Peekystar

The Nintendo Network service, that handled online play for the vast majority of 3DS and Wii U games, Splatoon included, was shut down on the 8th of April. So yes, the official servers for Splatoon are dead.

In light of the imminent shutdown of the 3DS and Wii U's online services, I've been revisiting Kirby Battle Royale and Mario Tennis Open over the last few days - as relatively obscure spinoffs with regional matchmaking on a decade-old system, it's been nigh impossible to find an online match in them for years, but with the shutdown causing people to revisit these old titles one last time, it's actually been possible to find matches again, and it's been pretty darn fun.

Been revisiting an old favourite of mine from the Wii lately, Boom Blox Bash Party, a chaotic physics-based puzzle game that I reckon still holds up really well. Since the game has several hundred levels in groups you're free to tackle in any order*, I simply resumed one of my old save files and took on levels in the sets I didn't finish in that old save file, which if the file select completion percentage is to be believed, is still around half the game. I've even been dual-wielding Wii Remotes to take on some of the co-op levels.

There isn't a consistent answer here, since it varies wildly from game to game. Most games with online play will have some way to interact with friends, most often with private lobbies that only your friends can join or the ability to join a friend in an existing public lobby, but one thing that's consistent throughout almost all games is that you can't send out a call to friends to join you; If you want to deliberately organise some gameplay with your friends, you'll almost certainly need some alternate communication method, since Nintendo doesn't offer any.

I doubt there's any technical reason for it, especially given that you can change your username at any time and other online services allow for longer usernames. I guess Nintendo just think that 10 characters is a reasonable cap for usernames.

I'd say the most interested I am in any upcoming game right now is probably Antonblast, a Wario Land-inspired platformer slated to release at some point this year. Was first introduced to its earliest demo by someone building a Smash Ultimate custom stage inspired by said demo, and have kept the game on my radar since then.

I seem to have reverted to my historic default of games I regularly play; Smash Ultimate, Mario Kart 8, and a rougelike. In the past, said rougelike was always Dead Cells, since it was essentially the only one in my library, but since mid-2023, I've started seriously using Steam, and through it started playing other rougelikes. Right now, my rougelike of choice is Spiritfall, which mixes platform fighter gameplay with the rougelike structure, which given my historic attachment to Smash and other rougelikes, makes it a game I was pretty much guaranteed to enjoy.

Nope; pretty sure that the Nintendo Selects are just discounted physical releases with a fancy border on their front-facing box art, historically done for some of the best-selling titles on the given console (thus far seen on the Wii, 3DS and Wii U).

Much the same as last week for me. Beat Mario Wonder's final boss; it, and especially the levels preceding it, were absolutely fantastic in my eyes. Also tackled said final boss with the Jet Run badge equipped, because that's totally a good idea. Just need to sweep the game for collectables and levels I missed now, including every regular desert level in the desert world. Bit odd that they introduce the sand mechanic in the world's Poplin House, only for all the levels using it to be optional.

Started the Triple Deluxe replay I was thinking about as well; thus far, I've bested the first world, affirmed I'm still terrible at the Dedede's Drum Dash subgame, and had a very stupid (and very impossible) idea about trying to beat the game without the B button. Whilst you can damage all enemies with the Beetle ability's hover (heck, I defeated the first boss doing just that), it's a rather difficult strategy to execute, and Hypernova exists, which would dramatically inflate the B button presses every time it appears. Might be more feasible in Planet Robobot, though.

I got my hands on Super Mario Bros. Wonder on Wednesday, going in pretty much blind, and have been having great fun with it so far. I especially like the options you're given to play with, whether that's the easy mode characters of Nabbit and the Yoshis, the badges to augment your movement options with, the expert badges to actively hinder yourself with, or putting the talking flowers in German for no good reason. Only real criticism I've got of the game thus far is that worlds ending without bosses feels anticlimactic - I get that people didn't like how samey and/or easy most of the boss fights were in the New Super Mario Bros. games, but in my eyes, it's definitely a more climactic closure to a world to crush Koopaling #5, even if the boss fight is very easy, than to just be given the Big Wonder Seed in a house.

Once I'm done with Wonder, or possibly before, I might replay Kirby Triple Deluxe. I've been doing a few 3DS replays lately with New Super Mario Bros. 2 (beat all the levels and got all the star coins) and A Link Between Worlds (reached Lorule and felled the Theives' Hideout; haven't touched it since), and the mood has struck me to play Triple Deluxe again recently. Whether I actually act on this thought, we will see.

A certain NES title that spawned a long-running franchise and half the genre's name.

Curiously not the first time a classic novel in public domain received a sequel in the form of a Metroidvania videogame.