The Nintendo Switch

I've got no problem with them charging $60, if that's what they want to do, but on every other system the price steadily drops after a while. There are plenty of huge AAA games I've gotten for the PS4 for less than $20 that surely took a heck of a lot more time and work than a graphical rehaul of this Zelda game. Or, you know, games that will at least occasionally be on sale for significantly less than retail. I've noted it before, but Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze was a port of a Wii-U game and it cost *more* on the Switch than it did on the Wii-U!. But the Dark Souls Remastered, for example, was $40 across all systems.

And again, as far as gold standards go, Hollow Knight is $15 for a gorgeous, awesome, long and involved original game, certainly one of my faves of all time. I would have happily paid more for that one, but clearly the developers were happy charging a pittance.

Yeah Hollow Knight is all-time insane value for money. Plus I’m stuck again so I’ll be playing that fucker for years.

I bought Link’s Awakening on the day of release because I finally admitted to myself that I’m a Zelda groupie. I also have an 11 day old newborn so I’ve played it for like five minutes, but it looks adorable! Would be surprised if it’s better than the new Switch version of Link to the Past, though.

Switch would be perfect with a newborn.

i made a bunch of games in megazeux when i was 14 its not too hard

Fuck yes

Xpost

yes! I had a good session on the Ori & The Blind Forest demo yesterday while I was lying down, with the baby passed out and snoozing on top

In the name of newborn cupboard space I also gave my PS3, wii and gamecube away to a friend’s daughters and feel a lot of relief about not having to finish those games

We got a switch for the kids and no one but me has played it much :/ I'm reluctant to get LA for $70 (which is what it costs in AUD) if its a bit of a lightweight Zelda. Would I like it if I liked Minish Cap?

It was my 2nd favourite Zelda (after LttP) for a long while (now Breath Of The Wild is my favourite). The music and story is amazing! $70 is way too much though, it is a GAME BOY GAME.

Yeah thats why I'm demurring! But if you like the music, thats pushing me to get it haha.

Started LttP on the train ride back from Baltimore today. It'll probably keep the Link's Awakening cravings at bay. I've never played LttP, so it's nice to visit a venerated classic for the first time.

Has anyone tried that new Kirby party game yet? Is it any good?

Oh LttP is the best one. Don't ever use a FAQ for it, figure it out

i just beat the first dungeon of the second round and i am lost.

it is such a leap forward from the first two, though. So many of the things i loved in ocarina started here, and i never knew.

The pacing is perfect, it completely broke plebe expectations for A Game Arc-- my brother and I absolutely believed that a defeat of Agahnim meant a victory, and were blown away by the fact that we were actually only 1/4 of the way through-- a feat that FF6 attempted to recreate and did narratively, if not as effectively-- and most importantly the difficulty balance is exactly right, it scales upward in difficulty effortlessly, there are few secrets that are so obscure that they can't be figured out in-game, no tortuous impossibility of the first two Zeldas nor the hand-holding of latter-day Zeldas.

Link's Awakening is overall better-designed, to me, and has far better plotting, but it's a Game Boy game, so it'll never have the same shine as LttP. Majora's Mask is the Finnegan's Wake of the series, impossible to parse without a guide, and yet ultimately more rewarding (for me) than Ocarina-- aside from the faggoty Zora plot line it's an amazing game. Wind Waker is perfect right up until the 2/3rd mark (in regards to time spent playing it), at which point it becomes a Triforce fetch quest and reminds me uncannily of the moment in Twin Peaks Season 2 when James Hurley is doing things and I'm punching the couch begging for it to be over.

I don't know why I don't rate Ocarina highly at all.

links awakening is my favorite 2d zelda but i have no real desire to play the remake. game boy fidelity was always part of its mystique imo

I don’t think I realized that the feeling of grandiosity fgti mentioned above was a staple of the Zelda franchise. I was a child for OoT, and I felt dwarfed by the scale of the game. To a kid, once you’ve retrieved the Spiritual Stones, you think surely the game must be close to over.

I thought that feeling of wonder was something only a kid could feel, and then I played Breath of the Wild.

agreed that LttP is the best. it's a mood

Started LttP on the train ride back from Baltimore today.

Hold up, you don't need a wifi connection to play this? That is, I have a trial of Nintendo Online, so I have access to the SNES library, but I can download this and play it without online access?

Yeah, you download the SNES app and it just downloads all the games I think. I had started while I was connected to wifi but then continued completely disconnected.

yeah it runs offline, though if you're offline for more than like a week it will look you out until it's checked in to make sure your sub is still going

Is it time for me to buy a Switch yet???

Fucking yes, dude

Like, a secondhand one or a new one??

like a new one dude!

won't the s/h ones go down in price now the new one with the better life is out?

possible but it's a pretty minor change, dunno how many people will upgrade just for an extra hour or 2 of battery life

@ Unctious, I just found every individual section of Ocarina— aside from the Gerudo part and the very ending— and the Bottom Of The Well— to be incredibly unmemorable. I played through it about five years ago and was like “oh right, the early game is boring; wait, the Hyrule invasion is boring too; ah yes the belly of the fish, boring...” and on and on and on. Loved Phantom Ganon as a boss, loved the Gerudos, but otherwise it just didn’t do much for me, especially considering how Mario 64 is my favourite in the series

Sorry to digress! What are these weird SNES games I’ve never heard of on my Switch now?

It was fun to play Stunt Race FX again for about five minutes lol

there are SNES games on the Switch now??

gotta download a free app if you're on their subscription service but yes! they've been weirdly quiet about it but it is very awesome.
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/super-nintendo-entertainment-system-nintendo-switch-online

also:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/snes-nes-games-on-switch-no-longer-coming-in-month/1100-6469688/

yeah a lot of these snes games are not great. I have never played Link to the Past or Super Metroid so I should play those. but like Pilotwings, Stunt Race FX, Starfox, F-Zero...modern versions are just so much better. As museum pieces they're ok. My kids lolled at how bad those games looked, so we've added to the "dad is a dinosaur" story. though they love SMW obviously.

I agree; more than half of them are garbage. But the winners!

Here are the launch SNES titles for Nintendo Switch Online:

Super Mario World
Super Mario Kart
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Stunt Race FX (Available for the first time since its original Super NES release!)
Kirby's Dream Land 3
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Star Fox
F-ZERO
Pilotwings
Kirby's Dream Course
BRAWL BROTHERS
Breath of Fire
Demon's Crest
Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics
SUPER E.D.F. EARTH DEFENSE FORCE
Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Super Puyo Puyo 2 (Available for the first time in the U.S.!)
Super Soccer (Available for the first time since its original Super NES release!)
Super Tennis (Available for the first time since its original Super NES release!)

what are the biggest things missing besides dkc and earthbound

oh smrpg

Basically, you wanna play Mario World 1 and 2, Zelda Link, Super Metroid... and that might be it but those four are roughly as good as the system gets!
No idea wtf is the appeal of Pilotwings in 2019 but it's hard to get too angry when they're freebie add-ons with the promise of more to come.

at the time I just played a ton of NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat, but those won't be coming.

I'm a SNES fan. Super Metroid is all-time, as is Mario World although I don't know how they hold up to new equivalents.

Shame Chrono Trigger isn't on there. You'd expect everythign to be available considering you can hack the SNES Mini and put pretty much any ROM on there

xp i would also add Super Castlevania, Evo, Final Fantasys/ Secret of Mana/Chrono trigger(never gonna happen), Gradius III, SF Alpha 2, Super Punch Out, Actraiser/Soulblazer, Super Starwarses, Mega Mans, NBA Jam, Ogre Battle, Harvest moon, Earthworm Jim, Bomberman, DKC 2 and 3, NBA Jam, Shadowrun... but yeah Earthbound and ESPECIALLY Super Mario RPG

in many ways, the SNES was my fave console.

street fighter and megaman and secret of mana are already on switch

3rd party stuff won't show up in the snes app unless it's small-time enough that they don't care about selling it on their own e.g. breath of fire

SUPER PUNCH-OUT

I'm playing Super Castlevania at the morning and I'm trying to work out why people liked it so much. It's quite monotonous on the whole

my realistic hopes are EVO, Actraiser, Ogre Battle, Harvest Moon, Earthworm Jim, DKC 1/2/3, Shadowrun, Earthbound, SMRPG, Punch Out
we will likely get a lot more shovelware with one good game on each update.

xpost I kind of feel that way about a lot of old games. I mean, nostalgia is a powerful thing, but for example there is a local arcade that usually has a few hundred old school cabinets on rotation, and my buddy loves to go there, but I find the games so broken and basic compared to current games that even my nostalgia has a limit.

I don't play that many new games so I haven't got much to compare it to. I guess Castlevania, having come out in 1991 pales in comparison to later platformers. It's very much walk along, smack a baddy, walk along, grab a power up, with very little variation.

and yet, symphony of the night, from just a few years later, totally holds up as a fun game, even as so many other classics of the era were rendered obsolete by incremental genre improvements to over the years

@ Unctious, I just found every individual section of Ocarina— aside from the Gerudo part and the very ending— and the Bottom Of The Well— to be incredibly unmemorable. I played through it about five years ago and was like “oh right, the early game is boring; wait, the Hyrule invasion is boring too; ah yes the belly of the fish, boring...” and on and on and on. Loved Phantom Ganon as a boss, loved the Gerudos, but otherwise it just didn’t do much for me, especially considering how Mario 64 is my favourite in the series

― fgti (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, September 23, 2019 7:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the only way for me to make sense of this is to imagine you played OoT after playing Majora's Mask or other, newer titles.

No, I played it upon its release. I could probably name every single world in Mario 64, but I'd be hard-pressed to name all the temples and bosses from Ocarina without checking first.

Castlevania IV has incredible music and (at the time) really great graphics. You gotta compare it to Super Ghouls N Ghosts in terms of when it appeared, what it meant. Certain levels are crazy! And in general the bosses are just wildly, amazingly good. There's a boss rush-style ending (with all new bosses) that is just divine, and the final Dracula battle would set the template for all future 2D-based Dracula battles.

I hate how clunky the jumping mechanic is, I always got frustrated that you couldn't jump onto, or from, stairs, and how if you didn't press "down" as you approached a stair there was a possibility you'd just fall into oblivion. The items are largely superfluous and the flying medusa heads are a headache, but all-in-all it's a pretty gorgeous, exciting, well-balanced game, and I love playing through it every few years. It was released at the exact right moment for me to adore it (I was 11?) and it honestly has only been eclipsed by SotN in terms of my favourite Castlevania games, even if I much prefer RPG elements in this series.

When Castlevania IV came out, the instruction booklet named the library bosses (a dancing, rapier-armed ghost couple) as Fred As-SCARE and Paula Ab-GHOUL which was completely awful even at the time lol

super ghouls and ghosts is IMPOSSIBLE to play; i put in a half hour and couldn't finish the first stage. am i truly a casual? i transitioned into a replay of Dark Souls II which is easy in comparison.

was just talking to my friends this past weekend about eagerly tearing open the shrink wrap on your brand new game so you could read the game manual during the car ride home.

I sort of miss that, in a nostalgic kind of way. Do physical copies of games even come with manuals nowadays? I pretty much have only been buying digital recently.