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Londragon

N-E Café Podcast

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I didn't think Kirby's Dreamland 3 felt that slow.

Luigi's Mansion in the GameCube also had difficult controls.

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The complaints (not just here but everywhere) about the controls in Luigi's Mansion I find a bit weird. I thought it they made perfect sense and didn't really struggle at all. Then again, I'm someone who has no issues with the tank controls in older Resident Evil games and actually enjoys them,  so what do I know? :p 

Questions for discussion on the podcast...

How much stock do you put in reviews these days? Do you think people put far too much emphasis on game reviews/scores and do you think scores themselves should be done away with? In the past, has a review sold you on a game that you weren't originally interested in?

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1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Questions for discussion on the podcast...

How much stock do you put in reviews these days? Do you think people put far too much emphasis on game reviews/scores and do you think scores themselves should be done away with? In the past, has a review sold you on a game that you weren't originally interested in?

Thanks for the great questions.  Won't get round to them this week, but I think they might focus heavily on next week's podcast.

Cheers.  Keep them coming everybody!

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Speaking of reviews, back in the days of magazines, they were our main source of info on the content of mainstream releases. Would you say that back then, did you pay more attention to the text in the review, the score at the end... or the screenshots showcasing the game's look, feel and aesthetic? And how much has that attention shifted with internet reviews?

(Old gaming magazines have been on my mind as of late)

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We just finished recording the 18th episode, and as I mention right at the end of the podcast, in the closing section, due to time zone differences and the impending daylight saving hour it was best to change the day of our recording.  Something that was more sustainable for the long term, would allow more guests, and could accommodate the 3 time zones we live in.

So, it was chosen that Sunday morning at 9am UK time was the most preferable out of all the limited options.  It's only 4pm for me after the hour change, but we thought to implement the change as soon as possible, and that means before the hour changes, and starting next Sunday, 22nd of March.  This also means that the day we release the podcast will change, too.  Nick mentions on the podcast that it will be up for consumption early hours every Tuesday from episode 19 onwards.

Episode 18 will drop as usual, then there'll be a week and a half until episode 19 releases, as 2 podcasts in one week seemed a bit overkill.  Unless there's a surprise Nintendo Direct to talk about.

Thanks for sticking with us, I put together a little Guess the Gaming Character audio quiz for Nick and Greg to play through this week, hope you enjoy and play along.

I'll also change the opening post to qualify the change in recording and release times.

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'N-E Café [018] Who the Hell is That?' is now available on all good podcast providers.  Don't forget to leave a review and a rating at your provider of choice, it'll help us be seen by many more others.

The 18th N-E Café Podcast sees Lee Davies pit Gregory Moffett and Nick Lone against each other in a do or die Nintendo based character guessing game.  We also discuss the recent Nintendo News; games we’ve been playing, featuring Pokemon Shield, Capcom Beat 'em Up Collection, Halo and Metroid Prime; and a quick Listener Question. Enjoy!

 

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1 minute ago, Vileplume2000 said:

Is the transition tune from

  ??? (Hide contents)

Axiom Verge

?

Negative.

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1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:
  Transition Tune (Hide contents)

Golden Axe

 

I knew it would be too easy but so had to give it some representation after playing through it 3 times last week :grin:

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22 minutes ago, nekunando said:

I knew it would be too easy but so had to give it some representation after playing through it 3 times last week :grin:

 

Spoiler

It was driving me nuts. I knew it was from a Mega Drive game. At first I thought it was Strider and then I thought it was Altered Beast. The final tune gave it away though.

 

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I listened to the podcast a tad late today (totally forgot it was Thursday). A few things:

  • Langrisser is actually a strategy RPG, more akin to Fire Emblem;
  • Pokémon's limited animations have nothing to do with "lack of violence for the kids", but with the sheer volume of animations they would have to do for each individual Pokémon. It's a work-saving measure. From what I understand, longtime Pokémon fans aren't happy about it either (it was a limitation easier to stomach back when it was with sprites, I think, but the jump to 3D was really unkind to it);
  • Pokémon Stadium had more complex animations per Pokémon, but that was back when there were just 151 of them. The reason we don't see them hit each other in that game is another technological limitation: it's more feasible to have one animated Pokémon on-screen at a time (instead of both an "attacking Pokémon" and a "being hit Pokémon" simultaneously), so they use clever camera work to show one attacking and another suffering at separate times. Pokémon Battle Revolution (Wii) would use the same animations, and had no issue in showing the Pokémon hitting each other (no longer a problem with both animations on-screen at the same time);
  • The bloke that waltzed into our playing session was called Lord_Kado :p ;
  • The Splatoon 1 girls are called Callie and Marie. The only reason I'm confirming this is because their names spell Calamari, and y'all should notice :heh:

 

Spoiler

I immediately knew that was a Mega Drive soundtrack, though not one I'm super familiar with. My first guess was Golden Axe as well, but the second tune was bad enough for me to think of Altered Beast :heh: Either way, good job to H-o-T

 

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8 hours ago, Jonnas said:
  • Langrisser is actually a strategy RPG, more akin to Fire Emblem

It's a good job I was listening to this episode driving home and not at work because I actually burst out laughing at Lee trying to explain what the game was. Lee, it sounded like you were just naming any JRPG that came into his head. "It's more like a Dragon Quest...Tales of...Trails of...one of those kind of things..." Brilliant stuff. :laughing:

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It's a good job I was listening to this episode driving home and not at work because I actually burst out laughing at Lee trying to explain what the game was. Lee, it sounded like you were just naming any JRPG that came into his head. "It's more like a Dragon Quest...Tales of...Trails of...one of those kind of things..." Brilliant stuff. :laughing:

That’s me, all bluff and bluster. Always happy to make people chuckle though.
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How do you all think the quiz went? They’re always fun to record, and Nick did an excellent job of cutting out the elongated series’ of silence and thinking time. And listening back myself, it sounds fine, but wondering how people who didn’t participate feel about it.
Quizzes are nice to fill a podcast now and again, and it would be nice if anyone has any suggestions about how it could be bettered.

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27 minutes ago, londragon said:

How do you all think the quiz went? They’re always fun to record, and Nick did an excellent job of cutting out the elongated series’ of silence and thinking time. And listening back myself, it sounds fine, but wondering how people who didn’t participate feel about it.
Quizzes are nice to fill a podcast now and again, and it would be nice if anyone has any suggestions about how it could be bettered.

I think it went really well, and I definitely enjoyed guessing along. Super specific game trivia like that is just the right balance between obscure and familiar, just enough to keep listeners engaged

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35 minutes ago, londragon said:

How do you all think the quiz went? They’re always fun to record, and Nick did an excellent job of cutting out the elongated series’ of silence and thinking time. And listening back myself, it sounds fine, but wondering how people who didn’t participate feel about it.
Quizzes are nice to fill a podcast now and again, and it would be nice if anyone has any suggestions about how it could be bettered.

I think it went well but quizzes/games on a podcast aren't really my thing. I much prefer discussions about games in general and any recent news. It's a big reason why I dropped the Easy Allies Podcast because most of the time it was just the guys playing along with Kyle's random games. If you get the balance right then I think it's fine but, yeah, they don't really do anything for me. 

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Another quality episode. :D

I liked that there was some crossover between N-E Café and A Smashing Cast with the talk about Capcom Beat 'em Up Bundle as that was great fun to play. :smile:

Really good on the news front, especially consdering it has been a slow news week and I enjoyed the game even though some of the voices I had no idea what they were. :p

Guessed the transition tune within the first few notes, it's one of those ones where you know it if you've played it and probably even if you haven't. :peace:

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Been busy the last few weeks so need to catch up on episodes but just listened to the pod pals one, another good episode. Regarding the transitions tune stuff mentioned, I do try to play along but just haven't had any idea on the last few hence no guesses, which makes me feel like I haven't played nearly enough games! Also wanted to clarify something regarding the spoilers thing - my intention wasn't for everyone to put their guesses in spoilers, just for the answer reveal to be. Otherwise I go into the episode with the answer already and so can't play along, especially as I usually listen via YouTube so am a bit later to the episode in general.

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On 13/03/2020 at 12:48 PM, londragon said:

How do you all think the quiz went? They’re always fun to record, and Nick did an excellent job of cutting out the elongated series’ of silence and thinking time. And listening back myself, it sounds fine, but wondering how people who didn’t participate feel about it.
Quizzes are nice to fill a podcast now and again, and it would be nice if anyone has any suggestions about how it could be bettered.

I enjoyed it and always happy to hear more.  It felt the right level to be able to join in & guess while listening.  I wouldn’t want it to completely replace the regular discussions, but for me it definitely added to the Podcast (similar to the episode where you guessed the various Christmas tunes) and I certainly enjoyed it more as a result.  Good work!

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On 3/8/2020 at 11:14 PM, Julius said:

Man, I got mentioned three weeks ago a couple of times in this thread, sorry for the long wait time on the response! That was the week I started feeling under the weather (a bit better over the last half a week or so, though!), and only just remembered I didn't respond, so yeah, sorry to turn back time. 

Long story long, had a rough time of it in terms of my physical (and mental - it felt pretty cyclical at a point) health since leaving high school back in 2015. I got pretty ill and stressed out in particular in February 2016, and I recall just constantly watching and listening to videos. I just wanted out of everything that was going on in my life at that time. More and more, as things got worse and worse, I found myself escaping into video games - and the world surrounding them: forums, news, reviews, everything. I'd loved Pokémon growing up (got a lot of stories there, which I hope I bring up again some day!), put thousands of hours into Battlefront II, and have so many memories of video games as a child (many of which I'd love to share here at some point). But I would have never called myself a "gamer"; honestly, still not sure if I could, I feel like I'm just a fan of a lot of people's great work. 

As a bit of a side note, funnily enough, looking back, I started an unhealthy obsession with film about a year before that, though I think my relatively better health at that time meant most of that obsession was just poured into Star Wars and classic films in particular. Huh. 

Anyways, I started reading more and more about the Nintendo NX. It would pop up on Neogaf, Reddit, everywhere (though I didn't have accounts anywhere). Started reading about Zelda for NX, watched all of the footage again and again and again, watched and listened to so much of the Gamexplain videos about it and the NX. This was a few weeks before Sun and Moon were announced, and so I was watching a lot of Pokémon related videos at the time as the 20th anniversary drew closer; of course, this meant a lot of checking serebii.net, a website I'd visited since learning about it back in primary school in a Pokémon World magazine! Even have plenty of memories of growing up on the forums. Man, what a time. 

While doing this all, I, completely by chance (or search algorithms), happened upon this video, featuring a talk with @Serebii:

Damn, that's the first time I've watched the video since joining - only just realised that I should be give a belated thanks to @Kaepora_Gaebora!

Seriously, because, well, yeah, I got a good feel for the place from the vibes of the video, checked out the forum in the description, and frequented the place for nearly an entire week without signing up before finally taking the plunge.

Fast forward four years (holy cow), and here I still am! I love this place. H-o-T, you mentioned Reddit, Era, etc., somewhere in your original post, and I agree: those places, while lively for conversation, just feel a bit too big. I don't have any social media platforms at all, in large part because I felt like I was shouting into an empty echo chamber, and looking back, that was definitely the last thing I needed at that point in my life.

The small, tightly knit community here provides a sense of intimacy you just won't find in many other places on the internet these days, and while petty arguments can get out of hand - and I've been around long enough to see some stumble away from this place almost as a result of that - there are great discussions of all sorts going on here. As someone with a lot of friends who just aren't as in touch with the games industry as we are here - as you'd expect from my generation, I do still get a lot of "PC master race", "Xbox is more powerful than PlayStation" comments, but no-one seems to actually care about the games that they're playing - it provides me with a near-perfect environment to use as an outlet for my excitement and discovery of games, new and old - because while I certainly have a history with games, there's just so much that I just didn't experience because of when I was born, or not being as interested at that younger age. Being surrounded by so much gaming knowledge on here has really opened my eyes to video games - I owe a lot of my love for them to this community.

Thanks, that was really nice for me to read when I was starting to feel under the weather :) definitely owe a lot more to this community than I can really express through words read on a screen, I just wish that I could play and share my experiences more than I already do! :D

Oh wow! That's so awesome! I was always a bit upset that the NEShow never got the big audience we were hoping for (full disclaimer; I was the person who edited and put the series together behind the scenes - I'm also the same doofus that appears in the Star Fox Zero segment).  So awesome to see that we got someone new in because of it; it was clearly well worth the effort! :D 

 

Sadly we had to stop making them because of various life circumstances that got in the way (I went back to uni to become a nurse and Kaepora became a daddo) and I don't have the same time to dedicate towards making the show anymore, but it's nice to know that there are people out there that enjoyed it!

 

Would love to go back and make more episodes at some point if time allowed for it and we could somehow get a team together again.  Was a lot of fun making episodes, but I can't take on that kind of workload alone again right now.  That's why I've been trying to equip the guys working on A Smashing Cast to be able to put together episodes, edit and upload them to Youtube without needing me there all the time to get them going (I handled the current set of episodes up there myself, since they were having a lot of technical troubles); and now it looks like Ryan and Co are just about ready to start getting it up there without me having to step in! So I'm well chuffed :D Really looking forward to seeing more episodes appear, with me being able to step back and just be a viewer this time!

Edited by Dcubed
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N-E Café [018] Who the Hell is That? is up at our YouTube Channel. Enjoy again.


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I have a question for a future episode, is there any franchise or single game/unreleased concept that would you like to see get a new instalment on switch, and what would you like to see in that new entry - so any shortcomings in past games you'd want to see improved or just new ideas to freshen up an old formula etc.

For me this would have to be Mario Strikers, had so much fun with Charged on the Wii and would love a new entry with an expanded roster, a few new arenas and some slightly better balanced special abilities (Waluigi was definitely always my pick for his ability to wall himself off for special shots).

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Thanks, added the question to our list, and will probably get to it next week. Great question, getting my thinking cap on.

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