Hey Sonicspot is back, what do ya know? Might have a reason to hang around GS again.

My impressions of Sonic Lost World were "meh." It was just ok. I played it and beat it and had no desire to return to it. I don't get why after establishing a good control and gameplay formula with Sonic Colors and the modern sections of Sonic Generations, they threw it out the window in favor of "Super Sonic Pakour Galaxy." I got annoyed at the fact you had to use the "Kick" mechanic for certain enemies as opposed to just being able to homing attack everything. At least they brought back the double jump. Also for once when you need Omochao to tell you what the hell to do, he's no where to be seen. But it's hard to deny that it borrows ALOT from Mario Galaxy and yet if Sonic wants to copy something from Mario, why not make a good 2D console Sonic game (not an Iphone game ported to consoles with a number tacked on to generate hype) using the classic gameplay of Generations?

The patch definitely helps. It was stupid to not have an extra life after 100 rings and I'm glad they ditched the motion for the gamepad. The DLC levels were nice with the Zelda one being the strongest.

But clearly Sega's moving on and going in a new direction with "Sonic Boom."

@KBFloYd: Power Stone on the Dreamcast did.

I thought Monolith Soft's "X" was the big budget RPG.

The more you look at things and think about the situation, a lot of these Nintendo doom and gloom articles are click bait. It's a slow time right now. The holidays are over and there's no big releases for a couple months. All the GOTY awards are done. There's nothing else to really talk about with the Xbox One and PS4 as their in the hands of the consumers and it's not like there's a ton of killer software on those to talk about and websites want to generate traffic. So when this announcement came all the gaming sites (which love to find any reason to spell doom for Nintendo) were thrilled as they could write all these "Death of Nintendo" articles to generate site traffic.

I'm going to sound like an old nostalgic gamer here but I liked gaming better in the days when gaming magazines were the main media outlet. Since magazines only came out once a month, they had to focus more on reviews and previews and didn't have time for puff pieces, or ridiculous attempts at business articles. I do find it funny that in recent years, it seems like everyone now thinks they can analyze the business of video games.

I was also talking elsewhere with someone who was well versed in business and the main reason for Nintendo's drastic prediction drops is to avoid a worse situation. They could've stayed at the 9 million prediction mark but if they didn't meet that, then shareholders and investors could in fact sue them so basically it was lower predictions and deal with backlash now or don't and have a much worse problem later on.

@mariokart64fan: Speaking of the Vita, there was an article on GS where Sony blamed smartphones and tablets for poor Vita sales, given that the Vita's non gaming features are the same as a smartphone meaning if there isn't compelling software that people want to buy, then you see it's problem. But I see the whole cross play with PS4 as Sony's last ditch attempt to keep the Vita relevant but don't hold your breath for the Vita 2. But yeah it's funny you don't hear the same doom and gloom over the Vita's lousy sales. Then again when you look at console wars, there are those that say "handhelds don't count." Why? I don't know. It seems like when Nintendo has a piece of hardware that's in the lead, they suddenly "don't count." Remember when the Wii was dominating the sales charts, the hardcore community looked at the sales figures and said "well the Wii doesn't count. It's just a gimmick toy. The real battle is between the PS3 and 360." I remember when the PSP first went up against the DS and all this talk of handheld wars, then when the DS branched out with stuff like Nintendogs, Brain Age and NSMB, and started beating the PSP in sales, suddenly no one wanted to talk about the handheld space.

Mark my word, if the WiiU was outselling the competition, the game sites would say "well the WiiU doesn't count because we say so."

Also I don't get this whole "there not advertising thing." All Christmas long when I was watching various specials on TV namely the "family" oriented channels like Disney and ABC Family, every other commercial break was a WiiU ad. What? Did you think they'd advertise on Spike TV or Comedy Central?

I think the WiiU will be treated like the Gamecube. Nintendo will coast along with fan service games, market it to kids to get by. They'll put more focus on the 3DS because they've always dominated the handheld space and won't lose that. I think the whole notion of "going third party" is overblown. They're not bleeding money like Sega was. Sega's downfall was from years of bad decisions, and one piece of failed hardware after another. (Sega CD, CDX, 32x, Game Gear, Nomad, Saturn, etc.) Aside from the Virtual Boy, Nintendo still makes money off it's hardware. (Sony lots millions on the PS3 early on and MS has constantly lost money on the Xbox brand)

Let's hope if the WiiU is another Gamecube they'll at least give us another Metroid Prime, Starfox and Fzero (since GC had all those).

Also we forget that a while back Miyamoto mentioned he was working on a new IP to be announced this year. No idea what it could be with him.

Also given it's massive 3DS sales and the fact there's that app on the WiiU, I'm almost willing to bet they're going to announce Animal Crossing U. But I've rarely been right on predictions.

While light on story, the gameplay is great, I'd also say Rayman Legends.

Also I just downloaded Earthbound on the eshop. If you like JRPGs and a good story, that's a really good one. I'm loving it so far. Then again I liked a lot of the JRPGs from the SNES era.

The big two factors are 1) having all these characters from so many great games getting to beat the snot out of each other and 2) it's up there with Halo Lan parties, Mario Kart, Mario Party in that it's fun to get a bunch of friends around and just play. Having online is nice but like a lot of games, it's more fun when you have everyone in the same room. Plus you can punch them in the face if they act like a jerk. LOL Brawl and Melee also tried to give a fair amount of content to solo players in terms of event matches, story mode etc. Though if that's not your thing, then the only reason to bother with it would be to unlock all the fighters and stages.

Also like a lot of Nintendo games it has the "easy to learn, hard to master" quality to it. Anyone can pick it up and play. Unlike Mortal Kombat where you had to learn insane button combos to be good at it, Smash is all about timing, learning your character's strength's and weaknesses. It has a simple pick up and play nature that kids can learn easily but to play but many spend years perfecting it which is the sign of a well made game.

It's also amazing that with the sheer number of games that get cloned when one is popular, that you don't see more Smash clones. We know Sony tried with PS All Stars and there's been a couple knock offs like Punch Time Explosion and TMNT. But not many have managed to duplicate it well. I'm mostly surprised Sega hasn't made their own mascot fighter especially after the Sega All Star Tennis and Racing games. Seriously why does that NOT exist?