Polygon’s Michael McWhertor on the Quality Control podcast with host Dave Tach:

For a few years now, I have promoted and evangelized Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. To the point where I think even people at Nintendo are like, “hey, send this guy the Captain Toad review code first.”

I love the game. I love the character. It’s a great little puzzle game. It was one of those things that was released on the Wii U — which didn’t have a ton of great games, but this was a real standout in my opinion — and not a lot of people owned the Wii U. [Captain Toad] was something that was overlooked by a lot of people. It’s a fun little package. Now that it’s out on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS, people have no excuse not to go play Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.

…

In 2013, Nintendo released Super Mario 3D World, and excellent platformer for the Wii U. In that game, there were a handful of levels featuring Captain Toad. You gave up control of Mario, Peach, Luigi, etc., and you played as Captain Toad in these tiny little diorama-style levels where Toad would walk around with a headlamp and a heavy backpack.

He couldn’t run and jump. He could basically just walk around levels. He could fall down things. There were switches you could pull to raise him up on platforms. But each one was just this cute, clever little puzzle level that felt like Nintendo experimenting within the Mario Universe.

Mike and I share similar feelings about Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. The game itself is a charming, clever, puzzle game. But beyond that, it’s a wonderful expansion on a more realized Mushroom Kingdom. And it was great to see the character return in Super Mario Odyssey.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Captain Toad is genius.

Jason Schreier:

The producer of the gorgeous upcoming Switch game Octopath Traveler made waves this week with a quote in which he said that mechanically it was a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy VI. Other people have made similar comparisons. But Octopath is nothing like Final Fantasy VI—it’s more like a SaGa game, with some experimental ideas that work, and some that really don’t.

I’ve played a little over an hour of the Octopath Traveler demo and am chipping away at some initial thoughts. One of those thoughts — contrary to both Takahashi-san and Schreier — is that Octopath Traveler feels like Final Fantasy X.

Each character has an individual relationship, conflict, and narrative, the visual turn-based system is akin to that of FFX, and there is an odd mismatch between the writing style and voice acting; the writing feels high-brow English juxtaposed to the modern American voice acting. While it’s certainly not the same problem, it is reminiscent of FFX’s infamous laughing scene.

Amber Case:

A decade after my experience with the LED fans, I started seeing blue displays everywhere. From mobile phones to in-car displays, blue lights were becoming the norm. It’s hard for me to think of any examples of prominent high-tech products on the market now without pale blue screens or indicator lights. LED-based bulbs with more blue light are fast replacing incandescent bulbs. The default display to our iPhones and Androids operates along the blue spectrum, as do our laptops; new cars, especially those like Tesla which aspire to be “futuristic,” come with blue-lit dashboard displays, and so do our “smart” appliances, televisions, video game consoles, watches–the list goes on.

Unless it’s the post-apocalypse, imagery of the future is generally always depicted by some form of light. This article provides a brief history and effect of shifting from red and orange light (function) to blue light (form) on screen and in real-life.

I was obsessed with the blue eject light on the original PS2. When powered on at night, married to the start up chime, the blue light was a beautiful touch to round out the futuristic design and marketing of the console. The Wii’s disc drive bay gave me a similar feeling.

The poet in me would say it’s vast and mysterious sea, sky, and stars that make blue so extraordinary. While I agree that red and orange are preferred from practical standpoint, there’s no denying that blue is gorgeous. The Zero Counts design is certainly guilty of leaning on blue — ZC blue (#004992).

Regardless of your feelings about the film, try imagining Tron: Legacy with an orange Grid. Gross.

(Link via The Loop)

Felix Gillette:

More symptoms emerged in November, when the company released the NES Classic Edition, a miniaturized, rebooted version of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the console that had made the company a household name in Europe and America in the ’80s. The updated version was carefully calibrated to rekindle the latent passion of lapsed fans, with 30 of the most popular NES games built in. (Unlike the original, there were no cartridges.) From the start, supplies were scarce. Stores were constantly sold out, so customers lined up for hours to await shipments of even a few units. But what seemed to some like a supply-chain disaster looked to others like a calculated strategy. At $59.99 per unit with no additional games, NES Classics were a low-margin item; much more important for the company was to whet the world’s appetite for Nintendo games in preparation for the Switch. To that end, Nintendo and DeNA also released Super Mario Run for iOS and Android, giving hundreds of millions of people an opportunity to help Mario scamper across their smartphones or tablets.

The strategy worked. By the time the Switch arrived in the spring of 2017, legions of people had been enticed to reconnect with their favorite childhood game characters on a proper Nintendo device. Over the next fiscal year, the Switch accounted for $6.8 billion of revenue. Nintendo’s existing handheld platform, the 3DS, kicked in an additional $1.7 billion, and sales of smartphone games rose 62 percent, generating $354.9 million.

This is a fun write-up on the current state of Nintendo — from its headquarters to the injection of young talent to its now iconic business ebbs and flows. To toot my own horn, I think it works as a macro companion piece to my micro view in Big-N’s Big Year.

Needless to say, I’ll forever be tickled by major news outlets covering Nintendo and video games at large. It’s a no-brainer considering the size of the industry, but for someone who grew up in a time where video games were a niche, nerdy hobby, it’s extraordinary to watch a company like Nintendo become as culturally significant and observed as Disney.

(Link via MacStories)

Hard Drive:

A lead change occurred in the final lap of the Rainbow Road Grand Prix last night during what was supposed to be a friendly game of Mario Kart amongst friends, when a blue spiny shell struck the leading racer mere inches from the finish. The driver, Marty Witten, fell from first place to last before creeping over the finish line.

“Fuck shit goddamn motherfucking ass shit fuck,” said a visibly perturbed Witten, who had led the entire race before the shell struck. “Fuck fuck fuck I hate this stupid bullshit game AHHHHH!”

Hard Drive kills me. I chuckle at damn near every one of their headlines.

Part of The Hard Times, it’s essentially The Onion of video games. Whether you’re deep into video game culture or you simply reminisce on days spent playing Mario Kart 64, it deserves a follow.

Blue shells. Fuck shit goddamn. Haven’t we all been there?