Assuming this is for a team game, predator-prey relationships create interesting dynamics where teammates have to protect each other from their counters, while also aiming to create situations where they can isolate a countered opponent to press the advantage.

In a 1v1 game though, you do want panel 2. It would be very bad if Street Fighter was decided by playing rock-paper-scissors on the character select screen.

Vampire Savior

Are you volunteering to go make that many?

HW1 didn’t include anyone from A Link to the Past, Oracle of Ages/Seasons, Four Swords, Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, or Spirit Tracks. So those would be a good place to start.

An engine reimplementation is something that has to be made from scratch for each individual game you want to remake.

There are roughly 150000 games on Steam. So you’re asking for 135000 engine reimplementation projects.

Qanon

Honestly disappointed they’re limiting it to BotW and TotK, again. I really liked HW1 as a celebration of the entire Zelda franchise, and wish a sequel expanded on that to represent an even wider variety of picks throughout the series, especially games that weren’t represented in HW1.

Aika from Skies of Arcadia

As a journalist she did it to see what would happen. And then wrote an article about what happened. This is definitely worth talking about even if she did click the box, the box isn’t really the point here.

Just a few days ago, at a local Vampire Savior tournament. Grand Finals ended with me sniping Q-Bee’s bubble super with a callout from B.B. Hood’s gun super. Wish I had a clip, but it wasn’t streamed or recorded.

Also had a few good laughs playing Skullgirls earlier that night at the same local, chaotic shit always happens in that game.

Word of caution, do NOT read the original manga. It’s kind of infamous for the incredibly controversial direction the story goes in the second half, which the anime thankfully omits.

Conservatives have been labeling anything and everything they don’t like as “porn”. A queer romance novel is “porn”. Two male characters kissing on television is “porn”. Drag queen story time is “porn”. The picture book Heather Has Two Mommies is “porn”. And the thing they’re really most afraid of, educational resources for LGBTQ youth are “porn”.

So by declaring porn illegal, they now have a pretext to go after everything they call “porn”. Their goal isn’t to remove all porn from the internet, it’s to make it harder for people who need those educational resources to access them. It’s not about porn, it’s about “porn”.

Kinda surprised to hear he didn’t already have one.

First game is one of my all time favorites, and I’m blown away by how much more they’ve packed into this sequel.

• Top Ride is back
  • Can now select any character/machine, unlike the original which only had Free/Steer Star (these are now control settings)
  • New exclusive powers
  • Camera zooms in slightly to follow the player, but classic zoomed out view remains an option for local multiplayer
• Road Trip mode
  • A roguelike? Select one of three challenges, obtain powerups, repeat
  • Challenges can involve all three main game modes
  • Dark Matter teased - boss, presumably
  • Shows opening cutscene, this is the game’s story mode
• Online play
  • ArcSys style lobbies
  • All three game modes have separate ranks
  • Ranks associated with colors, again looks like ArcSys style
• All Air Ride courses are returning, plus 9 new ones, for a total of 18 courses.
• City Trial stuff
  • Lots of new items shown
  • Rare boxes can contain more items
  • Sandbag from Smash appears? Drops powerups when hit
  • Legendary Air Ride Machines are back, both Hydra and Dragoon
  • Team Battles - 8v8 mode
    • Legendary Air Ride Machine parts are shared with teammates, making them easier to assemble
    • Stadium events have teams compete for a total score
  • Teases a floating island far in the distance…
  • Free Run, looks to be the same as the first game. Underground parking lot has every machine, but you can also summon any machine anywhere from the pause menu. Flight Warp Star returns, again exclusive to Free Run, can draw a contrail with the special button.
  • City Trial Stadiums can be played standalone, like the first game.
  • Active Stadiums menu lets you toggle which Stadiums can show up, like Smash’s random select
  • VS Boss Stadium - original had Dedede, now there’s Robo Dedede. Transforms between Dedede Form and Car Form. Click R stick to lock camera onto the boss. Teases more bosses - looks like Nightmare and Zero Two?
  • My Music lets you configure frequency of each track, like Smash. Large collection of classic tracks from the whole series.
• More playable characters shown: Taranza, Lololo & Lalala, Daroach, Rocky, Rick, Scarfy, Marx, Waddle Dee
• More new machines
  • Transform Star - Quick Spin swaps between Star form and Bike form
  • Hop Star - Quick Spins do a small jump
  • Bull Tank - Charges forward without worrying about damage
• Two selectable announcers each (one male, one female) for 12 languages. JP VAs are Banjo Ginga and Makiko Omoto.
• Time Attack for both Air Ride and Top Ride, exactly what you’d expect. Standard three lap with enemies, one lap with no enemies. Separate records for every machine.
• Photo Mode accessible from the pause menu in any mode, free camera to play with
• Checklist is back, and reveals an image like in Kid Icarus Uprising. Five tabs: Air Ride, Top Ride, City Trial, Road Trip, and Online. No riders or machines are locked behind online achievements though. Some boxes can be clicked on to go directly to a challenge. Riders and machines can be unlocked multiple different ways, subsequent boxes will instead reward alt colors/decorations.
• My Machines menu lets you customize machines with unlocked skins, accessories, and decals. Machine Market lets you share your designs online. Prices will go up the more popular your design is… but you don’t actually get any coins yourself.
• Hats!
• Miles are the game’s currency for unlocking cosmetics. Decorations, hats, profile card backgrounds, music.
• For every online opponent you place higher than, you earn a Gummy of their machine. Can also be earned ‘gradually’ offline. Used in a little physics minigame where you can just fiddle with your massive pile of trophies. “I hope you aim to become a gummillionaire.”
• Garage - diorama mode you can decorate with your machines
• Composers Shogo Sakai, Noriyuki Iwadare
• Entire menu worth of Accessibility settings
• amiibo - They’re big (shows a size comparison with the original Kirby amiibo), and effectively function as two amiibos, rider and machine. Can swap the rider and machine, and the game will recognize how they’re paired. “But with such elaborate specifications, we probably couldn’t make very many of them…” [Sakurai pulls out five different pairs from under his desk] Kirby & Warp Star, Bandana Dee & Winged Star, Meta Knight & Shadow Star, King Dedede & Tank Star, Chef Kawasaki & Hop Star.
• “Just so you know: we’re not planning any DLC. Everything is here. Also, I’m not planning on making this an ongoing series. I’ve thrown everything I have into this game from the start. So I hope you don’t miss this opportunity.”
• Global Test Ride demo November 8-9 and 15-16.
• Outro teaser shows the Fountain of Dreams and Star Rod, followed by a sleeping Nova opening its eyes.

ZSNES was an important milestone for its time, but once Snes9x came out, it didn’t take long to overtake it in terms of accuracy and compatibility. ZSNES is actually pretty terrible in comparison.

Romhacks:

• Link to the Past Randomizer - Generates a shuffled ROM with all chests and items swapped around, sending you on a wild goose chase through Hyrule trying to find everything required to beat Ganon. Has a LOT of settings to play around with.
• Link to the Past/Super Metroid Combo Randomizer - Like the above, but with both games combined into a single ROM using some elaborate witchcraft. Certain doors take you from one game to the other, and the item pools are shuffled together so you’ll have to go back and forth between Hyrule to find Metroid items and Zebes to find Zelda items. It’s a bit imbalanced by the fact that LttP is a much bigger game than SM with far more items and locations, but I recommend playing through it once for the sheer novelty.
• Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash - A metroidvania running in SMB1’s engine. As the name suggests, it’s heavily inspired by Celeste and ports in mechanics from that game.

Standalone fangames:

• Panel Attack - Open source clone of Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack/Puzzle League/Puzzle Challenge/oh my god Nintendo please pick a name and stick with it featuring netplay and modding support.
• AM2R - Another Metroid 2 Remake. Do note that I’ve heard a big 2.0 update is supposed to be coming soon, so you may wish to wait for that.

I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding.

DRM-free games can be freely copied, nothing’s stopping you.

Pirates have to crack games that don’t have DRM-free versions available, games that aren’t on GOG.

Will never be anywhere close to what Newgrounds and Kongregate were at their peak.