The Nintendo Switch

Yeah Splatoon is hueg in Japan. AIUI Zelda has more or less never been as big in Japan as it is abroad but I don’t know the data on that.

relative popularity of Nintendo franchises globally is not what you think if you think of Nintendo as Mario and Zelda. it's more like Pokemon, Mario, Splatoon, and Animal Crossing. Zelda is down in the 2nd tier alongside Fire Emblem and the like. Metroid is barely on the map.

Nintendo obv considers Zelda top tier maybe just bc of NA idk

honestly shocked Splatoon is doing this well though

esp. considering it was a Wii U franchise

It's their only proprietary online shooter (more or less), isn't it?

Anyway I’m on vacation with my sister (and partner and her sister), we both brought our switches, we played four player Mario Kart in the hotel room over wireless on two systems with each of us using a Joycon, the Switch is pretty brilliant.

splatoon is massive in japan, pc gaming doesn't really exist there so that removes most of its competition from the market

zelda gets considered top tier because it has a pretty locked-in fanbase in the west but as we just saw it's not so much of a golden goose that they're not willing to make major changes to its gameplay. you won't see them doing that with pokemon.

hasn't the general feeling been that Zelda was stagnant between Wind Waker and BOTW? I could be imagining that, frankly

yeah that's certainly true. people liked the last 3DS one but other than that you wouldn't have missed much if you skipped forward 15 years which is probably part of why it's no longer a golden goose

a lot of those games got very positive reviews at the time though iirc, there's more than a little bit of hindsight at work with that narrative

Not stagnant as much as slow, I'd say - If you consider post-Ocarina handheld games to be sometimes-interesting failures (which I more or less do), then there were three of them between Majora's Mask and Wind Waker - but that's still only two years, with Ocarina of Time only two years before that. Then it's four years to Twilight Princess, five years to Skyward Sword, six years to Breath of the Wild. And each gap has two handheld games in it, but they're a year to two apart.

I remember really liking Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks, actually, esp. the dungeon design

video game gun violence is out of control it must be stopped

https://i.imgur.com/i6hwb2Q.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5p0SiWHwvw

DKC:TF is looking good! i never played it but i keep seeing people say it's a GOAT platformer.

it's also apparently ridiculously unforgiving, which is why they added an easy mode. Seems BS that the switch version retails for $10 more than the Wii U version retailed. It along with Kirby I at one point had pre-ordered then decided you know what? These games look dumb I don't want to play either of them.

ridiculously unforgiving

heh this is a plus for me. besides, it can't be any worse than Snow Barrel Blast in the original DKC and i made it through that...

Yeah I had it on the Wii U and never got very far into it.

i doubt it's any more or less difficult than the originals

been lurking around the internet a bit for news on the remaster. it's pure chaos right now, pixel counters and console warriors analyzing scant off-screen shot video, etc.

the improvements sound nice. being able to do more than 1 item at a time is going to make a huge difference. they are also including additional HUD options, including DSFix-style (without having to edit an .ini file) UI scaling. feel like this will come in really handy on Switch, where you can have standard size HUD on portable mode and scale them down for a more cinematic view when docked.

there is a new bonfire in the Catacombs to enable quick access to the Vamos the Blacksmith. which is nice cos making the trek down there and back was such a pain. new players take note - this is a huge change to the game and an accommodation towards "easy mode" critics that decry the gamemakers as cruel. this essentially nerfs quite possibly the most difficult part of the game. that pit in the bottom of the world filled with rolling skull wheels. they were also in DSIII but far far easier. i wonder if you will still be in constant danger of stun-locking. they have said there are no combat changes, which is good imo.

as for the graphics and effects and stuff, i won't know what to think until i am playing the game. im pretty sure it will be great for all systems. i am only getting it on Switch because i already bought it on PC and the fucking controls stop working from time to time. Steam gets a patch and my joystick will suddenly have LR/UD axis switched and the buttons wrong. i try to calibrate it. maybe i have to download new drivers or a new version of X360ce or configure Joy2Key. i would rather have Mario be chillin next to Zelda with no BS and a 1 press Dark Souls button.

sorry, wrong thread (sort of)

i think nintendo's gonna have it playable at their booth at pax this weekend so i'll check it out

Nintendo has put out an interview with some of the leads on the Labo product:

https://labo.nintendo.com/developer-interview/

It's actually a pretty in-depth discussion on the design goals and process, the sort of thing that doesn't always emerge from Nintendo's walls and probably never before a game comes out.

i think nintendo's gonna have it playable at their booth at pax this weekend so i'll check it out

I played it for a few minutes at a demo booth in February, having not touched a DKC in 20 years. My verdict: seems fun.

i meant dark souls. the Nintendo booth had a half hour wait pretty much instantly after the expo hall opened though so i didn't end up trying anything.

i did get to try yoku's island express which was about as good as it looks in the trailer, the demo build only had 2 small areas of the game though so it's hard to tell what the scope is gonna be but it's a chill and nice looking pinball adventure game. the ppl from the publisher said it's gonna be out in Q2 which means soon

iconoclasts confirmed coming to switch - that and hollow knight are the last remaining indie sidescrollers i've been avoiding buying on pc to get on here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I1zz59QzG4

Dark Souls Switch. skip to ~4 minutes in to see Blighttown gameplay. this is the trouble area where fps was known to tank.

Dark Souls nerds noted that that section of the game was more problematic coming from the other entrance, something with ... trees?

I'm refreshing myself on the PS3 version and coming into blighttown from the big tree causes the frame rate to plummet but only for a second as you transition to that wide area. there are no dangers till the massive slugs at the bottom of the branch, so its noticable but not that impactful.

uh god the massive slugs *shudder*

so great form farming titanite! camp in that little area and you can upgrade all your gear in no time.

love that giant monster slug. can't wait to get back into the atmosphere of this one again.

have reached chapter 9 of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Things have escalated.

Should I buy BAD DUDES y/n

this should go without saying, but are you a bad enough dude?

yeah those last few chapters of xenoblade2 are very much worthy of the xeno series

Anybody going to get Labo day 1, kid-haver or otherwise?

i will not but look forward to seeing whatever weird homebrew stuff people make with it

furious with myself that i didn't have kids like five years earlier so i'd have an excuse to buy labo stuff

dark souls delayed until 'summer', no new date yet

!?!? At least that implies they're making sure it works.

:(

Maybe tech is moving fast enough that it can be better? Doom, for example, ran pretty eh, but then they fixed it, and Wolfenstein supposedly runs even better on Switch.

When TF is Terraria

terraria devs just cancelled some big new version of the game they were working on for the past 3 years so who knows what the fuck is going on there. does seem like something that ought to have gotten a switch port by now

on the bright side there's another octopath traveler preview vid up and it's still looking great

https://youtu.be/x99ObqWLkYA

Heck yeah. Love these protag designs.

ive decided to do a 180 on buying games digitally, kinda want physical copies of major single player games going forward especially for stuff like DKC where there's a decent chance I'll play it for 5-10 hours and then never again.

it's pretty fun to put cards in the thing imo

my Zelda cart has been in there for almost a year now, i feel bad evicting it