This is crazy. The first time we've heard a peep out of Starfy since The Legendary Starfy outside of Smash. And this is the first time these three games were ever released outside of Japan! It makes me wonder if Starfy's about to make a comeback, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Wish they were translated, though. These games have stories, and while you don't need that to enjoy the level design, a part of the experience is gonna be lost on anyone who can't read Japanese.

This looks about comparable to the remaster from earlier, which looked incredible for a Switch game. The trailer looked nice but definitely not what we would expect from something on the level of a PS4. I don't see a reason to doubt that the footage was the game running on Switch.

But the fact that people are debating if this is Switch 2 footage speaks volumes about Retro Studio's skill. Jaw-dropping graphics for a Switch game.

So weird to see a PlayStation IP on Switch. I wonder if LEGO pushed for that since LEGO games have a big audience on Switch (as far as I can tell based on very limited research and big assumptions.) But I really have to wonder-- If the goal is broadening the audience, why on earth is this game on Switch but not PS4? I'm not mad or anything, but that's extremely weird. Maybe it's an attempt to sell more PS5s?

What do people think of the new massive team attack? Does it mess with the balance too much? Is it easy to ignore if it does?

I've loved this Booster Course Pass. It's been so fun being able to look forward to new waves of content for MK8DX. The majority of the new tracks have been very fun to play on. They continued to surprise me by doing a lot more than courses, too. Characters, options, small features, and even balance tweaks!

Sure, it wasn't all perfect. Sure, all of the tracks are just brought over from Tour and not remixed the same way the base game remixed its retro offerings. Sure, Wave 1 looked like it was made in Roblox. But overall, I think the good far outweighs the bad. This DLC has been awesome. I'm honestly going to miss it. But hey, Wave 6 looks fantastic, so we're ending the BCP with a bang.

Funnily enough, I had a weird idea before for a dual screen hybrid console. As a handheld, it would be like a DS. To dock it, you can take the screens apart, dock the top screen, then use the bottom screen as the controller, like a Wii U. I thought this was a dumb idea and that Nintendo would never want to repeat the Wii U, but... Hey, who knows?

Has 8BitDo made a stick like this before? I see that they've made a controller like the N64's before, but that's not the same kind of stick as this. This is like a GameCube controller's stick, which is really good. It's true that 8BitDo isn't really known for their sticks, though, so hopefully they pull through.

That controller has an 8BitDo logo on it. Two-handed N64 controller from 8BitDo soon?

I put the image in paint.net and increased the exposure, the results of which you can see here. Looks like the 8BitDo Ultimate Controller, but with N64 buttons. The analogue stick has an octogonal gate with a circular pattern on the cap, much like the GameCube controller's left stick. Now I'm wishing that 8BitDo would make a GameCube-like controller with hall effect sticks.

Here are some tips from somebody who made the switch about a year ago. My advice is to take it slow.

I first tried Linux on an old laptop that nobody was using anymore. I messed around with it, did a coding project, tried to see what it was like to get this and that running. It's good that you tried Linux with a home server first. That means you're already decently comfortable with it.

I recommend starting with a dual boot setup. Some time later I got a new PC, and I was planning to run Linux on it. It came with Windows 11. I wasn't comfortable with going full Linux, so I split the 512GB SSD down the middle and gave most of the 2TB hard drive to Linux. This has served me very well. It gave me peace of mind to know that if there was something I really needed that I couldn't get working on Linux, I could boot into Windows.

After a bit, I defected back to Windows. It ended up being somewhat bad timing. I wanted to play Sonic Frontiers, but it barely worked on Linux. At the time I was also using the game engine Unity, which was what my game design courses were teaching me, and I couldn't get it working properly on Linux for the life of me. I kept my Linux partition in case I ever wanted to use it for something or even switch back. This is partially why I recommend a dual boot setup. You might be dissatisfied with Linux the first time you try it, and if you end up really wanting to go back to Windows, you'll be glad that you left yourself an easy way back.

Well, I'm glad I left my Linux partition on there, because I eventually came back and stayed here. I was over Frontiers, and I finally managed to get Unity working, so there I stayed. As I spend more time with Linux, I get more and more comfortable with it. I only ever boot into Windows to play multiplayer games with my friend since I don't want to waste time troubleshooting a game for an hour during a call if something doesn't work. Though I suspect that most of what we play would work fine on Linux! I'm starting to feel like I'm getting comfortable enough with Linux that if I wanted to get rid of my dual boot, I could. It helps that Unity destroyed itself so I don't want to use it anymore anyway. Moral of the story: Don't feel like you have to fully commit to Linux at first. You can make the transition slowly and do what makes you comfortable, and you'll get there eventually.

I know this comment is very long, but I want a paragraph to recommend distros. I highly recommend something Debian based for a new user. It's relatively easy to learn compared to other kinds of distros and more stable. I recommend either Linux Mint or Pop!_OS, both of which are excellent for beginners. They're both based on Ubuntu, which itself is based on Debian. They're pretty similar under the hood, so it mostly comes down to which UI you prefer. I believe that Pop!_OS is a little more up-to-date with some packages, but not everyone likes its UI, and its app store is somewhat miserable. I use Pop and I adore it, but it's not everybody's cup of tea. If you want to try a few distros before you commit, I recommend trying them on some old device you don't use anymore, or a virtual machine.

...That sounds kind of amazing. I don't know how happy F-ZERO fans would be with that, but Smash gave Captain Falcon enough fighting moves that it could kind of work.

The focus should stay on the racing. The mechanics need to be solid, there needs to be enough tracks, the works. The singleplayer would need to primarily be about racing, since it's rare that a game can be two genres at once and succeed. But the structure can be flexible!

You play as Captain Falcon in a somewhat open world. You can drive around freely in the Blue Falcon. The world is very large, but the Falcon is very fast so it's fun to explore. There are oodles of races to be had, but you have to drive to them in order to participate. At any point you can hop out of the Blue Falcon and, like, start punching stuff. Captain Falcon runs pretty fast, has his Falcon Punch, has most of his moves from Smash and more. You could also tweak the Blue Falcon's stats and look as you go. It would still be the racing game that F-ZERO fans want, but it would also attract people who weren't interested in F-ZERO but like Captain Falcon in Smash and want to play as him rather than his vehicle.

It seems to work like this, judging from the Steam page:

1. Solving a Picross puzzle gives you an element. Like, if the image for the puzzle is dirt, you get dirt.
2. In order to unlock new puzzles, you need to fuse elements together. Locked puzzles will have a riddle-- Use the riddle to figure out which elements you need to fuse to unlock the puzzle. For example, fusing dirt, water, and sunlight unlocks the plant nonogram. Solve that nonogram to unlock the plant element.
3. As you solve puzzles, Emil (the wizard dude) gets stronger, allowing you to "fuse more puzzles." Not too sure what that means, but I assume that you need to level Emil up before you're allowed to fuse the harder puzzles.

I could be wrong, but this is the impression I get. Looks like an interesting gameplay loop. It has 280 puzzles, so it'll keep you busy for a while.

I love Nonograms/Picross! This company does a pretty good job of translating these puzzles to video games. I played one of their Picross S games, and it's pretty good (as good as you can expect a Picross game to be, anyway.) Glad they're publishing on Steam now. Mouse control just makes sense for these kinds of puzzles.