Judging YOUR Nintendo Hot Takes! - NVC 804

Mario Kart Double Dash is the worst one. What? This is your Nintendo Hot Takes Judge on Nintendo Voice Chat. The show starts right now. You've switched to Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of March 19th, 2026. I'm your host Logan Plant joined by Seth Macy. Hello, that's not a hot take, that's a bad take. And Rep Valentine. It's a take! We'll talk about it. We'll talk all about Mario Kart Double Dash and dozens of your hot takes if we can get through them all because this week we're judging your Nintendo Hot Takes on Nintendo Voice Chat after we gave ours last week. We'll hear a couple from Reb later in the show, the one from Seth we didn't get that we teased last week. We'll also talk about that huge Nintendo Switch 2 update that's a game changer for backwards and compatibility and Rebs time at GDC including a cool interview with the devs of Donkey Kong Bonanza. But first, your Nintendo Hot Takes first, I gotta say, wow, you showed up. Thank you for sending your hot takes in to NVC at IGN.com. We got over, well over 100 submissions. It was insane. So I'm sorry we are not going to be able to read all of them on the show today. I read every single one. I read every single word of every single one. So no, if you sent it in, I did read it. And I might respond to some too in the email. I like to do that when people email me. So I picked, I have about 20 on the sheet here. Reb and Seth have not seen these. We're going to talk about all of them and just see how you did at your Nintendo Hot Takes. Okay, this first one comes from Kevin who says, I love Mario Kart. Hundreds of hours across all of them. Mario Kart Double Dash is the worst one. I dislike the controls the most. The turning and the drifting are inconsistent. DZ Cruiser is an awful track. I don't think switching characters during the race is a good mechanic. I'll die on this hill. Seth. That everything that was say the opposite of that, and it's all true. Every Mario Kart Double Dash is the most magical and wonderful one. And I think that it's well overdue for an up like to revisit that mechanic of having how could you not like that's the funnest part? He's spin around and you find out like who pairs well with the others. And that gives it a whole like a whole other dimension to how you're you're you're figuring things out. And I guess, you know, customization of carts sort of made that like not really that important of a thing. But man, I'm like, look at. I keep it close to me at all times just so I can look at it. You never know when you're going to need to like open it up and smell it. Oh, is the right disc in there? Yeah, but also the like the Legend of Zelda demo disc that I thought I'd lost. Oh, I thought I love that. Congratulations. Yeah, that's actually. OK, but yeah, no, it's in here. The the the the instruction manual is in here because this is a fantastic Mario Kart experience and I'm I I can't I I mean, the worst one I could say I could see saying like, oh, I don't I don't like it or I think it's overrated. But the worst one is absurd. Like what was it? Mario Kart for the we that's the worst one. I think Super Circuit's the worst one on GB. I kind of like that game. Oh, so you never play Super Circuit. No, it's not. You're you're you're right enough. It's not I don't think it's the worst one, but Super Circuit's low on the list. So it's fine. It's not a hot thing. But what do you think of this one? I I feel the same way about this that I do about you saying Super Circuit's the worst one, like it's not it's not that hot to take, but it's like wrong. I think I don't think this is the worst one. I I I agree that double double dash is a little bit overrated, especially in high. Oh, a little bit overrated, not a lot of it overrated. Like at the time that having two characters on the car and like the switching mechanic and stuff was like kind of novel. But I remember playing this game a lot with my friend. And I remember the more that I played it, the more I was like, it doesn't actually feel like it's making a massive difference having two guys on the car as opposed to one. It just like it just wasn't doing as much for me as I. It's 100 percent more characters per car. That's just yeah. Yeah. And and like the tracks were fine. I don't know. I it's not. It's not a bad Mario Kart. I don't think it's the worst one. I don't think there is a Mario Kart. Like that's where I'm tripping up on this is there. There are multiple. I think Super Circuit is worse. I love Super Circuit like from a nostalgic perspective, because that's the one that I grew up on. But it's worse. I love double dash. I'm not on board with this hot take at all. The thing I am with Kevin on is that I actually think that the double dash doesn't control super great, especially compared to the modern Mario carts, but read you said something recently that stood out to me. You said Nintendo keeps making jumping feel better. So the past jumping feels worse. And that's true. Yeah, that was not Mario, but it goes it doubles for this too. We're like Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart World feel so amazing to control that you go back and play double dash and you feel like you're on ice. And it I do think it is it's less precise and less fun to control than the others. But I love everything else about double dash. I think the place where two people on the same cart shines is that you can play co-op Mario Kart and swap who drives what lap. And like you can have eight people play like through land play together. You can have all these people playing on the same cart. That's really cool. They've never done that again. But also let you have two items, which now World and eight deluxe both do. And that comes from double dash. So I don't actually bring it back with online play. I think online co-op play would hit. Yeah, that'd be sick. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. I would love that. I want them to bring this back. I think that it's great. Yeah. And Daisy Cruiser is a bad track. Come on, I love Daisy Cruiser. You can go down into the underground little cellar and then shoot out the cannon. It's great. Yeah. I feel like iconic tracks come from double dash. Baby Park, DK Mountain, Baby Park is legendary. Yeah, it's simplicity. And that's what makes it so wonderful. What if we just get a really small circle? Yeah. And it's made for double dash because double dash has the character specific items that are huge and like take up the whole track. So that it's just chaos in double dash specifically. OK, thanks, Kevin, for emailing in. Zach's hot take is my hot take in short form. Super Mario Sunshine is genuinely an unironic good game, possibly my favorite 3D Mario. And I only played it for the first time as part of the 3D All Stars collection a few years ago, so this is not just nostalgia talking. The world Mario Sunshine's creates is so fleshed out and tangible like you're really in a vacation experiencing a new town. This is in stark contrast, especially to the Switch era, where often game design is more about how many ideas can we throw at you in one game versus presenting a single idea you can get lost in. Rev, I know you love this take. Yeah, I mean, I feel like this isn't hot. Like I people don't like Mario Sunshine because they're comparing it generally to like Galaxy and Odyssey and even 64. But Mario Sunshine is a good game. Oh, Zach said my favorite 3D Mario, possibly my favorite 3D Mario. Well, OK, that's where the spice. You get a lot of hand in, Zach. Honestly, well, I might like Odyssey better. Some days I wake up in the morning and this is my favorite 3D Mario. So I I agree with that. You wake up to choose violence. But I think the base the base take of this is a good game is not hot and spicy at all. Like Nintendo Mario games, even the most of the worst ones are still pretty dang good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love it. I think the world building of Sunshine is absolutely fantastic. I think it's we were actually we were talking about this in Slack the other day. I was talking about like the we're having this Mario Galaxy movie. And Mario Galaxy was an incredible game for a lot of reasons, but not a lot of them had anything to do. You know, Mario's not a story heavy game. Mario Galaxy does not have a complex or deep story. And Sunshine doesn't really either. But because it has this really interesting world building and all these weird wacky things that are happening in this cohesive, like world zone island that you were exploring, I feel like story wise, it was kind of more right for exploration than Galaxy was in a movie setting. And it kind of confuses me that they went with the Mario Galaxy movie, but then like borrowed elements from basically every other Mario game. We've seen more. Well, Galaxy in that movie. Yeah, Galaxy is more marketable. But yeah, I would rather Mario goes to jail in this game. Yeah, there's like your voice acting in this game. That's not great at all. It's really funny. Seth, what do you think of the stick? I mean, I think it's a brave thing to admit that you like this more than all the other ones because I also love Super Mario Sunshine. I've always been a big defender of it. But a little of that, a little of that went away when I played it on the 3D collection. I was like, oh, this isn't as great and wonderful as I thought. That being said, it has the best single Mario song of any Mario game, maybe any video game other than Duck Tales, Moon Theme, in Why am I Not Remembering the Name? Delphina Plaza, thank you. Delphina Plaza's theme song, best video game like song ever. I like to put the 10 hour YouTube on sometimes and just get things done. The underground remix for all of the like block levels with the without flood that are just hell, yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. No, it's a I I like this a lot because it is like a weird departure for what you would expect from 3D Mario. I just can't imagine it thinking this was the best one. I don't know. I'm sorry. It was a zigzag. I'm sorry. Well, it goes back to the jumping thing again. Nintendo keeps making jumping better. Like we were talking about Mario 64, but like Mario 64 was great in its time, but then they made Mario Sunshine and then they made Galaxy and then they made Odyssey. And they just keep making jumping better. And so no matter what, it's going to feel inherently worse to go back to older games and try to jump because they made it better. Yeah, yeah. I'm also sort of realizing here in real time that a lot of what I like about like, say, Double Dash or Sunshine has a lot to do with just how the GameCube controller shoulder buttons feel. Yeah, they're so good. They're the best. They still are the absolute best and nothing comes close. And then that click. Oh, so good. Yeah, make a fidget. You know what? I'm going to trademark right now. Nobody can steal this. I'm just going to make fidget spinners that are just the GameCube shoulder button. I don't think you can trademark that. I just did. It's not going to be. It's going to be called the video game controller retro shoulder button fidgets toy. Yeah, sounds good. TMTM for me, I feel like I don't think I think Sunshine is a good game. I think that when people say it's not a good game, a lot of time that's like Nintendo fans that don't play a lot of bad games. It's like when you think Sunshine's a bad game, like, oh, there's really bad games out there that are actually bad. This is the least one of the least polished games Nintendo has ever released. I think for sure. I think that's very it's it's very messy in parts and some levels are just brutal and probably should be everywhere. What did you expect? Well, true. Yeah, the Sandbird, the Pachinko machine. I ironically love the Sandbird. I I would rather like bury myself in knives than go through the Pachinko machine. Yeah, it's it's a brutal game at parts. And this is another one that we had a comment on last week's show about Majora's Mask. And this is something I say about Majora's Mask all the time. So I like seeing it in our comment section. They said that I like thinking about Majora's Mask more than I like playing it. I feel the same way about Mario Sunshine. It was that was that was last week. Sunshine, you're going to fight with the commentary. OK, yeah, comment again and rebel fight you in the comments. School yard. Yeah, I think Sunshine's vibes are immaculate. The setting is cool. I agree with Zach that like it's cool that it is one setting that they really explore in all these ways. I love the theme park level, but it's not Odyssey and it's not Galaxy 2 and it's not 3D World. I don't even think it's close to those. It's a fun take, though. Franco says Star Fox 64 while an excellent game has little market potential next to Star Fox Adventures, Assault, Command and even Star Fox 2. What do we think of that? I don't understand what is being said here. Like if we made if they made a like a modern version of Star Fox 64, that wouldn't do as well as these other modern Star Fox 2. You're not saying it's like bad. You're saying they're not going to sell it. Yeah. What is that? I don't know how many copies of this cell? Star Fox 64. I mean, I did decently well back in the day, but Star Fox has completely lost its way since and just tried to emulate what Star Fox 64 was or tried to do different things like slap a Star Fox skin on a rare 3D Zelda clone on the game in the Gamecube era and Star Fox Adventures. Like I think what Franco is saying is that I don't get the I don't necessarily get the command comparison like Assault is more cinematic. Like it has some on foot stuff and Star Fox Adventures is like an action adventure game where your boots on the ground as Fox. I think basically Franco is saying like a four hour arcade shooter that you're supposed to play multiple times does not have the same potential as a 3D action adventure game, which is just true, I think. I think that's actually a fair take and I'm also thinking of it now less from or excuse me, more more from just like the characters of Star Fox would probably benefit maybe more from a character driven adventure game than they would with, you know, flying parts because that's what the game is. But I don't know, man, Star Fox is so weird. I've only played one, two and some of 64 and that. Oh, no. And one of the the DS ones, which I can't command is the one where you like trace your route on the bottom screen and that would be the one that I played that. Yeah. I love the original Star Fox. I probably love it more than most people just because it was one of those things that overwhelmed my life and I became obsessed with it. Yeah, I don't know that there's any any market for Star Fox, anything anymore. Unfortunately, I don't either. Yeah, I'll go a step further. I think that Star Fox is dead and maybe should stay that way. I'm sorry, Star Fox fans. That's my take on top of this one is I feel like for the last 30 years, it's just been chasing the shadow of Star Fox 64 to diminishing results each time the last time being Star Fox zero, which was basically a reboot. It was basically 64 again and people didn't like that game. I had a weird control scheme with the gamepad, but I just think until they come up with a way to really reinvent Star Fox, it shouldn't come back because it's just going to be the same story that's pretty much every time. Yeah, I think I'm with that. I am the least experienced Star Fox person on the panel. So probably not the best one to decide whether it should come back or not. But I don't think it should die forever, but I do think that if it were to come back, they would have to just fully reinvent it like as I don't know necessarily something totally different because you'd still want to retain the Star Fox-ness of it. But like it would have to be just something. I don't know. It would it would need like a Donkey Kong, Bonanza style. Okay, this series is about some other thing now. Yeah. Or I could see that doing like a Star Fox 99. It's kind of a stopgap thing. That could be cool. I think something like that. Not every problem can be solved by adding 98 more of something. It can for Star Fox. I totally could for Star Fox. I think it'd be cool to shoot down ships and then you send those ships to your enemy's screens. It could work. It could totally work. But it's not even a reinvention. That's like as they're 99. I wouldn't say had a big comeback with as they're 99. It just they did a cool thing with the Super Nintendo game. Should make Star Fox into like a bullet hell or something. Yeah, that'd be cool. That'd be neat. Nathan says my hot take is this. Nintendo's pricing strategy doesn't make them greedy. In fact, it makes them one of the best gaming companies because it enables them to be sustainable, resilient and creatively risky without staff layoffs. So bring on the $80 switch games, the $60 Metroid Dreads, the $20 GBA ports and the never decreasing software prices and may Nintendo remain a creative powerhouse with sustainable margins long into the future. Reb. I don't know. That we have the data to attribute their lack of layoffs to their recent within the last year chaotic pricing strategy, variable pricing or whatever that is. That's PlayStation. Oh, is that I thought that was a Nintendo term variable pricing? Yeah, that's Nintendo. Yeah, Doug Bowser. Oh, I thought it was a PlayStation. No, it's yeah, that's a Doug Bowser term. No, it's like a recent thing because they started doing this variable pricing thing and someone asked them about it and Doug Bowser was calling it variable pricing or whatever. But even that they've still been pricing games. Everything is $60 and the switch generation to this has been going on for longer than just yeah, it has, but I just I don't even so. I don't know that we have the data to sit to draw the line between that is the reason like there are so many other factors in running a sustainable company that does not lay large amounts of people off on the regular basis and has like reasonable margins and is able to make a profit and bring value to shareholders, whatever. I mean, pricing your games is one component of that, but I don't I mean, I disagree with the notion that this that it makes Nintendo inherently greedy. I mean, it's a company that exists to make money, but I also disagree with the notion that it makes them somehow benevolent. I think they just are putting games for prices and sometimes the prices they put those games at are kind of dumb. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Seth? Well, let me see here. I would say that a large reason that Nintendo has kind of avoided the layoffs is probably more cultural than it is economic. It might be. Yeah, it might be a legal thing. I don't know what like laws look like in Japan, but you know, I know it want to famously like took a huge pay cut when he was running because, you know, the company was doing so poorly. It's significantly harder to lay people off in Japan. Okay. Like just factually. Yeah. As far as like the pricing is I'm I'm I'm always preaching subjective theory of value, which is the economic theory of how, you know, price and value is wholly subjective. And you know, if I decide that like I'm trying to think like this New England Patriots thing that I have and I said, hey, I'll pay $10 for that and Logan would be like, I would not pay one cent for that. So like who's right? Well, nobody's right because everybody has a different idea of what value should be. And it's also like supine virtual boy remake has no value. Exactly. And I thought it had a $99 value, but I was I was wrong. But it's also this whole thing of like games are 59 99 games are 69. That's not how it used to be. You look at like old like, you know, flyers from Toys R Us and Kmart like games were just all over the place. You know, like I paid I think $85 for Final Fantasy 2 for the Super NES when it came out and you know, like games didn't have a set price point. They were just like kind of whatever. So that whole idea that a game like games should be $70 and you know, no more, no less, that's a kind of a new new. I guess it's not new, but it's it's not how it was back in the old times, you know, back before most people even on this podcast were born. So I yeah, I definitely think that Nintendo's pricing structure doesn't make them greedy and like what Rebsit like their business, like it's what it does. I think it's just a debt seeing supply and demand adapting prices to that. Like look, if you have a house and someone says to you, I want to give you $500,000 for your house, but the town that you live in said your house is only worth 300,000. Are you going to be like, no, sir, I'm only going to take 300,000 because that's what the town says. No, you're going to get whatever price you can. And that's what Nintendo is doing. They're seeing how far out they can push the price and still get people to buy it before they make any adjustments. And you know, $79.99. Is that a little bit more than I would like to pay for a video game? Absolutely. That's why I got the bundle deal where it was only $50 for Mario Kart World. So yeah. And again, like Reb was saying, I don't think that that's why Nintendo has avoided layoffs. You know, if it were that easy, everyone would just sell their games for $1,000 each and nobody would ever lose their job ever, except for people buying games. So. Listening to you Seth did make me realize that I actually, I'm sorry, I have really bad allergies right now. Happy spring everybody. It made me realize that I don't actually have a fully formed opinion on how much games should cost. And I'm just admitting that on a podcast that I have not quite put the build the puzzle pieces together on this because this is like a really complicated discussion, right? Like you hear these conversations about Indies like Indies are selling their games for five bucks because they feel they have to because gamers in their heads have this idea that if a game is too expensive, if an Indie game is like $20, it's overpriced and they're not going to buy it. But then you have advice coming from other circles that tell Indies, no, price your game higher because if people see it, they think it's a better game and it's worth more and then they will pay the money for it. And then you have all like people were criticizing the silk song devs for pricing their game what they did. And you have people in comments on Steam who say things like, oh, this game was only five hours long. It isn't worth 15 bucks, whatever. Right. How do you measure how much people should charge for a game? Games are getting more and more expensive to make. That's why the prices are going up. But like what, like how how you make those decisions and who benefits and who does not benefit from them is a really, really complicated conversation that the more I try to wrap my head around, the more I think that I don't have enough information in my brain to really make a judgment call on. That said, sometimes Nintendo puts games at $79.99 that I think should not be $79.99 and that's just like what super mario party jamber and Ted does was two edition plus jamboree TV like that. So objective theory of value. Yeah. And the thing. Go ahead, Seth. I was just gonna say, and I look at the 3ds when it came out for $250 and some people bought it, but a lot of people didn't because a lot of people said that is more money than we are willing to spend for those people who did like Logan. Happy Ambassador program to you. Thank you. But for everybody else, we got it for for $199. $169. Was that how much it? No. How much it went down? $80 price cut. Yeah. Huge. Unbelievable. Yeah. I'm so of two minds of this one because part of me can completely see where Nathan is coming from. I agree. I don't know if it makes them one of their pricing strategy makes them one of the best game and companies, which is what this hot take argues. But I do see the point of tears of the kingdom is a game that took seven years to make and hundreds and hundreds of people across the world to make and it cost $70 and I got 180 hours out of that experience. That is worth way more than $70 to me. And then Mario tennis fever is not worth $70 to me for what I got out of it. Even close. Do those things balance maybe for some of us? Yes. And maybe you just skip on the ones that aren't quite worth it for you. So I totally see that side of it. But then as people covering this company, that doesn't mean we should give them a pass when we think something is outrageously priced. It doesn't mean because yeah, we're not covering Nintendo from the strategy of Oh, is this is this going to make it so they are sustainable and resilient and can't avoid layoffs. We talk about that side of Nintendo also, but we also talk about the consumers like this is a consumer facing podcast. We're talking to you about your money and if we think something is worth it to buy. So I'm totally of two minds of this. I think that it's it's fine. Ultimately, I'd rather this than a bunch of live service games that get shut down after a couple months like we've seen some other publishers and developers do or free to play games riddled with micro transactions, which Nintendo doesn't really do. Like of all the problems in gaming, you could pluck out of the bag and assign to Nintendo. $70 games is not the worst one. So yeah, it's fine. I think they should go on sale more. That would be nice. I do agree. Actually, that is that's the real take here is they should put their games on sale more and they don't do it because they don't have to. But it would be nice. Well, yeah. That's the problem is they don't have to and they are maximizing shareholder value by keeping them. But I will say as somebody who has been covering like sales and deals for like 10 years now, Nintendo has been putting their first party games on sale more lately than I think in the history of Nintendo. Like you can get first party switch games for like $39.99 almost any time there's a sale. Granted, it's like the B tier games like Luigi's Mansion is like. Each show time is always on sale. But still like for this era of Nintendo, the sales are bigger than they ever been hardware. Forget about it. They just will not bring the fact they brought the prices up. But that was that's a whole different macroeconomic thing that I won't get into. It definitely encourages people to buy them when whenever it is that they want them because my. Yeah. There you go. Joke about Ubisoft games where if a Ubisoft game comes out and we think we might want to play it, let's just wait like three months and it'll be on a discount because they discount their game so often and so quickly like that Prince of Persia game that was really, really good was on a ridiculous sale. Like $10 a month later. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And we accurately predicted that he was like, I'm just going to wait and what we did. So yeah, I'm glad you brought up Ubisoft because I was going to say I just kind of blanket throughout there. I think they should go on sale a little more. Not to that level. I don't think first party Nintendo games should really ever be bargain been 99 999 things the same year that they launched. That's bad. Like that has been bad for Ubisoft. Yeah. And Nintendo products are premium. They know that and they hold them to that standard. I don't necessarily think that's bad. It's just sometimes like you're talking about Seth, you said that the sales are better than they ever have been. That is true. Unlike the base release, the downside of that is we don't have a Nintendo selects anymore, which we did used to have. Right. We used to have $20. Yes. Twilight Princess or something like that. Those don't exist anymore. Your choice. Yeah. So that's the ones that aren't worth anything to collectors. Yeah, exactly. I know that the Gamecube one with the big best seller metal and the yellow banner and the yellow spine, ugly, ugly boxes. I have several of them right behind me. At EDF, we don't just encourage you to use less electricity. We actually reward you for it. That's why when you use less during peak times on weekdays, we give you free electricity on Sundays. How you use it is up to you. EDF change is in our power. This next one comes from Shane who said, Pokemon battle gimmicks need to stop at least for the upcoming winds and waves. They always feel so forced to me. Ham fisted into the games. Mega evolutions were so cool when first introduced, but then every subsequent, subsequent game, can't say that right now, had to have their own version. Call it gimmick fatigue, I guess. Take the resources used to make the flashy animations and mechanics changes and put it into the world. Reb, what do you think? Oh, this is another one where I just like feel my feelings and thoughts on this are so jumbled and complicated. I don't know that I have a strong take one way or the other on this. I will say I don't think this is a hot take because everybody I talk to feels this way about Pokemon. I hear this all the time. So it's hardly a hot spicy take. And that specific take two, like the thing, oh, I really liked mega evolution. All of this other crap can get in the bin. And I, I see what they're doing, right? Because what they're trying to do with Pokemon battles is like the way most of these mechanics work is they're trying to for, for big battles in the games, like with gym leaders or rivals or whatever. They're trying to have like a big grand finale finish, right? Like you're, you're battling and you're battling and it's, it's, it's tough and all we're going to get there. We're both on our last Pokemon and then we do our big move, whatever. And it's epic and we're like Dragon Balls, seeing it and stuff. And then it's over and we won. That's kind of what they're trying to do with it. And when it works, it works. I mean, I actually thought the, the, the soccer stadium stuff going on in a sword and shield with Gigantamaxing was, was kind of cool. Like with the crowd cheering and stuff, like there was some really cool, at least there's some really cool moments, but I do think there is, is something to the, the notion that, hey, we have a different one of these every single generation and then as soon as we're done with it, we forget about it and move on to the next game. And some of these are kind of silly. Like Z moves were, Z moves are the worst. Z moves are kind of silly. Yeah. And so I, I don't know that I wanted to see them keep on coming up. The terastalizing I thought was frankly kind of silly. I don't know that I just want to keep seeing sillier and sillier iterations of this, but I also don't know that I just want to see every Pokemon get a mega evolution eventually. Like that is not exciting to me either. I don't know what the solution is. I don't think the solution is to just get rid of the, the gimmick thing wholesale. What did you think they need to find like some other way to, I don't know what I'm watching. I just saw a meme queue with the line, let's snuggle forever. I think they need to find some way to, to keep that feeling of like epic battle finishes and that there's like sort of a, a trump card you can play at any point during a match that, you know, your opponent doesn't know when you're going to pull this out. They know you have it, but they don't know like, like, I think that's kind of cool, but I don't know how you preserve that without just continuing to add ridiculous mechanics every single generation. Yeah. Big Pikachu is cool. Big Pikachu is cool. I agree with a lot of what you just said, Rab. And the take also, I agree with Shane. I think that mega evolution is the best one. There's a reason people were so hyped when they just went back to it in Legends ZA. It is the coolest and most fleshed out than just the Z moves a cool, basically pressed to win button in the main campaign of Sun and Moon. So yeah, I think it's a hard thing to figure out because do you just want to strip it away entirely like you were saying, Rab? Or do you want to find it a better way forward? I think it's a tough call, but I agree that some of them are very uninspired. Yeah. You know what I want to know is how did humanity have such a advanced society, you know, with like technology that's on par or surpasses us, have been living with Pokemon for thousands of years and they're also like, we just discovered this new thing about Pokemon. Like what is up with the Pokemon scientists not having done much studying? There's an answer to this. Are you ready? I am super ready for this. I'm so excited we get to talk about this. Pokemon's a multiverse. Oh, I'm not excited. Yes. I'm already talking about this. Really? Okay. I will give you the very short summary. This was all established in Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. I'm sure some Pokemon Lord nerds in the comments are going to correct me on some of this, but the gist of this is correct. I'm very confident. So I don't know the exact breakdown, but some of the games take place in a timeline where mega evolution is not a thing and some of them take place in a timeline where mega evolution is a thing. And we know this because Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, the original ones are in the timeline where mega evolution does not exist, but Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, the remakes are in an alternate universe version of Hoenn that where most of the same events play out, but mega evolution exists and also a meteor is about to hit the planet. So I'm sure someone has done like a complex breakdown of like what, you know, they've like numbered all the timelines or universes or whatever and they've made it make sense. I don't know the exact details of it, but basically that's why they have not discovered mega evolution in the games up until X and Y because X and Y takes place in a different universe where that is a real thing. Yeah, it's not. But then, but also your point still stands because if you recall in red, blue and yellow, there were no eggs and no breeding. And then in golden silver, despite having lived alongside Pokemon for many, many years, all of a sudden Pokemon professors are like, Hey, do you know these guys lay eggs? Wild. We found an egg one day. We didn't know how it got there. Imagine having chickens and just be like, what is this white thing that just came out of it? It's holy cow. Yeah. Pokemon games have been doing that sort of nonsense forever. The mega evolution thing does have an explanation, but not not all of them do. My favorite is always the technology is incredible guy who's is recurring NPC who's at the beginning of every single mainline Pokemon game. You find him just like sort of standing outside or inside the first town you talk to him and he always opens his dialogue with a line that something like science is amazing or technology is incredible. I think is what it is now. And then he delivers a line about whatever the new technology in that game is like whatever the new gimmick is, whatever it is, he explains it to you. And I love technology is amazing guy. Nice. What's it going to be in Wins and Waves? That that like Rho Tom thing on the art on the back that people think is going to be like a surfboard. Science is incredible. We figured out how to surf. Yeah. We learned that when Pokemon die, they they go to an alternate reality and then they're reincarnated as people. You know, oh, wow. There is. This is nice. Science is amazing guy. There he is. He's been there since the beginning. Yeah. Quick poll tile. Awesome. Let's get to Carlos's take who says the most aggravating thing is thinking that the president of a company should be a mascot for the company. These people are there to run a business, not to be a marketing tool. It is incredibly fun when a Reggie comes around and it can create a different culture, but expecting other suits to step out of their job description and become memes is unrealistic and unnecessary. Reggie is the exception, not the rule. It is very annoying to see people talk about how Doug Bowser didn't do his job or how Reggie was simply better or that Prichard is going to ruin Nintendo, which is also just misogyny and be another Bowser. People need to understand they are there to do. They are not there to do what you want. They're there to run the business that gives you the games you like. Great. Take a hot take. It's perfect. 10 out of 10 take. That's great. Yeah. Move on. That's fantastic take. Yeah. Yeah. Only thing I want to add to it is that I think that Reggie even was quietly stepped back in his last couple of years there once the Switch generation started, which we've talked about on this show before, but it is not even a Doug Bowser shift. It is. It was a cultural shift within the company at the start of the Switch generation to put less of an emphasis on suits, specifically foreign suits, like leaders of foreign branches of the company like Reggie leading Nintendo of America. So that was a decision made clearly within Nintendo at that time. So it's not even just Doug. Reggie was barely in stuff the last couple of years here as president as well. Great take, Carlos. Josh. Okay. We have a little bit of a Zelda segment in here. We got a lot of Zelda hot takes. People had many. So some of these are very similar to other emails that we got. So the one I pulled us from Josh, but many other people share the same idea. And Josh says my hot take is that I prefer any Zelda game over the open air games. That includes Lynx Crossbow training. Lynx Awakening is one of my favorites. And I also love Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, Link to the Past, the Oracle games, etc. The open air games were okay, but not as fun to me. I have never replayed either, but have beaten Lynx Awakening on the Game Boy and on Switch multiple times. My gripes with the open air games are the lack of a cohesive chronological story and shrines are nowhere near as good as dungeons. Something about designing a puzzle with one intended solution is better than open-ended puzzles that you can solve 50 different ways. Additionally, a chronological story is way better than a story that you experience in any order by viewing memories, even if you play them in order. I liken it to a Choose Your Own Adventure book, not as good as a regular chronological book. I know you all think Breath of the Wild is the best game ever. I enjoyed Mario and Luigi Brothership more than Breath of the Wild. Whoa, that is a spicy one. Yeah, it's a hot take. Dismissed. I need to hear this. Wait, okay, so we're specific to... It's leading us from my memory. Specifically talking about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, because you said open air and I... There's the open air games. Wind Waker. Ah, I'm Plain Air, yes. I thought Wind Waker was open air, but... No, just the two. Just Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Are the two on trial here. Yeah. And a lot of people emailed in feeling the same way. I mean, it's a divide in the hardcore Zelda fan base that has existed for almost a decade now. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of wrong people who don't enjoy fun. They like to have everything played out for them. It's like, you know, these are the people who when they were like 14 years old, their mom had their socks folded, laid out for them in the morning and their underpants ready for them. Okay. No, I'm just saying. No. I'm just saying, like, there's the, like, you get to have this open, like, amazing world where you can pretend to play and like, like you're a kid again with action figures and amazingness, but it's actually better than that because the world is alive and breathing. And then there's like, you know, games where it's like, okay, you got this, now you can go do that. And, you know, I like those. They're fine. No, I just, I love, I love all this. It's gonna say they're fine. They're way better than fine. No, no, no. I know, I know. Like, Wind Waker is obviously like one of the best. You're talking about awkward of time, man. I know I just spent like a whole episode complaining about that game, but it's pretty dang good. Yeah. Okay, look, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to go here. All right. Just, uh, yeah, I'm just trying to say the Breath of the Wild, the Legend of Zelda, uh, excuse me, and Tears of the Kingdom, yeah, are, two, are the best games ever made. And like, I don't fault anyone who doesn't like them. I just feel bad for them for not being able to like have fun by just letting their imagination kind of take over for a little while and go explore and have fun. So there. I think saying you would rather play Link's Crossbow training than this is, That's crazy. is maybe being a little ungenerous to both of these games. Well, I think you're being ungenerous to Link's Crossbow training. Link's Crossbow training is a great game. I love Link's Crossbow training. Would you rather play that than Breath of the Wild? Yes. On the, on a, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes that's what you want. And that boils down to my whole thing, which is I just like both. I love both. I'm canceling you. This is over. No. Okay. Where I'm going with this, I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be nice here. Okay. I think, I think we're maybe being a little, I think you were being a little ungenerous to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. That said, I do not think Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom should be the model for every single Zelda game from now on. I agree. I think they are a moment in time. They are fantastic. They are personally my favorite Zelda games. But if every single Zelda game going forward, we're just following on that model with the Shrines and the Opium, then it's storytelling and the super open freedom world, whatever. I would get bored and there is something kind of fantastic. Like I said, I went back to Ocarina of Time earlier this year. There is something really lovely about going back to something that's still kind of open and open world, but also linear in ways and has like very specifically designed dungeons with like solutions that you're supposed to try to puzzle out and that do have right answers. And like there's something really wonderful about that. And I think it's fine to recognize that that is sort of the core of what this series is built on. And maybe we don't stray so far away from it forever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Legend of Zelda kind of famously the idea for the game for the NES, well actually for the Famicom Diss system came from Miyamoto as a child exploring like the wilderness around where he grew up and like going into a cave and feeling this like thrill of adventure like being a little scared to go in a little bit further. And then, you know, coming back later when he had the red boots so he could or the iron boots so he could actually walk through the cave. So that's that's what it was. Yeah. I, I, Zelda is my favorite series and part of the reason that it is that is because of its constant willingness to reinvent itself. It has done so many, many times and it has done so brilliantly many, many times and Breath of the Wild was the latest version of that reinvention. I 100% agree with Reb. I think the next Zelda, it would still be amazing and probably one of the best games I've ever played. But if the next Zelda was that same thing of you're in a small area, you get your four powers, then you have the whole area and you go to the four corners in any order you want and then you go to the middle. It had to be disappointing if it was that again because you just can't do that. Even if it's in a new world, I think they need something to keep that a little bit fresher. And, and to your take, I completely get if somebody personally prefers the linear curated stuff that Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time do because they're very, very, very different games and styles. And that preferences are going to be one or the other. I like both honestly pretty equally. Like my favorite traditional 3D Zelda is right up there with my favorite open world 3D Zelda and my favorite top-down Zelda. I like Zelda in all its forms. I even love Link's crossbow training like I just said. So, yeah, the part you lose me is brother ship. It's a five out of ten. I stand by it a year and a half later. Breath of the Wild is infinitely better than Mario and Luigi Brothership. Also, by the way, if you're listening to this and then you think we're being hard on interview takes, we love all your takes and we're happy you all wrote in. And we love that you're participating in the show. Yes, please stop taking me so seriously. A lot of the times I'm saying stuff just to get a rise out of you. Yeah, for sure. The next one comes from Connor. We're sticking with Zelda. We're going to the other side of the coin who says, the traditional Zelda formula is done. You don't have open world Zelda fatigue. You have Breath of the Wild and tears of the kingdom Hyrule fatigue. There's like 20 traditional Zeldas go play one of those. That format is tapped. They've explored every possible use case for it to the point at which we literally had train conductor link. Meanwhile, we've only had two open world Zeldas swallow the pill. This is the new Zelda formula. Whoa. Exact opposite. That's even spicier somehow. And I guess I say the same thing. I said the last one like on the meme. Why not both? I just want both to go exist. They're both brilliant and they scratch completely different itches. I think there's no way that that format is tapped for traditional 3D Zelda. There's new technology and innovations. They haven't done one like that in 15 years. If they made a new traditional 3D Zelda, it could blow your mind. I'm sure of it. Yeah. I think that's where this one gets me. Like whatever you like, but this is a failure of imagination. If you think that Nintendo has done everything they possibly can with a linear Zelda game. Like no. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the next logical place for Zelda to go is both. Like Logan said, why not both? A game that is both. Oh, now you can't destroy these enemies unless you have this item from this dungeon that's traditional, but it's also like maybe you just see them and go somewhere else for a long time and come back later. I think that, yeah, I think that the future of Zelda is just both open world and that sort of linear and you can go off the path, which is what I do every time anyway. Like I very rarely beat open world games because I like just wandering off into the hills. I think that there's this is the new Zelda formula will not new anymore. It's almost 10 years old. This is the Zelda formula for like Aonuma and Fuji Bayashi, the main core Zelda team at Nintendo. They're going to keep doing this. But there's other teams like I think that Monolith could be handed a traditional 3D Zelda and make a hell of a game. And I've been meaning to bring this up on the show. I think there's a good chance that they are going to do that someday based on some interviews that came out a couple months ago about monolith involvement in the future as a lot. There's so many studios you could hand this to and they could do something that Aonuma would never think of to do in a 3D Zelda game. Like we see Nintendo partner with these studios all the time to do really cool stuff. You all see what Koei Tecmo's doing lately. Those guys have been an incredible partner studio for Nintendo. Like holy cow. Yeah, man. Them with a traditional Zelda that could be really cool too. They've already done really good Zelda stuff. Yeah. So there's room for both. Those are the same take on opposite sides. This next one we're still about Zelda. Harry says, Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom is the most disappointing Zelda game ever made. Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games of all time and my top 10 for sure. After over 100 hours exploring this beautiful world, enjoying the physics based gameplay, collecting weapons and outfits, exploring different locations. The last thing I want to do in the next Zelda game is a rehash, a repeat. The new Ultra Hand abilities added nothing substantial that changed the way I played. What? The locations were the same with the Sky Islands and depths adding very little of interest. The overall journey of the game felt like I was retreading the same game with similar beats and was the first time in any Zelda game that I felt bored and let down. I mainlined the main story, something I never do in Zelda, sprinting through the depths and throwing my single row of hearts link at the final boss over and over just so I could see the ending, which wasn't cool enough to redeem the feeling of the wasted time that had come over me while playing Tears of the Kingdom. What? This is the worst take I've ever heard in my life. I don't think any of us are with you. Sorry, Harry. I don't think we're with you. No, I can't help you with that one. I'm sorry you didn't like Tears of the Kingdom. That's a real shame. It's a good game. Hey, where about the chocolate cake is the worst kind of cake? I had vanilla cake for a long time and I thought it was the best. And then I had this chocolate and it just did nothing for me. That's basically what you're saying right now. One of my best friends doesn't like chocolate cake actually. No, I mean, okay. I think what this person is saying is that they had vanilla cake for a really long time and then they had chocolate cake and it was amazing and they really enjoyed it. No, okay. And then someone brought out a second chocolate cake and they're like afraid. It was a new frosting. But I have already had so much chocolate cake. I understand where this is coming from, especially if you spent that much time in Breath of the Wild. I did not have this experience because I love... I mean, I would not want to do this a third time to be clear. Like Logan said earlier, if they brought out a third one of these, I'd be like, alright, I'm done. But I do think the world changed between those two games. And I thought so much of the joy of this game was going back to these familiar places and treading this familiar ground and seeing characters in this space because it was no longer this lonely adventure and seeing, you know, what people had built in the interim between the two games or like how natural features had changed or what was below or above and getting all this extra context. Like, I think that's really cool. I understand if that was... if the change was not enough for you. And I imagine it was probably not enough for... I feel like the longer you spent in Breath of the Wild, probably the less impressive Tears of the Kingdom was. I think that's exactly it. I get it. I think that's wrong. I put... I started replaying Breath of the Wild in the lead up because I was so excited for Tears of the Kingdom. I put 45 hours into Breath of the Wild up to like the day that Tears of the Kingdom came out and it was wonderful and beautiful and refreshing. In fact, I would go so far as to say putting 45 hours into Breath of the Wild right before Tears of the Kingdom came out made me enjoy Tears of the Kingdom even more. And this is a replay. I didn't just start playing Breath of the Wild. I had already had 150 hours into it and then I restarted the game and put another 45 in before I started Tears of the Kingdom. So I found it like an appetizer, a yummy, tasty little appetizer to get me ready for the main course. I'm stretching a little bit to find some common ground here. I'm not with it at all either personally, but there is a segment of Nintendo fans that feels this way. That's why I put this one in here because I know Harry's not alone. There's people that think Tears of the Kingdom is a boring retread that doesn't make good as a sequel to Breath of the Wild. I 100% disagree. I think like you went to New York City and then you went to New York City six years later, but a bunch of stuff was different. You'd have a blast. It would be... That's what the... It's like one of the best worlds Nintendo's ever made. And I just was in awe of Tears of the Kingdom of how much they did actually change. The cultural shifts are fun. Like, oh, in Hittano Village, now there's this mushroom fashion craze and there's an amazing sidequest chain that unfolds when you go there. Or these ruins collapsed on Kakariko Village. And then not only that, the way you engage with this world is completely different. Like not throw Ultra Hand out. I'm not even talking about that. Like the way ascend and recall completely change. The way that you're playing in this world, like you are dominating this landscape, you were previously kind of tiptoeing through in Breath of the Wild. It's a totally different experience. And yeah, I think... I would tell you, Harriet, to give it another shot, but I think your mind is made up. No, don't. Don't play something else. You're fine. It's the best Nintendo game of all time, according to a recent IG and Top 100 list. It's real good. It's real good. Okay, that is... It's the best game of all time, according to the Seth 100 list of all time. Yeah, it would be according to me too. That's it for Zelda, though. We're moving on to Mario. Steven said, This is another one where I don't personally agree with the idea of 3D Mario's hands down. This is another one where I don't personally agree, but I see how you got there. I don't think this is terribly spicy if you like a specific kind of game, and then you play a slightly different kind of game. A slightly different kind of game is not your thing. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, I don't have anything... There's no Odyssey disrespect to you. This is fine. Yeah, I like Odyssey way more than Galaxy, but I can see it's the same thing we're talking about, which style do you prefer? And they're very different games. They're super different. One's a linear 3D platformer, and one is a sandbox collectathon. They're super different. Yeah. Ninti says, My Nintendo hot take is that Super Mario 3D World is a better game than Super Mario Galaxy 1 or 2. This is based on playing all three to completion on release and also again within the last year. Mechanically, 3D World moves and feels far better than Galaxy does. From an art design perspective, I find the levels and worlds in 3D World create a much more immersive sense of space. 3D World does a better job translating the legendary level designs of Super Mario Brothers 3 and Mario World to a 3D plane. I agree with this one. 100%. I'm just going to say, I think it's a hot take. I agree. I think 3D World is kind of under... not even kind of. It's very underrated because it's really wonderful and I feel like it doesn't get the respect it deserves. I kind of think given the choice... No, I can say it right. I've finished 3D World. I've never finished either of the galaxies. I agree with this take. Thank you, Nin Frendo for giving me... Nin T? Nin T Frendo. I also finished 3D World and have not finished either of the galaxies, but it's not because I didn't like the galaxies. It was just because I was not really around in the Wii generation. I did not have a Wii and so I kind of missed out and I never really went back to them in full except when I was playing with friends. So I feel like I can't give a thoughtful response to this. I don't know if I agree or disagree with this. I definitely think it's better than Galaxy One. I love Galaxy One. We're talking about all 9 out of 10 and above games. Yeah, these are all great games. But I think that for me, 3D World, I completely agree. Each level does a completely different thing in a totally different setting. Galaxy does too, but a lot of it is that space theme. It's almost kind of like Sunshine. How much do you like this one vibe they go for? A lot of the Galaxy One levels kind of fit the same motif. Galaxy Two is really a half step between Galaxy One and 3D World. You see the more isometric levels that they totally go all in on in 3D World. It's totally the bridge to that game. I don't know which I like more between those two. I think if you throw multiplayer into the mix, 3D World wins. But as a single-player game, I might take Galaxy Two over 3D World, but it's close. But overall, I think 3D World deserves more respect and is as good as the two Galaxy games. 3D World's really good. Yeah. I also think 3D Land deserves more respect. The one that gets even less respect than 3D World. That game's great. Let's not go there. See? See? Right there. Deserves more respect. I'll say it. I mean, again, it's still a Mario game. It's still very good. Yeah, more like an A that of 10 and above than a 9. Josh says, I despise the new Donkey Kong design from Mario Kart World and DK Bonanza. Bring back Rare DK. Ah! No! Wrong! Bad! I love him too. He's so fuzzy! He's good. Yeah. I think he just fits better with the Mario art style, which in Mario Tennis Fever, he just looks more like the rest of him. Fuzzy. So in-face. Yeah. I love Rare DK too, though. This is not a hot take, but I went to the Nintendo Store in San Francisco and what I really want is I want... So they have that big Donkey Kong plush in the new style that's like super fluffy and then they have little guys, but the little guys are not fluffy. And what I want is I want a little guy that's fluffy. I'm not going to spend $100 on this giant Donkey Kong, but I would absolutely spend probably more money than it's worth to get a small fluffy Donkey Kong. And I don't understand why they're not making that. Yeah. Yeah. They made one. They made one fluffy Donkey Kong. You talking about the huge one that they did make in Japan? Yeah, the huge one that they have in all the Nintendo stores now. That's in America now too? Okay. Yeah, it was in San Francisco. Okay, cool, because I thought it was just Japan exclusive previously. It's so huge. How much did it cost in San Francisco? Do you remember? I did not memorize that number. Okay, it was like $250 or something like that in Japan. Whoa. Yeah, it's insane. I feel like it was a couple hundred. We need more bonanza merch just in general with the new design. Yeah, we do. Okay, we're running out of time because we've got some other topics we do have to get to. So I'm going to pick one more hot take. It's the bottom one on the list that comes from Rob, who says, my hot take is Nintendo should stop making 2D Mario games and stick to 3D. Since 2D no longer pushes systems to their limits, 2D Mario games are fine, but uninspiring. They can't surprise us. Wonder Seeds might have had a weird effect, but it wasn't surprising. The game established they do something weird. We've reached the limits of what a 2D Mario can do while still remaining true to the series. 2D Mario games are like an old band releasing a new album so they can tour and just play the greatest hits. Is the argument here that just 2D games in general cannot surprise us anymore? Yeah, because I don't agree with that. A little bit. Yeah, if you extrapolate, that's kind of the next step. Silk song was last year. Animal World was the year before. Like, there are a lot of really good, surprising 2D games still coming out. Yeah, I don't agree with this one. Seth? Even Mario. I think I'm biased because I don't wonder as much as everyone else. And so I kind of agree that there really isn't a lot. Maybe that they can, and I'm trying to think of like, oh, the last crop of 2D Mario games. Do they appear on my list of like all-time faves and they super do not? They don't. New Super Mario, I've had a lot of fun playing all of these games. Don't get me wrong. Like New Super Mario, you, we played a lot of, like as a family, enjoyed that. And but yeah, maybe, maybe there isn't a lot of, a lot to go over there on the 2D Maris front that isn't. No, I think, I think I agree. I just truly think it's a failure of imagination to look at any aspect of anything Nintendo has done ever and say, oh, they've tapped that. They've done every possible idea that they could and they're never going to come up with a good one again. Like I just think that that's really underestimating their abilities. I mean, I do think they've leaned very hard into 3D like everyone else has in the past decade or so. And that's because that's where tastes are going. And it's also an interesting new place to experiment. But I mean, we're also seeing a lot more developers sort of look back at retro styles and like what we can do with them and come up with imaginative new things in that space. And so I think and hope that Nintendo will go back there. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that Nintendo, all Nintendo does is kind of surprised me. And that's one of the things that I love about them. They will do things in games that I didn't even expect or imagine or just delight me. You know, the all of Breath of the Wild was just like complete. Like, oh my God, I can't believe they pulled this off. But just thinking of the last however many like 2D Mario games, none of those like leap out to me as something that I just want to start playing. Like, right, I would go play Galaxy Red. I kind of want to go after we talked about Sunshine. I kind of want to go play that again. But like none of the 2D Marios, I really I don't even think I have any installed on my switch to actually maybe like just, you know, yeah. I mean, I'm sitting here disagreeing with you as a noted, like not super into 2D Mario person. Like I've played a lot of them, but I'm just kind of like mostly whatever on most of them. But I again, it goes back to even like the Nintendo games I like the least are still really. Well, yeah, obviously. It's like people get really a pair get mad at me because I said the N64 is my least favorite Nintendo system. But that is still a system that I love. It's just like one of them has to be your least favorite. It just has to be. So yeah. That mine's probably the NES and I love the NES. Exactly. I was saying. Yeah, for sure. I love 2D Mario. I love 2D platformers. I think more than 3D platformers is just like my favorite genre. Like a really good feeling 2D platformer is my favorite game to play like a Celeste Super Meat Boy Super Mario Brothers Wonder. I think Mario Wonder is becoming underrated in the Nintendo community. I lots of people you hear talk about it are down on it like Seth. I know even Brian doesn't like it that much. I just feel like it's when red talked about it's better. It feels better to jump in every new game. I don't think Mario ever feels better to control than in Wonder specifically in 2D, but maybe even in 3D. Like he just feels perfect to control in Mario Wonder. And that's such a big part of a platformer. I absolutely think there's space for innovation and new games in this. And I think a big part of this too is 2D Mario games sell extraordinarily well. They're way more approachable to play for kids and for casual gamers than a 3D platformer where you have to control the camera. Like my fiance does not play many games. She's played more in the last couple of years. But still if you put a 3D game in her hands she struggles with having to wrap her head around moving the right stick to control the camera. In a 2D platformer it does it for you. You don't need to do that. That's a real thing and it's a reason they still make these games is because they're widely accessible for a three-year-old to pick up and play a new Super Mario Brothers game. It is really eye-opening to sit down next to like an adult up here who has not grown up with video games and has not played a lot of video games and hand them controller and see what confuses them and what puzzles them. Yeah, it's a language. Yeah, you really get a sense for why some games are the way they are in ways that seem like, oh this is obvious, why are they doing it like this? Well it's because they do actually want to be accessible for people who don't have as much experience. Yeah, and sometimes she'll watch me play a game and I'll do something. How did you know to do that? When did it tell you? I'm like, oh you just know. Or you just kind of like, I've played a thousand games in my life. Like you just kind of suss out what button does what and how to do what. Like it's totally a language thing and not everyone has that and I think we overlook that sometimes. I remember playing Rhyme with a friend of mine and it was her first ever 3D game where she had to like control the camera. And at the very beginning there's this big glowing beam of light, just massive beam of light that's like up on this hill. And so obviously if you play video games you know, okay big glowing beam of light, that's probably where it wants me to go. And so you just walk that way and I watched her just wander around this forest for like 10 minutes before she finally looked at me and was like, what do I do? Like go to big glowing beam of light. But she had never seen anything, like why would she know that? Yeah, why would you know? You wouldn't. No. For sure. Well that's your Nintendo hot take. So sorry we only got to like 15% of everyone that emailed in. It was so many, it was awesome to see those rolling into the inbox this week. And yeah, I read them all. And like I said, keep an eye on your email because I might respond to some of the ones that we didn't get to. Yeah, we'll have fun. But we're going to talk about Switch 2's latest update after I remind you that it's time for a brand new month of gaming. You can jump into the Humble March Choice Bundle and score an amazing lineup of titles. Right now you can grab Tempest Rising, Chance of Cenar, Sworn, Etrian Odyssey 3 HD, Brett and Fred, Zero Hour, Small Land, Survive the Wild and Hard West 2. This all supports the Malala Fund, an organization working for a world where every girl can learn and lead by breaking down the barriers that hold back the more than 130 million girls out of school today. Head to HumbleBundle.com through April 7th to start playing today. Hey, Chance of Cenar is awesome. Is it? Yeah, Chance of Cenar is awesome. I have not played that one. I think you talked about that on the show. I played that alone. Like a couple months. I think you talked about the one on the show last year. We were on it a couple of years ago, I think. Okay. It's a little bit old, that game's great. If you're a language nerd, Chance of Cenar. Brett and Fred is awesome. It's like an Ice Climber game, but they're not Ice Climbers, they're Penguins, and they're tied together. And it's like Celeste style platforming, but you're tethered to your partner. 2D pixel art, brutally hard. It's a great game. Well, Switch 2's latest update is a game changer. This has been a great week to be a Nintendo fan, because this is like my favorite update they've ever released for anything. I'm so thrilled with this. It's Switch version 22.0.0. And the big new feature is they added handheld mode boost to Nintendo Switch software handling. And this is in the system menu. This is a toggle. You have to dig into your system settings and flip this on for it to be activated. It is off by default. And what this does is it causes compatible Switch software to run as if they're in TV mode while you're in handheld mode on your Switch 2. So basically, this was my biggest complaint about Switch 2 for the last nine months, was that when you play a backwards compatible Switch 1 game in handheld mode, that has not gotten a free patch or some Switch 2 edition that cost $5, $10 or $20, it was blurry because it was stretching a 720p image to a 1080p screen. So it was fuzzy. It was not pixel perfect. They looked bad. Games with a lot of text like Fire Emblem 3 houses, they didn't get an update. It was just really, really hard to play these games. Gorgeous games like Paper Mario just looked really jagged edges and bad. It was rough. Now, everything you play in handheld mode, if you flip that switch on, almost everything. There's a few exceptions like the Pikmin games aren't included. It runs in 1080p now. So it's 1080p on your 1080p screen or whatever. Some games run like 800 or 900p. Basically, they look a lot better. They have better performance because they're running as if it's a docked Switch 1. It's fantastic. And Seth, I know you tried out a couple of games this way. I did. And I thought after hearing you kind of describe it as like, there's no way it's going to be like that. Like it's a what a 7.1 inch screen, like how much of a difference. So I played Metroid Dread and then I went into the menu and I turned it on and I literally went, Wow, when I jump back into the game, that's what's cool is you can like go into the menu and toggle it off and on and like just see instantly like how much better it looks after boost mode. And I did it for Dragon Quest 11 as well. Same thing. That game looks like it looks very bad when you are not in boost mode. I was kind of forgot. Yeah, I had self-censored myself. And then I turned on the boost mode and it was it was night and day. It looked so good. It just looks terrible in handheld mode without boost mode. This is one of the coolest things that I can't believe wasn't part of the Switch 2 firmware when it came out. It seems like this would have been a good way to I mean, they didn't need any help selling switch to I mean, obviously it was the fastest selling like Nintendo console in its first six months ever. But still like, I don't know why it took them so long to get to this because it is like you said it's a game changer. It rules. The weird thing was when I did Dread, it was like, it thought it thinks sometimes it thinks your Joy-Con are pro controllers, which I thought was kind of weird. Yeah, basically it's always that if you're playing with attached Joy-Con, it thinks it's a pro controller, which is why some games aren't featured like Pikmin has lots of motion control or touch screen stuff in handheld and some of the games. So some of them they just didn't toggle this on for. But I haven't ran into any issue that's super big deal in the games that I tested. This is also the like probably the second time I've ever played my Switch 2 in handheld mode. Like it's always it's always docked. And I just don't bring it with me when I travel because I end up just not using it ever. But man, that Switch 2 screen, I know everyone was so upset that it was an LED and not an OLED screen, but that is a really good screen for for being an LED screen. I was kind of, I mean, obviously Dread is looks the best. It's going to look on the OLED screen as far as colors are concerned. But man, that boost mode, it's rule. It's I can't believe how much of a difference it made. I was shocked and I literally said wow out loud to no one. Yeah. Now finally, Switch 2 feels like a full replacement for my Switch 1. It didn't it didn't didn't tell this this really bugged me on these games that I love that I hated this cycle of we are waiting. Is Nintendo going to update Smash Ultimate so it doesn't look like crap in the handheld mode. And then Donkey Kong Country Returns HD gets the update. Oh man, like what is so random and frustrating waiting for these random news drops of which games do they arbitrarily pick. And then Jamboree, it's like, oh, we're going to pay wallet behind this. And then this version of the game doesn't even get the performance in the resolution patch. It was a mess. And now it's just flip the switch and everything works. And I love it. Rev, have you tested this? Nope, you told me to and I spent all evening playing Phukopia. Yeah, that's fair. My friend made a cloud island. And I went there and none of my other friends who were sent the cloud island code had started doing anything on it yet. It was literally just a blank cloud island. And so I had work to do. What'd you do? Well, I first I made like a gajillion patches of grass because there were no Pokemon and we have to get some Pokemon here so we can get some work done. So I made a bunch of grass patches and habitat like basic habitats and stuff. And then I set up a workbench because we didn't have one of those. And then I set up a storage box next to the workbench because we didn't have any of that. And then I had the ability I had up the environment level to two. So I was able to buy a bunch of decor and stuff. And then I put the decor all over the place and made some more habitats. And when I finally signed off for the night last night, I had three leaf huts under construction. So, you know, we're powering along. Meanwhile, on my actual island, I've got like the ice temple built in the power plant built in the fire palace built and the rare Pokemon coming out of my ears and Snorlax's snoozing over there. Like we're doing great over there. I built a church and I couldn't figure out what we should be worshiping in the church. Right now it's like a meteor, but we'll find something better, I'm sure. Oh, like the alternate universe you told us about earlier. Yeah, honestly, yeah. It's very fitting. A little bit like. Yeah. Can I just real quick do a Pokopia Confession? Yes. 30 hours before I discovered you don't have to buy the huts from the store. You could just build a house and have Pokemon live in it. 30 hours before I... And I also noticed that by accident. Genuinely, that's fine. Like it's, I think that something like that happened to me too. Like you're not alone. I was buying the huts for the longest time and then I think, I mean, I knew you could build structures and I was just, I was like finishing a broken down one because I just wanted it to look nice. And then suddenly it went ching! Empty house. Like, oh. Yeah. Okay. So any square structure or rectangular structure that's at least two blocks high and has a door counts as a house. But there's also an upper limit. Like you can't make giant mansions. I think it's like 10 by 10 or something if it's bigger than that, then it doesn't count. Which I just stopped when I tried to make one really long hallway once. They put over your rips. I'm about to rip the cruise ship down to the studs. That is my mission. No! I'm going to destroy it. That's just what I want to do. No, I saw someone yesterday and you were going to every single block of volcanic ash from the volcano and honestly, powered to you. Yeah. Have you seen what people in Japan are doing with this game? It's like, it just comes through the algorithm when I'm on the work accounts of just the craziest stuff that people are doing. And for whatever reason, it's always like a Japanese account that's automatically translated. And it's like, yeah. I don't think it's been an hour of things that you've been making like a little bath house the other day. Just like kind of putting some tiles in and then putting a bathtub and a little hot spring and a little shower. And like this, you know, it's just the simple outdoor baths area. And then I open up Reddit or whatever and somebody has made like this perfect Hamam basically with like all these gorgeous decoration and tiling and like vines hanging off of stuff and like thoughtful aesthetic placement. And yeah, no, I'm, I poke them on our tube to live in crappy looking houses. Sebastian. Sorry, we derailed this logo and this is a Pocopia Pine. That's all right. I got this last week and Brian was here and the three of us are just in love with this game. It's just, it's brilliant. It's fantastic. And there's a lot it doesn't tell you like that house thing stuff doesn't surprise me at all. You didn't know that there's a bunch of stuff I haven't known that I'm seeing other people doing like, oh, that would have been. I love really nice to know. Yeah. Well, yeah, there are things that I wish I had known, but it's also like I just love discovering. Yeah. Oh my gosh, like that's so, that's so cool. But God man. I will pull us back to the update very briefly because I just want to say that they also added the ability to invite friends to a game chat room that you're already participating in. And this was another thing that we wanted them to change basically before how it worked was if Seth and I were chatting in game chat and Reb wanted to join us. I'd have to end the chat and start a new one with all three of us. Now you can just do it normally. Nintendo's catching up to the year 2026. So nicely done there. And a fun fact in this, I went back this morning and listened to an episode we did in July called five things we'd change about Nintendo Switch 2. And these two things were two of the five and they knocked them both out in one update. Let's go. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, the other ones were your Switch One controllers not being able to wake your thing, but that's not going to happen. Oh, you just reminded me of my conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory, but I have a theory that they added this functionality because they are going to be announcing the game. They are going to be announcing or a Switch 2 Lite and they want all your old Switch games to look awesome on that because you could never put that into a TV. And that's my theory is that there's a Switch Lite announcement coming within the next six months. Okay, that's, I was wondering about the timing because it is very curious timing. The best, I like that theory a lot. The best I came up with is they're releasing a Tomodachi Life next month, which is a Switch One only game that's not getting a Switch 2 edition. I'm like, well, they're just throwing this in maybe because they don't want this brand new game to look bad on Switch 2. That's probably more realistic than mine. I'd love a Switch 2 Lite. I think we'll see that. I think with Wins and Waves actually is my big theory. I think we're going to get a Switch Lite 2 or Switch 2 Lite with Wins and Waves next year. Cool. Well, that is the big update. Also, you can save notes about your friends on your friend list so you can give your friends nicknames. If you don't know who your friend is, it's nice. Just a couple of little tweaks. They're making it a little better, but thrilled with the Switch 2 now. It is a replacement now for my OLED. 100% love that update. Reb, you went to GDC last week. The thing I want to hear about first is you interviewed some of the devs of Donkey Kong Bonanza. I sure did. They actually gave a talk at GDC. Oh, I don't have it in front of me. What was it called? Constructive destruction, something-something voxels. The talk was specifically about voxels. If you have not read the Ask the Developer interviews, basically the entire world of Donkey Kong Bonanza is made up of voxels, which are basically 3D pixels. That's how all the destruction works. The talk was them explaining how that contributed to the game design and basically being able to rip up terrain and have it make sense and have it feel good. It was a really, really cool talk. Then I got to sit down for an interview with them. We mostly did talk about voxels because the interview was limited to, hey, please talk about their talk. I couldn't ask them anything too crazy. We had a really interesting conversation. I asked them about a lot of the very specific blocks in the game, like the lift-off ore and the switcheroo goo, which I thought were just really fascinating uses of the voxels. I didn't get too many weird development anecdotes, but I think my favorite one is I was asking them about- I was specifically asking them about the salt and the acid-dissolving stuff in the feast layer, that's what it's called. They didn't talk too much about the mechanics behind that, but they did tell me that I guess the way the feast layer came about is they were just playing around with voxels and prototyping, and one of their developers just made an enormous burger. They walked in and were like, oh man, I got to eat that. It looks really good. He was talking about wanting to- really liking bacon burgers specifically. There is bacon on the burger in that game. There's bacon on the burger. This was Kenta Motokura who was telling me this. I also was talking to programmer Tetsuya Kurihara. They were really great. They were good sports about some of my questions. I was at one point asking them if Donkey Kong sounded like Seth Meyers in their heads, to which they actually- They gave me an interesting answer about how- Sorry, Seth Rogen? Sorry, Seth Rogen. Oh my gosh, sorry. They gave me an interesting answer about how Donkey Kong in the game is a different Donkey Kong from the one in the movie, because the Donkey Kong in the movie is a character, but the Donkey Kong in the game is a player stand-in, which is different. In their heads, he does talk, but he sounds different. He doesn't sound like so. So I thought that was a strange, interesting answer that I don't think was intended to give away any deep lore or anything, but was just like a- It's all part of the Donkey Kong multiverse, the Donkaverse. Yeah. I think that just goes to show what we talked about last week a little, with Seth's hot take about the Mario movie. Oh, I skipped your guys' hot take. Sorry, I'm really jet lagged, by the way. I got 3 AM last night. We got to circle back to that. I wasn't going to find you if you didn't bring it up by the end of the show, actually. Yeah, we'll go back. I think that it just goes back to what we talked about last week, is that I don't worry that the Mario movie is going to infiltrate how Nintendo creates and thinks about their games. I think that answer shows a lot of that. Yeah, it's really cool, though. I thought that the talk was cool, too. The big quote that came out was, like, it is more fun to destroy that, which is beautiful. And just talking about how they wanted to make this really highly detailed world for you to just completely tear apart. Yeah, just I walk away from that talk just even more impressed with Donkey Kong Venanza than I already was. I think it's just brilliant in the world they built these voxels. Super impressive and loved to see everything that they kind of thought about behind the scenes. One other thing that you just reminded me of. So they gave that quote and I asked them about it and I asked them what makes... Okay, so you guys have spent, you know, however many years in development trying to figure out how to make things satisfying to destroy. Like, what is it? What's the magic formula? Like, what makes something satisfying versus not satisfying to destroy? And it was fascinating because they still don't know. Like, you know, because you know it when you feel it, right? Like, you just play test it and when you punch something, it's either satisfying or not. But they don't actually have a magic answer to what is the line between fun to destroy and not fun to destroy. And I thought that was really interesting. It's something that you can spend so much time working on and perfecting in such a wonderful way because everything in Venanza is very fun to destroy, but you still don't understand. Like, it's just such a feel. It's a science pitch. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool because it is just like, I think it's why Venanza is... There was a lot of hesitation about it before it came out is that you don't really know what that feels like until the controller's in your hand and you feel the combination of the varying sound effects and the HD rumble and just the graphics of all these things crumbling. Like, it is just very entrancing. Yeah. Cool. Well, that's awesome. Go check out Rebsful interview up on IGN. Okay, sorry, everyone. We're going to rewind to our bonus round of hot takes. Rev, you missed the show last week. Let's hear one of your hot takes. Okay, well, I am first going to direct everybody back to the episode we did a couple months ago where I played Ocarina of Time for the first time. If you want a real hot take, go listen to that episode because I'm full of Ocarina of Time hot takes and everyone was very mad at me for them. So go back and watch that. But apart from that, my other hot take, I'm excited. I hope this makes people mad. I think they should create. I think the Pokemon Company should create a Disney Vault style vault and start retiring Pokemon. Whoa. I love it. I love it. Tell me more. I think Disney should start throwing Pokemon in that vault. I think, I think, so here, I've thought this out. So if you, so I think every time they come out with a brand new game with, you know, let's just say 100 new Pokemon in it, that means they have to retire 100 old Pokemon. Like, you cannot add a new Pokemon to the universe without retiring an old one. I think they should retire based on, based on a lot of factors, right? Like, I don't think it should just be the super unpopular ones. I think they should maybe retire some people's favorites, but, you know, mainly focused on ballots. So like, if you're bringing in a new generic bug, you should probably retire an old generic bug. I also think that once the Pokemon is retired, no more merch of that Pokemon. Whoa. Whoa. No more cards? No more cards? This is a hardliner approach here. Are there cards? I think there should still be, no cards. Retired. I think, I think it should still, if you already have it from like an old game, you should still be able to bring it into Pokemon home. And I actually think you should still be able to bring it into Pokemon Champions. I think Champions should have one, like, format, I guess, or league where just any Pokemon, even retired ones could be used, like no rules. But I think like their main competitive format, if it's retired, no, out, never allowed. What about Pokemon Go? Are you pulling them from that too? If they're already, no, I think if they're already in it, it's fine. Even if they're retired. I don't think they should be removed from any existing game that they're already in. But I just, they can't be in any new ones. I also think if they make a straight remake of whatever game that Pokemon was in, I think it should stay in the remake. Like, that's fine. But it can never be in a brand new game. No more merch, no more new things. And I don't think they should take them out of retirement ever. And I think, even worse, it's going to piss more people off, I think they should automatically retire, like, every single mythical Pokemon that's more than like two generations old. So, Mew, Celebi, Geraci, Kattini, out of here, by, not the legendaries, I don't actually don't think they should retire legendaries, but they should definitely retire the mythicals. And I think Gen 1 should be on the table. I think starters should be on the table. Oh, sorry. There's too many. There's too many. Is that the main reason why there's just too many of them now? Yeah. There's way too many. There's so many that it's like, this is what sparked this, right? I mean, it sparked this because you asked me to think of a hot take. But like, I was playing Pokopia and frickin' Watril popped out of a bush. And Watril was this last, like, most recent generation. Like, Watril was relatively new. But this guy pops out. And even though I've like, fairly recently played a game with this guy in it, I was like, who is this? What is this guy adding to this game? Like, I am not excited to see him. And I know, I know every Pokemon is someone's favorite. But I am saying this with the full knowledge that if they ever did this, they would absolutely kill some of my darlings. And you know what? Fine. Fine, honestly. I think I was fully on the side of actually having a limited Pokedex is good. I think it's great, frankly. I think, what the heck is that? It's a Pokemon? Okay, sure. Looks like every Route 1 bird. It's a bird of co. Yeah, I was thinking like, Gen 1 Pokemon, like, Venonat. What has Venonat done for you lately? Venonat lovers in the comments. But no, I just think it's too many. And they do keep coming up with cool new designs. I think that's nice. And like, obviously, they're never going to retire like the original three starters or peak. I mean, they're never going to do this anyway. They're never going to take my idea. But like, you know, it's just a lot. There's way too many to keep up with. It has the same problem. I got into Magic the Gathering the last couple of years, and it's really fun to play. I love the card game. But there's so, so many cards. There's so many cards. There's so many cards. I cannot possibly ever know them all. And people who have been playing the game for like 20 years are like, oh, this is the, you should add this to your deck because it's the perfect. Like, I don't even know what that means. Like, what card are you talking about? I've never seen this. I'm never going to find this. I'm not going to spend money on this. Like, what? And Pokemon feels like that now. And I've been playing since the very beginning. But sometimes they just like, someone will mention a Pokemon or I'll see it in something. And I'm like, I don't. Why? Why do we still have this guy around? Like, I'm sorry. I'm sure it was lovely when it came out. Do you have an idea for the process of retirement? Is there a fan vote? Does Game Freak decide? How is this happening? Game Freak should decide. Game Freak should decide and it should release. I think they should release like a list on like the Pokemon Company website saying that these are the Pokemon that are going to be retired this year. Oh, you're creating a marketing hype cycle with this too. Totally. I'm creating a monster here because here's what's going to happen if they announce, OK, these guys are going to be retired at the end of the year at the release of this game. All of a sudden, all the merch of them is going to get like really popular and expensive. And it's just going to cause a whole disaster. So I mean, really, this is not actually a good idea. I mean, I think really my hot take does just boil down to there are too many gosh dang Pokemon. They're just way too many. Maybe my actual hot take is they should just stop making new ones. Yeah, just make new regions and just kind of draft your 150. That's a good. Yeah, they could do that. Yeah. And the Legends games basically do that. And they have a few new ones, but it's mostly returnees, right? Yeah, it is. I recognize this is an extremely flawed take and they should not actually do this. But I just it's just it's too many, man. It's too many. And there's too many that are just like just like there. They just can't retire my favorite, of course. I don't think you know who it is. Fodzire is my favorite Pokemon. Oh, he's great actually. He's a little loser. Yeah, he's just yeah, I love him. He's in Pocopia. Pink gorilla in Seattle. He's in Pocopia. Sweet. Oh, I haven't found I haven't found Clodzire. Oh, that's incredible. Oh, no, I don't care at all. I got to go. I got to go find Fodzire. Yeah. Okay, Seth, we teased a hot take from you last week that you didn't get to. And that was about the Nintendo online infrastructure. What's the deal there? Yeah, I don't think they need one. I don't think they need a robust online infrastructure in the same vein as Xbox Live or PlayStation Online. I think that in 2016 they did. I don't I think that they just kind of aged themselves out of it. I don't think it's as important anymore at all. Everything's kind of come full circle. Like who cares? I'm thinking like friend codes are annoying because they're like 16, you know, or 12 or however long it's just dumb and it's stupid. But also like people kind of have come back around to wanting to be anonymous online again. So maybe having like this convoluted system to add friends. I don't think it's an important part of the Nintendo the Nintendo experience to have a robust online system. Nintendo has always been about playing at home, playing with friends, playing couch co-op, playing regular co-op, you know, like it. The online is a nice addition, but it doesn't need to be at the forefront in the way that it needed to probably be in like the Wii U era at the beginning of the Switch era. So I think that it's completely fine that Nintendo sucks at doing online stuff. It's nice that they're getting better at it, but I think it's one of the least important things for Nintendo to do. And the fact that they just have never really done a good job with it shows that it kind of is the most or one of the least important things for them as well. How are people supposed to play Splatoon? I mean, that's the exception, not the rule. You can just make a Splatoon. I mean, what we have now works fine. I'm just saying it doesn't need there's like it's way to now freeze in time. It's fine as it is. I thought you said you should get rid of it. No, no, they don't need to get rid of it. That's silly. That's silly talk. No, no, no. No, but I just think like it doesn't need to be as big of a part of the Nintendo ecosystem as, you know, Xbox Live and PlayStation Online are for their respective consoles. I don't care if it's simple as long as it's functional. That's the problem. Like half the time it's convoluted in a way that I don't remember if I talked about it on the show or not. Did I did I talk about trying to get 12 people on to an animal crossing island recently? Yeah. Yes. And it was a horror show. Yeah, that was not good. And like, I just think that should be better. I dug four holes around some of your animals and trapped them. That was my contribution to your island. Yeah, it's great. So rude. And then I let everyone on a parade to see them. It was wonderful. I'm just chaotic in those games. I told you I'm going to destroy the cruise ship and Pokemon, Pokopia. That's just that's what I live for in these games. Yes, Seth, I'm with you. I think it's mostly fine as it is. I think there's a little few tiny things that could be better. Like I can't invite you to play Mario Kart World right now. It's just not an option in that game. It's very game specific how to link up. But Nintendo finally added voice chat dedicated built in into the hardware. And I feel like people don't talk about it or use it because people use Discord or whatever other platform they're using. So yeah, I completely agree with this. I think that Nintendo Switch Online is perfectly fine and it's at a great price compared to the others. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah. Twenty bucks a year. Fifty bucks if you want to play the virtual boy games that Rebs has have zero value. Yeah, it's a much better deal. I didn't say well I said that. To you. To you. Zero value to you. Limited value. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. We got about 10 minutes before I got a run. Rebs, do you want to talk about any of the games that you saw at GDC? Yeah, I'll do a speed run so I can get through all of them with like a sense of each. So yeah, I went to so Nintendo around GDC game developers conference every year does. I call it an Indies event. It's a third party partners event where they invite media in to come play games in the third party partners. It's usually a lot of Indies this year. I mean, really it was kind of a not not the most not the best version of that event I've ever been to it was kind of a lot of stuff that was just sort of whatever. So they had Elden Ring there. It runs fine on the switch to now. It runs fine. It wasn't running great before now it runs fine. That is the extent of what I have to say about that. Yeah. Great. Good for them. If you've not played Elden Ring and you have a switch to play it. It's really freaking good game. I did play the other one that was just sort of like confused by was Kena Bridge of Spirits, which came out on PlayStation like a million years ago. I had forgotten all about that game and I honestly forgot it was coming to switch. That game's cute. That game seems fun. It just it wasn't like exciting in an event like that because I was watching this in state of plays a couple years ago. I think they have a sequel coming out soon. They do. They just announced it. Yeah. So if you didn't play this on PlayStation, it seems like a really good game to pick up, but it's just like, yeah, OK, we got this now. Great. There are some other things there. There's an indie game called Hua 2. HOA is how it's spelled. I played the original Hua. I thought it was very sweet. It was a 2D side scroller kind of situation. It's fairly mellow, peaceful, not like mind blowing in any real way, but sweet, nicely ghibli art style. Hua 2 is a 3D top down sort of situation almost. I was not blown away by this. I'm glad that this game did well enough to get a sequel because that's like really surprising for a small indie like this to do that well. To warrant doing such a thing. I don't know if it just didn't demo well or what, but I wasn't really thrilled by it. There's a lot of moving crabs around and standing on their heads. I played a game called Mouse PI for Hire that Ryan McCaffrey has been evangelizing for a while. That game actually is as good as Ryan McCaffrey says it is. It's a first person shooter with this old timey black and white cartoon style where you're like a mouse, a gritty mouse detective with your cartoon guns and whatever and going in and trying to catch the bad guys or whatever. It was fun. The guns were snappy. I think my favorite one is one that's like, so you know, I mean, most of them are just like cartoon guns or whatever, but there was one that shot, you all ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Yes. It basically shot the equivalent of the dip at these guys. Oh, wow. They were just like, like it wouldn't do anything to them for like a couple seconds and then they would just like melt away and like this disgusting cartoon fashion. It was pretty cool. Cool. So yeah, that game was pretty good. And then I also finally got my hands on Mina the Hollower, which is a demo. Basically everything for a million years. I actually feel like I was at a disadvantage because these demos are very smart. Like they assumed because this game has been demoed in so many places that I had already played a demo of it. And so they kind of dropped me in the deep end with this one and I had not played it before. So it turns out I'm very bad at being in the Hollower. It's a tough game. Yeah. But it was fun. Awesome. I liked the different weapons that she gets. I was just constantly like picking up stuff. I enjoyed the burrow underground and then you pop up on the other side and all the different ways they were using that to influence both combat and movement. It's pretty. It's nice to look at. Music's great. I feel bad that this game has to sort of follow up Shovel Knight because I don't think anything will ever be Shovel Knight again. That was a place in time. Totally. But this is pretty good. Mina's pretty good. She's cute. They asked me if I knew anything about this game going in and I said mouse game mouse. And that was all we did. So yeah. Mina the Hollower is great. I recommend it. They delayed it. It's coming out soon though. Right. It doesn't have a date yet specifically. But I think it could be any day. Like I think that's pretty much done. They're just waiting for the right timing because there were some articles about how Yacht Club really needs this one to be a hit. So yeah. I hope it does well. It's very nice. Yeah. Awesome. Outside the Nintendo event I played a couple other games I think are just worth throwing shout outs to. I played a game called Color Bound which I believe is coming to the Switch. It is a puzzle game. How do I explain this? So you enter these levels. You're going to see them here really quick. You're going to enter these levels and you're basically trying to get from one end of a space to another with like a flag on the end. It's not like a long level. But everything is sort of in like monotones or like one to two colors and you pick up these little paint drops around the level that are in different colors and you use them to color in obstacles so that you can bypass them because if like if the background is yellow on the palm tree in front of you as yellow it blends in and therefore the obstacle no longer exists and you can just go past it. Right. That looks amazing. Yeah. It's all these really interesting little logic puzzles to do with figuring out what to paint and in what order and with what colors. I had got stumped on one during the demo and had to walk away so that I didn't hog it for everybody but it's really cool and I'm really looking forward to this one. I had never seen this before. This is so cool. And it's in 2D. 2D platformers still can do awesome stuff. 2D platformers. Yeah. Novel idea. I've never seen this before. Yeah. I played Toe'em 2. I'm not going to go into detail on that. I reviewed Toe'em. Toe'em 2 is more Toe'em. What's not to love? Toe'em's great. And then the last one I wanted to... Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Tio. Tio's just like breezing through all these clips. You're amazing. The last one I wanted to talk about is a game called Jigriffed. And Jigriffed is not coming to switch, to my knowledge. I mean, it might be. But the reason I want to talk about it is because it's Wind Waker. It's Wind Waker but you're a frog. Awesome. But there's the other bit of it. Yeah. Okay. So what you just saw. I played Kardo. Kardo is a game where you pick up these pieces of the world map as you go and then you can kind of zoom out to a bird's eye view and place the map pieces and then you zoom back into your play and they connect in the way that you have connected them. So if you pick up like a... And this plays the same way. So if you get a puzzle piece that is an island, like you have access to that and then when you zoom out, you can take that puzzle piece and move it around and try to get it to fit in where it goes and then you zoom back in and it is now in place. And you have to use that to solve all these platforming puzzles. So one of the early ones is there's this one island that's in four pieces and it's just a circular sort of thing in the middle and you have to arrange them correctly so that you make stair steps for yourself to get up to the top of it. And there's all these other things. There's like collectibles and things like that as well. Weird Wind Waker frog puzzle piece. Yeah, that looks really cool. It's really interesting and I just really hope this comes to Switch but because it's so clearly inspired visually by Wind Waker, then it would be silly not to have it on a Nintendo platform. So I just thought that one was worth mentioning as well. And that's kind of the extent of what I saw that was Nintendo-y at GDC. Obviously, I didn't see literally everything but there was kind of a surprising amount of stuff not coming to Switch or at least not announced for it yet. A lot of times people will announce things just for PC first, especially Indies, and then you'll find out console platforms later. But there were a lot of really incredible things that I played at not Nintendo's event obviously, but other events that were my favorite things from the show that are not coming to Switch as far as I know. And that's a shame. I hope they make it. There's a couple that I really hope make it. Jigriff's one of them, but there's a couple. There's a couple. There's a life sim specifically that I really liked at the Xbox event called Dolphinium that I hope comes to everything. That one really blew me away. Cool. Well, thanks for sharing. Hopefully some of those do come to Switch. You know what is coming to Switch though? Super Mario Brothers Wonder, Nintendo Switch 2 Edition plus Meetup in Belleville Park is out next week. We'll talk about it then on Nintendo Waste Chat. That's another episode in the books. We're here every Friday with audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on Spotify or the IGN Games channel on YouTube. Seth, where are you going to be next week? Next week, I'll be at PAX East where by the way, Belleville Park will also be there at the Nintendo booth. I am going to be out and about on the floor. If you see me, please say hello. I love meeting people when I go to PAX. Also, I'm going to be on the unlocked panel. I know that's an Xbox panel and not a Nintendo panel. What? But you take what you can get. There's going to be probably more IGN people at this PAX than there has been since like 2014. It's kind of packed. Awesome. So looking forward to it. Awesome. So, I'm going to go ahead and say hi. If you see Seth, don't email us later and say hi. I saw Seth and didn't say hi. Just do it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Seth and Red. Thank you to TyO for working behind the scenes. And thank you all for sending in your hot takes for us to judge. That was a ton of fun and we really appreciate you participating in the show. But for now, that's all the time I've got. I got to get back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS. Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more NBC, the only place you can. Get the thing.