The Nintendo Switch Is (Almost) Three Years Old – NVC 496

Welcoooome to Nintendo Voice Chat! This week, Casey DeFreitas is joined by Peer Schneider, Brian Altano, and Tom Marks to talk about all things Nintendo. First up, the Nintendo Switch is almost three years old, and the panel reflects on the system’s launch, some of Nintendo’s wacky experiments on Switch, and their biggest surprises and disappointments so far.

Then, in the news, hear about Platinum’s recently announced project, a new Samurai Jack game headed to Switch, details from the Yacht Club Games livestream, and a whole lot more. Finally, hear another round of questions on this week’s Question Block.

Timecodes!

  • 00:00:00 Welcome!
  • 00:02:16 Reflecting on the first three years of Nintendo Switch
  • 00:24:00 News time! Yacht Club Games, Platinum, and more
  • 00:31:20 Games out this week
  • 00:42:10 What we’re playing
  • 00:51:24 Question Block!

 

From now on, we’ll share the list of games discussed in the episode right here in the episode description! That includes games out this week, and what the panel is playing.

Games out this week:

What we’re playing:

  • Casey: Rune Factory 4 Special
  • Peer: Fire Emblem: Three Houses DLC, Darksiders: Genesis, Broken Lines
  • Brian: Voxelgram, Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl
  • Tom: Something he can’t talk about…

 

Finally, NVC shirts and sweatshirts are now available at the IGN Store! Use the code nvc10 to get 10% off your purchase of NVC clothes. Multiple styles and colors are available.

NVC is available on your preferred platform!

You can also Download NVC 496 Directly Here

You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.

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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.

Jungle Cruise Boat Sinks at Disney World

The Jungle Cruise tour at Disney World can get a little wet, but for some passengers today, it went underwater.

Unlucky passengers earlier today at Disney World in Orlando clung to their boat as it began taking on water. A few guests tweeted about the boat sinking as it was happening.

Disney confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it immediately called the Reedy Creek Fire Department to help passengers. The boat was then towed away after everyone was safely evacuated.

The sunken boat only interrupted the attraction for 105 minutes according to an unofficial Twitter account. Despite the incident, the Jungle Cruise ride reopened for guests looking to get right back into the water.

If you’re worried about your Jungle Cruise trip going a similar route, watch the upcoming movie instead. The trailer below provides a look at the movie coming on July 24, 2020, casting actors Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, among others.

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Take a look at our 2020 movie box office predictions and see our estimate for the Jungle Cruise movie.

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Jeffrey Lerman is a Freelance News Writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @Snakester95.

Header Image Credit: WDW News Today

The Mandalorian Season 2: James Mangold, Robert Rodriguez to Direct Parts, Bryce Dallas to Return

James Mangold and Robert Rodriguez will reportedly direct parts of Season 2 of The Mandalorian alongside Bryce Dallas Howard, who is returning to the series after directing an episode in season 1.

Black Series Rebels (via StarWarsNewsNet) report that both Mangold and Rodriguez have contributed in the directorial effort of Season 2 of the hit Disney Plus show. Whether this means episodes or just sequences of scenes is currently unconfirmed, although Black Series Rebel seems to think the latter. We also don’t know if Mangold and Rodriguez’s names are attached together because they helmed an episode or sequence together or separately.

Season 1 of The Mandalorian had different directors direct different episodes, so having multiple director names attached to the season is not surprising. We’ll likely learn more info closer to the release of Season 2 this October when it drops on Disney Plus.

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Black Series Rebels also shared that Howard is returning to direct an episode. Howard previously directed Episode 4: Sanctuary on Season 1 of The Mandalorian last year. We thought that episode was good, giving it a 7.5 out of 10.

Rodriguez’s latest directorial credit came by way of Alita: Battle Angel, although he’s known for other movies like Sin City and its sequel, the Spy Kids movies and From Dusk Till Dawn. Mangold directed Logan in 2017 and his latest movie, Ford v Ferrari, just won some awards at the Oscars.

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We’re excited for The Mandalorian Season 2 because it means more Baby Yoda, and because we thought the first season was great. We also can’t wait to find out what happens next after that ending.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN who is excited to see Baby Yoda on his tv screen once more. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

 

Shovel Knight Artist Is “Sure” That A Direct Sequel Will Happen Eventually

The original Shovel Knight saga from Yacht Club Games wrapped up in 2019 with Shovel Knight: King of Cards, the game’s final expansion. Two spin-offs have been planned, with Shovel Knight Dig and Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon both in the works, but fans might be curious about whether a direct sequel will ever follow.

Shovel Knight 2 has not been announced or confirmed, but a member of the game’s development team believes it will happen. Speaking to Dualshockers, Yacht Club Games artist Sandy Gordon says that we have definitely not “seen the end of Shovel Knight.”

Asked whether this means there will be a sequel, he says that he is “sure that’ll happen at some point: it’s something we talk about a lot.”

Gordon also says that the studio is looking forward to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, although they’re not ready to discuss any games they might be working on for these systems.

Shovel Knight sold exceptionally well on Switch, and considering the studio’s retro focus, it’s likely that the studio would want to continue working on games for Nintendo’s portable system.

Yacht Club Games is working on an entirely new game now, the retro-style action game Cyber Shadow. A release date has not been confirmed for the title.

Now Playing: The First 3 Stages Of Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon

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Baldur’s Gate III Devs Open Up About Stadia Exclusivity, Suggest Game Wouldn’t Run On PS4/Xbox One

Baldur’s Gate III has been unveiled, featuring a turn-based combat system and some powerful cinematics. Now, with the game being shown at PAX East, more information is coming to light about the game as outlets talk to the creative forces behind it. One that that has come up a few times is the fact that the game is skipping PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but will be available for Google Stadia.

Talking to Eurogamer, design producer David Walgrave says that he isn’t convinced the game would run efficiently on the other consoles. “I don’t think that current-gen consoles would be able to run it,” Walgrave says. “There’s a lot of technical upgrades and updates that we did to our engine, and I don’t know if it would be capable of being able to actually run on those things.”

He concedes that it might work if they tweaked the textures, but “It wouldn’t look as cool anymore.” He also says that the game will come to PC and Stadia simultaneously in early access; although Stadia does not have an official term for Early Access as of yet, he says that it will largely be the same as it is on PC.

Meanwhile, speaking to USGamer, Walgrave has spoken further on working with the Stadia platform. “We know where they’re going, we know what to implement with their API, so we just implement that,” he told the site. He says that the team “follow(s) the news” and is aware that not everyone loves the system, but that’s okay–“”We also think that there are certain features that we’re building thanks to Stadia.”

For more on the game, check out GameSpot’s own interview with Larian creative director Swen Wincke about how the game will continue on the series’ legacy.

Now Playing: We Saw Two Hours Of Baldur’s Gate 3, And It Was A Lot

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Nintendo Switch Eshop Releases Feb 28-March 6: Pokemon, Metro, And More

As February ends and March begins, a whole bunch of new games are hitting the Nintendo Switch Eshop.

A total of 15 games will be released on February 28 alone, including Metro 2033 Redux and Metro: Last Light Redux, marking the end of February 2020 with a bang for the Nintendo Switch releases. March on the other hand is starting off with just a handful of games, 13 more games will follow over the week, making for a whopping total of 28.

In addition to the Metro games, Friday’s releases include the wild west action title Bloodroots; multiplayer arcades LocO-SportS and STAB STAB STAB!; 3D bullet hell Profane; and classic run and gun platformer Bucket Knight.

Bloodroots on the Nintendo Switch.
Bloodroots on the Nintendo Switch.

Finally, March 6 sees the much anticipated Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, a remake of the DS/Game Boy Advance original, release on Eshop and as a physical edition The demo is still currently available to play on the EShop, with your progress from the demo able to be carried over once the full edition has released.

You can find the full list of releases for this week below. The week after is going to be a quiet one in the lead up to the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom 64.

This Week’s New Nintendo Switch Releases

February 28

  • BE-A Walker
  • Bucket Knight
  • Blood Roots
  • Depixtion
  • Frozen Friends
  • Ganbare! Super Strikers
  • Grizzland
  • LocO-SportS
  • Metro 2033 Redux
  • Metro: Last Light Redux
  • Profane
  • Ski Sniper
  • Skull Rogue
  • Spartan Fist
  • STAB STAB STAB!

March 2

  • AvoCuddle
  • The Story Goes On

March 4

  • Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly
  • I am Ball
  • Lost Horizon

March 5

  • Murder By Numbers
  • Dude, Stop
  • Unlock The King
  • Wunderling
  • Kairobotica
  • Ibb & obb

March 6

  • Save Koch
  • Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
  • Breeder Homegrown: Director’s Cut

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened has not yet been given an official release date, the Nintendo Eshop still only has February 2020 for the release.

Now Playing: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX – Nintendo Switch Announcement Trailer

Crossy Road Castle Is Out Now On Apple Arcade

Australian developer Hipster Whale created the mobile juggernaut endless-Frogger game Crossy Road, and it was a smash hit with 250 million downloads since its release in 2014.

A sequel of sorts, Crossy Road Castle, is launching this week through the Apple Arcade subscription service. Like the original, Castle is an endless running game, but this time you’re making your way through and up towers full of “chaotic arcade fun.” The levels are procedurally generated, which means they’ll be different each time you play.

The game supports solo and multiplayer, and it also features both touch and console controller inputs. Check out the trailer below to see Crossy Road Castle in action.

Crossy Road Castle is rolling out now on iOS through the Apple Arcade subscription service. The service costs $5 USD per month, and provides you with access to a growing library of games. Some of the other titles in the catalog include Sonic Racing, Rayman Mini, Lego Brawls, What the Golf, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Grindstone, among others.

For more on Apple Arcade, check out GameSpot’s rundown of the best games on Apple Arcade.

Now Playing: Apple – Introducing Apple Arcade Trailer

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PUBG Developer Addresses Ongoing Issues And What They’re Doing About Them

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is going strong, recently beginning its sixth season of content and adding a new team deathmatch mode, but there are also ongoing issues with the game that have sparked concerns for some players. The developers have taken to the game’s website to discuss some of these issues, and explain what they’re doing to improve matters for players.

The post opens with a brief statement on cheaters, and how dealing with them is a high priority. “We’re utilizing multiple internal teams and external resources to find new solutions for this problem. We’ll be sharing more information regarding these efforts in our upcoming Community Letter and 2020 Roadmap post in early March.”

One major issue for players has been the game’s performance, with FPS stuttering, freezing, and crashing issues making the game harder to compete in. These problems have increased since January, and the team is “conducting ongoing multi-faceted tests and analysis in an attempt to identify and resolve the issues causing this performance loss and causing game crashes.”

Because some of these crashes have been hard to reproduce, or may be specific to hardware, it’s been difficult. Thankfully, many players have sent in replay data to help the team identify issues. The developers encourage players to share issues they face through the game’s support page.

PUBG has also been the victim of multiple distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and the team is working on defense solutions for this. “The good news is, our recently developed internal solution has reduced the impact of DDoS attacks by nearly 85%,” the post reads. “This is and will remain an ongoing issue, but our dev team will also continue to work on and implement additional measures to mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks when they occur.”

The post also acknowledges that some players have had matchmaking issues with Team Deathmatch, but that these have largely been resolved through a hotfix, so players should no longer face long wait times and uneven teams. Custom match presets have also been restored after recent updates broke them for some players.

“We understand there are many other high-priority issues impacting gameplay,” the post concludes. “One of our primary goals this year is to be more transparent with what we’re working on, so we wanted to get this letter out to you to address some of the more notable issues we’ve faced recently.”

PUBG remains very popular, especially its mobile version. Unfortunately, PUBG Corporation recently dropped out of GDC 2020 due to concerns sparked by the coronavirus.

Now Playing: The Most Influential Games Of The 21 Century Video: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

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Netflix’s Altered Carbon Season 2: All The Season 1 Story And Characters To Remember

There are a whole bunch of other people floating around in Altered Carbon Season 1, who play integral but sometimes confusing roles in the plot.

Laurens Bancroft: The super-rich Meth who makes a deal to get Takeshi out of cold storage to enlist him in solving Bancroft’s murder. Bancroft was so rich that he not only can afford clones of his original body to resleeve his stack into, he has a dedicated satellite in orbit, which holds a backup copy of his consciousness–so even if his stack is destroyed, he can live on. Just before the start of Season 1, Bancroft’s sleeve was murdered and his stack destroyed. When he redownloaded from his satellite, he set about trying to figure out who killed him. (There are a lot of suspects, including his extremely crappy family.) Turns out that Bancroft killed himself, though, after committing a murder and being blackmailed by Rei. He destroyed his own stack out of shame, minutes before his scheduled backup, so that when his consciousness was downloaded again from the satellite, he wouldn’t remember what he’d done.

Vernon: Tak found Vernon by investigating death threats against Bancroft, who blamed Bancroft for his daughter Lizzie being beaten and driven to madness. When Tak confronts and interrogates him, he makes Vernon an ally by helping him try to treat Lizzie’s psychological problems, with Poe’s assistance. Vernon becomes an ally of Tak’s and helps him in his fight to solve Bancroft’s murder and take down Rei.

Lizzie: Vernon’s daughter Lizzie was a sex worker who was visited by Laurens Bancroft, and eventually got pregnant by him. When she went to his house to tell him about it, Lizzie was confronted by Bancroft’s wife, Miriam, who feared the threat of an illegitimate Bancroft child and nearly killed Lizzie. Miriam enlisted Rei to have Lizzie driven insane with virtual reality torture, fragmenting her mind. Vernon kept Lizzie in VR to protect her, and Tak and Poe worked to help Lizzie recover. When she did, Tak learned about what had happened, revealing another piece of the puzzle regarding Bancroft’s murder and Rei’s involvement.

Ortega: A police officer who worked with Tak on Bancroft’s murder, and was in love with the man who owned the body Tak inhabits in Season 1. She was the officer originally assigned to Bancroft’s murder, but ruled it a suicide against Bancroft’s wishes. She spends the first season of Altered Carbon helping Tak as he works to solve the mystery, and they develop a close relationship. Ortega was formerly a Neo-Catholic–according to her faith, she could never be resleeved due to her beliefs. She renounced her religion, however, which causes strain between Ortega and her family.

Pokemon Day: All The News You Need To Know

Every year on February 27th, the Pokemon Company and fans celebrate the release of the original Red and Green Pokemon versions in Japan. Along with the celebration comes news on the various Pokemon franchises for the year ahead.

This year, we got a look at the next Mythical Pokemon, Zarude, who will feature in the next Pokemon movie, Pokemon the Movie: Coco, as well as as appearing in the upcoming DLC for Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield.

Along with Zarude, we also got a trailer for Pokemon the Movie: Coco. The trailer shows a shiny Celebi flying through a forest and a young boy named Coco, who lives in this forest with his Pokemon. Ash comes across Coco, and it doesn’t take long for things to go wrong.

All new Wild Area Events have kicked off in Pokemon Sword and Shield, with Mewtwo, Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur now getting a chance to appear in Max Raid Battles. Mewtwo cannot be captured, but you can still earn rewards by defeating it (like Ability Capsules and PP Max).

Some news was also revealed for the Pokemon Masters mobile game, showcasing a number of future content updates that will be implemented. Starting from tomorrow, 3,000 Gems will be free to all players who log onto the app to celebrate Pokemon Day, along with the addition of Red and Charizard as a Poke Fair exclusive Scout. Over 10,000 Gems are up for grabs over the course of the event.

Story events now include Event Maps to assist you in progressing through them with the use of Travel Tokens. More areas and rewards will be unlocked as you complete the story. The Battle Villa will also be open tomorrow, introducing an all new feature called Lucky Skills, which can be added to Sync Pairs with a Lucky Cookie or Lucky Scroll. The Battle Villa allows you to create a roster of up to 9 different Sync Pairs to challenge the Battle Stages. Like a traditional league challenge, HP and PP will carry over from battle to battle.

Improvements to legendary events and the Sync Grid will be added down the line, as well as a new Pokemon Egg feature.

And finally, Mewtwo Strikes Back EVOLUTION is now available worldwide to stream on Netflix (aside from Japan and South Korea). The movie can be streamed viewed with either English voice acting or with the original Japanese voice acting–a first for an international Pokemon movie. Armored Mewtwo can still be caught in Pokemon Go up till March 2 to celebrate the movie’s international release.

Now Playing: Pokemon Sword & Shield – Zarude Mythical Pokemon Reveal Trailer