Nintendo's Miiverse is dead. However, that doesn't mean that all your message board posts have disappeared into the ether. Drastic Actions and the Archive Team have launched Archiverse, an unofficial but very thorough collection of Miiverse posts. There are roughly 133 million posts, 217 million replies, 76 million screenshots and 72 million drawings -- all told, just shy of 17TB of data. It even includes developer-specific communities and the E3 communities that Nintendo delisted.
We live in a time of fear. Fear of other people, fear of our government. We’re afraid of where we are, but more than that, we are terrified of where we are going. We can hardly predict what will happen in a given year, and technology complicates all of that. What will happen in five years with our world evolving the way it is? 10 years? 50 years?
Well, you’ve already guessed it. Bad things happen. Tragedies befall unsuspecting, ordinary people through increasingly powerful and pervasive technology. The line between what we can do and what we should do has been painted over with acrylic paint, and all we’re left with is a cold, fractured vision of human nature taken to its logical conclusion when our greatest desires are only a keystroke away.
If you're ever in the mood for another metroidvania but you don't have a ton of time to invest in learning the lay of a new land, Renegade Kid's Xeodrifter might slot nicely into your schedule. It's on the shorter side, it's good at what it does, and soon enough, it'll be available on Nintendo Switch.
Unlike Xeodrifter for Wii U and 3DS, the Switch version won't have cross-buy.
"Like the Metroid titles that inspired it, the music, graphics, and world/enemy design are more than worth revisiting a few times a year," Holmes said in his review. "This may be Renegade Kid's best game yet, despite its relatively short length." If all goes well on Switch, maybe we'll get a sequel.
Edmund McMillen and James Id are setting aside more time to complete their Binding of Isaac prequel/spin-off The Legend of Bum-bo. After missing its planned December 2017 launch, the puzzle RPG is now striving to release during "the first half of 2018," according to McMillen.
For those wondering what’s new with the legend of bum-bo, @jamesid and I have expanded the game a bit and pushed its release back to the first half of 2018. Expect news and a teaser trailer by feb! http://pic.twitter.com/AEXL1BRxDu
If you haven't kept up with this game, it's about matching tiles. That said, everything is presented through a familiar Binding of Isaac lens. You'll make matches to gain mana and cast spells to inflict damage, defend, counter, heal, and modify the board, among other effects. "Many items synergize and combo off one another and once you bring trinkets into the mix things start to get really crazy."
This time, McMillen says he's pushing the item-combo aspect further by "always giving the player two choices on what item they want from a treasure room as well as adding a 'casino zone' at the end of each chapter where the player can use their spoils to buy/replace/modify their current spells or even spin the wheel of fortune and raise their stats."
Some of the most fun I've had with Isaac was when the stars aligned and I became stupidly, game-breakingly powerful, so I'm glad to hear that same sort of feeling should happen again in The Legend of Bum-bo. Release-wise, this is hitting Steam and iOS (and maybe Nintendo Switch too).
Alright, film industry, you're on the ropes, streaming services have got the upper hand right now. You need something new, exciting, and original to revitalize everyone's love for you. You can do this. Show me what you got!
Oh okay, I guess a horror movie loosely based on an eight-year-old internet meme will do.
For those that don't know, Slender Man was an internet meme before that term lost its meaning. It involved a creepy looking long-limbed faceless character that wore a suit and captured children. It peaked in popularity in 2012 and then again 2014 but has been steadily on the decline in popularity ever since.
From the looks of the trailer, Slender Man is going more for the mythological story of Slender Man, rather than the real world story surrounding the internet phenomena. The former to me is more generic and boring. The real world story happened in 2014 when two young girls held down and stabbed a classmate of theirs 19 times because they wanted to become proxies of Slender Man after reading about it online. There's a better story to be told there about internet fandom and its effects on human psychology rather than another jump scare laden horror movie, but to each their own.
Outside of the first 10 seconds the trailer is almost completely devoid of discernible dialogue, so the studio seems to be playing off of the mystery of what would cause some high school student to stab themselves in the eye, or they expect the super hot Slender Man brand to bring everyone out in droves for it's May 18, 2018 release date.
Welcome one and welcome all to this edition of Comments of the Week.
Unfortunately Gmana couldn't be here this week because, unlike me, he has a life to live around the holidays, therefore you are all stuck with me. There are some amongst you who would probably tell me that this edition needs to be festive or Christmas-themed; however, because it is not Christmas Day, I would therefore tell those people that they are objectively wrong.
I've always wondered why Square Enix dropped Dissidia, a complete celebration of the entire Final Fantasy series, on portable devices. I mean don't get me wrong the PSP was widely successful in Japan, but with the right tweaks the publisher could have built up a nice FGC following behind it over all these years.
They might be trying to do that now though, as Dissidia Final Fantasy NT will be getting its own tournament, sponsored by Amazon. It'll take place on January 17 and will involve "some of the world's top fighting game streamers," and will also include "predicting" (read: betting) on winners for prizes via Amazon.
This is neat! I'll be taking a closer look at NT when it arrives at the end of the month, but ultimately the community and its sales will decide if it gets inducted into the FGC pantheon.
The Independent Games Festival has revealed the finalists for its 2018 awards, and this year there are a few definite favorites. Infinite Fall's relentlessly witty adventure Night in the Woods is on the short list for not just the Seumas McNally grand prize, but also the narrative and visual art prizes. And to no one's surprise, StudioMDHR's almost fanatical devotion to classic cartoons in Cuphead has earned it some nods: it's up for audio and visual art prizes in addition to getting an honorable mention for the grand prize.
Monster Hunter: World will be hitting consoles in a few short weeks, but PC players are gonna have to strap in for a wait. Capcom confirmed via Twitter that the goofy hunting simulator would be ready for an Autumn 2018 release window. That doesn't even give us a month, but that at least means it will be launching before December...
Leave it to the IGF to remind me just how jam-packed my backlog is these days.
The finalists are here for the 2018 Independent Games Festival, including nods to recent favorites like Cuphead, Tacoma, Tooth and Tail, Night in the Woods, Heat Signature, West of Loathing, and A Mortician's Tale. There's also a lot of love for the blood-boiling Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
We'll find out the winners on March 21 during the annual Game Developers Conference. This year, League of Geeks (Armello) co-founder Trent Kusters is hosting the IGF award ceremony.
Hexen is harrowing. It's like looking into a dark pit and realizing the pit has no bottom. It's like realizing that somehow the ground gave way beneath you and you're suddenly tumbling into that infinite pitch black abyss below. It is the knowledge, the horrible, perfect knowledge, that darkness and fear is all your existence will be as you tumble forever in utter oblivion.
Do you remember Hexen? Do you remember its pixelated castle walls? Its mud-stained color palette and audio design by way of an abandoned dumpster? Do you remember the betrayal of a promise, a lie so deceitful Satan himself shook his head?
I had forgotten until last week. When over drinks with visiting family we broke out the old Nintendo 64 to nostalgically leaf through some games. We saw all the classics. GoldenEye with its multiplayer bliss. The surprising depth and competitiveness of Mario Golf. The adventurous exploration of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Good times, treasured memories. But then, an ominous red cartridge caught our attention, a stranger in a box of familiar old friends. There was a moment of confusion, a face we could not place. But then, in a terrible shared collective rush we remembered Hexen, and the curse it placed upon our childhoods.
We knew that Phantasy Star Online 2 Cloud, the special version exclusively for the Switch, would be literally running off the cloud -- but thanks to some new info from Perfectly Nintendo, we have more of an idea what that entails.
When you download the game from the eShop, all you'll need is a file that's as scant as "dozens of MB," and you're good to go. Once you have that client, the entire game will update and run behind the scenes. As a tradeoff of sorts it'll be capped at 30FPS due to bandwidth issues, and Sega says to outright expect some lag.
With all that in mind, Sega states that the game will operate at roughly the "five or six" setting for the PC edition, and the free-to-play/microtransaction scheme will naturally return. You can cross-play and cross-save on PC and Switch with the same SEGA ID.
Most end-of-year awards focus on highlighting the best of that calendar year. That's not exclusive to games. Grammy's, Oscar's, MTV Music Awards -- they're all shows that are meant to celebrate entertainment that released in the past 12 months.
Not the Steam Awards, though. Those are a free-for-all of some of the most popular Steam games ever, many of which are still the most often played on a daily basis. As a result, only 4 of the 13 winners released in 2017, which, whatever -- it's not like these awards or any awards mean much anyway.
Party-fighter Brawlout recently hit the Nintendo Switch and achieved an impressive opening, attracting over 50,000 players in its first two weeks. However, there have been some issues with the game's online mode, ones that developers Angry Mob will address soon.
Some players have been complaining of annoying latency issues when fighting online, while others have also had problems with matchmaking, with the game not aligning players to their selected regions.
However, Angry Mob Games have said on Twitter that they have had developers working over the Holidays to stamp out these bugs, along with a few others, and have a patch almost ready for submission to Nintendo. Once approved, the update can be expected shortly thereafter.
Brawlout is available now on Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC.
I've always loved when people insist that they love an inferior city most than the clearly-superior city they currently reside in. "I guess I'm in San Diego right now, but my heart will always be in Gary, Indiana!" Garbage.
Anyway, that anecdote is null and void as far as this headline goes. Lipovka is, hands down, the best city. They have a very nice diner. The education system is second to none. Beach front property. Violent crime might be up a smidgen, but that problem isn't unique to Lipovka.
But, against our better judgment, we bookended this video with Primorsk runs. And it went okay! The quarry's a whole heap of trouble, but Primorsk is a very suitable vacation town.
In addition to the hidden Golf game (that was akin to a good luck charm that should never been opened) and the secret controller message, Nintendo managed to sneak another adorable little reference into the Nintendo Switch's hardware.
This one is arguably more deeply embedded than the rest, as the system OS kernel tells its power management controller "Oyasumi," or, "good night," before executing the sleep process. When the system wakes up, it says "Ohayo" to itself, or, good morning.
Nintendo really seemed to have a lot of fun making this system, and it shows.
You know what I really want to play on my Switch? 2D Zelda games! But with the Virtual Console nowhere in sight, our options are pretty limited. In comes Blossom Tales, a 2D Zelda clone that doesn't do anything amazing for the genre, but it sure does play up the nostalgia.
It has all those things you love: a sprawling overworld, heart pieces, squid monsters. It may not be A Link to the Past, but Blossom Tales is one hell of a tribute to that classic. It does the 2D dungeon crawler justice all while giving off a certain charm that makes it more than another forgettable clone.
Bandai Namco have released a short video showcasing more gameplay from upcoming anime title Dragon Ball FighterZ, this time being played by members of the NFL's Green Bay Packers.
The two-minute video features Packers' quarterback Brett Hundley, linebacker Chris Odom and defensive tackle Mike Daniels, among others, hashing it out on the ArcSys-produced fighter, while shouting at each other, a lot.
Self-confessed Dragon Ball fan Daniels says he likes it when "Goku comes out of nowhere and hits a 'Kamehameha' or something like that". Daniels also goes on to say there's no reason why FighterZ can't be game of the year. Ain't gonna argue with him on that.
Anyway, a lot of fun is had. Fun that you too will be able to experience when Dragon Ball FighterZ launches January 26, on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
While many gamers are aware of Nintendo's Wars series through its handheld iterations, such as 2001's Advance Wars on the Game Boy Advance. Western audiences never really got a chance to check out the strategy series' earlier entries which date back to the '80s.
In fact, even as late as 1998, Super Famicom Wars was developed for the... err... Super Famicom, and was released via the console's Nintendo Power Cartridge system, which allowed owners to write and re-write game ROMs onto specially devised carts.
Some budding Wars fans, keen to visit lost battles of yesteryear, have succeeded in translating the original Super Famicom Wars ROM, making the game fully playable in English for the first time in its history. The modders have noted that that there is some unreachable data in there, so every nook and cranny hasn't been localised, but enough of the text has been translated to make the game playable.
You can check out the translated Super Famicom Wars in the video below, via YouTuber Mangs.
Sometimes the Heroes of the Storm team doesn't nail a hero's fantasy, or as I call it, fluff. This is mainly an issue with older characters (which are usually the subject of reworks), but in the past few years several newer additions have committed this sin. They might be enjoyable to play and add to the meta, but they don't feel like you're controlling something from the appropriate source material.
Blaze the Firebat on the other hand, does nail it. Playing him on Braxis Hideout with the Starcraft theme blaring and calling down a bunker is damn fun.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle came out last August and has already dropped a few add-ons by way of its season pass, but there's more DLC to be had if Ubisoft has anything to say about it.
Oddly enough the game isn't even out in Japan yet, and while Ubisoft is handling the publishing in the west, Nintendo is stepping in directly for their home region. When that happens it might get the first bit of story DLC alongside of its official launch -- as an intrepid eShop user has spotted a release window for the story expansion of June 2018.
There's a lot up in the air at the moment, but all signs point to a worldwide story DLC release in June or whereabouts that summer.
A cookery book, full of recipes inspired by beloved SNES RPG EarthBound, has annihilated its Kickstarter goal, and is expected to go into production for release this year.
Mother's Cookbook is the brainchild of New York chef and EarthBound devotee Bryan Connor, who decided to stir his two loves together to create the culinary oddity. Starting a crowdfunding page, Connor originally set a target of just over $7,000. Now, with over a week to go, the total stands at a little over $22,000, as EarthBound fans clamor for the secret of his Down-Home Burgers.
The finished book will feature around fifty recipes for all occasions, including Mach Pizza and Peanut Cheese Bars. The cookbook will be made available in hardcover, paperback and digital form and will feature over 140 pages of recipes, photos, kitchen tips and nostalgic tales about the 1994 classic.
Mother's Cookbook, published in part by Fangamer, is scheduled for release in late 2018. For more details, visit the official Kickstarter page right here.
When it comes to the Ouya, all I can think about is that horrendous, embarrassing "60 BUCKS?!" commercial. Not all of the work that went into its Kickstarter, its promises, the several good exclusives in its early days -- but that damn marketing folly.
It was just one drop in the barrel though, even if it beats out "anime fans on prom night," as the Ouya campaign just made missteps on top of missteps on its way to the bottom. Now, you can immortalize it if you have a Switch.
By way of Chinese manufacturer ViGRAND, you can snatch up a $25 Ouya remote, which has all of the bells and whistles outside of NFC tapping. I can't speak to the quality of the controller, but it did give me an excuse to post that video again.
Play-Asia have now opened pre-orders for the soundtrack album to the Nintendo Switch smash hit, Super Mario Odyssey, which launched in September of last year and shifted Switch consoles by the capload.
The Super Mario Odyssey Original Soundtrack comes on four discs and features a staggering 136 tracks. Also packaged with the musical marvel is a Japanese booklet featuring comments from the musicians, design notes for the character of Pauline, and full English and Japanese lyrics for theme songs "Jump up, Super Star!" and "Break Free (Lead the Way)".
The OST is scheduled to launch in Japan on February 28 at a cost of ¥4,968, or roughly $45. Also available is the more compact Super Mario Odyssey Sound Selection, which features 12 popular tracks and can be purchased from iTunes for ¥1,300, or $12.
Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland was a 2006 Nintendo DS title that gave us an all-too-terrifying look into the solo adventures of the world's most horrifying map-maker, Tingle.
Tingle's brilliance proved too great for audiences outside of Japan and so the sequel, Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love would never see release beyond its home country. That is, until now. That's right, Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love is now playable in English all thanks to a new fan-translation.
Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love puts players in the role of the Zelda series' map-maker as he explores a romantic picture book along with three companions. You can download the translation patch for your (legally-obtained) ROM from the project's official site. But, if you would rather not see what Tingle has been up to, I can't say I blame you.
You can get a look at the English translation here, thanks to Lutheage on YouTube.
As the old saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, try again. Or, if you're Jonas Neubauer (AKA NubbinsGoody), break a different world record instead. The NES Tetris maestro was trying to break the world record for speed-clearing 100 lines in the classic 80s game and was doing alright until he made a minor error (a basically negligible whoopsie for most players, at that) and lost his focus. "That was a fast 300,000" he says casually, before checking his Twitch comments and then realising that yeah, it was a fast 300,000. Fast enough to earn him the world record for hitting the score in under two minutes, in fact. And understandably, he's pretty excited. And the 100 lines record? He broke it the next day.
