It’s not a very notable thing, and we don’t see who the hands belong to, but it just seems like what they went for IMO.

Cadence of Hyrule is pretty good, more forgiving and more of a connected map with item-based puzzles compared to Crypt of the Necrodancer. The map is reordered between games, but it’s mostly designed rather than fully procedural. It’s fun.

It borrows heavily from a Link to the Past visually, but has references to many episodes. You’ve got enemies from Breath of the Wild, Gerudo, Goron, even a full Majora’s Mask inspired DLC.

Regarding Order of Ecclesia, it’s even less connected than Portrait of Ruin, which at least has a central hub. Only the very last part opens up a bit but it’s not a big area. The rest is almost completely linear and made of separate, small levels, featuring a bit of backtracking for specific quests. Calling it a metroidvania is almost a stretch at this point.

It is pretty good though and I liked it a lot. It almost feels like the missing link between classicvanias and metroidvanias, especially in hard mode.

All those lazy bums getting their nutrition from free IV drips.

In Cadence of Hyrule there’s an “enemy” (more like a trap really) that’s a pair of white hands coming from the ground which grabs you and prevents you from moving for a couple turns. I am pretty sure it’s supposed to be that guy.

It’s not a floor/wall/ceiling master, there are wallmasters in the game too and they’re a lot bigger and brown coloured.

Just tried, turns out I had already signed it.

Return to Dreamland is an original game though. Which is even more confusing in Europe where it’s called Kirby’s Adventure Wii, while being completely different from Kirby’s Adventure.

However, Nightmare in Dreamland (GBA) is an actual NES Kirby’s Adventure’s remake.

Kirby game titles are a mess, especially since they’re almost all different in every region.

IMO I think it’s less “understand” and more “find a way cheese those bullshit Iron Knuckle fights”. I’ve completed Zelda 2 a few times. Those are still torture and terribly un-fun.

I was going to recommend Bomberman. Super Bomberman 4 on SNES in particular is very fun, you can grab not only bombs but opponents too, and there are cool mounts with special powers. A bit chaotic in some arenas, but the classics are still there of you want them, and then when everyone gets better ot wants a quick laugh, you can go for the crazier ones.

I’ve been hearing about this for so long I honestly can’t remember whether I’ve already signed it.

Yes, I got it. I mean No! No, don’t repeat that!..

Stop. For the love of Hylia, please shut up.

…Fuck you, old bird.

I had CPC Jaws, it was an action game.

Pure videogame logic. You had the tiniest submarine and you had to explore underwater caves full of killer starfish and other unspecified marine creatures. The goal was to fish out parts of the ultimate anti-shark gun and use it on the shark.

Said shark patrolled the area just below the surface. Not sure how big the submarine was supposed to be, but comparing sizes, I think that shark must have been a freaking megalodon.

If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that’s only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming out of pipes, yeah, I’d say that one was hardly a new thing.

Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that’s a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, …)

Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.

Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.

Social media never was press.

Mirror’s Edge technically was on console before PC. Only for like two months, but still.

Not really. I am just a bit younger, growing up between the 80s and 90s. I still play old games, only those that aged well though, but sometimes decades after their prime. I play new games a lot too. And games from any time in between, as long as they do something right.

And there are many, many games around which you can bond just as well as you could back then. Not even talking specifically about multiplayer games (which I don’t play very much at all) I’ve always been a fan of “co-piloting” games, just sharing the experience of playing, spectating, commenting around a game.

Some games are fantastic for this. Some games are rich enough that you can share your experience and discover other people do stuff completely differently. This sort of always existed (for example, what’s the right way to complete Legend of Zelda?), and this is still true even for somewhat simple games, but possibilities have only increased in range. I am pretty sure nobody plays a game like Rimworld or Tears of the Kingdom the same.

Dude. Mario Kart sells consoles, not the other way around. You’re delusional.

I have the Switch 2. MK world is nice I guess, but it’s nowhere near what 8 was. It feels like they were so proud of their connected gimmick they decided they would create nothing for this episode.

8 cups, almost all of them redone old tracks. The “highways” connecting them feel very similar except a couple areas (and those include, again, bits of old Mario Kart tracks). I mean, the way they redid these old tracks is cool, but base MK8 also did that very well with its 4 retro cups, and had 4 main cups full of awesome new tracks. And that’s before DLC/Deluxe added 4 extra cups. Not counting the pass for the Tour tracks, those were subpar.

There’s a lot of music… But apart from that game’s theme, all of it is remixes from Mario games. The karts also are almost only rides from previous episodes.

The free roaming mode is frankly not that great. I had loads of fun messing around in Forza Horizons games, but here it’s just a bit boring. Challenges must be activated and interrupt your driving, they’re mostly so easy you can mess up and still clear them, and though they do track records, they don’t do anything to make you want to improve them. Also you don’t meet other players. For fuck’s sake, the last actual Mario game had you meet and play seamlessly along random people!

MK World is like 90% fueled by nostalgia. This is not what I expect from a new Mario Kart game.

I don’t know what’s included in batocera, but obviously, there’s a big difference between GBA and NES/SNES multiplayer.

NES/SNES multiplayer is one system with 2 controllers plugged in. To do multiplayer on GBA each player needed their own GBA, and you’d link those together. So if you emulate that on one device it would have to emulate 2 or more systems at once.

Yes please. If it’s not kitsch, weird and/or flashy as hell, it’s not true ESC. There was a year when it was like almost everyone had agreed to sent their most boring crap, it was terrible.

Kinda ironic for someone with that last name.