Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@kyleforrester87 Planescape Torment is brilliant, more story focused than combat which is more up my alley as AD&D 2nd edition makes me want to tear my hair out in Baldur’s Gate. Icewind Dale is still great though too!

Welp, it was just announced the 3DS and Wii U eshops are going down next year (for purchases; they've at least made it clear previously purchased software will be redownloable for the foreseeable future). And unlike Sony, they can't be bullied into doing the right thing.

fml

@Ralizah Now’s really the time to install CFW on 3DS and Wii U if people haven’t already then.

This day was going to come eventually. I'm glad that I've been slowly purchasing titles over the years so that I don't spend so much money at the same time. And unlike the Wii Shop Channel, I'm not making the mistake of not buying certain games and regretting it afterwards.

Anyway, I think it's finally time to purchase games like Shin Megami Tensei IV (it never goes on sale anyway), Cave Story, Denpa Men 2 and 3 on 3DS, and on Wii U the DS Kirby games, Golden Sun Lost Age, Pandora's Tower, Project Zero 2, Ogre Battle 64, Megaman Battle Network, Yoshi's Island DS, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and more.

And if there's an Atlus sale again on 3DS eShop, then I might finally decide to buy some of the Etrian Odyssey games since physical copies are crazy expensive.

@R1spam Only just seen your heads up about the Mario Kart DLC. Will get that ordered as me and the kids are well into that at the moment 👍

@Ralizah I wouldn't be surprised if this leads to Sony trying again to shutdown the PS3 and Vita stores.

@Grumblevolcano Which is understandable. The problem with the shutdown of the PS3/Vita stores was that Sony gave us an incredibly short notice before wanting to shut them down. I would've been totally fine with them being shut down if they had given us one year in advance to make necessary purchases, just like Nintendo is doing now.

At the end of the day, both Nintendo and Sony don't have a universal system like Microsoft has in terms of buying older content on newer hardware. The more systems they release, the less relevant digital storefronts like the PS3/Vita stores and Wii U/3DS eShops will become. So it was always inevitable that they will be shut down. These companies just don't take game preservation into consideration when developing future consoles, which is why I'd rather buy my digital games on Xbox if I can't help it.

Anyway, the point is that I don't mind that these stores are going away as long as you get ample amount of time to purchase the games you want to have. Can't really expect these stores to say open forever when the games aren't even available on recent hardware, which is the companies' fault.

@LtSarge I feel that for it to be acceptable there needs to be a reasonable alternative. Like when Microsoft took down the 360 Halo servers in January it was MCC, the XB1/PC remaster of Halo Wars and the XB1/PC port of Spartan Assault that was the reasonable alternative. 3DS, Wii U, PS3 and Vita don't have reasonable alternatives at the moment:

• 3DS - Some games were ported to other platforms but for the most part the 3DS is lost when it's shutdown
• Wii U - Massive chunk of Wii U games are on Switch and I'm sure we'll see more stuff like the Zelda HD remasters come in the future but NSO currently isn't anywhere near a reasonable alternative to Virtual Console.
• PS3 - Lots of 3rd party games were brought to PS4 but on the 1st party front, most of PS1-3 currently is lost to time. Spartacus may change that but at the moment Spartacus is just rumours and speculation.
• Vita - Same as 3DS

@Grumblevolcano But that's what I'm saying, there is no alternative. Neither Sony nor Nintendo care about game preservation and consoles like PS4/PS5 and Switch don't have backwards compatibility with these older systems. So what is there to do? They can't keep the stores running forever because they keep making different online infrastructures every generation, which costs a lot of money to maintain. This is why Sony was so eager to shut down the PS3/Vita stores.

I mean, how long were people expecting the Wii U/3DS eShops to stay open? Until 2030? 2040? These stores were always planned to exist in the short run because Nintendo doesn't care about having a universal system where you can keep playing the games you already own on newer hardware. They make a digital storefront, then they shut it down, then they make a new one, then they shut that one down. They've decided that this is the path they want to take and people have to accept it because there is no other alternative.

I've been preparing for this day for YEARS ever since the Wii Shop Channel was closed. I've been slowly purchasing Virtual Console games so I wouldn't have to buy all of them at once when the day would come when the eShops are shutting down. It sucks, but it doesn't come as a surprise to me at all. Both Nintendo and Sony suck when it comes to planning ahead with their systems, it's as simple as that. Maybe that will change with the Switch and PS5 going forward.

On a side note, I bought Pandora's Tower on Wii U and I was surprised to see that you can actually play the game with the Wii U Gamepad. In other words, you don't need a Wii Remote + Nunchuk to play it at all. Granted, I've seen some people say that it's harder to play the game well using the Gamepad, but it's still cool that there's an option to play a Wii game with the Gamepad.

@render nice, it's a family favourite in our house too! Mario kart has to be one of the few games that you can have a 3 Yr old and an 83 Yr old play! They are taking registrations for the free switch sports online test as well just now for this weekend, might be a good one for some family game night.

This eshop closure makes me glad I bought digital 3DS games like a madman.

While there are a lot of retail games I'd still like to snag, I own virtually all of the eshop-exclusive content.

Really salty I lost my copy of Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, though, since I own the other ones physically still, and that game's physical is insanely expensive.

@RogerRoger Got lost in the shuffle of a move. No idea why. My other 3DS games are OK.

It's my favorite game in the series, too. And considering Level-5 has stopped distributing games in the U.S., a reprint is probably never happening.

Might just suck it up and pop for one of these overpriced physicals someday.

@Ralizah My copy of Spirit Tracks went AWOL a during a move too. Not sure how it happens. There’s probably a bird’s nest somewhere with a bunch of DS cartridges inside it.

Well there you go, a new mainline Pokémon game that's open world. That's exactly what I've been waiting for, not something like Arceus. I've been wanting a fully open world game where you go to towns, battle trainers on your way there, fight gym leaders and so on. Basically everything you've been doing in a mainline game but in an open world setting. And Spain is also a great setting.

It's crazy how fast Game Freak is putting out these games though, but honestly I'm not that surprised. I've said this before, but they keep experimenting with the open world formula instead of releasing an actual open world title. Sword/Shield had Wild Areas, the expansions were fully open world, Arceus had huge open areas but it wasn't completely open world and now Scarlet/Violet is going to be an actual open world game. This is what I've been waiting for all this time and I'm so glad that I skipped Arceus. Otherwise I probably would've experienced series fatigue at this rate and I wouldn't want that to happen before Scarlet/Violet comes out.

@LtSarge Arceus is great. I’d absolutely give that a go first as I doubt that the new one will be as Monster Hunter-esque.

@LtSarge I wouldn't get your hopes up for this being an open world. This could just as easily be a game where the 'routes' between towns are more open-ended. More like Xenoblade in that respect (which I'd be perfectly fine with, tbh).

Anyway, we don't really know how this game will behave mechanically. The brilliance of Legends: Arceus is the way it changed up how players interact with the game. Catching Pokemon and battling them to fill out the pokedex actually made engaging with all of your monsters worthwhile. Changing names, movesets, etc. were streamlined. You could sneak up and catch Pokemon in the overworld, and never actually transition away from your environment to a separate battle screen. The game had actual side-quests, which, again, made the exploration more worthwhile. Ride pokemon were dramatically overhauled and allowed the player to go pretty much anywhere by the time you found the last one. It had crafting and tons of stuff to find in the environment.

It may have ditched the traditional series structure, but it actually feels like a much fuller experience than other recent Pokemon games.

Maybe this has all of that in addition to the usual Pokemon structure, but we don't actually know how it plays yet.

@Ralizah "Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are an "evolutionary" step for the Pokemon franchise and feature an "open world where various towns with no borders blend seamlessly into the wilderness." The Pokemon Company also notes that "Pokemon can be seen everywhere in this wide-open world - in the skies, in the sea, and on the streets.""

https://www.ign.com/articles/pokemon-scarlet-and-pokemon-viol...

"With these new titles, the Pokémon series takes a new evolutionary step, allowing you to explore freely in a richly expressed open world."

https://www.gamesradar.com/it-sounds-like-pokemon-scarlet-and...

@Ralizah Pretty much this. We know absolutely nothing other than ‘it has the garbage pop-in of Arceus’ and ‘the Pokemon are in 3D’ 😂

@LtSarge Oh wow. Guess we'll see, then. An open-ended environment with towns, gyms, and the mechanics from PLA sounds amazing. Environmental design, if nothing else, was about a million times better in that game than in SwSh.

Hope it's mildly challenging in spots like PLA was as well. That game seemed to do a better job of balancing XP gain so that my Pokemon weren't overleveled against bosses.

@nessisonett I was satisfied with how far away you could see Pokemon, but they GOTTA fix the issue of entire portions of environmental geography suddenly materializing ten feet away, lol.

Then again, the shadows in Elden Ring shimmer chaotically every time I turn the camera, and that's apparently the best game ever made, so what do I know?