Damn, this was a good pod. I liked the deeper discussion. I think you are onto something.

But Epic Games Store is evil! 🤣

Trojan horse. Get in for free and then release the kraken. You are doomed.

Do you notice any audio lag? I have read some reports about some lag.

Oh man, I disagree with this episode.

While I do love each season, I feel each season is slightly inferior to the last.

Season 1 captured magic in a bottle. It was the start of something special and you didn't know where they were going.

Season 2 had some great character development and moments, but some pacing problems.

Season 3 lost the majority of that character development and became more popcorny. It was enjoyable but I felt that it didn't move the characters from point A to B very much. That being said, the way the ended the season gave me a lot of hope for the next season.

Also season 3 had once of the worst scenes I have ever seen that ground the show to a halt. While it was good on its own, it really screwed up the pacing and should have been edited down.

It involved singing. Still makes me cringe.

On it’s own it was great, but it ground that episode to a halt.

I'm gonna watch the whole show again at some point to get more context for this, or an updated point of view.

That said, if memory serves I thought season one suffered from the issue where I felt like many early Netflix shows suffered from in that they were two episodes too long.

Might not be totally how I think now but it was then so when I do a rewatch i'll note that again. I thought Season 2 and 3 nailed the pacing but I like popcorn

Yo: https://twitter.com/Stranger_Things/status/1178701041333886976

Hyped! More upside down please! I would get into what I want to see, but I am avoiding spoilers.

I finished it earlier and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to list off all the ways that it’s amazing.

But one thing I will say that you didn’t touch on much is the dungeon maker.

Eeeeehhhhh you know, the rest of the game doesn’t suffer because of its inclusion so I don’t really count this as a ding against it but, wow, this is entirely uninteresting to me. It just doesn’t hit any notes for me, because it’s all stuff you’ve done before, just remixed. There’s not a lot of room to do anything interesting there.

I had thought this was a beta test for a Zelda maker, but I read an interview where apparently the devs were asked to make something like Mario Maker for this and struggled to find a fun way to do it.

That, and the FPS dips (I think it goes well below 30), are the only complaints I have about this. The original Link’s Awakening was a strong contender for my favorite Zelda game, and this remake pushed it just high enough so I can say yes, this is it. This is my favorite. I love the new art style. I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse than the original blocky pixels, but it’s a great modern yet simple take on it. But really, it’s the QoL updates that let you do things without so much micromanaging.

And the new score, holy cow. Yeah, the original chiptunes are great like you said, but this score feels like what the composers originally intended, even though the Gameboy couldn’t quite pull it off.

I think the score is symbolic to the game as a whole: the original and the remake can coexist well. This feels like the original, so much that I still remembered where some stuff was, and the maps from the old game are still accurate (except for a few minor things). But this could also be brand new. And in this way it excels in a way most remakes don’t: it almost immaculately recreates the original without being beholden to its mechanics that may have aged out.

To put it simply: this is one of my favorite games of all time, recreated to be even better than I ever remembered it.

Also I’m not seeing a bunch of similarity with Link Between Worlds, honestly. I don’t think people are talking about it much because it’s a very different visual language. I’ll give you the music a bit, but visually it seems more like an attempt to bridge the 2D and N64ish era rather than doing its own thing. It doesn’t seem like just a platform limitation but a whole different set of inspirations.

Back in my day games ran at 15 fps and we liked it! :) It is sad to hear about the FPS issue. Do you see the same performance docked and in handheld?

I never tried it handheld, only docked. It definitely wasn’t game killing and it seemed like it was mostly around transitions from inside a dungeon to outside, or after fast traveling.

Interesting analysis: https://youtu.be/UnckUk830HA

You can't install the cartridge games to internal memory. Which sucks but it makes sense.

However, there are more graphically (and presumably data) intense games on the Switch that run fine, so I'm hoping this is just an optimization issue they can patch.

Ha, now I wish I still had a save file with Marin.