Zapp Branniglenn

I've heard about this Guh Nasty Guh Norc character. He's too simple and too ugly to pose a threat to Archanea. And since Archanea has no supply of magic gems, the only army he can create is whatever he brought in with him. The Black Knight is the real threat since he has impenetrable armor and a sword that was also blessed to never break. Not to mention plot convenient Warp Powder. It'd be a big gamble, but it all comes down to whether Yoshi can successfully eat him. Mog's Dance command might work since a lot of those attacks are designated Unblockable and ignore Defense. Having a Monado is no good since I can't use it. The only Fire Emblem character I'd suspect who can is Robin, since he and Shulk have extremely similar situations to the respective villains of their game. Even if any of us could use it, it specifically doesn't hurt humans! So while I'm sure it can hurt Majora, I have no idea whether Skull Kid is human (he has a beak, but otherwise has regular human features) Ultimately, I think we have no choice but to team up with Gharnef and resurrect Medeus. He and the Earth Dragons may be able to catch the moon and stop it from reaching Earth. And I know Gharnef is still around since Starlight specifically didn't kill him the first time, why would it the second? As for Kazooie...I'll load her up with Red feathers and send her to Valentia. Request King Alm to take in refugees if we fail. That idiot killed Duma so he had better do something in this crisis.

The two shows I'm watching right now are X-Men 97 and Fallout. And wow. Two incredible adaptations of a thing from 1997. I guess the only thing I'm tired of is the one difference between the two. One has a new episode every week while the other had its whole season dropped on day one. I don't understand the logic in that. Sure 'binge-watching' is its own marketing buzzword, but it's not the default state in which we consume media. When there's a new episode in a few days, it's something to look forward to. When eight hours of TV get dropped on you it becomes an immediate backlog that you have to make time for at a direct opportunity cost of whatever your current media thing is. Like you were just assigned your term paper in school. Having multiple episodes up on Day One for the binge watcher demographic is going to seriously ramp up your internal stats on that show opening, but it doesn't have to be the whole damned show. These Streaming companies surely want people to return in order to avoid those major lulls inbetween high profile releases, so I'd say the sweetspot is around 20-30% of the show's episodes up on Day 1. However much runtime it needs to introduce the world, establish characters, and hook them with a good mystery.

I was never under the impression that Young Link was the Majora's Mask version of himself instead of specifically OoT. Sure he has Fire Arrows, but that item was invented in OoT. And before you point out he can't use a Bow in that game, he can't use a hookshot either (and adult link shouldn't be throwing a boomerang by that same logic). There's a lot you could do to remaster Young for a bunch of MM references. Small stuff like giving him the golden hookshot (and I'm a bigger fan of the Razor sword than the Gilded Sword) to big things like subbing in mask transformation special moves (I mean Zora Boomerang is an obvious swap. Deku flower as an Up B, etc), but no final Smash I could come up for him would beat the Hyrule Warriors version. Plus they have Skull Kid and Moon's assist trophies ready to re-use as assets for that Final Smash. A talented hacker could mod it into Ultimate with some effort. Donkey Kong's new one bugs me. I would definitely demand Bongos somewhere in his moveset if I were in charge, and you could have reworked the old one to be good in a gameplay sense. If Bongos are out, then I would have the final Smash be initiated with a punch like it is now, except the victim is launched upward and then a cinematic shows them face planting in the underside of the moon, then pan upward to see DK also already up there and punching the moon to send them to crashing back down to the earth. I'm proposing a lot of moon violence today. Mario's probably the most in need of a new one, and also flush with the most source material to draw from. I haven't played Mario Wonder so there's probably something obvious there. But if not, Steve actually ended up with half the Final Smash I envisioned for Mario. I want Mario to initiate with a big 360 cape spin into a cinematic of Mario grabbing the victim by their leg, tail or whatever, throwing them like he does Bowser in Mario 64. They crash land into Bowser's castle, then we cut to an outside shot of Mario Gliding via cape to a TNT plunger like in Super Mario World and the castle crumbles around them. Or he kicks over the Axe in SMB1 to drop the bridge they landed on. One underrated aspect about Mario that I don't think is reflected in his moveset is that he's not a brute force kind of hero. He's more of an opportunist that uses the environment and powerups to thwart his enemies, and the final smash is probably the only place we can capture that. Samus' big beam lost a lot of charm in the move from Brawl to Smash 4 now that it doesn't change her into a totally new character (and it's STILL called Zero Laser). It's also not a reference to anything specific (big missed opportunity in Smash 4 to re-characterize it as Hyper Beam from Prime 3, or even Prime 1's Final Boss Phazon Beam). Maybe this is a boring suggestion, but the Power Bomb is begging to find its way into her moveset. Give it a massive, long lasting hitbox but also a two second timer for the other players to escape. Makes for a fun cat and mouse where Samus tries to grab them and throw them into it, after it's primed. Or she holds off until she knocks them offstage and plants it right at the ledge as they're recovering. Pikachu's is fine. I just wish Volt Tackle would serve as the basis for finally getting rid of Skull Bash which always felt like a superfluous part of his moveset. The Z Move is an obvious choice If I designed a final Smash for Pikachu, I would go with a cinematic where every 'Pikachu clone' shows up alongside him like Mega Man's final Smash and they do a team thunderbolt. Plusle & Minun, Togedamaru, Pachirisu. Call it Pika Posse. And yes include a Raichu and Pichu. Don't include Mimikyu, because that leans into the joke of Mimikyu better. Jigglypuff's sucks. Both in concept and gameplay. And the obvious idea of a Jigglypuff Final Smash ended up being Peach's! Puff's Final Smash should summon a stage where she performs and all opponents fall asleep. She gets upset, and her movement speed and attack power increase temporarily. Her facial expression also gets stuck in an outraged expression, similar to DK when he has his Giant Punch charged up in Ultimate. And also, to ensure that Puff does something interesting in this mode, disable Rest until it wears off. Since that's an obvious choice on a sleeping opponent. If you want a heavy hit, spend your time revving up a Rollout.

I was legit surprised when I saw they'd split up the X series right down the middle. I would have cut it X1-3, then 4-8. With the pricing being $15 and $25 USD respectively. X4 is such a shot in the arm that it feels unfair to have The Good Ones all in one package. Personally I don't see the rift in quality between characters to be so large, but playing as Zero is what we signed up for so most players won't miss it. I don't even recall ever needing to buy anything with the game's "wage rate" system. If you could buy spell charges, then we'd have a use for cash. Anyway I'm glad random battles aren't a primary source of income. You want a JRPG that has no grinding, here's one that you can not only beat comfortably at Base Level, but it's almost 100% optimal to do so if you want to keep the game easy. You can even Draw 100 magic spells from a monster and then Run so you don't get the experience. They knew what they were doing.

"Say what you want about the Loptyr cult but they sure got the trains running on time"

Boy this ganondorf business sure comes up a lot. You want a good reference? Behold, the origins of Flame Choke. Ganondorf HAS a sword at his disposal, and elects to murder this dude in a way that's more personal. And now Flame Choke is his most interesting move in Smash, both to use and to get hit by. My tech roll away is always getting caught by yet another Flame Choke until I'm in a corner and then he can more easily respond to my options from there. Incidentally, this is the most memory-holed cutscene in the series among Zelda fans. For years I've been hearing its "so random that ganondorf shows up at the end after Zant". No, dude, Ganondorf is revealed right here at the midpoint. The Sages speculate AT you that Zant's power probably came from him and that you'll have to deal with him too. And if this isn't your first Zelda game, you believe them because he's part of the titular Legend of Zelda.

they could put in Lucius as a man

I think Meowth would have been a great replacement for Jigglypuff. Though perhaps a bit disappointing if he wasn't represented as Meowth of Team Rocket from the cartoon. I could totally see him using a Pounce Side B that operates just like Diddy's Monkey Flip. I don't even know how they arrived at Diddy Kong scratching people's faces as an attack. I think the only thing I would change would be having Wolf in place of Falco for Melee. Wolf is IN the game's opening so Falco just seems kind of random. The least recognizable member of Star Fox.

I don't read it that way. If they wanted Squirtle and Ivysaur as separate fighters, the 3DS version would not have stopped them. You're correct that Pokemon Trainer was specifically unfeasible for the 3DS hardware, but Charizard is living proof that they were willing to rework his parts into separate entities. And Sakurai also cites the Zelda/Sheik and Samus/ZSS situations as part of that accommodation process. Sheik surprises me in retrospect. Outdated Zelda character, gets two whole special moves as part of the rework, is definitely not as recognizeable to a casual audience as Squirtle/Ivysaur. But Nintendo owns Sheik, not Squirtle. I think it's a crucial factor.

It's not. But it is the context that precedes me saying "My unpopular opinion is..."

so in the last few years we've been seeing a lot of outrage over the hollow knight sequel not coming out. And It has definitely stopped being cute. Stop harassing these three guys who made a hit game. My unpopular opinion is that a ton of great indie games have come out since 2017 and those people should expand their gosh darned frying pan. Maybe discover that there's more to life than a 2D Soulslike. When it does come out, and is perfectly fine like the original game was, these same "fans" are going to tear it apart over unrealistic expectations and I see it coming a mile away. And don't get me started on the performative outrage Woke-a-phobia. Let Needle Girl have her implied girlfriend. No one cares. A week ago Pepper Grinder came out. Same $15USD price point as hollow knight. Can already recommend it more. I shouldn't suggest a 'Play More Games' without dropping at least one suggestion. There's also Minishoot Adventures. Trust me that it is way better than its lame name. Same price point, same fresh out of the oven smell because it's two days old.

Assuming there's no genre-twisting changes to the battle system of the next Smash Bros they can probably port over whatever they want from Ultimate barring any insurmountable licensing issues. One thing I could see them doing is scaling back the roster at launch, but adding back veterans and stages one or two at a time for a steady influx of (hopefully free) updates to keep the game lively across the following two years rather than being dead for the months in between DLC characters. By holding veterans back they can take their time balancing them against a developing meta rather than suffer having to do everyone at once in time for Launch - which no doubt took time and resources away from new stuff in Ultimate. But if we are discussing licensing issues, I think a lot of folks don't realize that the Pokemon are relatively endangered. Quite a few still wrongly assume Nintendo owns Pokemon but the Pokemon company needs to be negotiated with same as anyone else. This is corroborated when we look at the history of characters that were playable in one game but not in the next: Dr Mario Pichu Roy Young Link Mewtwo Snake Squirtle Ivysaur Lucas Wolf 40% of cut characters were pokemon. 40% are ones Nintendo claims full ownership of. 1 is Snake, the last is Lucas who is complicated but fairly close to the Pokemon situation, legally speaking.

I too have proposed modeling the Six Prologues of Dragon Age: Origins into another established video game series. So my immediate thought is having Link, Zelda, or Ganon at all is the major pitfall to avoid. Think about it, those characters are all Chosen Ones within the established series mythos. To have one necessitates the other two, and suddenly we've lost the ability to go off-script in a Choose Your Own Adventure game. But Zelda can, and has, been a lot of different stories surrounding different characters. Embrace the side story aspect of a choose your own adventure framework. Separate origin story Prologues for a goron, a zora, a lowly Hylian knight as the "human" choice. And whatever other tribes they decide to include. Make it an RPG (since we're literally playing a role), and include party members so that you have full access to all the skills and racial traits you didn't choose for your main character. Then design dungeons with puzzle elements that concern those skills. Hand the project to Camelot, and our Zelda Gaiden is a spiritual successor to Golden Sun.

It's standard for some rpgs to have Dex-based weapon types, so that every physically inclined character need not all scale on the same Strength stat for damage. Skill-Scaled weapons in fire emblem can just be a feature of those weapon types. Bows, crossbows, daggers. Perhaps even throw in some new javelin, hatchet, and spell variants. Alternatively leave the Skill scaling to the realm of class skills. Characterized like "Archers can hit a target, a sniper aims for the most vital spots". My only worry is introducing too much additional math to fire emblem. Adding Skill/3 to a Bow's damage would absolutely have to be calculated for you in the battle forecast and when you open an enemy's stat page and look down at their final Atk stat. If our Fire Emblem game also includes rallies, passive buffs and other conditional modifiers to damage it can really slow down the more considerate players. Combat Arts are another potential area to incorporate skill scaling in a way that's not universal to all player and enemy units and doesn't add a ton of potential math to encounters

Ditching the stat in favor of weapon ranks would be an elegant consolidation of two Fire Emblem stats into one. Though there is that loss of dopamine where there's one less Ding at level up... Alternatively, bring back FE1's Weapon level stat and give it the functions of the Skill stat. I'm sure they can think of some way to make Skill as good as the other stats, point for point. For instance, adding to your avoid. Because the measure of how well you dodge attacks shouldn't just be your fleetness. It should be how well you can strike without leaving exploitable openings and maintaining your balance. Just because you quickly struck at your opponent doesn't mean they weren't anticipating your movements and responding accordingly. How do you hit someone faster than you? Strike where they're going, not where they are. Therefore both stats could add 1 to your Avoid total. Skill is the technique and acumen to avoid damage while Speed is the response time and physical performance of well trained techniques. Then play with the concept via class skills. Like granting Armor Knights a passive that converts the skill stat into raw defense instead of avoid.

Another neat thing to add would be that Fire Emblem Heroes comic as another in-game unlockable. Because at some point getting more units won't be as interesting at Hour 50 as they would have been at Hour 5 when your roster was still low. These are also really funny and well localized in comparison with the story texts. Some comics could have unique unlock conditions, like simply fielding a team of the four units of said comic after you've unlocked them all. Give the player excuses to try out their back catalogue of junk. One last batch of units can be compelling, though I'm not sure Heroes' most pressing addition in a new release is Yet More Units. I could imagine that a game like this will probably end with some commissioned arts remaining unused on a company hard drive, because of shifts in release schedules and priorities. Some character spots may literally been taken up by a more marketable Alt towards the end of development. It would be a little funky to dump in artwork from other projects. Mainly due to the format difference. Cipher art is wonderful, but it's just the one picture, you don't have the three different poses for that character. It's also hard to say whether Nintendo retains the rights to those arts so many years later. And finally a chibi in-game character sprite still needs to be built so it wouldn't be a Zero Labor assignment. How much of the Fire Emblem Roster is still waiting anyway? I remember you made this chart showing how much of the Playable roster were in, but I know of no other resource.

It's neat to see Sony publishing (or I guess, allowing the publishing of) first party titles on steam, but it would be fascinating to see them open up their back catalogue and work their way down the list to Legend of Dragoon. I was obsessed with that game, and I'll bet I've already turned in the work for that hypothetical Platinum. All Stardusts. All Additions. Maxed out Dragon stones. Really it's just the four discs of base game that's entirely too long lol Good luck on FF8. The remastered version's achievement list seems way more tame if you've got a Missables Guide handy. Not needing a complete Card collection is a great mercy.

hold it now hold it now hold it right there Diddy Drop Rap getting snubbed? You wouldn't dare

First Pepsi, and now Mountain Dew? What's up with these protag designs? Is there an undisclosed partnership with PepsiCo?

A lot of stuff has been appearing on my radar in the last couple weeks, so it'll be a challenge picking out which ones to focus on. For now, here's what I got done with in March. 007 Goldfinger 64 (2017) Penny’s Big Breakaway (2024) Contra Operation Galuga (2024) I also met a big milestone this month. I 100% completed Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition. I wrote on this game about five years ago and have chipped away at it casually for a month at a time whenever the mood struck. That’s how I approach these mega grindy completionist projects, It’s not good to be hyper fixated on one thing for too long, or else it'll deteriorate your initial interest in the game. And I do really like Hyrule Warriors. 2014 was sure a different era of Zelda as we were inundated with remasters, remakes, and entirely new releases in the outrageous waiting period for “Zelda U”. There’s so much reverence for the most inane of details across every era of the series that makes it feel comparable to a Smash Bros. It being over is kind of bittersweet. There's no more to discover, I have witnessed each of Tingle's animations. In the end I got all the in-game achievements. And for some extra credit, I finished the Badges for each character and A Ranked all the challenge mode maps and Ganon’s Fury which are conspicuously absent from the achievement list. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (2012)

They should be considered among the better games, Devil Survivor is the closest I came to finishing an SMT game that doesn't have Persona in the title. The battle system works about as well when placed on a grid. It's just that Fire Emblem's systems are way more satisfying and predictable then a random crit making you lose your turn - even if you resisted the element of the attack that crit you and barely took damage from it. I don't like Press Turn interactions when they hinge on random, undefined chance.

To be honest, Fire Emblem but As a Creature Collector RPG is sort of covered by Fire Emblem Heroes. You even kill them off to make other units stronger. And I'm skeevy on the idea of SMT's Fuse Demon mechanics if the "demons" are living, breathing, thinking people. Not even actual, Grimdark SMT has ever done that. If I were in charge of SMT x FE, I would decide immediately on the fire emblem half as the genre, but keep it simple: The Lord is a blue haired sword dork whose death causes a game over, but the rest of your army is built entirely of classic SMT demons standing in for the various classes. It would be an inbetween of Fire Emblem's "Any unit death is a tragedy" and Advance Wars' "Every unit is expendable with literal dollar amounts". The core battle system would reflect classic fire emblem. Small, parse-able numbers. If Agility is X greater, do a double attack. Skills and spells with HP and SP costs would replace weapons with weapon durability. Fusion would facilitate Class promotions but still have a level requirement. And maybe if the two fused units had built up enough support points that allows them to pass on even more skills from their fusion. And also talking to demons to recruit them is just about the most Fire Emblem game mechanic that comes from SMT so we gotta have that too. I think it could be refreshing to play a game with Fire Emblem's game mechanics, but not anchored in Fire Emblem conventions. An entirely new roster of classes with their own strengths and weaknesses rather than having to include classic fire emblem classes with their tired tropes. Horses and fliers that dominate via movement, archers that are good against fliers but nothing else, etc. I might also suggest some light dungeon diving like in Shadows of Valentia. Because a game with expendable units probably demands that it not be a linear fire emblem game with finite resources.

It becomes a cold move when you hear that I have also played the N Sane Trilogy and thus could have granted Crash his own slot via that second entry.

I like to think of it that FE1's release on the Switch is self-qualifying if you are posting from North America or any non-Japan country. But if it were disqualified, then I guess I would just edit Tiki in my list with Fire Emblem Warriors as her game of origin. Marth's in that game too, though I don't fault anyone for forgetting his cameo in what it essentially a Fateswakening crossover. Perhaps I should have ditched Link and kept Zelda and Linkle after all...

I'll do you one better. I'll only use Switch games I personally have played on my Switch's play history, the character has to be playable in that particular game, and no game can be used twice. Also I suppose we should exclude Smash Ultimate itself since that's kind of cheating.