Nintendo Direct 12/11/2015 (EU): Not-so-live Impressions

It's very late. I'm very tired. It can only be Nintendo Direct Not-so-live Impressions time.

• 00:00 -  Jeez, that YouTube description. Freaking spoilers, Nintendo. :D
• 00:11 - Yay! Shibata!
• 00:28 - Aww. Rest in peace, Mr. Iwata.

• 00:42 - Well bam, there it is: Twilight Princess HD!
• 01:02 - Oh boy. I'm so ready for this. I might have been one of the only ones, but I freaking loved Twilight Princess. I've been hankering to replay it for years, but man, that Wii version looks like jaggedy garbage on a HDTV.

• 01:05 - Hmm. This is maybe not the full visual upgrade I was expecting. :D Looks like a more basic uprezzing. Even so, this is a big step up from that PAL Wii version smeared all over a big TV.
• 01:47 - What's with the music here. Twilight Princess had awesome trailer music and a rad trailer to go with it back in the day.
• 02:17 - Uh Oh! Outsourced remake. Between that and the lack of graphical pizazz here, I'll bet most of GAF is shitting all over this right now. :D

• 02:25 - Oh yes! Oh fuck yes! I will buy the crap out of that amiibo! (Failing to see how this makes it more than "a prettier remake of the same game", but carry on, Shibata.)

• 02:32- Compatible with the existing Zelda amiibos too. Eww, pee column Link. Come on, Nintendo, how about a proper adult Link amiibo?
• 02:39 - Oh. I was kind of expecting this to be releasing imminently. I still have hope that this isn't taking the place of the new Zelda on the Wii U though, but with this releasing next year (almost certainly), we're getting into more dangerous territory on that one, I fear.
• 02:47 - Okay, March 4th. Yeah, that early in the year, I think it's safe to say that they're not positioning this as a sort of consolation prize for Wii U owners. Hype train re-engage!

• 02:56 - Oh snap, it's a retail release. I was thinking digital with the amiibo released to coincide with it, but hell yeah, I'll take this, especially with the soundtrack included (which, surprise, I really loved).

• 03:28 - Oh crap! A wild Zelda Wii U appears! Really wasn't expecting a confirmation of that here, but I'll also take that. Looks more cel shaded than the last time they showed it, I think. And whoa, does Link have brown hair here?

 

• 03:29 - No, it's blonde. He's wearing a hood, not unlike the one Zelda wears in Twilight princess when you first see her actually. Some connection maybe. Time to revise your timelines, everyone.
• 03:44 - Oh? Some stop and swap action with the Wolf Link amiibo. The Twilight Princess connection plot thickens... Or not...
• 04:02 - I'm trying to think what Zelda games they haven't released on the Wii U VC yet. Majora's Mask and.. Minish Cap, maybe?

• 04:07 - Of course! How could I have forgotten the two DS games. Such a great fit for the Wii U. You won't even be able to play these on your TV! :D (2D sprite-based games with minimal touch screen interaction: those are the types of DS games that'll look good and work well on the Wii U, Nintendo. Not these.)
• 04:41 - It's a Zelda-heavy direct. Triforce Heroes now. Yep, still don't even have a 3DS. :D I did just pick up Four Swords Adventures for the Gamecube though, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles actually. Now all I need is a house and three hookers to play them with.

• 06:03 - Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam. *Sigh" And all of a sudden the realisation that there's no true Paper Mario sequel on the way becomes a crushing disappointment once again. I'm sure this'll be fine though.

• 07:30 - For a second there I thought they were adding Paper Mario's badges to Mario & Luigi in the form of cards. Nope, these are just glorified items. Wouldn't want to add any interesting wrinkles to that super fun M&L battle system, would we? :D #SoSalty
• 07:47 - Okay, a few of these amiibo cards have badge-like functions, but again, most of these just work as single use, stat-altering items, as far as I can see. 

• 09:28 - You know, the papercraft battles might be the most interesting thing here to me. Well, aside from the story, which I'm sure will be fun.
• 10:22 - Updates for Wii U games in 2015 now. Slopes! Slopes! Slopes!

• 10:36 - Man, I feel terrible for not having played Splatoon yet. Between Yoshi's Wolly World, watching every bit of Glastonbury coverage (it was fun while it lasted, TunnelBear), Mario Maker and a bunch of other things, it just slipped off my radar. Of course I still bought it though. (I mean, it did come with an amiibo. Come on.).
• 11:59 - Cool that they're still supporting it with new content though.. I wonder if this is where they start charging however.

• 13:22 - Yes. Give me my slopes. Damn it!
• 13:34 - Just the stuff in the recent update so far. Really happy with checkpoints. Everything else, I could take or leave.

• 14:12 - Ooh yes! Finally some searching options, and tags by the look of things.
• 14:23 - Seriously, Nintendo!? A web site, not something in-game? This is going to used for searching by virtually no one, meanwhile loading up levels within the game alone will be as much of a crapshoot as ever. Plus, Mario Maker Hub is already doing exactly this anyway.
• 14:46 - Okay, there is a little integration with the game. Marking a course as a favorite on the site and having it waiting in the game will make sharing levels a little easier at least. Providing people use this site, that is.
• 15:04 - December for the Mario Maker site. Well, can't hurt to throw my levels up there as well, I guess.
• 15:08 - Queue absolutely none of my levels :D (Giants Rule, people: AA63-0000-0092-A8BD Catch it!)
• 15:21 - I'm somehow not expecting any of Dan Ryckert's atrocities to show up here either. :D

• 16:02 - I hate all these people. :D Also, "Nigge"? Really?

• 16:56 - "Which level will you play first?" None of the above, Nintendo. None of the above. #SoSalty

• 17:18 - Xenoblade Chronicles X, and I think I'm having a Chystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers flashback.

• 17:48 - This still looks great, but, and maybe I'm being a terrible person here, I still haven't played the Wii original, so I'll be skipping out on this one for now come December.

• 18:33 - Speaking of skipping stuff, I hear Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash might be one to miss. Definitely won't be bothering with Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival either. That Tom Nook amiibo though? Maybe.
• 18:43 - Wait!? What the hell was that Mario Tennis song? ♫Tennis. This is Tennis, with Super Mario... something♫. What? I... What!?
• 19:10 - Ooh, a new guy.

• 19:27 - Fast Racing Neo. Graphics look quite nice. Played the demo of the first one on the Wii though and found it a bit unwieldy.
• 19:37 - With the color switching and extreme speed here, I'm getting shades of Ikaruga and Burnout here. Hm, might give this a look if there's a demo on offer.
• 21:07 - Yeah, that looks quite sharp. Man, imagine what a Wii U F-Zero could look like. *sigh*

 *Sorry guys, forgot to turn off YouTube annotations for majority of the following pics. That's why you can see an info link... thing in the top right corner of  most of them. D'oh!

• 21:14 - Typoman: a puzzle-platformer with a unique art style, finally. :D (Actually, the art styles I usually like, but you couldn't get me excited about another indie puzzle-platformer at this point.)
• 21:43 - Yeah, this one's a pass for me, I think.

• 21:59 - Steamworld Heist for 3DS. I should probably play Steamworld Dig at some point, right? 
• 22:17 - Hats! Do people still care about TF2 hats? I'd have to imagine that Dota 2 and those dumb steam cards have eaten into that market a fair bit.
• 22:31 - This seems like a neat game (that I'll probably never play either). :D

• 23:07 - So this is Nintendo Badge Arcade. Decorate your 3DS home menu. No thanks, I'm good.
• 23:15 - Nintendo finally getting into that lucrative desktop theme market.
• 23:27 - Oof, charging for random items in games is always gross.
• 23:57 - Pokémon Picross. I have no thoughts on this whatsoever. :D I should probably play the DS picross games, just not on Wii U.
• 24:00 - Another "free to start" game. DeNaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Another Bloody Reblog: October 2015 Pick-ups and More

Okay, I’ll admit it: it's been me all along! :D

No, not much in the way of rarities here, I’m afraid. This lot's mostly made up of a bundle of Mario-related games I bought a few weeks ago, mostly games I already had in some form, but never on the NES/Famicom. It’s been kind of neat to go back and play Mario 2 and 3 without the Mario All-Stars enhanced graphics for the first time though, and it’s proved to be a great refresher course for Super Mario Maker, even though I didn’t quite plan things out that way.

Also picked up a few Konami classics (the two Wai Wai World games and the Famicom version of Kid Dracula, which is super fun), plus Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki da yo Zen'in Shūgō, a follow-up to River City Ransom set in old-timey Japan (JiliK: history expert). I was really temped to grab that one up on the Japanese Virtual Console, but there’s far too much text to try and play it in Japanese. Thankfully though there’s a translation patch out there though and with the cart, I can put it to use on my Retron 5.



Picked up a few Super Famicom and Gameboy games too. Puzzle platformers aren’t usually my thing, but I spotted a copy of Mario & Wario going for a few dollars and I couldn’t resist. Mystic Ark was much the same. All I know is that it’s an Enix RPG that involves collecting people that have been turned into dolls, or something. Eh, it was two bucks and there’s a (really well-done so far) translation patch. It’s got to be worth a shot at least.

The other two SFC games I’ve played a fair bit of already. Magical Taruruuto-kun (top left) looked like a pretty neat cartoony platformer in videos. From what I’ve played of it though, the platforming seems super basic, but the game’s also quite frustrating because if you take a single hit, you not only die, you go back to the freaking map screen. Heisei Inu Monogatari Bow: Pop'n Smash (centre left), I’m enjoying a lot though. It’s a wacky tennis meets soccer game, more or less, where both you and the computer have goals sealed off by blocks. The basic aim of the game is to smash the blocks by lobbing a ball off them with your tennis racket and getting it into your opponent’s goal. There’s definitely a bit of jankiness to it, but it’s been pretty fun, frantic action so far.

On the Gameboy side, I also got the portable version of Kid Dracula, as well as Metroid II and Donkey Kong Land, which I've actually been enjoying quite a bit. It’s impressive how much of the SNES game they managed to cram in there, especially in the animation department. Granted it looks kind of like garbage, and it can be tricky to play with the big character and limited view of your surroundings, but it features all-original levels and the Retron’s save states take a lot of the frustration out. I’d say it’s worth a look if you can get it for cheap and preferably Retron/Retrode it up.



Some new additions to the family. That brings me up to 13 amiibos now. I think. :D Definitely still a few out now that I’m thinking of getting. I’d be surprised if I make it to the end of the year without picking up Sonic and Fox, and maybe the Duck Hunt dog. Overall though, I find most of the amiibos they've released so far either fall into the categories of cool-looking figures for characters I have no attachment to (Palutena, Little Mac, Shulk, ROB) or characters I like with figures that I don’t (Gannondorf, Wario, Link). Chibo Robo will be mine though. Oh yes, he will be mine.



Club Nintendooo!!! Having blown most of my remaining points on the Link Between Worlds soundtrack a few months prior, I was just short of getting the MK8 soundtrack when it appeared, of course, at the eleventh hour before the service shut down, leading me to spend..... too much on eBay for a copy once they started going out to other members. But boy, that soundtrack’s awesome.
That’s not the only Club Nintendo soundtrack I picked up in the last while though. I managed to snag the Ocarina of Time, Animal Crossing and Kid Icarus: Uprising all for about €20 each thanks to a saved search I set up. Not bad. Actually bad though: Pokémon 2BA Master. Thanks, Laser Time.



If the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack hit at the eleventh hour of Club Nintendo, the Endings and Credits CD hit at the twelfth. This time though I wasn’t about to spend *cough* *cough* *cough* euros on the damn thing. Instead, I bought a few unused Club Nintendo codes on eBay, enabling me to clear out the last of my stars in style. (Though it really bums me out to think of how many more I'd still have to play around with if I hadn’t spent all my Gamecube era ones on all those terrible wallpapers. Damn it, Nintendo.)

Also grabbed the Mario 30th Anniversary double CD, and, let’s address the elephant in the room: I bought the Data Discs Shenmue soundtrack...



...which is pretty rad, but it’s the thing that finally got me to cave and get a turntable, and I held out for so long. Vinyl is just something I have no attachment to or nostalgia for. Now I have this bulky-ass player and (already) a stack of records that I don’t know where to put, and I'm just ripping everything to MP3 anyway. Couldn’t we have skipped the middle step and you could have just given me downloadable versions of hard to find/non-existent video game soundtracks, Data Discs/iam8bit?



But no, you had to get me out there buying vinyl-exclusive early Now compilations didn’t you, because hey, I might as well. I’m already swimming in a sea of the stuff!

Nintendo Direct (UK) 15.01.15: Not-so-live Impressions

It's January. Let's watch a Nintendo Direct!

• 00:32 - Thanks, Iwata! Okay, what have we got here?

• 00:37 - Dynasty Warriors? Well, it's not the Mushroom Kingdom Warriors I was hoping for, but... (I think I'd totally play that actually. :D Hyrule Warriors is surprisingly enjoyable so far). 
• 01:03 - Huh? That guy looks weird. Still have no idea what this is. Man, imagine if it was another Odama game. (Almost picked that up last year. It seems hard as balls though, especially after seeing the NWR guys playing it.).

• 01:14 - Oh, shit. It's one of those paintings from The Day of the Doctor. Is that a Zygon?
• 01:27 - Welp, it's a strategy game anyway. Looks like for 3DS.
• 01:34 - Grid-based combat confirmed. This must be Fire Emblem X uh, Shin Megami Tensei, was it? JiliK: SRPG expert.
• 02:12 - It looks pretty nice anyway.
• 02:19 - Nope, this seems to be another Fire Emblem game altogether.
• 02:51 - It's another game from the Fire Emblem Awakening team. I should really give this series a go. The GBA version I already have on my Wii U would probablly be a good start.
• 03:31 - Nice to see Iwata looking better. I've totally tuned out of his Fire Emblem pitch though. :D
• 03:52 - A puzzle game now. Puzzle and Dragons?
• 04:12 - Puzzle and Dragons Z. Mysteries abound, made of a deep energy (energy). Foes all around... *ahem*

• 04:20 - Oh, this game's just fucking Bejewelled? No thanks.

• 04:37 - Aww shit. Mario!
• 04:46 - Damn it Nintendo, the New Super Mario Bros. music is not a way to sell me on anything. Bah Bah!
• 05:22 - Yeah, this is totally just Puzzle Quest. Tried it, but I'm not sure even Mario's going to get me into it.

• 05:29 - Oh, it's a retail bundle? They can't be charging full price for this, can they? Those games should €10 a piece on the eShop, at most.
• 06:49 - They're being bundled on the eShop too. Yeah, that doesn't bode well for a low price. So, Pokémon Shuffle?
• 07:04 Holy crap! It's ANOTHER Bejewelled clone!

• 07:16 - With RPG battles! What the fuck, Nintendo? :D 
• 08:16 - Waiting for the other gross, freemium shoe to drop.
• 08:34 - And there it is. Items and turns available to buy on the eShop. I can't imagine this will require them as much as many other free-to-play games, but still: ewww.

• 08:55 - Wait. Did Iwata say Wii instead of Wii U there? This is Wii U home screen. I see some Wii-bannered Wii titles though. Downloadable Wii games finally?
• 09:07 - There we go! Dare I ask how these are going to be priced? :D Not sure there are too many Wii games I still need to pick up really. I've got a heaving shelf of them already, unless these are being upscaled. (I bet not though.)
• 09:15 - I've got to say, the amount of milage Iwata's getting out of that "directley" motion is impressive.
• 10:03 - Nice to see they're offering Metroid Prime Trilogy as (probably) one of the first titles. Not sure I'd be up for that without the ability to run it through Dolphin though. Kirby's Adventure though? Absolutely.
• 10:40 - Oh. These are all out soon. I'm going to say, €29.99 with no upscaling.
• 10:50 - Okay, €19.99; Not too bad. And half-price for the first week too. Shit, I'm totally going to buy Metroid Prime Trilogy, aren't I?
• 10:57 - Punch-Out, Sin and Punishment 2 and Pandora's Tower too. Crap, really shouldn't have bought that last one on release day. Still haven't played it. I didn't even get offered the freakin' coins Club Nintendo were supposed to be giving out for owners of the full Project Rainfall trifecta, pretty much the only reason I bought it in the first place. ♫ Nintendo Direct Rants... with JiliK ♫ 
• 11:09 - Shibata now. No word on any potential upscaling. I'm not going to hold my breath for it.

• 11:08 - Man, this Shibata amiibo is even worse than Rosalina.
• 11:39 - Okay, the next round of amiibos. (He says, like someone whose bought into this dumb toy line, hook, line and sinker. :D) Yeah, don't think any of these are for me though. I do have Toon Link, Sheik, and Rosalina pre-ordered though (screw that guy).

• 11:58 - Yes! Now that's what I'm talking about. Didn't really care for the Smash Bros. Mario and Peach amiibos. These look great though. Damn it, these freaking amiibos are going to break me.
• 12:03 - March 20. That's before the Smash Bros. ones they've just announced. There's going to be let up on these things is there?
• 12:18 - Okay, that's cool. These Mario ones are going to be interchangeable with their Smash Bros. counterparts. Now, if only they'd release a decent Link one. I want the spinner in Hyrule Warriors, but that pee colum. Ugh.
• 13:08 - Yeah, Mario Party 10; Time for a snooze. :D

• 14:47 - This amiibo mode is super weird. Doesn't turning Mario Party into (pretty much) a physical board game remove what little that series has going for it in the first place?
• 15:08 - I guess that Mario Party 10 box art is okay, but for true artistry in box art, I go to Amazon.fr:

• 15:21 - Bandai Namco. I wonder what this is. Man, this'd be a strange place to see Tekken x Street Fighter popping up. :D
• 15:29 - Those look like SoulCalibur characters. Oh no. This can't be another SoulCalibur action game, can it?

• 15:34 - Oh no.
• 15:49 - Free-to-play too. Super. Also, are they echoing that guy. Also, why is he wearing sunglasses?
• 16:20 - Project Treasure. Hmm, those characters sure look a lot like SoulCalibur ones.
• 16:38 - Ah, Splatoon! Really looking forward to this.
• 17:55 - Cool-looking hub, plus customizable characters.

 

• 18:24 - Really like the look of these shopkeepers. That squid guy is rad as hell.
• 19:46 - Okay, Xenoblade Chronicles X now, by the looks of things.