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Dufniall

August 21 N-E Game Club: DS Edition - Kirby: Power Paintbrush

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"Touch the bottom rectangle, you might like it!"

***For a general introduction to what the N-E Game Club is about click here. If you are unable to participate this round, but want to join in the future, then go ahead and post your ideas in that thread as well.***

For the glorious return of the N-E Game Club, it's time to dust of your good old Nintendo DS Phat/Lite and start scratching that bottom screen, because the theme for this round is touch-heavy Nintendo DS games. The dawn of the Nintendo DS led to two major things. First, the trend for publishers to come up with game titles that had DS in it (Deadly Silence, Dawn of Sorrow, Dual Strike...), and second, heavy reliance of the touch screen.

Plenty of games went for a touch-only, or mostly touch approach and these are the games that will star in this month's poll. The biggest problem here is that a bunch of these titles are not widely available, so I hope we can still get some participants.

Anyway, here is the shortlist:

  • Elite Beat Agents (available on Nintendo DS) 2 votes
  • Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (available on Nintendo DS, Apple iOS) 2 votes
  • Kirby: Power Paintbrush (available on Nintendo DS, WiiU virtual console) 3 votes
  • Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (available on Nintendo DS) 0 votes
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (available on Nintendo DS, WiiU virtual console) 2 votes

Get your votes up, I'll leave the poll open for a week so we can decide the winner on Monday August 9. Be sure to vote and declare yourself in or out!

UPDATE:

The game that rolled out as the winner is Kirby: Power Paintbrush. Let us know below if you are going to join in. Let's aim for September 1st to round this off and give your opinions if Kirby touched your heart (again).

Edited by Vileplume2000
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Well, well, this is the first time we decide this via forum poll, I believe! Intriguing selection of games we landed on, and we can't change votes...

As I said, I was undecided between two games. After doing some thinking, I settled on...

Spoiler

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

It is Zelda's Anniversary this year, right? And this is one of the few I never replayed, despite really liking it. As much as I like EBA, I think ST is the one I'd like to revisit the most

I own three of those games, and it's difficult for me to get a hold of the other two. So I'm hoping one of the three wins.

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If you'd went with Phantom Hourglass ahead of Spirit Tracks and its slow, laborious dungeons, my vote may have went a different direction but I've went for the one I'd love an excuse to blast through again..

Elite Beat Agents :grin:

If I want to break down the rest of the nominees, Ghost Trick is a game I love and went to revisit it last year. I didn't play it for long but I struggled to get myself into it again and to avoid risking it's legacy in my head, I moved onto something else. Perhaps I'll go back one day, but it doesn't feel like the right time!

Kirby: Power Paintbrush became something of an unexpected hit with me. When I played it initially, I went through the game without going out of my way for the collectables and it was OK, without being spectacular. I returned several years later and focused of collecting everything I had missed the first time around. My appreciation for the game soared after that to the point where Rainbow Paintbrush on Wii U couldn't really match up in the end. Having said that, I feel a bit like I had my time with the game and don't really have an immediate desire to return.. and if I did, I can't see myself dedicating the time to go after everything again.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword may have come up here due to mentioning it to @Vileplume2000 on Discord last week as I had actually played it randomly a little one day to see how it holds up these days! I didn't get very far and could be interested in carrying on.. especially if I can find my old Dragon Sword stylus somewhere 😅

Finally, and I touched on it earlier, is Spirit Tracks which fell so far below Phantom Hourglass it wasn't even funny :blank:

Perhaps Phantom Hourglass had the benefit of feeling fresh due to the new ways of controlling Link, his items and creating notes on the map and therefore Spirit Tracks had more trouble with trying to capture the same magic (Definitely worried that the sequel to Breath of the Wild could struggle with this aspect too) but there are larger issues in spite of that.

I don't have a good history with top down Zelda games (in fact, Phantom Hourglass is perhaps the only one I really liked in addition to A Link Between Worlds on 3DS) but I had a particular problem with the dungeons in Spirit Tracks due to how much I hated having to move the Phantom around so often. It made each dungeon such a drag and I never want to experience that again :nono:

 

Edited by nekunando
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I never thought I'd find someone who would put Phantom Hourglass over Spirit Tracks!

Timed Stealth Sections that you have to repeat five times is the main reason I never want to play it again.

At least Spirit Tracks lets you use Zelda to make the stealth easier. And no repeating sections to boot.

Oh, and Zelda still cracks me up in this game.

3wBZWQ.gif

Let's face it, Spirit Tracks started the trend of more interesting Zeldas.

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11 hours ago, Jonnas said:

Well, well, this is the first time we decide this via forum poll, I believe! Intriguing selection of games we landed on, and we can't change votes...

I was kind of hesitant if I should do a fixed poll or keep it open for politics, but let's see how this goes. In case of a draw we can always do a second vote between the winners.

11 hours ago, nekunando said:

If you'd went with Phantom Hourglass ahead of Spirit Tracks and its slow, laborious dungeons, my vote may have went a different direction but I've went for the one I'd love an excuse to blast through again..

To be honest I would have picked Phantom Hourglass over Spirit Tracks as well (because it is less fresh in my memory, and it is the first Zelda DS game so the order would be more correct), but because @Jonnas preferred ST I went for that one. 

It's an interesting list, that's for sure! I don't know yet who will get my vote, as a couple of games would be fun to revisit. I'll... think about it a bit longer.

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1 hour ago, darksnowman said:

Not really feeling the magic: xy/xx with these nominations. 

Well, you only have yourself to blame for not nominating it yourself.

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20 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Well, you only have yourself to blame for not nominating it yourself.

..and who am I blaming for Spirit Tracks :blank:

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21 minutes ago, nekunando said:

..and who am I blaming for Spirit Tracks :blank:

Not me, I nominated Ghost Trick.

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2 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Well, you only have yourself to blame for not nominating it yourself.

You old grump. :( 

2 hours ago, nekunando said:

..and who am I blaming for Spirit Tracks :blank:

Tugs flopped and Thomas the Tank is still going (?) so...?

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2 hours ago, nekunando said:

..and who am I blaming for Spirit Tracks :blank:

It's 3 posts above yours

...

:heh:

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Oh good choices! I love Ghost Trick, but only played it again last year so I’ve gone for  Kirby.  A game I’ve never played but always wanted to.  Seems like a good excuse to go to eBay...

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Well, this is a pickle. The poll closed (set it to close at midnight) and I forgot to vote myself haha.

Four titles ended with two votes; Ninja Gaiden got zero. My favourite game from the list is Elite Beat Agents, but I played through it already quite recently. So I'm going to vote for Kirby: Power Paintbrush. It's Kirby, it's touch, it's not too long. It's available on WiiU and Nintendo DS. These are my arguments.

SI_NDS_KirbyPowerPaintbrush_enGB.jpg

How long did we usually reserve for playing the game? A month or so?

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56 minutes ago, Vileplume2000 said:

How long did we usually reserve for playing the game? A month or so?

Yeah, it was a month.

I was actually gonna suggest that you break the tie, seeing as you suggested this in the first place, so it worked out anyway!

Edited by Glen-i

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Well dangit, I don't own this game, nor do I have a Wii U! That's on me, of course (the game always interested me, but I somehow never got around to buying it), but it does mean I can't really play or give my impressions on it :hmm:

Looking forward to reading impressions, though. At the time, a lot of the discourse around this game focused on the novelty of the controls, so I'm curious to see how opinions are like in 2021.

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4 hours ago, Jonnas said:

Well dangit, I don't own this game, nor do I have a Wii U! That's on me, of course (the game always interested me, but I somehow never got around to buying it), but it does mean I can't really play or give my impressions on it :hmm:

Looking forward to reading impressions, though. At the time, a lot of the discourse around this game focused on the novelty of the controls, so I'm curious to see how opinions are like in 2021.

If you wanted to get it on DS, it’s not very expensive… It averages around £20-£25…

Only issue is that you have to watch out for fakes… eBay is rife with counterfeit DS games now…

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1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

If you wanted to get it on DS, it’s not very expensive… It averages around £20-£25…

Only issue is that you have to watch out for fakes… eBay is rife with counterfeit DS games now…

WHAT! I have a sealed copy! Tell me that's the going price for a grimy cart only! :confused:

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2 minutes ago, darksnowman said:

WHAT! I have a sealed copy! Tell me that's the going price for a grimy cart only! :confused:

Don't most of the DS games that got released on WiiU Virtual Console have lower resale values?

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Just now, Glen-i said:

Don't most of the DS games that got released on WiiU Virtual Console have lower resale values?

:eek: I'm going to have to cross-reference what I have with what is on there then. Sounds like the Wii U has put off my retirement. 

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Out of curiosity I checked if it was available on one of the Dutch webshops I use for games.. They had one for 40 euros for a boxed copy. That's more than I want to spend on a DS game.

Edit: That webshop is out of its mind, I see it for 20 euros on another, supposedly new.

Edited by Sméagol

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Updated the opening post, for those who want to join in post a reaction here, and let's aim for September 1 to gather up our thoughts. I'll take them into account later and make a front-page forum user infused Throwback Thursday out of it.

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Credits rolled.

HTDtKwA_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&

Yeah, most of the medals are from the other modes.

This game still holds up. The controls are very intuitive and there's a high skill ceiling with keeping Kirby under control while also maintaining your limited ink reserves. It's perfectly possible to use upward momentum to keep Kirby airborne forever with enough practice.

I feel like where the game slightly dips in quality is when you're playing the boss games. It makes a nice change of pace, but I'd rather just play more with the main game. The final boss works more like a traditional boss fight and it's my favourite part of the game, as you're tested on the skills you've developed.

So yeah, it's great!

Little tip for anyone else who's gonna play through this though. The Medal Swap Shop has 3 health boosts you should get as soon as you can, because 4 health is not a lot in this game. They're behind the 7 medal panel and the two panels at the bottom that are available at the start.

Edited by Glen-i
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Worth noting that getting all 250 medals is a mammoth challenge! Good bloody luck getting A Rank in Paint Roller!

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32 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Worth noting that getting all 250 medals is a mammoth challenge! Good bloody luck getting A Rank in Paint Roller!

That 99.7% will forever torment us...

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Never played Power Paintbrush. I have however, played Canvas Curse ;)

 

Was never my copy though, so no idea if its even something we still have. I have found myself listening a bit to its OST though, it does its job as a best of Kirby OSTs and as the only Kirby game I've actually played is most of my exposure to Kirby soundtrack apart from Smash Bros.

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