Frame Trap - Episode 101 "Relentless"

Black and yellow for Bayonetta

Chris H

It would be fun to play "if I were president of Nintendo for a day I would...". This HOTTAKE touches on the first change I'd make. Create a Virtual Console App, release it on Switch, Android, iOS, PC, Mac (maybe even Xbox & PlayStation), promising that this will be the last time you you'll have to buy Super Mario Bros. 3, because this app and its account and the games you buy will follow you to future Nintendo hardware.

Matt Brookbank

Being able to switch old moves back on without a move tutor is a huge quality of life improvement.

Robert A Iglehart

Oh my goodness... QUITE awesome. Great hotake. As someone who is admittedly a Nintendo fanboy.. I think you guys are PLENTY hard on 'em. lol. You don't generally let them get away with shit. That said --yeah. Even I'm disappointed with the SNES and NES online app. I also wanted some gameboy and Gba representation . And lord.. n64 and gamecube too! To be honest? I think it's cuz the switch is doing so good.. they don't NEED to dip into that library. Just a theory.. but wouldn't that cannibalize the 3rd party support a bit if all the legacy titles soak up the money? I dunno.. maybe not. Anyway last thing.. the conversation at the end got me thinking of this very recently released video by "MY LIFE IN GAMING" about retro games.. curation.. experiencing them now. New fans of retro games.. delisted games.. it's all in there. Worth a watch for anyone interested in the topics at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0AOzKwStM0

Raven Perez

Pokemon has had Move Relearners for a long time, and Sword and Shield has them available in every single Pokemon Center with no cost to using them, so Temtem being able to relearn moves too isn't really a one-up on Pokemon. Totally agree with Jones that how they handled expressing Type Effectiveness is better than how Pokemon does it though. Also, you only see the circles that inform you when you're selecting the move, so unless you check every one individually, the game isn't constantly telling you which is best to pick even if you have caught what you're up against. I thought you almost got Jones into Tokyo Mirage Sessions by calling it theatric but alas. I think there's definitely something to this Hottake in the sense that Nintendo's online has felt lacking, but I think people are falling into Nintendo's trap and getting distracted by the NES / SNES Online games. That really shouldn't be attached to the online model at all to begin with, yeah sure it adds tangible "Value" to the cost, but really our subscriptions should be going towards them implementing stable, competent online modes in all their games that'd make sense to have them instead. Ridiculous that we had to wait for an update to Super Mario Maker 2 to get online with friends for that. Games like Yoshi's Crafted World should've offered online two player coop instead of just local. The biggest offender was Super Mario Party, which had an online minigame mode, but not the full board game which what everyone wants to be able to play online with friends. Nintendo wasn't the first to do this, but people need to give them more shit for this bait and switch of the online access being tied instead to a game subscription service instead. That said, shifting to talking about game subscription services, I've heard a good argument against Switch having the Wii / Wii U Virtual Console setup, and that is third parties trying to sell their games on the Switch. For many indies, we've seen the Switch as the platform that generates the highest sales of their games, but back in the Wii and Wii U days that wasn't the case, and people have speculated this largely to be that the existence of the Virtual Console itself buried these new games in a sea of classic ones. People were spending their money on the older games constantly rereleasing instead of on new stuff. So, there's definitely an argument there for why having this consistent Virtual Console service could be unhealthy longterm, unless of course you turn it into a subscription service which pretty much solves this problem by only costing a flat fee, leaving people with money to still spend on third party games. That said, such subscription service should still be independent of the cost to play your games online. It should be an entirely different package you can also choose to buy into. If it was a separate entity like this, they could also dedicate more resources to releasing more content for it on a more frequent basis. One last thing I want to add. I really enjoyed that one single time Nintendo let us play a full Switch game for like a week as part of the Online Subscription. Japan got Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker, and Stateside got Mario Tennis Aces. I used the week to beat the campaign of Aces, which was all I cared about, and it was always this thing I didn't like enough to spend $60 on, but I was also curious and wanted to play it, so for me it was perfect. I wish they would've followed up and kept doing this with other games. Even though people know I love and have beaten Yoshi's Crafted World 100%, that would be another fantastic game to let people who weren't sold yet access for a week. If Nintendo doesn't want people to beat full games in a week, they could release stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 instead, which is damn near impossible for a new player to finish in a week but would likely hook some new players into then purchasing the full game, plus there's always Torna to sell them additionally. You could also do this with Splatoon 2 now that there's almost no incentive for new players to jump into that now that Splatfests and development on it is over, but some people still would like to see the campaigns and have a taste. Plus, that week with all the new players trying it out at once would fix the problem of new players being thrown into a league of nothing but hardcore pros now in multiplayer. Since we've heard nothing since the first time, Nintendo probably wasn't happy with the turn out though, which is a bummer. I liked the idea more than the Virtual Console stuff and Tetris 99 as incentives and would even be happy with as rare as two of them a year.

MBUN

A Bolt of Lightning!