This looks about comparable to the remaster from earlier, which looked incredible for a Switch game. The trailer looked nice but definitely not what we would expect from something on the level of a PS4. I don’t see a reason to doubt that the footage was the game running on Switch.

But the fact that people are debating if this is Switch 2 footage speaks volumes about Retro Studio’s skill. Jaw-dropping graphics for a Switch game.

So weird to see a PlayStation IP on Switch. I wonder if LEGO pushed for that since LEGO games have a big audience on Switch (as far as I can tell based on very limited research and big assumptions.) But I really have to wonder-- If the goal is broadening the audience, why on earth is this game on Switch but not PS4? I’m not mad or anything, but that’s extremely weird. Maybe it’s an attempt to sell more PS5s?

I’ve noticed that the games that dominate this list every month are very long games designed to suck players into their gameplay loops for hundreds of hours. Nothing wrong with that, but it makes me wonder if there are short games that are very popular, yet get left off of this list just because they end in 10 hours. I would like to see a top 20 list sorted by number of players rather than playtime.

Low profile circle pads for joysticks aren’t bad at all IMO. Some people dislike them. Depends on the person.

I don’t think I would want a Steam Deck in this form factor. The current Deck honestly feels like the perfect size for me. Not too big to be unruly, not too small to be uncomfortable. I totally understand the appeal of a pocketable device, but I’ve come to realize that I really just don’t have a need for a device that portable and would rather have something bigger. A device this small wouldn’t have the same number of inputs and would greatly compromise on comfort. That’s mostly a me thing, though. Plenty of people want smaller handhelds, so a smaller handheld PC could probably find an audience.

I would love an Android smartphone that’s like this. Not a gaming-centric device like a Retroid Pocket, but something that could be my daily driver smartphone while also offering physical controls for a quality gaming experience. Basically the Xperia Play, but modern. It would be far less cumbersome than carrying around a gaming device in addition to my phone, making it much more practical for me.

What do people think of the new massive team attack? Does it mess with the balance too much? Is it easy to ignore if it does?

Taki Udon went pretty in-depth with thermals in their review. The already great thermals have been drastically improved. The OLED runs cooler in general and does a better job of keeping the heat away from your hands. The fan is quieter than the old model. I linked to the part of the video where they discuss thermals, but the whole video is pretty interesting.

…Huh. Action platformer-shooter wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from a Smurfs game. Seems like a decent game, too.

I’ve loved this Booster Course Pass. It’s been so fun being able to look forward to new waves of content for MK8DX. The majority of the new tracks have been very fun to play on. They continued to surprise me by doing a lot more than courses, too. Characters, options, small features, and even balance tweaks!

Sure, it wasn’t all perfect. Sure, all of the tracks are just brought over from Tour and not remixed the same way the base game remixed its retro offerings. Sure, Wave 1 looked like it was made in Roblox. But overall, I think the good far outweighs the bad. This DLC has been awesome. I’m honestly going to miss it. But hey, Wave 6 looks fantastic, so we’re ending the BCP with a bang.

Funnily enough, I had a weird idea before for a dual screen hybrid console. As a handheld, it would be like a DS. To dock it, you can take the screens apart, dock the top screen, then use the bottom screen as the controller, like a Wii U. I thought this was a dumb idea and that Nintendo would never want to repeat the Wii U, but… Hey, who knows?

Oh, I see. 8BitDo really isn’t known for their analog sticks, unfortunately. Hopefully this one is better.

Has 8BitDo made a stick like this before? I see that they’ve made a controller like the N64’s before, but that’s not the same kind of stick as this. This is like a GameCube controller’s stick, which is really good. It’s true that 8BitDo isn’t really known for their sticks, though, so hopefully they pull through.

That controller has an 8BitDo logo on it. Two-handed N64 controller from 8BitDo soon?

I put the image in paint.net and increased the exposure, the results of which you can see here. Looks like the 8BitDo Ultimate Controller, but with N64 buttons. The analogue stick has an octogonal gate with a circular pattern on the cap, much like the GameCube controller’s left stick. Now I’m wishing that 8BitDo would make a GameCube-like controller with hall effect sticks.

Emulation Station might, since a lot of people use it as a frontend for their emulators. Since ES runs in a separate window while you play, all the time spent playing emulated games would all add to ES’s total.

I feel good for CDPR. They fumbled the launch of Cyberpunk, but people are still playing the crap out of it, so I guess they handled it well in the end. It must be horrible to have worked on a game for years, only for it to blow up the way Cyberpunk did.

Edit: Though I suppose the launch was only “fumbled” on last gen hardware.

Here are some tips from somebody who made the switch about a year ago. My advice is to take it slow.

I first tried Linux on an old laptop that nobody was using anymore. I messed around with it, did a coding project, tried to see what it was like to get this and that running. It’s good that you tried Linux with a home server first. That means you’re already decently comfortable with it.

I recommend starting with a dual boot setup. Some time later I got a new PC, and I was planning to run Linux on it. It came with Windows 11. I wasn’t comfortable with going full Linux, so I split the 512GB SSD down the middle and gave most of the 2TB hard drive to Linux. This has served me very well. It gave me peace of mind to know that if there was something I really needed that I couldn’t get working on Linux, I could boot into Windows.

After a bit, I defected back to Windows. It ended up being somewhat bad timing. I wanted to play Sonic Frontiers, but it barely worked on Linux. At the time I was also using the game engine Unity, which was what my game design courses were teaching me, and I couldn’t get it working properly on Linux for the life of me. I kept my Linux partition in case I ever wanted to use it for something or even switch back. This is partially why I recommend a dual boot setup. You might be dissatisfied with Linux the first time you try it, and if you end up really wanting to go back to Windows, you’ll be glad that you left yourself an easy way back.

Well, I’m glad I left my Linux partition on there, because I eventually came back and stayed here. I was over Frontiers, and I finally managed to get Unity working, so there I stayed. As I spend more time with Linux, I get more and more comfortable with it. I only ever boot into Windows to play multiplayer games with my friend since I don’t want to waste time troubleshooting a game for an hour during a call if something doesn’t work. Though I suspect that most of what we play would work fine on Linux! I’m starting to feel like I’m getting comfortable enough with Linux that if I wanted to get rid of my dual boot, I could. It helps that Unity destroyed itself so I don’t want to use it anymore anyway. Moral of the story: Don’t feel like you have to fully commit to Linux at first. You can make the transition slowly and do what makes you comfortable, and you’ll get there eventually.

I know this comment is very long, but I want a paragraph to recommend distros. I highly recommend something Debian based for a new user. It’s relatively easy to learn compared to other kinds of distros and more stable. I recommend either Linux Mint or Pop!_OS, both of which are excellent for beginners. They’re both based on Ubuntu, which itself is based on Debian. They’re pretty similar under the hood, so it mostly comes down to which UI you prefer. I believe that Pop!_OS is a little more up-to-date with some packages, but not everyone likes its UI, and its app store is somewhat miserable. I use Pop and I adore it, but it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. If you want to try a few distros before you commit, I recommend trying them on some old device you don’t use anymore, or a virtual machine.

That’s weird. I’m able to select it. I don’t know what could be going on there.

…That sounds kind of amazing. I don’t know how happy F-ZERO fans would be with that, but Smash gave Captain Falcon enough fighting moves that it could kind of work.

The focus should stay on the racing. The mechanics need to be solid, there needs to be enough tracks, the works. The singleplayer would need to primarily be about racing, since it’s rare that a game can be two genres at once and succeed. But the structure can be flexible!

You play as Captain Falcon in a somewhat open world. You can drive around freely in the Blue Falcon. The world is very large, but the Falcon is very fast so it’s fun to explore. There are oodles of races to be had, but you have to drive to them in order to participate. At any point you can hop out of the Blue Falcon and, like, start punching stuff. Captain Falcon runs pretty fast, has his Falcon Punch, has most of his moves from Smash and more. You could also tweak the Blue Falcon’s stats and look as you go. It would still be the racing game that F-ZERO fans want, but it would also attract people who weren’t interested in F-ZERO but like Captain Falcon in Smash and want to play as him rather than his vehicle.

We saw the player choosing from three floors: Easy, medium, and hard. Each gave different buffs. Looks like a “Do I pick a harder floor in exchange for better rewards” thing. I love replayable singleplayer games so I’m pumped!

I really wish the trailer was more clear about what the gameplay loop was. It’s not very clear, and we’re left to speculate. It looks roguelite-ish, but that doesn’t feel like something Nintendo would do. Also, that would be too awesome, and I don’t want to get my hopes up.

Whatever it is, it’s probably awesome! All they said was that it’s a singleplayer experience designed to be replayed over and over, and that sounds amazing!