Protocol Penguin

Gutted that after looking at footage, it seems it’s essentially just an emulated version of Super Mario Sunshine on the cartridge, glitches and everything. Would’ve loved to have seen a ‘fixed’ version, in the same way Wind Waker had various issues sorted for its HD remaster on the Wii U. (Admittedly GC Wind Waker was much more release-worthy than Super Mario Sunshine ever was.) Oh well. I suppose younger gamers can now get to experience the single-player ancestor of the Splatoon series, I guess.

Bugger.

Finished Ozark, Umbrella Academy and Russian Doll. Anything else worth a look? Would Cobra Kai be worth a try if I haven’t seen the ‘80s films it connects to?

I'm still convinced that Super Mario Sunshine was a third party game that Nintendo quietly bought up during development and reskinned as a Mario game. It's too weirdly un-Mario in places. At least as far as I can remember from the GameCube original. I'm disappointed from the sounds of things that Nintendo didn't 'fix' Super Mario Sunshine for this compilation, to be honest.

Oh man, remember c.1987-1992 when magazines would give games ‘awards’ which publishers would adorn the packaging of games with? It was like an early version of achievements – but for software publishers.

I did think of a concept like that too, like a Switch version of the PS Vita TV, but in practice I can’t see Nintendo devaluing one of their hardware formats like that. Just isn’t their MO.

So Lexis is like a clone of Wordtris, I guess?

That Prince of Persia conversion is a minor technical marvel.

Started a new village a couple of weeks ago; I’ll be AFN and working, but feel free to visit and perhaps drop random stuff outside my house. Buy whatever you want from the shops, and you’re welcome to pick the trees. 48Q2T edit: connection crashed. Will try again laters.

Honest opinion time... As a former Amiga owner, I basically regard Turrican & Turrican 2 on a similar level as Shadow of the Beast or Ubisoft’s Unreal, as in great tech demos for the stock Amiga hardware, but they aren’t great games at all, certainly by modern standards. Yes, T&T2 look, sound and play much better than Shadow of the Beast, but they aren’t gameplay classics. If you own the 16-bit consoles, or have console emulators (or MAME) on your PC or Mac, you’ve already got access to far better games from the platform-shooter genre. IMO.

True! I guess there is some precedent, after all. Still a baffling release decision by Nintendo, mind.

Time-limiting the Mario compilation is one of the least Nintendo things that Nintendo have done in recent history. I mean, you can still (just about) buy brand new copies of Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land, games both nine years ago. You normally don’t have to be in any sort of rush to buy first-party Nintendo games. They’ve gone weird.

Time-limited remasters and reissues better not become a trend...