Mario Wonder’s Bellabel Park Is the First Great Nintendo Switch 2 Expansion - NVC 805

Whether you're off to the big match, enjoying a trip to the coast to catch up with friends or exploring some incredible history with your family. With up to a third off most rail travel, a rail card can help you save on train journeys all around Great Britain. Find the one for you at railcard.co.uk. Tzensii supply. Super Mario Brothers Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Plus Meetup in Belleville Park is out now on Switch 2. I reviewed it. This is my favorite Switch 2 edition so far. What? You've been making fun of it for weeks? What are you talking about? I was not impressed with the preview that I saw this in New York a couple months ago, but what's actually in the main game, there's a lot more there that's really solid and it just uses Mario Wonder's mechanics in a lot of very inspiring ways. There is a lineup, but it's basically whatever issue you had with Super Mario Brothers Wonder, Nintendo has done something in this expansion to address that in unique ways that don't really alter the main experience. For example, people think the Bowser Jr. boss battles are pretty mediocre. I agree. They had seven Koopaling boss battles where each Koopaling gets a different Wonder Power from Bowser and these are really, really great battles like we're seeing one with Morton here where he turns into this giant robot puppet who attacks you from the background and you need the work away to climb up to these ropes to kind of yank his arms off. That's like way different than the just jump on their head three times thing that 2D Mario has been doing forever. So that's really great. There's over 70 single player missions that are like, you need to reach the goal in 30 seconds while you're invisible and while you can't stop spring jumping, go. And like it's using the badge powers from Wonder, which felt very underutilized in cool new challenging single player ways. You can also play those multiplayer, but they're very tough. I think these are mostly geared to be single player challenges, but it's just everywhere. I think this stuff is really, really good. Yeah, I mean, I played Wonder. I beat Wonder and I liked Wonder a lot, but I feel like except for some of its big Wonder moments, I don't have like a strong memory of a lot of the platforming of that game. I guess except for the Wonder moments and then some of the harder like end game challenges. I'm watching this and I feel like this is all new footage we're looking at, right? This is all new stuff from Belladelle Park. None of this is old stuff. Yeah. There's like stuff in here that I don't remember seeing in the main game that boss battle looked really cool. Are there like items, like different items that I haven't seen before? Yeah. Yeah, so there's a bomb earlier. Yeah, that is in a cooperative mini game, which is I remember the exact name of it, but you have this Bob-omb that it's basically hot potato. The Bob-omb will display a face above it of who it wants to be carried by, and then you need to pass it to that player. And as long as it's not in the hands of that player, the timer ticks down and you have to get to the goal while passing this bomb back and forth before your timer hits zero. But also if you drop your bomb into a pit, it's over. If your bomb falls into lava, it's over. So you need to be careful about when you make these transitions. Really, really fun stuff. Like these are all in levels that were already in Wonder, but they're completely turning the objectives on their head so they don't feel like repeats. It's like you take this pre-existing toy box and you throw new toys in it and the rules change, and it just leads to, I think, really clever platforming stuff, which, I mean, if you know me, I just love mechanics. I love how games feel to play, and this game shakes all that stuff up that just made it feel really, really fresh. I love the flower suit that he's wearing, too. Like that, I don't remember the flower suit from before. That's new. That's a new power-up, Flower Mario. He has like a Yoshi Flutter Jump, and also he can throw a Projectile upwards, this flower pedal that he launches above him. So there's one challenge where it's like defeat all the enemies, and a lot of them are above you on platforms you can't reach, so you just line up under them, fire the flower, and keep moving. And it's a really cool new power-up that I hope comes back like in a future game in a Wonder sequel or something, because it's really, really good. Okay, so I'll be real with you. I was fully intending to skip this. Just totally not even going to bother. I played through Mario Wonder with my partner, like full game, with the exception of the very end, like the super hard stuff. I just let him do by himself, because I'm a little slower to learn platformers than he is, so I let him do that. And it's also hard, as you said, a lot of the harder stuff is very difficult with two people, because you evidently leave someone behind. Should I tell him, hey, let's bust this out again and play through it? Like is it something we can just get out and play through a bunch of levels together, or like, are we going to be doing a bunch of repetitive things we've already done before? Yeah, I think two players is the toughest number to explicitly recommend it for, because the co-op games are very fun with two. They're more fun with four. Like this bomb thing, when you're passing it back and forth, if it was just you and me, it's like, well, here you go. But when it's four people, it's very chaotic. They're still very fun with two, and there's actually some stuff that's designed for two players specifically. Like there's these Captain Toad levels, where you are playing as Captain Toad and Plucky, who's his bird friend in this expansion. And Captain Toad famously can't jump, and so he holds Plucky above his head. And what you do is one person moves left and right as Captain Toad, and the other controls all the jumping. So it's like linked together, that Brian and Zach Ryan did for Breath of the Wild many years ago, where they each had one joy con and played through Zelda. But it's like a legalized version of that, where you're like, jump down, no, and you're messing up and yelling at each other, and it's super fun. So I definitely think there's stuff in here that's fun for two people. I feel like Nintendo has undersold this, if it's as good as you're saying. I think so too. I truly just thought this was going to be some dumb mini-games, and a couple bonus levels, and I totally written this off. How long did it take you to do everything? The single-player Toad Brigade camps I'm talking about, where it's like, use this badge to get to the goal, kill all the enemies in time. That took me about six hours to 100% that section, but that's not even including all of the... that includes none of the co-op or competitive mini-games. That's purely kind of the stuff in one section of Bella Bell Park, and then all the multiplayer stuff. I think I played for five or six more hours. I've played this for over 15 hours, but some of that was also revisiting the main campaign just to see how it feels and if there are any changes. So for a $20 expansion with everything you get, I actually think it's pretty fairly priced. Because like you, Reb, I thought this was going to be dumb mini-games that I played once and didn't like. There's some of that in here. I think the competitive sort of battle arena style mini-games are very throwaway. It's like you all have a bubble blaster and you just try to shoot each other off the edge, and it's just like... Then they're done that. Yeah, watered down Smash Brothers or watered down Mario Party mini-game. Like we're seeing now, throw these electric zap-polls and try to survive with the most lives. Like those are super mediocre at the competitive stuff, but the co-op stuff is... This is Nintendo co-op platforming designed for co-op, and that's what's super cool. It's like these Mario Wonder or the new Super Mario Brothers games you can play with four people, but they are also designed to be played alone. But these co-op stuff, it only can exist in co-op, and so it leads to ideas from one of Nintendo's top teams that you can only see in this form factor, and I think that's really special. Huh, okay. Well, maybe I play this? I don't know. You've really kind of sold me on it. I truly was ready to just forget about this. Yeah, I was too. My preview caused me to write an op-ed saying I'm tired of Switch 2 editions, which I still think it's a little nasty to paywall 4K upgrades behind these mini-games and other stuff in this one package. I still think that's a disappointing choice, but setting that aside and reviewing the product in front of me, I loved it. And I love Mario Wonder, so I loved having more to do. And I also want to talk about there's some changes to the base game that I think sound really kind of inconsequential, but are actually a really, really big deal. Rob, you mentioned, and I remember you even talking with me on the show when this game first came out, like it's co-ops a little frustrating. It's easy to get lost. It's easy to turn into a ghost. And this game makes several changes only in the Switch 2 edition that make playing through the base campaign that has been basically untouched so much more fun. First, you can zoom out the camera, which I think we're about to see a wipe of here. So it's just this much wider shot and everybody kind of has more room to play. Like when there's four elephants on screen, it's crazy, but now you can zoom out. They've changed how warping back, if you get cut off the screen works, before you would turn into a ghost and then whoever was still on the screen would have to go and rescue that player. Now they just warp straight back to the player. They're not a ghost and they can just keep playing. I assume you still turn into a ghost if you die. If you die, you still turn into a ghost. That makes sense. That's fine. But just getting cut off? No, you just, here's the wider camera, which just makes a huge difference when you're playing this with four people. Wow. It also doesn't, like, I was worried when you said that it was going to read, oh wait, they're changing, okay, hold on, they're changing it now. I thought they had already changed it. Oh yeah, I'm just showing the settings menu. Okay, but that was it. That was the wider camera. Okay, yeah, I was worried it would read as very small and difficult to see, but it really doesn't. It's just literally just a wider camera. Okay, okay. And now here we're showing off them. In the old one, if player one died, it would give player two the crown, and maybe player two is your little kid. I know Brian complained about this. When his daughter was much younger and they played this and she wasn't very good at games yet, and he's like, she gets frustrated when she's the leader. I get frustrated when she's the leader. Now you can set it so if player one dies, they get the crown back as soon as they're revived. So if player one is alive, the camera is always following them. So if you're playing with young kids, you're always in control and they can just tag along. They can warp back to you instantly when they get cut off the screen. It's just removing this friction that I think is what colored a lot of people's opinions of Mario Wonder, specifically who played it in multiplayer, was this is frustrating and not that fun. Now they've changed it, and I think it's way for the better. Where was all this at launch? I know, I know. And it's still weird that these are features that are paying well. They could totally just be thrown in there, but I'm happy with it. Like just the quality of life stuff alone. The new content, okay fine, charge us for that I guess. That's fair enough. But yeah, all these quality of life features that just make Co-op a more reasonable experience. That's nuts. I don't know why they're doing that. I mean, I know why they're doing it. Yeah, money, always the answer. There's Pikmin now too. There's a nice Pikmin. They put Pikmin in Mario? Oh my god. What'll they do next? It's just great. And I mean, there's still things I wish it had gone a little farther in. Like I mentioned, the single player challenges are some of my favorite stuff. There's one where we just saw all the blooms, like the big pink and green blooms. All the blooms, yes. A bloomp. There they are. That's a bloomp. There's a level where you have to get through the whole thing without making contact with any of the blooms. And there's lots of these things on screen, and it's just really intense and nail biting and fun. I just wish there were more of them. Like I said in my review, I could have gone for 100 more of these challenges. Because even still, I feel like they didn't get everything out of the badge system they could have. Like they introduced these dual badges that combine two powers into one, and they make probably 10 or so amazing challenges with them. It's like, oh, but there's so many combinations they could have done that they just didn't. I don't think we're getting another Switch 2 Edition plus whatever for this. So this is probably all there will be. And it's like, they could have gone extra step. Can you imagine how long the title would be if they tried to do another Switch 2 Edition? Yeah, meetup in Belleville Park plus some other ridiculous subtitle. So I wish they got a little farther there. And then, I mentioned the competitive games are pretty throwaway. Online is the same thing. It's just like, let's race in these jets and everyone else is a ghost, so you can't even spin them out like you can in Mario Kart. Just pretty forgettable. Well, I'm very irritated with you now because I have enough going on, right? The new WoW expansion is out. I still cannot put down Pogobia. I don't have time for this, man. Why would you do this to me? Hey, it's great. It's another great Switch 2 game. I was not expecting to play a Mario this year, honestly. Yeah. Really? Super Mario Titans? The AI fake that everybody's talking about? Well, I was going to say, I don't remember what my Switch predictions were at the end of the year. So maybe I said I thought there was going to be a Mario. So if I said that, then actually, I thought there was going to be a Mario. But I don't think there's going to be another Mario. Yeah. The last two I want to shout out just to kind of demonstrate how cool this co-op stuff is, is there's one minigame called Jump Count or Coin Count where they give you a target number of jumps for your entire group before you hit the flagpole. It's like you need to jump 120 times as a group, but your total is hidden. So everyone's counting their individual jumps as you're making your way through this level. And then at the end, you're all like, okay, I jumped 32 times. Me 30. And then you add them up and then somebody just jumps a bunch of times to make up the difference. And then you hit the flagpole and it's like this really exciting moment where it's counting if you got it perfect. And they do the same thing with coins too. It's like you can only grab 30 coins as a group in this whole level. So you're like counting together. We're all like crouching and Mario's pulling his cap over his face as you're tiptoeing under these coins. We don't want to grab because we're already at the number. It's just, this is really smart stuff that they've never done before. And I just, I really recommend it. I'm sorry. Can I get over Flower Mario? I love the way he stands with his little hands out. I love the way he walks. He kind of like skips. Yeah. A little sashay. That is so cute. I love that costume. But like that's a whole Mario costume. Okay. So I have, I have a sweatshirt that I actually bought from the IG and store a few years ago that's Frog Mario. And like Frog Mario is like, we never see that. Like that's such an underrated transformation. And now we're going to have Flower Mario that we're probably never going to see again. But I love, I love this. I love how cute this is. Yeah. Look at him. That is meetup in Belleville Park. Really great out now for 20 bucks on switch too. Okay. We got trailers for two of Nintendo's big April games. First is Pokemon Champions, which is coming to Nintendo switch one on, I believe April 8th is the number. And it's going to have a free update for switch two players with higher res, all that stuff. Uh, Rev, this is about a six minute trailer. What'd you think of all this? Um, I mean the big, so Pokemon champions has been very, very highly anticipated for so long, right? Like this is, this is what people have wanted. They wanted, they have all their Pokemon in Pokemon home. They want a way to sort of battle them outside the confines of any specific like generation or game or whatever. And this is it. This is something that people have been very excited about. I think after this trailer actually everybody's mad. Um, okay. Why, why is that? Why are people mad? I watched the trailer. I thought it looked good. It's like, bring your Pokemon from home. Do ranked battles, casual battles. Like I thought it seemed like what people wanted. Um, so the thing that people are mad about is it looks like the monetization is going to be really annoying. So this is a free to start game. Um, that you can, you know, put your Pokemon in and play without spending any money. But the issue is that everything that you want to do for the most, everything you want to like collect in this game, everything that you might want to do to make your Pokemon stronger or, you know, mega stones, like, like whatever it is you want in this game, apart from just throwing a Pokemon you already have and doing arena and battling it is limited by VP, which I think is victory points. I think that's what it's, yeah, victory points is what it stands for. And VP can be earned through gameplay. It cannot, you cannot buy it. It's not like a currency you can buy with real money. You can't open a window and spend 499 for a thousand VP or whatever they're doing. But, but the way you earn VP in game is by completing like certain objectives and challenges and you don't get access to a bunch of the like objectives that give you VP unless you pay the subscription. So in that regard, it's kind of pay to win. And as someone who has played the Pokemon TCG mobile game as someone who has played Pokemon sleep, I feel pretty confident in saying that everyone's fears are well reasoned because in both of those games, like you can play them for free, but you really don't get like anything meaningful. Well, you know, it's not that you don't get anything, but like you very quickly start running into walls if you don't have the paid subscription, like you start running out of things to do, you start running out of quests to do, you start running out of whatever. And so I, I kind of get it. I kind of get why people are mad about this. It feels like a weird mobile monetization scheme. On one hand, I don't really know what people were expecting because this has always been like a free to play subscription sort of situation. Like we've known that for a while. But what I what I do, I think sort of sympathize with is this fear that Pokemon is just going to use a bunch of these like predatory monetization tactics long term to sort of squeeze money out of people to the point where if, and I think I'll add to this too, I think the big issue that people have is all this would be fine if this was like an optional thing. But this is the future of Pokemon competitive battling. This is going to be what is at tournaments. This is what you battle Pokemon with for all like official things, whatever. And that's up to the Pokemon company, right? Not to fans because fans are. Yeah, I mean fans can put on whatever they want. But yeah, the official Pokemon company tournaments, Pokemon worlds, all that stuff, like this is the new category. And so if you are not willing to pay out the nose for this game so you can get all the victory points and thus optimize your Pokemon, then you're kind of out of luck. You're out of the competitive scene. And it looks like it's about five bucks a month for this subscription, which is, I mean, that's that's a lot for for an individual game for just battling. Yeah, it's. It's like it's difficult because like if you just say, oh, well, it's just five bucks a month, like that's nothing. I mean, it can be nothing depending on like what your financial situation is. But oh my God, that guy's jacket with the M for us on it was so cute. I'm sorry. It can be nothing like depending on what your financial situation is. But you know, Pokemon has for a long time been relatively accessible, right? I mean, yeah, you have to buy a new game when it comes out. But presumably you can find ways to make a single one time purchase. But just having to make those single one time purchases to get on top of the meta to get whatever the new Pokemon are to continue collecting Pokemon. And then also on top of that to have this extra subscription. I mean, that does add up. That's what 60 bucks a year. Do I still know how to do math? Yeah, roughly. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that's that's not nothing. That's more than Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Yeah. Yeah. And it's that's that's true just for Pokemon. And basically, it seems like home is essential for this. There are ways to get Pokemon in champions itself. There's like one a day you can recruit, but you only get that for a limited amount of time unless you spend VP to recruit and then you get that Pokemon permanently. So it is like you're already subscribing to home. And I guess that this seemed like a nice bonus add on to home, but it isn't its own ecosystem. And yeah, I see why that's really frustrating. Yeah, there's one other thing that people have been frustrated by that I've seen that's not related to the VP. And this actually just came out this morning. I have not dug into this very deeply yet, but apparently not all of the Pokemon, like over 1000 Pokemon, not all of them are going to be usable in this game at launch. Really? Oh, if you say that is really surprising to me. Have you not seen this? No. OK, so my understanding of it, and again, I read an article this morning and then I had a bunch of meetings. So I hope I'm getting this right. I don't like to just go off the cuff on the show, but I do think it's important to mention. So what I read is that they are not at launch. They might change at the future, but at launch, they are not allowing for these competitive battles any any Pokemon that is on the like that can still evolve. So if you can't evolve at all, you can be used. And if you were the final form of a Pokemon, you can be used. But like Pikachu, you can't use Pikachu in this game. That you have to use, right? You even though he's on the cover right there, maybe maybe they make one special exception. Maybe they're the exception for Pikachu. I don't know. But but like, but generally, that's the rule. So if something is unevolved, you can't use it. And that's actually like, like that's not just annoying. That is competitively kind of nuts because yeah, people use unevolved Pokemon for all sorts of reasons, like there's a lot of situations where an unevolved Pokemon holding. There's there's an item called, I don't know. I've never to say that's out loud before. Envio light, whatever it's called. But there's an item basically that if you give it to a Pokemon that has not evolved yet, but could potentially evolve, it makes it significantly stronger. And there is there are like Pokemon in the meta who are actually better that way. And so it's basically just cutting a bunch of guys out of the meta for kind of no reason. And also just like, you know, even if you're not super competitive, like if you want to, I don't know, if you want to bring your frickin' Iggly buff into Pokemon champions and battle with it, like you should just be able to do that. Even though it's a bad idea. Like. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's that's really not good. I was kind of hoping champions was going to be the catch all for all of these things. So what like we've talked about, take pressure off winds and waves from being competitive at all, because you can just bring everything from there into champions. But that is not seeming to be the case. So that's pretty disappointing. Yeah, I'm I'm not a competitive badler. So it was always unlikely that I was going to use this. But, you know, I competitive battling is a very like it's a huge part of what Pokemon is. One of the best things about Pokemon is that it can be so many things to so many different people. Like it can be a kids game and it can be an adventure game for adults who want to like have this nostalgia. And it can be a collection like like stamp collecting kind of game. And it can be this one of the things I think it's done very well historically over the years is consistently be a really interesting competitive game. Like they have a fantastic the fact that they have this battle system that can be very easy to learn and understand for kids who are just getting into it for the first time or people who are lazy like me. But it can also be this very complex, deep, interesting, competitive thing where people have like worked out a meta and there's all these different items and moves and TMS and all these things you can do to to make a very interesting and diverse team. Like the fact that that exists is like incredible. Like we've been doing this for so long, like, wow, we've managed to keep this intact. And so the fact that they're doing things that could potentially harm that environment, either by pricing people out or just by kicking, keeping people from building like teams that would otherwise be totally viable. Like that that really sucks. I don't know. It sucks. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see how it grows if they add more Pokemon after launch. And they're just getting this thing out the door. But that is a bummer. That's April 8th on Switch Free Update for Switch 2. And it's coming to mobile at some point. We don't know when yet. Thanks for catching me up, I've been lost in Belleville Park. So that was some interesting stuff to learn about champions. What else we've been learning about is Tomodachi Life Living the Dream, which got a big overview trailer this morning that is out on April 16th on Switch 1, backwards compatible on Switch 2. And we got a really great look at this game. Most of the stuff we already knew. But, Reb, I thought this trailer was great. I thought it was great too. I'm so excited for this. Oh my gosh, it was so dumb. Yeah, what do you think? Loved it. It is dumb. Yeah. It's just Tomodachi Life is this really strange game where when when I'm thinking about it, but not looking at it, like I'm just wondering around and thinking, oh yeah, Tomodachi Life is coming out. I think it's probably not going to be very interesting. It's just a bunch of little guys. Like I don't really need to get into that. But then every time I see gameplay of it, I'm like, oh no, this is going to be so much fun. Because it's just so much of weird little dudes in weird situations being silly. This is like, this is going to be a quintessential meme game and I'm here for it. I love this trailer. I am baffled and confused by their decision to just let people free draw faces. Like that is... More and more you can see why they're like, oh, you can't share screenshots directly from this game. I still think it's a terrible choice, but you see how they got there. Yeah, like, I mean, you know, not going to be inappropriate on this show, but you know instantly people are going to draw very inappropriate things on faces of their characters. Like they're just going to do it. It is a known thing in video games that if you give players the ability to freely create things, they will find ways to draw inappropriate things. So like that's going to happen. But then also like for people who are not like weird about their me is like, you know, that that does open up a lot of really interesting possibilities for what you could potentially do to create these little characters. So that's kind of exciting. There's a lot of different possibilities, especially to, you know, recreate cartoon characters or celebrities or just make just make weird alien dudes. Like like whatever, make cat girls. Like as I see a cat girl up here on screen, whatever. And so there's that level of freedom. And then this trailer also sort of demonstrated the ways in which these characters are going to interact over time. And it ended up being a little more it's broader than I thought it was going to be. Every my biggest concern about this game is that it'll get very boring, very fast, because eventually you'll just be seeing the same interactions over and over. But it seems like there's a lot of room and possibility for just I don't want to say infinite, because it's not infinite, but like a pretty massive collection of different kinds of things to happen. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. And I actually previewed Tomodachi Life. I got to play a couple hours of it and that's been my experience so far. But I think that I think this game is going to be incredible. I love what I have played so far. Basically, I just got to start an island and throw in about six residents into it. So I made a me of myself. I made one of my fiance. I made one of a couple of my favorite Major League Baseball players. I put Samus in there and I put Reggie Fizeme in there. I'm like, OK, let's go. Let's let's see what happens. And it was just hilarious. And there's a lot of mad libs to it. There's a lot of, oh, what should I go talk about with with King Felix Hernandez, who's my favorite mariner of all time from Seattle? And I was like, oh, you should go. Let's talk about Jeff Probst from Survivor. I'm really into Survivor right now. And then I go to I go to Felix and Felix was like, I first heard about Jeff Probst about a year ago. And it's just funny. Like it really is. It is what you put into it. And the dialogue catches you off guard all the time. There are consistent news broadcasts. If you unlock a building, which you do by inviting someone new to your town or checking off some other requirement, a random me is selected from your island to deliver the news as the news anchor. And then they just say the most off the wall things. Like there's one that's like this this town, this building will open in town once you have two sets of friends. And in the news broadcast, I don't remember who it was. I think it might have been me said, as of press time, it's unclear why the business has such strict friend based requirements. But I assure you that I do not make the news. I just reported. And I just thought it was so good. That's so good for you. I hope you were the one who wrote that. Yeah, it's really funny. Yeah. And here we go. This is this is King Felix from the Mariners, who is talking about the new quick build store that opened and the news report says, one resident is quoted as saying, you mean I could go into this building and buy a whole different building? If you say so. It's it's just great. Yeah. I have a few other screenshots here that I know Nick has pulled behind the scenes. I hear is Corey Kluber from the Cleveland Guardian saying, I'm just waiting for the right moment to let loose, but not too loose. And that's another thing that's great is when you build a me, you assign different traits to their personality. There's like four different categories. It's like, do they move slow or do they move fast? Are they polite or are they honest? Are they, um, do they think or are they fun? I don't know. There's like little things like that. Do they think or are they fun? It was like, oh, it was like, are they serious or are they fun? Oh, there's Jeff Probst. I mean, I started by Jeff Probst almost a year ago. And then based on those check boxes, you get a personality and the personalities for everyone I've made have been so freaking accurate. It's crazy. Like I made one for Samus and it's like Samus is like this go-getter who likes to work alone and she takes her job very seriously. I'm like, that yeah, it's perfect. Like super in depth stuff. Yeah. Here's Felix talking about Jeff Probst. What's the next one, Nick? Uh, it was Reggie's birthday. Oh, he's got a little himself on the cake. So there is, uh, yeah, there's my fiance throwing Reggie a birthday party, which was just adorable. Um, and then they cut to reactions from around the town. There's me and my fiance. We're already falling in love on this island because they do that organically or did you force that in the game? You can set preexisting relationships when you make a me and it's like, you can say, oh, is Logan related already to anyone on the island? And you can say who your partner is in real life. They don't start that way. It's just in the simulation. They're more likely to gravitate towards each other. And it's also, so like you cannot marry your sibling or your dad or something. Like, cause you can set those relationships because otherwise any me can get together with whoever they want. So there's that. And then do we have, how many more do we have, Nick? Yep. This is me. I, uh, I got to give myself a Nintendo switch. So that is my me sitting on the ground playing in an empty room. Just sitting on the floor in an empty room. That's my life. That is an accurate representation of my life. And I say, they say this is a classic scene. And yeah, that, I thought that was just funny because it, my me is so much like me. It's very funny. It's, he's, my personality is reserved perfectionist. I'm like, that's, uh, it's pretty accurate. So it's great. I have super high hopes for this full one. And I think it's just going to be a blast. I, as I was watching this trailer that came out today, I was thinking, cause, you know, it's talking about stuff. There was a bit about a couple of these me's like having a baby and it was a really funny little like scene with the baby going, yeah. And it was good. But I was thinking that a lot of these features are, you know, it's very Sims like, like we have the Sims already. Uh, and it is very detailed and in depth and has like, you know, a gazillion different things you can do and a gazillion different kinds of interactions you can have and people have made mods for it out the wazoo. And so in a way, like we already have a much better version of this, but at the same time, there's something so refreshing and delightful about playing within limitations. And so the fact that this is like a little, I, I say limited, you can seemingly do quite a bit in this game, but the fact that it is sort of designed around putting these characters together and having them have silly interactions, but then having like sort of a limited amount of space to do that and like, you know, not having like literally every, you know, it doesn't look like there's dynamic weather or whatever in this game. Like you don't need it. Uh, maybe there is, but you know what I mean? Like, like the Sims has so much more going on, but because this has certain limitations that other Sims that games that tell you you can do everything don't have, I think this could potentially end up being quite, quite a bit funnier and more, more, more interesting for that. I think so too. It's, it's feeling a niche that very few of these other kind of stimulation or customizable cozy games do where it's like, it's all about the characters. And that is usually not the case with these. I mean, you can also, I will, we've seen in directs tear down the island, build it however you want. That's there too. But it is really about this mad libs of it and this, this just, I'm going to throw in my favorite athletes, my best friends, myself, my coworkers, celebrities, and just see what happens. And the, the humor of it is the inside joke of it to you. And I think that's just makes it feel really personal in a way that some of these other ones, they feel personal in different ways, but I think this just strikes something in me that these other ones don't. So I, I just think it's great. Yeah. It feels like sort of the other side of the coin to what I'm doing in Pocopia right now. So campaign aside, what I'm doing in Pocopia is I'm custom building like this whole world and I'm, I'm like painting blocks and I'm hanging vines and I'm putting in windows and I'm building like all these very elaborate, like custom structures. Uh, and the characters, I mean, they were important during the campaign, but now they're kind of secondary. Like there's just so much a Pokemon wandering around. I don't really know why they're there. I give them houses sometimes in this one. I, I mean, you can custom build an island, but I imagine you cannot build the same level of like super elaborate, complicated custom structure, but that's not the point. The point is these people that are in it. And so it's, it's just the other side of that. And I'm, I'm glad that this exists. Yeah. And the, the people level up when you, when you raise their happiness level, they level up and then you get to give them something. And so like I gave myself a baseball glove and a ball and I gave my fiance a guitar and then you can also give them quirks. Like I made Samus do this gravity walk where like she walks like she's walking on the moon because that's like how she walks in super Metroid. And like I gave, I gave Felix from the Mariners a catchphrase that he said after a game once. So now sometimes he just randomly says it. What's the catchphrase? Oh, he said, he said, this is my house. And that's, that's his catchphrase. He said, I'm walking off the field once. Yeah. It's like how he says hi to people. Um, and there's just so much you can do. You can make somebody slouch if they have bad posture. You can make them stand with their arms crossed out. And so you want to level them up so you can make them more like themselves or different than themselves. And then every time you do, they say, I feel like I'm getting closer to my true self. And it's just, it's yeah, brilliant. I think the character systems are even deeper than we know yet. I think there's going to be a ton of interactivity with them. Can't wait for that out April 16th. Tomodachi life living the dream. Can't wait. Okay. Here's a quick piece of house keeping. It's time for a brand new month of gaming. Jump into the humble March choice bundle and score an amazing lineup of titles. Right now you can grab Tempest Rising, Chance of Cenar, Sworn, Etrian Odyssey, 3 HD, Breton Fred, Zero Hour, Small Land, Survive the Wild and Hard West 2. This all supports the Malala Fund, an organization working for a world where every girl can learn and lead by breaking down the barriers that hold back the more than 130 million girls out of school today. At Humble Bundle.com through April 7th to start playing today. All right, we have a couple of big news stories to get to about Nintendo this week. The first just happened two hours before we sat down to record. And that is Nintendo has changed its pricing strategy for games in the US. Statement on Nintendo of America.com beginning in May, 2026 and starting with pre-orders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. New Nintendo published digital titles exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 will have a different MSRP than physical versions. Nintendo games offer the same experiences, whether in packaged or digital format. And this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they buy and play Nintendo games. OK, this is already how it was in other regions since the Switch 2 launched. DK Bonanza was more expensive physically in the UK than digitally. There's a lot of misinformation in the US where people thought Mario Kart World is going to be $90. It wasn't. But now that is the case, not Mario Kart World. But now for games moving forward, that is the case here. Physical is going to be $10 more seemingly so far than digital. Red, what do you think of this? Well, this is fun because I went to a lunch with a PR person today and then I didn't look at my phone for an hour and a half and then I walked out and this had dropped and then I drove home and got an NBC. So what you have just read is the extent of my knowledge of what this is. Yeah. OK. I mean, they're not. But correct me if I'm wrong. They're not raising the prices on physical additions, right? Or are they? Like they're not. This is what's tough. People are making a lot of assumptions out there. I did some research this morning. I can I can lay out my thoughts so far. So Yoshi is going to be $59.99 digitally and $69.99 physically in the United States. OK, we thought Yoshi was just a cheaper title. But now does this imply? Oh, going forward, 70 is the physical norm. Sixty is the digital norm. That's what people think. I don't think so. Up on the screen now we have prices from the UK store where, like I said, this pricing that varies between physical and digital has been a thing for the last year. The download code for Yoshi is $49.99. The physical is $58.99. Now, if you look at DK Bonanza from the UK store, the digital is $58.99, which is the price of the Yoshi digital or sorry, physical and the DK physical is $66.99. The same is with Kirby Airwriters, Mario Tennis Fever, Hyrule Warriors, all this stuff in the UK is $58.99 digitally, $66.99 physically. But Yoshi's cheaper in the UK, which I think implies for true first party not budget titles in the US, we're probably going to see $69.99 digitally and $80.00 physically. But we don't know yet, but that's kind of where I'm leaning right now. Yeah, this is tough to sort of make any kind of like emotional judgment call on just because we don't we have seen one game so far impacted by this, right? Yeah, like we don't we don't know what it's going to look like going forward. It there is a world in which what this means is more games are going to be $80.00 physical and it's just sort of like a cover for Nintendo. I mean, Nintendo has already introduced the $80.00 game, but it's basically just a cover for Nintendo to make way more things than we originally expected be $80.00. And that's that's frustrating. That sucks. Alternatively, there's a world in which they just keep pricing things the way they have physically and then people who buy digitally buy cheaper games. And I kind of understand like why they would need to do that. I mean, we've seen the economic the economic situation of the world. We could do so many podcasts about that. But like it's a mess, right? Like we've got we've got weird tariff things going on. We've got weird component things going on. We've got manufacturing things going on. We've got all sorts of political things that are making shipping very complicated and weird. And so as a result, getting, selling somebody a physical game, Nintendo is probably and probably every other gaming company are looking at that situation and going, wow, we have no idea what it's going to cost to get a physical game manufactured and distributed within a couple of months or let alone a couple of years. Like they just don't know. So it makes sense to finally just bring the US, especially because a lot of the complications are stemming from the US. Bring the US up to speed with the rest of the world in that regard. And just like I get it. I get I get why we're there. But as a consumer with the economic situation being what it is, if you're someone who cares about physical games, and I think a lot of people have a very good reason to care about having physical media and not digital media and actually owning their own games. I also fully empathize with the concern that all of a sudden you're going to be being charged even more for your games than you would have otherwise. Like I I get it. Everything is expensive. It really sucks. Yes. Now, I think I think that it is true that I take like Fire Emblem or something. I think it's very likely that that will be 70 digital 80 physical. But like you said, the next one will be very telling than pricing of the next full AAA game will know more about kind of what to expect moving forward. But either way, I agree with you. The economic situation specifically in the US is very tough right now. And I think I see this as Nintendo pulling every lever they can to not move the price of the console itself. I think you're absolutely right. Accessories were boosted. Amiibo were boosted. Controllers, all this stuff has gone way up. We've seen DLC come out shortly after launch that has cost money. All that time, the game stayed the same. The console stayed the same. Now, digital games are staying the same and the console staying the same. So that's that is what it is. I think that this will inevitably move. Everyone has a breaking point for when are you done collecting physical games? I hit mine at the start of this generation. This will no doubt cause some people to hit that too. But I think the vast majority of physical consumers are so passionate about it that they will eat the extra money and continue to do it this way. I'm curious to see kind of the split in a year from now on their physical digital, because right now it's 50 50. It's been 50 50 basically the last five years. I'm curious to see what changes. Yeah, and I think too that this is sort of along with everything you said, I think this is sort of an attempt to push more people towards digital. I think a lot of companies have been trying to push consumers more towards digital. Just because, as we just said, it is less expensive to get a digital game in your hands. And I think Nintendo would like probably to be able to pair back the amount of distribution and manufacturing it does on physical games. I don't think Nintendo ever thinks they're going to get into a point where they never have to manufacture physical games. But if they have to manufacture fewer of them, then that is more cost effective for them as a business. So it just it makes sense. If consumers are just used to digital games all the time, that's what you get. Then like like Nintendo is in like a 50 50 split. They're very rare. Yes, for sure. In the industry, like most companies, I haven't I haven't checked the numbers and like like take two or EAs financials recently, but digital games, most people buy digital games. Like it's overwhelming. The digital split is overwhelmingly. Oh, it's like the digital physical split is overwhelmingly in favor of digital to the point where I've seen numbers where like some companies are it's like like 90 percent of their sales are digital. It's kind of nuts. Yeah, Nintendo is the outlier. I mean, one reason for that is just that they until this generation, the full game was on the cartridge, you couldn't say that about the discs on the other consoles. So people liked that. But there's just lots of passionate Nintendo collectors out there that continue to do this. People wait for indie games to get a physical switch released before they get them like there is still a big market for that. But like you mentioned, the cost of not making it, not shipping it and not giving a retailer a cut, they make so much more money on the digital one. So it makes a lot of sense for them. Idle money lies in your current account picking crumbs out of its belly button. Wondering, should I eat them? But when you start investing with Monzo, your money is always busy. It turns on regular investments, invests your spare change and tops up your stocks and shares. I sir, it even helps you make sense of risk and return. Monzo, the bank that gets your money moving. You could get back less than you invest. Monzo current account required UK residents 18 plus T's and C's apply. The new LinkedIn hiring pro can't undo your last hire, the lone wolf, who you thought was a good collaborator because you didn't have the right candidate insights. But once you hired them, it was all hoarding, info, declining meetings and howling at the full moon. But LinkedIn hiring pro can find you a perfect fit by using insights from the LinkedIn network to give you a short list of the best fit candidates. Hire right the first time with LinkedIn hiring pro. Post your first job today and get 100 pounds off at LinkedIn.com slash A.I. Hire terms and conditions apply. The other big news story is that Nintendo is reportedly slowing down switch to production that is according to Bloomberg, whose sources say Nintendo now expects to make four million switch to units this quarter down 33 percent on the six million it previously planned to manufacture. Nintendo recently confirmed it had sold fewer switch to consoles internationally over the holiday, particularly in the U.S. Though the impact had also been doled by stronger sales in the homeland of Japan. We talked about this on the show when that happened a couple of months ago. And there is no suggestion that Nintendo is going to adjust its forecast of switch to units for the year. Just how many they're actually making. And, Rob, I know you have a take on this. Yeah. This. So the last I've been very skeptical of all these stories that have come out around the quote unquote, we call it a sales, right? Like it is objectively a fact. Like, I mean, it's been reported, but the reports are accurate and from trusted people. So that or I don't know, was it in their earnings too? I don't remember. Anyway, Nintendo switch sales over the holiday were lower than they had been earlier in the year. Like that was in their forecast or in their results. Yeah, that is simply true. And but what you take out of that, I think needs so much context that I've written an article about. We've talked about on the show. A lot of it is just the fact that, you know, this game released in June. And so as opposed to other consoles that tend to release in like November. So the bulk of it sales were up front. They did a very, very good job early on in the switch to life cycle of making sure, especially in the U.S. that there was extremely good supply of consoles. Usually when there's a fall off or like a limit eight, uh, usually when sales on a console come out, they are limited by supply because it's very difficult to get a high enough supply to meet demand. But Nintendo actually did meet the demand. And that's why they did so well right at launch. So everybody early in the year got a switch that wanted one. And therefore they did, you know, go down a little bit over the holiday. Like that's kind of to be expected. It's I don't think it's like a weird red flag or like a a harbinger of something worse to come. I think it's just sort of a natural decline because everybody had them already. And as you said, Logan, they sold great in Japan and in some other regions. So it wasn't even that big of a decline. It was just the U.S. had a whole bunch of units ready to go at launch. Everybody got their switches and everybody else is waiting for a killer app. They're probably buying switches with Pokopia. Uh, so this, I think people are taking this reduced production as a sign that Nintendo is freaking out about switch sales. And I don't think they're freaking out, especially because they haven't lowered their forecast. I think what's happening is they have made enough and they recognize that. And I also think they, as we have mentioned on the show earlier, are concerned about cost of the console and of everything else. And I think they are probably looking down the line and probably see that prices of everything are going to go up. Whether they raise the switch to price or not, everybody is getting squeezed economically much harder than usual, especially in the U.S. And so probably fewer people are going to be interested in pulling the trigger on buying a switch for a bunch of reasons they can't control. So I think they're just trying to be reasonable to lower those manufacturing costs while they can. And to, you know, stay afloat a little bit better. And I, but I don't necessarily think that means that the switch, the switch is selling like what 45% better than the switch to is selling like 45% better than the switch one or something like that. It's still outpacing pretty much every Nintendo console ever. Yeah. So it like it's fine. The switch to is fine. It is. No, I totally agree with everything you just said. I do not think this is a cause for panic at all. And I think that I look at this and let's remember the last year, Nintendo explicitly said, we made so many of these. We had the, because we're worried about the cost of parts going up. So we made a ton right now and they made this deal with Nvidia to keep prices where they were for when they were building all of these machines. They have millions probably sitting in warehouses ready to sell. This is not, we think we are not going to sell any, like you mentioned, Reb, we've made enough to sell for the next quarter, two quarters, whatever it is. And it's a statement on the U that U S economy right now, not really on desire for Nintendo games. I don't think so. I think this is totally fine. I'm interested to see their next, their next forecast and their next investors call to kind of say what, what do they say about this? Because this will surely be a part of that. But I don't think this is a cause for worry at all. I think that they, they sold a ton. Also trailing expectations, the expectations were record setting. So they're just not, oh shoot, we're only a little bit less now, the best selling Nintendo console of all time. Like it's, they're going to be fine. I also think this was a little predictable. We talked about it a year ago now on this show. We said, this is going to sell insane for the first six months and it will cool down. We're in that cool down now. It's going to pick up. They have lots of cannons left to fire over this generation. 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, Animal Crossing, Splatoon. When these things happen, you will see line go up again with Switch sales. I think line's already going up. I really do believe that Pokopia probably moved, moved us up a little bit. And I'm, I'm obviously have to wait to see their earnings to see if there's any notes on that that are of interest. But I know so many people who, you know, we're holding off after Mario Kart, we're holding off after Donkey Kong. But when Pokopia got added to that pile went, okay, yeah, it's time. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think Pokopia, Pokopia has been very big by all accounts and that definitely has helped Switch too. Well, Rev, I'm so sorry. We were going to talk about Pokopia, but we are out of time. Do you want to show one of your pictures and maybe make a call to action for the audience to send in theirs? And we don't know which one. Okay, actually great. Thank you, Nick. Nick has shown, so this is my house in Pallet Town. I'm not great at decorating actually. I'm really terrible. Some people are making like crazy creations and I'm just sort of putting like a table and a chair out. But I accidentally started decorating my room like a team rocket lair in Pallet Town. And then I got really excited and now I don't want to upgrade to the bigger house with multiple floors because I like my little rocket chamber. I actually even have the classic from Golden Silver team rocket hideout music playing on the little CD player. So whenever I idle in this room, Imran, my husband has to listen to the little like creepy team rocket music. But yeah, I love this game. Everybody should send us their, the things that they're building in Pokopia that are going to be so much more elaborate and cool than this. And we can talk about them on the show, probably not next week, but the week after. Yeah, in two weeks. Yeah. Where do they send them, Logan? Send them to nvc.ign.com, email them in and we'll see more of Rebs creations in two weeks, R creations, whatever the heck I have. I'll build some better things between now and then. Yeah, so two weeks it'll be your Pokopia stuff shown off on NVC. NVC at ign.com, send us those emails. That's another episode of Nintendo Voice Chat in the books. We're here every Friday, Thursday this week, audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on Spotify or the IGN games channel on YouTube. Next week, we're not talking Pokopia because we're talking the Super Mario Galaxy movie. It'll be having me, Brian and Pear, who all will have seen the movie at that point and we'll talk all about it. Thanks so much, Reb. That was really fun. One on one show. Thank you. And thank you so much to Nick Mayer for working behind the scenes and thank you so much to you for listening. But for now, that's all the time I've got. I got to get back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS. Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more NVC, the only place you can. Get the thing. Inverse yourself in Herbal Essences' new Moroccan Argan Oil Elixir, infused with pure argan oil. Just one drop. Deliver us up to 100 hours of hair nourishment with the indulgent scent of a Moroccan garden. Herbal Essences' new Moroccan Argan Oil Elixir, Spark Quality Hair Repair without the price tag. Try it now. Essences. Serve as repair to smoothness, nourishment with the regimen use versus non-conditioning shampoo.