dartmonkey

Damn, that Captain Falcon Mii outfit makes me want to get the amiibo. But looking at the production versions makes me question it. I'm not sure what possessed them to model the characters in such positions. Sure, the prototypes look kinetic and great but they're obviously going to get sat on. The Yoshi one looks quite cute and true to the prototype. They're going for €9.85 on amazon.es so I might pick him up. I've got a proposition for any EU-based thumbs - it might sound suspect but I assure you it's simply a mild case of OCD that I'd like to satisfy. A year or two ago I was back home (UK) and saw Wii Play: Motion in a local supermarket for £10. This included a red Wii Remote Plus (with the inbuilt Motionplus). I only had the gold version that came with Skyward Sword and they're around £35 individually so I grabbed it. There was also another one so, thinking rationally, I grabbed that one too and ran to the checkout. Result! However, I've had two red Wii Remote Pluses ever since. Which is fine, but. Well, you know. It's fine, but. It's, er... *twitches* Would anyone like to swap a red Wii Remote Plus for a not-red Wii Remote Plus? I suppose black would be the most common colour, but anything except gold and white would be great. Red is sexy and beautiful and my favourite. But I've got two.

Have only just caught up with this thread again. Everything Zeus has said about his daughter's experiences and progression in the Mario games sounds wonderful. I also don't particularly like Yoshi's Island. I've never enjoyed the flutter jump and the whole game feels like a cute escort mission. And I dislike escort missions. Looks nice though. I have a feeling if I played the recent 3DS sequel I would find it extremely similar and most of the internet would crack out the pitchforks and unite to fight #Yoshigate. Except here, where the forums are apparently crawling with heretical YoshiMcSaurus non-lovers.

Just finished Mario Galaxy 2 with all 242 stars. I did 120 a few years ago but after finishing Sunshine I thought I'd finish up the rest before my Wii U arrives. It was an absolute pleasure going back to it and giving Luigi a chance for the limelight. I won't miss the Grandmaster Galaxy perfect run though - I spent about 4 hours just attempting that! I also finished Device 6 a while back ago after upgrading from a Stone Age iphone 1 to a Medieval iphone 4. An interesting little experience with a great ending. You know, I've never really watched videos, except if I need help getting obscure secret collectables or things like that, but perhaps they'd be a good way to dip in to these old games and get a feel for them beforehand.

Excellent, thanks for that. I'd definitely like to go back to the original after a break. I think it'll be easier than going back and playing something like Dark Souls after starting with the sequel. That's another thing I'd like to do in theory, but in practice it ain't gonna happen. I don't have the stamina for another 100 hours of tension and pain. Bayonetta seems a little less foreboding. Now just to wait for my Wii U bundle to turn up! I love the smell of new hardware.

I need a recommendation from any lurking Bayonetta veterans. I've never played it before and my instinct is to jump into the new one first, and then go back to the original if I fancy it because I don't think I'll be missing much in the way of story. If the first game is a 20 hour+ slog I don't think I can stomach two games' worth of witchtime - I'd rather do the 2nd while it's hot off the press and then maybe go back to the original in the future. Is this a massive mistake?

Cameron in the Sarah Connor Chronicles wanders around the house naked not, repeat, not because she's a red hot little fitty but because she's a Terminator and doesn't understand human social conventions. Her 'detailed files' apparently only encompass human anatomy and not 'boobs-out in public=no-no', despite evidence suggesting the first objective of every Terminator is to obtain clothes (and transportation). It's kind of like when Data doesn't understand Troi asking for a 'rain check' and hilariously thinks there's something wrong with the environmental systems on the ship - he's a walking dictionary but apparently he's never encountered that idiom before. The writers stretch credibility in service of what they want at any specific moment. Hell, all series do that, but I think it's only a problem when they're not saying anything interesting by doing it. The Data example didn't serve any plot point or larger story - it was done to make nostalgic TNG fans smile in the final episode of Enterprise (and felt pretty corny, because we're all pedants who know he'd never have said anything so rubbish by the seventh season). I dare say the Sarah Connor Chronicles writers were more successful in achieving their objectives with Cameron in the nuddy.

Boom! Just jumped on the Wii U train. Bundle with extra remote plus+Wii Party, Bayonetta 2 (+1), Nintendoland. Got ZombiU for €5 months ago. Will look around to supplement with Mario Kart and Super 3D World and maybe Earthbound and I think that's Christmas pretty much tied up!

Argh, the white New 3DS is tempting me to downsize from my XL. The sexiness of those SNES coloured buttons are doing their thing. Also, the New XL is reportedly a fingerprinty, slippery git. I'm sure I can wait until they release a New XL in matte white with the coloured buttons. And 1:1 pixel resolution with VC games on the smaller version leaves you with postage stamp-sized screens. But dayam. I guess that little bit of extra power might also speed up save state menus in VC titles too. Has anyone read anything to that end?

FEA is wonderful. I played through on Hard from the off and never regretted it, despite all the resets. It's also a game that I thought used 3D really well to highlight and separate UI elements over the battlefield. Not showy, just well thought out and implemented. Thanks to a few long flights and a Saturday to myself I've managed to finish some video games Bowser's Inside Story was my first Mario RPG. It dragged a little towards the end, and the inability to skip cut scenes was a ballache, but the writing was great and I enjoyed the series' timing-based battles. By all accounts this one was a high watermark so I won't track down the others but I had fun with it. Castlevania (NES) on the 3DS VC. This was my first Castlevania. It feels a bit fraudulent to say I 'played' this - I spent about an hour and a half save stating myself through the game! But where Mega Man 2 was a real pleasure to go through for the first time, this will join Zelda I+II and Metroid on my 'glad it's ticked off but I won't be replaying it' list. As with those games, the kernel of the series is there and unmistakable but it's very difficult to relax with them, if that makes sense. Playing them feels like study time - pleasurable study, but still work. Constantly save stating because I'm terrible at video games probably doesn't help the flow. I'd love for SNES VC to come to the New 3DS - I'd be very interested to see if SNES incarnations of these series feel less like library research. Psychonauts. Again, great writing. The art is grotesquely intriguing - it hangs together brilliantly despite all the sketchy lines and bulbous polys and the variation is impressive. Again, it dragged on too long, but as I get older everything seems to go on too long. Certain features reminded me of Mario Galaxy (the levitation ball and the boss where you ran around the sides of a floating cube mindscape). Fantastic music too. The Whispering Rock tune is just Mario Sunshine, a game I had but never completed, now 100%ed. Most vibrant thing I've ever looked at, but a horrible camera. It feels like a bit of an anomaly, like a throwback to less handhold-y days. 15 minutes before I completed it I discovered a move whereby if you spray the ground in front of yourself and dive into it you start a long slide. At no point was this communicated via tutorial, and I kind of liked that. I miss discovering little nuances in movesets without some doofus NPC saying 'Did you know that pressing X and B together while you're crouching will...'. On the other hand there are several places where I felt I'd have never discovered a certain door/passage/secret without help and some areas felt rushed or unfinished (or maybe just unpolished), which contrasts sharply with the Galaxy games which feel buffed to perfection. Perhaps I'm just a baby gamer and 'Old' Nintendo is too hardcore for me. I always thought the random trees you can burn in the original Zelda were unfairly obscure. Who the hell discovered that the third bush from the left was actually the entrance to the dungeon without reading the tips section of a magazine? Some poor bastard must have been bored shitless and tried burning very single one of the hundred of trees and bushes in that game. I guess kids in the 80s had a lot fewer distractions. Maybe that obscurity represented adventure or value for money. Now I feel cheated by it because my time is valuable and I'm not going to burn every single tree in the Lost Woods searching for the critical path. Sunshine has some issues and a couple of missteps (Bowser's voice acting sounds like I'm doing it), but it's an interesting game.

For me it's worth invoking other games and considering them in comparison, Hotline Miami specifically. People from these forums played that game and digested the narrative and maybe enjoyed it (I did) but the Idle Forums are populate by literate and thoughtful readers. For every one of them there's arguably a dozen others who blasted through Hotline Miami skipping the cutscenes and the 'reasons' for he murderous rampage. For them, and the general media who ignore the narrative or don't take the time to dig around for different readings, it's more or less the same as this. It's worrying that other games too have the same power but have been accepted by those in the know (ie. us, OBVIOUSLY) because the preferred reading is ironic or satirical. It also concerns me, as someone who generally abhors violence and recoils from the recreational murder of innocents in 'reality'-based worlds, that I enjoyed Hotline Miami so much when it shares so many superficial details with this. Blambo's comments shed some light on it, but this game makes me sit back and consider how easily and readily I obfuscate such violence in other games through noble character motivations or satisfying mechanics or orcs. I had to cleanse myself before bed last night with a few green stars in Mario Galaxy 2.

So then, isometric Hotline Miami-alike? The discussion it raises is interesting and relates to Chris' Orc talk on the podcast - if the protagonist was given a murdered family backstory or if the innocent people were terrorist or zombie fodder or they were obscured through a pixel art aesthetic maybe the sickened reaction I had to the video might have been different. Grim as it was, I loved Hotline Miami, and this shares most of the verbs. Hmm. More thought required.

The ones you've mentioned seem to cover the 'MUST HAVES'. Ocarina of Time 3D is a predictably fine game. If you're a commuter Animal Crossing could rule your life for a year. Luigi's Mansion is also great if you take your time with it. There's plenty of good stuff on the eShop, though much of it is also available elsewhere so it depends on what other game-playing devices you have and/or how much you value portability. It's extremely important to me because I may not have completed things like VVVVVV if I hadn't been able to play it on the bus. I've used my 3DS as a 'retro catch-up' device for many NES games I never played originally (save states mean I can actually complete them too!) I would also highly recommend any of the Sega 3D Classics games that take your fancy - M2 have slathered them with care and attention. And if you get bored you can always plough into the DS catalogue too.

Is there anyone else who just can't get into Smash Bros? I've never got it. It always feels like a closed door. I can never commit the controls to memory. Having Mario jump by pressing up feels wrong, even though I know it frees up face buttons for other moves. I've never had fun with it. Maybe I need to sit down with 4 people for the optimum experience, but that's very rarely an option. I've owned every Smash at one time or another, but don't have any now. I just deleted the 3DS demo. This game is sold on its accessibility to all. What am I missing?

I replayed SM64 on DS last year and thought it was spot on, challenge-wise. The camera isn't perfect but does what you want it to when you make adjustments. I felt the camera in both SM64 and B-K were fine, but you had to take active control of them. Funnily enough, I'm playing through Mario Sunshine right now (never finished it originally, want to tick it off the Mario list) and having problems with both camera and difficulty. You can't invert the X or Y axis (it's taken me about 10 hours to adjust) and the difficulty is all over the place. One of the reasons I always preferred Banjo was the character control. For example, Mario will turn in a small arc unless you pull back exactly 180 degrees and that can be perilous if you're on a ledge. Sometimes I'll do a reverse somersault when I don't want to, other times I'll have trouble pulling off that move. It looks acrobatic and feels great when you successfully combo leaps and wall jumps together, but it can be frustrating. Banjo, somewhat less realistically, immediately points in the direction you jab the analogue stick. For me, it's precise where Mario can be jittery and unpredictable. Sunshine is also ruining the camera in Dark Souls and Psychonauts as now I'm constantly rotating the wrong way! I change the settings and muscle/soul memory from 100 hours in Drangleic suddenly spurts in and it's moving the wrong way again

I agree and have experienced this to a certain extent. CoD4 was my first real online multiplayer experience and I quickly muted other people. I had party chat enabled with a group of 3 or 4 friends (and even that took a little bit of getting used to) but the name calling was affecting me negatively. Each game seemed to have a tween with Tourettes. More often than not he was talking to himself because everyone else had muted him out. I too have used the 'headset lost' excuse to avoid talking with forum friends. For me, I wanted to keep them in that box, and actually speaking with them would have broken the spell. On a forum you have time to compose thoughts but in conversation they'd have quickly realised I was an incoherent idiot. I think this type of anxiety is common, though. My sister used to refuse to speak on the phone and I think it was for the same reason. If you're not good with smalltalk it's frightening to be forced to communicate with only your voice - each second of silence further confirms your idiocy.

I'm waiting impatiently for this to arrive on EU 3DS. Release is still TBC. ??? Unless they're delaying due to the rumoured system-wide cross buy thing... which would be nice. But damnit, I've got some long flights coming up!

There is no Rayman - only Zool.

Hyrule Warriors looks like brainless colourful fun. On my scale of interest it's somewhere above Crossbow Training/Tingle's Rupee La La Land(?) and below Four Swords. Surely they'll have a goron in the character lineup? Biggoron. I'm a little surprised at how unanimously positive the internet has been about Zelda U. Aunoma is saying the right things but I'm sceptical about Skyrim comparisons. That field could be it! It looks nice but my eyes are seeing Skyward Sword in HD. Which is nice. Very nice, in fact. I'm just (pleasantly) surprised everyone's so positive. They got a lot of mileage out of very little material. My body is about ready for A Link Between Worlds now. I ploughed through Minish Cap, Spirit Tracks and LttP in quick succession and I needed a break. 'Best Zelda game' is high praise - do you think nostalgia for LttP helps elevate it into that bracket?

Additional gamepads aren't available. They may come out in the future but no software supports it. Couch co-op comes with one person on the TV, one on the pad, but it depends on the game. Different games have different options but Wiimotes are pretty integral to the system. Most first party games support everything but double check. The transfer process is supposed to be painless now, but I've heard horror stories about things like Rock Band DLC. With the WiFi servers now gone be careful if you have any DLC that wasn't purchased directly from the Wii Shop.

Terminator 2. The film is the greatest video game never made. The Terminator is a walking bullet sponge. He has an inbuilt detective/scanning mode. He uses an assortment of heavy weapons. He walks and talks rigidly. Why have Rocksteady not made this game already? There is so much obvious potential in the concept. Yes, he sponges bullets but if he can't pass for human, he's not much good to anybody (yes, I'm paraphrasing the film ). If you consider that he's forbidden from killing anyone, the game could actually be extremely strategic and non-violent. Okay, perhaps non-violent isn't quite right, but incapacitating people seems a little more progressive than beheading. If you had the skill you could tank it or you could stealth with the lights out or use the environment to your advantage, yadda yadda. All that video game stuff. Multiple gameplay possibilities empowering the player with choice...yuk. But hey, the Arkham games have shown how to mash genres enjoyably and make all that hot air into something chunky and satisfying. Also, the T-1000. You can be the bad guy. Morph into the wall to take down guards, copy people, get information, get stabby, run after little boys on bikes, leap onto helicopters. You lack the detective vision but you're a goddamn poly-mimetic alloy! Guns are so '80s - it's all about the knives and stabbing weapons. The movie gives you everything. Great and varied locations (residential, urban, desert, office, shopping mall, flood-control channels, steel mill, future warscape...), car/motorcycle/lorry chases, guns. The goddamn objective based gameplay! It's already a video game, and it's got a massive built-in 30-something nostalgic gaming audience. The worst game I've ever bought was T2: Judgment Day (NOT the Arcade Game) on the Mega Drive. An awful awful thing. However, now they've scrapped the law that all licence tie-ins must be shite, Rocksteady or Naughty Dog must make this game.

The download code for the free game expires on Sept 30th in PAL countries, not sure about US. Might be something to consider. It might be kind of nice to have the game for a while without the console. It could recapture that feeling of having a game but not being able to play it yet. DEVOURING the boxart and the manual...

The best part of that video was when the Batmobile was approaching the ascending stairs and was going to drive into the partition-y bit in the middle and I winced ready for a frustrating deadstop and it just ploughed through the fuckers. Now THAT is next-gen Again, I don't like that he's essentially got a tech deal going with Tony Stark, but the scope of the city and lack of loading is impressive. Do we know if Arkham City will be replicated as it was or are they 'rebooting' the geography? Keeping it the same would give returning players a good handle on orientation.

I've heard good things, but I'm a bit create your own life!d out after Animal Crossing. Metroid announcement today, then. A new game or Retro porting Prime to 3DS? Might speed up production, though 3DS isn't exactly starved of software. And Majora's Mask. It's turning up in too many places and we're not going to see ZeldaU before 2016. My money's on Majora's for early 2015.

Makes sense - that screen is from Bayonetta 1. Speaking of which, I know it's an easy fan request that they throw the original on the same disc, but dev-wise it's a considerable amount of work so I'm surprised. A remastered edition hitting the eshop would have been great, but I suppose packing in the original is a better strategy for them. You don't need to have played the first one but if you don't believe us, you can. Platinum are probably sick of critical acclaim and poor sales. I wanted to play the original but the PS3 version is notoriously dicey. ZeldaU looks...good. Maybe I'm watching at the wrong resolution. It looks very Skyward Sword-y. Lovely, but it's not IGNing me. Regardless of content, the Nintendo video presentation was so much more enjoyable to watch than the others that I wouldn't be surprised to see MS and Sony follow suit next year, or at least supplement a shorter onstage gig with a video. The advantages of editing and sidestepping awkward moments surely trump anything a middle-aged white bloke can rustle up on stage, no?

I've been flicking between sites. Having real trouble finding somewhere I like to stay for any amount of time. Where do you guys get news? Polygon is pretty much Kotaku now. Eurogamer has a pun addiction and a horrible layout. From what I've caught so far, it looks like MS were relatively successful at disguising that 2014 is lookin' pretty damn lean. Sony were a bit more successful. Nintendo are set to leverage the Metroid brand with the game we didn't know we wanted, Samus' Space Pirates Volleyball. From a distance there seem to be a lot of 2D Spelunkey lookalikes and games with an HD, Mode7-y, Starfoxy aesthetic. Pastels and polygons. Gonna sit down tmrw morning and take a closer look at everything. The only individual trailer I've seen is Sunset Overdrive. Points for CoD jokes but it really looks like a cocktail game (1 part Tony Hawk/Jet Grind to 2 parts TF2, garnish with vagina zombies). Also, Cuphead could play like a poo but they have NAILED that 20s/30s animation style. Will get.