Dcubed

No you don't need to be always online. There are no single player or local multiplayer modes unless you buy the Big Block DLC though (which comes with the physical version out of the box); as it only comes with the online Tetris 99 mode as standard (which kind of is the whole point of this game). But the two versions are identical if you buy the Big Block DLC.

This, plus the sheer unstoppable strength of the right-wing media that constantly poisons the minds of the public with their Tory propaganda. When even the BBC are in on the act with supporting the Tories, what hope is there for Labour? I pray that I'm wrong, but I sadly can't see it. The media are the ones that really rule the country, and they have turned the public into blind racists and bigots sadly.

This is absolutely insane! Someone has managed to create a remake of Super Mario Land, in the style of NSMBDS... on a SNES! What's even more amazing? IT HAS SIMULTANEOUS 4 PLAYER CO-OP!! ON A SNES!!! (A STOCK SNES I might add! No enhancement chips at all!) This is real homebrew, runs on real SNES hardware, and it is an utterly monumental achievement! (Just one guy made this!!!) It even has the enemies dancing on the BAH BAH like in the real NSMB games! Insane!!

Wahey! I finally got paid! Just went ahead and bought Sword, so expect me to join in the fun shortly

Glad he pointed out the changes made to the Colour Dungeon in Link's Awakening Switch; that immediately stood out to me when I played it (they even changed the hint dialogue to reflect the colourblind adaptations!) Also glad he pointed out the stupid font choices with FE Three Houses; really poor all around there (especially since the Japanese version uses a much larger and much more legible font). I get why Nintendo don't include full button remapping with their own games, but it's still a shame that they still don't have system level button remapping for those that really need it.

Sadly Pokemon is ineligable for GOTY votes, purely because of the kind of game it is. Anything that is deemed "kid friendly" cannot possible win GOTY.

Brilliant stuff! Shesez also did an interview with these folks as well... Fantastic watch/listen! Some great stuff in here for any fan of 90s Rare!

Yup, tonight lived up to its name alright!

Yo! It's done! And the first episode is up on the main site's channel now! Complete with fancy new intro and fancy new logo! Congrats to everyone involved in getting it up and going! I would recommend that you guys aim for releases on either Fridays or Mondays. People tend to not visit on the weekends and if you're doing these recordings on either Wednesday or Thursday, you will have plenty of time to get these up on the Monday (Friday is doable if you're recording on Wednesdays as well once you've got a smooth workflow going). You've got an intro, you've got a logo, you've got all the bits you need to get yourselves going. So let's get going!

I can do that, but I'm trying to set up @S.C.G with the bits to do that by himself and am seeing if we can get him up and running with doing that without my direct assistance, since my availability is going to be kinda limited and all over the place from around the 25th of November onwards and you're gonna want someone who can handle that stuff on the regular really; so I'm trying to set you guys up in the long-term. So I've forwarded him all the site graphics and video/audio bits & bobs and am seeing if we can get him doing it himself. If things go wrong though? Then I can do that myself for the time being And yeah, I agree. It's coming together quite nicely!

@S.C.G @Hero-of-Time So for those who haven't been keeping up with Hidden Palace/The Cutting Room Floor's Sonic Month; we've gotten some fascinating stuff out of it! First off, we have SEVERAL new prototypes of Sonic CD! A whopping 7 months before launch! (Shout outs to Salad Plain and the brand new discovery of Redbook audio versions of Past music!) 4 months before launch 3 months before launch 2 months before launch (This one is pretty close to final; as they would've started manufacturing in advance of its release - but it has unique title music amongst other changes) Fascinating to see how the game developed over time! Looks like they really struggled with the SEGA CD hardware itself as you can clearly see that the game ran very poorly in its prototype state; lots of changes and alterations throughout development too. Next up, we got treated to an unreleased tech demo from SEGA's shortlived Multimedia studio... Bizzaro stuff Following this was a set of prototypes of Sonic Chaos for the Game Gear/Master System... 5 months before launch 4 months before launch 3 months before launch Next up is two new prototypes of Sonic 2. Now these aren't the earliest ones in existence (the earliest known one would be the Nick Arcade prototype that has been floating around for some years now), but these ones come from about 3 months before release and really show how SEGA were absolutely scrambling to get Sonic 2 put together! 1 month before the final build! (Game is in a state!) 11 days before the final build! (Game is STILL in a state!!!! The Special Stages still aren't implemented!!) It's really shocking just how utterly last minute and to-the-wire Sonic 2's development really was! Its development was such a mess! And I think it does show in the final product. Now, they saved the best for last... Presenting... 3 months before the release of Sonic 3 standalone (11 months before the release of Sonic & Knuckles!) This proto is bonkers! It's SO rough and unfinished! I'm sure this prototype comes from a point after they decided to split up Sonic 3 into two games, because the Sonic 3 stages are significantly more complete than those found in Sonic & Knuckles (of which Flying Battery and Lava Reef are still in here in a basic state). But you can really see how there was absolutely no way they could ever have hoped to release it as a single cartridge back at that point. There are far too many differences to cover, as everything is really rough and unfinished, but do you know what's really wild? THIS PROTO HAS THE DROP DASH FROM SONIC MANIA!!! Yes! the Drop Dash actually originated from Sonic 3! It was dropped in favour of the Instashield (which is not yet implemented here), but yes! It originally was planned for Sonic 3! What's also wild? THIS PROTO HAS THE 1997 PC MUSIC INSTEAD OF THE MJ TUNES FOR ICE CAP/CARNIVAL NIGHT/LAUNCH BASE!!! The mystery has finally been solved! The PC music was the original Sonic 3 music all along! This definitely puts the whole MJ story in a different light now! Anyway, if you can only watch one of these proto vids? Make it the Sonic 3 one! It's just wild! Hidden Palace made some incredible discoveries here! It's just so interesting to see how the classic Sonic games developed; especially as how we never really get to see how the classics of the 8 and 16bit eras were made! It's so incredible to see just how much gets done right at the last moment before the deadline!

Yeah, this is a good watch/listen. You guys gel pretty well (though @Glen-i does NOT have a radio voice! Come on mate! Step it up!). It's much better than the pilot test run! And the format does actually work well with proper footage, as I figured it would do. I would defo tune in on the regular, so I reckon the format is a success! This version of the episode has some issues though. First off, the video and audio is somewhat out of sync (but I hear that you're already on the case with that). Second, the audio balancing needs work; the game audio is too loud and it can be a bit hard to hear some of you talking. Finally, the footage quality isn't great. The original footage I captured looks a lot better than this, so we need a better way of transferring it over to you if I'm gonna be capturing it for you... Luckily I have a better way! I have gone ahead and set up a shared section of my personal Onedrive for you to use to transfer original the videos over. Luckily, I also still have the original footage too! So I've gone ahead and have uploaded the original uncompressed video for you to use! Check your PMs for login details. The actual content of the cast is coming along nicely, so if we can get the tech side smoothed out, it should be good. We also really need to add the intro/ending N-E graphics onto this video as well if we want to be uploading it to the main site Youtube channel page. @S.C.G I'm not sure if you'll be able to use the NE site graphics directly, but have a go with using them using the details I've sent you. If you have trouble, we'll see if we can work something out.

It's actually not a bad showing for Game Freak here really. It's still on the lower-end of what Switch is capable of, but it's a huge step up from where they were on 3DS with X/Y, compared to its contemporaries. X/Y literally looked like DS games and in many ways, actually looked worse than Golden Sun Dark Dawn (while running significantly worse); a game that was released on hardware literally one generation behind the 3DS. Sun/Moon was a big step up from X/Y, but was still marred by horrendous technical performance; with battles frequently running at a miserable 15FPS and with the game not supporting S3D at all (outside of the Pokemon photo scenes, which run hilariously terribly). While Sword/Shield aren't going to be setting any benchmarks for Switch performance, I'd definitely put it comfortably above the likes of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It's far from the Switch's best, but the IQ is generally good, the performance is basically a locked 30FPS and it has some nice effects like bokeh depth of field, decent lighting/shadowing & reflections, decent levels of geometric complexity on the environments (not so much human models though) and generally looks pleasant on the eyes. The UI especially is just fantastic, super well designed! With more than a few shades of Persona 5 in there. I think that's been the most surprising thing about this game to me from a visual standpoint, I wasn't expecting such a slick UI from Game Freak! The only real complaints I have with the game from a visual standpoint is the pop-up on NPCs, the mediocre texturework/2D backgrounds and the low quality of the human character models, which are pretty low poly and look pretty blocky (the Pokemon themselves are fine though; they're obviously the same models as on 3DS, but they were future proofed and look just fine here). As far as visuals go? Game Freak have really come leaps and bounds. Sword/Shield do genuinely look good; despite not being top-tier for Switch. And that's just fine.

Kill me now.

Rumours have been swirling around that the reason for Dexit was because Game Freak run into severe technical issues with their 3DS model/animation rig importer and had to move them across manually. Sounds pretty plausible; after all, they had already reused these models/animations in Let's Go anyway. Ultimately though, all of these cuts come down to the fact that Game Freak as a developer have just being spread too thin, like I've been saying was going to happen for years. Since 2016, Game Freak have released eight games in just the last three years! That's absoutely nuts! Something clearly just had to give, and it was ultimately Sword/Shield that bore the brunt of it. On a brighter note, the game reviewed much better than I was expecting it would.

GTS is a huge loss, it’s how the majority of joe-average people used to trade online in Pokemon. It’s been a core feature of the series ever since the series first introduced online play (even the Japanese version of Pokemon Crystal has a rudimentary rendition of the GTS with its Mobile GB Adapter enabled online mode!) This is Game Freak making the most absolute desperate of cuts; cutting into bone here. And quite frankly, I’m surprised that they prioritised Wondertrade over the GTS (though I’m guessing that Wondertrade would be significantly easier and quicker to implement than GTS; so if GTS couldn’t be done within the deadline, it makes sense that they’d go ahead and at least get Wondertrade in there).

Well it's literally being released unfinished. This is looking to be almost as bad as Mario Tennis Ultra Smash was at this point

Am expecting it to get utterly savaged by the review outlets (especially since most of the major media outlets hate Pokemon anyway).

It’s not just that; but also it’s sad to not be able to bring your favourite Pokémon forward that you’ve spent so much time and effort training before. Especially if you’ve been carrying them forward ever since the GBA games. You grow attached to your own Pokemon, like your pets. So it’s disheartening to have to leave them behind, even if you’re not playing high-level competitive play.

Because of the costs and complexities of HD development, Game Freak have had to cut most of the past Pokemon from the series in order to get this game out of the door. It's not even that they're not all catchable in the game (no Pokemon game has ever allowed this; but you have always been able to transfer Pokemon over from other games), but the culled Pokemon are not even in the game's code, so it is impossible to transfer your favourite Pokemon from previous games because they're literally not in the game's code at all. This also makes the upcoming Pokemon Home service basically useless. For the first time ever, you literally cannot Catch 'em All.

OMG!! The Mai stage!!! YES @RedShell! Just... YES!! The spinning is just the icing on the cake

Highlights!! First GP was amazing, second was disastrous, third was ok. Overall? It went alright. Hopefully my average won’t be hurting too bad!

Interesting that this promotion and the Shu move comes off the heels of this interview with Jim Ryan... https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-11-07-sonys-jim-ryan-we-had-to-make-changes-to-deliver-our-ps5-dream Jim Ryan keeps denying that they're Americanising the company, but I still get the feeling that this consolidation is a mistake that smacks of old school SEGA America VS Japan... Heads are gonna no doubt butt between Jim and Herman I bet; as the fight for dominance between Sony Europe and America rages on. It's good to see that they're taking critisism to heart, especially regarding their recent lackadaisical attitude towards indie developers as of late, and that they're listening to people's concerns (make no mistake, this interview is a reaction to concerns over Sony's consolidation and fears over Americanisation). But I know my history and I've seen this before with SEGA. There are some positive moves being made here, but their big name staff losses over the past year tell the tale far louder than anything Jim is saying here, as actions always speak louder than words. Things are not OK at Camp Sony, no matter how pretty a picture Jim tries to paint. We'll see if these changes end up having a positive effect, but my SEGA senses are still firing on all cylinders right now...

Nature selection is huge! And you can now use vitamins for complete EV training!? Awesome!! Now let's just hope that there's some sort of equivilent to Hyper Training...

ARE YOU OKAY CLOUD!?