tegan

Dillon's Rolling Western, Pushmo, and Flingsmash come to mind. They tend to keep new IPs small, and often avoid risks by attaching an existing IP to something that should have been an original property (ie: Kirby's Epic Yarn was originally supposed to be a new franchise starring Prince Fluff).

Genetically engineer real Pokémon. Serious answers: 1) take more opportunities to actively promote and make use of the eshop. Nintendo's done a really good job of going from being a physical-only company (remember the wastelands of Wiiware?) to releasing absolutely everything digitally. Nintendo has traditionally been very reluctant to ever reduce the prices on their games, but if they were willing to do the occasional flash sale or bundle deal the way thast services like Steam or PSN have been doing, I feel they could really clean up. 2) let other studios make non-canon experiments with Nintendo IP. Kind of like the new Zelda game being made by the Dynasty Warriors peeps, but actually appealing. Secret desire: let Valve design a Zelda dungeon, since Portal basically IS a Zelda dungeon. 3) bring Nintendo into other mediums and bring the existing examples thereof to other territories. ie: get someone to make a documentary about the Nintendo/Universal legal battle over Donkey Kong, or take another whack at making movies and cartoons again. There's been a Mario manga running in Japan for more than twenty years that would probably be at least as well-received as the Pokémon and Zelda manga that have been brought over. 4) take the plunge and fix your online services. Go the extra mile and bring Swapnote back as an improved standard messaging feature across all platforms. Miiverse is great, now make it better. 5) acquire or build relationships with more second parties, as with the current Platinum situation. This could even be a good way to introduce the western world to the Japanese independent game development scene, which is virtually untapped here. 6) Pokémon LOMA. You will make a quadjillion dollars.

I personally appreciate that, literally overnight, they went from a lukewarm apology that missed the point entirely to making a commitment to fix the issue in a future entry. Personally, I'd like to get the game, mention that I wish it met my relationship preferences when I do the Club Nintendo survey. I feel that it would the best way to encourage them to keep making, localizing, and improving the series.

Holy shit, that comment thread just keeps getting worse and worse. The personal attacks against one of the podcast hosts in particular are pretty jarring for a site that's always been pretty progressive.

I was thinking of posting exactly this, but was worried that I had subconsciously made that fact up or something.

Tiny Cartridge has echoed my feelings on the game, but the comments section has been uncharacteristically, uh, bad. I don't normally go out of my way to join in comment thread arguments, so I hope I'm not being too much of a butt in it this time.

I'm actually curious about this too. I've been wanting to play both of those games, and I feel like a Thumbs discussion would be the thing to finally push me to play them. Side note: an amalgam of Molyneaux and Miyamoto would be either my favourite game developer of all time or never finish anything.

I finally got around to watching Trick 'r Treat. That movie is destined to become a classic. It's so perfectly timeless and works so incredibly well. My only complaint is that

I actually have the Nostromo and love it. In all seriousness, I kind of have a problem when people talk about the superiority of mouse+keyboard over a controller for playing games because it's really both situation-dependant and only half-true. A mouse is definitely a lot more precise and useful than a controller in a lot of cases, but a keyboard is still a piece of office equipment that was never designed with gaming in mind and WASD is still a terribly uncomfortable and unintuitive method of moving a character as compared to an analog stick or d-pad. That's why I really like accessories like the Nostromo with their little pseudo analog stick nubbins. I basically can't play FPS games any other way.

Studio Ghibli released their first ever involvement with a live-action production. This short is meant as a prequel to Nausicaä. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzbpwg_giant-god-warrior_shortfilms#.UYAUeoJAumF

You should totes get a-one of these.

Mentions of both Adventure Time (in the LootCrate segment) and potential full names for the Goldfish mascot made me realize that Adventure Time's Finn is probably short for Finnegan. Also, looking forward to Thumbs impressions of Mario Kart 8!

Nintendo talked about some of the stuff they`re doing to expand today. First up, they're doing a Skylanders sort of deal with little character figurines that can be read by the Wii U gamepad's NFC reader or an NFC reader accessory for the 3DS, where the figurine characters will carry over traits across multiple games. Teg predicts: the 3DS accessor comes bundled with Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby and interacts with Pokémon toys. All of the other Pokémon remakes came with weird experimental accessories (GBA wireless adapter and Pokéwalker) and Pokémon is immediately suited to the idea, so why the hell not? Also in the news: a Mario Kart 8 smartphone app meant to share videos and rankings, plus the Wii U is getting another much-welcome system update to make it boot 20 seconds faster this June. Hooray!

High res versions of the EU boxart. Note the red and blue plastic boxes. If they finally bring back coloured cartridges to match, I might buy a physical game for the first time in a year. Interesting to note: I can't see much different in Groudon, but Kyogre definitely didn't have all of those lines running across its back and forehead. Maybe they're new Mega Evolutions?

I was definitely teasing. I've never heard anyone besides Sean use "solid two count," oddly enough.

I assumed they were dead in most cases, but they're pretty explicitly alive and just waiting until they can go home in A Link Between Worlds. Speaking of which, I beat it! There's an alternate ending screen for Hero Mode, as it turns out.

Probably just because omega sounds cooler and thus should be attached to the more popular Groudon. Zeus: I'm gonna' strongly recommend waiting for the remakes just because the third generation games are the most noticeably unbalanced ones. I sort of hope that Norman is still ludicrously overpowered, just 'cause.

So who else participated in FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2014 last weekend? My local comic shop was absolutely packed, with the line to the front counter running all the way up to the second floor. I got the floppy about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Bongo Comics FCBD issue, but I really wish I had managed to snag a copy of the Boom Studios FCBD issue. I mean... Best. I also got the first two volumes of the four-volume manga 7 Billlion Needles for 40% off. I really like it so far. I totally dig that "Penguin Books presents" cover art too. I'll probably order the other two in the near future. It's inspired by the 1950 Hal Clement science fiction classic Needle, about an alien symbiote inhabiting the body of a youth and trying to track down a second, murderous symbiote. The manga puts some really fascinating twists on the story, like having the protagonist be an isolated, depressed girl who's suddenly required to make contact with her peers in an attempt to hunt down the imposter among them, and the creeping suggestion that the symbiotes are pawns of something greater. Lots of vibes of stories like The Thing and Parasyte. Unless the second half is unexpectedly awful, I'd recommend it. I also almost bought the first omnibus rerelease of Ranma 1/2 since I have so much fondness for reading those at the library when I was younger, but I don't think I want to disappear down that rabbithole just yet.

If this weren't on the official Pokémon Youtube channel, I would suspect it of being fake. Apparently these are coming in November, so it seems weird that there's absolutely no gameplay or music or anything in the trailer. I'm glad that they're finally remaking these, given that the originals are the worst of the series and definitely needed a second attempt. I just hope that they don't make half the overworld water routes again. This is gonna' be a long, frustrating wait.

I've been sick for the last three days with virtually no change in symptoms or severity. It's not so bad that I can't do anything, just bad enough to be really annoying.

Officially just making this the Muramasa screenshot thread now. I wish you could turn the HUD off permanently in this game, because the little moments where it's removed for story purposes really highlight how much it interferes with the look of the game.

Howdy y'all! As you may be aware, I'm on a bit of a fixed income right now. Unfortunately it's not always quite enough to cover my living expenses and I've fallen behind on some of my bills, so I'm trying to find a way to make ends meet. I figure by now many of you know my tumblr Let's Draw Video Games, so I was thinking maybe you'd be interested in buying some rad custom artwork! I'm charging $35 for a black and white drawing, with another $15 to add colour. I will not be able to do anything like a vector design or a digital painting due to time constraints, but I won't be half-assing it. PM me if you're interested! (I also get a small cut from my prints being sold on Society6, or you can give me a small tip through paypal at teganrobichaud at gmail do com [displays as a relative's name due to how it was set up, but I swear it's going to me] if you want to contribute that way) Sorry this isn't in Plug Your Shit, but I figure I can make an exception just this once due to circumstances.

I hate to ask again, especially since I'm still working on some things right now, but is anyone else interested? I'm super duper broke. OnO

I'm replaying this in Hero Mode! I'm up to the final dungeon now. This guy's whole deal where he thought he was supposed to be the hero is surprisingly melancholy.