After working at Nintendo for more than 25 years combined and creating the hit web show Nintendo Minute, we are back with a weekly podcast, vlogs, reactions, livestreams and more! We are true Nintendo insiders and know the company inside and out. We hope you enjoy our behind the scenes stories, perspective on Nintendo news and lifetime love of video games.
Hey, Super Mario Maker 2 made 2019 one of the best years for Switch, along with Luigi's Mansion 3 and several others. SMM2 is still going strong as far as I'm concerned. I know I'm still making new courses.
Because you guys ask why they didn't expand on what Assault did is well outside of the the fan base at the time still upset from Adventures, Star Fox is just an IP that Miyamoto chooses to treat differently from the others. Mario gets to continue to evolve his platforming with new tools such as FLOAD and Cappy, Zelda evolves the exploration aspects and tools like Wolf Link. But Fox gets used to demo Hard Ware gimmicks regardless of if they are good or not. That's why SF64, SF Command on the DS, the 64 3D remake, and SF Zero had some sort of hardware gimmick. Sometimes they handle it well like both 64 and 64 3D where the rumble pack and gyro controls were optional. Other times they make the awful choice to make it mandatory such as the stylus controls on the DS or they gamepad on Star Fox Zero. Its what I call "The Gimmick First Philosophy" as whenever they make a Star Fox game, they center around the hardware and ask "how can we make a game that uses this feature of the system?". The worst part about it is that if they don't find a hardware gimmick to use for Star Fox then there is no new game. That's what happened on the Wii and that might have happened for the Switch as well. Star Fox Assault is interesting as on release it didn't have a hardware gimmick of any kind but it was originally developed to have one. It was going to be apart of the TRI FORCE system collaboration between Nintendo, Sega, and Namco. The idea was making two versions of the same game, one for the home console and one that's an arcade machine and they would use the Saving things to interact with the two systems. However the Arcade version for Assault never saw the light of day but F Zero's GX did. So the situation Star Fox is in is very much on Nintendo's fault. Rather then taking something like Assault and expand upon it like every other entry, they choose to use it test bad ideas. I haven't even mentioned how they never stick to a developer as having one consistently work on a new entry you would have a clear and consistent vision for the series. That's why the Metroid Prime games are consistently good, Retro are always the ones making them or why Nintendo has a Mario or Zelda team. Star Fox doesn't have that.
It's futile. All it's gonna do is create a NEW cottage industry of discovering Nintendo's secrets like the Direct leaks were. And besides, ax experienced Nintendo fan can suss out almost instinctively who designs what because each development house has a unique signature in their design. In 3rd Gen & 4th Gen, you KNEW what a Konami game was, a Capcom game was, a Square game was, a Sega game was. I figured Princess Peach Showtime was Good-Feel from the beginning because they have a certain design style/signature. Nintendo lives for their secrets. It's part of their playing card maker DNA, I suppose. Card games are about the surprise. But they fail to realize that their penchant for intense secrecy only invites personality types who like to sleuth & uncover those said secrets. You make it a game of Where's Waldo & they're gonna do their best to find Waldo. Good luck to 'em.
Dang I hadn't heard or seen anything about the Pyoro sitch. Nintendo's investor meeting earlier today did touch on leaks, so there must have been something to do with what happened with his source
I don't want to be that guy, but going to Rudy's to experience "authentic" barbeque is like going to Olive garden to experience a taste of Italy. It may be decent place to eat, but at the end of the day it's a chain.
Retro Studios is my favorite development studio of all time so hearing about them is lovely! As for the best years of Nintendo's first party output on the Switch, I would order them: 1) 2023 - It may seem blasphemous to not have 2017 here, but I truly think 2023 is the better year. It has the best game I've played in recent memory (TotK), an impressive remake of my pick for the best game of all time (Metroid Prime Remastered), the second best 2D Mario and thus one of the best platformers of all time (Super Mario Wonder), an incredible Pikmin title (Pikmin 4), great output by Intelligent Systems (Fire Emblem Engage and WarioWare: Move It!!), and so many more (including a remake of Advance Wars and a new F-Zero entry) 2) 2017 - This was the best year for the gaming industry ever, and the release of the Switch is a big part of that. Mario Odyssey is the standout of the year, but the fact that they launched with BotW, were able to put out Xenoblade Chronicles 2 by the end of the year, and released a wonderful Splatoon entry with 2 make this year wonderful. But not only that, Nintendo released an interesting new IP this year with ARMS, and made a great collaboration with an indie studio (Snipperclips) to elevate this year to something truly special. 3) 2022 - This year was primarily propped up by surprises in rather iterative franchises that ended up rather amazing. Kirby and the Forgotten Land ended up delivering an incredible 3D platformer/character action game, Pokemon Legends Arceus took a Monster Hunter-y approach to Pokemon that offered a unique and addicting twist on the Pokemon formula, and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet delivered the best Pokemon games since Generation 5 with far more addicting gameplay than most modern Pokemon games. Add Splatoon 3 and Xenoblade 3 to that and you have a wonderful year. 4) 2021 - This year is carried by Metroid Dread delivering on decades long promises for me by giving us the best 2D Metroid since super with the best bosses in all of Metroidvanias. This was followed up by Bowser's Fury providing a promising blueprint for a future true open world 3D Mario game, and the rest of the year was filled out by great games like WarioWare: Get It Together!, Mario Party Superstars, and Mario Golf: Super Rush. 5) 2018 - The two standouts this year are Super Smash Bros Ultimate and Tropical Freeze. Tropical Freeze just let me reexperience the best 2D platformer of all time on the Switch again, which is welcome, and SSBU made the best Smash experience with the best roster of characters of any video game ever. In addition to that we got a couple good entries in well liked series, with Kirby Star Allies and most importantly Super Mario Party which fixed the Mario Party series into a way more positive trajectory. 6) 2019 - The best game this year was Fire Emblem: Three Houses and it provided a worthwhile fusion of TRPG gameplay with Calendar RPG systems to endear me to the cast and setting. In addition to this there were wonderful games like Astral Chain, Tetris 99, Luigi's Mansion 3, and Super Mario Maker 2 that provided a lot of fun (especially Astral Chain). 7) 2020 - Animal Crossing was the highlight of the year and solved a lot of the years problems while delivering a top tier entry in the series. There were also high profile remakes of games I love (Xenoblade 1, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions: #FE) to pad out the rest of the year in a way that I appreciated. The return of Clubhouse Games was also welcome! 8) 2024 - Mostly here on a technicality as we don't know all of the releases this year so I don't feel comfortable grading it, but it has already been pretty promising with Another Code, Endless Ocean, and most importantly Paper Mario TTYD. I'm really excited to see how Zelda and Mario & Luigi pan out alongside hopefully some more surprises!
Krysta - “2022 is a year of mid games”. Legends Arceus, Kirby Forgotten Land, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, Mario Rabbids 2 just to name a few. Like what is wrong with your tastes?!
Dude... 2019 was *phenomenal* for the Switch. Link's Awakening, Luigi's Mansion 3, Tetris 99, Super Mario Maker 2, Cuphead, Cadence Of Hyrule, Astral Chain. Just Super Mario Maker 2 was an Animal-Crossing-sized deal!
i think its a bit split, we may be going back to a tose, ghost developer sorta setting where they aren't as prominent in the credits due to their controlling of perception it does feel weird that we have devs shrouded vs others that are coveted and are selling points to individual games (say what you will about platinum games, namco bandai, wayforward etc) and to potentially see late acknowledgement or none at all as a trade off for devs being "potentially" not harassed is hard to swallow or it feels bandaid to a nuanced problem with interacting with the public. companies change their policies and their tolerances all the time and this may be another change in those times and maybe someday we'll get dev diaries and asks in the future if willing
GameCube was the first system that I bought with my own money. Even though there were some rough droughts in its lifetime, I have some very fond memories of this system. It introduced me to my now favorite video game series, Metroid.
Haven’t finished TTYD but I don’t mind listening to the spoilercast since I have actually FINISHED the OG GC version. So I don’t mind getting spoiled since how it all went down in the story is truly memorable. Will never forget that Final Boss 😂
Only thing I'm hesitant about this game is the BotW/TotK puzzle solving where there's 10+ ways to solve any "puzzle" which makes them feel more like an obstacle to get past than a puzzle to solve. I don't mind having games like this, it's neat to have it for 2d zelda, but when we've only gotten 4 actually new mainline games in the last 10 years including this one, and the only one that has specific ways to solve puzzles is Triforce Heroes and that didn't even have classic Zelda gameplay. besides that it was 2013 with a link between worlds, being the zelda game to play as a zelda game with puzzles.
31:26 I think the channel you’re talking about here is Kiwi Talkz! Been following him for awhile and he puts out really great interviews with many former Retro and even Valve employees. Cool stuff
Honestly the painting you both have painted of Nintendo has completely changed how I’ve viewed them (mostly in a negative way). It is shocking to hear how dated, closed off and just plain confusing they are as a company. Just as one small example- why are the devs so sectioned off? Why are they not celebrated for the hard work they do? It’s so disrespectful imo
That was a great episode and hats off to Victor Lucas woth the Electric Playground for his interview with you both. Whoever knew Krysta almost decided to be a lawyer vs working alongside with Nintendo and now to Kit and Krysta Podcast! Can't pass up the once in a lifetime opportunity! Great stuff 🥂
I used to work in the building next to theirs. We shared a parking lot. During my smoke breaks I would talk to them. They didn't tell me that they were working on, but it was Metroid Prime. I got fired and left Austin before prime came out though
Hearing Krysta explain her struggles getting back into Elden Ring was legit me 🤣 but I too am so back in to this game! Reminded me how incredible it is like what a great game!
