MBRedboy31

I’m currently playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure using a free Apple Arcade trial and it’s driving me crazy that this character’s name is “Wish me mell”.

It’s not that her name is a play on “wish me well,” nor that her name has not-name-like words in it (given I’m used to being around characters like “Hello Kitty” and “My Melody“.) It’s specifically that her name is ”Wish me mell” and not “Wish me Mell.” Is “mell” not a proper noun? I get it being capitalized like that for her franchise‘s name, but, seemingly unlike in her own franchise, the game always uses the full name “Wish me mell” and never just “Mell.” She has a bunch of friends in the game too that have similar character design stylization to her but they all have normal names. It’s like going to the toy store and if they they sold a “Tickle me elmo“ as though the character’s name is just “elmo” in lowercase.

I counted down the new year listening to this:

(And then, as always, I got to be terrified by the neighbors setting off fireworks and/or firing off their guns, as they always do every year, even though both of those things are very illegal here. No amount of heavy metal being blasted into my ears will protect me from that…)

You know what’d be a cool ”surprise pick” for Smash that I rarely see people discuss here? Promoting Master Hand to a playable character. He has a long-standing legacy with perfect attendance within Smash, he has ongoing relevance, he has a super unique silhouette, and he has moveset potential that nobody else would have. Everyone who’s played any amount of singleplayer in any Smash game knows who Master Hand is, so he definitely wouldn‘t be a nobody. Don’t tell me it wouldn’t be fun punching people with a giant fist, blasting them with fingerguns, and more.

I know a lot of people look down upon Smash’s original characters, but Master Hand has clearly been around long enough to be a bit more than just some thing they threw in to be a boss.

On a side note, having him as a boss feels kinda stale to me since he’s been the boss for so long, and adding some new moves each game doesn’t change that. Having him be a regular character would be really refreshing.

Crazy Hand could logically be a semiclone or Echo, but I‘m not sure if they’d want do that since it might get confusing if a match has both Master Hand and Crazy Hand in their default skins.

What currently interests me more than Switch 2 speculation is what Nintendo has planned for the rest of the Switch 1’s lifespan. I wonder if they’ll have a Switch 1 direct that’s well before the Switch 2 reveal so that those games get a little bit of attention before being overshadowed.

I think my most wanted Smash stage is still a Tetris Effect stage. I greatly desire the beautiful particle spam and the beautiful reactive music (plus I also want the Giant Particle Effect Space Whale to bless my Smash matches.)

I was thinking it’d have a few different backgrounds based on the music selection, kind of like Mementos but more drastic. Tetris Effect does have a secret unlockable GB Tetris level that could be the background for classic Tetris songs (including both of the existing Brawl remixes,) for people who want retro Tetris representation.

Each of the backgrounds in Tetris Effect’s Journey Mode goes through 3 variations as you progress through the level, so in Smash the backgrounds would change as time runs out in time matches, or as stocks decrease in stock matches. The GB Tetris background also has 3 variations, if you were wondering.

Since the visuals of this stage would be more prevalent than the mechanics, I think the Tetris blocks would be a bit behind the stage, and a small percentage of them would have soft platforms attached. So, you get a dynamically changing map without it being incredibly intrusive.

A niche thing that I want from Switch 2 is the Joycons being able to tell which way is down, like Wii Remotes can (I think?) I’m tired of needing to recalibrate the controller’s orientation constantly in every Switch game that uses motion controls.

What If™ Marvel Rivals had a guest character from The Incredibles since Disney owns both?

It’s interesting to think about since an Incredibles character would need to be very, very heavily redesigned to not look super weird next to the other characters; their outfit would need to be much more maximalistic and their overall stylization (how their face and proportions look) would also need to be way different.

I’m personally looking more outside the titular family for this; I’m thinking Frozone mainly, although Bomb Voyage or even The Underminer sound cool too.

I don’t actually think this is a good idea (I assume the playerbase obviously wants to see more Marvel characters over guests) but yeah, it’s mainly a thought exercise in character design.

I always thought it was a bit weird back in the day when some supporters were surprised or disappointed when they turned out to be a zoner. The Banjo platformers are very slow and methodical, focused far more on exploration and on puzzling out which of your abilities will work for any given situation than on fast-paced platforming skill (with some exceptions such as in-game minigames and stuff.) As such, a zoner play style feels very well suited for them in a kind of abstract gameplay feel sense.

My favorite niche obscure feature of the Wii U GamePad is that it has a tiny Wii Sensor Bar built into it (within the area that also includes its camera.) As such, if you want to play Wii games off-TV you can point the remote at the GamePad to use the pointer. Since the Wii’s main menu can only be navigated using the pointer, playing Wii games off-tv wouldn’t work at all without it!

The track selection in Super Indie Karts is kinda funny since there’s:

Cups with simple flat Mode 7 style tracks (albeit sometimes with fairly unique hazards)

Cups with fully 3D tracks with insanely twisty antigravity roads that are some of the most over-the-top track designs I’ve ever seen

And nothing in between.

Recently I’ve been thinking about Sportsmate’s moveset potential and it actually sounds pretty fun. I should probably make the Sportsmate thread whenever the next Smash is revealed so I can post a full moveset on it even though I’d probably be the only supporter. Here’s the most notable ideas I have:

Neutral Special is Serve, where Sportsmates lightly tosses a ball up in the air, and, like when you cancel Wii Fit Trainer’s side special, you can hit the ball away with any other attack. The ball Sportsmate uses is from a fairly long list and the move cycles through them, and each ball has different properties.
One of the balls Sportsmate can use is the soccer ball. You know, the absolutely ginormous soccer ball. It would deal less damage, but good luck to your opponents avoiding that!

Up Special is Spike, where they jump up and then you can spike enemies downward by pressing special again. But, if you start the move while near the ball spawned by Serve, the move becomes Dunk, where they jump holding the ball and dunk it downward on enemies’ heads when you press the button again. We’ll get goofy stuff like dunking on the enemy with a golf ball or a tennis ball or whatever, or even dunking on them with the aforementioned ludicrously enormous soccer ball (although it’s probably most powerful when you actually use a basketball for it.)

Side Special is Header. If you weren’t aware of what Soccer headers in Switch Sports look like, Sportsmate launches themself forward like a missile, Luigi-style. You can’t charge it, though.

Down Special is Bowl, which is what it sounds like. You have to press the B button again to make Sportsmate release the bowling ball, and depending on when you release it, you can alter its trajectory. Pressing the button really late makes the ball go up in the air, pressing it in the middle maximizes forward speed, and pressing it incredibly early makes it awkwardly drop behind Sportsmate (a great way to “WOW!” your friends!)

Sportsmate has a minor gimmick where parrying an attack is used with the Charge Sword from Chambara, and successfully doing so buffs their next attack that uses a Chambara sword to have slightly more power and better frame data.

You know those shoes they make only for little kids that have flashing lights that activate whenever the shoe impacts the ground? Why don’t they have those as cosmetics in videogames more often? Yes, it looks ridiculous when you give those to characters who aren’t little kids, but looking ridiculous is often part of the fun of videogame cosmetics.

A very minor gripe I have about Balatro is that the Vouchers you can buy have all have a perforation line on the top, like you’re supposed to tear off the top of the voucher to activate its effect for the rest of the run, yet that never happens. You just shove the voucher in your pocket and never tear off the line. It’d be a fairly satisfying animation each time you buy a voucher, right? Maybe it wouldn‘t actually look that nice with the game’s animation style, but IDK.
I haven’t actually played Balatro, but I’ve watched a whole lot of gameplay of it.

The idea of self-destructs in platform fighters is kinda weird when you think about it from the perspective of other fighting games (or at least ones that don’t have any kind of ring-out mechanic,) isn’t it?

Imagine if you were playing Street Fighter or Tekken or whatever and there were a mechanic where you can accidentally punch yourself in the face, KO’ing yourself instantly regardless of how much health you have.

I got Psychonauts 1 and 2 during the Steam Sale (they were very on sale) and I beat 1 and I just started 2!

The jump in graphical quality (due to how far apart the two games released) sure is giving me whiplash, ahaha.

I‘m not sure if I want to try to 100% either of these games or not.

Have you ever thought about your interests in terms of the six MySims interests?
Tasty, Fun, Cute, Geeky, Studious, and Spooky

Each MySim has a main interest, a secondary interest, and an anti-interest.

Geeky is definitely my main interest, Studious or Cute is my secondary, and Spooky is probably my anti-interest. What are yours?

I beat Pseudoregalia last night. I didn’t find the upgrade that unlocks the map until after I had found pretty much every other important item (not 100% though) and I was on my way to the final boss. I wonder how different my playthrough would’ve been if I had found the map earlier…

Is it weird that I’ve never been interested in trying Overwatch but I might try Marvel Rivals sometime? I got some games from the Steam sale that I want to play first, but yeah.

From watching gameplay, Marvel Rivals’ third person camera seems far less disorienting (I can’t really tell what’s going on in Overwatch gameplay I’ve seen.) And/or maybe, possibly, probably it’s also that I’ve thought something about Overwatch and its sequel have been cringe the entire time and I didn’t and still don’t want to interact with that?

I’m pretty sure(?) I had a dream where Peppa Pig was a skin for Multiversus Jake, evidently because the proportions were closest, even though that makes, like, no sense. I think Jake also had another “crossover” skin in my dream but I forgot who it was.

I was thinking about a hypothetical custom combo mode mechanic for Smash or another platform fighter. You’d activate it or pick up an item for it or something, and, if you hit an enemy with it active, you become briefly linked to them, and every attack you do during this time teleports you in front of them so it automatically hits.

So, like, as Mario, you could launch an enemy way offstage then input forward air and he’d instantly zip offstage to land the dunk. Or after the launch you could nair or up air first then press forward air, and no matter what you choose, it’d work. Maybe you could dunk the enemy onstage then input a smash attack and you’d warp down to the ground to intercept them and get the KO.

I think this’d be unpleasant in competitive play, but it’d be super hype for casual players and lots of fun to mess around with in general.

I’m watching a livestream of the 20 new extra hard “Ultimate EX” levels they just added to Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. They’re all modified versions of existing levels, and like… wow. It feels like some kind of sadistic kaizo romhack, but actual SMB kaizo romhacks aren’t designed like this (they’re usually fully custom modeled stages,) so it feels like its own thing.

Have you ever thought about how crazy it is that the Donkey Kong Land games exist?

Like… we have these SNES games with super detailed prerendered 3D sprites and animations and backgrounds, utilizing the full power of the SNES, and then somehow they ported them to the Game Boy. Not even the GBC. Just 4 colors in their color palette. And they didn’t completely reimagine them in an art style that’d more obviously fit the GB’s specs, they made them look as close to the SNES as possible.

And somehow it kinda works. Maybe in a kinda awkward way, especially due to how zoomed in the camera is, but it works.

The next two Super Monkey Ball characters have been revealed!


There will also be a free update featuring new singleplayer and multiplayer modes. The only one revealed so far is a singleplayer mode where you try to beat as many levels as you can in a row without dying even once. So… have fun trying to do 200 levels deathless!

All I want from the Game Awards is another free Fall Guys skin. I have no reason to expect it since they didn't do it for the last couple years, but I can hope.

In the alternate universe where the LX-III and UFO50 existed, I wonder if there are any Planet Zoldath purists who, even after all these years, are still like, “What happened to Pilot?! Why did they make him so cutesy? He’s supposed to be a tough space hero! In Pilot’s only appearance in aaaaages in Spelunky 2 they still used the weird chibi design! We want the real Pilot back!!”

Anyone remember way back in the day when Dan Fornace was posting updates regarding Rivals 1 directly on SmashBoards? I was only lurking that thread (and I didn’t actually made a SmashBoards account until sometime after the thread went inactive) but it was fun to see the game progress and see people talking about it.

I just beat Fractal Block World! The game manages to be super-low-budget-looking and also feel galaxy brained at the same time. I think I beat the game relatively fast for a not-quite-blind casual playthrough as I did it in 8 hours (I didn’t explore many of the side areas yet, of which there are a lot. Some people play it for over 80 hours!) It’s pretty handy that the game has places where you can find out where to find structures and stuff, I’d be super lost without that.

Also, I must appreciate the fact that the game somehow occasionally manages to make textured floating spheres scary and/or unnerving. I might have 45 nuclear bombs in my pockets, but what is that going to do against The Eternal Plague or against the inner-universe’s most lethal and unkillable giant billiard balls?

I drew a new avatar (it's Waldorf from UFO 50!)
It's been a long time since I've changed my avatar...

Random weird idea for an apocalypse book/movie: battle royale fog appears on Earth and slowly covers up the entire planet over the course of about 5 years. The fog is some kind of eldritch game logic-like entity that defies any capability of anyone doing anything about it or trying to survive in it, and is infinitely tall, so escaping to outer space isn’t an option since it also fills up the entire universe.

Who gets to live on the tiny bit of space that’d be left in the last year or so? Would massive wars be waged that ultimately feel fruitless? When it gets down to the last few square miles, would the last few people be politicians, or the rich, or organized crime, or just anyone who managed to squeeze their way in there at the last moment? Would there be a maniac who tries to get the victory royale just for the heck of it, since everyone’s imminently doomed and nothing matters anymore?

I was thinking about the concept of a UFO 50 platform fighter, and I was thinking about how it could come with two versions of the game: the actual original game that was discovered years ago in-universe but wasn’t included in the UFO 50 compilation, and an “unofficially modded” version where Mossmouth’s devs hacked in some of their own characters and stages (Guy Spelunky, ect.) The devs creating their own Smash Remix style version of the game just because they thought it would be cool would be pretty interesting, and would let them do that crossover without breaking the lore they've set up around it.

What if the next Smash gave us the ability to play as Spirits? You know, like… play as the PNGs.
Yes, it’d look insanely ridiculous.
But, we would we get to play out some pretty funny matchups. And nearly everyone’s most wanted would be playable in some way, even if it’d be far from ideal.

I really ought to try the Rivals 2 demo before it’s gone, but, like… I’m very nervous. I don’t think I’m prepared for this at all. I don’t think all the Multiversus I’ve played over the last several months has prepared me for this in the slightest. I was never really any good at Rivals 1 either and couldn’t figure out who I should main in that.

I wonder if the Nintendo Alarmo is going to be updated with themes based on all of the biggest Switch 2 games. All of its known themes are hyperspecifically based on specific Switch games instead of the game franchises in general so it’s going to feel a bit oddly dated in less than a year.

If you were wondering what my opinion of the Alarmo in general is, I think it’s cool that it exists but I’m not planning on getting one.

Random thing, but I think it’s interesting that Jimmy T’s love of anachronistically cutting-edge mobile phones is one of the few things in Nintendo character design that isn’t at all timeless and must be continuously updated to make sense.

Back when he debuted on the GBA, he was rocking his ultra-recent flip-phone with texting capabilities, and a bit later in Warioware Twisted he already upgraded to a fancier phone with a camera. (Remember how terrible those old cameras were?) But nowadays he has a smartphone since his previous flip-phones look so old now that they don’t look out of place for him to be using them, even though disco dudes obviously did not have 2000’s flip-phones.

Y’know, it might be fun if the next Smash were to get something similar to Multiversus’ Signature Perks, where you pick just one and it modifies a specific one of the character’s moves or adds a unique passive bonus. It’d be a lot less work for the devs than making 3 versions of every special move like in Smash 4 and it’d be easier to balance. (They also ABSOLUTELY need to be selectable directly from the CSS! Nobody will use them if they’re exclusive to a customization menu!!)

Kirby with Arya’s face-steal-on-KO signature perk would be super fun, BTW.

Props to the shoulder-bash-cancel-jump in LEGO Brawls for being the tech that makes one of the most dramatic differences in game feel I’ve ever seen.

Normally you just kinda walk and jump around slowly to hunt for those powerups that let you properly contest the objective (your base moveset is really wimpy,) but with this easy to perform trick you can yeet yourself everywhere at ludicrous speed. It’s like a Multiversus dodge jump but much more powerful. I wonder what that’d look like in a more “standard” platform fighter instead of whatever Lego Brawls is. You could cross the entire stage in an instant!
I haven’t played Lego brawls in ages so I don’t know if anything about this changed, tbh. But, this move still sticks out in my mind.

Random question: what color Joycons are attached to your Switch right now (if you have one/ have one with Joycons)?

I didn't really intentionally plan this, but mine has a yellow left joycon and a dark gray right joycon, which gives it kind of an industrial theme.

I like to imagine that the Blanka-Chan costume in Street Fighter 5 and 6 isn’t Blanka himself, but rather, some regular guy who somehow happened to obtain a magical costume that gives him all the abilities of the real Blanka.

Rivals of Aether II (they changed their mind on having the title just be Rivals 2) releases October 23rd.
(a returning veteran is revealed in the trailer!)

After over 2 decades, Dole branded bananas finally returned to Super Monkey Ball.

(albeit only in a limited time event, in Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble)