are physically painful to look at... a fucking Gamerpic!? Seriously!? THAT'S the best you can do!?) The "enhanced" visuals are ugly as fuck; pretty much everyone looks worse than the original. Technically better, but artistically bankrupt (Elvis is the biggest offender however!). Amazingly enough, the cutscenes in this version are somehow NOT broken though! So I can at least give 4J credit for that. All of the weapons have been rebalanced and fucked around with, and NONE of them play like they do in the N64 original. This is defintely a case of 4J Studios overstepping boundaries here and outright fucking around with the intended game design. The Laptop Gun is absolutely shit now & barely does any damage or knockback, Poison Knives can no longer cause motion blur to dead bodies (which is most of the bloody point of them!); actually, motion blur is basically crap now as it only lasts for a mere fraction of the time of the N64 original. Dragons and rocket weapons are all shit now... there's just too many changes to list here. Quite frankly, the weapon balance is nothing like the original at all, and that's absolutely unacceptable. NONE of the included control schemes match the original at all and all of them feel unnatural. Because having the ability to hold down the A button to pull up the weapon menu was just too complex for 4J Studios to figure out, instead, the controls have been tweaked to play like Halo or Call of Duty (The "Spartan" and "Duty Calls" options respectively - of course the "classic" option plays absolutely nothing like the original at all, because of course it fucking doesn't). Obviously 4J Studios felt that PD had to be "updated" to play more like a "modern" FPS and the game is all the worse for it; all of the control schemes feel awful in this version! Also the aiming sensitivity is all kinds of fucked, the manual aiming mode (holding down R on the N64 original) is basically completely useless now and the auto-aim is complelety fucked beyond recognition of the original game. Whoopie! Gimme the N64 originals over the XBLA versions any day of the week. Hell, I'd take them over the XBLA versions even without a resolution or framerate bump!

I actually have this cart! That's how I got these two games originally! (They were already stupidly expensive and hard to come by by the end of the GBA's lifecycle, so I was stoked to get the two for the price of one!) These kinds of compilation carts were very common on the GBA. It's quite simple really. It's literally two seperate GBA ROMs on one cartridge. The GBA could support cartridges up to 32MB (256mbit) in size; but these cartridge sizes weren't available at launch. Most GBA games (including all three Castlevania GBA games) are only 8MB (64mbit) in size; so the Castlevania Double Pack uses a 16MB (128bit) cartridge to fit both games on. Most publishers avoided using the larger cartridges unless they had to because larger capacity cartridges are more expensive than smaller capacity ones. But the cost of the larger cartridges come down over time, so you started seeing publishers use these larger capacity cartridges to package multiple games together as a cheap re-release.

More games need that announcer from FOTNSLR. Everything would be improved with him in it. I will pay real, actual money for a proper game with that guy in it! You hear me SEGA?

Holy shit @Cube!! I never even knew that version existed! Absolutely bonkers that they attempted (and succeeded!) to get Bioshock running on a Java phone!! That is some absolutely mindblowing insane stuff there! Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!

I've always been blown away by this Paper Zelda concept, the video is just incredibly well done! I would buy the absolute crap out of this game if it was real!!

No. The way NSO NES/SNES online works is that it just sends button presses for each player through the internet in real-time; and each player's gameplay instance just accepts the button presses as whatever controller input has been assigned (P1, P2 etc). It's basically a super long controller cable (but invisible! And you can't trip over it!)

@RedShell The N64 NSO games will run a LOT better than they originally did on the original hardware. Like with the Wii & Wii U VC, emulation can remove the slowdown that plagued the original games and allow these games to run at whatever framerate they were originally capped at. Smash Bros 64 is a great example. On the original console, it commonly drops to anywhere between 30-40FPS when playing in 4 player mode, but on the Wii VC version? It's a buttery smooth 60FPS at all times. Likewise, DK64 on Wii U has all of its slowdown removed and it's a rock solid 30FPS now! That's one of the reasons why I've wanted VC re-releases of Rare's N64 titles so badly for so long! We'll finally get to play the likes of Perfect Dark and Banjo Tooie (in their superior N64 original form!) without all the nasty slowdown!

Worth keeping in mind that Nintendo have put enough money into the N64 NSO service to secure Banjo Kazooie (and presumably Rare’s other titles). The first time we’ve ever seen these games get a VC/NSO re-release. So that’s a good sign that they’re willing to pony up some cash to make the Expansion Pack worth the money

Agreed. The 3D setting feels like a natural fit for the more puzzle/exploratory gameplay style as seen in KDL2&3.

Considering how ridiculously expensive those games are in their original cartridge form… They had better be coming!!

Oh and the colour scheme being used was another key giveaway. The greens & purples that were reminiscent of the original Bayo 3 E3 2017 teaser immediately removed any doubt about what it was. I really don’t think Bayo’s new design has anything to do with contemporary social norms, so much as it has to do with evoking Cereza’s look (we’re discussing this in the newly resurrected Bayo 3 thread; but it looks like you’re actually playing as a grown up version of Cereza rather than the Bayo we currently know ). There’s a ridiculous amount of hints and stuff that they’ve crammed into this trailer for Bayo 3 that they’re literally begging for fans to speculate over; I’m pretty impressed! I think it looks great so far myself!

Yeah, this is very much a Metroid Zero Mission style re-telling of Actraiser. There are a LOT of new gameplay mechanics that make the game play quite differently from the original. The combat system in the sidescrolling stages has been completely revamped, and the level design is pretty drastically different. Likewise, the simulation sections are much more fleshed out than the original; you now have resources to gather, forts and garrisons to build and even ally characters that you can command against Tanzra’s demons in the all new Tower Defense battle sections. There’s a new optional quests system and the story plays out differently throughout the simulation sections, with new story beats, characters and vignettes added in. So far? I really like it! I think these new additions really fit nicely into the original game’s mold. It does feel like what would happen if Actraiser got the Metroid Zero Mission treatment so far!

Sucks to hear, but at least it isn’t a major issue this time since you can just download the US version of the app with little trouble. Hopefully Nintendo will just allow you to choose your preferred version within the NSO N64 app, but even if they don’t? It’s not gonna be a major problem this time around.

I can’t believe it exists. Never in a million years would I ever have thought that Actraiser would return!!

Damn, that's surreal to see!

So... Bayonetta 3 is secretly a revival of Scalebound? Hard to look at Bayo 3's Demon Slave mechanic and not immediately think of the original Dragon commanding mechanic that defined Scalebound before it got cancelled... And that tease right at the end? There's no way that this is a mere co-incidence... Also... yeah, that's Cereza you play as. Looks like we've got some timey-wimey nonsense going on here! (Worth noting that the original trailer for Bayo 3 had a bit of a theme going on with things being split in half... including Bayo herself!) Edit: Looks like I may have been right on the money!

Only just hit me, but the Shadowrun Trilogy HD remake marks another Microsoft owned set of games make their Switch debut... Once again. Microsoft proves that they are the best 3rd party on Switch