Magical Quest 2 & 3 are very good for that. They already know the characters, and the games are beautiful and pretty good gameplay-wise.

You play together and if the child loses all his/her lives, he/she can steal yours. For difficult sections or bosses, you can do it alone.

There are new costumes regularly so the child wants to continue to discover the next costume, and its associated powers.

Magical Quest 2 is easier than 3, so I think it’s better to start with this one. You can either play as Mickey or Minnie.

In Magical Quest 3, you can either play as Mickey or Donald. Donald is meant to be played by the child because his gameplay is a bit different (with his soldier costume which is wooden barrel, preventing him to sink while Mickey has a silver armor which kills him if he goes into water with it). It’s not that difficult to play as Mickey (my nephew did not want to play as Donald and we had no major issues).

It was clearly running at 60 FPS during the Switch 2 reveal.

It will probably only concern the first batch. Nintendo does not want leakers to spoil the fun for everyone 2 weeks before its release.

You can still re-download your purchases from 3DS / DSi Ware / Wii (unless it changed since the last time I checked). Same goes for Steam even for unlisted games. It’s a problem that I am still waiting to see. And even then, just copy the data in advance on extra memory (which is inexpensive when the time to make backups comes).

If your console breaks, you can buy another one, link your account, and re-download your games. You can apply the same logic on games which won’t last forever (there are notorious issues with 3DS games that are dying, and CD-based games are doomed to rot like many PS1 games at the moment). The problems you raise will potentially happen at some point, but physical games (especially those sold nowadays) have also their own problems. You can also get robbed or have a fire at your house (in which cases going full digital is an advantage).

For preservation itself, legal solutions are doing little to nothing. Even if you count physical as a way to do it (which I disagree since the games are just incomplete and in their worst state), the prices going up because of speculation makes many of them unreachable to most people at some point. Piracy / emulation remains the only way to preserve video games efficiently (but it should not be praised for consoles still in production of course, we should let them die first).

I am 100% with you on this one.

I was against DLCs and digital games when they first came up with the PS360 generation. But physical games are generally incomplete, the boxes and support aren’t appealing to me anymore (removing the booklet was exactly when I gave up). You are not even playing from the discs anymore, all disc games are « game key cards » once your game is installed.

I went 100% digital since the Switch, much easier to handle and preserve, much more compact than stacking DVD boxes.

It was already an issue on Switch for some games. They just clarified when games are not complete, provided cheap carts for such games to reduce the cost. It’s not Nintendo’s fault if most editors are doing this. Nintendo is not doing it (at least for now). But as soon as you need a patch or a DLC, your physical games will be incomplete anyway.

Exactly. I think there are legitimate usages for this technology (eg voices for dynamic content, or when the original voice actor is dead or not available to voice again his/her characters). But everything should be done with the consent of the voice actors, and not in an attempt to replace the work that could be done by a voice actor in the first place.

It probably won’t happen, since money leads the way :/.

No subscription is required. It was only necessary for a limited time to order it, not to use it.

The difference is that developers in the past were much more involved in the games. Nowadays, they are just following instructions of a few people and their scope is extremely limited.

At the same time, if a game does not sell well, they are the first to be punished, not the ones who designed the game.

Moreover, the games are not designed only by passionate people. They have to think about DLCs at the beginning, deciding which part of the whole game must be cut and how to frustrate gamers just enough to buy them. It’s no more an add-on for a game that sold very well, or adding things that could not fit into the game at the time.

Ubisoft has also a structural issue because it optimized everything too much. All their games are similar, because it’s easier to use again and again the same game structure than trying new things. Their teams are built for developing such games. Sadly, when they try they generally fail (like the last Prince of Persia or Mario & Rabbids).

But as I said, it’s not the fault of the developers themselves, but the people managing them. And those have too many constraints from people who want to make as much money as possible. Bugs are acceptable, games should be filled a with DLCs from the start, and repeat the same formula for every game so that production cost can be as low as possible. And if it fails, it’s the developers’ fault who just followed orders, even he can’t have a say about the game.

Same for me. I wanted to upgrade from 3070 to 5080, but missed it. I was too afraid to wait for the 5070 TI release, so I instead bought one of the last 4070 Ti Super at MSRP.

I will stop trying to upgrade on day one. Just buy the previous gen a few months before the new one, and it will be perfectly fine.

I do not understand how such practice is still legal. No one care, and it is a plague in more and more fields (I really hope Nintendo will produce enough machines to avoid the PS5 launch fiasco which lasted 2 years).

I think it’s famous because it was first released on Dreamcast, and than released once again on GameCube, where there is not many JRPGs. Besides, the game is expensive nowadays.

If you see no problem when TOTK is playable on an emulator a few weeks before its official release, thanks to specific patches provided by some emulator developers behind a paywall, I cannot say anything else. For me it’s unethical to promote such thing when the console is still in activity.

I say « unethical » because even if it’s legal, it has the same negative impact as piracy, and that’s why I think it’s a problem. I have no problem with emulation when the console is « dead » (and I think it’s even necessary for preservation).

Nintendo would not be as aggressive if Switch emulation waited 10 years. Developing an emulator for a machine that they are still selling, running commercial games even better then their own system, and allowing to play new games that are not even released officially yet, I do not expect another outcome.

In addition to that, some people got paid for that. It’s a very different situation than any other emulator in my opinion.

Again, I am not against emulation, but the timing for Switch emulation is very bad and unethical. It’s not only about Nintendo, but also third party developers. A situation where Switch emulation is very easy (especially with all those handheld PCs) would greatly impact game sales. It won’t kill Nintendo of course, but third party on the system will just leave because they will not sell anymore (see what happened to the Nintendo DS because it was easy to pirate any game).

Exactly. I do not understand people defending this. An emulator playing games that are not even released, it’s a step too far. What’s the difference with piracy?

And I say this as someone using emulators on a regular basis for 15 years. Emulation is good (and necessary) for preserving video games, but the timing is important not to cross the (thin) line between « preservation » and « piracy ».

Exactly. As long as the games can bought (preferably physically, but at least digitally), I see no issue for this.

People should stop to keep their subscriptions when they do not use it. I subscribe to gamepass for 1 or 2 months, play all the games I am interested in, then stop it. If more people do that, the only way for Microsoft to keep subscribers is by improving its service to stay relevant.

Me and my family are all on Apple products since ~2014 (or even before). We never paid for iCloud. I opt in this year because (I) the 1st tier costs me 1€/month for 50Go and (II) it’s very convenient to get auto backup for the whole phone (except photos / videos, we are using a family plan with Google Drive for that).

But I admit that enabling iCloud by default and frequently showing a pop up because you are beyond the 5Go plan is pretty bad. But you can disable it at anytime, and there is no more pop up when you have done it.

It’s more complicated. Apple allows it, but apply a lot of fees so that it is really expensive (and probably not viable). If I remember correctly, you can propose your own store but you have to pay a fee for every download on the store (even for free apps).

I loved Lost Odyssey at the time but, at the same time, it’s probably one of worst JRPG I have ever played when you only consider the beginning. The game is so slow to start, and sometimes a bit too difficult (especially because it does not let you grind, which is very annoying at the beginning because you have not many options).

Besides that, It has a lot to share, with a touching story, very interesting reflections about immortality and harsh/intense moments. The gameplay is good as well, proposing its own mechanics and bosses that forces you to use them.

It’s not easy to recommend because it’s one of those games where you have to play many hours to get in.

I just bought it a few weeks ago, and started playing it again few days ago. As good as I remember so far :).