Dcubed

You can access any region eShop on any Switch, but you can only use an eShop card/code/voucher on the matching region’s eShop. So if you buy a $50 eShop card, you can only use it on the US store, not the UK one. Anything you purchase in a different region store can be played by any account on that same Switch, regardless of region. So if you have a Japanese account and you make a purchase on there, you can then play that game using a UK account on that same console. One neat quirk of the above is that NSO subscriptions apply to all accounts on a given Switch, regardless of region. So if you have a UK account which has an active NSO subscription, your Japanese account on the same system can then download and use the Japanese NSO NES/SNES/N64 etc apps for free (and you can then play the Japanese games on your UK account if you so wish).

It’ll have to be either Thursday 16th, Friday 24th or Thursday 30th. I have nothing else available for the rest of the month now (unless maybe you’d want to do a Wednesday? In which case 15th or 29th are also options). Here’s a crappy screenshot of the Minigame Trial board so you have an idea of what you’re in for… Just imagine this but with more Battle Spaces…

I’d certainly be interested in either of the two. Both have a pretty interesting history when it comes to games (naturally there’s Goldeneye as the big kahuna on the Bond side, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the likes of Starfleet Academy and Elite Force too if you went the other way!)

Sorry, @S.C.G. It had to be done... An appropriate summary of this week At least @Glen-i came last though... that makes everything right in the world at least

It is indeed running under emulation! But it's not emulating a stock Mega Drive... but rather an enhanced "Giga Drive" that is essentially a modified MD with S3D capabilities and built-in Z-axis coordinates for sprites! M2 would do a similar thing when they released the Mega Drive Mini 2, when they made the "Sega Mark V", a modified version of the MD with sprite scaling capabilities, and included an emulated form of it that runs modified versions of Space Harrier 1 & 2 for the MD. They did a whole series of Iwata Asks style interviews for the 3D Classics series back in the day with various staff from M2, but here's the one dedicated to Sonic The Hedgehog 3D in particular. I believe that the arcade ports are native ports however and not emulation. Some people have managed to get M2's Giga Drive emulator to run other MD ROMs on 3DS, but they don't have S3D capabilities unless specifically coded for the feature.

That's a LOT of Sonic board games! Are we at the end now then? I can't think of anything that's still outstanding... Does that mean... you're finally free!? Edit: AHH! NO! You've still got Monster Hunter! And the Phantasy Star Online games! You're not out of the Sonic Dungeon yet!

So... who else has given the demo a go now? I gave it a quick playthrough on the Steam Deck... Outside of some Proton related graphical glitches it runs very well. And my main PC runs the game like a champ. The game itself though? Ehh... It's very much TLOU RE4 edition, and everything that goes with it. It controls like utter dogshit! Because it's a modern AAA game, it just has to use the right stick for moving the camera and the result is a mess. The camera doesn't follow the player whatsoever and will put absolutely no effort into framing the action for you, happily letting you run into the camera Crash Bandicoot style unless you constantly babysit it with the right stick. This worked ok-ish for RE2 Remake, because that game had a moderate pace and took place in small, cramped environments. With the much more action-heavy focus of RE4? And the wide, open environments like the Village shootout section? This combination is a disaster! I'm constantly finding myself running straight into the faces of enemies that I can't see! They've also greatly reduced the effectiveness of Leon's roundhouse kick. Its hitbox is tiny now and it's nowhere near as effective at crowd control as before... In general, your options for crowd control are hugely limited compared to the original game. The shotgun's area of effect is woefully limited and nowhere near as punchy as in the original game, while enemies are huge damage sponges who can happily take a pistol shot to the face and barely even stagger, often not even giving you the option to follow up with a kick! To make matters worse, they've greatly increased the number of enemies on screen and they've taken away almost all of the i-frames after you're grabbed, meaning that enemies will constantly Wombo Combo you... Oh! Speaking of which, that's clearly very intentional as the game has a very heavy emphasis on combo follow-up attacks where one enemy will grab you and the other will charge to attack you (some of them even being scripted one-hit-deaths!). I see this becoming very quickly infuriating when you're constantly being attacked by enemies that you can't even see! All the enemies having magic magnet hands with massive Plesioth sized hit boxes for grabs doesn't help either. Generally speaking, your guns feel pretty weak and nowhere near as satisfying to use as the original game (also, dismemberment is almost entierly gone now - including the iconic Leon Chainsaw Death from the original where he gets his head cut off... that's gone). Leon's movement also feels clumsy and not as responsive as the original game either. I can't even kick doors open anymore! I'm not impressed with how this game plays at all. There's also a rather nasty potential design flaw in place with the new knife durability system... It's entierly possible to softlock yourself completely. Should you run out of gun ammo and destroy your knife? You're totally screwed. If you end up in that situation and you're in an area where you have to kill enemies to procede? That's it, your save file is ruined, because you can't even kill enemies to get your ammo back. Now I did test this out in the demo and the game does have a pity system in place where it forces item drops to become gun ammo, but it's still absolutely possible to put yourself into an unwinnable state; and that's really not acceptable. Speaking of which, the idea of a knife durabity system runs entierly counter to many of the game's new mechanics anyway! You actually lose knife durabilty for carrying out stealth kills and for killing enemies with them with normal slashes, which makes no sense! You are actively punished for playing well! WTF!? This is a bad idea from a game design standpoint and it will lead to players actively avoiding using the knife (especially since knives now take up space in your attache case to boot!), while also allowing for nasty softlock situations. Finally, the level design is somewhat suspect in the demo... The initial house has been turned into a dungeon basement of sorts and navigation feels unintuitive and confusing. I found myself getting lost for an embarrasing amount of time as I couldn't find the stairs to go up and get out, I had no clue where I was going in a way that I never felt in the original game (or RE2 Remake for that matter); and it's not a good kind of lost either, the way out was just very poorly signposted as I kept running right past it. And I don't know if this is just for the demo, but pretty much the entire start of the game was cut up until the initial Village shootout section, outside of the first house; there's basically no room for exploration whatsoever. The original RE4 is definitely not this linear. As for the game's overall tone and narrative? It's strange in that it seems to want to keep some of the B-Movie esc cheese from the original, but also present itself as a super serious HBO drama. The game seems to want to have its cake and eat it, and I feel that it's not going to satisfy either camp that wants a Prestige TV drama nor those that want something true to the original. And this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I find it deeply unsatisfying that you don't even get to fight the first Ganados you encounter; he's entierly dispatched in a cutscene, and you miss the iconic realisation that he's a regular human and not a zombie... (This also has gameplay ramifications as you're not even given that chance to familarise yourself with the gun controls here before you get into a proper encounter!). Likewise, you don't even get to jump out of the first window either. Already the game's narrative changes rub me the wrong way, and I can already see myself lamenting the loss of the QTE sections that the original game was so famous for... Overall? I'm not happy with the demo... I think I'm either gonna give the game a miss, or I may wait until it's on deep discount.

I still think we should do another vote on the matter... That vote was made before the idea of new characters came about! BRING BACK CHARACTER THEME AND PART NIGHTS!! Edit: AHHH NEW PAGE!!! OH NOES!! There we go. All better

Oh! Something interesting with this update... It seems that with the change in character stats, the update has broken all existing Time Trial ghosts that don't use the unaffected characters/kart parts! Go check your time trials and you'll notice that all the times are wrong now and the lines are all different!

BTW, worth pointing out that the Japanese version of Metroid Fusion actually has an exclusive Hard Mode that wasn't in the US or EU versions (The Japanese version came out after the US/EU release and got Hard Mode as a bonus feature). For those who've played Metroid Fusion to death (like me!), it may be worth checking out the Japanese version on the Japanese NSO GBA app for a new twist on the game

Heads up, Nintendo have been fiddling with character stats as part of this update! https://www.reddit.com/r/mariokart/comments/11mki0n/mk8dx_version_230_all_balance_changes/

I want Weird Mario. Give us Weird Mario you cowards!

New footage and deets just came out of the Level 5 Vision 2023 event! Takes place 1 year after Unwound Future, as both Layton and Luke go to America. Layton is not famous in America, but for some reason Luke is more famous than Layton? The town that the game takes place in develops itself as Layton gradually solves puzzles. Puzzles are being designed by a Japanese group called Quizknock, who make puzzle books and such things in Japan (It does NOT involve the same puzzle designers who worked on Katrielle and the Millionare's Conspiracy... thank God!). So the puzzles might actually be good this time around! A small amount of new 3D cutscene footage was shown, as well as details on Japanese voice actors. Luke drives a Metal Slug for some reason. Also he has now ascended to becoming Lanky Luke and looks weird... clearly he got jealous of Weird Mario from SMM. Game is due to be released outside Japan some time between 2023-2024, with full EFIGS localisation! Edit: Teaser site is up now: https://www.layton.jp/jouki/en/

Some new details and footage just came out of the Level 5 Vision 2023 event... The game is a hybrid of sorts between a 3D Ni-No-Kuni esc RPG and an Ace Attorney style detective game. You run around in 3D environments gathering clues, performing investigations and such and interrogating people to solve mysteries. There's two worlds, one being the real world and another being a VR recreation of the real world where you run around and do stuff to solve crime mysteries (there's some shenanegans where hackers edit the virtual world to throw you off the trail as well). You gather evidence and make logical connections on a Conspiracy Corkboard and eventually choose someone to suspect as the perpetrator. RPG battles play out sort of like Undertale, where you can attack people with lethal force, or attempt negotiations. Looks cool

Have you got the two CD soundtracks from Kirby Cafe? I have them both, they're great! Would love to go to the actual cafe myself one day!

So... I got a new toy around a week ago... RAWKET LAWNCHAIR! YES! I finally have an Analogue Pocket of my very own... and I also have the Dock to go with it as well! Now, I know I previously mentioned that I wasn't going to get one because I didn't feel the need for it when it first came out. I already have an IPS modded GBA and plenty of means to play GBA games on my TV (Game Boy Player, GBA Consoliser, MiSTer etc)... But that was all before the announcement and release of Analogue's Open FPGA platform... and to say that it's a total gamechanger is a massive understatement. First of all, lets talk about the hardware itself. Now, anyone who is remotely familiar with this system is probably already aware of how absurdly good the screen looks... and yes, it really is something special. Games look incredible on this screen, but it's really the GB/GBC/GBA screen filters that impress the most. They use the insane resolution of this display (1600×1440 resolution, at 3.5 inches, that's a ridiculous 615ppi!) to simulate how the original GB/GBC/GBA screens worked and it really does a great job of simulating the intended look & feel of those original systems, without the limitations of the crappy screen technology from back then. I won't go into too much detail, but even without the filter, the games look as good as you could possibly hope for really. I'm not really one for scanline or screen filters myself, but the GB/GBC/GBA screen filters are so good that I would actually consider using them... if they worked with the Open FPGA cores, which they currently don't. Apparantly this is coming in a future firmware update, but for now? All Open FPGA cores offer unfiltered video only. This still looks great, but I'll be keen to try out the filters on these cores when they do eventually enable them. The buttons feel really nice. All the buttons were manufactured by 8bit-do and they're mostly great. The face buttons are basically the same as on a SNES controller and come with the convex/concave layout as seen on the US SNES controller, which is pretty nice. The L/R buttons are basically the same as on the GBAsp, which means that they're good... if not completely ideal; I have no real complaints with them, as I've always like the GBAsp L/R buttons, but I know some other people find them a bit too small. Given the form factor though? There's no other realistic way they could've incoporated them however. The D-pad is mostly good, it's a SNES-style d-pad with minimal travel and non-microswitched; so it resembles the GB/GBC d-pad more than the GBAsp's microswitched one. It feels nice to use and is generally pretty responsive, however, I feel that it's not the best at picking up diagonal inputs. This is a common issue with 8bitdo D-pads though, so if you've ever used one of their SNES controllers, it feels pretty similar here. You do have to press a bit harder to register diagonals, making it not really ideal for fighting games, but otherwise? It's a solid D-pad and one of the better ones I've used on a handheld. The start & select buttons are ok, but not really ideal as they're a bit small and a bit far away from the main face buttons, and the bottom three buttons all being the same size and shape isn't ideal either. But otherwise, I'm very happy with the ergonomics; it's very comfortable to hold and use; and the system has a nice heft to it that makes the system feel solid and premium, but not heavy in the hand. The speakers are also very nice and pack a real punch. They're probably on par with the Switch OLED, which is extra impressive considering just how tiny the Pocket is compared to a Switch! (More on that later...). The SD Card is super easy to get to and convinient too, and the link-cable port works exactly as you'd expect it to. Original GBC and GBA link cables work perfectly... but unfortunately the shape of the system prevents you from attaching the GBA-GCN link cable or the GBA wireless adapter without modifying the cables themselves (which I am not willing to do!); while there's also no way to connect a link cable while the the system is docked, since the link cable port is on the bottom of the console. Bit of a shame that Analogue didn't account for either of these things. Likewise, putting the GBC IR port on the bottom of the system is a strange design choice, but it's not exactly a feature that you're likely to be using all that often anyway. And the battery life is superb as well! Playing at 70% brightness (about on-par with the Switch OLED's brightness) will net you a good 8 hours or so of battery life, which is just incredible for a modern-day device! (This is regardless of which core you're using BTW) Ok, so onto the Open FPGA cores now and oh my! We have quite the selection! Most of the cores have been ported directly from MiSTer (outside of the Spiritualised 1997 cores... which are basically all the official Analogue/Kevtris cores but shh... it's totally not Kevtris shh ) and they all run basically perfectly. You can literally run the entire GB/GBC/GBA/NES/SNES (Including ALL expansion chips!)/GG/Master System/Mega Drive (minus just Virtua Racing), NeoGeo and TG16/TGCD libraries, and every game works flawlessly outside of a couple of edge cases on the MD side. This is nothing new to MiSTer owners of course, but to have this on a handheld is just incredible! It's such a joy to be able to play the original SNES version of Chrono Trigger or Starfox, or Super Mario RPG on a handheld with no bugs, no input lag and no emulation glitches of any kind! Oh... did I mention that there's a Super Game Boy core as well? Oh My Word! Yes! The core accepts real Game Boy Carts, and even features full link cable support! And yes, it's the real-thing, including all the SNES specific functionality with supported games (DK94 features the SNES voice clips and additional colours, as does Kirby's Dreamland 2!) It's... it's beautful! And as an added bonus... GBC/GBA games that originally featured rumble support? Get this... RUMBLE IS SUPPORTED WHEN USING A DS RUMBLE PAK! Don't ask me why I still have one of these... So freaking cool! Really though, as great as the Open FPGA cores are. As great as it is to finally be able to play the entire libraries of these classic consoles on the go with no dodgy software emulation needed? The real star of the show is the form-factor of this device. Sure, you can play a selection of these games on the Switch, but lets face it. Switch is NOT a pocket-friendly device at all. It's big, it's bulky, it has limited battery life by comparison and it requires a carry-case & a bag when taking it out and about; making it a pretty mediocre handheld device. The Analogue Pocket though? Tinchy Literally smaller than a Game Boy True to the system's name, it actually fits in my pocket! I can use it like I would use my GB or GBC or GBA or DS or 3DS. I don't need a carry case or a bag, or a battery pack. This is something really important to using handhelds outside the house that modern devices have really forgotten. Something that I'm sure @RedShell would really appreciate (you get where I'm coming from!) I really miss handhelds that actually fit in your damn pocket and this finally fills that void with those 8 & 16 bit games I love! And speaking of modern devices? The Dock does exactly what you think it does. It works exactly like the Switch. You chuck the system into the Dock and in around a second, the game is on your TV screen, with bluetooth/2.4ghz wireless controller support enabled. It's all very seamless. The Dock features are pretty basic right now, it enables 4 player wireless and USB controller support (as well as the ability to turn on and off the device via the controller - something MiSTer actually doesn't support!), pristine 1080p output and that's about it. None of the screen filters currently work, and there aren't really any TV-specific display features available. Supposedly this is due to get expanded on in future updates, but this has been heavily delayed and is really overdue at this point. Despite the lack of bells & whistles though, the Dock does exactly what you want it to do, and it turns the Analogue Pocket into what is essentially a Switch for retro games. Pretty dang awesome. There's one last thing I want to address with the Analogue Pocket though and it involves Sleep Mode. Since it uses FPGA hardware, there's no hardware-level functionality for a low-power sleep mode state like on a typical modern mobile device. However, the system does have a form of Sleep Mode which works much like how Quick Resume works on the Xbox Series consoles, where the console performs a save state of the current game and shuts the power off; while waking the console powers it back on, reloads the save state, deletes it and puts you right back where you were. This works pretty well... for the cores that actually support save states that is. GB/GBC/GBA carts all support the feature, as do the GB/GBC/GBA and NES Open FPGA cores... unfortunately, no other cores currently support the feature. This is a real bummer, as SNES, MD, NeoGeo and TG16 games could really do with the ability to use Sleep Mode when you're out and about. Hopefully it'll come at some point, but considering that even the original MiSTer cores for these consoles (of which the Analogue Pocket ports are based on) don't currently support Save States? We're probably not gonna be seeing it happen for some time, if ever. While this isn't a deal-breaker by any means, it's not ideal, as it means with the non GB/GBC/GBA/NES cores that you have to leave the system on with the game paused when you need to stop playing; old-school Game Boy style, wasting battery power. Overall though? I absolutely LOVE this thing! It's genuinely portable in a way that we haven't seen since the 3DS, and to finally be able to play the full libraries of basically every 8bit and 16bit system out there on the go in 100% accurate form is genuinely incredible! It's even getting some of the arcade game cores ported over from MiSTer to boot! However, the system is ultimately limited in FPGA capacity and power compared to MiSTer, so it's unlikely that we're ever going to see anything beyond the 16bit era (certainly PS1 and Saturn won't be happening), but maybe SEGA CD might just barely be doable? Let's hope so!

It's not just Starfield Direct, Microsoft also announced an Xbox Games Showcase happening that same day right before the Starfield Direct as well... So they're basically going ahead with their usual E3 show at their usual time... just not at E3 itself. I hope for Microsoft's sake that they have a killer second-half 2023 lineup of major 1st party exclusives, because the current drought is killing their console...

They literally stole the Nintendo Direct branding wholesale! LMAO! That can be Nintendo's payment for free COD ports I suppose.

There’s a reason why the 3DS remake nerfed the Mush Badge…

Well you got your wish. Thanks a lot! BTW, 5 Boos on the board and not a single star stolen! Of all the boards for it not to happen on!

Ahh crud. Don’t tell me that they’re sticking with one game a month?

It’s a good thing that we held out on doing a Theme Night this week, because… It comes out next week! (March 9th)

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/03/pokemon-scarlet-and-violet-tera-raid-bug-replaces-paradox-pokemon-with-eggs Whoopsies, Game Freak forgot to add a version check to prevent people who haven't updated their game from joining online raids, blocking them out permanantly from catching Walking Wake and Iron Leaves. I can't even.

I’m starting to think that there might literally be no meaningful gameplay outside of DMC combat. They really don’t seem to want to show anything else… I’d hope that there’s more to this game than just combat arenas and empty corridors linking them…

Wow! Sonic Golf actually looks quite decent! (Horrible Java Jank aside) It's almost like a (very!) early prototype Cursed to Golf! I would've played the crap out of this if it were a proper DS game back in the day!