There are more reviews and big pieces in progress but I don’t do well in this heat so apologies in advance…
Why Mario Sunshine is the greatest Mario game for playing in this never-ending heat wave
Mario sunshine is just the best isn’t it? From the opening hub to the closing stages it’s full of charming quirks and just so much water and liquid that you could easily let your mind wander and feel like a cooling breeze has floated past your dried out husk of a brain. Firing back up the Wii while connecting to the TV on component cables to play this gem just feels satisfactorily up-scaled enough to be playable. What better way to cool off than spraying coloured muck with ice-cold refreshing water? Especially as this heat just dries up any thought about newer Mario titles and causes each passing second to be dragged into days. Given Nintendo are now openly suing Rom sites I recon this is the heads up you need for a massive influx of Sunshine merchandise and a HD port of the game to 3DS and Switch. Speaking of the Switch…
Why the Nintendo Switch is the best console I don’t own
I’ve owned a lot of consoles and typically they’ve been bought when they can either be afforded or necessity to play a specific title. I don’t own a Sega Saturn but I did once before so that removes it from this title in the sort of twisted logic that makes sense when walking through the sun for an ice cream. Unfortunately for Nintendo I own a ‘new’ 3DSXL and WiiU so the justification for a portable console to play Nintendo games or a home console for the same is negated (hell almost every smash hit on Switch is a WiiU title!). That hasn’t stopped me craving to play indie titles on more than the PSVita though and the recent release of Taiko no Tatsujin has me the closest I’ve been yet to purchase so far.
Why Taiko no Tatsujin is a system seller
Cast your mind back to 2002, the GBA is going strong and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the talk of the town. Naruto was the biggest anime series around (although I’ve always preferred Get Backers myself) and everyone was busy cosplaying as a hidden ninja at every convention centre around. Everyone was going mad for it (likely because there wasn’t much else out rather than it actually being that good) and we had a few games for the PS2 to go on. Still the reason to bring up Naruto was that a lot of people really got into its soundtrack. The traditional Japanese drums and loud ‘huh’ and ‘hah’ mixed in with guitar and panpipes really struck a chord with people and pretty much launched Asian Kung Fu Generation in the rest of the world (I bet you remember Haruka Kanata). Take a pause until 2004 and enter Taiko and the drum phenomena slowly porting across the seas from its arcade origins. It still baffles me why the most fun with a PSP to this day is Taiko no Tatsujin: Portable DX a game that only uses four buttons.
Why controls need less buttons and more mapping
Ever seen the Pokken tournament controller? What a mess visually. Yet it handles brilliantly. Simple easy button placement and a decent Dpad. It’s one reason why the GameCube controller is still compatible with latest smash (aside from the obsessive compulsion of retro games to reclaim youth) if isn’t broke, why fix it? Granted that c-stick is the worst but for a few changes this can be easily improved. A big singular button for most actions, small buttons for the rest, easily understood by the shape and feel rather than only looks and placement. Modern games are so entrenched we’re stuck with 4 buttons and even the new/old Atari controller looks like an XboxOne controller with new buttons. It always leads to lazy design of controls and we end up with running in a third person game being mapped to L3 when you’ve 8 other buttons on any standard controller. So basically make the GameCube controller standard for all our sakes (even if it is trash and I prefer a PS4 controller) because we don’t know what’s good for us.
Playing Minecraft is a lot more soothing on Easy Mode and that’s OK
ID make some phenomenal games and Bethesda are doing a cracking job of publishing them, it’s just a shame they still subscribe to the ‘easy mode is for losers’ ethos. Give me my fun in a package I can enjoy, if I wanted someone to poke fun at me for struggling I’d go online with Fornite. Easy mode keeps getting a hard rap in communities but it’s not deserved, inclusion is not an illusion, the more people playing your favourite difficult game the more perspectives and new ideas for spin offs, not to mention various fan art and all the benefits this sort of press can give a developer. That being said, Minecraft is so much more relaxing and more chilled out than this heat and sweaty weather when you just dial back the difficulty. Less tense melting into a chair as you worry that maybe the hiss you hear is a creeper and more likely to be another player happily trimming the grass and so chilled out they don’t even notice how hot it is.
Why Mario Sunshine is the greatest Mario game for playing in this never-ending heat wave
The never-ending heat that just keeps looping around and around and just when you see a cloud in the sky it’s another week of sweat and need for ice. We already know that Mario Sunshine is the best game for this heat. That GameCube controller works so well with this but do you know what’s better? A PS4 controller. Tweak the game to run in high-definition using a YouTube and little thought process. Get yourself a PC running the impressive dolphin emulator, mess about with button mapping and voila. Yes galaxy one and two were just amazing games and yes I’m sure Odyssey is the best Mario since 3 but given the heat, humidity and state of the world today. Just pop in the game and have a soak in its cooling waters. Maybe you’ll even forget this page was ever here.
…There are more reviews and big pieces in progress but I don’t do well in this heat so sorry after all!
ElderlyGoose 
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