Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@belmont yeah, I haven’t actually played ALTTP through fully, but I got fairly far on the SNES mini recently and while fun.. the plot is so basic and pretty dull. I don’t know, maybe it picks up a bit later. But LA is immediately more engaging. I remember being very impressed by this aspect of the game back in the 90s and it still shines through now.

@Kidfried Except thats what Nintendo actually does, we just think they dont.

Yoshiaki Koizumi is now the head of Mario, after initially writing the plot for Link's Awakening against Miyamoto's wishes, and the same for Majora's Mask. Shinya Takahashi is now the producer on all Switch software, instead of Miyamoto and Tezuka.

Sure, Miyamoto and Tezuka still make the games every now and then, but how many has Miyamoto been directly involved in in the past decade? ARMS was made by the young members of the Mario Kart team, as was Splatoon for Animal Crossing because they liked playing Battlefield (Really).

The younger members are rising to the top in management roles, and it shows. Sure they've worked there for as much as 25 years, but they are the younger ones, with the untested ideas.

Heck those same young people are where the ideas for LABO and probably Ring Fit came from.

Even look at Astral Chain, it was the directors first game in charge, ever. Sure he had a high position in Nier: Autotomato but this was his world, and with help from his senior, Hideki Kamiya (Because you aren't going to do it without guidance for christs sake), he made his game reality. This is an industry wide shift. The young and wild ideas are rising, and thats damn exciting.

@kyleforrester87 yeah the story on ALTTP is pretty basic and I think all the Gameboy Zelda games vastly improved upon it in that department. I will say in general gameplay and exploration I do think ALTTP is a lot better than LA which can feel a little basic.

I'm enjoying the remake but I do feel it really could have done with updating now that the Gameboys limitations are no longer a factor. Maybe it's the recent Resident Evil 2 remake that has spoiled us by giving us something that was both very familiar but new at the same time, or even A Link Between Worlds (which yes was a sequel) but kind of felt like a remake. What we have is a game that is very charming because it always was but the general gameplay is pretty basic, the map a little constrained and with a bit of thought and some risk taking could have been truly special and feels like a missed opportunity. Oh and the ability to use the dpad if I can only move in 8 directions anyway would be nice 😉.

Well I have been playing an awful lot of Link's Awakening over the weekend and I must say I really really like it. As someone with limited attachement to the original it feels new and the basic nature of the gameplay is quite refreshing for me. Combine that with truly gorgeous visuals and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I feel like there are two kinds of remake.

The RE2 kind where a game gets not just a facelift but huge gameplay changes and is basically a new game using the plot of the original but expanded.

Or the Spyro/Crash/Link one, that's the original game prettied up, annoyances removed and modernised...and leave it at that. A literal remake.

@Knuckles-Fajita I'd agree and for me it is about removing the limitations imposed by the original hardware. The Resi remake was more of a reimagining because the game played the way it did due to the limitations of the PS1 hardware and a straight remake would not be successful. As good as it was, the tank controls and camera had aged badly.

However, Link or Spyro etc. had solid gameplay and environments at its core. Changing that would of been a waste really.

@Rudy_Manchego Its funny as Link's Awakening did remove the limitation of using two buttons, and thus having to open the menu constantly.

Also removing overworld screen transitions, making it one seemless map. Which Pokemon probably could have done...

@Knuckles-Fajita I guess that is a limitation but I would probably state that it was a quality of life improvement since they could have ignored the extra buttons. For example, I would lump the Shadow of the Collossus remake in the Link's Awakening camp but the controls are a little better for example.

I in know way think they should have changed how it plays, just that a game which is largely based around exploration could have benefited from mixing things up a little bit. For myself in particular I'm very familiar with the original game so I basically know exactly where to go and what to do all the time. Don't get me wrong I'm still having a lot of fun with it, it's just a shame they didn't take the opportunity to add some new areas or mix things up a little for returning players.

As someone who played ALTTP once 20+ years ago, a straight remake like this is absolutely fine, I couldn’t want more. It actually does have extra content, as I never played the Color dungeon. Not that I remember the majority of it anyway!

Finally joining in this topic now I've a Switch been playing Link's Awakening as well over the last few days and I'm loving it so far. Never played the original and I've played very few Zelda games in general, so this is feeling very novel to me. Love the aesthetic of the game, it looks so fun and inviting to explore, and I feel like it's more satisfying to control than gameboy Zelda's? I'm putting that down to the feel of the Switch controls.
Did find the first puzzle with the Raccoon tricky to figure out but since that I've found it relatively easy to work through, apart from my never-ending capacity to fall into holes!

@Hego The big difference, I hear, is that you can actually just use your gear once you get it instead of having to pause and equip different items constantly (and I mean CONSTANTLY; there's so much pausing and menu management in LA on the GB). You also, from what I hear, don't have to read some half-minute long textbox telling you to equip a certain item if you try to grab objects without it equipped. And don't have to sit through endless textboxes of the owl delivering useless information over and over because you accidentally clicked through his spiel too fast and told him you needed him to repeat the information.

The puzzles in this game are a bit more challenging than in most 2D Zeldas. A place called Eagle's Tower really baffled me for a long time, although, in hindsight, what I needed to do was absolutely obvious.

Probably my least favorite of the decent Zelda games (read: not Zelda I, II, Triforce Heroes, or the CDi games), but I'm glad to see people enjoying it for the first time in this clearly improved form.

@KratosMD Still hoping for a Trails of Cold Steel 3 port!

I finished up Link's Awakening Last night. Really enjoyed the game, I think largely to the world and art style. Obviously a solid early Zelda game by gameplay. I got a little bored with the last dungeon and figuring that out but that is more my own stupidity than a design of the game.

I then downloaded Untitled Goose Game as I'll have a few hours away this weekend to play it.

@Hego I'm guessing that's unlikely. Falcom has no desire to work with Nintendo, and the only reason we got Ys VIII is because NIS ports almost everything to the Switch. But they won't port Trails 3 without Trails 1/2 (probably), and Marvelous, the company that publishes the first two games outside of Japan, isn't known for taking on the burden of developing brand new console ports.

With that said, I think Switch ports are the only way I'd be willing to play these games. PS4 is great, but I don't really like using it to play long JRPGs. I might make an exception for Ys IX, given how much I loved the Switch version of VIII and how it'll be an action game that's more appropriate on powerful hardware anyway, but that's about it.

Falcom build their games for one platform in Japanese and then move on. Porting and translation have always been done and paid for by publishers after the game’s Japanese release. Which makes it really difficult to predict what will happen and when.
@Hego @Ralizah

And my Switch finally broke... It is the only console I had that failed. My launch Gameboy still works fine but a 2017 system broke easily.

Since I bought it the joycons had issues seemed clumsy and did not attatch that well. The dock scratched my screen protector a second time. Also both cons have this drift issue. It is hilarious having Miriam or Rex running around randomly!

Also somehow it stopped charging, the console AC input managed to bend! The whole unit was way hot in the touch. Moreover all screws in the side of the cons have humidity for some reason.

It is still in warranty though but except the drifting I think they may charge me.

Before all this I beat Link's Awakening thoughand it was a perfect nostalgia trip. The original is one of my favourite games.

@belmont Wow that sucks. I didn't realize they made the Switch so shoddy. I guess Nintendo just doesn't have the same quality standards they had years ago.

@Tasuki It clearly sucks. Everything that was reported to be a malfunction hardware wise for the console it happened to me. I was way unlucky.

Nice extremes. This is the first case I've heard of everything failing on a unit.

Naturally though this "shoddy" hardware that "sucks" is down to it's timing. For the concept it needed a chipset that was capable enough, but that runs hot. But a cooler more efficient variant wasn't ready to ship until...let's see...2019. Reckon they should have coasted on 3DS and the corpse of Wii U for over 2 years before releasing Switch in its current refined factor with the smaller and cooler chipset?