The GHZ Forum

Edit: Moved this stuff in here. Because I am a shitty mod, the old posts from the Sonic Mania thread got pushed on top of Gaz's. Sorry!

So speaking of the Switch, did anybody else see how Super Mario Odyssey is obviously lifting its ideas from Sonic Adventure? Even the name is a dead give away. Mario in Station Square! Mario running on a path made of wind-blown leaves! He even curls up and rolls down hills! Who are they trying to fool here?

Yeah the vibe was, uh, pretty hard to ignore at times. It's vastly weirder for Mario to interact with regular-looking humans, though.

The opening felt like a homage to Adventure (especially when the Taxi drives over the sewer cap). I know it's probably just a coincidence because they are both set in cities, but it felt eerily similar. I was never a fan of using real world locations in a Sonic game and, based on the admittedly short teaser trailer, it seems even less suited to Mario (at least aesthetically), but time will tell.

I've never played Mario Galaxy, but lots of people say it inspired Colours and Lost World. Is it going back the other way now? (Especially as we just had Mario Run after Sonic Runners).

What's people's thoughts?

Personally, I'm one of the 10 people that actually bought a Wii U and I don't regret the decision.There were some great exclusives for it that made it worthwhile for me. However, I can't deny it's mistakes either. The tablet was a weird gimmick that rarely(if ever) seemed particularly well implemented, third party support was poor and the software line-up was pretty barren a lot of the time. For me Nintendo really needed to show they weren't going to repeat their past mistakes but that really doesn't seem to be the case at the moment. The launch line up for the Switch looks pretty poor and not many of the games really caught my interest. Zelda looks fantastic but why would I bother getting the Switch when I can get the Wii U version? Mario Kart 8 is a great game but I don't feel much of an urge to re-buy it. Splatoon 2 doesn't look like much of an upgrade from the previous game. 1-2 Switch and ARMS look kind of fun but they just seem like tech demos rather than anything particularly substantial. Mario Odyssey was the only other game that really caught my eye and even that looked kind of weird(putting Sonic in a realistic city never really appealed to me and I don't really think it works for Mario either). The price also seemed a bit high especially when factoring in the cost of accessories and online.

I do think the console shows a lot of potential but I can't see myself buying one in the near future and maybe not at all unless things improve drastically.

Mario going Adventure (actually, felt more like Mario going '06. Brrrrr!) is even weirder by the fact that Mario is a human. Why aren't other humans shaped like him? Wasn't he from Brooklin or something? Or was that only in the movie/Mario Super Show?

I'll be ready for a new Nintendo console once they:

• Create and maintain an online service worth paying for
  Stop fucking up localizations and hiring people for the specific purpose of fucking up localizations (Hello, Fire Emblem fans!)
  Stop asking me to buy McDonalds toys (am I talking about amiibo or their consoles? HEYO!)
  Stop waving around the VC games as if I haven't both purchased and pirated them 18,000 times already
  And the big one - catch up to their competitors in hardware.

The Switch is going to be $400 CAD. That's the same price the PS4 was at launch. The Switch will have inferior hardware to the current generation (again), and almost certainly an inferior UI and inferior software. I have no faith in anything other than Nintendo admitting four years down the line that the Switch wasn't really their next console and that the next NEXT one is going to be better, honest. No thanks, guys!

G.Silver wrote:Mario in Station Square!

Haha! That's exactly what I was thinking!

Both the new BotW and Mario trailers blew me away. I haven't played a 3d Mario since Sunshine and I've been craving one. Mario in the real world is a weird idea, but not every world looks realistic. It's still whimsical enough to be Mario, and I think a city world or two sound neat. If you think about it, NYC would be an awesome place to platform in (and the idea of Mario finally visiting his old home in Brooklyn would be novel enough to sell me on it anyway). Level gimmicks look great, moveset looks like there may be some genuinely interesting development from the previous games, and story...well, I'd love to see another epic like Galaxy, but I'll settle for something that isn't detrimental to the experience. At least it appears that it might have a story, as opposed to an excuse, based on the bits of cutscene we saw.

I like most of the Switch's concepts. A portable console is something I'm sure many of us could find occasion to use, even if it's not small enough to enter the phone/handheld market and the battery life is short. Having it come with two controllers that connect to the body so they're always with you when it's in handheld mode is a neat idea, though the remotes themselves look terribly cramped. The buttons and the stick are so close it looks like my thumbs would be rubbing (and I still hate the name Joy-Cons). The "HD rumble" sounds like a worthy advance in gaming haptics that could be a good addition to VR platforms, but on the Switch I don't see it amounting to more than waggle. And I think that the position they're going for is fundamentally right; it's far to late for them to try to beat Sony and MS at their own game, and as consumers we have nothing to gain from a third near-identical mini-PC - if it's going to have a set of exclusive titles then it might as well offer something unique. But based on 1-2 Switch and Arms it looks like they're still hoping to reach a new audience, and while they might find some success they'll never recapture the casual market they had with the Wii and they had better not be banking on that. Also, the controllers cost $80 - both the pro controllers and a new pair of remotes (+$16 if you want 2 straps). Buying 4 controllers would cost more than the system itself. I'm sure they're as cheap as they could manage to make them, but that's kind of absurd. If that's the HD rumble's fault then they've made a mistake.

The launch lineup was always the most critical issue. Both the WiiU and the 3DS had bad launches, and the WiiU's slow adoption in particular probably contributed heavily to the loss of third party support. Zelda's really the only heavy hitter this time, and many will settle for the WiiU version as Gaz pointed out. I mean, look at this. There are 5 games confirmed for launch and a handful of mostly ports spread across the rest of the year. Then combine that with their current reputation, the $300 price tag ($440 if you want a pro controller and a game), and the fact that this isn't a holiday launch so people aren't looking for something to blow money on. If it were backwards compatible, or if your virtual console library carried forward automatically on day one, then the portability alone could be its saving grace. But as it stands, the only reason to pre-order is love of Nintendo. This could be their worst launch since the Virtual Boy. It really hinges on how many of those casuals they can entice.

Opa-Opa wrote:Wasn't he from Brooklin or something? Or was that only in the movie/Mario Super Show?

There are various NOA sources placing Mario in Brooklyn/NYC in the arcade games, but as far as I'm aware, NOJ never canonically placed him in any real locales. Moreover it's shown Mario was definitively born in whatever world Dinosaur Land/Mushroom Kingdom are set in in Yoshi's Island. The ending of DK'94 shows Mario, DK, DK Jr., and Pauline traversing to the Mushroom Kingdom from wherever DK'94 takes place; presumably "Big-City" is where the the first Donkey Kong game is set as the level layout for the first four levels are identical.

The only major Nintendo characters explicitly citizens of the US that I'm aware of is Mike Jones and Little Mac (both created by Genyo Takeda).

Also, it's nice to see Bomberman is still alive. Not too thrilled to see no mention Hudson anywhere, though. And were those speech bubbles in korean?

And I spotted Diddy and Dixie Kong's name in the Mario trailer. The DKU is crumbling, muahahaha.

Dr. BUGMAN wrote:Not too thrilled to see no mention Hudson anywhere, though

It would be hard to mention a company that no longer exists.

Konami bought Hudson Soft in 2011 (they own over 50% of their stock since 2001), and absolved them into Konami Dgitial Entertaiment outright in 2012.

Found some gameplay footage (edit: timestamp ain't working; it's 15 minutes 30 seconds in)

So yeah, New Donk City (groooan) is full of streets and shit named after DKC characters.

Now, I can abide some realistic textures on cartoony characters, but seeing individual hair follicles rendered on Mario is beyond the pale. It's like Nintendo looked at every critically panned CG cartoon movie and said "why not Mario?!" Blech. And there's even the obligatory dance number! Hope we don't have Luigi eating Yoshi's shit, too...

Dr. BUGMAN wrote:individual hair follicles

Erm, hair follicles aren't what I thought they were. You knew what I meant, shut up

Hairs?

Yes, I believe that's the proper technical term. Thank you

Mario having more detailed hair never even phased me. However seeing Sonic Adventure-esque humans does, it makes Mario look like a different species. Nintendo could have cartooned them up a little to fit into the world better, they did it in the past.

On a side note, I always though it would have been funny if Mario was bald under that cap.

They kinda explored that with Wario in SM64DS, if you manage to lose his cap you'll see weird patches in his scalp like he has alopecia or something. Also, no-one has ever seemed to realize that Wario's mustache is actually extra-long nostril hair despite the fact it's obviously attached to his nose and not his upper lip.

So does anyone have one of these things yet? Are the horror stories true?

I got mine Sunday at Toys R Us. Didn't encounter ANY of the issues people have been posting on YouTube about it. I got Zelda, and played it a bit. It was fun.

I can confirm that the dock scratches the console; after just three or four times sliding the thing in and out there are already scuff marks on both sides that won't go away, probably because they decided to use strips of rough matte plastic to guide the system as it locks in. At least the stratches are off in no man's land, a definite improvement over the original 3DS which routinely scratched itself thrice right across the game screen.

Self-destructing consoles are the norm now and apparently everyone is okay with it.

I think this might be a decent workaround for dock scratches, even if it shouldn't be a thing in the first place: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/0 ... is_diy_fix

Anyway, I'll probably wait until later in the year (maybe even in time for the holidays) before getting mine. Not that it lacks games (as some people still insist), but I'd rather get it some time after the beta testing by early adopters. Who knows, it might even get a price drop (or at least a bundle) by then.

I just bought the official carry case which comes with a screen protector. The console should really come with this rather than the two strips of plastic which graft onto your controllers like a fucking gypsy curse.

Apparently there's a faulty batch of docks and the scratching isn't supposed to happen. Nintendo are repairing scratched models, but it takes 2 to 3 weeks, which seems unreasonable.

I just don't understand why they made the dock enclosed. The console apparently gets warm during use, so putting it in an enclosed case doesn't seem like a good idea (especially as there have been reports of screen protectors melting with the heat). It's looks like the enclosed dock was done purely for marketing reasons (to have the logo on display and to communicate that this isn't the dual screen WiiU).

I mostly play mine on the big screen. Breath of the Wild is the only game I have for it and it plays great. If I ever get my hands on a traveling case and a screen protector, maybe I'll bring it out more. I may just need to get over the newness factor before I can comfortably bring it out of the house. The farthest I've gone away from the TV with it is the kitchen, which for me is hardly outside the Wii U's range from the TV.

The dock is such a weird design choice. At first it looked like it added some power to the system, but no it's just an HDMI cable, charging station and USB port holder. If it's for marketing purposes, it seems to be working for them. I hope they address the scratching and come up with an official solution similar to the Wii remote condom. Maybe just some rubber thing you can put in the dock. It can't be that hard to address.

Aside from the dock scratches, it keeps trying to tell my TV that it's sending it a signal while in sleep mode. My TV has a message come up asking if I want to change to the HDMI port every so often and I haven't found the settings for either the Switch or my LG to make that not happen. The alternative is to turn off the Switch by pressing the power button right on the system. But the I have to awkwardly bend down and reach into my entertainment center to do something that was incredibly standard to do from the couch 2 Nintendo generations ago. And it takes me a few more extra seconds to actually get into a game again from boot up.

I wish the controllers (Pro or Cons) had a headphone jack.

On the more positive side of things, Breath of the Wild is fantastic. I haven't encountered an invisible wall yet. The scope and amount of freedom in the game is breathtaking. The Switch's interface is really snappy too. I can be back into a game faster than a (standand) PS4 from rest mode. The pro controller is a solid standard pad and the joy cons are real good for a portable device or acceptable for a home controller with 1 in each hand. They'll work just fine as player 2 and 3 controllers for the rare times I play a multiplayer game. It takes in-game pictures instantly. And it'll be a portable indie powerhouse. I'll stick with better graphics for the AAA multi-platform games, but for everything else I'll get it on Switch for portability.

Latest Mario Odyssey trailer.

Looks absolutely crazy... in a good way! Seems Mario now has the ability to possess enemies, people and random things like a T-Rex and a taxi. The trailer also features a vocal theme. It's pretty catchy. I also didn't expect to see Pauline in a main series Mario platformer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFbDmTjS_MI&t=0s

GFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-