Owlboy sounds awesome - I'll have to look into it over the upcoming holiday season. Maybe a Christmas present to myself, hahaha.

The only bummer is the major framerate drop. You kind of wonder what causes it, since the 3DS pulls off much more demanding technical feats elsewhere. That said, it's a great idea and I'm excited for it too.

The illustration up top makes it look like there are a handful of volcanic areas, suggesting the presence of fire types. The other nice thing about the modern games is the online trading system, so you should be able to get what you need without seeking it in the wild.

It's amazing how good the Pokemon series is. I picked up Pokemon Blue way back when it first got released, got crazy hyped for Gold (enough to play badly translated roms ahead of its official Western release!), was let down just a bit by Sapphire - too much swimming - and then pretty much bounced off all of the…

Just the other day I learned about Crabrawler, and I think that (along with recent current events) is what pushed me over the edge into a Day-One purchase. I mean, a boxing crustacean with a permanent black eye? You can't make this stuff up. Or I guess if you can, you get hired by Gamefreak.

That mental image is indeed what my month needed.

So happy to see this review going up, particularly as the new, exciting "review in progress" feature. You guys are really great at naming your critters - Doug the Diglett may be my favorite, though ?Perry is delightfully avant-garde (if accidentally so).

I'm playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Just got through the second go in the Forest Temple. This really is a staggeringly pretty game (I'm lucky to be playing on PC w/AA and 1080p). The watercolor backgrounds, in particular, are beautiful, but even the character designs are pleasant. I don't think I've ever…

Heck yeah! I'll be doing the same with Pokemon…

This actually had a pretty significant impact on the games that I play. I used to enjoy first person shooters and "grittier" action games, but the improving visual fidelity in the last console generation made me too queasy now that the characters tend to look so real. Consequently, I've moved toward more abstract or…

Good point. That was definitely an example of a game that had diminishing returns the further you got in it. This seems to be a lesson that the company took to heart, since the most recent 3D Mario titles actually keep their most engaging content aside until after the completion of the the main "story." I think your…

The program you're talking about might have been Kidpix? That was the computer program that I used to make PC art as a child. The highlight for me was Mr. Oops, an anthropomorphized "undo" button.

I don't know if this is already more common knowledge, but I've heard that Super Mario Maker was originally intended to be an updated version of Mario Paint. It obviously changed directions early in its development, but there you go - evidently you aren't the only person who was looking for a sequel to that game.

Good Lord, that seems impossible. Whew, how time flies.

This is a pretty cool insight, and one that I'd never considered before. The only counterpoint I might offer is that "winning" portions of a game tends to remove gates that prevent the player from having new areas and incidents to experience. It's conceivable, then, that a person could sell themselves short on…

That's crazy! My barometer for 1996 gaming is Pokemon, and it's rather staggering to think of Tomb Raider and Pokemon being released in the same year.

One minor note - it might be worthwhile selling your consoles on Amazon. The system is pretty easy and you will almost certainly make much more money than trading them in, even after shipping and packaging is included. That said, this advice may be entirely useless for a Black Friday purchase, to take it with a grain…

This is always a blast in the Xenoblade games, particularly given the expansiveness of their landscape. The most recent one, Xenoblade Chronicles X, didn't even include fall damage, so you were all but encouraged to find the craziest method to navigate the mountainous terrain.

You and I were totally on the same page with regard to Twilight Princess. It may actually be the only game in the series where I was so struck by the surroundings as to start wondering about the (entirely imagined) history of this place. The narrative itself even weaves that in a bit, as the flashbacks to the…

So I'm not proud to admit that I actually thought "maybe it's always looked this way and I just didn't notice."