An Ode to My Favorite Genre - BIGsh0t

I was recently asked what my favorite genre in gaming is and at first, I did not know how to answer. I see the strengths and shortcomings of a lot of different genres but did not know if I had a clear favorite. As I started to ponder on it and search through my gaming library, I came to a startling conclusion: roguelikes. I own nearly 10 different roguelikes, and I did not even realize how quickly they were becoming a mainstay in my collection. But what is it about the genre that is so appealing to me? Why have I been purchasing these since my return to gaming?

After taking a near decade hiatus from gaming, I returned to try out the Switch; this is where my exposure to roguelikes began. The uniqueness of the system created the perfect marriage between my available time to game and the short bursts of gameplay that the genre supplies. It was easy for me to pull out my Switch on a lunch break or when I had half an hour and attempt a run in Children of Morta, Enter the Gungeon, or The Binding of Isaac. For those not familiar, the key components of the genre include: procedurally generated levels, brutal starting difficulty, permanent death, discovery and limited retention, and grinding, grinding, grinding. Through time, I have discovered that I enjoy roguelikes because the genre best encapsulates and teaches us about life.

Dubs vs Subs - In Defense of Both for Nintendo - LightningNaga

It’s the debate that spawns a thousand memes in the anime and video game communities. 

“Do I watch it dubbed or subbed?”

This is a question that is actually pretty sensitive among fans. Do I pay respect to the original voice actors and writing? Do I listen to it in my most natural language so I don’t necessarily have to rely on subtitles? 

While this is a debate that is typically found analyzed profusely with anime fans - the video game fandom has the same debate. This is especially the case when it comes to Nintendo-released titles. And I’m sure if you join the Nintendo Jump Discord you could meet people with a ton of different opinions. 

Nintendo for the Non-Gamer - Beczilla

        

     Happy 2020 (when do we reach the moratorium on wishing a Happy New Year) and I am under siege by the amount of entertainment there is at my disposal.  There are so many movies, tv series, and reboots it’s dizzying.  And then there’s the books - oh boy - there’s the books.  My backlog is multiplying at alarming rates, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve always loved film, music, and literature - I was never in short supply of any thanks to my outrageously cool parents and my equally inspiring college friends.  But other than some minor Tetris, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro, I’ve largely ignored gaming for the bulk of my life.  

Games that Defined the Last Decade for Nintendo - DecoyDW

It’s hard for me to believe that we have come to the end of the 2010s. The past decade has truly been a roller coaster in my life with huge milestones including several big moves, new jobs, getting married, starting a podcast, and a ton more. It has been a decade of extreme highs and low lows, but one that I know I’m going to miss and look back on with nostalgia in the years to come. 

As Nintendo gamers, we have also been through quite a ride. We’ve been through some of the craziest highs and lows that the industry has ever seen: all centered around Nintendo, and all occurring in the span of just a few years. In these closing days of the decade, I think it’s important to look back on the defining moments that occurred, and how they shaped where we are today. And when I view this in terms of Nintendo’s decade, I have to focus on the games themselves. So without further ado… here are the games that I believe defined the 2010s for Nintendo and paved the way for what the company is becoming:

Pokémon Sword/Shield "Experience" Spoiler-Free Review (No Score) - Sergioalb64

As Scorbuddy and I sit around a campfire on our quest to, once again, "Catch ‘em All," we can’t help but think back on what an experience this has been.

It all began in Postwick one very fine afternoon. We were introduced to a colorful cast of characters and to a region that was vibrant and felt alive (or so it seemed at first). We became inseparable right from the start. We didn’t bother to catch any other Pokémon throughout the journey because, frankly, we didn’t need them. This made our journey much more interesting. Most trainers went around with several Pokémon, up to 6, and most of them would use evolved versions of said creatures. But not us. We were different, and we were absolutely ok with that.

Thanks to my previous experience in this type of journey, I was able to raise Scorbuddy well. When the time came for Scorbuddy to evolve, we somehow knew that this was not the course to take. It’s hard to explain; let’s just say we had an understanding that Scorbuddy would remain as he was for the rest of the journey.

As the adventure began, we were blasting through the competition without much trouble. At least, that was the case initially… until we arrived at the Wild Area. Our past journeys did not have such a large environment filled with wild Pokémon of such varying strengths. We soon came to realize that we had to be picky with the battles we engaged in. We had a few losses along the way, but we persevered, learning from these experiences, becoming a stronger duo after each battle.

Return of the Obra Dinn Review - Dragonflame323

The year is 1807. Four years prior, in 1803, the good ship Obra Dinn had gone missing and been deemed lost at sea after a failed sailing excursion around the Cape of Good Hope, along with all 60 of the ship’s crew and passengers. Their fates presently remain unknown.  You play as the role of an insurance agent investigator for the London office branch of the East India Company. The company has sent word to you that the Obra Dinn has miraculously found its way back to port and given you the task of traveling to Falmouth Port where the ship currently resides in order to assess all the necessary damages of the ship. Most importantly, you are to examine any clues or remaining evidence for what might’ve happened to the people responsible for maintaining this ship.  

Almost immediately to aid you in this endeavor, a mysterious case containing a pocket watch and a book with the title page “Return of the Obra Dinn:  A Catalogue of Adventure and Tragedy” is sent to you. It comes with a preface note signed by the author Henry Evans, expressly written to request the investigator of the ship to use the Memento Mortem pocket watch in tandem with the book to discover the identity and fate of everyone aboard. Though many of the book’s chapters remain blank, determining the fates of everyone on the ship will slowly reveal the contents of each chapter. Thus, the completion of the book is left by a mysterious and somehow knowing stranger in your timely hands.

Such is the intriguing impetus for the narrative in Return of the Obra Dinn, from which the rest of the game follows in neat and concentrated gameplay segments. In these segments, after exploring the ship’s decks or confines and discovering the remains of a person’s corpse, you will then use the aforementioned pocket watch to travel back in time to the very moment of that person’s death.After watching the scene play out, you are then treated as a moving body in a still image of a metaphorical time capsule for that scene, allowing you to move through its environment and analyze each person that was present to piece together the context that might’ve lead to the unfortunate events for that soul’s demise. Once you feel confident that you’ve been able to determine the fate of a person on the ship — universally inscribed within the book as: “Who died?”, “in what manner?” and, if applicable,”by whose hand?” — you can then fill in those blanks, and once three correctly described fates are written, they will be magically typeset into the book as factual events. This narrows down the list of the 60 possible crew or passengers who have perished and moves you closer to unraveling the truth behind these events.  

Killer Queen Black Interview with Liquid Bit

An interview between Darrel of The Nintendo Jump Podcast and Liquid Bit’s Adam Walters and Mike Chorak.  Liquid Bit is the developer of Killer Queen Black.

Darrel: Today, I am super excited to be joined with two members from Liquid Bit, Adam and Mike.  How are you guys?

Adam: Good!

Mike: Doing well, thanks.

Darrel: For anybody who’s not aware at this point, Liquid Bit is the developer of Killer Queen Black which is, as you guys know, Nintendo Jump Podcast’s Game of the Month for October.  So, all this month we’ve been talking about it and this is going to be linked to our full review of the game itself and its final breakdown.  To jump in quickly, can you guys talk about your involvement with the game, like your different roles?

Adam: Sure.  So I’m the CTO, Mike is the Chief Architect, but we’re a studio of three.  Matt Tesch is our CEO and does all the production and coordinating between all the different people, like contractors, ourselves, and features.  Mike and I are primarily in the code developing.

Darrel:  So you guys are going to be the ones that will be able to get into all the balancing and how we actually got this game.  That’s great.  Can you tell us a little bit about Liquid Bit, like how did you guys come to be?  What did you work on, that kind of thing?

Mike: Yeah, that’s an interesting story, actually.  It kind of goes back quite a ways, but to give you the skinny of it, the three of us (me, Matt, and Adam), we used to work together at a company called ÄKTA.  I actually worked with Matt at a company before that called Fueled.  We merged with ÄKTA, and Adam came on.  Our company got acquired by Salesforce so we’ve been working together for a long time.  We used to build mobile apps, actually. We were building iPhone apps, and one of our clients from Texas was like “hey, I’ve got some capital, I want to build a video game.  I don’t know what you’re doing at Salesforce, but if you want, let’s start a company and see what we can make of it.”  So that was three years ago.  And it’s like a really weird story.  This never happens, right?  But yeah, we did.  We put in our two weeks notice and started this.  Been doing it ever since.  I went to school for game programming, Adam didn’t have any game development experience, but we worked on a lot of stuff together and we were confident that we could do something that wasn’t a full AAA shooter or something, you know?