Wario Wario Wario

I remember that around the time the Bubsy reboot came out, someone on a Discord server I was on was working on a Ballz 3D reboot to pitch to Billionsoft.

If that game ever comes to be and there's a quadrupedal fighter (a feline specifically) in it, just know that was my idea.

And if the guy who's working on this is reading it... (or even still working on it, it's been a long time since I heard anything about it and I lost ties to that server years ago) on the house, seeing a concept of mine in motion is all the payment I need.

Honestly I'd rather have a Diddy Kong Racing Smash fighter over a "Mario Kart rider" fighter. Every Mario Kart character sans two of the babies exists in other forms outside of Mario Kart so basing them entirely on that one series feels like a waste, while DKR's roster is famously filled with mostly original characters.

Also, if Nintendo's gonna license out another company's character from their series, a DKR character will have larger brand recognition and a less stingy owner than the puppet.

I don't know why people tend to call Smash 64 the worst Smash game, even if we're to ignore Brawl's existence.

Make Baby Mario's symbol a lowercase m again.

I don't like the idea of Ring Fit Trainee in Smash, but Draguax is up there with Rabbid Peach as one of the few Switch shill picks I'd be cool with.

Damn, why does Toph get to put her entire article on front page?

Damn bro, you got the whole squad nyeh-heh-hehing.

Rollback netcode was one thing, but I'd be utterly ashamed if I were a Nintendo higher up right now.
A children's TV channel with no history in producing gaming content is doing more for their competitive scene than the longest-running of the big 3 console manufacturers.

To add salt to the wound, the prize pool ($5000 according to one of the invited players on the NASB Discord, higher than all except one Nintendo prize pool to my knowledge - the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, which provided $10'000) was provided by GameMill. The Big Rigs guys.

This may be the grossest stage I've ever played in a video game.

If any character in Nick Brawl was to be an "unga bunga" type, it's obviously gonna be the kaiju marketed to literal infants.

It's likely a coincidence but I kinda feel Piranha Plant getting in Smash started a sort of ripple effect that has lead to multiplayer games using preexisting casts (especially of the Scrimblo variety) being more risky and obscure with character rosters.

While Ashley or a Land rep are the obvious picks for a second Wario rep in Smash, I also think Jimmy T.; the Crygors; and Pyoro have great potential.

Mario be like "Time for a super fun party!" stands idly and waits for a box to hit the right number

He turned over a new leaf, I'm proud of him. A gym, a toy shop, Kraid's a trustworthy businessman

What was he arrested for?

Even if the Disney Music leak was somehow real, it doesn't inherently imply Sora, just like how Cacomallow didn't inherently imply Geno and Doomguy. The DuckTales Moon theme is one of the most iconic songs in gaming and I could absolutely see it getting the Getsu Fuma Den treatment for a second Mega Man rep's songlist.

If the hypothetical Disney Channel platform fighter people tend to discuss in relation to Nick Brawl was ever a thing, I'd completely forgive the lack of Disney movie characters as long as Chapek would lift the ban on referencing anything Fox Kids-related and we got my boy Sharky.

Monkey Ball unlocked for me, time to return to monke.

I mentioned this long ago, but I will always find it hilarious that Min Min is canonically a shill-pick.

I like how Nick Brawl chose to embrace the inherent flaws of ultraheavies in platform fighters by making Reptar the most insane overpowered character and just letting the nature of the genre itself balance him out.

"Mum, can we get ?"
"We have at home"
at home:

Game developers checking fan wikis for obscure characters in series they're working on is a win for everyone:

• devs get more source material to work with
• publishers and licensees get more faces to sell merchandise of
• casual fans get to see, for all they know, brand new characters
• hardcore fans get rewarded for their devotion to researching and preserving these characters' histories.

New game or no new game, this has been a great year to be a DK fan (other than the sausage in the room...)

I actually think Scooby-Doo playing into the trends and archetypes of the 70s is exactly why it's had such longevity in a time when even Yogi Bear and the Flintstones are starting to fade from the world's memory. What some more world-weary kids in the 70s could've seen as "Fellow Kids"-ey and pandering, kids in the 2020s see as something completely unique with its own wildly different tone and characters from the other cartoons marketed to them.

We could argue all day about the artistic quality of the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? show and its many barely-different spin-offs, or if rerunning and remaking old content is a loving way of paying homage or just a lazy compensation for original ideas, but there's a reason why these 5-decade-old shows see reruns just as much as their modern updates: it's not nostalgia, it's anemoia - and I think that's more universal a feeling than we acknowledge.

We should be championing new concepts, don't get me wrong, but - given they're provided with historical context or outdated content censored - passing down cherished favourites to the next generation won't hurt anyone, and kids are more than smart enough to know that older does not equal worse.

I don't think lives systems in games are inherently bad or good, it depends on the game. I found my experience with Crash N. Sane Trilogy to be much enhanced by the lives system because the levels were designed so that repeat playing would make stages gradually easier to the point of muscle memory, but I'm glad I went modern for Crash 4 because of the levels testing patience and pattern memory more than fast reflexes - both are great ways to design platformer levels, don't get me wrong, but one type is more fit for lives and the other is more fit for immortality

I do kinda wish Crash 4 gave more rewards for Wumpa Fruit collection though... the costumes system likely would've worked better as an in-game shop, but I guess the devs must've been trying to Activision-proof the game after CTR's MTX controversy.

Which Marco Rossi are you?

I've been watching Super Eyepatch Wolf's Riverdale video, and it's kinda interesting how Archie was light escapism in the war-torn 40s, and now in the 21st century where we don't really have many major Hitler-tier problems (other than climate change which we have the means to stop and just need to encourage the big guys to help out, and Covid which will probably be long gone in 2 years at maximum) Archie has had to turn into a more-shocking-than-life nightmare world to keep people's attention. I guess it must be a psychological thing: the human brain needs a balance of cynicism and optimism.

I don't want to get my hopes up too high, in fact this conspiracy theory thing is exactly what I've scourned some Geno fans for, but I do legitimately believe Waluigi is likely to be CP11, everything lines up really nicely just as it did with Banjo and Erdrick/Hero before - the Mario Sports trademark, the Legacy XP takedown, that flirtatious render from Nintendo Minute and even a merch mishap with Poster Foundry

It's kinda surprising Smash has managed to last so long without changing its frankly ridiculous serif logo. It's a weird holdover from the Shadow the Hedgehog era they should've gotten rid of in 3DS/Wii U.

I dunno where the comparisons between NASB Lincoln and Smash Ness are coming from - he comes off a lot more like Bowser Jr. to me, both aesthetically and gameplay-wise.

"Mum, can we go to ?"
"There's a at the local mall"
at the local mall:

It's easy to call a character redesign "devolution", but I think this may be actual in-universe scientific devolution

The Atari Hotels look really cool, but I don't even think Disney Imagineers could pull something like this off, let alone Atari the Sixth.

Also, small nitpick but while that game box art row is a really cool concept, a majority of those games are Milton-Bradley and Activision, and some of them are based on properties owned by other companies like Frogger (Konami) and ET (Universal)

That being said, I think referencing ET in some form was a good call. It's such a well known failure that it's pretty much unescapable in any discussion of Atari or the pre-Gyromite gaming landscape, and sweeping it under the rug like Nintendo tend to with their failures would tarnish Atari's legacy way more than acknowledging it would.

If you aren't playing your Jaguar like this, are you even a REAL Atari the Second fan?

I think it's really cool that MTA has a fire Piranha Plant instead of the regular Piranha Plant - more stuff like that would be a great way to make playable enemies the tiniest bit more interesting in Mario spin-offs. I've always liked the blue Underground Goombas, and even before "base/main character comes first" lost its universally-accepted status for roster selection I knew Koopa coming back instead of Paratroopa was a tragedy.

One thing I think is really cool about Brawl Minus is that each Waluigi skin has his own pose on the CSS. I kinda wish the official Smash games would do that - it'd be extra work, sure, but there's much less noticable things Sakurai's team have put an equal amount of effort if not more into.

I remember seeing this really cool video from the creator of Despicable Me (the concept and characters, not the actual movies) which I can't find anywhere, and at the end he apologised for the Minions even though they weren't part of his original pitch.

If we eventually get GBA on NSO, I seriously hope It's Mr. Pants comes along with it - one of the most wonderful games Rare has ever made and on par with other block puzzle classics like Tetris, Puzzle League, and Puyo Puyo. If it was released as Donkey Kong and not a fat guy in nothing but underwear it'd be just as iconic as those latter 2 games and nobody would ever shut up about it. Easily the least justifiable snub in Rare Replay.