Dcubed

You’re gonna have to F5 those pages like mad... This shit is gonna sell out immediately...

Super Mario 64 without “So Long Gay Bowser” and without the BLJ is not Super Mario 64. That’s the real travesty here!

I’ll gladly take The Legend of Zelda: 35 Swords. Thank you very much!

Bowser’s Fury has almost as much new content as an entirely new game from when I first heard about this port (well over a year ago at this point now!). The new content is VERY substantial!

This limited time release is no different to what they did with Mario Allstars Wii, Four Swords Anniversary and the Kirby Dream Collection. It sucks, but it’s not new. Nintendo just like doing limited time things when it comes to anniversary celebrations. I’m more upset about this being based on the Shindou version of SM64 without the BLJ glitch

Such a shame to have a great idea wasted on a game with such a short expiry date

There IS a racing game on Switch that does use the GameCube analog triggers... Grid Autosport supports them So yes. The GCN HUD does strongly imply full GCN controller support for SMS.

Yup... https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/3/21419025/mario-kart-live-home-circuit-nintendo-switch-ar-remote-control Whelp! Guess I know what you’re asking for Christmas then!

Apparently Velan Studios was founded by people that previously worked on the Skylanders series... ... that explains a lot.

Yeah, that obviously means that Sunshine has full GCN controller support. Nice! Sunshine really benefits from the GCN’s analog triggers/ digital click, so it’s nice that it’s still in

Yup! 3D World DX has a whole new game included, just like what the old leak said... Awesome!

I never knew I wanted Tetris 99 and SMB to have kinky sex... ... but I SO did!

Wow... Galaxy 2 and 3D Land got snubbed hard...

So... Nvidia just announced their RTX3___ series of PC graphics cards running on their new Ampere architecture and the price/performance ratio is insane! The mid-range model is less than half the price of the previous top-end model but is about 50% more powerful than it! (For reference, the mid-range card is 2x as powerful as the Xbox Series X's GPU!). Also announced a new I/O system that loads data from PC SSDs about 3x faster than PS5, by utilising the RTX cores on the new GPUs... Bodes very well for the prospects of Switch 2!

Considering that Sony already have a PS2 and PSP emulator up and running on PS4; PS2/PSP Classics on PS5 is not an outlandish expectation to have (Nor is PS1 for that matter).

They've said that the system can run any PS4 game without any sort of whitelisting; but only those "Top 100" games (And anything released after July 2020) are actually guaranteed to work at launch. Anything else is a coin flip if it even runs, let alone without glitches. Meanwhile, MS have guaranteed that anything released on Xbone (Except for the Kinect titles) is guaranteed to run correctly (some even with handcrafted enhancements and all with enhanced performance) on Series X. Not hard to see why Sony's efforts compare unfavourably.

Only "Almost All of the Top 100" PS4 games are guaranteed to work with PS5 currently according to Sony.

We got tons of complaints last time; but now, with people heavily investing in digital purchases, the consoles sticking with x86 architecture, Sony dumping PS1/PS2 Virtual Console services, the rise of the PC market (and its infinite BC) and Microsoft doing a bang up job with BC on their lineup of consoles? It's not hard to see why people are giving Sony a bollocking over their pretty poor approach to BC (Especially when they can't even get most PS4 games working properly on PS5; let alone anything else!). That is an understandable omission for Switch. It wasn't even remotely feasible once they made the jump to a portable, ARM & NVidia based system. And people have & continue to give them a bollocking over dropping Virtual Console (including me!). NSO is a very shit substitute for a proper VC service.

Looks quite promising. Wonder if Microsoft might announce the (Inevitably much more Japanese home friendly) Series S console here? Praying for Capcom to finally see sense and put out Monster Hunter Switch at long last...

Completely expected. Sony "Why Would Anyone Play This" don't give a shit about their legacy.

Nice to know that Facebook are more interested in saving their own skin than the skin of actual people being harmed by their platform

Worth pointing out that those difficulty spikes are part of the reason why those bosses and moments stick out so well in your memory. Everybody remembers Boost Guardian because it kicked everyone's arse when they dared to challenge it, and left a deep emotional scar that begged to be shared with others. A difficulty curve needs to progress of course, but equally, a linear curve is preditable and boring. Carefully placed difficulty spikes can make your game more memorable and interesting. Case in point? I've just started another playthrough of NSMB Wii and I was stunned to see Hammer Bros being placed as early as Level 1-3!! Holy shit! NSMB Wii doesn't fuck around! This game is brutally hard, and makes even Lost Levels look piss easy by comparison! But it also has levels scattered about that offer moments of reprieve, with a difficulty curve that progresses nicely overall, but not in a predictable & linear fashion; rather you have difficulty spikes strategically scattered throughout that act to surprise throughout (This is really enabled by the myriad of optional support mechanics in play that give less skilled players a fighting chance, but that's outside the scope of this post; look forward to my writeup later on ). And that's one of the big reasons why NSMB Wii's level design is so good! It's got real bite, and it's not predictable at all! The difficulty curve is purposely non-linear, and that works entierly to the game's favour.

When I was writing my review, I found myself thinking long & hard about what, at an absolute base level, makes a turn-based battle system, or any sort of RPG or strategy game for that matter, interesting and enjoyable. And I did ultimately come to a conclusion... The answer is Resource Management What makes these games so enjoyable is the act of balancing a limited array of resources. This could be something as simple as just time or even just HP, or it could be a complex array of limited units, moves, time & money in an Advance Wars game for instance; or an array of status effects in an RPG. Having to think on your feet and find ways to make the most of a limited array of resources is what fundamentally makes these kinds of games fun. The fact of the matter is that, as far as the regular mook battles go, there are no meaningful limited resources to manage in The Origami King. As such, there is no real strategy involved as a result; and all battles devolve into solving the Rubik's Cube and then wailing on your foes with your (basically unlimited) attacks (all of which play out in the same way BTW). The boss battles on the other hand? They are a different matter entierly as all of a sudden, not only are you at a very real risk of dying, you also now have a limited number of turns/moves to consider; and you now have to balance between attacking, healing, opening up spaces on the board to use later on and reducing the amount of self-inflicted damage that you have to take from each board's gimmick. It works, and it works well! That's the difference. That's also why Color Splash & Sticker Star's battle systems still worked for me; despite the lack of an extrinsic motivation (Exp) to fight enemies. They all had meaningful resource management gameplay. The same cannot be said of The Origami King's mook battles; but CAN be said of the boss battles.

I don't mind this so much... Except when these reinforcements can attack on the same turn they spawn in on. THEN it's blatantly unfair (I'm looking at YOU Fire Emblem Awakening!)

This is a bit of a tangent, but what is also frustrating is when a game either doesn't introduce anything meaningfully new & interesting throughout the game's running time, or when it's difficulty curve and new gameplay features are entierly predictable. The best games aim to surprise and maintain novelty throughout the entire experience. The Metroid Prime games are a great example of this, as they are purposely designed to have an uneven difficulty curve with diffiulty spikes strategically scattered throughout the game; something that ultimetely makes the games much more memorable and enjoyable as a result.