Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (January 16th)

Another week has whizzed on by, giving us lots of exciting news on Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury and New Pokémon Snap, as well as the announcement of a brand new Switch console edition and a Pokémon x Katy Perry collab of all things.

Thankfully, though, it’s now time to sit back, relax, and discuss our gaming plans. Members of the Nintendo Life team have done just that below (and yes, it looks like two of us have ended up treating ourselves to gorgeous GameCubes recently). Feel free to join in with your own entries via our comment section. Enjoy!

Henry Stockdale, contributing writer

Late to the party here but my main aim is finally beating Super Mario Galaxy again off the 3D All-Stars Collection. I’ve been bouncing between several single-player games though, so Hades will likely factor in too. I rebought it a few weeks back on Switch, after sinking many hours into the PC release, so a couple of trips to Tartarus are likely. Been trying to beat my fastest escape time of just under 13 mins. Outside of the Switch, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II will probably get loaded up on my PS5 too, since I started it last weekend.

Anthony Dickens, managing director

I’ve known about the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game for a long time, but for some reason it has never managed to make it into my shopping basket. Being a huge fan of the movie (and yes, I know it was a graphic novel first) this really needs to change. Zion literally can’t stop talking about it and gushing over his fond memories playing it the first time around, so he’s convinced me I should really pick this one up on the eShop and give it a go. I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted with Ramona Flowers, Knives Chau and those evil exes.

Kate Gray, news reporter

I am still playing Hades! I’m about to hit my 100th escape attempt, and I’m probably going to stream it, since it seems important. I just hope I don’t fail on stream. That would be embarrassing.

Ryan Craddock, news editor

Recently, I’ve been playing that age-old favourite game of ‘comfort buying all the retro gaming stuff eBay has to offer so that it can sit on a shelf and look pretty’. It’s a nasty habit, but it does mean that it gives me an excuse to dust off some old favourites to test out my new (old) consoles.

This week I managed to get hold of a Game Boy Pocket, instantly becoming the oldest handheld console I own as I only had Game Boy Colors growing up, and giving me a great chance to revisit Pokémon Trading Card Game. I loved the Pokémon TCG back in the day, before things got complicated and each card’s HP went through the roof, and this game is perfect for playing against opponents when you have no friends. Sad reacts only.

Elsewhere, eradicating my gaming budget for the foreseeable future, I’ve also now managed to collect all four base colours of the GameCube – including everyone’s favourite Spice Orange beauty. You can’t have too many GameCubes.

Gavin Lane, features editor

I’ve made several retro purchases over the last couple of weeks – drained my entire budget for the year, actually. I finally bit the bullet and bought a Spice Orange GameCube, which is the loveliest console I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I’m limited on Japanese software to play on it at the moment, so I’ll probably just sit and stare at it for a while. Lovely.

Otherwise, I’m hoping to jump into Metroid: Samus Returns on 3DS. I held off getting it for years in the hope that a Switch port would turn up, but I’ve given up on waiting. I also have several older DS games to revisit, including the original New Super Mario Bros., which I used to own but lost somehow. It has now been reacquired and I’m interested to see how it holds up.

I have also had an EON Super 64 PAL HDMI adaptor sitting on my desk since before Christmas, and now feels like a good time to finally fire up some F-Zero X and GoldenEye to see how N64 games look on my modern telly.

Ollie Reynolds, reviewer

Hello all! Hope everyone’s doing okay. I’ve recently started getting back into Pokémon a bit more recently, so this weekend I’ll not only be playing Pokémon Shield on the Switch, but also Pokémon Sun on the 3DS! Am I mad..? Quite possibly. I’m really pleased to see the 25th Anniversary celebrations starting to ramp up, and I can’t wait to see what announcements are made soon.

Time permitting, I also plan on jumping back into the ‘classic’ Resident Evil games, primarily REmake, but also Resident Evil Zero if I have enough time to spare. They work so well on the Switch, and it’s been about a year or so since I last played them, so I’d say it’s well overdue!

Mitch Vogel, reviewer

With the launch of Disgaea 6 on the horizon, I recently got back into Disgaea 5 Complete to see what I’ve been missing, and that’ll likely eat up most of my weekend. Full disclosure: I’ve had it since 2017, but only put maybe five hours into it. So far, I’ve put another twenty hours in and I think I finally ‘get it’, though I’m not sure if I’ll be going quite as far as the most avid fans that put hundreds of hours in. Either way, I’m more excited than ever for Disgaea 6 now!

Aside from that, I finally found the charging cord for my Vita! I decided to buy Persona 4 Golden earlier this week, and I’ll be progressing more into that this weekend. Persona 5 was my introduction to the series and I was floored at what a masterpiece that turned out to be, and so far, P4G is living up to that standard. I never would’ve thought that a ‘slice of life’ JRPG like this would be for me, but it’s really won me over.

Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer

Yep, I’m still very much stuck on the GameCube age of things. I felt the need for speed so I will spend my weekend between the lush cell-shaded motor beauties of Capcom’s Auto Modellista and attempting to pull off sonic booms at Extreme-G 3. Since I never owned the original the arrival of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World The Game – Complete Edition is actually very exciting, so expect me to welcome further belt action beatings after the last few delightful weeks of Double Dragon Neon.

My game of the week is Wrestling Empire! Mat Dickie’s games are legendary for all the wrong reasons and this one is his Magnum Opus. Despite being incredibly broken at times, it never fails to amuse by the amount of insanity it delivers per minute. Utterly brilliant career mode to compliment the 30 wrestlers on screen, rumble feature with zero loading times and stable performance. I look forward to further developments on this game.

As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to leave us a comment below with your gaming choices over the next few days…