Dcubed

Thursdays and Saturdays are usually good too, as long as they don't happen at 20:00 (That's Mario Kart and Smash time respectively). I'm not always around then, but let @Glen-i know what times you'd want to play on those days and he'll be more than happy to get some games going I'm sure.

Can't come a moment too soon! The poor old thing is creaking at the seams. As long as I get to keep my smilies, and can still read the old archived posts, I'll be haps Thanks for all your hard work

You know what? After seeing Skull & Bones eventually shamble its way to a retail release after a gruelling 10 year development cycle? And then seeing Ubisoft make exactly the same mistake again with rebooting the reboot of the remake of Sands of Time? I think Ubisoft might actually be dumb enough to continue attempting to release BG&E2. They don't seem to understand the idea of the gambler's fallacy, or of opportunity cost. So for the worse? They're gonna release this steaming pile even if it kills the company.

Oh wow! Never seen that happen before! Guessing it must be some sort of emulation bug with the game's collision, as he seems to fall out of the map. Varies a bit depending on our work schedules, but typically we'll aim for Friday nights at around 20:00. @Glen-i can be much more flexible than me when it comes to timing though, so if I can't join, then he can shift things around a bit for you.

This is another one of the major 3rd party N64 games I’ve not played yet. Unlike Mischief Makers though, I actually have a good reason for not playing it yet… it’s mad expensive on the second hand market! (Currently averaging around £110-125 on eBay). Really hope this one comes to NSO at some point… was always upset that it skipped the VC (despite Bomberman 64 making it).

I have lost all faith in this port... https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/06/estimated-file-sizes-for-donkey-kong-country-returns-hd-and-mario-and-luigi-brothership-revealed For reference, the original Wii version is just 3.3GB. There's no good reason why the file size should've ballooned so much when it appears to be using mostly the same assets from the Wii version. It just smacks of a poorly optimised port, which means that it's pretty unlikely that anything is going to improve before release. The game is probably done and just sitting in Nintendo's vault until January. Fuck Forever Entertainment. You ruined Panzer Dragoon, you ruined HOTD and you're about to ruin DKCR now. Shocking that Nintendo would allow these jokers to touch their games when there are so many better options out there!

Don't believe their lies. The end of British video game B&M retail is near.

I’m gonna confess something… I actually liked South Park 64 as a kid. It was just fun to mess around with the various weapons (like the Yellow Snowball and the Cow Zapper) and its various cheat codes. It’s not a great game, clearly made in a hurry and on a budget of a half-eaten packet of crisps + the 50p found down the side of the sofa, but there’s some basic fun to be had with its core mechanics. That’s not something that can be said with all licensed games, and there are certainly far worse South Park games out there.

I find it hard to believe that Sakurai doesn’t have a MiSTer, or at least one of the Analogue consoles… Of course he’d never show them publicly or admit that he uses them

Our little Sam is finally growing up and learning bad habits from us… I’m so proud of you

The Mario Party series is amongst the finest series of local multiplayer games ever made in the history of the medium. Literally anyone can pick it up, understand it at a basic level and have a great time. While more experienced players, who have an in-depth grasp of how its more intricate mechanics work, will generally win more often; any player has a legitimate chance of victory. Despite outward appearances, Mario Party is actually not a board game in the traditional sense. At the most fundamental level, Mario Party is a strategy game that is about risk and resource management. The goal is to manage and increase your resources, while mitigating your own risk and actively increasing the risk of your opponent’s gameplay; by screwing them over as hard as humanly possible. It is a beautiful social nightmare of a game that encourages you to be as evil as possible, where you are forced into situations where you have to make uneasy political alliances that advantage yourself, while selectively targeting players who may have an advantage elsewhere. The social element is the true essence of what makes Mario Party so brilliant, and its reliance on omnipresent randomness is what allows the social aspect of that gameplay to work. For however best laid your plans might be, you ultimately have to think on your feet and adapt to the unpredictable situation at hand. You may even end up intentionally throwing the game and sacrificing yourself, just to screw over a particular rival and ensure they don’t win. Mario Party is a game with literally endless replay value, with copious turnaround mechanics that mean you can’t ever predict how each match will play out; which makes every game exciting. No two games will ever play out the same way, and never will that social element ever grow dull. Mario Party is bullshit, and that’s what makes it brilliant. It’s also what makes it an utterly miserable and mind numbing single player experience, despite being an incredible multiplayer game. While the first game may come across as rather basic compared to its sequels (indeed, the lack of items does cripple its strategic potential in comparison to later games in the series; because it really was just that groundbreaking of a mechanical addition), the first game has such an incredible mean streak with its board and minigame design that it offers a unique flavour, even in a series with no less than 16 entries at this point. Every Mario Party game is unique and well worth playing today, and this first game (along with every other game in the series) has remained in my regular multiplayer rotation for the past 26 years for a damn good reason. It is simply local multiplayer gaming at its absolute finest, and it (along with its two N64 sequels) represent the absolute apex of multiplayer games of that console and indeed the entire console generation. It’s certainly not perfect, indeed, quite a few of its minigames are outright poorly designed, such as Bumper Balls (which is basically guaranteed to end in a draw if two players are even remotely competent), or Piranha Plant Pursuit (a guaranteed victory for the lone player unless they actively try to lose), but those flaws are indeed part of the bullshit that makes Mario Party such a legendary multiplayer title and series as a whole. I wouldn’t change a thing about it You have to remember that @Cube is approaching the game as an IRL board game aficionado, so naturally he’s gonna detest the random elements of the game; despite that being an inherent facet of the series’ game design. Mario Party is not a straight board-game simulator though. It’s a party video game first and foremost that happens to have a board game theme; and the key element of its strategy gameplay comes in the form of risk management. It would never work as an IRL board game, and that’s the point.

It’s not true randomisation like a roguelike. Rather, the way the game works is that there are a set number of potential dungeon “levels” that are picked from a larger pool each time you start the game. And within those levels, certain elements (like Rupee and enemy locations) are randomised each time you play. So the dungeons are handcrafted, but you won’t get the same dungeon level each time you play, and you’ll never know where exactly the keys/rupees/enemies/seeds etc are all hidden. Four Swords Adventures does away with the randomised elements altogether, in favour of having one very large game made up of lots of levels. It’s a very different game from the original.

The modern console release has been delayed to 2025. Hopefully the physical GBA cart still makes it for the end of this year, though I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up slipping into 2025 too.

That was nuts! God I love Four Swords Some grade-A Arsehole play there, great stuff

We got release dates for literally everything... EXCEPT SHANTAE ADVANCE

Given how long it has been in development for, I can't imagine that the development budget is anything below $100 million at this point. I imagine that it'll be another £60/$70 release to help offset some of that cost, so that'll help. They're probably expecting something at least on par with Metroid Dread I'd imagine, so 3 million is likely the goal, but the actual break-even point is probably gonna be somewhere around the 2 million mark. If it ends up being a cross-gen Switch 2 launch title? They should easily meet and surpass that goal... if it remains a Switch 1 exclusive though? That's gonna be tough...

Yeah, my online experience with MPS was very solid. Very rarely did I ever get any bad connections, whether playing online boards with friends or on Survival Mode with randoms; though you're always gonna get the occassional blip with online play, that's just the nature of the beast. I was shocked at how well it was done, no complaints here with MPS!

Game Sack have been recently putting out B-roll footage of various classic E3 showfloors that have been sent their way by people who visited the showfloor back in the early 2000s! Here's E3 2001... And here's E3 2002... Supposedly there's more to come in the coming weeks/months. A neat little time capsule from better times

Come on LRG/Wayforward... give us a release date for Shantae Advance already!!

In hindsight, Hey You Pikachu would've been an absolutely killer DS game; and probably would've been a multi-million seller if it were released in 2005/2006. Unfortunately it just came out too early. It's also quite bizzare to see Ambrella make a game that was so ambitious from both a design and tech perspective, considering the absolute dog-shit quality of literally every other game they ever made. Such a shame that they fell off the wagon hard after HYP.

Perfect Dark is absolutely bloody amazing. That is all

Probably for consistency reasons. US and EU use the same NSO apps as each other. It’s also why it uses the hilariously titled “Mature” moniker, since that’s the ESRB rating it refers to.

Yes it is, and it’s currently still a mystery about who is making it (top running theory currently is that the original staff from Alphadream joined Nintendo EPD proper and are making it as a fully in-house title).

Calling it now. This game’s story is gonna be centred around the creation of the Mochtroids. Sylux in the trailer is seen standing alongside a pair of Mochtroids (note the reduced number of nucleae and thinner skin compared to normal Metroids). They appear to be under his direct control and aren’t acting wildly like a normal Metroid either. Mochtroids debuted in the Maridia section of Super Metroid, which fits the series timeline here; since the Prime games take place between Metroid 1 & 2… and you know what’s the only other game to feature the Mochtroids? The Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt demo, that’s right, the DEMO. Not even the full game lol. Metroid-likes under the direct control of an antagonist would make for a pretty cool plot line here, and it would also fit in nicely with the series’ overarching theme of foolish people messing around with biology and supernatural phenomena in an attempt to control said phenomena to disastrous consequences… including the Chozo creating the Metroids to control the X-Parasites, the Space Pirates and Federation trying to control Phazon, the Federation trying to control the Metroids themselves after wiping out the Space Pirates (who themselves tried to control Metroids) and indeed…

This HD port is being made by Forever Entertainment (Same devs behind the Panzer Dragoon and House of the Dead Remakes) https://twitter.com/mmucharzewski/status/1803099712574177343 Feeling a bit nervous about this one now... They had better not be porting it into the Unity engine... (would explain why the cutscenes now appear to be capped at 30FPS), or else you're getting some janky ass scrolling and lengthy load times... While I do agree personally (you can tell that DKCR and DKCTF's gameplay physics are built around the Wiimote & Nunchuck combo, because these games never feel quite right with button controls), it's possible that with Retro not handling port duties here, this HD version might not have the original control scheme at all... as I suspect that they're directly porting the 3DS version over in this case (in order to have the new Monster Games-made Cloud world levels), and Forever Entertainment likely know that motion controls are not popular amongst the mouth-breathing "gamer" crowd, nor are Forever Entertainment known for caring about maintaining artistic integrity with their remakes...