I think I need to be the singular voice of dissent towards this game. Not because it’s bad, far from it, but it’s a major symptom of a malady that has been turning the entire gaming industry to shit for many years.

While there was excitement for this game when it was announced, and it’s seemingly doing amazing (consistently staying above Super Mario Wonder on the eshop), it’s also something of a “why would you do this” kind of game.

So let’s talk about it!

Okay so Sonic wasn’t good (see previous review), but Mario, unlike Sonic, has an extremely solid track record of quality up to now (as far as mainline 2D and 3D games go), and the trailers for this were pretty darn solid (I only watched the reveal trailer, but people were hyped for all the following ones too). These are 2 franchises on basically opposite ends of the quality spectrum, and it’s pretty interesting that these bitter rivals saw a release of similar styles of games in the same week.

So really this is just pure hype and, after release, very good critical reception as well, moreso than Sonic. I’ll try not to make too many comparisons in the review itself, but this whole point of reviewing both of these (especially when my review output has been low recently) is to compare them.

So let’s just go with it right now, not much else to say in the intro!

Well I am actually writing this intro before a Direct was even announced (today is September 10). Because it’s pretty clear we’ll get a Direct this month at the same kind of time as every September in the last 8 years, and I assume 13 or 14 for the date of the Direct (*Edit: okay it was 14, let me update the title*).

There are rumors going for this one from Pyoro, one of the only “leakers” that has actually been somewhat trustworthy so far. Namely a DK game that SEEMS to be Mario vs DK-related… hopefully it’s not one of the Minis games and actually a return to the original MvD, which was a take on Donkey Kong 94. Then one for an F-Zero game, which he is heavily hinting at being F-Zero 99 (please no). And one that seems to be hinting at a remaster of the 2 Trace Memory games (the Wii one never came out in America), or at least a Wii game and a DS game that are linked somehow. And there’s no other leaker saying anything credible. Would be funny if this Direct was the one where Pyoro lost his credibility.

My true expectation is, of course, that even a bad Direct has one or two cool things, so in the end I’ll probably have some thing to be happy about here.

Well, let’s go and watch this Direct! These are live reactions as I’m watching the Direct.

When this movie was rumored and eventually properly announced, my excitement was basically at zero. We already had a perfect Mario movie back in the 90s that is unironically really fun even though it’s only a Mario movie in name, and this was being made by Illumination… who didn’t make very good things in my limited exposure to them (I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the Despicable Me movies, and those weren’t… very convincing).

But trailers happened and they were weirdly solid, the movie came out in theaters and the reception was wildly positive… so I picked it up when it came out on Blu-Ray.

So let’s see if it’s good why don’t we!

I haven’t reviewed anything in a bit, so let’s do it for the biggest game of the year! I actually wanted to write a mini-review for Trinity Trigger when I finished that, but I had so little to say about it, it just wasn’t worth it. Game’s pretty underwhelming.

So anyways, we’ve got the sequel to Breath of the Wild now. I watched the first 2 trailers for this, then nothing else until launch, so I had no idea what to expect beyond “this looks a lot like BotW but it has new powers”.

So now I finished it and I’m gonna do a quick review! Let’s go I guess! This will be a simpler review.

Well something kinda weird happened. The youtube algorithm, for some reason, has been REALLY pushing pokemon card content onto me in the last few months. It’s weird, considering the last time I bought or played with Pokemon cards was literally in 1999, Base Set 2 being the newest set at the time.

Eventually (late Feb/early march) I just figured… Let’s buy a couple Pokemon things, for fun. And now I might be stuck in it.

So what I want to do is talk about my history with the cards and how things look to me, which is kind of being on the outside looking in, in a way.

So let’s go I guess!

It’s a new Fire Emblem! I took way to long to actually post this review! I’ve had this, like, half-written for the last almost 4 weeks now.

I’m not the biggest FE fan out there, but I enjoyed all the ones I played before this (the original Famicom one, the GBA ones, Awakening, Three Houses). This one, I saw the announcement trailer, and watched absolutely nothing else. So I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting into, but it did look cool.

Let’s see if it’s good!

There’s the usual February Nintendo Direct. I am gonna react to it. Whoa! So yes I am writing this intro before actually watching the Direct. It could be the most hype Direct ever, it could… not be. I have no idea, and I have no real expectations.

The rumor mill was a bit dry, but got a bit better… 2 hours before the Direct. There’s the Advance Wars rumors which are kinda dumb (the SKU changed on the eshop so people think that means it’s coming out right away, the other is a random wal-mart employee saying he saw a standee with a February 10 release date for it but provided no proof)… possible, but not likely based on why Nintendo indefinitely delayed the game. There was a bit of an “oof” rumor from Exputer saying they saw video evidence of a remake of Baten Kaitos, though this rumor is weirdly contradicted by this image just popping out a bit before the Direct showing a remaster collection of Baten Kaitos 1 and 2 rather than a remake of the first (could be faked of course). So either way, that’s possible. And that’s about it as far as anything interesting and new. There’s a Syluxhunter thing from last year about some F-Zero related thing, though no timing or details were given for that so… eh. Oh and there’s the whole TotK 70$ price and Metroid Prime 4 appearing/disappearing from online stores kinda randomly, I don’t think that’s particularly useful info as far as content… but it WOULD be bullshit if Nintendo upped the price of their games.

As far as expectations, I’m expecting Tears of the Kingdom to be shown very briefly, I feel it will be a bit more of a tease, leading to a separate Direct just for that game closer to release. I’m expecting something about Pikmin. I’m expecting to not see Metroid Prime 4. And I’m expecting DLC stuff for Fire Emblem, Mario Kart and maybe Splatoon. So that’s a good 5-8 minutes of the 40 that was announced accounted for, which means there’s a lot of time which could just be anything. And also Samba de Amigo since that popped up just a bit before the Direct started, no excitement for that.

So as usual, I’ll be giving short comments about everything in the presentation, and finish it off with my overall thoughts.

Let’s go!

I find this a weird nostalgia bait thing. Like… Kids cared a little bit about this back in the 80s, and it even got a really crap movie because of the success of the cards, but I dunno if all that many people really look back that fondly on Garbage Pail Kids, beyond it being a product of its time. However, I’m kinda into this concept of making new games for old systems, especially now if you make sure to, you know, make them available on modern platforms too. One of the best examples of this is Battle Kid, a game that was stuck on NES for a bit but is now available on Xbox and hopefully will come to more platforms.

So I figured I’d grab this on a sensible system so I got the PC version. It will come on an NES cartridge later if you like spending like 7 times more than the game costs to get a collectible version of it… Yeah, not a fan of that price point.

So let’s see if this is a good NES game or whatever!

Well yesterday we got the announcement of both a new Nintendo Direct (the first big one since early February) and, a bit later, a new State of Play. Because both are on the same day, I figure… let’s make them fight.

So here I’m going to do my usual for gaming presentations. I’ll give a bit of an intro, then for each I will post my LIVE reactions with my overall thoughts afterwards… and then we’ll make them fight, see which one was better.

I’m writing this intro and the next segment before the Nintendo Direct starts, that way I currently have no idea how well either of them did.

So let’s go!
Skip to Nintendo Direct
Skip to State of Play