Abram Buehner

This is a wonderful thread recapping the Donkey Kong Bananza GDC talk. Such an awesome peek behind the curtain showing how beautiful and complicated the game is under the hood

Sorry I know I'm farming things I've said a billion times but idk no one else is saying them so I'll just keep at it whenever the opportunity arises

Pokopia is affirming my belief that the problem with a lot of Nintendo commentary isn't that the conclusions are wrong but that the premises are uninteresting. Discussing how Switch 2s are selling extra fast now and that Nintendo's stock price is skyrocketing is as boring as discussing the inverse

Missed my chance to see it last year. I have been WAITING

The huge success of Pokopia makes it clearer than ever before that Doshin the Giant must return

It's part of why I find the constant worrying over the next Nintendo direct so tiresome, when Nintendo will have published 8 games within the first 5 months of 2026 (Tennis, Pokopia, Tomodachi, Pokemon Champs, Yoshi + 3 NS2E) with 4 still still on the slate. So much to play and think about

This is an excellent point, there is a meaningfully large portion of the space that operates as unpaid PR for sure, be it instantly reacting to news announcements as you said, or reading though metacritic score summaries at embargo

WAIT THIS IS COOL

but I see a Nintendo that's opening back up. Even the TOTK interviews, post-pandemic, were as far-reaching as NYT. We have to put a lot of caveats on any narrative about Nintendo. We're in a period of it, by its own admission, reassessing how it shares information, and that's not strictly internal.

Nintendo Dream operates independently, but let's just put that to the side. Famitsu got the Prime 4 interview seemingly in place of an Ask the Developer. VGC just spoke to Shigeru Ohmori for Pokopia. There's no doubt that the pandemic reorganized the business to a meaningful degree 1/2

Just to tag this, none of the Prime 4 interviews were handled internally

I just don't think the narrative is nearly so simple when you look at everything together. Even consider Tanabe announcing his retirement in Nintendo Dream, in an external interview. Every company preapproves the outlets that speak to them. The landscape of current access is complicated

Nintendo does Nintendo Directs when they think a Nintendo Direct is a good marketing plan for their business

I don't think it's so simple, considering that Bananza (with interviews from IGN to Rolling Stone) had a huge external interview campaign, and Miyamoto has been giving regular interviews thanks to the parks. Then we have 1-offs like Sakamoto getting interviewed by Inverse for Emio.

Reposting this thing I wrote last year, in light of the confidently wrong takes I'm seeing left and right about Nintendo Directs, Nintendo anniversaries, Nintendo marketing, Nintendo's release calendar. Wrong takes on basically everything really!

I think my POV is that while that saying is true, I also think presence makes a game like this seem clearer. Part of what makes a Metroid game interesting to me is what subsequent playthroughs reveal. I actually like the routing of Prime 4 a lot and I didn't know that on the first run

It's partially that and partially a desire to really understand what the game is doing and saying so I make sure my praises and criticisms are grounded in it, not my thoughts on Retro's legacy or what Prime 1-3 are doing

The more I replay Prime 4 and the more I reflect on it, the more apathetic I feel. At this point, I can't escape that it's thin and perfunctory and unable to provide a coherent vision that inspires me and makes me feel curious like the previous games do. I like it bc I'm predisposed to enjoy Metroid

Would love to revisit this one. Haven't played it since 2015

The second-to-second curiosity and decision-making Bananza inspires is still so exciting to me. I pop back into it regularly just to revel in the joy of exploring with DK. Certainly in my top 10 games ever

If every video game released for the rest of the year is terrible, 2026 would still be a goated year for me on the shoulders of Pokopia and Marathon alone

Heracross in a flower field 🍃

It's me! I tried to write less about why I think these games are good and more about what moments or feelings stuck with me from last year. So it's a little different than a regular top 10, but I'm happy with it, and I hope people find some value in it.

I have tried Mouse controls in every Nintendo game that supports them and Pokopia is the first time that I've used them and thought "actually yes, this is good and meaningful and incredibly useful and better for what I'm trying to achieve than my regular control scheme"

Happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!

I don't really know what criteria we're using to make these 3x3 game grids, so I'm going on the principle of "if I had a really small shelf that could only hold 9 games, which 9 games would I want"

unfortunately the charge is the same

I appreciate you turning yourself in

posting a timestamped photo of marathon running on my ps5 and remanding a recount

Doing a citizen's arrest on anyone who posts about the Marathon concurrent player count