Tag: Nintendo

Nintendo Direct Switch

Presented by Yoshiaki Koizumi, not Yoshi.

Yesterday, Mr Mori the Animal Crossing youstuber predicted there'd be some AC news.

As usual, I bold anything interesting.

  • Fire Emblem N-Gage: Bringing back mobile gameplay from a long-obsolete phone/console. Seriously, 100% gachapon nonsense instead of a tac RPG, everyone involved in this should curl up and die of shame.
  • It Takes Two: Do you like jumpy puzzles and waiting on a switch for someone else to complete their jumpy puzzle? This is a game designed to cause two people to murder each other.
  • Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: "The Forbidden Story Begins" NO! It is forbidden! Taking selfies to capture ghosts, remake of a 2001 game. This would be interesting if it was remade as an AR game set in YOUR HOUSE, but instead it's the most toothless Resident Evil-without-guns possible.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles DLC again: Pay even more up front, to get the chance to pay more every 3 months, for the game that should've shipped at half the price. Very much built on the mobile MMO model, not quite gachapon but there's no sense of a story or world, just battle to grind up numbers, pay more to grind bigger numbers. Shambling corpse of remake/sequels after remake/sequels from the original Xenosaga games which had art and philosophy.
  • Spoogeboob Squizzpants: I'm sure it's fine for 6-year-olds.
  • Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star: This is the opposite problem. FotNS ran in manga until '88, in English until '95, the appallingly ugly anime until '88 and almost immediately fansubbed & brought over. So the audience is basically, what, pudgy 40-60-year-old men with a (non-Lite) Switch? I mean, maybe.
  • Oddballers: Dodgeball was a horrible, traumatic experience for almost everyone except gangs of hooligans held back 2-3 years and ready to take out some violence on younger kids. Let's turn that into a super fun little game, says Ubisoft! Yeah, no.
  • Tunic: Small fox, isometric action adventure game. Hey, you made a game for me!
  • Front Mission: BattleTech ripoff.
  • Story of Seasons: Harvest Moon devs were fucked out of their title by American studio fuckwits, so renamed it. I love the idea of HM/SoS, but in practice the time-driven rush thru the day, and then thru the seasons, drives me insane with time pressure and I just quit the second I fall behind. I can barely handle Animal Crossing's 1 day per day, and have to time travel if I mess that up. If you're not neurotic it may work for you.
  • "Splatfest": Not actually a porn convention, but Splatoon event. Do not care.
  • Octopath Traveller II: Sequels. Why does it always have to be sequels? Same weird mechanic as the first. I might like these if they were organized traditionally, but I get annoyed at "optimal path" games.
  • Fae Farm: Animal Crossing but faeries.
  • Theatrerhythm: Beat match game with new soundtracks, mostly locked behind overpriced DLC. Did you know you can listen to music and play drums or air guitar to it yourself for free! Nobody can stop you! YET. Coming soon: Air Guitar DRM.
  • Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope: Mario in open world: YAY! Fucking rabbids: OH NO NOT AGAIN. Also has DLC/season pass nonsense. Can you just make a game?
  • Rune Factory 3 Special: Farming, fishing, fu… marriage in Rune Factory world. Obviously, Animal Crossing needs in-character marriage with small furry animals to keep up with this kind of amazing innovation.
  • More NES, SNES, N64, Genesis games, latter two only if you pay the super online fee. Goldeneye is fun, right?
  • Various Daylife: Previously reviewed on iOS. Not great, but less gachapon than most daily grinder games. Available now for $28.99! Wait for it to be marked down 90%.
  • Factorio: Grindy factory building/tower defense. Long available on other platforms.
  • Ib: RPG Maker CYOA with artpunk/just plain incompetent graphics for everything not from the RPG Maker tile set.
  • Mario Strikers Battle League
  • Atelier Ryza 3: "The Final Summer Begins": Well, yes, global warming means the world will at some point quit having other seasons, just endless dying in heat. BUT ANYWAY, the game looks really nice, running around a pre-apocalyptic island collecting magicky bits? No mention of DLC, might actually be a real game.
  • Sports.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto-San!!! Theme parks, eh. Pikmin Bloom is a smartphone Pokemon Go ripoff, great. I live in the middle of nowhere and don't go out, doesn't help much. Pikmin 4 on Switch in 2023, no gameplay video. Can't say if it's any good until we do see some video.
  • Just Dance: Just sit on my ass on couch.
  • Harvestella: JESUS GREEN THUMB FUCKING CHRIST why is every damned game a life simulation/farming/Animal Crossing ripoff? FATE OF THE WORLD FIGHTING DOOM / gotta get my carrots planted you know.
  • Bayonetta 3: Bay is wearing clothes. Has now done a complete heel/face turn, is a heroine and not a creepy assassin boob witch. Zero out of 5, do not want.
  • Raincode: Gloomy corporate dystopia. Adorable chibi child detective with sexy gothic lolita ghost sidekick. "Master detective", and even more goofy carnival-ride "solve the case" realm. WHAT. It's like they saw Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and thought "how can we make this even less plausible"?
  • Resident Evil Village Cloud: RE7 DLC but streamed from Stadia because the Switch can't run a high-res game, even if it's a really shitty, undeveloped game.
  • Sifu: Kung fu fighting game? Oh, this is the one where every time you lose, you get older and a compensation skill. Lose a few times because you practice that way, and game over of old age.
  • Crisis Core FF7 Reunion: Remake of a FF7 side story game on the PSP in 2007. Pretty lame, you basically got missions and ran down corridors, did a top view shoot-em-up, got a few bits of dialogue as Zack (remember Tifa's real boyfriend?) Not a bad little game, but it's been a long time.
  • Radiant Silvergun: Galaxian ripoff yet again.
  • Endless Dungeon: SF roguelike shmup ripoff of Diablo.
  • Tales of Symphonia Remaster: Absolutely unnecessary, and minimal effort, remake of a good PS1 RPG but cliché quest. Characters still look like LEGO minifigs with slightly better hair. Sets are not even that good, maybe Playmobil quality with badly-placed decals.
  • buncha remakes. Don't touch.
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe: Orko arrives on a spaceship and follows a local cute flesh-eating blob. "Everyone can play as Kirby!" I mean, it's a Kirby game. So fun but silly.
  • Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom: Sure, probably. Maybe you'll go kill the evil Queen and her whole country will shut down in mourning so you can break all their pots and steal their "rupees" (taken from the kingdom they conquered & robbed). All we see in this video is some hang-gliding and such, could just be an extra map for Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo Direct 2022-02-09

  • Nintendo Direct is all Switch games today, which is good, that's the only console I care about anymore.

What's annoying is, since Nintendo have stated Animal Crossing New Horizons has had its last update (tho they keep doing minor patches so far; and anyway I only check in once a week or so now), there's not really a strong reason to watch these. But maybe I'll find a new crack addiction?

  • Fire Emblem Warriors: So, Fire Emblem Heroes (iPhone/Android) is a gacha game with very simplified tac-RPG combat. Bored the hell out of me, tries to extract money by making you click on a bunch of things to get coins. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a semi-open-world-y RPG with a tactical combat system, but a lot of detail to it; I haven't played, but it looks competent. Fire Emblem Warriors is a dumb action beat-em-up in the same setting, with pompous stage-acting voiceovers that I don't think I could take seriously long enough to reach the next fight. Pass, but looks competent for the kind of junk game it is.
  • Advance Wars, Splatoon, Front Mission: Remake/sequels of lame games. Front Mission in particular A) Calls the mecha "wanzers", B) is all about aiming at a guy's nuts. No.
  • No Man's Sky: Yeah, sure. Been a little jealous of other devices that can run it, but not enough to get one, for years now. Gnome Anne's Ky is finally on a usable device. My experience with Quake, Skyrim, etc. on it is that FPS things can work on Switch, but they're awkward, but Nermanski is slow and awkward anyway so it should be fine. Summer.
  • Mario Strikers Battle League: Weirdly Soccer-like, but not: A) Soccer doesn't allow use of hands, Bowser is disqualified. B) Why are they wearing helmets? There's no helmets in Soccer and they're cartoon characters anyway, head injuries aren't a problem. C) They actually score goals and don't just fall down and whine like babies to con the Ref, so how is this Soccer in any way?! Anyway, least interesting thing you could make.
  • Disney Speedstorm: Racing with Disney characters. Very conflicted. On the one hand, I love Asphalt (tho mostly the earlier entries), and this game is made by them, and it looks really good. On the other hand, Disney is the enemy of mankind and I'd really rather not support them. On the gripping hand, this is free-to-play? So I'll at least get it and feel bad about playing Donald Duck or some other corporate-owned character stolen from the public domain by decades of bribing Congress. Fuck Sonny Bono forever, there should be a line to use his grave as a public toilet. But I'll see you in the game lobby.
  • Star Wars Force Unleashed: Remember when Star Wars Expanded Universe & videogames was the good stuff, and Lucas had mostly fucked off, Disney hadn't bought them yet? Well. Already played this but I surely didn't finish.
  • Assassin's Creed The Ezio Collection, Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece for Cloud (no relation), Klonoa Fantasy Reverie, Portal Companion Collection, Cuphead: Shovel shovel shovelware your old games onto the Switch. Extra credit to Klonoa for literally being a Mario 64 clone that says it's a clone, and is now a reanimated corpse on Mario's system. Portal was great 15 years ago, but dude, the gag's as dead as the Companion Cube. Stop.
  • SD Gundam Battle Alliance: Almost a proper mecha game, except it's the shitty "super-deformed" fantasy setting instead of the hard SF main Gundam setting. Hard pass with annoyance.
  • Chrono Cross Radical Dreamers Edition: Remaster, sure, but a fantastic game originally, and I'm willing to put up with a 3D remaster. Also, there's a text adventure in it! BUY ON RELEASE DAY, APRIL 7.
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Kirby wanders post-apocalypse, overgrown city and eats everything. Level up a town of primitive mutants to shop for powerups. Horrific glimpse of our grim future. Probably good times, will at least grab a demo if they have one. March 25.
  • MLB The Show, Wii Sports: No. Watching the tired middle-aged Japanese executives doing the bare minimum to unenthusiastically play "volleyball" is so sad. Please do not.
  • Live A Live: Unreleased (in US) JRPG in a bunch of time settings? But I've already played Another Eden. Solid maybe.
  • Taiko no Tatsujin: No, and also requires a subscription service.
  • Triangle Strategy: As previously noted, NO. Actually looks worse now that it's closer to release.
  • Earthbound: It's an N64 game in the emulator, so you could already get this. But it's a great game, a little conga line of children take on horrible monsters in malls. You'll love it. I guess this is a reason to get a Switch Online Plus sub.
  • Demon Slayer: Looks like a cute jump-and-slash. Since it's in the quick no-comment section, I assume it's cheap.
  • Mario Kart: Let's take all the old levels and charge you more in DLC for them. No, and you are a sucker if you buy these.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: And now, Zamfir! Master of the pan flute! Lot of overwrought dialogue about friends and fighting and fighting your friends. I dunno. I go back and forth on these. Xenogears & Xenosaga I were fantastic, then they fired the entire team and fucked up Xenosaga II. Xenoblade Chronicles was meh, and I haven't played the sequels/remakes/expansions, confusingly numbered X, 2, 2: Torna, Future Connected, and now 3. Odds are I'm not playing this one, either.

Nintendo Direct

Not a great Direct to start the year. bold for things I'm interested in.

  • Xenoblade? No, it's just Smash. My interest in Smash is zero.
  • Famicom Detective Club: Very interesting, I'll be picking these up if they're not unreasonably priced. Pre-order is nonsense in a digital store.
  • Monster Hunter is offensive, trophy hunting innocent animals not for meat, but because you've encroached on their land.
  • Mario Golf: No interest, even tho I enjoy some golf games, largely because it's Joycon based and I have a Switch Lite.
  • No More Heroes III: "Save the world!" It's yet another NMH game, you do stupid chores in an "open world" with nothing in it, then fight in an arena, and literally jerk off with your blade to charge it back up. Plot means nothing here. Another Joycon game. Hard pass.
  • DC Super Hero Girls: FFS STOP MAKING THAT NOISE! The shrieking pitch of the characters aside, this is not for me.
  • Miitopia: Miitopia should be Nintendo's social network, shared world thing, if they had any ability to operate anything social. Instead it's now a bad JRPG. Pass, and despair.
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Super Mario Items: OH YES GIMME! Especially the warp pipes, my house is up on a high cliff, separated from "town" by the river, so no villagers can reach it. But it also takes me forever to get home. So now I'll put one warp at my house, one on the far side of city center.
  • Project Triangle Strategy: The game is named for its genre, a rock-paper-scissors triangle, strategy game. With some of the most cliché dialogue I've ever heard in a game. Where it does show gameplay, it's kind of similar to Jeanne d'Arc without the cute character design, clever story, or deep tactical combat. If it turns out good despite first impressions, I'll reconsider.
  • Star Wars Hunters: Zero gameplay trailer. Buy it because you're such a Star Wars nerd despite the last 40 years of mostly bad Star Wars, or don't. Pass.
  • Hyrule Warriors: Ha ha no. Really dumb "action fighting" game with inappropriate Zelda skins. Almost any other game is better than this trash.
  • Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword HD: Interesting enough, and they seem to have adapted the Wiimote/Joycon controls to the Lite OK. I played on Wii and it was passable but not great; if you didn't, it's worth trying.
  • Splatoon 3: Zero gameplay trailer. A little bit of character customization in a shoot-em-up where that won't matter a bit.
  • Capcom Arcade Stadium: Free-to-start in-app-purchase arcade. I'm downloading it now. [later] So, some of the games at least are free, but you have to "buy" each one separately in the Nintendo eShop™. Ghouls & Ghosts has maybe the worst controls I've ever seen, I get tangled on diagonal jumps and die. It is sadness.
  • Bravely Default II: Looks fine, probably worth playing if you like this kind of thing. Pre-order, so can't tell now.
  • Knockout City: It's like Smash, but team-based. But it's not even Smash. Total pass.
  • Outer Wilds: You have 22 minutes… Stop. No. I hated Majora's Mask, will not put up with this bullshit in sppaaaaace. I want to lazily coast around looking at and doing things at my own pace, and the Sun exploding puts a crimp in my game style.
  • Plants vs Zombies: Adequate early iPhone tower defense game, long outlived its sell-by date, more of a touch interface game. Do not pay anything for this.
  • Samurai Warriors 5: I love samurai sword-fighting, and sort of like fighting games, but there's not much there, and the ridiculous superpowers ruin the historical fighting concept.

  • Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection: You are the legendary ninja Ryu Hayabusa… You fight giant crabs, because that's what ninja do, right? These are all fun games, "ninja" in name only, very stupid, but fun.

  • Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse: Slightly funny joke is carried on way too long.

  • World's End Club: Very cartoony/Flash-animation endless runner with cutscenes. Not much game to the game.
  • Neon White: Very weird "flying cards shoot angels" game, with at least 3 art styles mashed together incoherently. Pass.
  • Legend of Mana Remastered: It's a great game, one of the prettiest action RPGs of the old times. I have it on iPhone, old graphics upscaled. I don't think I like the new graphics, the original pixel art was perfect.
  • SaGa Frontier Remastered: Great game, art update. Unlike Mana, I think the art could use an update; I'm not sure I like this, but it may be better.

What I'm Playing: Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics

What I'm Playing: Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics

I loved the version on the DS, so I got this the moment it was released on Switch.

You start by picking from a set of little human pieces, which you can recolor their skin & hair, but not their appalling clothes. I almost went with Dad there, but in the end Cool Bro looks better. Looking at the random other players later, I see a lot of them chose that or Suit Guy. As I've noted before, Nintendo has Mii avatars, and then doesn't use them in games even where it'd make sense. You see a little face photo of your Mii in some games, but it should use your Mii in the world! Nintendo is so frustrating and anti-social.

Then you go to a globe UI, with figures representing "guides" that give you a menu of a few games. Or you can just pick any game from a preposterously long line menu, or you can hit X (up button) to switch to a grid which is more reasonable. UX is very confused, always a couple extra button presses or spinning the cursor around a too-large area to get to anywhere you want. You unlock more guides by playing games, earning trophies.

Your piece has up to 5 "recommendations", but you can't set them from in the game, you have to go all the way back out to the globe, find your piece, and add them from a list. And these don't help you jump back to a game fast, you have to find it in the grid every time.

Like almost all Nintendo software now, there's no settings for audio, and the "music" is driving me insane, but I need the sound to play some of these, so I'm constantly muting and unmuting. At least in the old days, Nintendo's music had complete scores, but they've apparently fired all their musicians, this is just beep-doo-beep-de-beep, over and over until I stab someone.

Each game starts with couple figures playing the game with often amusing commentary—the kids narrating Connect Four as a samurai duel is fantastic—often enough tutorial for anyone, but it immediately comes up to a menu with "How to Play" and Play, and hitting + in game usually gets a help menu. They're trying to teach you games you may be unfamiliar with. However, showing the tutorial EVERY time you start a game until you hit X (up) is insipid.

There are medals for winning against the AI and playing at least 2-4 times depending on the game, so there's a little grind possible if you're into that.

Nintendo History guide gives you: Hanafuda, Gomoku, President, Shogi, and Riichi Mahjong, which Nintendo made for a century before going into the videogames business.

Many of the games have local and Internet multiplayer, which I haven't yet tried. I expect the usual Nintendo® Quality™ networking, which is to say everything will drop out constantly. I'd rather play against AIs.

Current playlist of 11 good, 16 bad, 25 unplayed doesn't seem all that positive, but the good games are usually very good, and you can just ignore the stupid ones. The constant terrible music is the only strong negative.

I'll keep updating this post as I play more of them.

★★★★☆

bold is good, italic is bad, plain is I haven't bothered to play it yet.

  1. Mancala: aka Awari. Anyone who's typed in games from Basic Computer Games is intimately familiar with Awari. It's a weird little game, but fast and fun, and there's just enough strategy against a smart player (not the AI) to make it hard to win.
  2. Dots and Boxes: "Boxing" is also very familiar from school. The first player (default to you) is at a severe disadvantage, but it's possible to only give up a few boxes to the second player, and then clean up the rest.
  3. Yacht Dice: aka Yahtzee, Poker Dice. Nice enough, but I found the controls a little finnicky, it should not use the "do stuff" button for both pick and reroll. Slaughtered the AI, as one would expect.
  4. Four in a Row: aka Connect Four. Pretty dull, aside from the tutorial.
  5. Hit and Blow: aka Mastermind, Bagels, etc. with an unfortunate translation name. But I dislike the color-matching version, I'm a numbers person.
  6. Nine Men's Morris: I don't understand this game. You start playing while setting up, and it just screws anyone who loses one piece. Also obviously should have been #9.
  7. Hex: Again, should've been #6. It's a road-building game, dumb low-challenge game.
  8. Checkers
  9. Hare and Hounds
  10. Gomoku
  11. Dominoes
  12. Chinese Checkers: aka Pegboard. Not Chinese, sort of checkers except nothing is captured.
  13. Ludo: aka Parcheesi, Sorry!, Trouble, etc. I switch to the 3 dice to come out rule, rather than automatic/on 6, otherwise it's Parcheesi (not quite Indian Pachesi), a good being-dicks-to-each-other race game.
  14. Backgammon: An ancient dice game, a good fun game. I dislike the joycon controls, cursor-moving by spike around the track instead of selecting individual pieces left/right.
  15. Renegade: aka Othello, Reversi, etc., pretty standard. I lost really badly the first round, and then eked out a win, I've always been bad at this game, or anything that requires me to do deep analysis of simple positions (go, checkers, etc.), I'm a broad strategy for complex positions (wargames) thinker.
  16. Chess: There's a sort of lesson program, but the starter AI is incredibly suicidal, so it's not even interesting. Probably it gets harder, but I'm not that interested yet. I dislike the set design, it's very hard to tell the pawns apart from bishops, queen from king, and there's no alternate set option. Still, it's Chess.
  17. Shogi
  18. Mini Shogi
  19. Hanafuda: Very pretty cards, but I've never learned the sets, and visual association like this is harder for me. AI let me win 3/3 on this, which is crazy since I was just clearing chaff, I never saw more than 2 cards of a good set. However, after winning the guide "gave me a gift" of Mario-themed Hanafuda cards, so that might be easier for me. I think this might be worth practicing at.
  20. Riichi Mahjong
  21. Last Card: aka Uno, Crazy Eights. The card branding is almost but not quite infringing on Uno, so it hits that uncanny valley effect, and I kinda hate looking at it. AI didn't stand a chance, I don't know what they were even doing, picking cards at random? There isn't much strategy to Uno, but no strategy means you lose.
  22. Blackjack: Gives a limited number of rounds, and chips but you can go into debt. Does not have Split, which is kind of amateurish, and it doesn't have the dealer check their down card on A or 10 up, so you might play a round and find out they have Blackjack. It's bizarre beyond belief that they didn't make Blackjack be game #21, but #22. But I can always play a few hands of Blackjack.
  23. Texas Hold 'em: aka Poker.
  24. President: aka Asshole, Daifugo, etc. Kind of an annoying party game, giant hand of cards to manage at start. I hate the rich-get-richer mechanic, which is why it's sometimes called Capitalism, but it's more like Monarchy.
  25. Sevens
  26. Speed
  27. Matching
  28. War:

    War, huh!
    What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'
    Say it again, war, huh!
    What is it good for? Absolutely nothin', come on!
    —Bruce Springsteen, "War"

    I timed this, and it takes 5 seconds and one button-press for each card, and it always resets the cursor to the rightmost card, so it takes a minimum of 2.5 minutes. Was this included as a prank?

  29. Takoyaki: Ten octopus. Almost as random as War, but you get a choice when Joker is drawn, and it's much faster. Winning this nonsense unlocked a Mario-themed card deck!

  30. Pig's Tail: aka Buta no shippo. Instead of a little action game of throwing drawn cards into a pile but avoiding matches, it's a completely random War-like, with a slow "penalty cards" deck.
  31. Golf: Cute little putting game, only has 3 clubs: Driver, Iron, Putter. It's not quite a wacky golf or mini-golf, but it's not any kind of realistic golf simulator.
  32. Billiards
  33. Bowling: Has touch controls or joy-cons, but I have a Switch Lite, so I just went with touch. A little rocky start, but then I can get a strike most throws. IRL, my aim is a little too erratic, but I've played hundreds of hours of Ramp Champ and other touch-stroke games on iPhone, so this isn't hard for me.
  34. Darts
  35. Carrom: Like marbles or pogs, but without the freedom of motion, and a strange "queen" you have to take another coin after or you put it back. I don't know that I like this game, it takes too long and the controls are stupid (stick to move up/down only, L/R to aim?!), but it's competent and kind of interesting.
  36. Toy Tennis
  37. Toy Soccer
  38. Toy Curling
  39. Toy Boxing: Lightly based on Rock'em Sock'em Robots, but without the pop-up heads or movement forward/back, just button-mashing. Controls are A/B to wobble your guy's arms out to hit or up to block, which is implausibly hard to switch between, they should've used L & R shoulder buttons. Normal AI is easy, Hard AI is brutal, I assume the others are unwinnable?
  40. Toy Baseball: Accurately simulates a cheap mechanical baseball game from the '60s, with maybe the worst pitching stick control I've ever seen. Once I got the hang of it, I recovered from 0 runs to 3, while the machine that doesn't fumble with sticks got 6. Not likely to play more. There's no Toy Football, as that's not "worldwide".
  41. Air Hockey
  42. Slot Cars
  43. Fishing
  44. Battle Tanks
  45. Team Tanks
  46. Shooting Gallery
  47. 6-Ball Puzzle: A weird collapsing ball Tetris variant, not as interesting as Bejewelled or Tetris.
  48. Sliding Puzzle
  49. Mahjong Solitaire: 20 layouts each for Beginner, Standard, Advanced difficulty. Has a nice color-assist, which is good if you can't easily make out the stack depth. I can see this being a big time-killer for me.
  50. Klondike Solitaire
  51. Spider Solitaire
  52. Bonus: Piano: The piano has a single octave, the help says the buttons or shaking joycons does something, but it does nothing on the Switch Lite at least. Turning the device upside down gets you a synth with 4 octaves selectable by button, but the keys don't rotate into normal position, so it's pretty unusable. I would prefer a real "toy piano" simulator, but then you may as well buy a teaching piano toy or a proper cheap synth, they're $30 or less on the 'zon.

What I'm Playing: One month of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

I said I was done, and I had quit entirely, but for the 2-year anniversary ACPC has old time-limited items available again in the crafting system, so came back for one last month, and was thinking maybe I'd stick around for the Xmas/New Year's event. Not try-hard, not grinding, just play a couple times a day in the can or before bed. Competition makes these events unpleasant.

My old friends list is about half gone from just being out for 2 or 3 months, some people really purge their friends list quick. Because Nintendo hates social and shut down Miitomo, their only attempt at it in recent history, there's no real connection there and you can't say goodbye or anything. This is the worst part of every Nintendo game, just the endless sadness they dump on you because they're such awkward NEETs themselves, they can't conceive that people might want to make friends and talk to them.

For the most part, this last run has been fine. I like just casually catching fish & bugs, I've got some new items and put them in the camp, got some nice screenshots of it. The flower festival was OK, I only got halfway thru the second stage because I wasn't logging in every 3 hours on a no-sleep schedule like the try-hards, but it is pleasant, the festival NPC was Isabelle, and I got an Isabelle-doing-Powerpoint item for the camp, which is hilarious to me. The fishing tourney started a couple days ago, and I'm again in the bottom 5 of my friends list, but it's OK. I won't be buying any real-money "Leaf Tickets" but the anniversary login has given me quite a lot.

The new mechanics for the trash bird ship are both better and hilariously worse than before; now you need specific items, many of which cost the almost-real-money "Sparkle Stones", and you get to pick from 3-5 unlabelled boxes to see if you get a good item, or just animal snacks. I've sent off a lot of ships with cheap egg clocks and 4 mismatched socks, and got 1 animal friend and a couple sparkle stones for my trouble. Not worthwhile. Nintendo apparently knows this sucks, and are promising to fix it in the update next week.

The "Happy Home" minigame really sucked before; if you had all the items crafted, you just tapped the first item in each dialog and you "won" (no prize, really); if you didn't have them all, don't bother, you lose. Either way there's an excruciatingly long cutscene and progress bar and several dialogs. They've slightly improved it now with some guess-the-item "lessons", where there's a little bit of thought and gameplay to it. Many of the lessons are exactly as bad as before. They keep trying to extract Leaf Tickets from me to pass one of these impossible ones, which is just rotten, shitty mercenary behavior; I loathe Lottie as much as I ever did Resetti, and the developers of both.

But then this bullshit paid subscription thing pops up today, and I'm all "hell, no!" and /r/ACPocketCamp is similarly unenthused/angry rioting mob. I guess I won't be making it to New Year's, and the next time I'll see Animal Crossing is New Horizons on the Switch next Spring. Hopefully they don't let micropayments ruin that one, too.

Nintendo Direct: Animal Crossing New Horizons

More Over…watch? Smash. Poke-Man. Don't care. I'm mildly amused that they make a big deal of cooking curry on rice in Poke-Man. I'm not sure what that has to do with cockfighting.

"Dragon Quest XI S Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition" might be the most Microsofty videogame name ever made. Shame on you, Squenix & Nintendo. But it looks pretty.

SNES retro console is pretty great. But we do already have emulators and old ROMS on pirated sites. Some new cheaty features like making Super Ghouls & Ghosts playable instead of a bitter lesson in frustration and failure, knowing that you will never be good enough to see the end of it, are really not appropriate. And they only work while you have a subscription, so when Nintendo shuts that service down in a couple years, your emulator games go away with it. The SNES controller is awesome… but can't be used as a Joy Con, so it's unusable with other games.

More Tetris 99, "daily missions" gamification. Yeah, great, I've already played Puzzle & Dragons.

Mario & Sanic Summer Olympics! Just in time for winter. I do like these kind of games.

Doom 64, Jedi Knights II, Witcher 3, etc. because everyone's porting every old game to Switch.

Grid Autosports is promising. Farming Simulator! That actually makes some sense on a portable console. Xenoblade Chronicles remaster next year.

Animal Crossing New Horizons: 3.20.2020

I must say, I don't like the metaphor of phone as UI to everything. AC is more of an old-timey setting, it should just have a book for tutorial.

The bug & fish catching seems deep like the console games. Not much detail shown here, like everything in this long pre-release struggle.

Maybe too much emphasis on multiplayer? I don't want people on my island, only animals.

Still, I'm waiting for AC:NH to get a Switch. I miss my Pocket Camp a bit, but then I see reddit or other videos mention how grindy it's got, and I'm glad I quit.

Dragalia Lost

A new gachapon game published by Nintendo.

Super, overly cutesy, somewhat like Legend of Zelda (original) with 3D models in a top-down, flat world and dungeons.

You explore dungeons and fight mobs by tapping, combat's fast and very casual. You can bond with dragons you've summoned and shapeshift into them; basically the adventurer/assistant model used in DanMachi.

There's a little comic book story, haven't had time to read it yet. The music is perky and varied, though it's a bit loud until you can get to the main menu and options about 10 minutes into the tutorial.

Cute enough to play a while; I'm still pining for TES:Blades. There's not any obvious equivalent to DanMachi's "Syr's Lunchbox", a cheap monthly subscription of goodies and currency, which I prefer to buying IAP currency directly.

Downloading a bit at a time is annoying. In More, Options, System, there's a Batch Download button at the bottom, to load everything.

Setting a "Helper" (the character you contribute to other players) is under Friends, Helper. Obscure UI. But you get 300 "Wyrmite" (the free gem currency) for doing it!

My player ID as Kamimark is 9320 9801 641, friend me.

Nintendon't Fake NES Controllers

One of the few things I liked in the latest Nintendo Direct was "NES controller for Switch! Though there are good 3rd-party ones, but sweet."

Turns out this is a complete bullshit product: ArsTechnica says they only work with online, emulated NES. There's the Dick Nintendo I know and barely tolerate because they hate their players.

So, 8BitDo is still the best option.

Nintendo Direct

Nintendo Direct 2018-09-13

  • Luigi's Mansion: Eh. I liked the original some, largely the gag being the Wiimote was like a vacuum cleaner or Ghostbusters particle projector, but no interest in more.
  • Katamari Damacy HD: Neat, but just a remaster. How's that Final Fantasy VII remaster going, Squenix?
  • Nintendo Switch Online: Actually saving your game data between consoles?! From anyone else, this is 20-year-old tech. Nintendo has just discovered "using the cloud to not be dicks"!
  • NES controller for Switch! Though there are good 3rd-party ones, but sweet.
  • Diablo III, some other ports. Eh.
  • Town: Boring generic name for boring generic RPG, but it's NEW content. So, good for you!
  • Daemon x Machina: Maybe the worst-looking mecha game I've ever seen, like a reject from N64 suddenly revived for Switch.
  • Yoshi's Crafted World: Branded LittleBigPlanet ripoff.
  • Asmodeee boardgame mobile adaptations. Yawn.
  • Starlink: Is this the terrible Starfox game they previously canned, or a new one? I dunno. I loved Starfox64, but all since is disappointment.
  • The World Ends With You: Fuck yeah. As previously noted, I resent the iOS port ripoff, but I loved the game.
  • Team Sonic Racing: Arcade racers are a thing I love, but they showed a few seconds of gameplay. Who knows.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: How to turn your friends into bitter enemies, the videogame.
  • Final Fantasy XII, and more ports: Nice, sure, but I've got every one I care about on iOS or Playstation. STILL NO VII HD, SQUENIX! WAY TO RIP MY HEART OUT A SECOND TIME LIKE YA DID WITH AERIS, YA FUCKS! I'm fine, it's fine.
  • Smash: Don't care. Even with Isabelle. Enjoy getting face-wrecked by a fuzzy dog-girl, nerds.
  • Animal Crossing: 2019. Fuck! I've been done with Pocket Camp for months. Minimum 3 more months, and "2019" in Nintendo Time probably means Q3 or Q4. My body is ready NOW.

Miitomo End of Life

When Miitomo came out, I thought finally, Nintendo had got a clue about online services, made someplace that could be a hub for your "Nintendo identity", let you make custom Miis to play in other games, or even use as avatars for other places, hook up chat and friends list for all other Nintendo games…

But, none of that happened. It stayed a small closed service that connected to nothing, never let you do more than change clothes, change the wallpaper and flooring of your tiny empty room, and chatter at annoying questions, the talking people do when they have nothing to say.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has its own much more primitive avatars and limited set of clothing, at least it's active for now, but there's very little "social" to it.

Some years ago, I went into Line Play with someone, and despite spending no money, just freebie coins, I ended up decorating this house, which is still there (had to stitch some screenshots together, there's no "photograph whole room", only a video capture). This is what Miitomo should've been like:

Line Play house