Samias

Yeah, Pikachu has always been in a weird position. I guess with Thunderbolt being so strong, Gamefreak continually decided to push it, Flamethrower, and Ice Beam far back in any level up pool. However now there are filler moves like Shock, Shock Wave and Discharge to fill the gap between Thundershock and Thunderbolt in power so it's a much smoother power curve. Also dragon types only became OP in gen 3, with the addition of Salamence, the Lati twins and Rayquaza plus Draco Claw and Draco Meteor, though Outrage kind of helped in gen 2. But Dragonite and later Kingdra were kind of mediocre yet that's all that was available. Sort of like how fighting types in gen 1 were all considered bad but later on became some of the strongest Pokemon with vastly improved movepools and better meta matchups once psychic types were nerfed. Psychic is ridiculously OP in gen 1 along with normal types. I think just after Mewtwo, Tauros is considered the best competitive Pokemon in the game due to its absurdly strong Body Slam. Please don't hate on Persian in gen 1, yeah it has an obscene crit rate but gen 1 is the only time it was ever a top tier mon due to the crit calculations and it's just so cool looking. NPC Persians aren't even particularly strong so Blue players can train a Bubblebeam + Slash Persian and take it through the whole game. It's quite potent.

I think the FE trophies are from Radiant Dawn and maybe touched up slightly. But yeah, almost every trophy is just an asset from their original game. It's why Fire Emblem had no trophies in Melee that weren't fighter trophies. In SSB4, Ice Climbers is an exception. You can clearly tell it's a new model from Brawl as their parka is much more textured and the polycount is higher. Presumably this is the model they tried to get working and that ICs were very late in development before getting scrapped but the asset got used for the trophy so it wouldn't go to waste. Edit: Melee is a little different in that it was an near launch title for the GCN so there is actually very little reuse there, the jump from the N64 was too great. They kind of tried with the trophies but they look off. But notably the All-Star mode wait room is a beautiful remix of Float Island from Kirby. The sheer number of collectables in Brawl is fueled by preexisting assets to fluff up original work.

Gen 1: +Fun, exploitable bugs. Fairly wide variety of Pokemon to encounter for what this game is. Very non-linear gyms in the midgame. -Imbalanced as all hell, most movepools are trash so the Pokemon with good ones are ridiculous. The only game with a possibility of being truly unwinnable. Tiny bag and non automatic box changes leading to insane amounts of needed micromanagement with no way to tell at a glance if you needed to do it or not. HMs are permanent. Gen 2: +Two whole regions! Fixes up a large number of bugs from gen 1 as well. Introduction of day/night, breeding, seperate pockets for different items in the bag, and rebattle mechanics. The new moves in virtually every type mean that fighting and bug types are no longer nearly unusable. Also Silver is the best rival. -Pretty bad HM bloat to explore the world, whirlpool probably being the worst of them. Cellphones constantly interrupt the flow of the game. Time based mechanics means there's a lot of waiting around to get certain things. Gen 3: +Beautiful tropical environment that really stands out from its predecessors, abilities make previously unviable Pokemon viable. Speedy game engine. FRLG games added new areas to RBY and are great remakes overall. In-game move relearner!!!!! Also the first time we have some method of confirming IVs in-game. -Bland catch variety until the very late game due to the absense of large chunks of gen 1 and 2 Pokemon to give it a similar regional dex count to the previous games. Way too many zubat/tentacool/wingull/zigzagoon encounters. Gym leaders and Elite 4 in Ruby/Sapphire have terrible teams full of repeat Pokemon despite all the new Pokemon that have been added because of that. The music of FRLG seems a bit... messy? Compared to the originals. Gen 4: +Physical-special split for moves. HGSS is probably the best remake of a game I've ever played. DPP Poketch is the best bottom screen implementation IMO but HGSS's 3rd item shortcut button was good too. Large improvements in box management. GTS!!!! -Diamond and Pearl engine is slooooooow but it was improved in Platinum and HGSS. DP is also way too heavy on water types. Most new Pokemon are also kinda ugly. Elite 4 ramped up significantly in difficulty. Gen 5: +Daring introduction of many new Pokemon and exploration of many unused type combos. N is my favourite antagonist. TMs become permanent items like HMs. -Somewhat lackluster endgame. If you don't rush to Black City/White Forest all your residents may already have left. Extremely linear compared to predecessors. Gym leader and Elite 4 teams are a little too pared down to a formula. Gen 6: +Amazing Pokedex, constant opportunities to try out new Pokemon in your team. Character customization. -Gen 5 homogenization of challenges continues. Some megas are just too good. Endgame is pretty much only Battle Tower now.

Pokemon in this game learn very few moves overall and Nidorans in particular have very bad future movepools (tail whip, bite and fury swipes u_u) while Nidoqueen will have Body Slam, one of the best moves in the game so long as you evolve her before level 23. After evolution, enjoy one of the best TM learners in the game.

I'd say Ike was also a bone thrown to North Americans who, at the time, liked Tellius a lot more than Japan. The Tellius games were the biggest flop of any FE game in Japan while here it was about equal to Shadow Dragon. Also Metroid's low rep is likely the lack of iconic protagonists. UItimately there's very few prominent humanoid characters in the Metroidverse other than Samus, as the Metroid series at least has good stage rep and assist trophies. Realistic choices for other characters would be like... Adam or Rundas or something, and I don't think Adam is interesting and the MP3 Hunters just appear way too briefly to be memorable fighters in Smash. Playable, downscaled Ridley without flight would hardly be Ridley at all. It's just the nature of the series, just as how Zelda is kind of tapped out on major protagonists who are not one-off support characters due to the reuse of the Zelda/Link/Ganondorf trinity. I actually think Sakurai's roster choices were extremely well balanced between US and JP popularity. Even the JRPG choices like Shulk and Ness are equally well regarded in every region, being obscure choices overall. If Sakurai was going to be biased towards JP we would have seen choices like Takamaru or other JP-only NES era protagonists. Instead I think it's more obvious that Sakurai will cannibalize his older games to cut corners, leading to a bias towards Kid Icarus: Uprising due to all the reused assets from that game. So whatever the next Smash game is, look towards whatever Sakurai worked on close to but before that, and you'll probably see a ton of assets come from there.

I mean you can digitally buy what they deem PSOne and PS2 classics through PSN. Not backwards compatible but the classic PSN titles normally range from $5-10 and are emulated fairly well on the PS3.

But if they have a Wii then they don't need a Wii U for it. Honestly I like my Wii U a lot but for sheer value the PS3 is just so much better. It still has some classic PS1 and PS2 games buyable for super cheap on it, plus the gigantic library of amazing RPGs and action games... and every genre really. I wouldn't buy a Wii U unless you're dead set on some of the killer apps like Splatoon and Xenoblade Chronicles X.

I'd love to see Sunshine HD and Galaxy HD. The games really deserve that, although at least the visual design makes them still playable to this day and age without an HD coat of paint. In Sunshine's case, it's becoming increasingly hard to track down and people's opinions are beginning to turn more positive towards it than before. Was it perfect? Hell no. But it was unique and as someone older I feel like I'm more emotionally equipped to deal with some of the more brutal challenges that game had to offer.

I guess Nintendo will host some Space World type of event for the NX sometime in the fall. But I'm pretty disappointed at their E3 news and also that the Wii U is going to have a thin year... at least it has Splatoon, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Mario Kart 8, SSB4, Hyrule Warriors, Bayonetta 1/2, and Super Mario 3D world. That made the system worth it to me. But no Metroid, no full 3D movement Mario, no mainline Zelda, and a mixed reception Star Fox... eek. What a sad 2016 this is going to be for 1st party Nintendo.

I own the Wii version and not the GCN version, so for me that is the "original". Also I don't think the GCN version has anything over the Wii U version, whereas the Wii version obviously has motion controls to make it different. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to interpretation. The Wii version is also like $20 thanks to reprints and the GCN version is nearly impossible to find, so that's a thing too.

Wind Waker HD is kind of the exception to the typical HD remaster. No HD remaster ever gets its polycount bumped up but WW had a significant upgrade in its lighting engine and streamlining in all the right places. Twilight Princess HD is just a standard HD touchup but if you compare it to say, Final Fantasy X HD or something like that it holds up just fine. Maybe WWHD got your hopes up too much but TPHD is not a lazy port. If you compare textures side by side with the original it is significantly sharper and even got some extra poly count in environments where it was needed to prevent things from getting too blocky. It also has an extremely impressive draw distance, which might not be particularly realistic, it does allow you see enemies from ridiculously far away without too much strain on the frame rate. Other than the horse controls and some occasional wonkiness underwater, TPHD is actually quite a nice update with all the hidden stamps to collect and general removal of repetitive events that plagued the original release. TPHD is not my favourite Zelda but the HD version means I'll never really feel the need to replay the original unless I want to reexperience waggle.

I wouldn't mind if there was a VR peripheral down the line and totally optional if the system is indeed more powerful than the PS4. However I wouldn't want it to be something they unveil at launch or anything. If it turns out that VR isn't just some passing novelty then I think it's beneficial for Nintendo to experiment in VR space as well.

The US is actually exceptionally cheap compared to the rest of the world. And everything is so expensive in Japan because of companies trying to squeeze what they can out of people who buy new, since there's a thriving rental and used media market. Now in the age of digital distribution they still lag behind and try to wring every yen out of buyers. Anime is the worst, where a single episode could be priced at something absurd like 2000 yen (3-4 episodes per volume, the volume being around 8000 yen). However games and music are not really much better. The average console game is about 8000 yen and the average portable game is around 5000 yen. The average single for music is something like 1500 yen and has 2-3 tracks + instrumental versions. The US exchange rate usually hovers around 1 USD = 110 yen these days but back when I visited it was more like 1 USD = 80 yen... Your average Japanese gamer simply buys things from a used shop to get comparable prices to something in North America. It doesn't matter how much of the market is domestic. While I found food, clothes, household goods and comics to be cheap, everything else was a racket compared to back home.

Yep... nowadays, speed's my game, quality is.... sort of my name? Whatever gets me through my mountain of work! Also another after-work sketch which I semi-planned a BG and stuff with later but I wanted to push the perspective a little.

The "tutorial" is the hardest, most brutal part of the game. You will curse and maybe cry a little bit for all the times you get one shot by randoms and you have no team yet. If you can make it out of the first area, congrats, you can probably coast through the rest of the game. Also save often. Just because the game gets a lot easier, sometimes you just run into asshole mob configs that will wreck your day. Usually spamming Blight or some other miserable AoE. Strength kinda sucks as dex increases skill damage more than strength does. If you want to build a physical MC, go for dexterity.

The price of new entertainment media in Japan is absurd. I remember games and CDs being ridiculously expensive, like Persona 4 was something like 8000 yen new. But the PS2 was insanely successful. I think consoles underperforming not just because of price but the fact that most people can't really afford the space at home and rarely have time to sit down and play anyway with such a long working day and long commutes on public transit.

When I get bored I always draw my favourite blue-haired elf :U I kinda screwed it up but I did it in like 20 mins after work so I'm pretty happy?? Bonus sketch:

Handhelds sell better in Japan than consoles by a large margin. Even a "failure" like the Vita is actually doing pretty well overseas, as the PSP was always extremely competitive with the DS. Despite the 3DS declining in numbers from the DS, their anti piracy measures were far more effective with flash carts and emulators being far less ubiquitous than during the DS era, so Nintendo probably feels this generation was ok. Not great, but not dire. I presume they're going to continue about 7-10 hours of battery life of continuous play and 70~ hours of battery life in sleep mode. The graphics will probably jump up to 480p, MAYBE 720p if Nintendo is ambitious but the likelihood of a 1080p or better handheld seems unlikely as Nintendo typically prefers the cheap and utilitarian approach to all their hardware so they make a profit on their systems rather than taking a hit on initial costs and hoping for strong software sales. Dual sticks will probably become standard considering Nintendo rarely goes backwards on hardware revisions. If it isn't a part of the new console, it will definitely have some kind of crossplay function, likely being able to link certain games or be used as a controlller like Smash Bros has demonstrated between the 3DS and Wii U. It'd be cool if you could stream to the TV to play games though. Also the mobile market IS putting a strain on the 3DS. Nintendo has just done a good job continuing to court indie devs to work on porting their titles to the 3DS because it has such a comfortable control scheme compared to playing games on mobile, and has stronger battery life. Nintendo also offers a strong selection of 1st party games like Mario Kart and Smash Bros. However the 3DS has lost traction even with children due to mobile Minecraft being such a hit. Meanwhile, the adult crowd consumes an extremely large number of puzzle games and social games on mobile. It's a billion yen industry which Nintendo could only dream about these days by comparison. Selling millions of copies of Pokemon worldwide is great and all but the saturation of mobile gaming actually eclipses any dedicated gaming system. I prefer my 3DS but I'm a part of the minority. Even my fiance uses his phone for games more than he uses his 3DS because the phone is more essential to have on him.

I like this game more than the original Legend of Zelda, but it's also extremely difficult. I don't find the NES Zeldas as timeless as NES Mario games, despite liking the Zelda franchise more overall. However Zelda 2 inspired a lot of future games, especially the 3D ones with more complex swordplay and magic. While these games end up being too cryptic for me to truly enjoy, this is one of the more outstanding titles in the NES's history and is a very memorable and experimental piece of work.

I honestly think Square should consider remaking The Bouncer. It failed in its time for being so damn short and having such clunky controls but it had really cool ideas go into it and some cool Nomura art. Now that they have better action RPG game engines from KH and FF they could just plop the game into that and then perhaps work on some longer stories in the same universe.

The return of Ema makes me super excited! I thought she had some really cute chemistry with both Apollo and Klavier and was disappointed when she just kinda vanished after Ace Attorney Investigations... I pretty much like all of AA4's characters and reaaaally hope they don't abandon what they built up during those games. I know a lot of people would disagree about continuing that plot but there's just a bothersome amount of loose ends.

I really liked Mitama, the only shining light of Azama paired to anyone. At least his unholy union produced precious poetry staffbot. She has some fun supports being the wet blanket without being obnoxious and mean-spirited. I wasn't too fond of Hisame. Pickles aside (which was an overdone joke but not really the core of his character outside of Corrin interactions), he was forgettable and also the least useful of all my children. I also really disliked Rhajat, who is literally Tharja 2. It's actually offensive that she is the only truly bisexual option for women too. A lot of people hate Asugi but I found he was OK? I am by no means in love with him and the candy thing is super overdone but he has some OK supports related to thieving. I have no feelings about the Nohr children yet except the fact that all their parents are psychopaths...

Birthright endgame... Kill general, kill final boss. 1 turn. I had actually started to struggle near the endgame because all my units had extremely poor physical durability except for Corrin, Ryoma and Rinkah, but then I got to Xander's chapter and the small amount of difficulty just tanked. Shout out to the opera house where ending the chapter is insanely easy but the real puzzle is breaking through the enemies to get the only Hammer in Hoshido, which is very important for later chapters if you use Rinkah or Scarlet. Took me a few tries to get said hammer due to aforementioned lack of durable units.

Ugh, yeah. That was my first play through. Great stats for Sophie and a nice reclass for Hana but the actual support is dismal.

The only downside is that the boomerang can blow the bugs fairly far away from Link, and of course it is a little finicky to pick them up instead of roll. Whereas the clawshot tends to place the bug right in front of Link with a much shorter window for them to flutter away. And like Dai, I had nearly all the bugs by Lakebed except the ones in the Sacred Grove and Gerudo Desert. They always come in pairs so when you hear one, there's always going to be another close by. And generally speaking there's only 1 pair per map. They did design the bugs to be found fairly early as they lock wallet upgrades behind them, whereas the poes are the more involved hunt since there's just so many of them.