Salads

Nintendo FLIRTING WITH THE DARKSIDE with those buy both bonuses, but god damnity that was probably the best game hype video I've seen in my life.

Let's get some things clear. Genesis Sonics: Fucking awesome stuff. Sonic Adventure 2: Anal goop dripping onto your shoes. Mario 64: Fucking awesome stuff. Year of release not needed for consideration.

Sonic 3D must have groped a kid or something if it can't even get a mention in a discussion about best isometric Sonic game when it's the only one.

Honest Trailers is usually hit and miss but thanks to the Souls series' +20 Criticism Armour nearly every bullshit call in that one is a punch the air moment.

Am playing TLOU in Russian and pretending it is an alternate timeline where President Palin decides to use chemical warfare to teach Putin a lesson. It solves a few problems such as why I have the ability to shrug off bullets / infinite stamina (because I am Russian) and why I'm willing to Rambo my way through hundreds of lives without hesitation (because I had to go through school with the name Joelle)

As someone who buys 'big' games physically the figures in this thread are making me understand why people were impressed they squeezed SM3DW into 1.6something gig. My various console/pc hdds wish that every company had the same decades of trying to fit their games onto tiny carts experience.

Smash Run is a Smashy version of the City Trial mode in Kirby Air Ride (also by Sakurai). I haven't played either so that doesn't mean much to me, but may help explain it for someone out there.

For don't-have-enough-time-for-games people, howlongtobeat.com may be a valuable resource. Super Ape, with this new context of you having an interest in JRPGs, I shall switch my advice to Play Mother 3. It and its predecessor are the only Dragon Quest formula games I rate as good enough to recommend people play. I pushed a friend into playing through M3 once and at the end I can't say our relationship emerged unscathed from him having been pressured to play through thirty plus hours of mainly selecting 'Fight' from a menu, but ignore that guy. Mother 3 is the best that selecting fight from a menu can get, and irrefutably special. Would love to hear your thoughts (me and BL88 have made your decision for you you can thank us later). Speaking of great games, from my little list above Pushmo, Border Down and Tekken Tag Tournament are going straight into my personal top 50 of all time.

I'm possibly the biggest Mother 3 fan in the world but if you're short on time you've got to stick to games that value yours. Cast a suspicious eye over anything that has decided to include experience points and no MMOs, JRPGs or open worlders period. Pokemon Black 2 breaks that rule considerably in my case, but I see it less as a game and more as a colourful screensaver to retreat into for soothing ten minute bursts when things get stressful.

Currently playing (not all at once, obviously) 3DS - Pushmo Dreamcast - Border Down DS - Pokemon Black 2 PC - Brutal Legend Playstation 2 - Tekken Tag Tournament Playstation 3: The Last of Us Wii: Rayman Origins Just wanted to get off my chest that I am having the gaming time of my fucking life.

I've been all over the blog where that High Fly Flow titbit from the last page came from. All of Yottsume's charitable translations in one place. http://yottsumepuroresu.blogspot.co.uk/

I will play and enjoy a Dr Mario I don't have to pay extra for. Observational Wolf-related news from the Japan Demo: 'Fox has an alternate skinThat looks exactly like wolf. He's gray fur, purple eye device and grayish clothing. It's the only skin that changes foxes fur. This is only a color, NOT a costume' Also one of the colour schemes for Link is Fierce Deity Link, which is a bit exiting for the few who know what that is.

Rogers isn't all bad, but he's distinctive enough that the GoW post stood out as being similar. The entirety of this sub-forum could spend their time parroting other writers and I probably wouldn't have a clue, so he can take that as a compliment I guess. 1. Not a knock on SMB3, but a defence of SMW. I disagree that Nintendo try to keep things static, but that's a different discussion. I disagree also about the idea of Mario games teaching kids bad design (I've just sampled a Ratchet and Clank game) but I sympathise with that feeling when I see how popular Minecraft is and think how much trouble it's going to cause when those kids grow up and start making games having been vaccinated against understanding the problems with kb+m / dual stick avatar control. 3. Confession; the last version of SMB I played was Super Mario Bros Deluxe, which did have world maps (like this) so that changes things. However, my point stands insofar as I don't remember that being described as a negative addition. On the one hand, calls for Mario world maps to be similar to specific older Mario world maps from gamers is less objective criticism and seems more based off of the kind of personal nostalgia Nintendo would be criticised for utilising. On the other, if we see them less as 'Mario overworld from our past' and as what they are - level select screens - then the problems you're having shouldn't happen. I'd still say that a bloated level select screen isn't a big complaint, but it is a valid one. I haven't played 3D Land yet but I know that they changed the overworld for 3D World and that Super Mario Galaxy 2 had a much more streamlined overworld having stuck to the 'Mario Bible' 3D hub world in the first game, so I'm optimistic that the problem is something they know about.

I was going to buy the game when it came out but you've successfully spooked me into holding off because yes, I will inevitably buy any DLC if it has non costume swap character additions (I would have left a DLC Dr Mario to rot.)

(to BL88) Ooooh. I remember thinking your Gears of War summary in the Gotg sub-forum was Tim Rogers-ey, and he made the exact same argument about SMB3/SMW secrets. And even he loves 3D Land. Firstly, there's nowt wrong with SMW flagging its secrets. SMB3 was an arcade assault course with secrets. SMW was a platform adventure about finding them. The reward for finding those secrets was the rest of the game you spent crazy 90s prices on. SMB3 gave you warp whistles and the like because you started from scratch every time you turned it on and the 'hold your nose and turn around twelve times' method of getting some of them was its better integrated version of the Konami code. You don't have to find them and you arguably aren't meant to, but if you don't find any of the secrets in SMW you can't even get to Bowser. Also, I remember taking ages to find the exit to my final course with a big signpost telling me where it was (both on the world map and in the level!), and I don't think my satisfaction would have been enhanced if instead of looking for that exit on Cheese Bridge all I knew was that it was somewhere across the seventy one courses I already had. Even as a kid I wouldn't have bothered. Secondly you say you like it when games have super-obscure secrets. Cool. I like it when a voice announces the name of the game on the title screen, but I don't accuser players who like games without that feature of being corpse-fuckers. Thirdly, the world map in SMB was literally a straight line. It isn't 'where we're at', it's where we've already been, though your warp pipe comment suggests the complaint could now switch to 'Nintendo out of ideas world map relies on nostalgia'. This isn't a Doom Map then > COD map now scenario. Reminds me of when NSMBW came out and people were were making the same 'didn't feel like a cohesive world' complaint on the grounds that the world maps were separate and didn't scroll into each other like like SMW because they were reaching so hard they forgot about every Mario Bros game prior.

Pro wrestling learning the lariats > punches lesson all over again.

I remember hearing about this match at the time. HCW sounded so intriguing when I'd hear about the odd all-star match and picture Hawaii as this East meets West meeting of continents battle rock. Their title history looks like it was handled worse than the IWGP.

I remember being introduced to peak-era WWF wondering why people were so into Rock and Austin stomp-punching each other.

From what I hear Dead Space 1 and 2 are like Alien and Aliens (both great, the second one more action based) but there the analogy falls apart because the third was rubbish and the spin-off (Extraction) was amazing. Hilariously I attempted to play the first one while in the middle of being treated for anxiety. I stopped when I realised how frequently the game liked to go BOO.

...still friends?

You do understand that I've been trying to explain to you Nintendo's DLC policy (which has been stated outright, upheld 100% to date and appears to exclude holding back members of the Smash character roster for DLC unless it was a free update) and not embarking on some bizarre tirade at somebody on a message board for suggesting that Nintendo would dare act against my personal preferences, right? I thought you were going to come back and explain how you thought extra characters in Smash could fit into that policy because I was interpreting it wrong, or maybe that Mario Kart 8 was a sign that financial woes had persuaded them to abandon it (both possible), but apparently all DLC is the same anyway because it's all extra so giving examples of what types of DLC a publisher would find more acceptable than others and why is a sign of someone hating all DLC / games / capitalism.

For fighting games, the characters are the game. People begrudgingly buy fighting game revisions because they come with extra characters. This entire thread has been hopes, reveals and speculation about the roster and little else. The roster decides whether people buy the game, what abilities the player has and what the player has to do to get good. You said it yourself - Wolf plays completely different, so if you don't have Wolf you are missing out, but Link in Mario Kart doesn't change shit. He's a costume. He's horse armour. And 'It's extra. And completely optional.' could be said of every piece of DLC ever released.

Mario Kart DLC was brought up in the Smash thread, which reminded me of this DVDVR-suited gif (which oddly enough glosses over what seems to be its biggest selling point of featuring 16 new tracks for a 32 track game)

I never said Nintendo doesn't do DLC. I said it would be a first for Nintendo using DLC in that way. They've always been very vocal about doing DLC right and 'pay just $x to get the rest of the game!' wouldn't fall into that. PIkmin 3's challenge maps, Fire Emblem's extra stories, Mercedez-Benz karts etc are all trivial extras. They've been doing new pokemon DLC since '96, but because they're integral to the game they're still leaving money on the table by giving them away for free. I didn't think they'd add new characters and courses to Mario Kart for this reason, but the packages revealed so far have novelty and (I know this is the wrong term for a game like Mario Kart) non-canon theming to frame them as distinct from and arguably even clashing with the original retail content. Extra characters for Smash could happen but 1) it's a lot harder to argue that an incomplete fighting game roster is fully satisfactory as a standalone product, 2) not only are Sakurai games famously stufffed-to-the-brim with content but in Smash finding and unlocking that content is a key part of the game and 3) they've already spurned an easy chance to milk money out of the game by making Amiibos completely non-essential.

That would be a first for Nintendo using DLC in that way if true. Will believe it when I see it.