Did you have a modded console? Without modification, the 10NES lockout chip prevents PAL cartridges from running on NTSC or vice versa. But it is possible to disable the chip to get around this.

The real point here is that they don’t have the ability to manufacture at the scale of the big three. It literally can’t be in direct competition.

I don’t think that’s had much of an impact when Nintendo sold more Switch 2s at launch than Valve has manufactured Steam Decks over its entire lifespan. The Steam Deck is still an enthusiast product for a niche crowd, and will likely never be in direct competition with the big three.

NES and SNES were region-locked. In addition to an actual lockout chip, they even had different cartridge shapes so you couldn’t physically fit Famicom or Super Famicom games.

Handhelds were not (until DSi and 3DS), but I specifically said home consoles.

It’s early and there aren’t a lot of heavy hitters yet. But for me, Kirby Air Riders alone was well worth it, I waited 22 years for this sequel and it delivered.

That was always the case for Nintendo’s home consoles, not like it was a new thing that started with the Wii. Switch was the first one to be region-free.

It sounds like you’re upset that a game that clearly put a lot of focus on PvP in its design, has PvP in it. I’m not sure it’s fair to blame the game because you expected something else.

I think this just a sign of changing times regarding how games are made. We’ve come a long way from the days when one programmer added multiplayer into Goldeneye at the very end of development, that could never happen today. And those are the footsteps Halo 1 followed in, they didn’t even have Xbox Live until the sequel.

Today, I think trying to make a game do a little bit of everything may risk struggling to stand out against titles that focus all of their development resources on just doing one thing really really well. You do have a point that having solo content to fall back on is at least a safety net, but does the opportunity cost of implementing that solo content make it even harder to succeed as a multiplayer game in such a competitive market?

But would @[email protected]’s statement also apply to go?

Maybe in just one specific genre, but other kinds of competitive games do exist. It’s worth noting that fighting games have never had even a single cheating scandal.

I think that’s a rather shallow way of looking at. Would you describe something like chess as ‘lazy’ then?

A good competitive game has to put a lot of thought and care into its design to make it so that two players trying to make each other miserable actually ends up coming out the other end as a fun experience.

I’d argue that if a game doesn’t have anything to nitpick at, it probably wasn’t doing anything bold enough for me to truly fall in love with either.

It’s a purely narrative game, the original version (this is now a remake of a remake in a new engine) was made in RPG Maker but without any RPG elements. Walk around, talk to NPCs, watch the story unfold.

The one big thing it has in common with Undertale is that the less you know going in, the better. If the art style and vibe is enough to get your attention, go ahead and give it a shot, go in blind.

Physical copies, yes. If it’s a game I absolutely know I’m definitely buying and I want it badly enough to spend full price and I want to play it on day 1, I’ll preorder to ensure it ships on day 1. Because if I actually ordered it on release day, it’d take a few more days to ship. Last game I preordered was Kirby Air Riders, and I’m very happy with that purchase.

As for Early Access, my criteria is to just evaluate the game in its current state - if it offers enough to be worth buying now, I’ll buy it now.

The person I replied said Nintendo wasn’t making their old games playable at all. You’re complaining about something else.

Panel Attack

Bit of an odd example to cite since both Golden Sun games are officially available on NSO.

Attending Combo Breaker is the highlight of my year every year. In 2025 I was able to fit Frosty Faustings into my travel budget too. Managed to place 17th in Mystery Bracket both times, and they were very wild bracket runs. I saw Gyakuten Puzzle Bancho and turned to my opponent to utter a sentence no one wants to hear in Mystery: “I’m sorry, I know how to play this game.” Also at CB I was able to make it out of pools in Under Night In-Birth II, and it was a hella stacked bracket so I’m pretty happy with that one.

Been focusing more on my mahjong career, attended Riichi Nomi Open and Philadelphia Riichi Open as my first two tournaments. Didn’t do so hot though. But of course, when I win it’s because I’m skilled, when I lose it was just bad luck.

New arcade opened up near me with modded Maimai, Wacca, and Chunithm cabinets. I told myself I’m never going back to Round 1 again, though R1 does have the new official international Maimai now so I guess that’s something. I also got back into Dance Dance Revolution a little, but I’m still not very good.

As for actual new releases, Deltarune is obvious. Kirby Air Riders is a sequel I waited 22 years for, and it was worth the wait. The original is one of my favorite games of all time and I’m blown away by how much higher they raised the bar. Online City Trial is everything childhood me ever dreamed of. And I have to shout out Rhythm Doctor finally exiting Early Access, the final chapter is a wonderful conclusion that gave me a lot of emotions.

Visual novels would be good if you’re looking for something low-energy.

One of the bonus levels in Rhythm Doctor is a Bits and Bops collab. There’s also an Unbeatable level, so it’s a funny coincidence to have all three games launch in the same week.

Boing.

I wouldn’t worry. Dread was extremely well received, and set up a big plot hook for a continuation.

Text that’s written in kana-only can actually be kinda difficult to read. Japanese is written without spaces between words, so kanji helps to distinguish where words actually begin and end. The language is also full of homophones, words that are pronounced the same but are written with different kanji to disambiguate them.

Free fonts exist, so you don’t even need to resort to AI.

Unicode has over 100,000 kanji, though the vast majority of these are esoteric kanji that are rarely used. You could trim it down to just the Joyo kanji list, consisting of 2,136 characters for everyday use.

I think you’re describing the Nintendo DS.

Kirby Air Riders definitely feels like it keeps that spirit alive. The game could’ve just been City Trial and I would’ve paid $70 just to play City Trial, but they packed everything else in there too because they could.

The Fiend’s Cauldron from Kid Icarus Uprising. At the start of a stage, you have to wager currency on how high of a difficulty you want to attempt, on a sliding scale from 0.0 to 9.0. Higher difficulties cost more to play, and if you fail, you lose your bet and the difficulty drops if you choose Continue. It’s an interesting system for how it forces you to check your ego and self-evaluate just how much you think you can handle.

TF2 was the original gacha game.

If I’m going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.

Grinding evasion by dual wielding shields and attacking yourself is peak game design.

If you’d read the article, Valve says they’re working with anticheat devs to come up with a solution together. This can only happen with their cooperation, if Valve somehow could bypass it on their own that would represent a vulnerability that should and would get patched.

TBH, I kinda get the feeling that’s what most of the hype surrounding the Machine is. People hoping it sells well, but not necessarily people planning to buy one for themselves.

If devs want to support one, it’ll be no problem to support the other. But I doubt devs who already refused to support one will suddenly change their minds.

I wouldn’t expect the Machine to be any more popular than the Deck, which already wasn’t enough to convince holdouts. In fact I would bet the Machine will sell much less than the Deck, since that had a more unique niche carved out for it.

Points of no return and anything else that’s permanently missable. No, I am not doing a second playthrough of a 100 hour JRPG.

Portrait of Ruin

As someone who played later entries first and then went back to SotN, IMO it’s a bit rough around the edges in comparison. Still a fantastic game, but I think later games managed to improve on it.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. IMO this is where the series peaked, perfected the formula and delivered a game packed with several large maps and three sets of bonus characters to replay the game with.

• Puyo Puyo Champions - Extra selfish pick, in this scenario now people would have to play it and we’d have a healthy playerbase again. I’d finally get to fulfill my dream of large offline tournaments.
• Skullgirls - See above.
• Stepmania - I was tempted to say Wacca or Chunithm, but in this scenario Stepmania would be ideal for nearly infinite content, as well as offering both keyboard and pad playstyles in one game.
• Slay the Spire - My pick for casual second monitor content. I’m also assuming the modding scene is allowed to continue, in this scenario it’d suddenly have everyone making tons of new characters.
• Super Mario Maker 2 - Actually took me a bit to think of what the last game should be. Gotta be an endless game, but I didn’t want to duplicate genres by just adding another fighting game or puzzle game. Though if we’re allowing romhacks to count as part of the game, if new romhacks can continue to be made, substitute Super Mario World instead.