Misery loves company

It seems that there is a large contingent of people out there that are completely miserable because despite all their efforts, the Nintendo Switch 2 continues to break records in various categories. It sold 6 million worldwide in it's first 7 weeks of being on the market. It sold 2 million in Japan in 14 weeks which makes it the fastest-selling console in Japan CRUSHING the previous record held by the GameBoy Advance at 900,000, and it has become the fastest-selling console in US history at 2.4 million thus far besting the previous-record held by the PlayStation 4 at 2.2 million. At this point, while it is not confirmed yet, the Switch 2 has approximately sold 9 million units in just 4 months. By the time the Holiday season ends, the Switch 2 will have outsold the Wii U, and have sold more than half the units of the GameCube. Think about that.... Meanwhile, many people continue to say things like "People aren't satisfied with the Switch 2..." "The sales are slowing down..." "It's too expensive... "There are NO games for the Switch 2... "The games are too expensive..." "It's just an overclocked PS4..." "It's underpowered..." "Nintendo is suing this company, or that company...." ...BLAH-BLAH-BLAH yakkity-shmakkity. First of all, EVERYTHING is too expensive nowadays for EVERY THING. The prices of Switch 2 games are roughly the same as games on the PS5 family and the XBOX Series family with a few exceptions. However, people will tell bald-faced lies to push a narrative. They will say... "Donkey Kong Bananza is $90 dollars!!" The game is $70 dollars and in my opinion it is worth it as a major AAA, 1st-party title. However the DLC pack which includes DK Island and Emerald Rush is an extra $20 dollars. DLC is NOT REQUIRED to fully enjoy Donkey Kong Bananza. No one knew this DLC pack was coming, and no one complained about the game as it was. So, to act like the game was "incomplete" and now the DLC makes it "complete" and thus the game itself is $90 dollars is nonsense. No one has any problems being nickel-and-dimed to death by games like NBA 2K or Madden when you at literally paying the SAME PRICE ($70 dollars) as Donkey Kong Bananza, but you are just getting the exact same game you paid $70 dollars for last year, and the year before that. We haven't even mentioned the PAID content packs and DLC that IS required for a "complete" experience if you are a seasoned-player in those types of games and not just a casual. People complain about Mario Kart World being $80 dollars. I don't think it's worth that much personally, and I think Nintendo did kind of play themselves of overestimating the importance of Mario Kart and I don't think that they put enough into this game to warrant the price increase. They were heading in the right direction of a good idea of making Mario Kart open world, but they didn't follow all the way through on that concept and kind of took the cheap path. This game DOES feel incomplete but only because of the open world aspect being pretty bland and vanilla. It does feel like the results of the game do not match their ambition. That's fine because as a creator myself I experience that first hand, but don't charge the consumer for what it COULD have been (or even SHOULD have been.) Charge them for what it IS. So, with this game I'll let people have their complaints to a degree, but as I said before, you could have just bought the pack-in Switch 2 console and got the game for $50 bucks. It is definitely worth that. Just sayin'.... There are other games coming to Switch 2 that people are complaining about being too expensive by lumping in the price of OPTIONAL DLC packs rather than looking at the MSRP of the game itself, but I've already proved my point that this is balderdash. Then you have people that comb the Internet searching for literally ANY and EVERY single news story that has even a remotely negative thing to say about the hardware capabilities of the Switch 2, and if they cannot find any, they either just regurgitate the same false narratives (e.g. the Switch is just just a PS4,) or just tell bald-faced lies about it's capability. However, when developers from major 3rd-party studios known for producing games that push hardware come out themselves and explain just how capable the system is (in addition to being able to see it with our own eyes with games like Fast Fusion, Cyberpunk 2077, Street Fighter VI, Star Wars: Outlaws, Final Fantasy VII: Remake, and even Resident Evil: Requiem) those people get REAL small, and REAL quiet. To anyone that has a functional synapse left in their brains, it is clear that you can see the difference between optimized and unoptimized games on the Switch 2 (or any other console or device for that matter.) Games that are optimized look really good and even come close to the XBOX Series X and PS5 versions in some aspects, and games that aren't optimized look and run pretty bad, again just like on other platforms. The part where the cheese falls out of the sandwich in this is with people the will for example look at Madden '26 for the Switch 2 and say, "Ha! There is PROOF that the hardware is weak-sauce!" Again, purposefully ignoring all the previously mentioned games that show off it's capabilities. However, what you WON'T see them do, is go and look at the reviews of the PC versions of Madden '26 and you see literally the EXACT SAME PROBLEMS the Switch 2 version has and even some problems the Switch 2 version doesn't have. What are the commonalities here? Neither version is OPTIMIZED!!! There is no excuse for someone having a monster-rig of a PC that stomps all over the PS5 Pro in literally every metric that exists and have a vastly inferior gaming experience compared to playing it on a PS5 Pro. This is about laziness and greed. Not hardware capability. EA doesn't care as long as the get your money. They'll figure that since there hasn't been a Madden on a Nintendo console since the Wii U, Nintendo fans should be happy with whatever version they get, in whatever STATE they choose to give it, and if they don't like it, too bad. If they game does poorly, EA gets to say, "Hey, we tried," and then have an excuse to not bring another Madden to the Switch 2 in the future. Getting back to the chronic complainers. People will not give up talking bad about the Switch 2. They REFUSE to stop. EVERY time I type in "Nintendo News," or "Nintendo Switch 2," in the feed on YouTube, X, Google, etc., it is ALWAYS a barrage of NEGATIVE banter and you literally have to put in a concerted effort to search for anything positive regarding Nintendo. Not that it isn't out there, but it is just buried underneath layers of horse-crap that has been proven WRONG numerous times by legit sources. The only conclusion that I can come up with is this. People that worship at the alter of hardware specs are upset that the Switch being as weak as it was completely destroyed the competition in sales, and by the time the Switch is no longer in production, and the last Switch console sells in a retail store, the final tally for the Switch WILL BE OVER 160 MILLION making it the best-selling video-game hardware of ALL TIME, and there is NOTHING they can do about it. Not a blasted-thing. They can't handle that. To add to that, the Switch 2 while still not as powerful as the competition, turned out to more capable than they expected it to be and major AAA 3rd-party games designed with the PS5 and XSX in mind when properly optimized run so good that you literally have to pause some games side-by-side to point out tangible graphical differences. The Switch 2 being what it is has no business being able to do that, and that also drives them nuts. Lastly, despite prices being higher than expected on the games and hardware, and no real "killer-app" type game on the Switch 2, the console literally has broken every single record there is to break while in a recessed-economy. That is the 'Coup De Grace' so-to-speak. So, these people do everything they can to try and make everyone else feel as miserable as they do. The prices of the PlayStation and XBOX games, consoles, and services keep going up every few months, yet the same people don't say a peep about that. By the time the first calendar-year passes for the Switch 2, it is not a stretch to suggest that it will have more AAA 1st-party titles than the first 6 years of the PlayStation 5, and by the end of the year it will already have more than the XBOX Series X. Now, I have no dog in this fight. I'm a PC gamer and I primarily game on Steam. I bought a Switch 2 so that I can play Nintendo titles. I'm not interesting in playing 3rd-party titles on the Switch 2 unless there is something unique about the Switch 2 version of a 3rd-party game. I just like to point out hypocrisy. I find it laughable that people have so much time on their hands to talk about anything and everything negative regarding Nintendo. I mean, shouldn't you be playing your amazing games on your "superior" PS5 and XBOX Series X????? HMMMMMMMMMM??????

History of my birthdays

This is a short history of birthdays that I have vivid memories of. 5 years old I remember my mother taking me up the block to McDonald's where a lot of my friends were already there and I had a birthday party! I don't remember too much from the party itself other than the fact that we got the cool, red boomerang things as a parting gift. I also remember eating the Ronald McDonald cookie that was on top of my birthday cake. Back then, McDonald's used to have a program where you fill out this little slip and drop it in the huge deposit box in the lobby which you could get sent a card with a coupon for a free hamburger, small fries, and small drink. I made sure I did that EVERY year from that point on until I got too old for that stuff.

After the party, we came home and I opened up a few gifts. I got two remote control cars. One was a big, red Trans-Am that had the cord attached to the control. The other one was a small, dark-red colored Porsche which was a radio-controlled car with no wire attached. Later on that evening, we went to Showbiz Pizza Place! So, this birthday was pretty much fire to say the least.

6 years old I remember my sisters had baked a carrot cake and instead of candles, they put six pieces of gum on top of the cake! I also remember that I got the Coleco Gemini as my birthday gift and we were playing with it the day BEFORE my birthday while my mother was away doing something.

7 years old I don't remember having any party or anything. I just did the McDonald's free meal thing, but when I was coming home from school that day, I saw my sister and my grandfather taking a brand new BMX bike out of the trunk of his car. This was my birthday gift! It was a Team Murray Track 330. This isn't an actual picture of MY bike, but it is a picture of the same model minus the padding.

8 years old This birthday was LEGENDARY. At least, how I remember it. I could be wrong about this, but knowing how things were back then, it's hard for me to believe that all this was done without it being my birthday. I remember coming home from school on a Friday and my mother and sister were putting together a new entertainment center in the living room. It was customary to change out of my school clothes into my play clothes before I could go outside to play. My mother said, "Don't change out of your clothes yet, because we are going to Ponderosa."

If that is all we had done that weekend I would have been straight because I LOVED going to Ponderosa. However.....it was not. After having dinner and enjoying ourselves she tells me that we are going to the movies. I asked what we were going to see, and she said that I was going to see Godzilla 1985: The Legend Is Reborn. My jaw just hit the floor. I couldn't believe it.

The movie was AMAZING of course. I remember seeing all the promotional material on TV for the movie for months and being excited about it including all the goofy Dr. Pepper commercials as well.

To this very day I cannot drink a Dr. Pepper without thinking about Godzilla! I obviously asked my mother if we could go see it and she never said yes, or no. It was one of those, "Well see....." type of things which usually meant "yes" but not right now. The Saturday morning after all this fun, I was in the kitchen messing around with this secret spy decoder toy I got out of a box of Capt. Crunch (which is the most DISGUSTING breakfast cereal EVER created IMO, but I tricked my mother into buying it just so I could get the toy!) LOL!! Anyway, while I was sitting there, I was just basking in the afterglow of such an incredible evening. I could still hear Godzilla's awesome "roar" in the back of my mind. I was a HUGE kaiju fan at this point in my life. I had watched many of the old films from the SHOWA era every Saturday afternoon at 1:00PM on Super 18 in Milwaukee, and then later on TBS. So, seeing a brand new Godzilla movie with modern (at the time) special effects was incredible........but we are not done!

Now, this is where it gets confusing. It is entirely possible that I misremembered the date of all this, or it happened exactly as I remembered it, because I also remember having a birthday party. I have pictures of this. It was a Transformers theme for the party. All of the plates, cups, and napkins had Transformers stuff on them, and my birthday cake had a small Optimus Prime on it. You can clearly see 8 candles on the cake so this was my 8th birthday party.

So, it is POSSIBLE that this party happened on a Sunday and the other stuff happened on that Friday. If not, who cares. I choose to remember it ALL happening for my 8th birthday!! 9 years old I had a pajama party that wasn't all that great. My friends came over, we had hot dogs, chips, and soda. We played for awhile, then went to bed. When I woke up, everyone had left and went home already in the middle of the night. So, that was a bummer. After this, I did not have a birthday "party" again until I was an adult. More on that later. The next several years had the same pattern which was still a blessing. I would get my little coupon from McDonald's like I mentioned earlier and get my free hamburger, fries, and soda. My grandfather every year would give me $25 for my birthday. One year I remember using it to buy a microscope. The reason being is that I got the Transformer toy, Perceptor, which transformed into a functional microscope. This peaked my interest in microscopes in general, so when I got my $25 bucks from my grandfather, I took it to Kay-Bee Toy Hobby and bought a microscope. I can't remember too many things I ever bought with my birthday money. I usually just put it in my piggy bank and used it to buy snacks on occasion. 37 years old The next "memorable" birthday that I had was about 11 years ago. My brothers took me to Gameworks in Schaumburg, IL (it's gone now unfortunately) and we had a good time playing the arcade games there. They also all pitched in and bought me an XBOX One console. Also on this date we went to the Galloping Ghost Arcade. I call this place the "collapsed dimension" because when you look at it from the outside, it doesn't look that big or impressive, however, when you are inside there are seemingly ENDLESS rows of arcade machines that just go on and on and on and on and every time you feel like you found them all, you discover a new area with MORE machines. It's nuts! This was my first time visiting that arcade. That day was very special to me, and I'll never forget it. These days I don't really celebrate my birthday or holidays. It's just a personal choice. However, I am grateful and thankful to God that he allowed me to have those wonderful experiences and great memories of birthdays of the past and I can always pull those memories any time I want.

Should Nintendo Announce a 3D Mario?

I keep hearing a lot of Nintendo fans saying that they expect Nintendo to announce a new 3D Mario soon for the Nintendo Switch 2. I don't necessarily agree that would be a good decision for a great many reasons. Part of the logic on why they believe this is based on the fact that the last "major" 3D Mario game (Super Mario Odyssey) was released 8 years ago for the Nintendo Switch. Okay, that follows. I mean, it's been 8 years, right? That's actually longer than a typical Nintendo console generation itself which is around 5-7 years. So, it is not exactly off base to be expecting one soon, or at least an announcement of one. It's understandable. However, I do feel that announcing a 3D Mario at this particular point in time would be a mistake. One major reason is...Donkey Kong Bananza. Whether people want to accept this or not, despite the Mario universe being spun out of Donkey Kong, he is NOT on Mario's level. AT ALL. People are certainly enjoying Donkey Kong Bananza no doubt, but it's not exactly a game-changer. I don't see hordes of people going out to buy the Switch 2 specifically for THAT game. Hordes of people are buying the Switch 2 because....it's the Switch 2. Right now the Switch 2 is it's own "killer-app." Donkey Kong Bananza played a huge part in my decision personally to buy a Switch 2, but that's just me. Most people I would surmise were expecting a 3D Mario at launch for the Switch 2 before it was revealed that Donkey Kong Bananza was in that spot. People were certainly pleasantly surprised to get a new 3D Donkey Kong game because we haven't seen one proper since 1999 (more on that later,) but if I were to take a poll of Nintendo fans and non-Nintendo fans alike on what their choice would be between the two of them, I think I can go to the bank with most people choosing a 3D Mario over a 3D Donkey Kong. I say all that to say this. If you announce a 3D Mario game now.....that is going to negatively affect sales for Donkey Kong Bananza. Especially if the game is coming within the next six months. Now, if the game is WAAAAAAAAY off in the future like 2027, then I think it wouldn't affect it much. I think Nintendo is smart enough to understand not to put a "major" Mario game up against a "major"Donkey Kong game. History supports this hypothesis. **Disclaimer** This list excludes remasters, ports, rhythm-based games or racing games. This is only for first-run, major 2D and 3D platformers style games. Super Mario World (1991) Donkey Kong Country (1994) Super Mario 64 (1996) Donkey Kong 64 (1999) Super Mario Galaxy (2007) Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010) Super Mario 3D World (2013) Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (2014) So, only once has Nintendo released a "major" Donkey Kong within a year of a "major" Mario game and in every case, the Mario game came FIRST. I just think that it would be a mistake to even announce a new 3D Mario right now. I'm not saying that they won't. I'm just saying it's not a good idea for Donkey Kong Bananza's sake if they want those sales to remain strong in my opinion. I mean, just be honest with yourself. Regardless on how you feel about Donkey Kong Bananza pro or con, if you haven't bought that game yet and if Nintendo were to show us footage of a brand-new 3D Mario game built from the ground up on Switch 2 hardware and the game was less than 6 months away, which game would YOU be getting, or be getting first? I'm just sayin'.