IGN’s Top 25 Nintendo Games + Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Preview - NVC 788

Do they think Prime doesn't cut, Metro doesn't catch on because it doesn't have enough like cinematic cut scenes, moments, characters. This isn't the way to do it. Like they're way more nuanced and better ways to push this franchise forward and keeping intact. The reasons people love it to begin with, that is not this. Like I don't know who this is gonna please, like new players, I don't know. We've got a huge show this week on Nintendo Voice Chat. First we're breaking down IGN's top 25 Nintendo games of all time, our good friend Alex Olney from Nintendo Life is stopping by again, and then I'll finally share my in-depth impressions of Metroid Prime 4 Beyond. NBC starts right now. Race the rudder, raise the sails, raise the sails. Captain and unidentified ship approaching, over. Roger that, wait, is that an enterprise sales solution? Meet sales professionals, not professional sailors with LinkedIn ads. You can target the right people by industry, job title and more. Start converting your B2B audience into high quality leads today. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit for the next one. Go to LinkedIn.com slash lead to claim your offer. Terms and conditions apply. You've switched to Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of November 14th, 2025. I'm your host Logan Plant joined by Brian Altano. Hello. Rebecca Valentine. Happy Mario Galaxy Day. And returning from last week, it's Alex only from Nintendo Life. Hey, Alex. Hello there, lovely people. Thank you for having me again. It's nice to be able to go through and talk about things properly now, you know, sort of, no holds barred. Go right into things. Yes, and you're referring to IGN and Nintendo Life's top 100 Nintendo games of all time list, which is part of this week's huge show, where we're gonna break down specifically the top 25 Nintendo games of all time. And then after that, I have played over one hour of Metroid Prime 4 beyond, and I have so many thoughts to share. We'll also get the panels take on the Super Mario Galaxy movie because NBC is IGN's all Nintendo podcast. Where every Friday morning, we bring you nostalgic retrospectives, impressions of brand new Switch and Switch 2 games, and important Nintendo news updates. Subscribe to IGN games on YouTube, or follow us on your favorite podcast app to make sure you never miss a new episode. If you've already done all of that, leave a like, a review, a rating, or just tell a friend about us. It's the best way. You can support this show, We All Love, and don't miss the special midweek episode of NBC, where Brian, Nick Lamont and I sat down and reacted live to the Super Mario Galaxy movie Direct. Let's get into this huge show, buckle up. There's so much to talk about. We are starting with IGN and Nintendo Life's top 100 Nintendo games of all time. That list has been going up 20 entries at a time all week on ign.com. And when you're listening to this, the full list is now available. We've crowned the best Nintendo game of all time, and 99 others. So today we are going to break down 25 through number one. We're gonna highlight why we love these games, why they each deserve a spot on this list. And we're gonna go kind of quick, so this podcast doesn't take like five or six hours. And then there's a big debate in the top two that we're also going to talk about, as well as a little bit of behind the scenes of how does a list like this come together. So let's get started with number 25, which is Super Mario 64 that Alex really wants to talk about. I do indeed. Super Mario 64. I mean, come on, what does that say that hasn't already been said? Pioneered the 3D platforming genre? I already talked about Banjo-Kazooie in the previous episode. And Super Mario 64 almost didn't deserve to exist. And that's not me trying to be mean to it or anything like that. But there was nothing like it at the time. And even for a good amount of time afterwards, there was nothing that managed to capture 3D platforming anywhere close. Mario, so acrobatic, running, jumping, side flip. That is the best one objectively, I've checked. It's just, it's absolutely sublime. I mean, it's still fun to play today. And there aren't a huge number of 3D platformers that can boast such a claim. You know, so as I say, I said, I talked about Banjo last time, but we're talking about Mario this time. And yeah, we just said, oh yeah, the Bowser levels especially ingrained in my brain because I was a young child. I couldn't be a lot of them. It was always a massive achievement whenever I managed to. I mean, I could sit here and talk about it for hours and hours and hours, but we need to be snappy. Yeah, I know we all wanna jump in and talk about these. We will have a top 10, but yeah, we'll keep it going brisk for these first 15. Reb, another N64 game, Zelda Majora's Mask. I love Majora's Mask. I love it more than Ocarina of Time, but that's okay. We'll talk about that later. Majora's Mask is fantastic. It was made in a very, very, very short amount of time. Basically reusing assets from Ocarina of Time to make something completely different. Like I love Majora's Mask because it's so weird. It takes place on this three-day cycle. It has like this sort of internal clock where you're going through these three days before the moon falls and every citizen of clockdown, everybody in the game has these cycles that they're moving through and these very intricate patterns that you get to know over the course of repeating these three days over and over and you have this quest that you're on, but you're trying to do it in the context of solving all these problems and figuring out how all of these little pieces and people fit into the puzzle. And it's such a cool idea and the level of detail and the level of emotion that's put into some of these quests. Like there's a couple of quests in this game that I think go down as some of the, I don't know, maybe most moving Zelda quests of all time. Like they're really, really freaking good. And it's just such an unusual out of left field game that I actually played and finished for the first time last year. And I think it really holds up. I tend to think that N64 games don't hold up super well now if you try to play most of them in like a modern era just because they feel kind of clunky, but there's just something about the uniqueness and weirdness of Majora's mask that I think really shines through. And man, I love Majora. Brian, your first pick got a movie trailer revealed today. Super Mario Galaxy. Right? Yeah, who would have expected that? No, I think it's safe to say that, Alex just nailed it with Mario 64. Sunshine was obviously a bit of a stumble, right? Like it's kind of notoriously undercooked. It's got some great mechanics, but like all in all, it's what? I didn't do this to any of you. I was going to start fighting for the list. Sunshine's on the list. I was going to start fighting for the list. Mario 64 is a top five game. This list should go in the garbage can. It's all right now. It's on number one anyway. So, you know, we already made the list. But we don't even need to see Sunshine. I'm not even talking about that. Galaxy was a phenomenal step right back on track. It introduced a bunch of really cool new mechanics, incredibly tight platforming, great new power ups, and also like a very modest use of motion controls that was not really common at the time. People usually went all in and it had a little bit of waggle, which was actually really rewarding and some pointer stuff. But for the most part, this was, you know, kind of Mario 64 on steroids, right? It took all the great stuff from that game. It put it into space, added new characters, introduced Rosalina to the franchise, just a phenomenal, just great, comfortable, incredible game to play, right? It just feels good playing this game. Got an even better sequel. I'm not even going to look on the list where that is. Maybe it's not where it should be and we can fight about that. But both of those games are on Switch now. And if you don't have them, go play them. So Mario Galaxy is awesome. My first pick is the newest game on this list, which is Donkey Kong Bonanza, which made it in at number 22. I mean, I think it should be higher, but I'm happy to be in the top 25. I just, I've talked about this game to death this year, but something I don't think I've ever really dove into on this show is I just think, I don't think I've ever played a game that has better connection between its world and its main character. Like Mario games are always sandboxes built for Mario, but the 3D Mario team just took it to the next level with the Bonanza and how every layer reacts to you in a completely different way. And it is just this perfect playground built for this hulking gorilla to destroy. And I just think that is incredible. And we're seeing Splatoon here right now. I think that's what I talk about how Donkey Kong, in this video I talk about Donkey Kong Bonanza, like has all these elements from Nintendo's core pillar franchises infused into it. It has that fresh personality and like music vocal track edge from Splatoon. It has crazy mechanical ambition from tears of the kingdom. It has the freedom of a breath of the wild. It has the platforming of a Mario Odyssey. And they gave it to their original mascot. And I just think that's so incredibly special to redefine a character that had been left by the wayside for a better part of the last decade. I just think it's amazing. They bring it back in house and they create one of the best 3D platformers of all time. Brian's next with Man 1. I love but can't talk about Legend of Zelda, Link Between Worlds. You can hop in and say some good stuff if you want to. I just replayed this game this year. It is so good. Like at the time, I don't think people really understand how daring it was to make a sequel to a Link to the Past. Like that felt crazy and also to do it with like a polygonal art style and not, you know, sprites and pixel art. They nailed it. This also, I think, laid the groundwork for, obviously it's a continuation of what they established with the original Zelda, which is like go in any direction, do anything. I think that like this game is why we have Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Like this established the get the items in your order, be creative, go in any direction you want. And it's just a really smart way to let players engage with the world of Zelda, right? It's instead of feeling rigid and forced and, you know, regimented in a way that you couldn't do anything unless the game let you. This game gives you so much freedom and I really love that about it because when I replayed it this year, it felt like a completely different experience than from the last time I played it because I just did everything in a different order. And I love it. It's so charming. It's up there with Link's Awakening and Link to the Past for me. That's my like trilogy of 2D Zelda games, my favorites. Yeah, this game is awesome. Cool. Well, all I was gonna say was the Breath of the Wild thing that you already covered. So I don't have to. So we can move on to your next choice, which is Resident Evil 4 at number 20. I don't know, man. This game is not great. I don't think I, I think this is the game I've heard you talk about more than any other ever. I love this game so much. When I pre-ordered this game, I got the demo disc and I ran through that demo disc probably 60 times. The first time you get chainsawed in half in this game, it was terrifying, like actual, actually terrifying for me. And I loved it. I loved it so much. It blew my mind specifically was getting this on Nintendo GameCube as a GameCube exclusive game for a while. And as we know, never got ported to any other system ever again. So it was really cool. No, even the Nintendo Wii version of this with corner controls was awesome. This, I know it split the fan base a little bit because it, you know, it kind of started taking Resident Evil away from survival horror and into action. And they've been trying to find that balance perfectly ever since. Resident Evil 4 is still, I think, the best version of that to ever happen. So this is my favorite Resident Evil game. It's probably one of my favorite third person action games ever made. It's fantastic. What else can you say? This game is so good. If you haven't played it, play it. And you can play it on your smartphone too and in every other screen under the sun. Reb, talk to me about Final Fantasy 6. Final Fantasy 6. So I will talk a little bit about making of later, but I do think when we were making this list, we were thinking about, okay, well, we can't just have first party Nintendo games because there's some games that are very like, which essentially Nintendo that are absolute classics that it would be ridiculous not to include. And Final Fantasy 6 was one of the ones that was brought up. It's just like, how do you not have that on a Nintendo list? It is arguably, I mean, people have different opinions, but it's arguably one of, if not the greatest RPG of all time still holds that to me. Not according to our list. Not according to our list. But I mean, people make the argument. Like it is in conversation. Whenever you're talking about best RPG of all time, you are, it's somewhere in that conversation, Final Fantasy 6 is getting brought up. It has an incredible cast of characters, a large cast of characters, not all of whom you even really need to spend a lot of time with in the playthrough if you don't want to, depending on how you play it. But they're all incredibly well written and have these really detailed, interesting stories, all these different things you can find. It's got like this super rich world with all of these sort of different corners and all these different people who are reacting to the state of it. And then it has this incredible twist halfway through where everything just falls apart, which at the time was kind of unheard of. And I think still kind of is. Like we don't really play games where you basically lose at the start of Act 2 and have to sort of put the pieces together and figure out what that looks like. It's a really emotional story. It has some really like hard moments, especially around that part of the story. But it really comes together in a way that I think still resonates also. Like a bunch of people who are living in hopeless times and are trying to find hope from the ashes and figure that out. Obviously it has the incredible Final Fantasy battle system, the ATV stuff, like, you know, all of the Final Fantasy trappings and good stuff are there. You know, the summons, all the fun stuff. It has secret characters you can find. And then it has one of the most incredible scenes in an RPG ever, which is the opera scene, obviously. Like they just put a whole opera in there, why not? Yeah, Final Fantasy VI is nuts. It's not my personal favorite RPG of all time, but it is like so high up there that it makes me happy. I wanna replay it. Cool. Yeah, number 18 is Fire Emblem Awakening. And Brian mentions that we have Breath of the Wild tears the kingdom because of A Link Between Worlds, which is completely true. We have the entire Fire Emblem franchise to this day, big on switch and 3DS because of Fire Emblem Awakening. This was going to be the last game in the series. This was it. This series never took off in the West. It sold terribly. It was always popular in Japan. They got a bunch of entries that we didn't. But with Awakening, Intelligent Systems basically went, if this is it, let's do everything we've ever wanted to do in a Fire Emblem game in this game. They expanded on the relationships. You could marry off whoever you wanted. And then those characters would have kids. And then those kids would come back in time to join your army to fight you. They added more casual difficulty settings to bring in new players, but still had the classic permadeth, there's more difficulty levels. Amazing story with iconic characters, a ton of whom are in Smash Brothers like Chrom and Lucina and Robin. And yeah, this became the best selling Fire Emblem yet. And the series took off from here. We got Fates afterwards. We got Shadows of Valencia afterwards. And then on Switch, we got Three Houses, which is now the best selling strategy RPG of all time and engage with Fortunes we've come in next year. So this is easily the most important game in the Fire Emblem series because of what it did. It's still a series because of this game. And then I think it ranks this highly too because Three Houses is on our list. It ranked lower than I think a lot of people wanted it to based on the comments, but Awakening is just a great strategy RPG where Three Houses focuses way more on the relationship building and the tea parties and the battling takes a hit. Because of that, this is very, very good Fire Emblem at its core and yeah, it ranked very, very highly on this list. Of next number 17 is Reb for Animal Crossing, New Horizons. Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing is such a weird series. I love it with all my heart. It's this little life sim series that started out in such a weird, awkward way on M64 GameCube depending on where you were playing it. And they've done just this incredible job over the years of with each entry, just making a better version of it over and over. Like you can argue, yeah, there were certain features that didn't make it from one to another that you might miss, but New Horizons is absolutely the pinnacle of what Animal Crossing can be. It has everything. It has the best decoration system of any of the games. Like the customization abilities that you have to decorate not just your house, but other people's houses and an entire island are off the charts. We all spent hundreds of hours in 2020 making these ridiculous, elaborate islands and houses and rooms. We had an amazing time. You were able to actually bring large groups of friends over to your island for the first time and have these little parties where you whacked each other with bug catching nets. And then just the essence of the Animal Crossing-ness of it. Like it's got these charming characters with so much, like even though they have a set number of personalities and like set dialogue, like it's not like procedurally generated or anything, there's just so much of it. The sheer amount is there that I was like 400 hours in and for the first time ever discovering my residence having a barbecue in the middle of my island and I had never seen them do that before. Like there's just the sheer amount of things you can discover and weird little emergent scenarios you can concoct is ridiculous. There's all these collectibles, there's hours of things to do. It's cute as heck. They have all the seasonal events so that it feels fresh. Like every time you jump back in, there's something going on. And then they had the DLC as well, the happy home stuff. And apparently there's more coming. So Animal Crossing is ridiculous. I kind of wish we were getting another one for Switch 2 right now, but I'm so excited to go back to this early next year that like it's kind of hard to be upset. Cool. Well, from one island to a bunch of islands, Zelda, the Wind Waker, that's number 16, Alex. Yes. So I know, you know, sort of many people have a favorite Zelda game. And I'm not even sure whether necessarily this is my favorite Zelda game, but it's the one that left the biggest impression on me overall, I think. I think it was, you know, I was at that age where, you know, sort of really impressionable, mind still forming, you know, brain all malleable and squishy. And along comes this game that feels like almost impossibly big. Now, we know, you know, being an adult, I now know, looking at it, a lot of it was just hiding loading screens. But my God, did they make that work? You know, if you're going to have that kind of limitation, you know, sort of make it thematically appropriate. The Great Sea is one of, I think, the maybe not one of the best, but one of the most enjoyable and one of the most more than most engaging to explore open world, certainly for the GameCube era. The story, I think, is really cool. I genuinely didn't see the Tetris, Zelda thing coming. Spoilers, sorry for a 20 year old game. I did not see that coming. I just genuinely, you know, genuinely thought Tetra, new character, sure, whatever. And then suddenly she's Princess Zelda. And it's only like my brain was just firing in all cylinders. And I also had, I don't know how much detail I want to go into, but I also had a great deal of fun going through this with a friend of mine, my oldest friend, George. Hello, if you're watching, we would have like the action replay, which we actually discussing shortly before we started recording and just mucking about, you know, like moon jump going over, you know, sort of basically what speed runners do, but without having to do anything genuinely difficult. You've got things like, yeah, the fish guy gives you maps. It's one of the weirdest Zelda games and an absolute classic, a stone cold classic in every sense. Koroks introduced Koroks. That's it. I'm moving on. That is all you need. Number 15, Pokemon Heart, Gold and Soul Silver. That's right. Again, talking about the greatest of any given category, if you're talking about the greatest Pokemon game of all time, you are for sure talking about Pokemon, Gold and Silver somewhere in that conversation. And if you're talking about Pokemon, Gold and Silver, you are talking about their absolutely phenomenal remakes, Pokemon Heart, Gold and Soul Silver, which are certainly the definitive way to play these nowadays. Gold and Silver were such incredible Pokemon games. They remain to this day, the only Pokemon games to feature two entire fully fleshed out regions with two sets of eight gym leaders and a final challenge at the end of each. It is ridiculous that we have never gone back to that, given how well that was received. The fact that it was actually a direct sequel to Red, Blue and Yellow, where, you know, there was like some time continuity and you could go back and see this region three years after you had visited it in the previous game. Like that was really, really cool. The games just in general were really good. The Pokemon that they introduced were really fantastic. The Johto starters, I think, are some absolute favorites, as we've seen with the recent Legend ZA. People love, well, people love Toadadile, I guess. I don't know. I love Cyndaquil. I love Cyndaquil too. Honestly, I love all three of them. I love Chickaree. I wish that Meganium had a better mega. Anyway, Heart, Gold and Soul Silver just really amped that up. They did not, they changed exactly the right amount. They didn't change too much. They kept the spirit of those games alive, like fully and completely. But they added like all these really nice little touches, like the ability for Pokemon to follow you around in the overworld. Like that was huge. And we're still begging for them to like let us do that kind of thing game after game. Like we've kind of gotten it with the 3D games now, but like this was such a big deal for such a long time. The Poke Walker was weird, but it was really, really cool. They had some additional content as well, like some new things that you could explore that weren't in the original games. Heart, Gold and Soul Silver are just absolutely fantastic. It's a shame that it's kind of hard to like actually go back and replay them now without like the correct systems in your possession. But if you ever just want to play like the definitive Pokemon experience, I think Heart, Gold and or Soul Silver is probably it. I just want to very quickly as well. For a while, the Poke Walker was the most accurate pedometer in the world. Wait, is that actually true? Yeah, genuinely. I mean, it may well be that it was the most accurate consumer available pedometer. But yeah, for a while, it was just like, oh, yeah, this is the most accurate one in the world. Wow, that's very cool. Yeah, I did not. I did not know that. Yeah, those are very expensive now to get like a full complete inbox set of Heart, Gold or Soul Silver with the Poke Walker included is very pricey. I still have my Poke Walker, but it doesn't work anymore. I need to get a new battery for it. Oh, if you put your battery back in, your Pokemon will still probably be on there. I changed the battery like last year and my Venomoth that I haven't looked at for 10 years was just like, yeah, what's going on? Yeah, what the hell, man? Where have you been? Yeah, like Animal Crossing on the L.U. Oh, number 14, Brian mentioned that Galaxy is Mario 64 on steroids. Well, Galaxy two is Galaxy on steroids. This is just the B side to Super Mario Galaxy played in both back to back this year since they just came to switch. And it just further reaffirmed that for me, Super Mario Galaxy two is the best, like linear Mario platformer there is three viewer 2D. It's my favorite one. I like it more than 3D world, more than Mario world, any of them. I think this just has incredible level design, amazing ideas, great power ups like at the cloud where you create up to three platforms to climb really high towers or to cross really treacherous gaps, just outstanding platforming that once they've established the rules in Galaxy of how does the zero G work and what are all the systems here in place? Then this, they just have the license to go completely crazy with it in Galaxy two. That's what they do. And you can see that this is kind of the bridge to the 3D land and 3D world era of Mario as well, because this game introduces the flip panels where when you spin in the air, the red and the blue flip back and forth or the the beat block road where the the blocks are disappearing to the rhythm of the song that's playing, which leads to some of the hardest and best levels in the game like Galaxy two. It's it's a 10 for me. I know Brian doesn't think so because of the bird. We talked about that a couple of months ago, but this game is it's just incredible. And it held up so well. The Yoshi levels are awesome. He's like four power ups in himself, too. So yeah, this is not the highest ranking linear Mario platformer on this list, but it's it's my personal favorite. Number 13, we're going to talk about the fourth game in this series a little later. But this is Metroid Prime Metroid Prime one. And that goes to Alex. Deep breath. It's a masterpiece. It's an absolute masterpiece. Whether you're talking about the original, which still looks good. OK, yeah, you know, you it looks a bit like a GameCube game because it is. But at the same time, you could easily argue that it was maybe, you know, half a generation ahead and running at 60 frames a second. Absolute madness. It shouldn't exist. The idea of taking the Metroid series, 2D Metroidvania or search action if you want to be an irritating commenter online and making it 3D, not only 3D, but first person, frankly, an impossible task. But not only was it, you know, did they succeed? It's one of the best games of all time, one of the most enjoyable worlds to explore, talon for. And yeah, the other games are amazing as well. But the first one, it's just this beautiful sort of concise, digestible, but also seemingly endlessly expansive experience, just scanning everything because everything's worth scanning. You've got brilliant upgrades. You get OK, the spider ball isn't great. I much preferred it in Metroid 2, but, you know, it's a 3D game. What, you know, you have to limit it somehow. Also, genuinely difficult boss fights even today and the remastered version on Switch, every single asset was updated and it shows. But the rest of the game is just intact. If it's the only Metroid game you've played, I'm still annoyed at you. But, you know, fair enough, if it's going to be one, that's the one. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, It got Happy Mill toys. I dressed as Super Mario, Raccoon Mario that year. And this was before they made Halloween costumes for everything. So my mom had to take like a Raccoon stuffed plushed animal thing I had and cut off its tails and ears and put them on a red hat. Like this, we were dedicated. When this game came out, we had not in America seen a proper sequel to Super Mario Brothers, right? The original. We got Mario 2, which was, you know, reskin Doki Doki Panic and he's throwing vegetables. And it's great. It's fun, but it's sort of a quasi-sequel. Lost levels we didn't really get until the Super NES collection came out a couple years later. So when Super Mario 3 came out and everything that was established and built on in the first game was now even bigger and better, there were vertically scrolling levels. He had a flying power up and could turn into a statue. There was so much cool stuff in this game. There were hidden exits and secret levels and stuff like that. Really clever boss fights. Introduced to Koopa Kids. There's just it's a fantastic game. It holds up so well. I go back and forth all the time on whether I like it more than Super Mario World. They're just about tied in my head. Not on this list, though, which we'll get ties on. But no, this is such a great game. It blew my mind at the time. I was so happy getting that bright yellow box for my birthday that year. Very cool. And the last one in our before the top 10 that I can't believe didn't make the top 10. Alex, tell me about Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. It just had to be one out, didn't it? But, you know, that's the way it goes. It's almost impossible to organize these games at the best of times, I swear. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the title says it all. It is the ultimate Super Smash Bros. game. And I know there are going to be some Fox only final destination fans out there who are going to say that Melee is better. You're welcome to say that you prefer it. It's not better, though. I mean, come on, there's about, I don't know the exact number, and I'm not very good at counting, but I think about 17 billion characters or something like that. You can play as all with near unique, like, move sets. There are some duplicates here and there. But yeah, look at that screen. How can you be angry with that character select screen? We have been completely spoiled by Ultimate now. Have you gone back and look at Brawl's roster? It looks tiddly tiny. It's so sad by comparison. But Ultimate is just superb. The movement is probably the most refined it's ever been. Again, some people would talk about wave dashing, and that's fine. You can continue to talk about wave dashing in the comments. But in terms of inaccessible, just for, you know, your average guy or girl who just wants to play a little bit of Smash, easily the best way to go about it. And indeed, competitively, personally, I think it's definitely one of the most fun. It's the fastest in terms of, or at least the travel when you get hit, it's the fastest. And you go back to old games, you hit someone, you think, oh, they're not going off the edge. Oh, they've gone by comparison. Ultimate is like, no, I'm coming back. Amazing stuff. It's also got Ridley in it. It does. Yeah. And Banjo. Eventually. Eventually he made it. All the games you talked about are represented in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, because almost every game is represented in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. But let's wave dash to the top 10 now. We cannot talk about these as a group. So no holding back. Jump in whenever. Number 10 is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Nobody wants to jump in. Yeah, there's nothing to fight about here, right? This is the best Mario Kart game. Yeah. It's set the bar so high that World, which improves a lot of stuff visually, mechanically, in other ways, feels like half the game, because it kind of is right now. You know, Mario Kart World will grow to become a better game. But Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, with everything in it, it still plays so well. It got so many characters. It got so many new courses over the course of its life since it first started on Wii U. Yeah, just one of those, like, when we talk about game feel, like how great something feels to play, this is it, right? This is just a fantastic party game. It's so much fun. Couch co-op, competitively, online, all that stuff. It's great. Yeah, I think one of my favorite things about it, and some of it is just a testament to the Mario Kart series in general, and not anything special about 8. But I think 8 just has a lot of little nuances that do this very well. I can bust this out at any gathering of my family. And everybody in my family immediately knows how to play it. My siblings who play games know how to play it. Parents also understand how to play it, either because at some point in their lives, they played the original Mario Kart, and this is just so instinctively similar and familiar to them, or just because it's fairly easy to understand. Cargo forward, use item, done. Everything is very intuitive and clearly signposted. Even the courses, whenever I open Mario Kart 8, I feel like they've added more to it. It's not really true. They haven't added a bunch of courses anytime recently. But I just feel like I look at it and I'm like, oh, man, I haven't driven on this course recently. What the heck? And their course design is just so good that I can instinctively follow these paths and not feel like I'm missing out, or I'm just crashing into walls because I don't know what's going on. Like, I don't know. It's just it's really well designed and really cool. And there's, like you said, Brian, there's just so much to it. It's so effortless as well. You know, everything about it, it feels unbelievably fast, 150 CC the first time you play it. And then they were like, OK, admittedly in deluxe, it was always there. But like with the original, it was like, hey, we're introducing 200 CC mode. And it's like the courses were not designed for 200 CC mode. Nope. It's the only way I can play the game now because I just got so used to just driving around and especially like the F zero circuits. So difficult to play. You actually have to break for the first time in a Mario game, a Mario Kart game, all to be clear, you have to break. And it's incredible. It's superb. That Rainbow Road is one of the best tracks that I think has ever been made. It's just phenomenal. Also, that soundtrack, those guys just going absolutely nuts on the saxophones. Are you kidding me? I was going to bring that up because if you watch our top 100 Nintendo games video on IG and like over half the background music we're using is from Mario Kart 8 because the soundtrack is just it's just works for everything and it's so catchy and upbeat and fun. That it's it's like unmatched. And the original on Wii U just felt like, oh, this is what Nintendo can do in HD. Like it is so stylized and the Luigi death stare and Mario's mustache fluttering in the wind. Like this is that just Nintendo charm. But on a whole new technical level, it's still one of the best looking Nintendo games there is. And I think it will age well forever. The game just looks amazing. And I just think that world is, like I said, it's the most disappointing eight out of ten ever because of what it had to follow up. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is just a giant. It's the the finish line of that Mario Kart formula they've been building to. They had to do something else with the next one. And they did because you couldn't have made a sequel better than this one. Yeah, I think in the same way that for the longest time, Super Smash Brothers Melee was like wasn't to some people still is like the definitive Super Smash Brothers. I think Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is going to continue to be the definitive Mario Kart for a very long time to come. Yeah, I agree. And how like I like Smash Ultimate more than Mario Kart 8, but how I can justify it is what you said, Reb. Anyone can come over and play Mario Kart Smash is overwhelming if you have not played it before. And if you're really good, you'll just kick everyone's butt. But Mario Kart, anyone can pick up and play and have a ton of fun. That's number 10. Number nine, the first of a bunch of Super Nintendo games in our top 10. It's the Legend of Zelda a link to the past. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to say about this game. I mean, I mean, I'm just like, yeah, of course. Can I can I, you know, say something controversial? Oh, no. Never finished it. What? All right, leave. Go get out. Finish it. Yeah, you got to go. He's gone. So I'm we were actually just talking about this. A couple of us talking about Zelda 2 yesterday, right? Is all the two very divisive, sequel, disappointing for a lot of people. I love it, but I completely understand why people would be turned off by it. This Zelda getting like a very proper. I don't want to keep saying on steroids here, but like get the Super Nintendo version of Zelda compared to the original NES Zelda game is exactly that, right? It takes everything from from the first game, builds it out. But what really blew my mind about this game was the sound design, like hearing water droplets inside the dungeons and stuff like that. The like it's it's it's MIDI music, but it's not chiptune. And it's it's fully orchestrated from from a MIDI perspective. It's not like, you know, there's a whole, you know, 15 piece orchestra or anything. But that and the the the weapons you get. The the system where you can basically jump between parallel worlds, which obviously they brought on and again, in link between worlds, but like going into the dark world version of of the entire overworld and all of a sudden people were like evil and weird and messed up and had rabbit ears. Yeah. And you're like, what is happening? There's like there's an entire other game in this game. And then that ending that Alex never saw, it's so good that you need to you need to finish this game. I know, I know, I know it's terrible. I have I have played, I would say probably 80 percent of the game. But it's just and I think I've done that twice, maybe three times. But then something something gets in the way and I cannot bring myself to like the only way that I can get back into a game like this is to start it afresh right in this cycle that's never going to end. And something else is going to come up in my life and get in the way. One day I will sit down on a weekend and just blitz the loss of it. Because I am brutally aware that this is this is the Zelda blueprint. Yeah, you know, the first one on the NES. Yeah, you know, it started out as doing some crazy things. Whoa. And it's great. And it's all right. But this just absolutely nails it. And there's a few little tiny growing pains if you come back to it when you're older and you haven't played it properly before like me. But, you know, it's it sort of feels like, oh, my God, this is this is the home console version of Link's Awakening. Stick that on my tombstone. Rob, anything on this one? Just that this is another one that I played as an adult. And like because I I didn't play a lot of video games until I was older than probably most of you started playing video games. Like I really didn't start. I had a game cube when I was 10 and that was the first console that I owned. And I had I had a Game Boy before that. But I didn't like I had to go back and play a lot of the older classics, which is why sometimes on the show you hear me talking about classics that I've just missed because I wasn't playing games then. This is one that I went back and played as an adult. And I I, Alex, I disagree. I don't really think it has any growing pains. I think it holds up fantastically. I really enjoyed every minute of this. I remember right around the time that I was playing this for the first time was right around the time. If you grow up in a fairly sheltered environment and don't use a lot of swear words and then suddenly become an adult and start learning swear words. This is a great game to play to practice your swear words. Especially on a couple of the bosses. So I had I had a great time. I do just want to make it absolutely clear when I say some growing pains, I am nitpicking the tiniest, little twiddly, little things that really don't matter. That's what I'm talking about. There's nothing significant in there whatsoever. Now, I'll see you later. I'm going to go and play a link to the past. Yeah, make it a three day weekend. Just so you don't stop after 80 percent. Yeah, you mentioned links awakening. Why is that not in our top 25 who dropped that ball? You didn't show up to the meeting. OK, that's that's you know, that's not fair. Yeah, you were at the meeting. I don't know. You were there. We talked about this. I don't know why it didn't get higher, but it's somewhere in there. Yeah, realistically, and we'll talk about the making of. But the actual reason why a bunch of really great games are not in the top 10 is because there's only 10 spots. Yeah, arguably like every game. I will not arguably definitively every game in this top 10 is incredible and deserves to be here. And I'm sorry that there's more than 10 games that deserve to be in the top 10. There should be more than 10 games in the top 10. I agree. I think I brought that up. I think I sent an email around or something like that. Like I think Super Smash Brothers Ultimate should be in the top 10. And also, I would not kick any of these out for it. Like, that's fair. This next game, I think is too low. And it's number eight. I think that Super Metroid is a top five Nintendo game of all time. And it didn't make it. And I'll kick this one off because I'm replayed Super Metroid on my flights to and from New York last week. Just because I run through it about once a year now. And oh, man, this just whenever I play this game, I just continue to be absolutely amazed by how good it is to communicating with zero words. It's unbelievable. My friend and I, we play the Metroid games a lot together. We passed the controller back and forth. And like when you discover a secret or something or you place a bomb at a weird point and then there's a missile upgrade, we're like, man, you just metroided so hard right there. It's just like it's just effortless. And there's like a room where you shoot a chozo thing to get an upgrade, then you drop a power bomb, it makes a path you go through, you get a missile upgrade, you drop another power bomb and there's a missile upgrade tucked in the wall. And it's just like secrets on secrets on secrets that are just incredible to find unmatched atmosphere at that first moment when you descend down to Brinstar after kind of the reunion tour of everything from Metroid one. It's like, OK, well, you we re-saw Dead Mother Brain and all that stuff. Here's the new area. And it's just an incredible, like really funky soundtrack. This game is basically perfect from start to finish. And some days I think it's the number one best Nintendo game of all time. Like when I just think of what Nintendo games excel at the most, I think nothing does it better than Super Metroid. Still, thirty one years later, whatever it is. I mean, before when Alex was like, if if Prime is the only Metroid game you played, you know, be disappointed, it's because of this game. Like this is this is the other one that you should have played. But it's never too late. It's it's on it's on switch. You have no excuse. Yeah, this this same deal with, you know, Link, not Link between worlds, but Link to the past were like the sound design of this game again, just completely blew my mind that sound ship on the Super Nintendo did so much heavy lifting and also like, you know, getting an actual map in a method for the first time. Cool. We actually know we're going now. This is great. Yeah, no twenty five letter password to save your game. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK, nobody be mean to me. Everybody be nice to me. I played this for the first time at the start of this year, and it is the only Metroid game I have played to date. And I am in love with it. It's so good. Like I get it. That sentence was going in one direction. I'm very pleased you went the other. Yeah, I advocated for this to be up here because again, an example of a game that I did not play in my childhood for various reasons and and finally got around to as an adult. And yeah, you're right. Like it's everything. I you've all spoken eloquently on it. I love the atmosphere. I think that's one of my favorite things about it. It's just so moody, like you're right. The soundtrack is just just haunting and strange and the loneliness of this game and the ways in which it's able to convey like isolation and and mystery with with with so few words and with so few, like like it's not like full of cut scenes. Like there's not a bunch of like scripted things happening. You're just sort of walking around these like weird environments and seeing weird things and I don't know. It's just it's really, really cool. I love Super Metroid with all my heart. I it has made me want to play another Metroid. I just haven't quite decided which one when and on what. But it's it's it's made it's made a believer out of me. Rabbit, actually, it makes me really happy that you played this game for the first time recently and loved it because I know how much you love Metroidvania games and especially the modern ones. And you're really good at them and you're like, well, well, I mean, to the like, I remember like when when Animal Well came out, right? Like you were one of the people being like, let's on. Let's crack the code on this game. So yeah, I'm like an egg. Yeah. Like I have nostalgia for this game because I grew up with it. And I like but it's it's always cool to hear somebody play something like this for the first time in like 2025 and be like, yeah, man, this this is a rips. The only bad thing about it is that stupid infinite jump thing. I still can't do that. It's hard. No, that's fine. It's it's the challenge. I'd say. Bold and ambitious control scheme that I feel is that's the only that's the only issue I have with this game. And it is completely understandable because, you know, this sort of thing, there was no blueprint, you know, to do as many different things as it does. It's a little bit clunky in certain things, you know, in the scan visor or whatever the hell it was called, was it called the scan visor? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I know what to do with all the buttons on the controller just yet. So I know exactly that's what I say. I'm just curious. You're coming from like a, you know, sort of a 2025 man complaining about something, trying to find fault in one of the finest games ever made because it really, really is. I actually only played this for the first time as an adult. It was still about 10 years ago, which I don't like to think about. But I think I first played on Wii U, if you can believe it. Of all things. Yeah. Only because I had a SNES, but by the time I had enough money to buy something like Super Metroid, it was too much money, you know, and especially I think over in the UK, inordinately expensive game. But it's it's superb. Like there are Metroidvanias that are released with all the modern Wizz Bang, Gizmo Gadget things, you know, to make development easier. And they wish they could be this game that was made by, I'm going to say three people in 1976. Not quite, but close enough. Yeah. I don't think it's a segment on Super Metroid without talking about the clip. They just showed on screen, which is the glass tunnel that you break with a power arm, this tunnel you run through 15 times throughout the game. And then eventually you're exploring some other area. And you see a version of that tunnel that is cracked. And that's the game telling you, you can break that tunnel. Did you know that? And you didn't. And it's so cool. And it does this stuff all the time, like road blocking you. You fall down a pit and you just can't climb back up. Modern games would like just put a wall up or something. But no, that game, you can't because you can't freeze the little beetle guys. You have to hop on to get back up. And it's just it's genius. And every Metroid sense is still chasing Super Metroid, even Metroid Prime, which is phenomenal. It is the it is like the link to the past to Ocarina of Time. It is the the Metroid blueprint in 3D. And every Metroid game sense is not as good as this one. I love Dread. It doesn't even come close like to Super Metroid. It's it's phenomenal. And I just want to think comes a little close. The whole idea of me just walking up to walls and sort of smashing them randomly or like experimenting with different tools on different bosses to see what happens. Like that's lineage from Metroid, just walking up to this and putting bombs in front of them or or freezing them just to see what happens. Like like that's that's from this. You've encapsulated it perfectly. And it's it's also a game where the developers almost don't care if you miss out on a third of the game. No, you know, and you know, you're not going to miss any major story beats or anything like that. But if you just go through the game, you could miss. Yeah, you could miss 30 percent. And the game is like try harder. Yeah, easily. Yeah. Well, Reb, you mentioned a few keywords and you're a little spiel on this. I'm just going to tease ahead. You said loneliness, no dialogue, isolation. Let's keep those key Metroid words in mind for later when we talk about Metroid Prime four beyond. But right now we're going to. I know what we're going to say. OK, yeah. We're going to have a number seven on this list, which is Chrono Trigger, which I actually haven't played. So I'll throw it over to you guys. Oh, no, you have to. OK, I want to. Everybody's going to going to leave right now. And we're going to go play the game on this list that we haven't played yet. No, this is the highest ranking RPG, by the way. This is what we say is number one. And I am on the side of the debate. I think Final Fantasy 6 always has to be in the conversation for best RPG of all time. But for me, it is Chrono Trigger, like like full stop. Chrono Trigger is fantastic. It's it came out around the same time as Final Fantasy 6. And they're they're doing like such different things, but also doing the same things kind of well. And it's like really fascinating to compare the two, which is not what I'm doing here. It's so good, man. Like the soundtrack is an absolute like all timer for video games ever. It has a much smaller cast of characters than the Final Fantasy 6 does, but they're they're like really tight and they're really well written and they're really interesting in the way you can like sort of swap them out freely, including getting rid of the main character at certain points in the game. Chrono, which is like completely nuts and was unheard of at the time and is still kind of wacky today. The amount of the sheer amount of endings that you can get, depending on how you beat the game, how you play through the game, different things that you do, little details, little touches, like the whole thing in the Millennial Fair at the beginning, where depending on your actions, they may come back to haunt you later in in a trial if you behave immorally. Like like there's so much detail when you're switching between the eras, depending on like who you talk to, you can see like how that influences the course of history and have different characters take different actions. In certain eras that you then see reflected later in the story. It's just it's so cool. It's it's a really, really timeless story. And I love it so much. The animations are fantastic. Oh, I loved I love Chrono Trigger Man. They've never made another one like it. Getting instant insights is amazing. But if there are too many data points, it can be hard to see what works. So I'll ask my AI assistant for recommendation. And with PDF spaces in Acrobat Studio, it's easy to remix documents and transform insights into standout content so you can go from idea to creation in record time or within an AI powered workflow. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on Adobe.com. Has anyone else played it or is it just ramp? So I haven't played this game since it first came out. And so I'm just sitting here being like, oh, yes, that's right. Oh, yeah, that's right. Just running through everything. I was like, yep, I remember that. But it's been a long time. This is this is the one that I need to go back to again. Yeah, because it's been a really long time. It's also it's like I think like 25, 30 hours max. Like it's not excruciatingly long. It is exactly the right length. Cool. Alex. I'm afraid I haven't played it properly either. I've got to go to play it. This is a game to access. Like they have a very expensive DS remake. It's like hard to find now. Yeah, it was not accessible for a while. Did they not like port it already? It's on like well to pay me. But the less we talk about that, the better. Yeah, I mean, the DS, I will say the DS version is unfortunately the best way to play it now if you have access to a DS and a copy of it because it does have a little bit of extra content and the DS version like does a really good job of being faithful to the game. I I have not checked in on the status of the other, the more modern ports. I remember there's been a lot of concern over Square Enix's porting of classic RPGs to PC and mobile. But I'm not sure where Chrono Trigger is sitting right now, as far as good or bad. But if you can if you can find a way to play this, you've got to, though. It's just it's just phenomenal. It's exquisite. Did we lose Alex's camera? Or Alex's? I'm still, hey, I hang on. Give me two seconds. He was so ashamed about never playing Chrono Trigger. Shut it off. Shut it down. Wow, really? You guys have not played it. Not not since I first played it. Oh, as a kid. Yeah. OK. Cool. We're back. Well, I'm glad that Rebs the expert on that one, because, yeah, we all need to catch up on that one. But number six, the legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, the best Zelda on the N64, the best traditional 3D Zelda, according to this list and according to me as well. I will know I said Twilight Princess is the best. But I do like Ocarina way more than Twilight Princess. I still think Ocarina's dungeons are just amazing. And from like a puzzle design, like a puzzle box lock and key setup, they're still probably the best in the series. Like Twilight Princess are more cinematic and more grand and more epic. But Twilight or Ocarina of Time's dungeons are still just ingenious and the way that you manipulate them. And Aizio Anuma talks about it as these like Japanese toys, these these dolls and these puzzle boxes that work in these interesting ways. And you have to zoom out and think about the the product as a whole to make them work. Ocarina of Time by far is the one that delivers the most on that promise, whether it's the the water levels and the water temple, which people hate. I love it. That temple is wonderful. Or the fire temple where you have to climb to the very top and use your big hammer to knock down the pillar that changes the room down below. Ocarina of Time just does it all. And of course, it's just iconic and classic and probably on 15 IGN lists over the years. It's been number one on this list, but not anymore as 27 years have passed. I mean, the time travel mechanic, right? Like we talked a bit about in Link to the Past, the sort of dimensional thing of going to like the here's the evil version of Hyrule or whatever, going into the future as young Link and seeing what happens to things when evil takes over was like mind blowing as a kid. Like being like that they destroyed Hyrule. Like it's obviously Hyrule Field is still pretty and stuff like that. And the older you get and the more you play this game, you realize it's it's pretty small, right? Like but playing playing this game for the first time when I was younger and getting into Hyrule Field and seeing just the scope and scale of that, finding Skulltullos, finding like bombing holes and making, you know, finding secret treasures and stuff like that. The Rumble Pack, like letting you know when you were standing on something special. I love I love this game so much. It's it's it's so special. I think that, you know, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom do its own thing really well. But in terms of 3D, all the games, I think this is still my favorite. Nice. And I haven't played this. No, I'm joking. No way. There's absolutely no way. No, this is this is a phenomenal game. And even though I think I personally prefer Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time is the better game overall. It's tighter. It's overall it's overall just a better experience. And I don't think that gets any better. We've just seen the well Shadow Temple and the bottom of the well is easily one of the most terrifying experiences I had as a child, certainly in video games. Because like, I mean, you look at it now and you know, the N64 polygonal graphics are a little bit sort of cute up to a point. And then but then you get to the bottom of the well and then you get grabbed by the thing. It comes out of the ground with a detached jaw and you go, oh, no, no, I do need to change my trousers after all. Absolutely terrifying. And they play off if whether it was intentional or not, they play off in what so many games nowadays do with like low, you know, sort of like grainy footage in like analog horror, wherever it's called. You know, Ocarina of Time, just a Zelda game was the real deal. And OK, it didn't go as dark as Majora's Mask. But if anything, that meant the scary stuff was all the scarier because you weren't expecting it. Majora's Mask, you expect everything to be absolutely mental and completely off the wall. Ocarina of Time, hey, fairy game, or let's go and get another spiritual stone and then you're on a ship seemingly piloted by death. You know, it's good stuff. Yeah, there's like a big like white dead blob whose forehands coming out of the ground or grabbing your face. Yeah, lots of things like that. No one actually knows what that character is. Dead hand. Yeah, it's good that. I'm not sure that's my best guess. I don't think anyone's focusing on the name when they get to that thing. No, no. This is the one where this one's my blind spot in the top 10. I have played Ocarina, so don't get me wrong. I have not not played it, but this was this was one of the when I was going back as an adult and going back and playing older games. This is the one everyone recommended. And I went back and played this fairly early on when I was in college and I bounced off of it really hard. Like I did. I played I played several hours of it. I mean, I got into the meat of it, but I just I just couldn't. I couldn't connect with it and I really struggled. I think it's because like, you know, going back to the N64 controls and I was playing on on an N64 as well, a friend's copy. It was a little clunky for me and a little little hard and a little frustrating after, you know, being used to modern games. But having gone back and played Majora's Mask last year and loving it so much. I played it on the 3ds version, the Majora's Mask one. I believe there's not going to have time. Yes, on 3ds. It is the definitive version of this game. Absolutely. I've been very seriously because I did Super Metroid last year or this past year during January. I've been seriously thinking about going back and doing this in January of this year and giving it another chance because like I I think I've matured. I think I've gotten over a little bit of my pretentiousness about trying to play older games and feeling like I'm stumbling around the controls. And I also just really want to see like, like I understand logically what all the fuss is about. Like I could I could list off all the things that are great about Ocarina of Time because I've heard enough people say them so many times. But I think like I don't I couldn't tell you anything about the actual experience of playing this game, apart from, you know, the the handful of hours that I've done, because like I just I don't know, like hearing people talk about Ocarina and experiencing it, I think are two very, very different things. And so I think I think I'm going to give this one another chance in the new year. The the day night cycle in this game blew my mind. And the last thing I'll say about this is without even playing the noise, if you've played this game, you can hear the rooster. Yes, like I heard it right when you said that. Absolutely. Yeah. I play this game every single year. My sister and I play it at the same time and we can beat it in about eight hours because we just know everything, every answer to every puzzle. And it's it's super fun to just revisit it every single year. We're in the top five now. I have basically nothing to say about number five, which is Tetris. So who wants to talk about Tetris? I mean, it's kind of the perfect puzzle game in so many ways. It requires no instruction. It's almost human in how intuitive it is. You sort of naturally just want to make these blocks match up. And then when you do, lying disappears, you go, hey, that was a nice little bit of dopamine. And that's it. You've had the full instruction. It's the super Metroid of puzzle games. That's what I mean. There's nothing to improve upon like what like it tried. They have. The best thing they've done is add like a really cool trippy music and VR to it with Tetris effect. But like, what does it need? Well, so the thing about this game for me is that this is, I think, one of the greatest handheld games ever made. And specifically for Nintendo, this established the Game Boy as basically established Nintendo as like a handheld game developer forever. And I know they didn't make this game. There's a bunch of lengthy documentaries and movies and books about how exactly this game together. But playing this game on a Game Boy as a kid and also seeing grownups do the same thing was the first time I'd really seen like a hobby. I really loved legitimized by like dudes in business suits and stuff. And, you know, I've talked about this on the show, like being on an airplane as a kid and looking around. There were guys like going on business trips, grown, grown adult men were sitting there playing Tetris on the Game Boy. Like this was a pack in game with the original Game Boy. I got that for Christmas one year and I was obsessed. You could play this game in short bursts. You could play it for hours on end if you wanted to. They created, you know, a medical name for when you play this game for too long, which was like Tetrisitis and the Tetris effect, which became the, you know, when you would start to see blocks in real life, you would go in. It made you insane. That's how good this game was. How many other games on this list can say they made you temporarily insane? Tunnel darkness. That's the only one I got. That's it. But no, this is number 100, right? Yeah, it is number 100. Is it? Number 100. Now, what a perfect pack in game. And there's a very recent, very dramatized movie that also talks about that. Yeah. I think that's maybe worth emphasizing, too, which Brian has already said, but like the idea that Tetris and Nintendo are like inextricably linked in this way, because Tetris, I think, was a huge part of what made the Game Boy so successful, successful, but also the Game Boy was a huge part of what helped propel Tetris to be even bigger than it already was. Like those those two things help support each other in such a way that explains effectively like why we are still thinking of either of them today. Yeah, for sure. Number five, I know it just always earns a spot. Some are really high up on these lists. And yeah, it's different than the other stuff. It's Tetris. OK, we got kind of two pairs of games left. Number four, number three are the last two Mario games on this list. Number four is Super Mario Odyssey, and number three is Super Mario World. So we're saying Mario World is the best Mario of all time, but Odyssey is close behind in the best 3D Mario of all time. Alex, what do you think? I mean, can I just open with world? I know it's you know, Odyssey's on the screen, but I just I've got this thing about world that I love. So when I was when I was a lot younger, most things have happened. Most things happen when I was younger, as opposed to when I was older. Super Mario World, I didn't own a SNES, but there was one at my grandmother's house, the grandmother, who I saw less often, she just lived further away. But I would I would play that SNES incessantly, much to the chagrin of my family. And one of the games I played more than any other was Super Mario World. I think it must have been five years after I first picked up that game. I finally found the star road. And as I said earlier, in regards to Super Metroid, this, you know, Nintendo don't care if you don't see some of the most surprising stuff in this game, you can get to Bowser in about 15 minutes if you know what you're doing, which is just ridiculous. And I don't think they've been that bold since with Mario games. I'm not saying they haven't given his castle a backdoor since like they've never there's a back entrance to his castle. Like I just played through this in like 11 minutes. You see me of this. I did not know this. What? Really? Yeah. I didn't know I didn't know. No, it's the levels literally called Bowser's backdoor. And you can only you get to it through the star road. And like Alex just said, like you can you can beat this game in about 10 and a half, 11 minutes if you just beeline the star road, beat all of those levels and go right to Bowser's backdoor. There's like a couple of mecha Koopas and then you're in the final boss fight and you're rolling credits. Yeah. That's amazing. That is really cool. Bob, it's so many secrets. So much secret stuff. Like a prank. Like it sounds like Brian is messing with you. Yeah, I know. I know you're not. I know you're not like that's like like that's that's so cool. That's just the way I every time I talk to people, I like, is he lying? Yeah, that's that's fun. So actually, no, you know, we're not going to say it's like this game on steroids again, but no, I really took everything they built in Mario 3 and kept going with it. Right. The the Cape Power up had so much more flexibility than the, you know, the raccoon ears and being able to do that thing where you could basically fly through a whole level. Like if you guys know that, like you do that dip and then you just yeah, then you can do that power. Yeah, if you nail it, it's awesome. And yeah, same deal, like secret exits, the level where you get to ride on a bunch of dolphins. Like I just I love this game so much. It's so gorgeous and moody. The ghost houses, some of the forest levels that have all this like parallax scrolling with different backgrounds and foregrounds and stuff like that. There's like fog. I love it so much. Such a clever game, so charming, just ingenious. There's even a zone and I know this is going to sound like I'm making up, you know, but there is even a zone in that ghost house we just saw. There's a secret exit and it's like ludicrously secret. You know, you'd almost never work it out unless you were looking for it. And it leads to a place called Secret Area and it's just all the power ups. It's like a leftover from Debug or something like that. But it's called Secret Area and it's just there. It's great. I love it. One of the Star Road. Is it the last Star Road level where it's basically just like coins that spell like, thank you for playing Super Mario, you're a good dude. We love you. Thanks for hanging out. And it's just oh, yeah, you just collect all these coins and just spell out words. Again, not lying. Sounds like I'm lying. No, Mario game does that now. Like all of them do that at the very end. Like 3D World through Clear Pipes or whatever. It's to this day, my favorite Mario aesthetic, like my favorite Mario, I feel like they've gone to a different style. Well, they definitely went to a different style after Super Mario World and never never went back to it, but they really didn't do anything quite like that before then. And so just the look of Mario from that area era, the look of the enemies, everything just is very charming and makes me happy. I I also feel in some ways like Super Mario World was kind of the last game of like, I don't know if that was really tight. I'm sure watching the footage here and I'm like, oh, Mario just dive bombed. And now he's good. Good. Yeah, he made it. It's a good save. I feel like this was kind of the end of Mario's, like for lack of a better word, like the chaos era, like, I don't know. All the Mario's that have come out since then have been, I guess, a little more polished, a little more sunshine. But, you know, it's not like there's a brand Bible happening by that era. You know what I mean. Well, no, we we didn't get a two D. Mario for a really long time after this. And when we did, it was like 15 new Super Mario Brothers games. And those were all, you know, pretty vanilla, Yogurtie for a while. There, like, it was pretty much like exactly two. Your perspective. Yeah. Still, when they were doing some weird stuff, like, like all the stuff you were describing about, like, you know, secret areas and things like that. Like, they're just kind of throwing stuff at the wall and see what sticks. And they're still, they're still invented. Like, don't get me wrong. It's not like they're not inventive, but there just feels like there's a little more chaos energy in Super Mario World than there is in Pretty much any game that's come after it Like I don't like that like a Mario wonders inventive in its wonder effects But those are on the critical path that everyone sees and it's like a fun little surprise. Look what we did It's not what Alex was saying secret area and there's just a bunch of random crap in there that you pick up and then you leave Yeah, it is very different. Also, if you do the little very last secret level as you say where there's just got all the What the coin saying thank you for playing or something you do that and suddenly all the sprites change and it's suddenly autumn Yeah, it goes like Halloween. It's so it's so weird Wearing Mario heads. Yeah, what's happening? Yeah, there's like pumpkins and stuff like it's great Also a pack-in game for the Super Nintendo like Super Nintendo. Yeah, this game was there My neighbor got a Super Nintendo like two months before I did and I was best friends with him for a week and a half So we could play through this game and then I dropped them like a Yoshi Sorry, I hope you don't make any good use of the fruits with Yoshi like not no, oh, you get a one up Okay I'm gonna go on my way to eat five fruits and if you eat the pink fruits, maybe you get something else And I don't know I mean it was weird It was fun that it was there, but it felt like they were like mmm these bushes need something Let's put something in there even if it's not really useful also Bowser's Bowser's castle having a neon sign with his name on it Is great. That's such a good very on brand We had do have to give Super Mario Odyssey its flowers we I'm more of a 3d Mario girly than a 2d Mario girly just just because I struggle I love the 2d Mario games when I struggle with them my Mario's platforming is a little floaty for me to ever be good at it But I love the 3d Mario games. They're so fun. I love Odyssey I think I think Odyssey probably is to this day my favorite Mario It it's just so joyful it feels because you know I I'm a sunshine stand and to me Odyssey feels like Like the energy of sunshine, but without some without the drawbacks, you know, I love the world design I think that each each different world that he or each different kingdom that he goes to is is just Fantastic and detailed and full of interesting secrets and full of colorful and interesting enemies I love some of the little touches that they did with like the switch technology Like you will always hear me rave about how cool it is to dive into the the ocean on the area with the like the carbonated Sodacy and feel the joy cons I just think I think that's so cool I love that they did that or when you're like zipping unzipping the walls and that one kingdom and you feel the zipper like that was That was so cool. That was when like the the Whatever the fancy word they used for the HD rumble HD Well, that was when HD rumble was still new and exciting Yeah, I love I love the story. I Kathy is like Kappy's really cool in that he's like a good little buddy to have along on your journey and like mildly obnoxious But like not too annoying, you know and like the way that an endocrine companion ideally should be hold on to that for You got co-op in there you can have somebody control Kappy Which is like maybe not great not super fun for like two adults trying to play together But fantastic if you're playing with like a younger sibling as I have done Bowser is hilarious in this game. The worlds are incredible There's so many moons to find holy crap one of my favorite things to do every year is watch games done quick speed runs of this game Oh, yeah, and just basically listen to the little moon jingle play Because they're getting so many moons so fast It's so cool. I love Mario Odyssey The and and you know the the song sequence the jump-up Superstar sequence is like an all-time great in In Nintendo games just that entire Platforming section with the song going in the performance at the end. It's unforgettable. Okay, so I I Kind of screwed myself up with this game because I think it's one of the best games of all time But also I got 999 moons and yeah, I don't know why I It's it's it's like I'd self-sabotage completely burned out on it and Haven't really been able to pick it up since but it got a it got a switch to update And so I really want to go back and just you know wipe my brain of of you know when I play this in what 2017 For a hundred something hours and got well you like to do that You have to grind for coins and basically keep going back and then trading them in for moons There's no reason to do that Absolutely, no don't ever do that if you're listening to this little fireworks show It's not just Google the fireworks show you put on YouTube look up any fireworks show and Just do that instead of what I did because I really want to play this again. It's so much fun It's it's probably one of the up until bonanza. I would say it's probably one of the best Controlling games of all time just yeah, the movement. Yeah, just player movement and like we've I've shouted out rev just did too The the recent games done quick speedrun of this where it's just like two friends Co-opping it one's playing as cappy the other ones playing as Mario Yeah, it's just such a delight and it just reminded me how clever this game is how creative it is It's yeah, this is this is exactly like what what I want from a platform This is exactly what I want from 3d Mario forever They're so good at balancing making his movement like very easy to pick up and just just like have like somebody play without like Like I'm not I'm not amazing at platformers and I can you know work my way through this and feel comfortable with it But then yeah, you've got like speedrunners or like really really skilled players doing all these incredible Technical ridiculous things like throwing cappy and bouncing in the air and getting up to these high High up areas that you shouldn't be able to get to and then they put coins up there for you Just for funsies. It's just it's so cool how they've been able to like combine those two things together. I Actually did I did a very similar thing. I did get well not something I also got 999 moons and I don't think it burned me out It I mean don't get me wrong Getting loaded coins just to buy moons not exactly, you know, I'm not leaping out of bed in the morning to do something like that No, it's it is But it was very satisfying to get it done, you know, just to say I could you know, yes But I would actually say you mentioned bonanza I'd say this controls better. No, you're wrong bonanza controls Well, I take the movement on Mario and maybe it's just simply because Mario Better than Yeah, the you know sort of DK obviously is slow methodical punching, you know get out of the way I'm you know an immovable object or rather an unstoppable force Whereas Mario is very light on his feet athletic and Like get out of the way. Whoa, I'm going over here and that's just so much Yeah You know sort of you could as as you rightly said you can start and you just hand it to someone and they're like Okay, and they're able to get nearly every moon, you know just by doing some basic jumps and then you Go in and you know sort of go, okay, and you get the moons in a third of the time if you'd go Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and it's just as much fun to play it again once you master it I would say if some some ways more fun even if nothing's a surprise anymore. I got a little existential I Love Mario Odyssey also It's my favorite 3d Mario my favorite Mario was my favorite 3d platformer until this this past July This game is just incredible and I've said it before on this show But I think that like there may be a better Mario game that comes out in the future But this is the ultimate celebration of Mario that may never be topped from the the Donkey Kong jump-up superstar moment you talked about rev to the 8-bit platforming segments that are just peppered throughout Where you're climbing a column in the desert and it's just super Mario brothers to all the costumes that he wears all the references and enemies It's just it's just an incredible Celebration of Mario a great way to return to the sandbox after galaxy galaxy 2 3d land 3d world We went back to that 64 sunshine style, but it's way way bigger and way way better It's it's incredible and I got the fireworks show I did it, but I chipped away over the course of eight years I didn't do it all in 2017. I finished 100% in my original October 2017 file this past January like I just did it this year Thanks It was super fun to like just every whenever I got a craving for Odyssey which happened around its anniversary every year It's when I was thinking about that time it came out when I was in college I just go back get 15 more moons and set it down until the next year and that was just a really fun way to chip away at this massive game I Did not get that many moons. I Beat I beat dark side. I did not beat darker side and I was happy Well, that's the Mario of it all let's talk about the legend of Zelda side of things our top two Number two the legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and number one the legend of Zelda tears of the kingdom correct Whoa, so I don't know we've given every other game. It's do we've talked if we talk about these games like almost every week I feel like should we should we give them their flowers or should we just talk about what went into which one we like more and why I Just trying to think of no, I Did an entire mini series on on tears of the kingdom? Look really cool, I'm gonna go back someday I think I think we got the order right here and I think it's it's difficult I could see I could see it going either way with these two right because like obviously one of them created the blueprint and the other one just Improved it in almost every single way, but I think steroids. Yeah, I could almost say it's yeah like the original I think I Think about these games all the time I think that they are not only two of the best Nintendo games ever made that they're two of the best open-world games two of the best video games ever Made and I'm playing through Hyrule Warriors now on On switch to and it's just reminding me how much I love this world and these characters and this art style tears of the kingdom for me is the better game for reasons I didn't expect because when I previewed it I was like this building stuff is gonna get annoying and Just as it starts to they find ways to Make that easier for you, right? They sort of fast-track all these blueprints for you and they give you the option like you can go crazy with this if you want You can build a mech Or a metal gear, but you can also just like push a button it'll build it for you You can you know like some of my favorite memories in this game We're just creating this really crappy haphazard flying machine up in the skies And then just hoping it just putters to the finish line and I can jump to that next sky island or Diving from the skies all the way to the depths which I loved it felt like Like Zelda doing Dark Souls I love these games so much. I think I think the order is is perfect, but I could see it going the other way I think these games have done so much with the power of suggestion and it just really goes to show how The the Nintendo team that has put both of them together Has just so gotten so so good at suggesting things to the player Allowing them to like like feel like they are in control and creative But also making sure that you never just feel like you're totally lost and don't know what to do in a situation Like everything in the original Breath of the Wild like we love praise praising the great plateau as a tutorial area Because they do such a good job of you know, you get your controls and everything But they give you like these little bokoblin camp campsites or whatever where there's you know like a hive of bees And you can kind of see it up in the corner and there's like the suggestion Oh, well, what if we shut that down to see what happens? What if we push this boulder down a cliff? What if we use, you know, our new power of Magnesis with this like Metallic box or whatever like they always Everywhere you go in both of those games There is something set up for you right there to just implant an idea in your head and make you feel like it was your Idea like the game designers are the ones doing it, but you're the one going oh man I'm so clever I'm gonna do this cool thing and they do the same thing in tears of the kingdom with all of the little machines like even though You're collecting them all and can pretty much do yeah I mean you can make a machine that just lets you mow over enemies if you want and just play the game like that But every time you run into a camp every time you end up in the depths or in the sky or wherever you are There are just pieces of something whether it's environmental items or tools or whatever scattered around that will immediately make you think What if I approach this problem in this way and it makes you feel so smart and so cool and so clever and they are just so so good at it They've always been good at it because we've seen how they've designed dungeons in Zelda games up to this point Like like Zelda dungeons have been incredible about that a link link between worlds was like that We were talking about it earlier how you could like bring bring different items with you and approach it in different ways But these are just like the pinnacle of that and I I've never played a game that was like either of these and being so good at making me feel so smart They are both Unbelievable games they really really are and I know it's not fashionable to say that tears of the kingdom is better I know a lot of people say oh, but Breath of the Wild you know, it's simple Well the thing is is that I find it very difficult to separate them I think either one yeah could be the best but I do think if you're talking as Objectively as you can at the end of the day, it's all opinion. I would say that tears the kingdom is the better game But Breath of the Wild for me was maybe a marginally better experience Because it was just it was the first it was the first like it and You know sort of going to get a switch at midnight Bring it back playing it at my mother-in-law's house You know sort of up on a big TV really quiet audio and I was just like I'm playing Breath of the Wild and oh I'm Unbelievable unbelievable experience But tears of the kingdom just takes everything up. It's like Breath of the Wild on steroids No, it is it is utterly superb and I think one of the one of the biggest tragedies in a way is that once you've played Tears of the kingdom going back to Breath of the Wild Feels like you're playing with one hand tied behind your back You're like what you get Magnetism sound you go. Oh, yeah, I can only use it on metal. Why is that? You know What do you mean? I can't jump through literally any ceiling in this entire I know It's bonkers and you sort of get where all the caves You know I will say uh tears the kingdom. I'm not a fan of the companions No, I found them annoying. Is that follow you around? Yeah. Yeah the sages. I I've been annoying Tulin is okay Tulin you have and you go You could turn them off. Yeah, I know you can turn them off, but it feels like you know, hey, here's your big reward I don't want it Well, you know, I did it was like I treated it like the iron boots in Ocarina of Time I I when I want it I pause I go through all those laborious menus. I turn it on I Unpause I use it I go I turn it off and I had a great time doing it that way Yeah, I actually did um for a while. I streamed a run where I was playing without the paraglider. That's an interesting experience I'll tell you that for free, especially some of the um Some of the some of the shrines I I did some of the shrines where you're absolutely required like where there's like gusts of wind blowing up everywhere. The game is so open I did it. It took me about an hour, but I did it without using the power. I didn't have the paraglider at all. It was It was bizarre the fact that you can get anywhere near You know as far as I did in the game without a paraglider, you know, I did you know I did the wind temple and stuff like that And I did it without um using like building or anything like that either Um, I'm apparently I'm a masochist uh But the game allows you to just do this sort of thing and the game is going to be a different experience For everyone who plays it almost every time they play it if you'll let it If you go in and just do the same thing that you did before That's on you, baby. You know Try something different do something else. Maybe limit yourself artificially or go Oh, I'm only going to use the goblin horns or something like that Just have fun with the game because it is so ludicrously flexible ludicrously breath of the wild though is it's I can't say the word that I want to use but it's it's one of the One of the most fabulous experiences I have ever had It was so unlike anything else and the dlc would like You know the master mode where was master mode and tears the kingdom guys, right? You know and doing the the trial of the sword on master mode. I tell you you want to challenge trial of the sword on master mode that thing is Hard Until you get past like the seventh room and then it's okay Both those games have so many like genuine jaw dropping moments like moments where you where I just like like physically gasped like I still remember in breath of the wild going to uh, I think it was hiteno village for the first time and I For whatever reason I there was a quest that wanted me to go to one hill And I mistook it for like a mountain and I started climbing that that icy mountain that's over by hiteno That I really should not have been on at that stage in the game like I only had a couple hearts I was not very good at all and I'm climbing it and I I'm like, you know Scarfing like food to try to stay warm and it's not going well at all And I'm like at the end of my rope and I finally get to the top and there's just this enormous Blue dragon like flying by and I get out the paraglider glider and I catch the drafts and I fly alongside it And it just I hadn't seen the dragons in that game yet And it just absolutely took my breath away like like that moment and there's moments like that in tears of the kingdom too Like the very first time like you jump in the hole to the depth. You're like, oh, I wonder where this goes Whoa, what like like they did such a good job of hiding that like normally I get mad that Nintendo's super secretive But in that one case they kept them keeping the idea of the depth's back and then letting people have that moment initially Oh my god, it was so good and both games are full of things like that Like they're again, they're just so good at anticipating Anticipating what players are going to think and feel in a given moment and then just setting the stage exactly right for you to to feel something big and profound and cool and I think breath of the wild is Breath of the wild was the pinnacle example of that for several years and then tears of the kingdom took it another step higher Yeah, I think that there's these games are about stories and they each have stories and they're they're good They're fine stories, but they're really about your own story and it just is incredible how everyone will have a different one And for me tears of the kingdom, I love it so much so much more than breath of the wild which I also do love But tears of the kingdom just it's it's mechanics are unbelievable Just recall rewind any object jump through any ceiling glue a fish to your sword Build every anything you want with glue like it is Unreal that it works that it works on switch that it works So seamlessly in a zelda game because I was worried like brian said that this was going to be a game about building It's not it's a crazy epic open world adventure with building if you want But you don't even have to and alex you've been saying a lot on this show They don't care what you see these two games are the ultimate expression of that You can go straight to ganondorf if you want to they don't care and They are also ready for anything you do which is the most impressive part bonanza does this really well too But it really started here where you work your way around you don't talk to a character You were supposed to talk to to kick off a quest. Well, oh you didn't catch up with impa Well, let me fill you in like they just just every scenario I want to see the flowchart of ways you can go in that game and how it changes what happens because it's Unreal even in little side quests like there's a dude in a cave who you were supposed to find his bottle out at sea But if you didn't and you talked to him he's like I left a bottle But nobody's found it yet, but you can still do his quest right then and there It's genius and I feel like it's stuff we start to take for granted or like the how fire and ice work You wear a fire sword on your back and it cool or it heats you up in the cold like just these little touches No one else is doing this stuff No other game comes close to doing this the systems and the depth that these two games have they're the easy one and two also without spoiling a second of it I But when when I rolled credits like the last hour of this game. I was basically standing up in my living room tears on my face saluting my tv like Like a boomer dad on the fourth of july or something. It's just like yeah, that's a video game. It's like it's just so good It's so powerful. It's so special. I was thinking about the first time you see a Lionel In one of these games and you're like, what is that and a little question mark pops above its head and you're like, oh It's looking at me the same way. I'm looking at it because it's like who's this dude and you're like, what's that thing? And all of a sudden it kills you And there's so many little stories like that like like you guys were just talking about this little moments of discovery That you would just come in and you would talk to your friends about and like Alex You said it too like playing breath of the wild on switch On launch day and that whole thing where you're like, this is a handheld game. This is a tv game I can I can you know, I got I got to leave but I'm bringing this with me on a on a flight or a car trip Whatever it was having that like and that personal connection with with that console on day one with such a massive game It's frankly what I was missing would switch to because like switch to launching with Mario Kart world I was like, this is cool. This is fun. This is casual But like I wanted that deep connection with like a big single player game at launch And I got in a month later with with bonanza, you know not on the same level for as a Zelda game for me But still excellent But yeah, this this was such a special thing established the switch To be the juggernaut that it continues to be, you know, eight eight years later Yeah, I've just I've just got two points that have just been eating away at me You mentioned the liners and the question mark and they see you and stuff like that You're absolutely right about that. But have you ever approached one without your sword drawn? Just been once enough for it to see you But far enough away so that it's not going to attack you straight away if you approach without a weapon drawn They just look at you and wait and if you leave they'll leave you alone But if you draw your weapon, they immediately outgrow Like they they sort of look at you and then oh no, you're a threat right you're going down, mr and Logan what you said about um recall I'm not a video game developer but even I know tracking the movement in 3d space of every single object on screen for the past 15 seconds or so every single one So that you can just you know, send it back up if you want that is Ridiculous that is the sort of thing that comes up in a in a board room You know sort of that'd be a cool idea and everyone gets No, we're not doing that. It's flawless in tears the kingdom absolutely flawless. It is Unfasomable Fasomable that they got that working and getting it working perfectly And it's like one of 10 mechanics in that game It's not even the most important one Yeah, I I wrote the blurb for number one on on in our video and I said I open it by saying breath of the wild Is the more important game but tears the kingdom is the better one Which is I think the best way to say it like tears the kingdom has better bosses a better finale crazier mechanics a fuller high rule But breath of the wild man like we we saw that moment when link walks out of the shrine of resurrection And I think if we ever did a top nintendo moments of all time that might be number one Just like the the impact and meaning of that Especially that being the day the Wii U era ended that was like nintendo climbing out of the shrine of resurrection Just unbelievable to be playing this game on this machine In this way after the era that had just passed it it will give me chills forever They try to replicate it in every high rule warriors They do and it tears the kingdom But it's still that first time that link walks out and you see high rule and they're just like go and it's it's unmatched Cool well that was a lot on those two games They're number one and two and I love that ign is a very firm tears of the kingdom believer because That a lot of the internet is flipped they flipped back They say breath of the wild is better for x and y reasons But we are a rare outlet that gave tears the kingdom game of the year over Baldur's gate three Which I love that we did that and it's number one on this list, which I don't think it would be on most lists So yeah, we love it here Okay, we ran very long. So is there anything we want to share about making this list I know rev you were you said you wanted to chime in on something earlier. I don't remember what it was Okay I have no idea what it could have been I want to hear about prime four You what did you say Brian? I want to hear about prime four. I've been I've been I've been waiting for this game for decades you played it Tell us about it. No, I will do that. We have to say goodbye to alex first alex Thank you so much for joining us for these last two weeks. It was super fun having you Is there anything you want to plug where people can find you what you're working on? Yeah, you know head over to nintendo life, you know youtube channel the website the works We do all sorts, you know, it's it's mostly nintendo related. You'll be surprised to hear But yeah, you know if you like the way that I do the talky talky YouTube nintendo life's the place to go If you like to hear that basically exactly the same words but written out go to nintendolife.com Simple as that you can find me on blue sky if you fancy if not The website says hello Adorable I thought you just left I was like yeah, it's eight plus comedic time And if you don't want to see me, I'm gone. Cool. Thank you so much alex It was a blast. We hope to have you back soon on nintendo voice chat But we're gonna take a quick break when we come back. It's finally time to talk about metroid prime 4 beyond 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 ai hire terms and conditions apply Welcome back to nintendo voice chat logan plan alongside brian altano and rebecca valentine We're about to talk about metroid prime 4 beyond but first a quick piece of housekeeping If you're looking for something new to play and a way to give back you can head over to humble and grab eight amazing games for just 1499 including total war war hammer 3 another craps treasure no more heroes 3 Etrian odyssey hd ferro a new age synergy spin hero and paleo pines Every purchase supports a no-kid hungry a nonprofit that provides meals to students in need across the us build your library Make an impact and help end childhood hunger head on over to humble blood.com and start playing today Super fun top 100 nintendo games of all time segment Go check out that full list on ign with a full video going up this saturday and it was great to have alex as well Let's talk about metroid prime 4 beyond this is a real game that is coming out in three weeks after eight years of waiting I have played it. I have played roughly One hour between an hour and 90 minutes of it at a preview event last week in new york city Two of the three amiibo are out now I said i wasn't but i caved and i got the just the normal samus one not the giant one with samus on the bike In my oh here it is now that i'm oh no, okay Oh It looks so cool. It is very nice. I want it Um, but I played two different segments The first one was what you're seeing on screen, but not this version of it This was from the april nintendo switch to premiere event that brian and I were at This is the intro to the game samus drops on a planet at a galactic federation base that's in a war zone And you you fight through it. It's a very cinematic epic sci-fi action And then you're introduced to silux the the bounty hunter who's returning from metroid prime hunters is the main villain in this game Who breeds his own metroids that conflict is introduced and then samus is whisked away by this mysterious artifact to the planet view roast Which is where metroid prime 4 beyond is going to Presumably entirely take place on before I go any further Everything I saw is in like the first 90 minutes of the game itself So don't really worry about super big spoilers Like I know the setup for the story which I'm going to talk about and like the first boss But it's like the equivalent of if I told you what happens in like the great deku tree in ocarina of time Like it is not a very big chunk of this game at all I walked out of this preview event the most like conflicted. I've ever felt walking out of a first party Nintendo preview event. I know I was joking a lot earlier in the show about a chatty companion That's a real big issue and a real big bummer in this game that I'm going to get to that's the bad I want to start with the good which is that this game looks amazing and it runs Phenomenally I played the switch to addition. Nobody knows how this plays on switch one yet except nintendo and retro It's well just like legend zea will know at launch how it is on switch one But on switch two man, it looks good like This is it is a cross-gen game. You can tell in some ways This is not a full fledged like all cylinders switch to next gen exclusive But retro studios is one of the most talented like art director art direction teams on the planet So give them a chance to make this cross-gen game prime for on switch two looks absolutely incredible Gorgeous vistas great environments really dense textured foliage in this forest area I was in I played it at 120 fps on the switch to handheld So smooth so awesome looks great played it in 4k 60 on the tv Looks just amazing like this is stunning It's not the best game you've ever seen But it is I would say living up to that legacy of metroid prime being really tame good looking games with really really strong art direction It starts out with exactly what you would think you land on this planet and the the camera snaps into samus's visor And you're off and running I start scanning absolutely everything in sight recording it to my logbook atmospheric music is playing I'm shooting little bats and like gas spheres and things that pop out of the ground with my arm cannon It's metroid prime like it is straight up metroid prime Then I go a little further. I have the morph ball samus loses most of her things. She doesn't lose everything this time She still has her double jump and she has the morph ball You start gaining the the psychic powers which are one of brian's biggest hang-ups of this Kind of want to mine too a little bit after after this demo. We'll see They a lot of it is using samus's psychic visor which is replaced the scan visor Use the psychic visor to scan the environment record your logbook like normal But also to complete these puzzles like some of them are very basic It is tracing these shapes they outline for you with the control stick or with motion controls depending on your preference It is using the force to move a giant lever from one side of a door to the other And it takes like 10 seconds to open that door and that's it Some of the smarter ones are there's these little they call them moats of psychic energy that you that you can samus can telekinetically manipulate and she needs to like move them from one thing to the other like this door is locked You need to look around and find two of these little energy balls to throw into this door Maybe one of them is behind a like a missile thing you have to shoot to reveal Very basic, but this is the first area. So I think it's things that could really step up as we go This is the tutorial area to this game and these psychic abilities. It's retro. It's nintendo I expect these puzzles will get better as we go Then there's like the the charge shot where we've seen in all the trailers You can charge up your your beam and fire it and then the camera follows it And you're steering it with the control stick and you can hit like three targets at a time with it That played into the boss fight, which I'll talk about a little later Very cool metroidy zelda stuff like get this weapon It's both a weapon and a key to solve puzzles and fight enemies Solid stuff. This all sounds good, right? This sounds like metroid prime. Sure. Yeah How uh, how have you found the controls so far because I I got to play a teensy bit of this in poland just the just the tutorial level like a little the little bit at the beginning with the At the galactic federation headquarters or whatever And they they made me use the mouse controls like they they wouldn't let me play it normally And I found them really I it's my hand doesn't want to fit around a joy con and use it like a mouse like that And I found that sort of frustrating for the things that I had to do. So I'm curious like what you think of that There are three control schemes in prime four. I tried all three of them in my demo mouse is the worst It's the worst one Like I I liked it when brian and I tried it together in april But that was the day the switch to was announced and it felt very new and exciting. Wow. There's a mouse in this joy con That's cool. Now that the dust has settled the novelty is worn off a little bit I'm not going to use it and I don't think you should either especially because Metroid prime is a lock-on first person shooter It is not you have to aim down sights perfectly at every enemy It is like a 3d Zelda you target your enemies and shoot them automatically So don't worry about controls. It controls fantastically. It feels really great to control I used a pro controller for most of my demo just classic stick controls no motion required great Feels like primary mastered but a little better because this is not a remake of a game cube game. It's a new game so it feels Fantastic and then the other control scheme is split joy con and it's mimicking prime three or the Metroid prime trilogy from we And you you aim your you aim the reticle on the screen So there's more motion involved that feels great too if you like how prime trilogy controls That's a really good option too. So it controls really really well and plays really good too I I noticed a couple of small updates like when Samus transitions from morph ball back to first person behind the visor running Before it was always like this in every other prime. It's kind of this awkward pause as she transitions But now she keeps moving in whatever direction you're running and she does this little like back pedal that you see Is the camera zooming back to go back into that first person view? So it's like just a really small touch that that I noticed that made a difference. That's nice. That's awesome I plan on playing this game almost entirely with a pro controller or me too or in handheld so Yeah, that's that's gonna be my way to go. I'm with you. Reb. I like I think thinking about playing this game long term Where the mouse would be too much. I mean, I've seen that people sell like those attachments on etsy or whatever But still I just I want to play this with a regular controller Also, I was having a hard time in like the ideal conditions where they have like a nice smooth flat surface with a big mouse pad I don't have that in my living room. I have like a normal person coffee table at a normal person coffee table height Which is not like desk height It's like down here and I'm on the couch and I'm like leaning back in a big pile of pillows and cats I I'm not using a mouse man. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's just too many buttons you need to use in prime for that when Okay That's exactly what it felt like like I was I like it felt like I didn't have enough buttons It expects you to still use the face buttons on the controller that are part of your mouse and that just doesn't feel good It doesn't work Well, it makes it it makes me feel better than I'm not crazy and just not understanding metroid prime. So thank you Yeah, no, you don't need to use the mouse controls. I I think few people probably will which is fine That's not a disappointment to me at all because it controls great with a with a pro controller in hand Which is which is what you want I also want to say because we've just been seeing some footage of this on screen I didn't get to try the bike at all or see the desert at all Which means nobody gets to I think this is the final preview event So this is going to remain a mystery until launch how good are these open segments on the bike in that desert? They keep showing in the trailer my preview event ended with samus returning to the desert which My indications so far seem like this will act as a As tissue that connects the major Explorable zones so like instead of elevators in metroid prime where you take an elevator from fennin jonah drifts to the talent overworld You go out to the desert you get on your bike and you ride to the next area That's what it seems like to me But I didn't get to do it which I really thought I was going to get to going to a preview event for this game when they've talked So much about the bike lately. Yeah, that is weird I okay. Well, that's let's I was just going to say the but I I feel like we've said this on the show before But I feel like they let they don't want to market this like the bike does not look exciting They keep showing it, but they won't let you play it which immediately Leads me to think oh the bike's not going to be very good But we don't know that the bike might be super fun, but they like what's going on Yeah, I Well, here's a reason I think they're having trouble with how they've marketed it so far red And that is because they've been hiding something from you in every piece of footage we've seen so far This has not been in it and that is our good friends by the name of myles mckenzie Who is a galactic federation engineer specialist? Who samus runs into she gets this distress beacon on her map, which by the way the map is a metroid prime map It's the Blue and orange with the rooms you visited the ones you have in this 3d wireframe thing that you manipulate She gets a distress beacon to go find this galactic federation guy She gets there and this cutscene kicks in and he says Um, I I think I have the exact quote somewhere But the first thing that he says is wow wow wow wow This is really really bad, but at least you're not stuck in a cubicle with phil anymore. So win That's the first thing this guy says that is this Tone of humor to samus No to himself. Oh, okay. I thought I was like when did samus work in an office? Yeah, he's stranded on this ship that is like stuck in these vines and you walk in and he's talking to himself He's stranded on view roast as well because seemingly when the artifact transported samus it also transported a lot Of galactic federation people one of whom is myles mckenzie and he starts with this Honestly kind of cringy monologue about a joke about being in a cubicle with phil just does not The seconds before this i'm like Stalking through this really atmospheric dark tunnel and this gorgeous choral melody is playing and it's and i'm chasing after this Little creature that's bleeding out and i'm like what what hurt this thing and it's very metroidy And then you get to this clearing and you see this ship and you see this engineer and he starts talking like that and it is just tonal whiplash He gets attacked You save him and he's like oh, thank you so much for saving me samus Here's some missiles and I was like, okay. He gives me the missile upgrade Bye, and then he says I think i'm gonna tag along so where to It might be a good idea to check the map and get our bearings No So with it within like one shut up one or two lines of dialogue This guy not only joins the mission. He also tells samus what to do tell samus check your map and I started to I felt like my stomach drop When this was the direction it started to go I couldn't believe what I was seeing after how encouraged I was from the first 15 minutes to now And it just got worse and worse here are some quotes that I did sample in my preview So sorry for the repeats if you've if you've already watched that But he says missiles are effective against creatures with a hard shell, you know You pass the save room and you don't go into save because it's a preview event I'm not going to waste a minute going into the save room He says that looks important samus. Are you sure we don't need to use that referring to the save room that i'm walking by I scan a lore tablet which enter enters into my log book because the the new race is called the lemorn and very cool part of this game is that there's always an ancient race on these planets in metroid prime and the conceit this time is that the lemorn entrust samus to Document their entire history before it's lost to time very cool idea I realized samus is very much like a detective a historian in these games So to make that the plot of this is our race is extinct This planet could go away at any time you need to save our history before it's gone forever love that You scan one of the tablets and myles says can you read that does it say anything about this place? Wow, they really don't want anyone in here. It must be a sacred space It is constant It's constant to the point where his voice lines are interrupting his own voice lines Like he gets he cuts himself off because you see something else that he then comments on and I swear I am trying to approach this very fair. I am not exaggerating. It is almost non-stop When he is with you there's like little combat scenarios where he's not talking all the time But he screams whenever an enemy jumps at him like Super cool atmospheric moody thing this this this um, so he's not even like in your headset. He's following you physically He's with you. So it's an escort. It's an escort mission where he's samus alone. She's working Yeah, like so don't talk to her with Bit uh, okay. Sorry. I it sounds fake. I couldn't believe it. But this is it This is the direction this is going. Okay. What's driving me nuts here is that we've we've We've tried this before we've gone down this path with metroid where there is another character Telling them when they can and can't use certain items where there's another character talking to you the whole time we saw that in um, you know, uh fusion like and when that game launched there was there was backlash to it when like This it's this is not I I want I don't want to speak for everybody But I will say that for me personally when I engage With metroid as a franchise it is to be left alone. It is for this isolation. It is for this, you know, just this dark bleak quiet sci-fi world that I am exploring at my own pace And having somebody interject constantly Takes me out of that and but we we've we've tried this it didn't work right we tried it with other m It didn't work like Why are they doing this again? Yeah, it's It's one thing if metroid wants to strike out in a new direction and introduce a companion and and have this stuff and And fundamentally change what metroid is which I have a problem with because it's like at what point does something transform to become so Unrecognizable it is no longer what you fell in love with we're not quite there yet with prime 4 But it feels like a step towards that but it's it's another the way they've done it here Where that epic choral melody is still playing you are still metroid behind the visor scanning and fighting But they have just glued on this like annoying like I don't know like the the worst style of mcu humor like at it's when it's When it's bad like that level of like quipiness and cringe To a metroid game that is otherwise fundamentally unchanged like if you lifted miles from this It would be metroid prime and it would be great But they made metroid prime and then just like dropped this guy into it And it just feels like a really bomber of a direction. Did they feel like See and this is the thing we don't know right like we don't know if he's with you the whole game or just like for this level So like I mean my question is like he's ruined this level clearly But like did they do play testing and were people like too? Was their game design too bad or were they like too were people too stupid to figure out like what you do with the missiles like is it not sufficient anymore to like You pick up a missile and then you immediately put In front of the player an enemy that cannot be defeated with the normal shoot and you think well, I just picked up these missiles Why don't I try that? Oh, it works now. I know how these work like like that's that's like a Nintendo's been doing this for for decades. We just complimented them like 20 times In a top in a top 100 where they did this very very well throughout the years like why was that not sufficient here? I mean I feel like a deliberate choice right to they had a scripted character They had a record vo maybe mo cap all this stuff like what what you're saying rebb is like If they could have just done like circumvented this with a couple of pop-ups and stuff like that And it's it's less elegant air quotes, but it's better for for metroid. Yeah, like it's it's baffling to me I I'm just I'm just sort of like I don't understand Where in the timeline of the development this game anyone was like this is a really good idea Let's stick with it I do want to back up a little bit because it isn't the entire time so before people like leave the video or the podcast It's not forever and again. I'm trying to be very fair. I don't like delivering this bad news I was so psyched to go and play metroid and very upset when I walked out of that with this being the reality Like this is this is a bummer But so you you keep going with him. He keeps saying his his lines. He's constantly talking Including a line of literally quote. I can see the door samus. Thank you miles. Thank you for stating the obvious And you get to one point. It's this bridge. It's a very beautiful bridge. It's this lemorn like ancient construction with overgrown forest is such a beautiful area and these jungle monsters start jumping over the sides of the bridge and I have had an enough enough of this guy. I just If I leave him behind you can't you can't shoot him. I did try I'm just gonna try and leave this guy behind and so I just beeline for the door and he says samus. Don't leave me behind No, I'm like, I'm good. I'm gonna see what happens And then I get a thing on my visor that pop up that says miles is down Oh Use your psychic powers to revive him and I'm so far away from him because I was intentionally trying to leave him behind that He died. He dies game over game over screen says federation trooper killed in action Oh, and this is the like of of all the things metroid prime 4 could have been all the mystery of 8 years I would have never guessed it would include outdated escort missions with a companion who never stops talking Never would have guessed it So also the fact that it says federation trooper killed in action instead of miles killed in action And also you scan miles. He gets added to your galactic federation logbook Then there's five more question marks after miles I'm like, oh, so each area is going to have a companion That is my current read because you do eventually get to this Thing that they call base camp in this lemorn temple and miles discovers this technology that's broken And he says I'm gonna stay behind and fix it samus you go off and explore Thank god like finally peace and quiet. I can leave he says a few more annoying things on your way out Like it's about to get real nerdy in here is something that he says in this game And then you leave And it's great to go through this temple without him and you fight a boss That's just a very classic like game cube era boss honestly like it feels great in that way I say that as a compliment where it is this Giant plant creature that looks like it's from the wind waker And it has this these this big tentacle you shoot the tentacle belly pops out you fire missiles into the belly Rinse and repeat but then it grows two tentacles and by the time you destroy the second the first one grows back So you use that charge shot I mentioned earlier to slow down time to cut through both tentacles at the same time It's like yep use the thing you just got to beat this boss Super classic stuff great Loved it when miles wasn't around really excited for prime 4 when miles wasn't around and then you get back to miles Mile who he's this is like a jump scare when I was playing this game because I'm like I'm so glad miles isn't here and then he's like pops up on my visor and he's like I got the comms working samus Yeah, he doesn't talk to you that much in the comms go back to base camp and give him a swirly good grief. Oh my god. I Right Yeah, so you go back Samus and miles agree to be partners now that the comms are back up and running He says he's gonna stay here Samus leaves the area my preview ends with the shot of the desert samus is alone But miles can talk to her anytime so my read is totally Each area is gonna have a new federation person that you recruit that is a companion What's the extent of it? Are they all as annoying as miles or was it like that because it was the tutorial? I hope that's the case that's currently the best case scenario is he is like this because it's the first 10 minutes of the game but Even still I don't want to be traveling with a companion like no cutscenes story Characters fine, but when I'm out metroiding let me metroid is is how I feel about it I I did just admit on the podcast earlier that I've only played one metroid which is super metroid But my impression of this of these games from super metroid and from just my passive cultural knowledge of all the others is that Samus is alone for like 99% of these games and then occasionally a bird person talks to her that's That's what I got. Yeah pretty much. I mean there's nothing else like there's no other like there is a galactic federation somewhere They get more involved in the later games, but it's always what people don't like when they do Yes when they do get overly involved like they're in prime three, right? But it's it's kind of in the margins in that game They're there early on and you do with them a little later, but they're not they're not a reoccurring presence throughout the game. They're not Explaining everything you're literally looking at with your own eyes Like anytime like other m Dabbled in that territory, right? And it was almost universally disliked and you'll always get somebody in the comments of this video Who are like, oh, it's my favorite metroid game. Okay, cool. You're weird. You're not wrong because it's your own choice, but it's like That isn't that that game is just not anywhere near on the level of the best games in the series and the best games in the series Leave you alone. That's the whole point. They just leave you alone a scan visor that can give her information If she needs it like yeah, you've got some universe tools that can deliver whatever you need to you that doesn't involve Recording v. Oh, right like you just don't need that so I And it's like maybe do they want to tell a bigger story with more characters? Or they do they think prime doesn't cut metro doesn't catch on because it doesn't have enough like cinematic cutscenes moments characters This isn't the way to do it Like they're way more nuanced and better ways to push this franchise this for franchise forward and keeping attack the reasons people Love it to begin with that is not this like I don't know who this is gonna please like new players I don't know. I heard someone at my preview event say yeah, that was really funny. I didn't expect it to be funny I'm like I didn't either and I'm not happy about it nor did I find it funny personally, but your mileage may vary on that Yeah bummer, but it's a bummer. We'll see. Yeah, it's we will see it also like just the um I guess just the the sort of lack of information around this game so far like you're you're You got to play over an hour of it and you still don't know how the motorcycle feels that's kind of worrisome, right? Like there's I understand leaving a lot uh to be surprised with when when people play the full version of the game but all having stuff in marketing and then not having it in a preview and then hiding other stuff that Is in a preview that we don't want it's it's a bummer man. I it's This is one of my most anticipated video games of all time and now i'm i'm kind it's kind of a gut punch It's not your fault. I'm not shooting the messenger here Yeah It is it is it is kind of a bummer to all of a sudden be like Oh, this this could have been like this big powerful return to form and maybe it still is right? Yeah, but this is one hour It's the first hour. Yep. Yeah, just knowing some of this stuff is there definitely takes the wind out of my sales a little bit I think it's not helped by the fact that we know this game is how to rocky development like because it got announced like like 50 years ago or something at like, you know at knee three um and It's changed developers. It's been apparently rebooted like all these different things that happened to it And then we didn't we didn't hear anything for like years and years I think that if this game had just been announced like in april or something And then we saw like two trailers and then this To be clear this would still be really obnoxious But I think we would feel less like like our hearts would be pounding a little bit less I think just because yeah, like oh, this is just a nintendo cycle. There's probably more we haven't seen yet It's probably like, you know, they'll probably pull it off. But the fact that we know things Like this is this has gone through something. We don't know what um is like very concerning and and the marketing's been weird and so it just it It just raises more questions from me than it normally would And I just man, I just kind of want this to be out so we can just know like just rip the band-aid off What what is going on with metroid prime 4? I hope it's great. I hope it's great for all of you Yeah, I hope so too and Yeah, I just feel like also reading between lines This is a section they chose to show in a preview. So it's probably representative of the final game So it probably is a fact that samus is going to have these chatty companions traveling with her Oh, and I tried to turn it down in the menu never before at a preview event Have I dug through the settings to see if there's something I can change because it is actively Like ruining my experience so much and there's because some games have it right like you can make a treyus talk less in god of war to give you fewer hints The only way to do it here is to just turn off voice acting entirely Which you don't want because then it would look like legend za and it's got scenes and nobody wants that So yeah, it's there's not really a choice the only gameplay settings were to Turn off tutorials, which is when something pops up on the visor telling you what to do Which all metroid primes have this choice to turn on and off and to change the difficulty There's casual normal, which I was playing on and hard which you only unlock after beating normal. So This is it. This is it. Um at best it is a fun really cool Retread of metroid prime. That's a neat return that looks gorgeous on switch 2 and at worst it is the chattyest metroid I've ever played Yeah, so we will see the full thing in three weeks when metroid prime 4 beyond is out on nintendo switch and nintendo switch 2 If you want to hear what these this actually sounds like and see that i'm not cherry picking here This is what it's like go watch my video preview because we're including the voice samples from miles So you can see this is this is a constant thing that happens But you'll also get to see the good stuff like the really beautiful opening area and the really cool boss fight that I mentioned So go check that out up now on ign But that is a very lengthy episode of nintendo voice chat in the books We are here every friday on ign games channel on youtube and your favorite podcast app If you like the show, please tell a friend or leave us a review rating or nice comment wherever you're listening It helps us out so much Next week on mvc the this year just keeps going curvy air riders will be out We will talk all about it. If you're interested the curvy air riders global test ride is happening this weekend again That's november 15th and 16th at a few different times if you want to check out the game for yourself I played a bunch this past weekend of the global test ride, but we'll talk about all of that Next week for now, brian altano. Where where can people find you? Uh, you can find me on instagram and bluesky at brian altano. So go do that have fun rebecca valentine Just on bluesky duck valentine dot b sky dot social And you can find me online at logon j plant and again, uh, we'd really enjoy if you look at my metroid preview Because yeah, we put a lot of work into it and happy with how that one is turning out Thank you so much brian and rebb for joining me every alex from nintendo life earlier today Thank you to tyo for working behind the scenes on a huge day. We shot our mario movie one earlier today So we've done like three hours of nvc today. It's been a marathon and tyo's done an awesome job And thank you so much for listening But for now that is all the time i've got i gotta get back to playing animal crossing new leaf on my nintendo 3ds Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more nintendo voice chat the only place you can get the thing