3DS Catch-all

RolandofGilead wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Quick question. How many full 3DS games fit on the default 4GB memory card?

About twice as many that I can fit on my default 2 GB card. How did you get a 4 GB card with your 3DS?

I have an XL. I thought it came with a 4GB card.

People should look at Aero Porter. It's a fast-paced puzzle game built on the conceit that you're running the luggage sorting of an airport. You use the shoulder buttons to raise and lower color-coded luggage to of corresponding conveyor belts, then get them on the planes. There are some twists, luggage for VIPs that need special handling, fuel to keep your belts running. It's all about time management and coordination, and it's really fun. I'm pretty terrible at it, but I will get better. It's $4.99 on the eShop.

Here's the launch trailer.

Is there any way to prompt or force a Spot Pass notification for NSMB 2? I want to download the free DLC Coin Rush levels, but the option to shop doesn't appear yet.

I'm playing Epic Mickey for DS and unfortunately it's not all that good

It's pretty much a game meant for kids. And I'm not the sort who says that things like Mario or Disney movies are only for kids. It's the sort of game where you get a "quest" to fetch an object for a character, then the game prompts you to draw in a picture of that object, and then you get the quest reward yay!

The platforming does remind me of playing Castle of Illusion when I was young, but it's nothing too special. I'm already on the second area and I've heard the game has only four, so it's very short. There is padding in the form of characters giving you quests that require objects / characters located in previous levels (the levels that have quest items in them are marked). Those objects / characters simply do not exist before you get the quest for them, so there's no way to collect everything you need the first time through. It's pretty much just pure padding to try to get you to play each level twice.

There's some cute Disney touches but nothing like the homage that Epic Mickey for Wii was. Probably the best aspect is the cute spritework. If I were still doing perler beads, I would definitely grab these sprite sheets and make some cute Disney characters from this game, because they're even cuter than the Disney sprites from Chain of Memories. But that's the only way this game is superior to a Kingdom Hearts one.

I would recommend this game for a young child but not an older Disney fan. I'm going to finish it anyway though because it's short and I'm stubborn.

I played the demo and came to the same conclusion. Eecially with the weird jumping physics and hand-holding.

Yeah, the jumping physics are weird. You'd think that would be easy to get right in a 2D platformer, but no. It makes the bouncing-on-enemies attack surprisingly fiddly to land, so I stick to the much simpler tornado attack when possible.

Demyx wrote:

Yeah, the jumping physics are weird. You'd think that would be easy to get right in a 2D platformer, but no. It makes the bouncing-on-enemies attack surprisingly fiddly to land, so I stick to the much simpler tornado attack when possible.

I think many of us wanted it to be Castle of Illusion, but instead it's a definite kid's game. Maybe even a cynical cash-in.

The initial footage looked rather low-budget to me, but I figured I'd hold off my opinion because I never played Castle of Illusion so who knows.

ccesarano wrote:

The initial footage looked rather low-budget to me, but I figured I'd hold off my opinion because I never played Castle of Illusion so who knows.

Well, play the demo while there's still a demo. I went from really excited to depressed about it. I just think it's bad. I'm not even sure it's a kids' game / adults' game thing. I just think it might be a simple game and a bad one.

DSGamer wrote:

Is there any way to prompt or force a Spot Pass notification for NSMB 2? I want to download the free DLC Coin Rush levels, but the option to shop doesn't appear yet.

I thought Coin Rush mode and the shop didn't unlock until after you'd finished the first world. I'm not sure, though; it's been awhile.

Demyx wrote:

I'm already on the second area and I've heard the game has only four, so it's very short.

There are actually only three worlds. The Destructoid review goes into a bit more detail if you want to track it down, but basically all reference to an Alice in Wonderland world was removed from the marketing materials just before the game was released, and the boss of the third world was pretty truncated. The impression that reviewer was left with was that the game got shoved out the door before it was completed.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

but basically all reference to an Alice in Wonderland world was removed from the marketing materials just before the game was released

Except for the box art...

I had read the Dtoid review you mention and was quite confused.

Yeah, there's four doors on the box art and one has the Mad Hatter so they didn't do a very good job of removing it from marketing materials, then. That's even more disappointing since I love Alice and was looking forward to that part, as much as I can be looking forward to a part in a rather lame game.

DSGamer wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

The initial footage looked rather low-budget to me, but I figured I'd hold off my opinion because I never played Castle of Illusion so who knows.

Well, play the demo while there's still a demo. I went from really excited to depressed about it. I just think it's bad. I'm not even sure it's a kids' game / adults' game thing. I just think it might be a simple game and a bad one.

That's the thing, I didn't even have interest in the demo as what they had shown looked like a cheap low budget imitation of older games.

I dunno. The whole appealing to nostalgia by namedropping Castle of Illusion left a bad taste in my mouth altogether. Using an older game as inspiration? Okay fine, but show me mechanics that are a refinement on what those older games had done well while bringing some lessons learned from the 15-20 years that passed since the previous game.

From the sound of your impressions, they didn't really have any of that and, if anything, Disney just wanted your generic handheld counterpart to Epic Mickey. GameBoy Color all over again, etc. etc.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Is there any way to prompt or force a Spot Pass notification for NSMB 2? I want to download the free DLC Coin Rush levels, but the option to shop doesn't appear yet.

I thought Coin Rush mode and the shop didn't unlock until after you'd finished the first world. I'm not sure, though; it's been awhile.

I had finished the first world, and then some, and it hadn't appeared. I went into the Coin Rush mode a number of times and nothing. Finally I went online and viewed videos on the eShop that related to Coin Rush. After I did that the shop showed up a few hours later.

Are there any "must have" Coin Rush packs? I just got the free nostalgia pack. Not sure if there are other packs where the level design is different enough and cool enough to warrant a purchase. I don't love Coin Rush on its own. So I'm curious about packs where the levels are interesting enough that I'd want to play for that.

I wish they'd offer DLC of new levels. The nostalgia pack has me wishing they'd provide worlds from games like Super Mario World, complete with a Yoshi. I would pay for that.

The Nightmare Pack (or whatever it's called) is my kind of fun. Probably not your kind of fun though. It lives up to the name.

Damn, February really is going to be packed with game releases.

If you missed Theatrhythm on the 3DS or just really, really like microtransactions, it's going to be released shortly on iOS devices as a free-to-download game with for-pay characters and songs.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

If you missed Theatrhythm on the 3DS or just really, really like microtransactions, it's going to be released shortly on iOS devices as a free-to-download game with for-pay characters and songs.

That's odd. For once Square overcharges for the console game and undercharges for the iOS game.

DSGamer wrote:

That's odd. For once Square overcharges for the console game and undercharges for the iOS game.

I heard $150 being tossed around as the cost of the full content on the iOS version. That seems like more than the 3DS one + DLC, although I haven't done the math.

shoptroll wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

That's odd. For once Square overcharges for the console game and undercharges for the iOS game.

I heard $150 being tossed around as the cost of the full content on the iOS version. That seems like more than the 3DS one + DLC, although I haven't done the math.

Huh. Nevermind, then.

At least the barrier to entry to find out they did another bad port is low.

DSGamer wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

If you missed Theatrhythm on the 3DS or just really, really like microtransactions, it's going to be released shortly on iOS devices as a free-to-download game with for-pay characters and songs.

That's odd. For once Square overcharges for the console game and undercharges for the iOS game.

You think $40 is overcharging for the 3DS version? Is that a general objection to $40 handheld games, or do you specifically think that Theatrhythm doesn't have enough content to justify the price tag?

ClockworkHouse wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

If you missed Theatrhythm on the 3DS or just really, really like microtransactions, it's going to be released shortly on iOS devices as a free-to-download game with for-pay characters and songs.

That's odd. For once Square overcharges for the console game and undercharges for the iOS game.

You think $40 is overcharging for the 3DS version? Is that a general objection to $40 handheld games, or do you specifically think that Theatrhythm doesn't have enough content to justify the price tag?

I just don't think the RPG elements were very well-thought-out. For me it ended up being a pretty basic rhythm game and therefore not worth the $40. But I have no particular attachment to Final Fantasy so I can imagine other people might feel differently.

DSGamer wrote:

At least the barrier to entry to find out they did another bad port is low.

Heh. If the cost of the DLC is around $150, that's about $2 per track (assuming we're just talking the 70 songs on the cartridge) which is at least competitive with Rock Band's pricing. I think that's fair if you're only interested in certain games/songs. However, the 3DS version is $0.99 per song. I'm guessing the extra cost is to defray the development costs and they're probably selling a higher bit rate version on iOS since space is less of an issue there.

EDIT: As was pointed out in the iPad thread, it's $.99 per track and you can get the songs from the 3DS game for about $40 if you use the bundles. The only change is you can buy characters if you don't want to grind crystal shards for them. So pricing is exactly the same, which means blogs like Joystiq are essentially freaking out, yet again, over a) Square-Enix has the gall to charge more than $0.99 for their games, and b) F2P costs moniez

If you're playing Theatrythm for the RPG mechanics you're probably better off playing something else. The main draw of that game is purely nostalgia. At least now you can only pay for the nostalgia you want.

shoptroll wrote:

If you're playing Theatrythm for the RPG mechanics you're probably better off playing something else. The main draw of that game is purely nostalgia. At least now you can only pay for the nostalgia you want.

Yeah. I've played FFT, FF1 and FF2. So there isn't much Final Fantasy that I'm nostalgic about.

I can't imagine the mechanics transferring well to finger-based touch. Someone try and let me know.

And goddamnit, Theatrhythm is worth $40. I'd pay $60. It isn't simple, it just requires time and buy-in. MF.

DSGamer wrote:

I just don't think the RPG elements were very well-thought-out. For me it ended up being a pretty basic rhythm game and therefore not worth the $40. But I have no particular attachment to Final Fantasy so I can imagine other people might feel differently.

That's fair. I've heard from friends here and elsewhere that the RPG mechanics really come into play at higher levels and when grinding for shards, but if you're not into that part of the game, they can certainly seem extraneous. I haven't played more than the demo, myself, so I was just curious why you'd call it overpriced.

DSGamer wrote:

I just don't think the RPG elements were very well-thought-out. For me it ended up being a pretty basic rhythm game and therefore not worth the $40. But I have no particular attachment to Final Fantasy so I can imagine other people might feel differently.

I think a basic rhythm game can easily be worth $40, but I love rhythm games.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I can't imagine the mechanics transferring well to finger-based touch. Someone try and let me know.

That's what an iPad stylus is for >_>

DSGamer wrote:

Yeah. I've played FFT, FF1 and FF2. So there isn't much Final Fantasy that I'm nostalgic about.

The series really doesn't hit its stride until IV. FFT is pretty awesome though, but I can't blame you for not having much to nostalg about.