I challenge you… to a D-D-D-D-DUEL!
#549 – Astro Duel! You’ve seen it on the Switch eShop, but maybe you’re not entirely clear on how it works or how it plays. Wonder no more – Crew Member Glen himself is here with the review to fill you in. Make smart choices with that money of yours!
Footage credit: Nintendo World Report TV
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Why are we such gluttons for punishment?
#543 – Vroom in the Night Sky is available on the Nintendo Switch eShop. Is it worth it? No… unless you can have a good laugh at a game like we can! Vroom’s terrible translation lends itself to some hilarious jokes (at its expense, of course). Seriously, if you haven’t seen this game, it’s so worth watching the footage and hearing us pick it apart!
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Thump 4 Prez.
#536 – If you own a Nintendo Switch and you haven’t downloaded Thumper, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! This rhythm game on the eShop is worth all 2,000 pennies you’ll drop on this gem. You’ll be intrigued, you’ll be awed, you’ll be stunned, you’ll be challenged… do it. Go forth and Thump.
Footage Credit – SwitchForce
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
For real though, is Scott just being a pansy? (GET IT!?)
#535 – TumbleSeed is a cute, adorable, STINKING DIFFICULT indie game on the Nintendo Switch. Your only task is to roll a seed to the top of the mountain, but the game does everything in its power to stop you. Games like this straddle a fine line between fun and frustrating… where does TumbleSeed land?
Footage Credit – Polygon, SwitchForce
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
If you don’t like spoilers for this game, then… BUY IT ALREADY!
Part 3/3: Simeon and Scott take on their new favorite indie game, and it’s on Wii U! The game is Affordable Space Adventures, an asynchronous delight that will surprise you and challenge you. It’s a must own title, and this three part series is going to demonstrate just how hard the game can get toward the later levels!
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Enjoy a more uncut (less cut?) experience with this episode.
Part 2/3: Simeon and Scott take on their new favorite indie game, and it’s on Wii U! The game is Affordable Space Adventures, an asynchronous delight that will surprise you and challenge you. It’s a must own title, and this three part series is going to demonstrate just how hard the game can get toward the later levels!
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
We warned you that this game was epic.
Part 1/3: Simeon and Scott take on their new favorite indie game, and it’s on Wii U! The game is Affordable Space Adventures, an asynchronous delight that will surprise you and challenge you. It’s a must own title, and this three part series is going to demonstrate just how hard the game can get toward the later levels!
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Look what gem we dug up.
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is available on Nintendo Switch, including the timed-exclusive Specter of Torment campaign! Ryan has been playing the title for review, and has completed the game and assembled all of his thoughts. Watch to see what he thought of this villainous twist on Shovel Knight!
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
After an incredible Indie Showcase that Nintendo aired before the launch of their new platform, the Nintendo Switch, I’m still left thinking about that reel of stellar indie software. The lineup looks fantastic, and in an otherwise barren stretch without software between Zelda and Mario Kart, the indies are going above and beyond in filling in the gaps.
Nintendo really stepped up their game in the way that they are courting independent developers this generation. You can tell. You can feel the excitement emanating from these smaller, self-publishing game creators. Not only is a slew of great games coming to Switch, but the indies are providing exclusives and timed exclusives by the handful.
Recently IGN’s Nintendo podcast took a week off their normal format and interviewed some fine folks. They sat down and talked with many of the creators that were featured in Nintendo’s showcase, but also interviewed the employee of Nintendo in charge of managing these releases, all in one informative episode.
While you should definitely give the full show a watch or listen, I took two very important facts away from it:
1: Expect indie games to be enhanced with unique Switch features. Nintendo is helping indies implement the latest and greatest into their titles, and helping make these games more attractive on the Nintendo platform as well.
2: More selectivity is determining what appears on the eShop. It’s not an open invitation for indie developers anymore, but only the best of the best are being let in to the new eShop. This might seem like a step backward in Nintendo’s indie relations, but they’re really just taking an active step in keeping the shovelware out and wooing the best developers in. Damon Baker is the man in charge of Nintendo’s “portfolio management,” so he’ll be making a lot of calls, taking people out to golf, and not taking no for an answer when it comes to getting Nintendo fans access to the smartest indie titles.
Nintendo isn’t the only company taking advantage of HD Rumble or the other technologies packed into the Joy-Con controllers. Indies are crazy about this technology, and have reported that Nintendo’s documentation is off-the-charts helpful…
Let me say that again:
Nintendo’s development documenation for Switch is insanely good.
I know – sounds boring to you or me, but developers are going crazy about this. And it means we get better games, faster, so there’s that!
In one example of rapid technology implementation, Tomorrow Corp’s games (World of Goo, Human Resource Machine, Little Inferno) already take advantage of the IR-free Motion Pointer technology before it’s been seen from any other developer, first-party, third-party, or otherwise.
Indie games that allow full iPad-like touch-screen only controls as an option are also on the way.
Indie developers are having extremely efficient experiences in getting their existing games running on Switch hardware, which has historically not been the case with Nintendo platforms. In the IGN interview above, devs stated times between a single hour to two weeks when discussing port timeframes.
Not to mention that development kits are actually on the cheap end of the spectrum for indies! At approximately $450 per kit, it’s hardly a barrier of entry for anyone hoping to see their game running on Nintendo hardware. Finally, the Big N seems to have created a win-win situation with their development environment.
Switch is the perfect console for indie games. It’s easy to develop for, fully-featured hardware, that we can take with us anywhere! Let’s show independent developers that we respect their time and appreciate their efforts by voting with our wallets.
Watch for these upcoming (and some newly released) games:
You DON’T own this game?! Are you even human???
Of course, it’s spring 2017 and the hype is centered in on Nintendo Switch… but there’s an indie Wii U game that we just couldn’t help but tell you guys all about. It’s called Affordable Space Adventure, and it DESERVES you to play it! We can’t speak highly enough of it, so we’ve bestowed upon it the rare designation of “masterpiece” and this video practically begs you to give it a download! Footage Credit to DreamcastGuy!
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
These is the part of the website where we write little snips of funny text relating to the clips below.
Snipperclips is a Switch exclusive game that makes excellent use of the system’s unique Joy-Con controllers. Playable alone and doubly fun with friends, this devious puzzler is charming, creative, and challenging – the “Three Cs” of puzzle games! What more could you want? Watch Ryan and Scott play through some of the tough levels as they discuss the game’s merits.
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
I love shopping… eShopping, that is.
Don’t forget the downloads! There are some stellar titles on the Switch eShop, even if the launch seemed a little sparse. Quality over quantity, right? Indies and 3rd parties are strongly supporting Nintendo’s efforts right out of the gate this time around, and it’s our responsibility to let them know that their support matters. Vote with your wallet and play these awesome titles!
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“Yeah, I think it would be great if we totally forgot about the pointer on the Wii Remote and arbitrarily used motion controls…! Dahur!” – Skyward Sword Developers
After battling the game for around a year, Simeon finally declared defeat over the evil Demise and saved Hyrule. It wasn’t a quick trip through this Wii classic, but Simeon was noting his experience along the way and he has returned from the journey to tell us all about it. With the game being recently released for download on Wii U’s eShop, this is a great opportunity to see if a revisit to this game is worth it for you!
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Yep, if anything is a first-world problem, it’s this one. But at least we have the freedom and the blessing to have to debate such a topic!
Full shelves, or full hard drives? Physical boxes, or digital convenience? We gamers are forced to make this tough decision with just about every new game we purchase. There are pros and cons to buying your games at retail as well as through Nintendo’s eShop, so we’re here to cover the entire topic and make sense of the decision for you. A lot of it will still come down to preference, but at least we can examine the whole issue!
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Wait until you get to the part of the review where Simeon talks about the phase… glitch… gun… zapper-thingy.
Simeon has the full scoop on the Metroid-like Indie game called Axiom Verge. It’s available for Wii U and it just may be worth your time – watch to get his complete impressions!
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
X-Scape. X-Scape. X-Scape. The game IS CALLED X-SCAPE!
DSiWare, a relic of a bygone age! We are here to fill you in on the best downloadable games from the service past.
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
The year is 2016. Competing consoles have full-fledged online efforts backing their console and software. Purchases are tracked digitally, automatically, and conveniently. It’s not much different in the smartphone and tablet arena either: buy a game on your iPhone, play it on your iPad. Pretty simple! Pretty commonsensical!
That is until you step foot into the realm of Nintendo, where it’s like pulling teeth to get consoles and handhelds to talk to each other. The realm of Nintendo, where we all have Nintendo Accounts, My Nintendo accounts, and NNIDs, and we only have a vague idea of how those all fit together.
The realm where you buy an old SNES game on your Wii U and it’s not there on your 3DS.
We’re talking about cross-buy, and more specifically, the lack of cross-buy.
Nintendo’s Virtual Console service is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. After a decade of offering their classic titles for sale digitally, how has Nintendo’s service expanded? Well, the answer is unfortunate: barely.
Virtual Console made a small jump from Wii to 3DS with restore points. The next real iteration was on the Wii U, which implemented the 3DS improvements plus customizable controls and a few other small perks.
The nice thing was, it was really easy to transfer your VC games from Wii over to your Wii U console!
Oh – wait… no, it wasn’t. You had to buy them all over again. Sure, Nintendo gave you a slight discount for owning the same software on Wii, and the service recognized that, but rather than letting you access your VC games on Wii U’s home menu with the new perks, you had to pay again or just deal with the outdated features and slog through old emulated Wii menus.
Nintendo doesn’t charge for operating system software updates, why should they charge when Virtual Console technology is upgraded?
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the news that Super Nintendo games were coming specifically to the New 3DS as an exclusive feature over the previous generation’s model. You can’t expect me to believe that the original 3DS couldn’t run Super Nintendo games – that would be absurd. But they desperately needed some unique features for the handheld (because they couldn’t make more than one exclusive game for it), so SNES VC titles were the answer.
I own quite a few SNES games on my Wii U, and by this time, Nintendo Network IDs were a thing. They have already been implemented. NNIDs were supposed to be the answer to all our 21st century problems with Nintendo’s online systems – it was supposed to track our purchases, unify the different Nintendo platforms… it was supposed to bring balance to the force!
Yet another implementation of the Virtual Console had arrived with no mention, no promise, not a peep about cross-buy.
I had been frustrated about Nintendo attempting to sell us the same exact retro software over and over again for quite some time, but I held onto hope that Nintendo was going to make good on their word to use NNIDs and make the whole Virtual Console experience more cohesive. When they came out with NNIDs in March (launching alongside Miitomo) and then put SNES games on the handheld, it was finally the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The straw being the terrible value proposition from Nintendo that shows they have a broken business model for their classic titles.
The camel’s back being my willingness to put up with it.
I boycotted SNES Virtual Console titles on 3DS, and in fact, I haven’t bought a single VC title in the time since. I’m through with it. I don’t have $8 (per game) x 10 (titles) for every new console iteration they come out with… for the same games!
Let me rephrase that… I do have the money, but I don’t have the will to spend it on this stuff time and time again. I have plenty of nostalgia for Nintendo’s older games, but I won’t allow them to keep using that against me.
It’s not $8 – it’s the principal.
Okay, maybe I am planning on buying the NES Classic Edition! But that’s different…
The point is, I’ve been burned too many times. I’ve invested too much in this broken, excuse for a digital platform called the Virtual Console and seen it count for nothing when new hardware comes out. Nintendo’s online systems and their business sense isn’t smart enough to allow my purchases to carry over, but I am smart enough to avoid the same traps over and over again!
Nintendo, listen closely: You don’t burn your early adopters. You don’t make your die-hard fans pay twice.
You don’t punish people for buying your games early!
You reward these customers. You say: here, you have a big collection of VC games on your Wii? We spent 700 man hours figuring out how to make those transfer over to your Wii U home menu, for free, and now you can keep enjoying those titles just as easily.
You reward your loyal customers. You take the information about their SNES purchases connected with their NNID and you download those games automatically onto their 3DS, so they open it up and see a surprise gift on their menu screen. I know you can do this stuff – you send me random demos all the time.
Because of so many bad past experiences with the Virtual Console, I’ve turned a deaf ear to the service. I won’t be playing another classic Nintendo game digitally until they address this issue.
I’m waiting eagerly for the Nintendo Direct where Kimishima, Reggie, or Bill Trinen takes the stage and announces the new direction for Virtual Console, a cohesive experience where Nintendo respects my investments in their software.
Until then, I’ll be ignoring all press-releases and the insignificant drip-feed of the same old games every week.
BoxBoxBoy! is the sequel to the hit downloadable puzzle game BoxBoy! for the 3DS that expands on the original, quite literally, as this time around you use two sets of boxes instead of one. While no prior experience with the original is needed, it really helps as the mechanics you learn over the course of an entire game you learn in a few levels. You’ll still be hopping on and throwing boxes, along with hooking onto ledges and snaking your way through narrow paths, and it’s all still a lot of fun.
The only new idea is creating two sets of boxes, but that’s okay as it completely changes the way you have to solve the puzzles and sometimes significantly ramps up the difficulty. There’s still plenty of switches, spikes, and lazers to deal with and it definitely had me stumped for a while on more than one occasion. There are usually a few levels in a row where you use the same mechanic in increasingly difficult puzzles, only to ditch it for a long while and come back to it when you’ve forgotten about it. Absolutely fantastic level design and it made feel dumb for not realizing the solution much soon than I had. There are bonus levels in which you replay chunks of levels you previously completed except this time with either the ninja or the bunny costume from the first game, but you have a lot less boxes at your disposal.
Two sets of boxes, twice the challenge.
The collectible crowns are back once again. If you’re not familiar, think hidden coins from Mario, except you have a limit of boxes you can create until it disappears. Being the OCD gamer I am, I had to get all of them, and a few were extremely difficult. It adds a lot to the way you approach levels and to the overall replay-ability.
The more crowns you get, the more coins you get at the end of every level, which can be spent in the games shop. There you are able to purchase new costumes, short a quirky comics, and music from the game. All of the costumes you unlock from the original BoxBoy! transfer over too, which is a neat little addition.
There’s quite a lot of content for the price and is a great buy for the puzzle and platformer fan alike. While I recommend playing the original game first, this is a sequel that lives up to the original and shouldn’t be missed.
Check out our video review of BoxBoxBoy! or the original BoxBoy!
The clever ways that people name their sequels will never cease to amaze me.
The sequel we’ve been waiting for is here! What does Ryan think of BoxBoxBoy?
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sounds like those graphing calculators that play Portal.
With the release of BoxBoxBoy, it’s time to revisit the original! Let’s review BoxBoy for 3DS!
Shot by Alex Campbell
“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
