So, Nintendo recently announced a slightly smaller, portable-only model of the Switch. The good is that it's a little bit smaller and is only $200, a full $100 less than the regular switch. Also the thing has a d-pad instead of buttons on the left side, which is nice.
The bad is that it can't be docked so it is not a "Switch"-able- console, it's handheld mode only and some games don't run well in handheld mode; it is still too large to easily fit into most pockets, as it's smaller than a regular Switch, but larger than a model 1 Vita; it doesn't fold to protect the screen like a DS-line system, meaning scratches are likely if you do carry it in a pocket; the controls are now attached to the system so it does not come with the removable joycons that some games require -- Mario Party, all Labo releases, Starlink (physical), and 1-2-Switch, primarily, though other games that take advantage of separated Joycons like Mario Odyssey or such lose that functionality of course as well; and HD Rumble is gone.
... Yeah, those are some pretty big negatives. Sure, it cuts the price by a third, and I'm sure the Switch Mini will sell well, but I at least have no interest in this. I mean, a more portable Switch would be great, but this is not that, it's still far behind the 3DS in that regard.
Super Mario Maker on the Wii U was amazingly fun to play levels in, make levels in, and watch people make or play levels in on the internet. I didn't have a Wii U when the first game released because I was foolish and didn't get one until very late, but had a lot of fun watching videos online of people playing it, then I played a fair amount on 3DS once that version released, and on Wii U after I got one.
And now, the sequel is out! As I said in the title, I'm pretty confident that this will be my game of the year. I certainly can't think of anything that will challenge it for that; Link's Awakening is sure to be amazing but isn't a new game, and nothing else I can think of is really in contention.
And while it's early, I'm already having fun with all three of those things in this fantastic sequel! Well, I haven't made levels yet though I will, but playing and watching are both fantastic. And i will make levels, particularly once I get a good stylus for my Switch. For playing levels, Mario Maker 2 is like the first game but better. It has more stuff, more objects and such, slopes, new visual themes, and so much more! It's pretty awesome stuff. As a Game Boy fan, I particularly like the inclusion of the Mario Land 1 Superball powerup, which turns your character grey, plays Mario Land 1-1 music, and gives you the Superball just as it was there, a bouncy ball which picks up items. This items' use in Mario Maker is pretty obvious and great. There is a lot more too. This game is amazing, and Nintendo says that two MILLION levels have already been uploaded, which is pretty amazing. No Mario Maker 1 levels are playable in this version, but there are so many levels that that isn't an issue.
Also, this time you can play as not only Mario online, but also Luigi, Toad, or Toadette. It's too bad that Toadette is now Nintendo's female character in Mario games and not the Princess or Rosalina as they had before, but it's better than nothing I guess, even if it does continue Nintendo's strange, and somewhat inexplicable, love for Toads -- also see the 3DS and Wii U Paper Mario games for a lot more of that. Anyway, you choose which character you want in the pause menu, so it's not set by level creators.
There is also a multiplayer mode, though I've heard very bad things about the online play's quality. I haven't tried it for myself yet though. Also some of the local play requires Joycons for some stupid reason. I mean, the game supports the pro controller, it's what I use to play the game with single player! Why require both players in the two player creation mode to use joycons? Nintendo does dumb things sometimes...
The game has a single player story mode as well. It has about as many levels as the one in the 3DS game, but has a lot higher production values this time, with a world map, stuff to collect, choice about what order you play the levels in, and more. And some amusing conversations are here too, like the ones with Mary O. and the pigeon in that game. Here you play as Mario, rebuilding the Princess's castle after Undo Dog accidentally undid it. Each level has a different challenge to overcome, and introduces you to a new element of the design. It's pretty good, though it's not what I play Mario Maker for, really; the weird, always mixed in quality fanmade levels are.
So the game is mostly amazing, but it does have a few issues. First, some little touches from the first game, like the skinny Mario and the weird sounds Mario sometimes made while falling into pits are gone. More substantially, creation is a lot worse than it was before because capacative touch screens are awful compared to reactive for serious gaming purpose. I've been saying this for years, but still believe it, and this shows it very clearly! Fingers are horrible for precise touch, so you can't do much of use with that. So, you'll need a capacitive stylus that works with the system and allows for precision, which is an additional expense and will have trouble matching the precision of a reactive stylus if they even CAN do that -- those awful mushy tips are the worst for precision to say the least -- or you'll need to learn the button controls, which I haven't tried yet but won't be as good as direct touch control is. Considering that creation is half of the game, this is a pretty big problem.
Also, friend codes are a thing in this game, and you can't bring your Switch friends list, if you have one, into the game; oh no, that would actually make sense, and Nintendo isn't about making sense when it comes to online anything. So no, you've got to learn friends codes outside of the game, and add them manually. Alternately, if you have a level code you can follow creators that way, but still, they make it a lot harder than it should be. That's to be expected from Nintendo, but still, it's annoying.
And last, in the first game all new levels went into the 100 Marios mode, where you had 100 lives to try to beat 15 levels (or 6 levels, in Super Expert difficulty). Well, 100 Marios mode has been replaced with an endless mode, where you have only a few lives and see how far you can get. With only 5 lives at the start instead of 100, getting far is a lot harder this time; yes, you can get extra lives in levels, but it's tough. I also miss the goal of trying to finish 15 levels and beat the game; instead you now just play until you lose. There are online leaderboards, but still I don't know that it's an improvement. Anyway, in this new endless mode, unplayed levels will never appear this time! Now only levels with a like will. Instead, new levels ONLY go into the New Levels tab in the single-level selection option, so the only ways to get your level played and liked, so it appears in the endless queue, is either to know people who will play your level, beg people online to play your level like everyone else, or hope people play it in the new levels queue, that's it. I'm sure they were trying to fix the "lots of terrible levels in the 100 Marios mode" problem the first one had sometimes, but this isn't good either. Also it can take several days for levels to even get into the queue, at the moment... not great. This issue does seem to be getting better, but the basic design of how new levels are handled is not good. I've seen the idea of a new levels mode, like the endless mode, but just for new, unplayed/unfinished stages, and that's a good idea, I think.
Still, though, what is here is pretty amazing and it's fantastic that Mario Maker is back, because it's one of Nintendo's best ideas ever and it's really great that it's now on a more popular console. I don't know if it matches the first game overall due to how much worse the creation is, but for people who are only playing it's easily better due to all the new stuff. Mario Maker 2 is fantastic and I love it. I should go play some more of it now...
Ben here is- just the worst. One of those "young and hip" conservatives the older ones like to trot out all the time to support their views. Watch a crazed man disassemble him to the subatomic level. It's an hour of Ben Shapiro. I am so so sorry.
It's back, it uses (mostly) muppet based technology (and they look even better than the originals), and once again we get to see this movie that- let's face it- kind of inspired most of the world building in the Final Fantasy games (at least 1-5, 9, Crystal Chronicles, and probably a bunch of others).
I picked this up the day I heard about it. There's no way I was waiting for the 3D remake (the past two 3D remakes have been kind of disappointing, losing a lot of the charm of the 2D artwork. Maybe the 3rd one will be better, but I opted for this.)
It's kind of unprecedented to see an official translation for a game THIS long after it came out, specifically the original ROM. It seems they basically hacked it, so they must have lost the source code. Still, it's done very well and looks nicer than the fan translation, with terms fitting what's been established in the series and a fitting title.
Well, that's all well and good, but there's two other titles here. Final Fantasy Adventure is an oddly titled version of Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden. It's weird the Japanese words I've picked up over the years. As you might imagine, they took the Final Fantasy subtitle and ran with it on the premise that it would sell better with that as the focus. It's a very fun single player game that makes that tinny GB speaker really sing. There's lots of surprising emotion pumped out of that system, and the soundtrack sounds amazing here too. This is the black and white original, not the JAVA colorized phone port, not Sword of Mana (The GBA reimagining), and not Adventures of Mana (the 3D remake). It's a shame it only includes this, but it's done very well. There's no Super Gameboy style options to alter the color scheme as you see fit, but it does at least provide 3 options. One is pure black and white, the second is "A1", the default color palette you see if you plug it into a SGB (Personally I'm not a fan of this scheme for the game and on the Super Gameboy I always switched it to something else) and the third is a yellow/green "dot pixel matrix" setup that goes for such accuracy it makes each "dot pixel" tiny with gaps around them to really push that original look, though I think the yellow-green affair is just a bit too strong. It also gives two screen sizes for each mode. One is a full screen look that does a slight bit of smoothing to make it blend at the higher resolution, and the other is a smaller window more like the Super Gameboy. Take your pic, but I looked very closely and honestly couldn't find any graphical oddities in the stretched mode. It does a VERY good job stretching the image in a smooth way. Other than this, the game includes 4 different regional versions, each with it's own save slot. For some reason, the Japanese original was left out. That's a very strange omission if you ask me, and I can't imagine why they bothered, considering just how tiny these emulated ROMs are. Oh, and the emulation is also very well done.
Secret of Mana properly supports 3 players on one console with linked controllers. No online mode however... If you can deal with that, it works great. Once again, the game is emulated in 4 possible languages (No Japanese), and includes two screen sizes. Other than the two screen sizes, it rotates between turning a smoothing filter on and off for four possible settings. I am not a fan of pixel smoothing personally, so I leave it off, but that leaves the two sizes. On 1080p screens, you're choosing between vertical or horizontal "shimmer" since neither fits smoothly into the native resolution of the screen. On the Switch's own 720p, shimmer seems to be eliminated in "full screen" mode. It may be best to play this on the switch for single player in that case. There's a quick save feature with 3 unique slots. This is also true of Adventure, but since that game lets you literally save anywhere already its not worth mentioning. Secret of Mana definitely benefits from it though.
Trials of Mana, here's the prize. No, it's not a 3 player game (against all logic and the will of the Goddess of Mana), but it wasn't in the original version either. I think a patch could hack it into the game properly if Square Enix wanted to take the time. The translation appears solid and professionally done, the font looking better than most SNES era translations in fact. (It's variable width, rare for SNES games.) The title is fine (much better than Secret of Mana 2, which was the internal name for Secret of Evermore anyway, not this one). The branching classes mesh well with the branching story based on which characters you pick at the start and in which order. The combat system also flows a lot more smoothly than in Secret. There's a reason that this one is the more popular of the two in Japan.
