Ripplefield

The style is not suited for Chrono Trigger, it's for games where characters were made to be tight little 1x2 tile sprites and then dressed up with post-processing effects to make the environment pop. CT was held back by technical limitations, it's one of the few Square games of that era that definitely aged when you revisit it, not quite as smooth and clean as you remember it. There's relatively large sprites that make the extremely low frame animations stand out like a sore thumb, there's so many beautiful top tier Akira Toriyama designs that you can tell they struggled to fit into the resolution.

It needs to be remade as if it were a PS1 game first if they want to go a very safe and faithful route. I do think going full Dragon Quest XI would be perfect too, but the absolute ideal I think would be to keep it all completely 2D assets but actual literal HD resolution, like Vanillaware level hand made art assets.

Dang, really wish they changed the "optimize" function so that it only optimizes a unit's gear and does not set all the tactics you meticulously configured back to default every time

so how's everyone enjoying "Symbiogenesis"?

If this game looks impressive to you I implore you to check out every single other game by Ladybug in the meantime.

We came close with that weird Starlink think, but everything in StarFox was made to be a cool toy and it should be done proper. Likewise with the entire cast of F-Zero, they're practically a line of 90s action figures and vehicle toys.
I'm shocked Pokemon has never really hopped on the amiibo train, wouldn't they love if they had tons of people catching all the pokemon by literally buying them?

Sorry but I will always need to correct the usage of "2048" as a genre label when it's the inferior game that blatantly ripped off Threes.

At this point I'm far against the current non-linear approach to the main quest of these games, it results in sacrificing way too much for what you gain. It's especially hard to tell a compelling story with opposing forces working around each other when large sets of events can happen in any order, which is why they had that whole "mischievous phantom Zelda causing random problems" thing going for most of the game, and then finishing it all doesn't even directly lead towards finding and fighting Ganon, but rather one of the many large side adventures it lightly recommends you do indirectly results in one npc narrowing down that he's at the extremely obvious location that anyone would have guessed from the start of the game. Like yeah super cool that anyone can play this game in any way they feel like, but there's no combination of events that results in an actually good version of the story that holds up against the older games.

The 3 reveal trailer and intro seemed to tease some sort of expansive explorable wasteland, but then we quickly went right back to another urban town square, and it was only used as a backdrop for a very brief portion of the story. They need to make good on that, let us actually explore new styles of environments, play with the structure of the single player campaign, something other than a series of obstacle courses on floating platforms for once.
With the next game on more powerful hardware, I'd like to mostly see more precise shooting mechanics in general. The fact that the whole game is about paint and nearly everything has wide inaccurate splashy range makes that difficult, but I'd like to at least feel like I won't randomly explode even while completely behind cover.

It has its rough areas, mostly by nature of being a polygonal DS game (I can't speak on PSP or PC versions), but by and large they did an amazing job staying faithful to the original game and interpreting its world, and pretty much every additional touch like voice acting and animated cutscenes are very well done.
it set an satisfying template I wish they could've stuck with going forward with remaking all the following games, but they sadly got a bit sidetracked from that.

I was betting on one coming up soon a week or so ago, but then Nintendo twitter casually dropped the Splatoon 3 new season content update, Pikmin 4 previews are showing up in the Switch feed itself, and they even dropped a weird new game no one asked for out of the blue, all things that would've padded out a potential Direct presentation right now.

My DQ knowledge is limited, but I get the sense that they often play on your expectations of conventions, so something is lost if you go in totally unfamiliar of conventions, even if the modern games are made with modern audiences in mind.

For Zelda I say at the very least give LttP an honest go, it establishes everything that the series built on after, and I don't fault anyone for not having the patience for the first two.

Final Fantasy is nice cuz it's such a free for all. Start anywhere, go forward or backward in time, you'll find value and unique experience in each one.

And the idea of playing Pokemon games in chronological order feels like a joke. Maybe try out Crystal if you're curious of what a good retro Pokemon is like, but generally the answer is just play the one everyone's playing, it's a social experience.

For those of you who still don't see a good reason to leap to an OLED Switch because you keep it docked most the time, I'm with you, but repurpose this list if you've not yet upgraded to an OLED TV. I recently upgraded from a standard 36" HD 10-ish year old set to a modern 45" 4K with HDR (they're going for like $130 now?!) and even though the Switch doesn't even output to that resolution it instantly felt like playing on new hardware. Splatoon 3 absolutely glows on this thing.

Level-5 needs to get their act together as a whole, learn how to prioritize and know their limits of scale. Every bit of gold they've stumbled on was instantly ground into dirt, not EVERY hit they make needs to be a "cross-media franchise". Fantasy Life could've been a staple series, instead it got mobile shovelware sequel and a spiritual successor "Snack World" that didn't carry any of the original appeal. They seriously never attempted making another Dark Cloud style game? or just a regular safe JRPG of their own after working with Dragon Quest? This company always felt absolutely brimming with potential that just keeps getting snuffed out by poor decisions.

all I need to know is if those salmon eggs are squishy like the Metroid

I totally forgot if they outright said this when the Splatfest was happening or it was just so obvious everyone assumed it.

hi honey

if they're gonna merchandise this thing they better do a reveal some time soon, stuff ALWAYS gets spoiled via toy leaks.

Puzzle Bobble is iconic, but this footage leaves much to be desired. Really missing that fun energy of the old ones, not showing off any bank shots or big combos or aggressive play, and no classic tunes? Sure hope this is REALLY early like it says, but not a great first impression.

if Square can make this, couldn't they some day do a FFXI Offline?

World was only "World" as a precaution in case its changes weren't received well and they could call it a spin-off, but it performed fanatically so I have a feeling they'll just go back to numbering them, plus the old Nvidia leak did list it as "Monster Hunter 6"

The Switch has countless gorgeous looking games, most of which are not very complicated from a technical perspective. "Good graphics" are all smoke and mirrors, clever tricks and artistic direction. Even Call of Duty uses flat sprites in places you'd never notice. Game Freak needs to shape up, slow down, or just hire literally any other studio to do the heavy work for them.

It always feels like Square-Enix has no memory of acquiring any Enix properties besides Dragon Quest. Come on, lets get this back, along with Mischief Makers and Rakugaki Showtime!

I wish the term weren't so eroded, but scolding people into not speaking a certain way basically has never worked and never will. I propose we start slapping "AAA" on whatever game of any scale or and budget as a seal of quality and polish, so that eventually that label (which was an empty marketing ploy to begin with) will become increasingly meaningless and hopefully both terms fall out of use.

seriously stop. we can't do this for literally every thing he ever tweets.

I know you may not be able to wrap your head around the motivation for making something as a passion project as a fan of something, but why ever support Nintendo in these cases? Did y'all remind the teacher to give homework at the last minute of class too?

Always ALWAYS keep your big yap shut about these projects until they are 100% finished! Drop a mega download link and walk away, let it spread, let everyone make backups. Secretly keep some sort of proof you worked on it so you can show it off the potential employers.
That said, I was not even aware of this project, it's a real shame. AM2R somehow made it further along before getting shut down, and that was widely known of for a while.
The gameplay actually looks super nice, that turning animation on Samus is so clean, the environments and UI are beautiful. I hope they can manage to salvage as much work from this as possible and simply retool into another great Metroid-like game. Some aspects honestly give my next most anticipated one Ghost Song a run for its money.

Honestly it barely ever made sense, what's the difference between an indie who gets a publisher and any given dev studio? employee numbers? where is the exact cut-off point then? not that that has any bearing on how "independent" they are, whether or not a publisher has ownership or a contract with them doesn't seem like a significant factor to mark a whole category of games.
If what the term is trying to convey is a certain scale and scope of games, we do definitely need better vocabulary than that which focuses on the status of its developer, or "A"s which imply some correlation to quality. The fact that people associate anything 2D with "indie" now even when it's a first-party Nintendo game means we definitely F'd up

Tetris coming and being cross platform is the nicest surprise. Metal Slug and Eastward are ones we already knew about but it was very nice finally getting a better idea of how they'll play.

This game is one of my latest addictions, it coming to Switch will basically be the end of me.

@Gradius Exactly what I was about to comment. Maybe even throw some Arkanoid in there

I'm a patient person and there's plenty of games to play, AC is ideal as a casual thing to visit once in a while, it being a full time obsession was kinda its downfall this time around. I've been content with the decelerating update cycle, I was never upset with the amount of content they launched with, but the ONE thing that kept disappointing me was every new event added followed the exact same formula, a special NPC shows up, you do a pointless activity in the town square, gather special collectables that show up to craft limited items. So my one fear would be that The Roost would get reduced to a similar template, a limited time booth propped up in the civic center and that's it, but am very very relieved to see this data, basically confirming it will eventually be a a permanent establishment within the museum.

too bad they're still majority owned by Saudis

@the_beaver No, my expectations were low but I still made the choice to buy and play through it to completion so I would not be another Francis on the internet complaining about games I've never played. It's just another Sticker Star to me, with tiny incremental improvements which still feel insignificant since they shot the series in the foot so hard after Super.
Not a total valueless broken game or anything, but far from deserving its spot as the top selling ever. For sure not the "Metroid Dread" status of its series in any case.

It won't exactly set it among the top tier Nintendo blockbusters, but I have no doubt it will at the very least be the highest selling Metroid game to date. If another stale Paper Mario can do it just through its timing and merit of being on the Switch, then Metroid 100% can.

As mentioned, Mischief Makers is apparently stuck in some licensing limbo, but as I understand it Treasure as a company now only exists as an entity to license ports of old games, they've got nothing but time, surely there's a way they can work it out so this masterpiece isn't lost to time forever.

There's paying homage, and then there's total shameless plagiarism. There are enough of these Metroid inspired games on kickstarter that at least bring their own original ideas to the table.

Just stick some Nintendo stuff on the screen of a generic white phone, I don't get it. I don't see anything close to Nintendo's design philosophies. Why is it so thin? They would make it thicker just for the sake of being comfortable in your hand. They would have at least one physical feature or control method that sets it apart from every other identical product on the market. If they ever even went with a capacities touch screen, they would still include a stylus to work with it.