The Nintendo Switch

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.

Super Ghouls N Ghosts is well-known as being absolutely impossible. My brother and I actually did complete it, with many many many "continues", back when it came out; but when you beat the final boss, your girlfriend appears and says that you need a secret amulet in order to fight the actual final final boss, and you have to play through the entire game again.

I've played it recently (and won it properly) using save states... I got through the first three levels pretty handily the other day using the cool Switch-based "rewind" feature, but yeah it's a ridiculously difficult game. Some of the design and stuff is really beautiful on it, but I don't really recommend it to anybody

I love Space Megaforce/Super Aleste and I play it every year or so on my hacked SNES mini. I'd love to see the entire wealth of SNES titles become available on Switch, that'd be so wild. It was very satisfying, a couple of years ago, to sell my actual SNES and my from-childhood copies of, say, Mega Man 2X for a nice bit of cash, knowing that my hacked mini would take care of my needs.

(I still haven't played through Earthbound!)

fgti you need to play Earthbound tout de suite. I think you'd love it

I keep being told this very thing. I have played the first couple hours and loved it. Hope they slap it on the Switch so I could play it on the go! That'd be amazing. I am super-excited about FF8 being on there, I might finally finish it one day

earthbound is the best.
Mother 3! The sequel to Earthbound!

physical copies don't come with manuals anymore but my copy of Ys 8 included a fold out map of the game world which was a nice touch

Some of the indie publishers will include manuals. Golf Story has one.

just wanna say that i love the untitled goose game

there's a thread for it!

untitled goose game

I never had a Gameboy or SNES, and never got to the Zelda games on Game Cube or Wii, for some reason, so my Zelda experience ended with the original Nintendo. That is, I played the first game, then remember buying and being disappointed with the second game, and that was that until Breath of the Wild. But I am just started Link to the Past on my Switch, and I'm super early in but it seems fun! Recognize a couple of tunes I heard later in Breath of the Wild.

SNES emulator's not the only retro thing for the switch, theres also a "game" you can buy thats basically a MegaDrive emulator and has like 50 Sega games on it. Most of them are tat but it has a few Sonics, Dr Robotnik, Columns, Virtua Fighter etc. Cheap too.

I have a trial of Nintendo Online, so I have access to the SNES library

I don't think that you do. I tried to access the SNES emulator a couple of weeks back and it told me that I needed to have a paid, rather than trial, subscription to Nintendo Online.

No, it's the free Amazon Prime Twitch Switch free year of online, so I'm good. For a year.

I must be doing something wrong then - I've got the same deal.

yup you should be able to download the app from the store

Maybe its a US only thing?

the Amazon thing is a real subscription not a trial so you should be able to

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

― ciderpress, Monday, 23 September 2019 14:59 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

BoF was localised by squaresoft and I wonder if that plays into it. if it means neither Capcom nor square could do a bells and whistles enabled big money version on their own

btw i had no idea there was a (reportedly terrible) online BoF quite recently! what a bad idea

SNES emulator's not the only retro thing for the switch, theres also a "game" you can buy thats basically a MegaDrive emulator and has like 50 Sega games on it. Most of them are tat

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, September 23, 2019 11:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i take issue with this

these are DEEP CUTS is what these are:

Alien Soldier
Beyond Oasis
Comix Zone
Dynamite Headdy
Gain Ground
Gunstar Heroes
Landstalker
ToeJam & Earl

plus all the sega first-party RPGs, shinobi, streets of rage, etc. maybe i will buy it and finally git gud at alien soldier

the sega ages releases are higher quality than that collection though obviously less cost effective

the Amazon thing is a real subscription not a trial so you should be able to

The Mega Drive (aka Genesis) Mini was recently released - are the emulated games for Switch on par (selection/emulation accuracy-wise) with that?

SNES emulator's not the only retro thing for the switch, theres also a "game" you can buy thats basically a MegaDrive emulator and has like 50 Sega games on it. Most of them are tat

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, September 23, 2019 11:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i take issue with this

― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Tuesday, September 24, 2019 12:53 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You guys have never heard of retro game bundles/collections/packs/museums etc.? These have existed forever!

Switch has:

Genesis Classics
Namco Museum
SNK 40th Anniversary Collection
Atari Flashback Classics

The Mega Drive (aka Genesis) Mini was recently released - are the emulated games for Switch on par (selection/emulation accuracy-wise) with that?

― Vernon Locke, Tuesday, September 24, 2019 1:18 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Genesis Classics has more that I wish came on the Mini.

oh it might be that you have to use the eshop for the region that matches your subscription?

Yeah sadly theres some nintendo shop stuff not available in aAU thanks to regional fuckery :( The one that killed me was on the WiiU you can get Minish Cap, but you cant in Aus.

fucking sick of region blocking shit

i didn’t even know these things were available and am still not quite sure what they are but i am still angry

switch is region free so you can technically make a US eshop account and get stuff there, that only works for games though, idk about services like the online stuff

I know that if you have a NSO subscription you can download the famicom app from the Japanese store and play the games they got exclusively

the mountain section and moon pearl boss is driving me fucking insane #LttP

Link's Awakening has been delightful so far. I think I'm a little more than halfway through. One thing about it that has charmed and frustrated me equally is how opaque it can be (I'm thinking mainly of the trading quest). It's not like original LoZ levels of inscrutability but there's still a lot more of it than you'll find in any contemporary game. It seems like a lot of the time-value of old games is in repeatedly (a) dying and/or (b) trying and failing to find out what exactly one supposed to do next.

I'm actually really enjoying Link to the Past. I'm not a giant Zelda stan, but it reminds me of the first game but perhaps, yes, a little less opaque and more fun.

was links awakening the origin of the trading quest?

cant remember if lttp had one

the mountain section and moon pearl boss is driving me fucking insane #LttP

― unashamed and trash (Unctious), Tuesday, September 24, 2019 1:20 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

One tip is to hold your sword out and keep your heels on the edge of the ledge. Moldorm can't knock you off if you are holding the directional towards Moldorm while it's trying to push you, and you won't take damage. Realizing now how hard it is to explain on paper all of the proper things to do during the Moldorm fight...

That’s an unbelievably white-knuckle fight!

And yeah LA has the first trading quest— LttP has the mushroom -> powder -> weird bat upgrade but that’s it, I think? (There might’ve been some trading for a bottle that I’ve forgotten)

Already getting ragey at LA and I've only done one dungeon/miniboss so far lol. Forgot how annoying "die and start the whole level again" was. I never played the original either so Ive no idea what to do rly.

You gotta kill the bad guys

Meanwhile, I'm trying to find my way to the second pendant in Link to the Past.

i don't know where anything actually is anymore due to watching/playing too many randomizers