Nintendo Switch Catch-All 2.0

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Hopefully they don't email you on your birthday with news of these incredible savings.

I got one of those this week. While I appreciate the sentiment, Nintendo, I'm not exactly interested in buying anything else from the Wii U eShop...

I'll be so happy to get $4 off my next digital purchase... :/

Which might be Pokken Tournament DX so I can try and connect online to battle Domano!

Spoiler:

This is a lie I never play Switch games online with people I actually know in some fashion.

That reminds me that I need to get my friend code into the OP tonight.

So people who kickstarted Aegis Defenders and wanted the Switch version will have to wait. =\

I can't seem to edit it, so I'll put my code in my sig.

athros wrote:

I can't seem to edit it, so I'll put my code in my sig.

Delete "htmlview#" from the end of the URL

BNice wrote:
athros wrote:

I can't seem to edit it, so I'll put my code in my sig.

Delete "htmlview#" from the end of the URL

Interesting. I didn’t realize that would stop editing. Edited in. Thanks man!

Eurogamer seems pretty convinced Bamco Shanghai is handling Metroid Prime 4.

Tiny Build is announcing 6 games for Switch tomorrow. My bets are on Punch Quest, Hello Neighbor, Party Hard 1 & 2, Streets of Rogue, and Graveyard Keeper.

And Level-5 is finally on board with the Switch with a port of The Snack World: Trejarers in Japan.

The best part here is that it shows Nintendo is committed to working outside the confines of their halls for major releases and not just Warriors games. Until development heads south and Nintendo pulls a Star Wars 1313.

I honestly thought the rumors were simply that.

garion333 wrote:

The best part here is that it shows Nintendo is committed to working outside the confines of their halls for major releases and not just Warriors games. Until development heads south and Nintendo pulls a Star Wars 1313.

I honestly thought the rumors were simply that.

My google-fu is garbage this morning and I can't find any info on that studio. Have they actually released anything? And if not, does that mean that MP4 has been in development since 1313 was canned?

According to the Eurogamer article they have a number of staff from the canceled Star Wars 1313 game, hence the reference.

garion333 wrote:

The best part here is that it shows Nintendo is committed to working outside the confines of their halls for major releases and not just Warriors games.

You do remember that Bamco also handled a good chunk of Smash 4's development right? And Capcom and Sega have been trusted with Zelda and F-Zero titles in the past.

Also worth reminding people that Metroid is still a b-tier (at best) franchise in terms of sales.

If the rumor does pan out I'm really curious about what Retro is working on...

garion333 wrote:

The best part here is that it shows Nintendo is committed to working outside the confines of their halls for major releases and not just Warriors games. Until development heads south and Nintendo pulls a Star Wars 1313.

I honestly thought the rumors were simply that.

The last few Metroid games have been developed outside of Nintendo, so this wouldn't be all that surprising.

[Insert argument here over how often Nintendo uses outside devs and what qualities as "major releases".]

BNice wrote:

And if not, does that mean that MP4 has been in development since 1313 was canned?

Highly unlikely. If they had been working on this for nearly 5 years I'm pretty sure they would've announced its existence with more than a logo.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

The best part here is that it shows Nintendo is committed to working outside the confines of their halls for major releases and not just Warriors games. Until development heads south and Nintendo pulls a Star Wars 1313.

I honestly thought the rumors were simply that.

The last few Metroid games have been developed outside of Nintendo, so this wouldn't be all that surprising.

[Insert argument here over how often Nintendo uses outside devs and what qualities as "major releases".]

Metroid Prime 4 is definitely more of a major release than Federation Force.

My point is that Metroid: Other M didn't completely scare them off from investing significant funds into the development of MP4 mostly outside of Nintendo. I'm sure Nintendo's still involved, that how they do things, but the rumors seem to indicate that Bamco is handling most of the heavy lifting here.

Then again, it does appear Metroid is Nintendo's "we don't care what you did with this property, we're not interested in making these games with any of our EPD groups" series.

shoptroll wrote:

You do remember that Bamco also handled a good chunk of Smash 4's development right?

Sure, but that's still Sakurai's baby. Even if he doesn't want to be a part of Nintendo, he'll always be a part of Nintendo/HAL. Either way, Sora doesn't exactly have a huge team, right? They can't do it all on their own and afaik they never have.

garion333 wrote:

Metroid Prime 4 is definitely more of a major release than Federation Force.

My point is that Metroid: Other M didn't completely scare them off from investing significant funds into the development of MP4 mostly outside of Nintendo. I'm sure Nintendo's still involved, that how they do things, but the rumors seem to indicate that Bamco is handling most of the heavy lifting here.

I'm not disagreeing. Nintendo just works with outside developers a hell of a lot more than they get credit for (even setting aside that regular collaborators like Intelligent Systems, Game Freak, Good-Feel, and HAL Laboratory are all independent). It's not something that even started with Hyrule Warriors but for some reason that's where people stick.

Given Fire Emblem Warriors and Pokken Tournament, I feel like Bandai Namco with Nintendo's supervision is a phenomenal combination. I don't have experience with Hyrule Warriors, but the two have collaborated enough that I don't mind if they're being overseen working on Prime 4.

Of course, these are still rumors.

I've been going back and reading some old interviews regarding the Metroid games and it's been a pretty fascinating history, including the fact that Gunpei Yokoi and Yoshio Sakamoto, despite being credited as such, aren't really the creators of the franchise. It's also never really stuck to any one team until Metroid Prime. The franchise has been a continual process of refinement and reconsideration as to what makes Metroid what it is but with modern sensibilities. While I remember the outcry of Prime originally being announced as an FPS, I forgot the lack of faith in Retro, a newbie studio that was a complete mess.

Part of me would love to see Metroid go back to the original team leads over at Armature, but the "why" of them leaving Retro is still a bit odd. Granted, I don't have much experience with leaving a game studio, but while those former leads discuss it being an amicable parting and being "the right time", I feel like if it was amicable then being escorted out of the building by security is kind of heavy duty.

Regardless, I think a new studio could be fine handling a new Prime. There's also a lot of speculation based on Tanabe's comments that Prime 4 will take place on one planet with time-travel or distortion as a core mechanic, and Sylux (was it Sylux?) will be a central character as teased by the end of Corruption.

I don't expect this to be a 2018 game, but I do expect to see our first glimpse of it some time this year.

I still maintain (and will continue to maintain) that the best thing that could happen to the Metroid series is if they took the canonical story and threw it in a bin. Just start the damn thing over every time like they (effectively) do with the Zelda games.

Does Metroid really need a plotline outside of "explore new planet(s)"? They can even keep and ignore the stuff they came up with previously and the game would be just fine.

I am of mixed feelings regarding Metroid and continuity. At this stage, if they wanted to hit the "reset" button, I think that would be a totally viable option. On the other hand, I really liked the world building that developed in Echoes, and despite Samus' status as a silent protagonist in most of these instances I feel like there's room to explore her in fascinating ways. Both the SA-X and Dark Samus kind of represent Samus stripped of humanity and turned into war machines, and with the write people you can do something interesting with it.

...I mean, they haven't, and given Nintendo's style of development I don't think they could or would, but... just sayin'...

That said, I do think the greatest problem is the constant reliance on the Metroid species being at the core of everything. Again, the Prime series did a good job about making it more about Phazon and the Metroid Prime creature in the form of Dark Samus, and Samus being witness and hero to the goings-on of the galaxy seems perfect, but I feel like no one can get rid of the Metroid creature which, despite being titular to the franchise, has never been the actual core of it.

That said, if they decide to effectively undo Return of Samus/Samus Returns with Metroid clones developing a sudden new repopulation just so you can justify their existence, alright, fine, whatever. But I really like the setting as established in the Prime games (awful writing in Corruption notwithstanding), and would love to see more of it explored, even if primarily through scanned logs in abandoned outposts and ruined worlds.

In what way has story ever been detrimental to game play in the Metroid series?

jrralls wrote:

In what way has story ever been detrimental to game play in the Metroid series?

In what way has story ever been a benefit to gameplay in the Metroid series?

Woah, I didn't realize that was coming to Switch. I am super interested in having a game like that on the go.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
jrralls wrote:

In what way has story ever been detrimental to game play in the Metroid series?

In what way has story ever been a benefit to gameplay in the Metroid series?

Depends on how you mean. Reading scan-logs about how the space pirates were canceling their experiments replicating Samus' morph ball after the last test subject became mangled was always a delight for me. Still, that's technically world-building. The more "traditional" story in a Metroid has gotten, the worse it's been executed. But this is largely because Nintendo doesn't care much about story anyway. I mean, RPG's are a genre known for narrative and yet Fire Emblem has some atrocious writing.

I guess it's not so much "story" so much as "knowing how and what kind of stories to tell".

I guess I should rephrase: In what way has a continuous, canonical story ever been a benefit to gameplay in the Metroid series?

For me, I'll say that such a thing has been a detriment to gameplay, because of all the saggy-baggy cutscenes and story breaks required to explain why and how Samus has yet again ended up on a maze of a planet fighting bubbles with teeth. Kindly skip over all of that and just bring on the bubbles.

I agree, atmosphere is way more important than story in Metroid.

How is Mario Odyssey in handheld mode? Like how well can you see what you're doing? I'm about to go on vacation and I'm thinking of taking my Switch because Mario is the game I most want to play. I've only really played it on the TV and outside of looking at it for ten minutes here or there, so I haven't gotten a sense yet for how that will hold up over longer play periods.

I played the entirety of Mario Odyssey in handheld mode, and it's just fine. It looks more or less exactly like it does on TV, and the UI is appropriately-sized to not be squinty.

I played about 40% of the time in handheld mode. I can't remember having any issues aside certain optional motion controls being more difficult to pull off.