Seriously, it shouldn't! It's a great 3DS game that makes good use of the hardware, and does things that the Switch could not. You could not release this game on Switch as is, a third of the game requires touch and the Switch would not be any good at that at all. And the game uses the microphone as well, another thing the Switch doesn't have.
This "the 3DS should die" thing has been going on ever since the Switch released, and it's every bit as annoying now as ever... because the 3DS is still a very good system, one I'm still using a whole lot, and I at least don't want it to go away, as a handheld I probably like the 3DS form factor and featureset better than the Switch overall. And again, this game wouldn't work well on Switch anyway. Seriously.
Let me just say this right now. If "first sale", the basic notion that once I buy something, I can resell it is killed, there goes garage sales, there goes pawn shops, there goes all used car dealerships, there goes buying any house that isn’t brand new. There goes libraries. There goes the entire "reuse" part of "reduce reuse recycle". There goes everything. It’s not a slippery slope, its literally the result of destroying first sale doctrine.
Zenimax and their logic of "material transformation" is dangerous thinking here. Heck, I couldn’t even sell a modded old game console any more if that’s what "material transformation" means. I couldn’t sell acid washed jeans, or a book with foot notes written in it. No, I’m pretty sure "material transformation" was meant to specifically describe making a copy of the protected work and then selling that, you know, transforming the material it’s on.
I don't think this will go through, by the way, but it helps to remember that THIS is what modern major publishers (which Bethesda and their parent Zenimax now are) want to do.
One thing has been changed to the official timeline. Link's Awakening now precedes the Oracle games. That's what I had originally assumed back in the day, and it makes more sense. He went on a journey to improve his skills, managed to get back to Hyrule just in time to find out what's been going on there, and we see him at the start of those two games riding a horse as he finally gets back. Further, it lets us know that yes, Link did manage to survive being lost at sea.
Other than that, lots of new additions to fit in games that were made after the timeline first became established.
As was already stated, Link Between Worlds takes place a century after Link to the Past, so it's on that timeline. Triforce Heroes, interestingly, takes place after Link Between Worlds and before Zelda 1. So, there's a dark twist. The reason all those imitators are running around dressed as Link is because that's the very start of the Age of Decline, when Hyrule slowly turns into the desolate wastes at the start of Zelda 1, before a true descendant of the hero finally rises again.
So that leaves Breath of the Wild. It takes place at the very end, a distant period in the distant future of, wait for it ALL three timelines. I mean, there's references to events and characters across different timelines in that Hyrule, but this cements it. Some sort of Crisis on Infinite Hyrules event must happen down the line, combining all three timelines into one singular world. That, that is going to be a hell of a game when that finally comes along, but it's the only thing I can think of with this revelation. It even goes to explaining just why Hyrule is just THAT much more vast in BOTW. The Wind Waker timeline involves founding a new Hyrule and protecting it from all new threats. So, if they all combined, then Hyrule would suddenly become a merger of both the new and old Kingdoms into one.
That's a lot to take in, but video game continuities are finally getting as convoluted as comic books. Enjoy!
This is very interesting, I never knew about this bizarre legal situation. While it was eventually resolved, Nintendo seems to have been intent on keeping the branding for the hardware the same, possibly to prevent consumer confusion.
Splitting their own market like that seems like a huge mistake. The numbers are in, and there's a dead even split in usage between portable and console modes. The Switch IS the successor to the 3DS.
If form factor is an issue (literally the only thing the 3DS has to offer over the Switch), make a Switch XS, a smaller iteration with otherwise identical hardware.
Yes, after decades of never re-releasing the arcade version of Donkey Kong, spurring many rumors of if Nintendo has the rights to it at all -- because of how Nintendo treated the outside team that did the programming, pretty much -- they... suddenly released it for Arcade Archives on the Switch! That's pretty awesome. I've never really loved the original DK, but still, it's really fantastic that the original arcade version finally, at long last, has an official home console release. It includes the Japanese and International versions of the game, too, which is great. And it was released during E3.
And at the same time, Nintendo also announced that next month they will release the arcade version of Sky Skipper, another arcade game from 1981. The game released in Japan in arcades, and there is a Western-released Atari 2600 version (that I have a copy of; it's not great), but for some reason the Western arcade release was cancelled. Yes, a 2600 version, which is not mentioned in the Treehouse stream video above, was released here, but not the arcade game. How odd. Anyway, this Arcade Archives version is a port of the US arcade version, which Nintendo kept one of in their archives after cancelling it. The cabinet has some pretty neat artwork done by Miyamoto on it, see the video. I haven't played arcade Sky Skipper, but it looks okay based on the video, better than that 2600 version hopefully but not great. Still, it's awesome to see it, and I hope that the classic Nintendo arcade releases continue; they do have more.
So, this year at E3, Nintendo has decided to focus on a single game for the third year in a row. In 2016 it was Zelda, last year Mario, and this year it's Smash... but people seem to be a lot more upset at that focus than they were the last two years, as I'm seeing a lot of criticism of Nintendo's lack of games this E3. That criticism is accurate, as they have very little to show other than Smash, and there may be even fewer games shown than there were the last couple of years -- they aren't mentioning the 3DS at all for example, sadly, unlike 2017 (this is really unfortunate! The 3DS needs more games...) -- but it doesn't seem THAT different.
That said though, I've never loved this focus-all-on-one-game thing, so yes, I wish that they were showing more. In particular, what's going on with Retro? It now has been five years since they last released a game, and still we heard nothing about whatever it is they're making. They must be having development problems, five years of nothing is not normal. And not hearing anything about Metroid Prime 4 is also a disappointment, they should have had something to show of that here.
Nintendo does have a few non-Smash games to show, including a DLC addon for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a new Mario Party game they just announced (and are showing on the Treehouse stream right now, as it's taking a break from its heavy Smash focus for the moment), some mech game called Daemon x Machina, and details on the upcoming Switch Fire Emblem game (which has been delayed to 2019 and looks like Fire Emblem), but there isn't a lot. And again so far there hasn't even been any 3DS on the Treehouse stream, which, again, I do think is a mistake. Oh well.
As for Smash though, it looks pretty good. It seems that they're building it on the core gameplay of the last one, Smash 4 (Wii U / 3DS), but with a lot of changes. The last game's good, if not quite on par with Melee, so that's fine. It'll have every single character from all past Smash games, plus a few more, and every character has had some changes to their looks, moves, and such. The E3 Direct mentions some of the major changes for just about every character, and some sound good. Link now is the Breath of the Wild Link, for example, and bombs can be remotely detonated. I don't like the new Zelda design, however; they went with the Link to the Past Zelda this time, and I think it's the least good Zelda design yet in a Smash game. Going from the fantastic TP Zelda design from Smash 4 to this is a huge downgrade... ah well.
Visually, on that note, this game has a very cartoony style, more than I remember past Smash games looking. It looks nice, but different from before. The gameplay is mostly the same however, though there are some balance changes, such as to dashing. I am, of course, not the biggest Smash fan -- they're good games, but I've never loved them enough to play huge amounts of the games, Melee sort of excepted -- but the game does look good and I'm sure I'll get it eventually. Smash is very popular and should be enough for a good holiday season this year, but it'd have been better to have a bit more than they seem to have... though Microsoft doesn't seem to have much either, almost everything major they showed was for next year. It's kind of a weird year, it seems.
Yes, it's that time again. Currently we are in the pre-show press conference phase. Day one was earlier than ever, as EA had their conference midday Saturday. It was an okay but unexciting presentation with no major new announcements, unless you think things like a Command & Conquer mobile game and that Madden will be on PC again significant. I don't. Unravel Two was announced, which is kind of surprising given the mediocre response the first one got, but it must have sold alright. That's nice, I hope it's good. The other EA Originals title after that might be interesting, but I'm not sure. Otherwise, the main focus was Bioware's Anthem. It looks like it could be a good game, but we'll really need to see more of it to know. It's definitely going for gameplay with some Destiny or The Division style, but with jetpacks and some Bioware style elements, and I hope it works out. Still, overall EA's conference was not great. I usually find EA's the least interesting conferences, though, so that's no surprse really.
Next, Sunday, there were two conferences, Microsoft and Bethesda. Microsoft had a good show, and showed a lot of games... none of which are exclusive to the Xbox One (though this is fine, I like their enhanced PC support), and most of which are also going to be on PS4. They also showed a LOT of 2019 games. Like, most of their show felt like "coming 2019 or later", which is not great when their game lineup for the rest of this year seems to be pretty thin. And for one more criticism, the exclusives MS does have are mostly long-running franchise titles, including new Halo, Gears, and Forza games, and another trailer for the upcoming Crackdown title as well. They had a few second-tier new projects, but from an IP standpoint this was a pretty safe lineup. Some interesting games were shown, though, and I will want to play some of them. Oh, and MS also announced that they bought four new studios and started up one new one on top of that. They bought Ninja Theory (Hellblade, etc.) and Playground Games (Forza), along with two others, and are starting a new team in Santa Monica. MS needs more game studios, given how many they've shut down, but any game projects from these teams will surely be quite a ways off so this isn't helpful for MS's seriously thin exclusive game library anytime soon. They'd better hope that Sea of Thieves holds player attention long term I guess... because Crackdown is a 2019 game now, along with most of the rest of the games they showed.
As for Bethesda, I'm often a critic of theirs of course but they have done some solid press conferences. This year they spend some time on things for this year, most notably Fallout 76, which now has a 2018 release date, but most of the conference is on games for 2019 or later. Id's legacy had a very strong presence in the conference, as new Doom (a sequel to Doom 2016 was just announced here), Wolfenstein (Young Blood, a game wherey ou play as BJ Blazkowitz's twin daughters in a Nazi-run 1980s Paris, apparently), Quake (Champions, whcih still isn't out), and Rage (2) all showed up in the conference. The Elder Scrolls, including more about TES Online, the announcement of a new TES mobile game, and a far-off announcement of TES VI; Fallout (76); Prey (DLC for the last one); and an announcement of the rumored, but still far-off, space-based Bethesda game all also made appearances, so it kind of felt like Bethesda decided to toss almost all of their major IPs into this conference, regardless of how far along the projects actually are. It made for a packed show, but I wonder how many of these games we'll see at the next E3 or two... and do all four of id's shooter franchises need projects in development at the same time? I know each is different -- modern Wolf is much more story-focused; Rage is open-world and has driving; Doom presumably will be single player smaller-level focused; and Quake is a multiplayer arena shooter -- but still... huh.
