Due to our parting ways with siteturn and there non-existant customer support I am unable reclaim the domain name tcforums.com so tendo city will need a new name. Please post your suggestions below. Voting will close in 2 weeks.
Afterwards the new domain will be registered and host headers will be set on the old domain to redirect as 301 Moved Permanently.
Yes, after about fifteen years with Nintendo, Reggie Fils-Aime is retiring. He's not all that old (57 or so I believe) so it's a bit of a surprise, but sure, good for him if he wants to. I know I've always been somewhat indifferent towards Reggie, as I didn't exactly love that whole "my name is Reggie" introduction thing back in '04 and he's rarely had enough power to get the kinds of things done Nintendo of America's leaders did back in the '90s, but he will be missed. That latter part isn't his fault, anyway; it was Iwata who chose to centralize power in Japan and not Reggie, after all, he just worked in that system. I'm sure the next person, whose last name is, amusingly enough, Bowser, will similarly be mostly just a marketing person and not an actual division head like NoA used to have in the Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa days. I think in many ways those were better days for NoA in terms of Western developer relations, but modern NoA has done a very good job of attracting indie developer support at least, and that's something.
I mean, the Switch has an insanely large game library! It's over 1800 games already, which is kind of crazy. And almost all of those are indies, and mostly Western ones. Plenty of those games are no good, much like the bad-game-filled Wii U eshop, and finding the good ones can be difficult, but still that shows a lot of developer interest in Nintendo and I imagine Reggie has had a hand in that. Even the Wii U had pretty solid indie support on its eshop, despite the systems' poor sales. The Switch has a lot more bigger name titles because of its success, of course, but both have been successful, as was the Wii shop channel before it.
And yeah, I may not have cared for his memes, but Reggie was good at that stuff right from the beginning and that did benefit Nintendo for sure. Not for me really (or, to a much greater extent, DJ, looking back at old threads here...), but for plenty of people.
So, Nintendo both announced and released this surprise free-with-your-Switch-$20-subscription game in the Direct yesterday. It's basically a Tetris Battle Royale game, as 99 people play Tetris at the same time, trying to balance playing the game as usual on the one hand and controlling who they send lines to when they clear lines in their playfield on the other. I am not the biggest Tetris fan around -- it's never been one of my favorite puzzle games, and I never have put a lot of time into playing Tetris games, just some here and there -- but I would agree that it is a great game. Not the best game, but great, sure.
Despite that though, Tetris 99 is quite addictive and really good! The targeting system adds a complex strategic layer to Tetris, and the core gameplay is simple but great, just as expected from Tetris. There is only one mode, with a simple background, your play window in the center, and the 98 other players in small windows lined up on both sides, and one song, the classic one from the Game Boy version of Tetris, but the game is plenty addictive despite that. The music does change, for one; once the game reaches the top 50 the music amps up, as does the game speed. I'm not that good at Tetris so the best I've done so far is 12th, but it's a really fun game despite that. It does keep track of some of your stats, such as games played, games won, T-spins done, and a bunch more things, and you have a level that goes up as you play, but there isn't really anything here beyond 99 player Tetris. It's fortunate then that the core game is great enough to stand up on its own. I wonder if they will add to this, though; for now it's entirely free with no paid component other than needing to have that Nintendo Online subscription to play, but it looks like a thing that could be added to if Nintendo and developer Arika want. On the one hand more modes would be great, but on the other hand you need a really large player base to keep filling up 99-player matches, and that's easy right now but probably will drop off over time, so maybe they don't want to add much to this in terms of modes.
Regardless, though, Tetris 99 is really cool and a nice surprise. And yeah, it's pretty good as well, try it out. It can be hard to stop playing though...
So, what's been happening with MP4, in the more than a year and a half now since its announcement? Not good things apparently, because now Nintendo has come out and said that the game as it was has been canned. Yes, after several years of work, Namco-Bandai's Metroid Prime 4 project has been cancelled. Namco was making it with a bunch of studios in different places all working on the game apparently, and now Nintendo has decided that things were not going well for the project, so much so that they're restarting development with a new team. Apparently then Retro went to Nintendo with a concept, and it was approved... but as the video above says, this means restarting development of the game from the beginning, so it'll be a few years until it releases. So yeah, the hopes for MP4 releasing this year are done, and all we can do is hope it releases next year... maybe.
Additionally, though, what the heck has Retro been doing for the last five years? This has been a big question for a long time now of course, but this doesn't answer it at all. So now Retro will be working on MP4... but what have they been making in the years since DKC Tropical Freeze finished? Have they been working on some secret, still unannounced project that will release soon or something? Did they also have games cancelled? It sure would be great to know!
On top of this, rumor is that a Metroid Prime Trilogy remake/re-release for Switch is done but delayed until Nintendo decides to release it" https://www.resetera.com/threads/retro-s...more.95732 Nintendo rumors are only sometimes true, but this sounds plausible.
Probably someday, bits of whatever Namco's MP4 would have been will leak onto the internet. That'll be interesting to see... maybe not good, but interesting.
I don't know, I played enough 2018 games that I'd like to mention some I liked. This isn't really definitive (apart from the part where I'm posting it as a list :p) but why not? 2018 had some pretty good games, after all.
First, my list of my favorite games released in 2018 that I've played.
10. 40 Winks (N64) - This Nintendo 64 game was finished but cancelled back in 2000, before a homebrew physical-games publisher managed to get the rights and finally released it. Well, the Playstation version released back in 2000 and this version is quite similar, but it's better enough thanks to the improved graphics and such (and an exclusive two player co-op mode) that it isn't the same. As a big N64 fan I had to get this, and it's good. It's a decently fun 3d platformer. It's not amazing, but it is good enough, and I've got to mention it. I know it's an unlicensed game and isn't exactly new (being a game cancelled back during the system's life), but 2018 did see this games' first ever official and home cart release, and it was of a new, more finished version of the game than the rom that leaked years ago. (Note that the same publisher also released a PC version of 40 Winks in 2018, but that is a port of the PS1 version, not the N64 one, so it's not this version of the game.)
9. Assassin's Creed Odyssey (XBO, also on PC and PS4) - I've always liked the AC series a lot more in the concept of their historical settings than I have in the reality of their gameplay, which I always lose interest in early, but this one might be the best one yet.
8. Starlink: Battle for Atlas (NSW) - This game is easy, but the combat and flying are fun. I like the plastic ships too, they're well modeled. You do need to get a bunch of stuff for it, but it's a good enough game that it makes me want to get the toys.
7. SoulCalibur VI (XBO, also on PC and PS4) - I don't know if I'll like a Soul Calibur game again as much as I did the second one, but this game is pretty good and definitely plays like Soul Calibur for the most part.
6. Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido (3DS, also on NSW) - This puzzle game isn't my favorite one on the 3DS, but it is quite fun in a fast and frenetic way. There's also a Switch version but the 3DS one is definitely better.
5. Kirby: Star Allies (Switch) - This game is the fourth main title in the new Kirby game style that began with Kirby's Return to Dream Land on the Wii and continued in two 3DS games. And like the three games before it, this is a very fun and easy platformer with nice graphics and lots of great classic Kirby gameplay. This time, though, you can play as multiple characters in single player, which is pretty cool! They even added more characters as free DLC, which is awesome. Sure, the game's easy by default, but there are enough difficulty level options and unlocks here to present some challenge, and I always have liked the classic Kirby formula, which this game executes on well. It's not the best Kirby game, but it's good fun.
4. Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption (PC) - This is the new game from Corey and Lori COle, the makers of Quest for Glory. It's set in that series' world, except you only play a rogue this time, a guy named Shawn. See, while this game has QfG's humor, it's got more story. This game is set in a school for heroes, as the name suggests, and you're in the rogue class. I love Quest for Glory, and this game is good, but I don't love it as much as the QfG games; most notably, rogue always was my least favorite class in those games, so that you can only play as a rogue here has been my biggest issue with the concept since its announcement. Despite that though, it is pretty good, and it's absolutely worth playing for its sense of humor -- Lori Cole's writing here is great, and often pretty entertaining!
3. Tempest 4000 (Xbox One, also on PC and PS4) - This game is pretty much a port of TxK, Jeff Minter's Tempest clone for the Vita, to home platforms. And like TxK it's a fantastic game. I still like the original Tempest 2000 the best, but this game's also pretty great and it's awesome to have a nicer-looking followup of his all-time classic, even if things like the minigames aren't as good as the original ones are. T2K is one of the best games ever, and this game is pretty awesome too.
2. WarioWare Gold (3DS) - This newest Wario Ware game is the best one since the first game and its Gamecube adaptation! I really love WarioWare: Mega Party Games for the GC, it's my favorite party game ever, but while I like them quite a bit, none of the other Wario Ware games quite recapture the magic of the original; the various twisting and touching mechanics never interested me quite as much as classic button-based minigames. I mean, I like motion controls and touchscreens a lot, but for the specific things you are doing in Wario Ware, I think dpad and button controls work the best. Well, this game has all three of those gameplay modes in it, with a mixture of new and old microgames. This isn't just a port or something, it's an all-new game with lots of new microgames. And it's a fantastic package that makes use of every feature of the 3DS except for, well, stereoscopic 3D (sadly...) and that plays fantasticly well. It's outstanding stuff.
1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) - I've had this game the least of any games on this list, but I already can tell that it's a pretty exceptionally put together title absolutely loaded with content. I've never REALLY loved Smash to the extent some people do, and I still don't, but despite that this probably is the best game of 2018, and a game I'm sure to be playing sometimes for quite some time to come. It's definitely the best Smash game since Melee. In 2018 I spent a whole lot more time playing Wii U than Switch, but maybe this will make things different in 2019? We'll see though.
Honorable Mentions: Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Switch), Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido (3DS), Sea of Thieves (PC/XONE), 40 Winks (N64), Soulcalibur VI (XONE, also on PC/PS4), Assassin's Creed Odyssey (XONE, also on PC/PS4)
And of course, as I have for a while, in addition to my favorite games released in 2018, I also want to recognize my favorite games released in previous years that I first played (and bought) in 2018.
5. Mr. Do! (Colecovision) - I've played this game in emulation before, but this is actually the first time I've owned a version of this fantastic arcade classic. Mr. Do takes Dig-Dug and improves on it, with more gameplay variety and such. It's great.
4. Thoth (PC) - This is a really, really fun little twinstick shooter with Atari-esque graphics. It's very cool stuff, in both a gameplay and aural standpoint, and is surprisingly good. It's challenging but in just the right ways, and the music and simple but addicitive gameplay keep me coming back.
3. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) - Finally, we got another open-level 3d Mario game, after over 15 years! And it's fantastic. The game seems pretty easy, but otherwise it lives up to expectations. I like it as much as Mario 3D World.
2. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Vita) - Easily my favorite Ys game since the original, Ys VIII is a fantastic action-RPG with some of the best gameplay and graphics I've seen on Vita. Other ports of this game have added content, but this version's pretty fantastic too and really impressed me. It's a fine first Ys game to play, or a fine eighth.
1. They are Billions (PC) - This game is still in Early Access. They are Billions is a zombie survival RTS game, leaning heavily in the sim camp, like The Settlers and such, more so than Starcraft or C&C. I played over a hundred hours of this game, and as repetitive as it gets, it's really fantastic. I hope that it actually releases, I'd love to play the campaign they keep promising someday!
Honorable Mentions: Too many to note, so I'll only mention a few. Ys: Memories of Celceta (Vita); Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (Atari 5200); Venture (Colecovision); playing Atari 5200 Centipede and Missile Command (which I've owned for years) with the 5200 Trak-Ball controller (which I got in 2018) -- this is so great it's maybe top 5 material actually; Linking Logic (Colecovision); Sonic Mania (PC); Rosenkreuzstillette Freudenstachel (PC); Wipeout 2048 (Vita); Splatoon 2 (Switch); Super Mario RPG (SNES); Utuwarerumono: Mask of Deception (Vita); Puyo Puyo Tetris (Switch); TxK (Vita); Exist Archive (Vita); Streets of Rage 3 (Genesis); Super Hang-On and Space Harrier (Wii VC); etc etc etc. There are too many to list...
