koifish

On 8/21/2020 at 7:41 PM, cj_robot said:

Here's mine: The Sega 32X is actually pretty cool.

While it does have a tiny library, I'd say it has more good games than bad ones, which is pretty incredible, in my opinion. It seems to me that most of the games never tried to do more than the console could realistically handle and end up running pretty well, even the 3d games. It has a bunch of really good arcade ports and a handful of nice original titles as well. Yeah, the 32X probably should have never existed, but it does and I'm glad.

I feel similarly about the virtual boy. It has a number of fun games and it has a great controller, plus for a monochrome system the graphics are still great, way better than the GBA and even matching DS in some respects.

On 8/19/2020 at 6:45 PM, BouncekDeLemos said:

Haven't seen the Vita library much. I'm sure it has it's share of censorship and unrealeases over to the west due to Sony's strict guidelines. 

Those guidelines were put into effect well after the Vita was dead in the West. That said, there are a number of games on vita basically targeted toward horny otaku. Akiba's Strip, Omega Labyrinth, and Moero Chronicle come to mind, as well as the Senran Kagura games and some elements of Hyperdimension Neptunia. I'm pretty sure there were more that I'm just not thinking of or that I'm not familiar with. Still, seems like there were plenty to choose from. The spiritual successor seems to be those gacha phone games where you roll the dice for sexy jpegs.

48 minutes ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I beat Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions. This was such a frustrating game, but another unbeaten game off the list.

Wow, I can't believe it. I tried this game last year and thought it was one of the most sloppy and least enjoyable games on the whole system. Even sports illustrated for kids ultimate triple dare was a gift by comparison! Congrats on suffering through.

12 hours ago, BouncekDeLemos said:

I'm actually surprised that Bayonetta is in Smash. Did they make her a bit more different/less lewd in the way she wears and "uses" her outfit? 

I miss the old days man. When the term "sex sells" meant something. lol

If I recall correctly, they did change some things, but I don't want to pretend to know for sure. I never played bayonetta much as its not the kind of game I tend to play. Besides, bayonetta's sexuality is more in her movements and in her personality. If the upskirt fog in Ultimate is any indication, then what CERO cares more about seems to be static images that could be made and distributed.

Also, I forgot to mention another victim of this expansion and repression, which is violence in japanese games. I remember reading an interview with one of the directors of one of the house of the dead games. He said the biggest problem with house of the dead in modern terms was that graphics got more realistic, and suddenly the gore of blowing zombie bodies apart grew too much for the ratings board. That's a shame, but ultimately it's hard to survive in games if you don't hit the right audience, and I'm guessing super gore gets your rating bumped too high nowadays.

On 4/25/2020 at 9:38 PM, BouncekDeLemos said:

I still feel that Star Fox on the Super Nintendo still holds up to this day. At least for me. Low polys and framerate don't bother me. I even like it better than the Nintendo 64 version, and I actually love the 64 version. 

Also, I do not like Tifa's new look in the new Final Fantasy 7 remake. I feel that giving her stockings, shorts under her skirt, black undershirt... is kinda prudish. 

 

The irony is that as graphics have gotten better and systems more impressive, the content that is allowed has grown more repressed, as it suddenly looks "too real" and is not acceptable. In particular, CERO is heavily against sexual imagery in games as of late, and it affects all kinds of things which were seen in the past as being more innocuous. It''s the main reason that Mai Shiranui doesn't show up in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, for example. Plus games are taken a little more seriously as "big business", it's not just a bunch of guys doing what they see as temp work without much value behind it.

On 4/28/2020 at 3:27 AM, OptOut said:

As for my actual unpopular opinion, well... Here goes...

A Link to the Past is boring. Not a fan.

 

I think I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this one, lol! 

I agree totally, it's one I only finished once and never revisit. I can't comprehend how people keep playing it over and over, but I do notice that all the zelda randomizers are designed to let you skip the trash parts like Zelda handholding you to the castle, so my guess is often that people who really love it have played it so much in recent times through modified forms, that they have forgotten those kinds of things. Either way, I'll take Zelda 1 and 2 over it any day. Or I'll take Link Between Worlds, it played much better and was more fun.

For me, it's the following:

• The NES is far superior to the SNES, especially for Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom releases. Super Nintendo? More like Slowdown Neverending! RPG gamers need not apply, do as Yamauchi said and stay in your basements
• The 3DS is one of the best systems ever made, in part because you can play every DS game on it, but also for the 3D feature and for its own wide range of good games
• This is unpopular in the VR world, but I think oculus quest blows every other VR system out of the water, and that PC VR in particular is better described as a caged animal simulator, since you get to 1) build your cage of sensors, 2) hang a heavy cord from your face, and 3) stay in your one dedicated VR room and never leave. When you compare it to the effortless setup, portability, and wireless freedom of the quest, and with the much easier development and distribution for homebrewers, AND with the actually reasonable cost of entry, you get a far superior product and a far superior platform for making and playing games. I've owned a Vive and I own a Rift, and I sold the Vive and put the Rift away a long time ago, and I have no reason to ever want to entomb myself in their cage models again. Quest makes those game hardwares feel like the stone age.
• Similarly, I can't take FPS seriously now that I've done VR shooters. When you are "really there" and holding a gun and aiming down sights and reloading it the real way, even if it's dumbed down heavily for video games, it just blows the pancake (VR name for games played on a monitor or TV) shooters out of the water. I can't help but see every pancake FPS as just a stupid floating arm simulator, where you watch little movies to reload or to duck or to do all manner of things. Compared to VR it all feels like a kid's toy, a joke, total nonsense. I still accept TPS though, they feel "normal" still. FPS I just can't play much anymore, barring a few I really like, if they're not VR.
• and since I'm thinking of it, I'm probably one of the only people who hated valve even back when they were actually making games. I never liked script-life or script-life 2: cliffhanger edition, portal wasn't interesting enough to finish, and I can't imagine how they sold people a sequel just because it had a new plot. I did enjoy messing around on a joke server in TF2 though, so not all bad, but overall I think they are incredibly overrated and I really hate how steam fully established DRM platforms as the only way to go forward for PC gaming. Sure they saved PC as a platform, but for what, to see it turn into console port sloppy seconds mixed with whatever indies can't afford to release elsewhere? And with itch.io the latter point starts to feel less valid to me. I pretty much only use steam at this point to play Lost Planet 2.
• Super Mario Kart is by far the best Mario Kart game, and one of the main exceptions to my general dislike for the SNES mentioned above.
• There aren't any good Zelda games released between Ocarina of Time and Link Between Worlds, except for Four Swords on GBA which was a decently fun game.

Of course all the above are stated as opinions that will bother others, and are made less than soft to match. They're also dated to this point in time, so don't expect them to last into perpetuity.

Just as the title says, a thread for expressing your tiny gripes about game systems, or about specific games, or about anything you choose. This is intended as a dumping ground for the "first world problems" of our hobby

My gripe in mind is with the Wii. It's a very nice system with a lot of uses, but one thing that bugs me is that I use mine for both gamecube and wii games, and because that system set straddles the line between 4:3 and 16:9 as video standards, often it feels that half the games I play are meant for a tube TV and the other half for a flat screen, and I don't have one setup with both in one place. That means I end up having to unhook the wii, move it to another room, set up the sensor bar, drag over the wiimotes and nunchucks and GC pads and other accessories, just so I don't feel like I'm getting the wrong video. It's silly and minor, but that's it, and I think it perfectly captures the "tiny gripe" as I described it above.

Any of you have little things like this? I'm sure we'd all be amused if you shared them.

20 hours ago, Makar said:

All solid games! Enjoy man! I had a good time trying to beat my PRs over and over again in NES remix.

I was probably the only person on miiverse who liked the inclusion of Golf on the Wii U version.

Nice work.

It's good policy, when it's new it's high, when it's old it's gold, when it's retro it's time to sell to the cash mob

(in response to the comment about buying old stuff when it's just leaving the shelves)

That reminds me of when K-Mart was open in town. I used to go in there and see random pieces of history stuck on the shelves. Best I ever got was a copy of Gunstar Super Heroes for $2.50. Wasn't plastic-wrapped but everything else said brand-new.

25 minutes ago, Galdius said:

 

You're right. It's easier to buy now rather than in a couple years but I feel like it's already not as cheap as I was hoping it to be. I managed to find a lot of good deals here in Brazil but I already had to import some games and will have to buy a lot more in the US. If only the borders were open, I would definitely go to the US and would save a lot on shipping.

Seems like there are a lot of us looking for it lol
My biggest chance is if one appears here in Brazil but if in the US it's extremely rare already, here it will be almost impossible.

Ah yeah, being in Brazil will make it a lot tougher. Still, better now than in 10 years, when 3ds falls into nostalgia rush territory.

I'd be a bit surprised myself, in my experience it's the space between the end of a system's lifespan and before it's around 20 years old that stuff is the cheapest. You're probably in a good place to start, just not as good if it comes to those few and far between rare games that explode in price early. If anything, those games will probably only get more expensive, so I would think you're still in good position.

20 minutes ago, ChickenTendas said:

I love how the plates go from innocent stripes to the horror that is the Squirtle anteater

Yeah, no matter the rarity, some of them are amazing and other ones are just ugly. I wonder if anyone would even use the smash bros tournament winner plates, seems like you'd be too afraid to wear those on your system.

I think my mania may finally be over: I found a website finally that catalogs all of the cover plates released, and it blows my mind what I found therein. It looks like, not only were there all the plates I had found, but there were also a few more game tie-ins I had never seen, AND there was a series of plates created for European cover plate design contest winners, AND there were (5) sets of plates made exclusively as winner prizes for Super Smash Bros. tournaments. I now feel safe to say that completing a set of 3DS cover plates would be all but impossible; There can't be more than a very small number (maybe even just one set) of those tournament plate sets, and who knows where you'll find them. I guess you could just tie yourself to the commercially available ones, at least then you have some hope.

Anyway, here's the site. All the "who knew that even existed" plates are on page 3. https://nintendowire.com/new-3ds-cover-plates/

The only thing that bothers me is that this site doesn't have the Osomatsu-San plate set listed. If they're incomplete, then who knows what other plates are still out there? A scary thought

I find myself in a rabbit hole of new 3ds plates. Every time I think I found them all, another set comes to my attention.

Osomatsu-San had a bundle that included a console, several inserts, exclusive cover plates, and the game. Pokemon Centers in Japan sold primal groudon and primal kyogre bundles (with exclusive plates for each). Another of the "cute" line includes the "madras check" console with, you guessed it, an exclusive plate set. And a Disney game, Magic Castle 2: My Happy Life, got two LE sets for XL and regular n3ds, resulting in another exclusive plate set. I also checked and unless the nintendo website just stopped updating, there are more "standard" plates I thin that aren't listed, namely, the "spring yoshi" set which is made to match the system theme (which IIRC is named the same).

Yet I am probably still missing more.

I have bought some stuff on nintendo store, but never the refurbs. Interesting little sub-market. Makes me want to collect some for future prospecting. I figure at worst it's NOS.

This is me with some of my game and watch wants. I don't even want them for the CIB, just the play model would be fine. I don't see Crystal Screen Balloon Fight go on sale much, and the most recent sale was a CIB for 1660 USD! I wish I had had a job 10 years ago when I swear I was seeing them sell all the time for 500 or so. Same on the mickey mouse panorama, though I just started watching for that one. And speaking of, there's a Mario the Juggler for sale on eBay right now, and I can't wait to see how high that auction goes for. It's the only time I've seen that game go on sale.

5 hours ago, Galdius said:

I would never imagine to be 76 differente plates.

Yeah, and a few of them are crazy expensive. I don't hope to collect a bunch of plastic plates, but it is interesting to me. For a time I was  buying ones I liked via japanese imports; I got rid of them and now I slightly regret it, but I don't really care that much. I have my one favorite set, so it's not all bad. Still, the numerous plates out there make me marvel at what it would be like to try and collect them all unopened, especially all the EU and JP exclusive 3DS bundles.

On 8/7/2020 at 1:48 PM, WhyNotZoidberg said:

The Wii is a fantastic console for both gaming and collecting. But that's a discussion for another thread.

Indeed, sorry for posting off-topic

I was actually here to ask about kisekae (cover) plates for new 3DS. I have been buying up some hardware as a backup storage ever since I saw that my new 3DS was suffering ghosting on the 3D mode, and as a result I have become curious if anyone has a definitive collection of cover plates that have been released. You can see the main 76 plates that were released in stores on eBay (and you can see all but the three disney sets on nintendo Japan's kisekae page, I assume they are gone for licensing reasons). But then, there's also the pokemon 20th anniversary plates, the two dragonball plate sets, at least two hello kitty sets that I have seen, there's the mario embossed black and white sets, which I think are classified separately from the other four sets of Mario embossed plates (?), there are also at least two that I cannot find anywhere but in more exclusive console bundles, one is a diamond-studded pattern that was bundled with the EU SKU that bundled in style savvy 3, and the other is a japan-only (?) Which is colorful pastel dots with a soft yellow border. I also remember a random set of monster Hunter plates which I think were both numbered AND EU-exclusive. Now, I think I might be missing some and misrepresenting others, but aside from the 76 I think none of those are really classified anywhere beyond being part of a given console SKU. Plus, I can't really find record of all of them beyond the statement here and there on a game news site of a given console bundle. Plus, there are bundles that just include plates which were separately released, such as the mario 3ds bundle in the US, the animal crossing bundles (all of them use separately sold plates), and some other Japanese bundles (monster hunter X, colorful stars) so it further muddies the water. Sorry, I'm spewing too much about plates! But that's the level to which I'm curious about them, and I can't find much on the released sets. Anybody who can help me out?

Some edits, the EU SKU was for Style Savvy 2, the second dragonball set was an EU SKU for Extreme Butoden, and the white monster hunter plates are exclusive of the main 76, so I think that means they were also EU only. I also forgot that one hello kitty set was normal commercial offering, but the other set was exclusive to a JP bundle, and I also forgot two more LEs: one in the Mario DoCoMo plate set, and the other was the EU giveaway of the ambassador edition new 3ds; Those systems have a special set of plates that say Nintendo in big bold kanji on the top plate. Finally, I believe the white mario plates from the U.S. Super Mario series are exclusive to that set; The normal plates that were sold separately were only in black (as well as the pink/blue/wood/felt models).

I'm starting to wonder at this point if I should just write my own guide, I seem to be tracking down most of the releases, at least info about them. Keep hoping there's a wiki somewhere to save me the time.

Since I haven't found anything, I'll note three more I've seen; One is a "kyogre set" which seems to be another Japan-only console bundle, and then another brand-new to my eyes is a South Korean bundle that included exclusive Mario plates. That set of plates sold online recently for 300 bucks, so it's safe to say that they aren't around much in the west. Finally, I've seen pictures of a set related to the Japanese cartoon show "Osomatsu-Kun", probably a tie-in with a video game. I don't think they are part of a bundle but I also haven't seen proof one way or the other.

On 7/27/2020 at 5:35 PM, Makar said:

This makes me wonder when we'll see Wii prices take off. It's still a relatively cheap system to collect for. Glad I got all the 3DS games I wanted when I had the chance, although I think it's only certain games taking off. Stuff like fire emblem is still cheaper than the original MSRP. Im really surprised with how cheap fire emblem echoes is. So maybe the train hasn't quite left the station just yet for the 3DS. 

Collecting for Wii, I would think, would be less popular, just because it's such an easy system to both hack and emulate, and thus avoid ownership of the games but still being able to play them. That, I feel, takes some wind out of the price value, as you lose the crowd that just wants to buy for playing. Plus, even if you are in it for collecting, the system has a big reputation for shovelware. I doubt it will ever take off as a whole; Certain games will hold value and most won't hold any at all. That's what I would expect anyway.

I'm working now on completing Avenging Spirit, currently halfway through. It is tougher than I expected.

Afterward, I'd like to tackle Altered Space, it's a pretty fun game now that I've tried it.

3 hours ago, Gary Hobbesworth said:

Yeah, there have already been some games I really enjoyed but have no interest in since they basically have a finite lifespan. Of course publishers don't care, since they'd rather have no one play their old games they never port than let people emulate them.

Or better yet, be able to sell the remakes on new systems without any competition from the perfectly functional old game, as was seen already in the halo master chief collection.

2 hours ago, Gary Hobbesworth said:

I hope single player games don't become seen as obsolete by publishers, multiplayer games feel more like rentals to me, eventually their communities die and there's no one to play them with anymore.

Or worse, they turn into steam library tombstones. This is a problem for more and more games going forward; the final fantasy crystal chronicles remake being online-only multiplayer is another example coming up. The gamecube original is still just as playable as it was in 2003, but the same won't be said of its remake once the playerbase dries up and the online services close down.

4 minutes ago, Andy_Bogomil said:

I still wonder how successful the model will be moving forward as we see fewer and fewer of these single player games. The sales of this game will drop to nothing in the coming weeks where as online games can continue to sell dlc for months and years after the fact.  Still a success no doubt but with the popularity of the first not a huge surprise. I think remakes and sequels will continue to dominate the single player scene.

I also bet BoTW2 will be the best selling Switch game when released but my initial thoughts still stand. Think of the difference in release between OoT and Majora's mask (18 months) compared to BOTW and BoTW2 and BOTW was significantly delayed for the Switch. 

Not to mention they will likely involve the similar process of heavily recycled assets. The biggest change I would say from those two examples has to be complexity, and it can't be understated. There is a lot more going on in breath of the wild than in the 64 Zelda games. This is almost universal across the board for these games, the laundry lists get longer and the games get harder to finish. Even the infamous horse shrinkage in red dead 2 was likely a non-trivial task; Add another thousand things like that and any game will take that much effort.

On 7/12/2020 at 7:23 PM, CMR said:

This is how I feel.  I also tend to go after games that I can enjoy playing over and over.  That said, my backlog is also huge, and extends back to the PS2.  I'll probably skip the next generation entirely except for Nintendo.  My PS4 is a glorified DVD player at this point.

This, I bought a PS4 and sold it, and my switch is on the chopping block too. My PS3 exists for Netflix. This is funny though, as the target audience really is kids, I think, or at least, people without jobs. I laugh about it, just because no AAA company would ever listen to me, they'd go bankrupt!

On 7/11/2020 at 9:11 PM, zeppelin03 said:

Nintendo seems to be good about telling you about a game when it's far along. The new Paper Mario is a good example. We know BOTW2 is happening but they have set no expectations for release.  I wonder if other companies either waited to announce a game or didn't bother setting release windows would it help.

I think that Nintendo is also less pressured by the push to release a big game. There are several factors for this, the first of which is that Nintendo makes their own hardware and software. They can control additional elements that 3rd parties, even ones closely aligned with other companies, cannot match. Likewise, Nintendo also has a very privileged status in the gaming world, in the form of being their own "big fish in a small pond." Nintendo is its own ecosystem; Even though other developers or companies are bigger, Nintendo makes software exclusively Nintendo, and they also use their privileged status as both creator and owner of the platform to make sure that their games stand head and shoulders above the other games on the system. This has been a tradition of Nintendo's operation for decades; They have, with few exceptions, given themselves a privileged status and positioned 3rd parties as second-class citizens in the Nintendo ecosystem, through giving them less information on development methods, less resources for development, pricing out of cartridges, etc. Through this and through careful brand cultivation, they also maintain a strong reputation and a loyal following, which continues to buy their hardware, software, and merchandise. There is also another privilege enjoyed by nintendo, that is, that they control their pricing and distribution. For many stores or digital platforms, the host takes a cut of sales, around 30% usually. This is true for big box retailers as well as for steam and the console platforms (I believe epic games store breaks the mold here and does a dramatically lower percentage, as incentive to developers to release there). Nintendo, assuming they move product digitally, pays no dues to anyone, whereas the same is not true for 3rd parties.

Another, bigger element, is time. Many big 3rd party devs these days are publicly traded and depend on making their shareholders happy to continue making things go. Shareholders don't care about the subjective concept of game quality, they only care about hard numbers. Telling your shareholders that your big money project is going to take another year likely means a bad turnout for stocks and an unhappy investor base. Nintendo, in this space, enjoys two advantages. The first is that they have a strong record of good financial returns. Even during the desperation of the Wii U period, they were demonstrating sustainability and had a history to fall back on to mitigate investor distrust. Furthermore, Nintendo enjoys the fortune of being in a more consumer-friendly country. Japan and the United States are both investor-based corporate economies, but the United States investment world has a bigger reputation for being cutthroat, and for being investor-focused, whereas Japanese companies and investors tend to focus more on the consumer value created. I admit this is based more on what I have been told by potentially biased individuals, but the expression I have heard from Japanese is that "We invest in American companies, because they care most about their shareholders. We buy Japanese products, however, because those companies care most about their customers." This to me, taken at face value, seems to indicate that a company like Nintendo would be less pressured than, say, Naughty Dog, to release games on time and before critical market periods (holidays for example). Valve is another company that benefits from time, as they are essentially profiting infinitely off of other people's work, and thus do not have to make anything at all if they don't wish to do so. This is a dream come true, and is all but impossible for other developers. Thus, they must grind to get their gruel and cannot afford to sit in place.

Another aspect of time is in Nintendo's products and their tendency to have legs in the market. Many games come out and sell the majority of their units in the first week, with dramatic dropoffs in the following weeks. Nintendo (and actually, some Indies more recently) games tend to be "slow burners" that come out and continue to sell for long periods. This is aided further by Nintendo's seemingly endless hold on their game's pricing; Surely you too have seen that Nintendo games tend to stay at full price for months or years after they release; By comparison, even games like Death Stranding or Last of Us 2 were being sold at reduced value within weeks or months of release.

I will freely admit that this is not based on research but on my own experiences, and that I have no reason to suggest I am an authoritative source for these insights. That said, I feel this is a good set of observations to help explain why so many companies strain and struggle when others can afford an easier pace.