Tag: nintendo

Nintendo Direct on Kirby Air Riders

I’ve heard it said that there are several different varieties of Nintendo Directs. There the Major Announcement type (Switch 2!), the Bunch of Games type (Indie World!), the Franchise Update type (what’s Pikachu up to next?) and then there’s the type that introduces an individual game. (Breath of the Wild!) This video is of that last kind, but the game it announces is not the usual kind of thing.

Masahiro Sakurai is an odd duck. Famously the creator of both Kirby and Super Smash Bros., the last game he made as an employee of HAL Laboratory and/or Nintendo was Kirby Air Ride, or KAR. We’ve posted about KAR four times before: in general, the effects of its vehicle stat patches, the online competitive KAR scene and Sakurai’s own commentary about it. This time makes five, and it’s safe to say it won’t be the last.

Why did he leave? I can’t say with any accuracy, I have no sources at Nintendo, but I do sometimes remember little things I’ve read, which may or may not be true. One of those things was that he had left under a cloud due to the perceived failure of Kirby Air Ride, which had a long and troubled development process, starting on N64 then moving to Gamecube, and not having a lot of traditional content compared to its sibling Mario Kart. But this could be false: I believe he’s said publicly it had to do with not wanting to make the same kind of game over and over. So now, let’s set this thread down, and come back to it in a few paragraphs.

Sakurai worked as an independent game designer for a while, enviable work if you can get it, and are as good at it as he is. The first game he made out of the gate was early Nintendo DS hit Meteos, a fine game that everyone should play, if they can find it now.

Meteos was an action-puzzle game that did genuinely new things in that genre, and was really good, a tricky combination. He then founded his own company Sora Ltd., which has maintained close ties with Nintendo: every game they’ve made since has been published by Nintendo. One of those was Kid Icarus: Uprising, another fondly-remembered title. And then….

Yeah, I’m getting to it. Sakurai has continued to direct every Super Smash Bros. title. It’s been said that Nintendo believes no one else can effectively make a Smash Bros. game. Super Smash Bros. Melee came out before Sakurai left HAL and was a gigantic hit; the Gamecube wasn’t exactly a stellar success, but imagine how it’d have fared if Melee hadn’t been made? People still play Melee in large numbers today; ask AsumSaus about it.

While some subsequent entries have not met with perfect acclaim (Brawl), every installment has still sold an awful lot of copies. Nintendo keeps asking Sakurai to make the next Smash Bros., and although he’s mention feeling tired and worn out (he heads gigantic teams to make them, and it’s an immense amount of work), even threatening to retire at one point, Nintendo seems to keep finding bigger dump trucks of money to leave at his houses. So as an independent agent he’s made the huge Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and the colossal Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, and the utterly gigantic Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the fighting game that contains Mario, Link, Samus, Fox, Ness, Ryu, Simon Belmont, fighting Mii characters, Cloud, Sora and freaking Steve from Minecraft, among with dozens and dozens of others, even more if you count the Mii costumes you can buy, including Shantae, Cuphead and extra-freaking Sans Undertale himself.

And now, to pick back up that thread I left back there on the ground.

A few months ago at the Major Announcement Nintendo Direct about the release of the Switch 2, there was a short section announcing a sequel what may have been the game that caused Sakurai to leave Nintendo: Kirby Air Ride.

Sakurai has been vindicated many times over since then. Does it not have much content? He’s make the Smash Bros. games, each a greater tribute to the concept of excess than the last.. He said he didn’t want to make the same game repeatedly, but there’s been six Smash Bros. titles now. And after all this time, KAR’s City Trial still has a surprisingly large and involved fanbase, and even a tournament scene.

Early in the new announcement video (below), Sakurai mentions that it was bosses at Nintendo and HAL that asked him to make a new Kirby Air Ride game, not the other way around. It had to have been quite the vindication for him. Here is that video (47 minutes); for discussion of its contents, see below.

It has the slightly confusing name, when mentioned alongside the original, of Kirby Air Riders. I’ll abbreviate it KARrs.

Where KAR basically only had Kirby as a character, with King Dedede and Meta Knight more as gimmick characters, KARrs is full of characters, including former villains (Dedede and Meta Knight of course, and newbies Magalor and Susie), allies (Gooey and Bandana Waddle Dee), enemies (Chef Kawasaki, Knuckle Joe, Cappy, Starman and Waddle Doo), and various Kirby colors too. It has most (if not all) of the vehicles, called “machines,” from the first game and a few more. And it supports up to 8 players, 16 when played online.

And it still has City Trial, which Sakurai accurately refers to as the main event. Air Ride mode is a good basis, but City Trial is why people still obsessively play KAR today. It has a new City, on a floating island in the sky, and named “Skyah” He said there’s only one map, which seems a shame. KAR only had one City Trial map too. Skyah looks more varied, but not much more varied.

The core of City Trial is the same: the search for vehicles, the collection of vehicle-upgrading patches, the player-vs-player combat, and the sometimes-faulty information on which Stadium you’re trying to optimize for. KAR is a game where you can be told prepare for a race, and 10% of the time it won’t be a race. “Mind games,” as Sakurai calls it.

There’s still random events, but now there can be random contests that take place in the time-limited City portion of the match. All the players who choose to participate join in a special minigame that can award extra powerups, but players can also choose to ignore all that noise entirely, and just keep exploring and collecting patches on their own.

What’s missing? Sakurai says at the end that there’s lots of things he didn’t have time to mention, but they might just be gone completely. One of them, Top Ride, isn’t likely to be missed; it was a single-screen racing mode kind of like Atari’s Sprint games. KAR’s Air Ride’s tracks often made appearances as City Trial’s match-determining Stadiums, but Top Ride played no part in it. It’s probably been binned.

Another thing missing is KAR’s Checklist feature, a grid of squares for each of the three game modes, and each space representing a single challenge. Clearing the grid offered meta-progression in a game that made absolutely no attempt at storytelling. The Checklist was one of KAR’s big unique ideas, and it migrated over to a couple of titles in the Smash Bros. series. It’d be a shame if it was entirely gone from the game that birthed it. But Sakurai is known to discard even prominent features if he’s bored with them; remember the “Special Bonuses” in the first two Smash Bros. games, and how they vanished starting with Brawl? Remember how its Trophies didn’t make it into Smash Ultimate?

Even without the Checklists, there’s so much in the video to be excited about. This is unquestionably the Switch 2 game I’m most excited about. It’s true, it’s a sequel to a game that Masahiro Sakurai has made before, but it’s also an opportunity to iterate on ideas that deserve to be given another chance. Kirby Air Ride was something unique, and how often do we see that these days? Kirby Air Riders may be that utter rarity here in the 53rd year of video gaming: the birth of a new genre. It’s a personal pleasure to witness.

Nintendo Indie World 8/7/25

Our own Josh Bycer isn’t the only source of indie recap videos out there. Nintendo themselves released a new Indie World video yesterday with a number of new games listed, as well as an upcoming free update to one of my favorites, Little Kitty Big City. (I interviewed its creators for Game Developer some months ago!) Here’s the video (15 minutes):

The biggest surprise is, at the end, the news that both Caves of Qud and UFO 50 are coming to the Switch platforms at last! UFO 50 is out now! Please forgive my breach of decorum when I say, yippie, and besides that, wahoo. Thank you. (sips tea)

Sundry Sunday: There’s Something About Pokemon Mystery Dungeon

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

From TerminalMontage, who’s shown up here multiple times before. I thought maybe I might have already posted this, but a quick search seems to indicate that I haven’t, and it’s a useful intersection between Nintendo things, roguelike things, and silly things.

Specifically, this Something (5½ minutes) is About the original releases of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team, Red and Blue. And you’ll probably best see what all the About is about if you’ve played the original.

I’ll throw in some notes about the references in this video:

  • The rescue mechanic, which involves teleporting rescued Pokemon. How the hell does it work?
  • Kecleons, the shopkeepers in PMD, are as scary as depicted here. To think that this would be a lasting legacy of the Nethack Devteam’s Izchak Miller.
  • The music in the volcano segment is from the game, and it does the thing that the kids these days call “slaps.”
  • Make sure to fast forward through the credits for a final closing gag, where we find out who Cyndaquil really is.

Things Pvt. Skippy Is Not Allowed To Do At A Switch 2 Launch Event

Things Pvt. Skippy is not allowed to do at the Switch 2 release event, #14: Loudly read their erotic, explicit Sonic/Shadow fanfic.

#18: Spread rumors that the Switch 2 requires a new, more costly form of electricity to use.

#23: Dress in a robe, ask others in line if they’ve accepted Mario as their lord and savior. Also, they cannot set up a shrine to their Wario Amiibo.

#26: Show off the SD Micro Express card they bought online, telling people “If you don’t have one of these, you’re already dead.”

#28: Swear people to secrecy, tell them they’re a spy working for Sony, then take pictures of people in line to send to “headquarters.”

#32: Bring a blue bowl with spikes glued to the underside, then throw it at the person at the front of the line and try to take their place.

To explain: Lists of things Private Skippy is not allowed to do (usually in the U.S. Army, but also other armed forces or even other places) are an ancient form of internet humor, possibly older than the World Wide Web itself. It’s the kind of thing that would have been traded around Usenet, or even Fidonet. (Its absence from Know Your Meme proves its affected by recency bias.) TV Tropes has a page on Skippy, a claim it originated in 2001—I think it’s older but could easily be wrong—and a link to the webpage skippyslist.com, which is a broken WordPress install. Sorry Skippy.

Here is one surviving list on the Web, although part of the process of Skippy is that people add new items as they pass it around, so there is no canonical list. I should warn you that, as a very old form of internet humor, you can expect these lists to have questionable items on them, depending on who’s posting it. The list I linked also prefaces the list with a backstory. It’s entirely unnecessary: many of us know a Pvt. Skippy of some variety, even if they never served.

On Rescuing Mario Paint Projects From Cartridges

Mario Paint, Nintendo’s weird but beloved image, animation and music creation tool from way back on the SNES, is an anomaly. As with the Gameboy Camera and everything else Nintendo makes that has creation as its purpose, so much love went into it! It has an interface with whimsical characters like the Save Robot and Undodog! There are jolly icons representing the musical notes in the music maker! You can play with the title screen! Totaka’s Song is hidden there! There are randomized startup and erase animations! There’s that fly swatting minigame! Homestar Runner wouldn’t have existed without Mario Paint! I could, and should, go on, but I should more get to the point.

The post needs some visual interest, and Mario Paint’s title screen contains more joy per square pixel than almost anything else in this life, so here!

The point is, Mario Paint was also pretty unsuited to its hardware. I mentioned recently the fact that the cartridge doesn’t actually have enough memory to save all of its data and tries to use data compression to make everything fit, which, due to the nature of compression, doesn’t always work. Also, Mario Paint came with the SNES mouse which it requires, packed in, raising its price and increasing it even more in the aftermarket. And, worst of all: you can only save one image to the cart at a time, and the official supported way to preserve your work, as the Brothers Chaps did with the Homestar Runner link above, is to record it using a VCR.

This sounds like the kind of thing the hacking community could solve, but a rapid Google search (I’m running out of time in making this post) doesn’t turn up anything, even though I’m sure this exists somewhere. Someone on hackaday.io says they’re working on a physical device that could rescue the image off of a Mario Paint cartridge, and would even have an LCD screen built into it so you could see a cart’s image saved onto it, which I’m sure would have blown a young Mark and Matt Chapman’s minds long ago. But the last update was in 2023.

Going the other way, putting outside images onto a Mario Paint save, is not only possible but there’s a tool to do it automatically, hosted, awesomely, on Neocities.

The homepage of AutoMP, which can put images into Mario Paint save data, but not currently get them out. With that good old-time web design aesthetic!

There’s speculation that Nintendo themselves might do something with Mario Paint and the Switch Online service on the Switch 2. The Joycons on that system can be used as mice! But given the direction Nintendo’s been going with Sw2 (“switwo”) it’d probably be a paid feature, and nothing’s even been hinted at yet so who the hell knows. But imagine support for exporting Mario Paint images to your SD card, or onto your smartphone?

Michael MJD Shows Off Nintendo Promotional Web Browsers

The Internet was really turning into a big thing in the early 2000s, and a lot of companies hopped onto it to hawk their products. Nintendo was a little more standoffish about it than Sega, remember that the Sega Dreamcast had a built-in dial-up modem, and came with a web browser disk, while the Gamecube had no online functionality without the LAN adapter.

Web browsers would come to Nintendo platforms with the DS and Wii, and there are hints that they had at least considered it with the Gamecube (we’ll look into that tomorrow). But Nintendo did release PC web browsers, in order to help hype their games among internet savvy kids.

Michael MJD examines the phenomenon in a 19-minute video, here:

The programs in question were produced by Media Browser, who tried to turn branding-soaked web browsers into a viable business model. Media Browser is long gone (they lasted just two years), but some parts of their website are preserved on the Wayback Machine. Customized browsers produced were themed after Mario Tennis, Paper Mario, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Pokémon and Nintendo Power (thought it’s more of a Banjo-Tooie theme).

After Media Browser went out of business, another company, Braun Communications, stepped in and made three more browsers, it seems using the same software Media Browser did, for Metroid Prime and two more Pokémon games.

Under the hood they’re all reskins of Internet Explorer 5.0, so Media Browser/Braun wasn’t actually distributing web browsers per se as fancy borders to put around the browser that was already on Windows users’ machines. It also meant that Mac and Linux users weren’t allowed to have a Legend of Zelda web browsing experience: Ganondorf wins again. These were all free browser skins, but some of them showed ads to you, so you were essentially installing an ad banner directly to your machine for no useful benefit. Bonzi Buddy, eat your heart out.

So! What is using Nintendo’s branded web browsing solutions like today? Well first, even if you dig up the version of Windows they support (Win 95-98-ME era), they demand to be registered before use, and that site is long dead, so it’ll require a registry hack to put them through their paces. All of these browsers still exist on the Internet Archive, as linked on the video’s description section. Here’s direct links to the pages: one, two, three, four. If you look through them you might find some extras, like screensavers of the different properties. Those should still work, right?

RGME Explains the Super Mario 2 Level Format

This one, I won’t lie to you, is pretty dry. It’s an hour and a half of the Retro Game Mechanics Explained narrator describing, in precise detail, how Super Mario Bros. 2 builds each of its rooms from a couple hundred-or-so bytes in the game’s ROM. It’s an hour and 39 minutes, actually:

Even I began to drift off a few times through this one. It is exhaustive, and exhausting, but it’s very thorough.

I won’t even try to explicate it all in text, but here’s a few interesting tidbits of information:

  • Super Mario Bros., the original, built its levels on the fly. As you scrolled forward, the engine read the upcoming data and constructed it up ahead, off screen, in real time, always keeping ahead of the screen’s edge. This is why you can’t scroll backwards, the list is designed to be read going left to right. SMB2 instead includes extra RAM in the cartridge and uses it as a memory buffer to hold the entire current room, up to 10 screens in size. When you enter an area, the game takes a moment to construct the map in that buffer, and copies it to the PPU’s video RAM as you scroll around.
  • Instead of with stored as-is tilemaps, SMB2’s, as well as basically all of Nintendo’s scrolling games at the time, are constructed, made out of tile objects with different locations and parameters attached to them. This saves a substantial amount of ROM space, and functions as a kind of bespoke data compression.
  • The rooms are built screen by screen, although it’s possible for some items to extend horizontally or vertically outside of its home screen.
  • The format makes it seem like vertical rooms were designed first, and horizontal scrolling areas were then added to that functionality.
  • There are weird special cases everywhere in the building code! Some objects only work on certain levels, or serve different purposes in different worlds.
  • Birdo’s color, and behavior, depends on its initial spawning X tile position. If it’s 10 she’ll be a pink Birdo; if it’s 11 she’ll be red, and all other values mean a grey Birdo will be generated.
  • On the enemy list, entity numbers 92-127 are the same as the entities numbered 64 less than them, but with the property that, when they are despawned, the level ends! This property is used for world-ending bosses, but any entity in that range will end the level when it leaves play, even Mushrooms if one such existed.
  • Crawgrip, the boss to World 5, was added to Super Mario Bros. 2 during its conversion from Doki Doki Panic. The decorative rock background objects in its boss arena are especially hacky, like they were hastily added.
  • The stars in the sky in the night levels have a bug in their generation that prevents any from appearing on the first screen of their areas. They also aren’t placed specifically, but using a pseudo-random generation algorithm that always uses the same seed, so they’ll always appear in the same places in the sky.

GVG: Wii Games That Used The Forecast Channel

Nintendo has a habit of, with each new console, throwing a bunch of features at the wall to see what’ll stick. Most things, let’s be frank, don’t.

Top of my head? The DS’s second screen? It worked for a while, but now seems pretty well an abandoned idea. The 3D features of the 3DS. StreetPass. AR games. Their brief experiments with free-to-play on the 3DS. The whole darn Virtual Boy. Need I go on?

One of these features was the idea of system-supported services that software could use to interact with the player outside of borders of their channel. Miis were the finest example of this, of course, and amazingly Nintendo hasn’t abandoned them yet, although ideas like Miis that could travel between systems on their own have been conveniently forgotten.

But on the Wii, there were a few less publicized things that games could do. Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel were known to send you messages on the system bulletin board to congratulate you on winning, or to give you hints of Stars to find.

About a year ago GVG did a recounting of Wii games that used, of all things, data from the Weather Forecast Channel. They pinned down nine pieces of software that did this. It’s a feature that Peter Molyneux notably abandoned when he directed Black & White (after announcing it), but Nintendo actually did it. Here is the video, which is a fairly padded 9½ minutes:

The title says nine games used it, but the channel only lists seven, and not all of them are even games! The software named:

  • Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (could be enabled in Options)
  • Nights: Journey Into Dreams (in the Nightopian garden)
  • My Aquarium and its sequel, WiiWare titles
  • Tiger Woods PGA Tour (enable in Options)
  • In Japan: Rilakkuma: Minna de Goyururi Seikatsu
  • WiiRoom, a Japan-only video-on-demand service

More Mario Kart World Fake Ads

I mentioned these a few days ago, but my favorite part of Mario Kart games these days is the in-universe ads for various Mario-themed automotive products. Whatever world these games are set in, it obviously doesn’t have to worry about global warming, because not only are there plenty of vehicular support companies there, but they’re all either themed or named after some aspect of Marioness. We’re not told literally anything about these companies other than what we can glean their promotional imagery plastered all over the place, but I presume that the Mario characters aren’t just spokespeople/things, but actually own and run them.

In Mario Kart 8, Super Bell Subway was an extravaganza of environmental world building, implying far more about the Mushroom Kingdom than we ever hoped to get, and Mario Kart World is like an extended version of that. As with most Mario games, the only elements that will carry over between games are the ones Nintendo thinks are sufficiently marketable, and even then they’re known to throw out characters that fall out of favor (R.I.P. Toadsworth). But we might consider these glimpses as one version of what every day life in the Super Mario World might be like.

Check out the Mario Wiki page for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Super Bell Subway, which has a complete list of the signage used in that track. It also mentions that most of that game’s tracks are mentioned on the route maps in that course, as if you could hop a train and go there. Maybe it gave Nintendo’s designers the idea to make Mario Kart World a single cohesive map?

Anyway, here’s some more track signage from this heavily car-dependent version of the Mushroom Kingdom.

“Put it down Donkey Kong. No. Don’t eat the car! Bad ape!”
A sign seen on a high building in Crown City. Maybe this refers to Rainbow Road?
A movie poster seen outside of Boo Cinema in Crown City. I guess Peach isn’t just royalty in Marioland, but a movie star too. Boo Cinema seems to be a chain. They’re open all day and all year, in case you want to watch a movie at four in the morning on Christmas Eve. It’s all good, the ghost staff doesn’t need to sleep.
This seems like it might be a direct reference to the poster of some real-world movie, but I don’t know which it is.
Large poster on what I think is the Koopa Construction building. The big tire refers to the big tire looming over Crown City, I think.
The Dash company uses a standard Mushroom item as its logo.
“We Build Your Homes. We Build Your Towns. We Build Your Dreams. Koopa Construction.” Is it just me, or does that sound a bit sinister?
Why would penguins, who don’t need to sled, start a sled company?
Sorry for the poor quality, these are snipped from the Nintendo Direct video, and blown up really far too. Is that Peach’s crown?
Foo? Foo?? A Smokey Stover reference in this day, age and country of origin? I also don’t know what a Batadon is, but from the logo I think it’s a flying Easter Island head.
I’m sure there’s a good explanation for why the cosmic princess who travels the stars started a Greyhound competitor.
They added these signs to Toad’s Factory after the incident last month. That poor toad, maimed for life.

And, unrelated, under characters there’s this person:

Um, who in the name of the Question Block of Doom is that supposed to be?

Behind The Code Examines the Mario 3 Revision

Displaced Gamers and their various technical dives, including the Behind the Code series, are favorites around here, and we’ve linked to them many times before. They take a lot of time with their content, but they always do a good job, much better than the average Youtube channel of whatever type, and it’s always something interesting to learn about. They have a new video up now (22 minutes) that examines the differences between the original and revised versions of Super Mario Bros 3, released a few months apart back in 1990.

Most of the differences were superficial: they changed the cover art slightly and added a ® symbol replacing a ™ on the Official Nintendo Seal. On the rom itself, they changed the names of the lands in the ending, from a flavorful set of localized names to just Adjective Land eight times in a row.

But there were other changes, and one of them was a substantial difference in the code, one that required moving much of it around by seven bytes to make room for it.

What was it? In brief, there’s one level in the game, 7-3, that uses a vertical-only scroll instead of a horizontal or multi-directional scroll, and it writes the images of the cards in the status window to the wrong place. So in the original release, on that one level, the card images are mysteriously blank during the vertical section.

That was fixed in the revision, which meant a check for what kind of scroll the level was using, and which changed the pointer to where to write them. Code needs space, and that space came out of a section of unused bytes at the end of the rom, with all the code between the change and that section shifted to account for it. If you had a Game Genie code that relied on data in those memory locations, too bad! You’ll need a modified version of that code.

Here’s the full low-down, which goes into much greater detail:

Romhack Thursday: Mario Adventure 2

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

Another romhack! There’s lots of hacks and it’s not always easy to find one I consider notable enough to present. This week’s definitely has technical skill on its side.

Mario Adventure 2 might sound like a successor to Mario Adventure, a 2001 hack of Super Mario Bros. 3 that remakes it into an almost entirely different game. That would be great, but that’s not what this is. (And neither, I think, are related to this Mario Adventure 2.)

Mario Adventure 2 gets its name from Sonic Adventure 2. It’s a port of that game’s levels, fairly closely, into the Mario 64 engine, with some chances to Mario’s handling to accommodate 3D Mario and 3D Sonic (and his 3D friends) differences. That’s a pretty tall order!

The hack is not complete (its creators call it a demo), but unlike many WIP hacks that modify a level or two and then remain in limbo forever, Mario Adventure 2 has already converted around half the levels, the whole “Hero Side” story, starring Sonic, Knuckles and Tails. The “Dark Side” story, centering around Shadow, Rogue and Dr. Eggman, is not yet ported, but even if nothing is ever released from that, there’s a great deal to play.

Now if you know anything about these two games, your curiosity is probably piqued, not so much by how the levels from Sonic Adventure 2 were made completable by Mario, but how Mario 64’s engine could handle them at all. Sonic Adventure 2 is a Dreamcast game, but Mario 64 was made for the Nintendo 64! And it doesn’t pull emulator tricks to make them work: the game works on actual N64 hardware!

I don’t know for sure, but it seems like the game splits Sonic Adventure 2’s large levels into sections, that are loaded in as separate maps. And while the main sections of SA2’s maps are rendered in full, the many areas off the main route, that can’t be entered, are missing a lot of polygons (one of my screenshots shows this).

Replacing the emblem goals in SA2, Stars have been placed throughout each levels. The levels have far more than Mario 64’s eight Stars each, and the early levels, at least, have at least 25 of them. Some short sections of map have three stars to collect, visible at once. The remakes of Knuckle’s stages, which I remind you are non-linear and exploreable, are dense with them. Collecting a Star doesn’t kick you out of the level either, so it’s possible, though difficult, to get all the Stars in one go.

Mario 64’s engine has been changed to remove fall damage, and to allow for grinding on rails, which you’ll remember was a pretty big selling point of SA2. It hasn’t been changed to allow for rolling up steep slopes though, and Sonic’s loops had to be cheated in various ways, although you’ll also remember, I’m sure, that SA2 did some cheating of its own. Mario Adventure 2’s handling of them is probably a little less janky.

Those who’ve played Sonic Adventure 2 will remember a considerable amount of jank, and its Mario-focused counterpart reflects that. The first level, City Escape, is one of the most janky, with invisible walls blocking side-streets, and even some places that you’d assume could be passed. It’s still playable, for the most part, but there are a couple of places in Tails’ first level, Prison Lane, that rely on specific jumps to get through. Tails’ levels involved shooting enemies to open gates to progress. That aspect has been kept in Mario Adventure 2, but Mario doesn’t have missiles, sometimes the enemies are difficult to reach, and you’ll have to find an alternate way through. You’ll get stuck near the beginning of the third level unless you take advantage of a lifting platform to make a jump that doesn’t quite look possible.

If those sticking points can be fixed, then this could easily become a romhack for the ages. Let’s hope that its makers can get enough playtesters to find them all, and have enough energy to fix them. Until then it’s worth a try, but you might want to refer to a video that plays through Level 3 (like this one, two hours long) to find a way across that gap without killing all the bats.

Mario Adventure 2 Demo — requires Parallel Launcher and a Super Mario 64 rom image to play

Nintendo Direct 4/2/2025: The Switch 2

Nintendo’s last direct was just a few days ago, and now they have another one, one devoted to their next console, the Switch 2, and /wow/, the internet consensus on it seems pretty harsh. It’s coming out June 8th, and it’ll cost $449 dollars in the US. I mean sure, the awful tariffs of a certain Orange Person may play a role in that, but it’ll also sell for about that amount in the much-less-stupid European Union. It’s an unexpected move, considering that the Switch line is widely seen as underpowered compared to its competition. I personally am scheming and trying to figure out how to fit it into my finances when it arrives in just two months, on June 5th.

But I’m putting the commentary up front, instead of where it belongs, as part of an in-sequence point-by-point reaction to the video. But about those….

Set Side B updates every day at 10 AM US Eastern Time. I like that the site updates in the morning, but not too early, to give people a chance to come to it throughout the day. But this poses a problem with responding to Nintendo Directs, which tend to appear at nearly the least opportune time, right when the blog updates.

We could change our posting time when Directs hit, and may end up doing that. But honestly, up-to-the-minute commentary that tries to get in ahead of other sites isn’t our forte. That’s the kind of thing tryhard sites, who can afford a whole team of writers, SEO, and flashy sports cars for their upper management, would do. We’re a tiny three-person operation, and I rather think that’s some of our charm.

Because of this, instead of responding to everything in the video, or even trying to, here’s just my comments on certain highlights.

So, here is that video (1 hour):

There’s also an Ask The Developer article on Nintendo’s website with more information.

The first game up is

Mario Kart World

Right off the bat, it’s never been more obvious than in Mario’s initial “Lets-a go!” that Charles Martinet’s time as Mario’s voice is over.

I have quite a lot, the most of the whole show, to say about this game, but it’s of an aspect of it that few remark upon or even care about. I’m going to save all of that for tomorrow, in fact, since it’s way off the subject. Please look forward to it. (bows)

In the meantime, features include free roaming, “knockout races,” cross country races and up to 24 karts in a race. More details… argh… in yet another Nintendo Direct, on the 17th.

Presenters this time out: Kouichi Kawamoto (Producer), Takuhiro Dohta (Director) and Tetsuya Sasaki, Hardware Design Lead. Nice to see people who actually worked on the system!

Hardware Features

  • GameChat, activated by the new C Button, for voice communication between players, and with optional game screen sharing
  • Camera accessory for facetime-style chatting (didn’t we have that back on the Wii-U? but this works during games)
  • GameChat requires a Switch Online membership, but will be free unti March 31 2026.
  • Local Multiplayer with only one copy of a game. Clubhouse Games is used as an example; it’s really a feature that it should have shipped with, IMO, but better late than never.
  • Larger screen, 1080p support on built-in screen
  • 4K resolution when docked, up to 120fps
  • HDR support
  • magnetic Joy Cons (we knew that)
  • Joy Cons can be used as mice (that too)
  • built-in adjustable stand (and that)
  • an extra USB C port
  • 256GB built-in storage
  • fan built in to the dock

Interestingly, Switch backward compatibility is only supported with “compatible” games, implying some games aren’t compatible.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour

A game made specifically to show off the system features. The internet has been complaining greatly about the fact they’re charging for it, when it serves little purpose other than to show off the hardware.

Other Notes

Switch 2 uses the same shape of cards as Switch 1 games, but support faster data transfer.

Of special note, Switch 2 only works with Micro SD Express cards. This means current cards will very likely not work with the system, regardless of their capacity! This is going to bite lots of people, count on it. You may not even be able to get non-Nintendo branded SD Express cards for a while, and you can bet they’ll be charged at a premium. Pretty damn crappy, Nintendo.

There’s a new Pro Controller with extra buttons. No info on if Switch 1 Pro Controllers will work. My guess is they will (Nintendo has gotten better about controller compatibility in recent years), but of course they won’t have the new features like C button, and new programmable GL and GR buttons.

Paid Upgrades

A paid upgrade to Super Mario Party Jamboree that offers new features. The business with paid upgrades will become a theme throughout the show.

Zelda Notes is a Switch 2 specific feature in upgraded versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It works in conjunction with the smartphone Switch App to mark locations of interest in the game, and lets you share your TotK constructions via QR code. Interesting, but it doesn’t seem like a feature that needs Switch 2 hardware to support it?

Kirby in the Forgotten Land gets an upgrade that adds a second story, which seems like a more suitable use for a paid feature.

Metroid Prime 4 and Pokemon Legends Z-A are both getting Switch and Switch 2 editions. This would seem to imply that Nintendo suspects the Switch 2 won’t see tremendous uptake immediately, and are hedging their bets.

Upgraded Switch 2 versions of prior-owned Switch games are being sold as “Upgrade Packs.” The end of an era: at long last, Nintendo has abandoned the “Pak” spelling.

Other Games

DRAGxDRIVE: A mouse-controlled wheelchair-based basketball game with stunts. A cool idea honestly! May end up being the ARMS of the Switch 2, which isn’t a bad thing, I think.

I’m going to skip commenting on some of these, I’ll just list them out: Elden Ring Tarnished Edition, Hades 2, Street Fighter 6, with Switch 2 exclusive modes, Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, Split Fiction, Hogwarts Legacy.

EA Sports, the company I most love to hate, is also releasing games on Switch 2

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is a remake of two classic skateboarding games. I observe that skateboarding video games have, over the years, evolved into something that’s not really a lot like real-world skateboarding? They’re more like exploratory games with tricks added in and a coat of “hellow fellow kids” paint? Boarders don’t seem to be affected by realistic gravity, and regularly grind on services that no physical being could rightly grind upon. Anyway, near the end there’s a “A Few Moments Later” card stolen directly from Spongebob Squarepants, and the copyright notices for the game mention Spongebob, so I guess he’s making a Shrek-like appearance.

Hitman: World of Assassination: Signature Edition, now with added James Bond, Bravely Default, Yakuza 0: Director’s Cut.

Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment again asks us to imagine an alternate universe where you can make the events of a game we’ve already played not happen, or at least I presume it will. It looks like Zelda may be the main character this time; it takes place in the past she time traveled to in TotK, so Link might not even be in it.

Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack on Switch 2 to get Gamecube games: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Soulcalubur II (the one with Link in it) and F-Zero GX (the really really hard one Amusement Vision made, during the fifteen seconds during which they bubbled up from the surface of Sega). Others promised for future: Super Mario Sunshine, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Super Mario Strikers, Chibi-Robo, Luigi’s Mansion, Pokémon Colosseum. They also promise a Gamecube-styled wireless controller. Isn’t that properly called a Wavebird? We don’t know if the Smash Bros GC adapter will work with it yet.

Deltarune Chapters 1-4: A predictably silly trailer, but that’s why we love Toby Fox. To be available on launch day! To some, this will be the biggest announcement in the show, and I’ll admit I’m looking forward to it.

Borderlands 4, Civilization VII (Offers a paid upgrade from the Switch version, but it’s to get mouse controls, argh!), WWE 2K & NBA 2K, Survival Kids, Enter The Gungeon 2, Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (keep milkin’ that cash cow, Squeenix), Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, Goodnight Universe, Two Point Museum, Wild Hearts S, Witchbrook, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S, (inhale).

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Marvel Comic Invasion, Star Wars Outlaws, Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Complete Edition, Fast Fusion, Shadow Labyrinth (yep, the grimdark Pac-Man reboot), RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, No Sleep For Kaname Date — From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, REANIMAL, Fortnite (were you expecting it not?), Arcade Archives 2 Ridge Racer, Professor Layton and The New World of Steam, Tamagotchi Plaza, Human Fall Flat 2, The Duskbloods (From Software)

And my favorite part of the whole show even though we learned very very little about it besides that it releases this year:

KIRBY AIR RIDERS, directed by Masahiro Sakurai

Kirby Air Ride might be the most underrated game on the Gamecube, for while it doesn’t offer a Grand Prix or other campaign mode like nearly every other racing game, it does have City Trial, one of the best multiplayer experiences on the Gamecube. If you attended DragonCon in 2023 and went to one of their Gamecube nights, you might well have seen me playing Air Ride there! If all Air Riders offers is a greatly upgraded City Trial, perhaps with more than one city to explore, then it’ll be well worth the purchase price, and Sakurai is smart enough to recognize its greatness so I think we’re in good hands.

The last game was Donkey Kong Bananza. A new 3D DK title with destructable terrain. It also uses the updated Donkey Kong design, but it really works here, Donks shows a lot more personality and expressiveness here than he has since before DKC.