Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Thanks, Nintendo DS. ThanDS.
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anime_layer
 Posts: 57 |
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I opened the article because of the Look Around You reference but I appreciated the look back on the Nintendo DS.
Thank you Lemus, Themus. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 551 Location: PA / USA |
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I've attempted to do playthroughs of Ever17 in the past and even as an established anime & VN fan, it is rather obtuse and hard to follow. I've had family 100% it though, and they give me really good reviews of it, it just never clicked with me.
I think Nintendo really hit their stride with the 3DS, as multiple Monster Hunter games and Megami Tensei titles (even Xenoblade) can show that system was a powerhouse. The PSP is pretty great for being a small PS2 and has some of the most memorable gaming experiences of its time, but there's no way you will EVER convince me that navigating Monster Hunter World and Wilds' nightmare UI is going to be smoother than tapping a bottom-screen like a tablet or phone to instantly get the results you were looking for. To this day though, I'd say Pokemon has never again reached the heights they did during the nDS generation. It's thankfully easy to emulate now, but I'm definitely being faced with the reality as I'm getting older that Pokemon has turned into something I don't recognise anymore. Make no mistake, Sega has been botching and mis-managing their Phantasy Star IP for decades. Even as far back as the earliest releases of Phantasy Star Online, Sega has a VERY bad track record of cancelling the service out from under its English players with no warning. We never got the Vita-exclusive Nova game, PSO2 never got dropped properly even after English players were teased for years, and when they finally did translate it officially, it was to bait-and-switch customers into playing their weird Roblox clone New Genesis - if you actually want to play PSO2 you have to jump through some nasty hoops and even then it's debatable it's worth doing as 2025 approaches. It's a shame, because Alisa Landeel predates Xena Warrior Princess by like 8 years of being one of the coolest fantasy action heroines that I've probably seen in its anime & JRPG genres. People had positive things to say back when Netflix picked up Castlevania, but an adaptation of the Phantasy Star RPG line and its insane timeline path that stretches from the Sega Master System to the DS and Dreamcast would be an amazing TV franchise to write for. If you can grab the PS2 versions of Phantasy Star I & II with their name-corrected English translations, I give it some of the highest classic gaming recommends I am able. Doing a modern, lore-accurate & re-translated run of Phantasy Star IV recently, I was amazed to see how well the game held up against its SNES counterpart Chrono Trigger. It still remains to be seen how well we'll be able to recognise these Jet Grind Radio and Crazy Taxi games coming up. Eff that noise, give me a modern remaster of Future and an FF7R-style remake of the original Phantasy Star RPGs and I can leave this universe feeling like something extraordinary happened. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2379 |
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The DS Lite was my first console; I bought it with money earned from a summer job. From mainline games like Pokemon Pearl to relative unknowns like Drawn to Life to less gamey stuff like Let's Learn Japanese, it held its weight in joy and love until I tragically accidentally killed it by getting it soaked in a sudden rainstorm. My 3DS then picked up the mantle. I have nothing but fond memories of the DS line, being able to game most anywhere, rubbing styluses to the bone from playing Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, wearing down the buttons from too much Mystery Dungeon, being able to play easily with friends thanks to the incredibly permissive multiplayer, blowing away dust on maps in Phantom Hourglass, hearing the Rapos exclaim in sadness and joy when I closed and opened the DS, and more. Nintendo did an exceptional job with the DS.
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juaifan
Posts: 150 |
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I'd rather have a faithful Phantasy Star remake than a meta sequelmake. I mean, Phantasy Star lore can certainly be convoluted enough for them to do something like that where Dark Falz/Dark Force/Profound Darkness goes back in time to try to change things but I'd really rather not have FF7R be the standard of remakes going forward. Although personally I'd rather they remake 2 or 3. 1 and 4 stand up to the test of time but 2 and especially 3 are rough. 3 especially has the potential for a Romancing SaGa 2 quality of remake given the premise of generations and lineages. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 648 |
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I tend to agonize long and hard over whether my references will land with people, so this makes me very happy. Thank you. :')
Yeah, I'd vouch for PS2 needing a remake. I love that game and its art/vibes to bits, but that old Sega Genesis version is brutal. It's not even that the game is hard, the dungeons are just such a brick to the face. It's one of those old RPGs where you NEED a map. And they only get worse; the dams are labyrinths, and one of the late-game dungeons on Dezolis requires you to jump into a pit from the right side of a ledge in order to properly land at your destination several floors down. The PS2 remake they did also added the nifty feature of spoiler[allowing you to resurrect Nei in a sidequest], I always wanted to see that come stateside. Nothing to do with nothing, but I remember someone pointing out that Nei in Phantasy Star was likely inspired by Arshes Nei from BASTARD!!, which I'd buy. The long hair, the high-cut leotard, being named "Nei", the ears, being a romantic interest raised by the protagonist... I also vouch for PS3 really needing that second shot. It's the black sheep of the series and barely feels like a Phantasy Star game. But it has a lot of great ideas. The weird gem alignment for empowering your spells was a neat idea, and the game really deserves credit for its many branching paths. It's a game that definitely could use a second pass. |
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Dumas1
Posts: 85 |
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I spent a lot of time with my DS and 3DS up until a few years ago and still get the urge to pick them up again now and then.
Platinum Games' Infinite Space might be my favourite sorta obscure DS RPG. The story can be summed up as the protagonist of a Leiji Matsumoto space bildungsroman growing up to become an admiral out of The Legend of Galactic Heroes if you squint a bit. Memorable characters, sometimes funky ship designs, and two galaxies to fight across added up to something I must've played through three or four times. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2351 |
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It's funny to look at how Nintendo basically has gone undefeated in its handheld line. While people kept hyping up the PSP and PS Vita as the "handheld system that would finally defeat Nintendo" they seemed to forget the entirety of handheld history where tons of competitors came up and Nintendo slapped them back down (when said competitors weren't just making stupid decisions). And it's no wonder that when the Switch came out that it dominated against Sony and MS. AGAIN.
And the ultimate punchline is how people scoffed at handheld consoles and now it looks like they've become the new arms race. As such, everyone is trying to play catch up to Nintendo especially with the new system on the horizon. Sony trying to restart their handheld line and MS trying to get in definitely plays to that, but I can't help but wonder if they're too little, too late as Nintendo owns that market hand over fist and is probably going to get even bigger when the next Zelda or Xenoblade comes out. Especially with plateauing graphics and processors that forces old-fashioned good design back into things. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 648 |
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Oh man, I forgot all about Infinite Space... what an underappreciated title from Platinum. Clunky as hell, but it feels more like an old PC sim game than a Japanese RPG. You can tell they had a blast making and designing all of those ships. The customization was a blast to go through, and it felt great assigning all of those weirdos you recruited to various positions in your crew. The ship combat could've been better, but the game's scope was just unmatched. Truly an experience you couldn't have gotten anywhere else. I remember a lot of the advertising pushing the game as having been inspired by Childhood's End, which... I kinda don't see. The Yamato/Harlock/Galactic Heroes vibes are definitely much stronger.
Literally every competitor to the GameBoy in the 90s was a "better" console--better graphics, better processing, color screens, backlighting, the works. But they all failed. The Sega Nomad was way too clunky, and both it, the Sega Game Gear and the Atari Lynx were absolute battery hogs. The GameBoy was priced to move, a snap to program for, and was relatively affordable with its battery consumption--and later models like the GameBoy Pocket and the GameBoy Color were only better in that regard. The industry needs someone to bring out the Chair Leg of Truth on them; sustainable consoles beat out raw power every single time but people keep harping about better tech even while newer mid-generation upgrades require microscopes to see the improvements. |
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Flash33
 Posts: 74 Location: Florida |
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I still have my DSiXL that I got for Christmas one year (specifically mine is the Mario 25th anniversary one) and my 3DSXL that replaced my stolen 3DS. I still use both, though my 3DSXL has some problems: the joystick no longer has the smooth rubber part on it (it fell off one day & when we tried to glue it back on it wouldn't stick) and the volume is permanently set to max with no way to adjust it (the slider itself works but that's about it).
I have played on both a GBA and PSP before (my parents got them for me as surprise gifts so I'd have something to do when we went on trips to see family in other states) with 2 games I remember playing on them being Namco Museum (inferior to the PS2 version in every way as it only has 4 games (Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaga & Pole Position) & no arrangement versions) and Ape Escape: On The Loose (a handheld version of AE1 (I started with AE2 on PS2)) respectively. I no longer have them anymore but I did have fun with them. I've never really cared about the console wars (I have multiple Nintendo and Sony consoles and used to own a 360), but I will say that while Nintendo is right to put having quality games and affordability over high-tier graphics & day 1 microtransactions/DLC (something the industry as a whole refuses to learn & accept) they could stand to learn that it's okay to have both quality games & quality graphics on their hardware as well as have their games go on sale more often than they do now. Maybe that's something they're planning to address for the Switch 2 but I won't hold my breath. Last edited by Flash33 on Sat Nov 30, 2024 3:22 am; edited 2 times in total |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6318 |
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SMT 4, 4 Final, and the ports of Devil Survivor and Strange Journey most definitely didn’t showcase this. And the first two in particular were worse for it. When you consider they were supposed to be the successors to Nocturne and looked ugly when it came to the 3D segments and then of course all them had the rather outdated gimmick of it’s battles being handled in FPS like old school DragonQuest with the enemy sprites being animated (or not) versions of the actual Kaneko & Doi designs instead of those being rendered in 3D…..bar Shesha who randomly was.
I’ll be scraping barnacles off of shipwrecks before Nintendo permanently and deeply drop the prices on their first party exclusive titles. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 648 |
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I'm definitely getting to the point to where I can see the seams on the Switch creaking from the strain of a lot of the games on that console--not everyone can be Monolith, after all. But also, part of their adherence to older tech is likely because it's cheaper to manufacture, which also passes the savings onto consumers. Tech for the masses, not the classes. They could go with a console that serves as a loss-leader, but that's a big risk as the 3DS showed. I'm disinclined to listen to rumors under any capacity, but enough buzz has gone around about the Switch's successor having PS4-level graphics to where I'm willing to accept it as more than just industry cope a la Switch Pro. And with the PS4 still being a damn good graphical threshold even now, that could carry them for a good few years while everyone else bleeds money for 25% more reticulated splines. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1237 |
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I was in my last years of elementary school when I began hearing news about the Nintendo DS, living in South America and not having Internet access (unless I went ot an Internet café) my only sources of information were some imported magazines from Mexico like Club Nintendo, Atomix and the Spanish-language edition of Electronic Gaming Monthly, which always came with a delay of like 3 months, and to be fair, not all of the writers were so sure that the PSP would be an absolute winner, it varied depending on the writer, but Nintendo still had a lot of good-will in terms of handheld console development. The PSP was truly ahead of its time, but in retrospect it seemed Sony was pushing a lot of features that were not ready jet, unlike their home consoles the Nintendo DS got a lot of third-party support from the start, in part I think it was due to the hardware being much more simpler, but I wonder if making UMDs was more expensive than producing DS cartridges.
I had a N64 as a child and I, nor my friends or family had any problem using the N64 controller, I don't know why people make fun of the three prong controller, almost all of the N64 library made you hold the middle prong with your left hand and the right prong with your right one, I think I never actually used the left prong with the D-Pad and L button. Yes, the N64 controller wasn't as confortable a PSX one, but you have to remember that the PSX launched with a digital-only controller, the Dual Shock wouldn't come out until 1998, and the Dual Analog was very obscure, the N64 was the first major console to use an analog stick and Nintendo weren't so sure if people would know how to use it, even the Dreamcast controller had only one analog stick, it wouldn't be until the 128-bit generation that the modern controller layout would be set in stone. |
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AiddonValentine
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Plus it used to be that you could see how a lot of games needed next-gen upgrades to run. GTA III, Wind Waker, and Halo wouldn't have worked on older hardware even taking gameplay into account. Even a lot of 7th Gen stuff needed the hardware upgrades for basica gameplay ideas. Nowadays, I couldn't really think of anything that needed the PS4 jump until late into the gen and everything on the PS5 would work on the PS4 with just a visual downgrade. And even in terms of scale people have hit a ceiling. FromSoft has said they're fine with Elden Ring's scale and Nintendo has said they have no plans to get bigger than Tears of the Kingdom. As such, it's why hardware and performance junkies are having a bit of an existential crisis. They're expecting to think about design for once and that scares them. The can can no longer be kicked down the road, time to face the facts, boys. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2822 Location: Toronto |
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UMD was created specifically because flash storage would've been too cost prohibitive for the games on the platform in the '00s. The largest DS releases were Ni no Kuni and Pokemon Black/White 2 at 512MB - both of which were released late into the platform's life. For comparison, UMD offered 900MB to 1.8GB of data on day-1. They were cheap enough to print that there were games shipping on 2 UMDs (in Japan) as early as 2007. You might remember that Sony and Hollywood attempted to sell movies on UMD and those launched at like a $20 MSRP. If there was money to made at those prices, it implies UMDs weren't expensive to manufacture. UMD's issues were the loading times inherent to optical media of the era, fragility and drive noise. Those problems gave a reasonable justification for installing custom firmware that wasn't just, "free games, plox." |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6318 |
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That’s great now they can hopefully focus on improving things like the writing and gameplay mechanics. The actual two problems with BOTW & TOTK. |
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