@Anand The amount of time I spent mentally preparing for that situation was decimated by the amount of times that situation actually happened. (Zero {0} times).
@Zero
Funny enough, leftovers from harvest season gives us roughly the same amount of corn as Halloween does candy. And Halloween in the neighboring towns gets us a decent haul!
@Anand All the arcades I've been too recently have a bunch of weird modern games and then Galaga. I've been trying to get the top score anytime there's Galaga.

@Stan McStanly

The ones that carry weird modern Japanese rhythm games are the good ones. Anyone staying up to date with that scene nowadays is worth your attention.

If we're talking Dave N' Busters style modern games, maybe not so much...

(...but Dave N' Busters is pretty fun too.)

@Secret_Tunnel What are your thoughts on the ones that have a random wall of 4-6 pinball machines from the 90s?

On discussion of variety... while we are pretty close to Donkey Kong Bananza's launch date and did reveal the new gameplay "gimmick" I would like to point at Super Mario Odyssey's initial reveal where they didn't even show the capture mechanic yet.

I'm curious as to the flow of this game in general. I'm hoping that the beginning is pretty wide open and that the game kind of feels more designed as it goes on, because I worry it could feel too aimless. I wonder if it will take any influences from something like Steamworld Dig 2- a big field of random treasures and whatnot, supplemented by cleverly designed platform areas.

On the surface it looks like an even more scattershot design than Odyssey, with lots of mini-challenges everywhere. It also looks like it's kind of reusing some of those mini-challenge ideas from Odyssey, like getting all the music notes or something (only in this case, you're destroying a certain amount of gray blocks). I'm curious to see more but so far I haven't seen that AHA moment yet.

Odyssey's original trailer IMO felt like more than enough because it had been so long since we had gotten a 3D Mario game in the vein of Mario 64. When I saw that I was like, "Whatever this is, I want it and I already want more of it," at least for me. With DKB here, I'm a little trepidatious since it's such a newer idea with its approach to platforming. And then there's DK's redesign, which I'm getting used to, but still not crazy about.

@Stan McStanly
Yeah, Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man are all-timers. If you like Galaga, try Galaga '88 and Gaplus. Really neat sequels. And Cosmo Gang is an interesting Galaga parody.

@Anand I didn't know it had sequels but that makes sense now that I think about it.

@Stan McStanly
Yeah, and Galaxian is the... prequel? But you don't really need to go back that far. It's mostly a Space Invaders clone.

@Guillaume
Probably not, but that's freaking awesome! It's like Starblade to the 100th power.

The early 3D days were kind of crazy. Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL has a 3D version of Gradius, too. Solar Assault!



Is it fun? Ehhh, I dunno. Is it cool? Unquestionably.

Okay this game looks incredible. Not just a Next Level Games experiment, this is clearly a successor to Odyssey.

I adore that Nintendo is still innovating in the direction they've been going for decades: making their games more and more dynamic.

Looks SICK. Killer app.

I always knew I wanted this game.

Now? I NEED it.

Wowzers, this looks better than ever! So much packed into it, and I appreciate the weird little extra modes like the artist thing and co-op. Feels very Sakurai-esque in experimentation.

Plus I like how hard they're pushing the story elements. My parental instincts are kicking in and I must protect child with gorilla...

Secret_Tunnel said:

Okay this game looks incredible.

In. Credible.

I was blown away by this Direct/Trailer. Holy cow, this is amazing. Instantly shot up to my "most wanted" top spot. WOW.

And I kind of hate Pauline, in general, and this one trailer/game has suddenly turned me into a fan?! Bravo, Nintendo. I can not wait for this.

When the trailer started and the song began playing? Dang. They hooked me from the get-go.

One thing I don't get though is, is this the same Pauline from the original game? Because that DK got really old and is now Cranky Kong, right? So wouldn't that Pauline also be old now?! Is this her grandchild?!

Wait, this is way more complicated than I realized...

@Zero

I was looking into this today too, haha.

If there's anything we've learned from old Mr. Dragmire, it's that old instruction manuals are even less canon than everything else Nintendo puts out. I don't think it's ever mentioned in the games themselves that Cranky is the original Donkey Kong, so I could see Nintendo just completely ignoring and retconning that for this story. I'm curious if they'll also retcon Cranky being DK's grandpa/dad; that seems a step too far.

It'd obviously be incredible for this game to end on a flash forward to the original arcade game, but I don't see Nintendo sticking that landing. (MGSV didn't do it either.)

Ask the Developer is out!

I've been interested seeing them use the word "continuous" to describe the destruction in this game, since that's a word I've only ever seen anand use in reference to game design, specifically to Super Metroid vs. Metroid Prime. Having to stop and start (as in equipping armor or talking to NPCs in TOTK) does really disrupt flow.

Reviews are out.

90/100 based on 40+ reviews at the moment.

It's really good, who would have thunk it?

Donkey Kong is here