The Nintendo Switch

I'm not sure what's cursed about it?

cooking mama in smash bros pls

I assume that Smash will be a port and not a new game right?

i dunno, looks like they are hyping it pretty big. the official site has the game listed as "Super Smash Bros. (Title Pending)" so im hoping that's a new title and not just "Deluxe", which would be a pretty lame build up.

it's a new game, in the same way that Splatoon 2 is a new game. it'll look and play mostly the same just with new content/stages/characters

they would not headline their E3 with a port

Is it for sure "headlining?" There are a few other oft rumored titles waiting in the wings, like Pokemon and Animal Crossing and Metroid that could make surprise appearances, right?

Has every system gotten its own Mario Kart except the Switch? Did every system get its own Smash?

it's for sure headlining

that doesn't mean there won't be other games. Fire emblem is likely, Yoshi is likely, something new that we haven't seen before is likely. animal crossing would be a surprise since there's been no indication that they're working on one. metroid is probably not a 2018 game but might get a trailer. Pokemon is bigger than smash so it's probably not an E3 game if smash is the focus.

‘As in recent years, Nintendo will focus its E3 activities on games coming soon, with a special spotlight given to a key headlining title: the recently announced Super Smash Bros. game coming to the Nintendo Switch console this year’, reads their official press release.

‘Games launching beyond 2018 will be featured at a later date’.

they said that last bit last year too and then immediately showed a metroid teaser. it just means all the games they're doing live demos of are 2018

looking forward to having an hour plus rail commute in a few months to justify getting one of these

haha well there is that.

at least the ride home will be fun!

tbh I'm bringing it on myself and sorta looking forward to it?? enamored with the idea of a mixed train / bike commute, esp if the "wasted time" on the train is spent on stuff like games. makes it less of a guilty indulgence and more justifiable

donkey kong, should i buy you

guess how long i play dankey kong

if you liked the SNES ones it's very much in tune with those - gorgeous and overproduced. a lot of people think it's the best 2D platformer ever made.

the amount of detail in each level is kind of staggering tbh

i'm only on the 2nd world but here's a minecart level i just did that i thought was cool, if you want a taste of what the production values are like on this thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKTLRL5XzSM

omg I want a Switch rn

so it's like Sonic but really slow and heavy

ik, ik

the heaviness of minecart physics in OG DKC was always delightful

In fairness I am really slow and heavy these days so that sounds like a good fit.

i recently watched this Digital Foundry thing on the origins of Donkey Kong Country/Killer Instinct CGI. it's pretty great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ7qtqqgTlo

super cool that we now have real time graphics that can pull off the look that required a lengthy pipeline from massive rendering farms churning out individual frames overnight to compressing into 16 colors per sprite.

def gonna pick this up someday. just too much on my plate at the moment...

wow @ the music in the level i'm on now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFP4wn0dejc

That is pretty awesome.

my favorite thing about Tropical Freeze is every single level is different, they never reuse a theme or mechanic, and there are multiple things going on per level unlike the old games which generally just worked a single mechanic to its extreme per level. nothing outstays its welcome and it makes you want to replay levels just to get a taste of their unique bits again.

here's a good vid about the level design:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4

and another good vid from someone else breaking down a single level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wIIwBL784

picked up dankey kang today after never getting around to it on the wii u and goddamn this is a delight (albeit a regularly v challenging one)

so it's like Sonic but really slow and heavy

it kinda is, in the best possible way! it's melds mario and sonic in a really innarestin' way

should I buy dk y/n

nah

buy dkc if you like dkc, for all the praise its still a dkc game with the same gameplay as the snes ones

putting expense aside, if i have to choose between platformers, i think i'll get celeste next

sonic was always too fast for me, even as a kid!

donkey kong is nothing like sonic, it's not fast at all

celeste is excellent too though

I beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2! Cool shit imo.

still my favorite nintendo switch experience to date. such a weird and beautiful game

I was yelling at the cutscenes pretty regularly but they were never not entertaining and fascinating. With some surprisingly un-hackneyed themes.

My background: I haven't played a single DK game since the very first one. At one point I had this preordered, then I saw the trailer (I think) and it mostly seemed annoying. High difficulty, non-stop monkey grunts and Funky Kong? No thanks. So I cancelled my pre-order, knowing I would be busy with Dark Souls. Then Dark Souls gets punted and the Nintendo calendar looks shockingly light (where's Hollow Knight?), so I start to reconsider DK. Still looks annoying (even though the level design looks cool!), but I did learn that at least you can play other characters in Funky mode, which gives you some (but not all) of Funky's benefits, a compromise between what seems like the too easy Funky Kong and a more generic "easy" mode. That seems more appealing, but no way would I pay $60 for this. Again, $60 is apparently more than DK:TF retailed for on Wii-U! That's nuts. I'll just wait and focus on what I have. I'm nowhere near done Celeste, for example. Been taking a loooooooong break.

OK fine I’m getting Xenoblade Chronicles

Which means we’re probably getting a dedicated thread, just warning y’all

tropical freeze is a full price worthy game if you like platformers, the only reason it was cheaper on wii u is because there was insane backlash against it before it even came out because people thought retro were being squandered making 2d platformers instead of metroid prime

lol looking forward to seeing your reactions to it tombot

it's a divisive game among Nintendo fans, a lot of extreme opinions on both ends

I want to play Xenoblade Chronicles, but I'm still in Hyrule for a few more weeks.

BOTW may be my favorite video game ever.

I liked my 70 or so hours with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 quite a bit but compared to Breath of the Wild, which has something for everyone, Xenoblade really only has a couple pretty specific somethings. I'd say take a look at one of the videos that Nintendo put out explaining the combat system, and if it seems like pressing those buttons for dozens of hours would press your buttons, go for it. There's, like, at least four distinct meters/combo systems in combat in this game, and I only filled up the final combo meter ("Full Burst") like two times total, in the last few hours of the game. But it was satisfying as hell when did because it did something like 27 million damage.

xenoblade is for people who like trashy anime characters, pretty environments and music, crazy lore drops, and overelaborate RPG systems

https://nintendotreehouse.tumblr.com/post/166122222372/like-a-finely-layered-onionor-is-it-onions

some more details out about the online service - $20/year for individual account, $35/year for a family plan that covers up to 8 accounts. online play, cloud save backups, and a collection of 20 NES games (plus more added over time) with online multiplayer hacked in. launching in September at which point online multiplayer in existing games will get paywalled.

Seems fine. Family plan is a good move. I’m still not sure what the classic game library is, like, “for”, strategy-wise. I guess it’s a sweetener for the new paywall in front of online pay, but all you can eat access to the back catalog, even a slice of it, really seems at odds with what Nintendo thinks those games are worth. Guess we’ll see what gets added to the subscription over the years, and if the a la carte Virtual Console ever makes the jump to Switch (it sure seems like it won’t!).

I guess they are going for a limited Netflix type model with old games then? I wonder if any 3rd party games will ever turn up, or other systems. Add in Gamecube games and I'll gladly pay!

i think virtual console as it was in the wii era is probably dead since all the 3rd parties realized they could make more money by releasing anthologies rather than a la carte. i can see this NESflix thing being expanded to SNES and GBA for first party titles but not sure we'll get N64 forward

Nintendo 2017 had it going on. But 2018 seems pretty rocky. Dearth of big titles, this pretty underwhelming online thing ... Only thing I'm looking forward to between now and the end of the year is Smash and I guess Wolfenstein (assuming Dark Souls and Hollow Knight stay MIA). Lets me catch up on stuff, but that's only because there otherwise just seems to be little but a constant stream of 8-bit styled retro dungeon/platform games clogging up the store.