Nintendo may be growing up, but there are some SERIOUS growing pains.

I'm not against Nintendo doing DLC, I'm just against how they do it.

Hey there everyone, Happy Gamer here, and ReviewTechUSA recently made a video about Nintendo locking content in the upcoming Metroid game behind Amiibos. As is to be expected, people are kind of upset about it, and Rich says "this is just the gaming industry today, companies lock content behind DLC and Nintendo is just joining the party."


Yeah...about that. See, I'm a bit of an Amiibo collector. I try to get all the smash amiibo I can, and some of the others I'm interested in. I'm also pretty sure you said at one point "I don't like Amiibo." So allow me to enlighten you on one complain every Amiibo collector has, NINTENDO DOESN'T KEEP AMIIBO STOCKED!

See, I quite like the idea of Amiibo. They are one time purchases, are compatible with multiple games, and give you something physical. One thing I don't like about DLC is that it's digital (hence the "D" in DLC). I buy my games physical whenever I can so I have something to display. Conventional DLC can't be displayed though, because it's digital. Amiibo on the other hand, can be displayed, and I quite like how my Amiibo look around my TV and on my store display rack. They're also single purchases compatible across multiple games. I can buy 1 figure, and it can work on multiple games. If I guy a call of duty 4 map pack, it only works on call of duty 4. If I buy a Super Mario Amiibo, it works on over 30 games. Even if Nintendo charged $0.50 for each piece of unlockable content on each of those games, it still would be cheaper to just buy a $13 figure, that's going to continue unlocking content in the future. It's actually a really great way to distribute DLC, in concept.

See, here's the Achilles Heel of Amiibo. While conventional DLC doesn't have the benefits of Amiibo, it does have 1 benefit that Nintendo just can't seem to remedy, it's UNLIMITED. If I want to buy that call of duty map pack, I go to the xbox/playstation/steam store, add the DLC to my digital cart, download it, and that's it. I don't have to call 20 gamestops, best buys, toys r us, targets, meijers, and walmarts to see if they have that map pack in stock ultimately to find out they're out of stock. If I want the character skin in street fighter, I just get it from the digital marketplace without any problem. I don't have to buy the DLC months before it's even announced speculating that I'll want the game, just because I know if I don't buy it within the first couple days of release it'll be gone forever. If I want to get the season pass for a game, I just buy the season pass from the unlimited digital reserve. I don't have to pre-order the day pre-orders are announced because the pre-orders are going to sell out the next day. How is that even a thing? Pre-orders are supposed to gauge how much demand there's going to be, and you ship some multiple of the pre-orders to the stores. You don't say "we're only allowing this much demand for this product, consumers be damned." There is an entire sub-reddit dedicated to "how to find amiibo." You don't see that with any other DLC.

Look, I like Amiibo. They are a great concept, as I mentioned above. But if you go to the Amiibo section of the store and it isn't completely empty (as I've seen multiple times), you'll find 1 or 2 common smash series, a booster pack of cards, animal crossing (except villager), and maybe a splatoon. You won't find Kirby series, Zelda series, Mario series, 8-bit series, yarn series, or 80% of the smash series. The Metroid game in the video that uses smash series Samaus and Zero Suit? Good luck finding both full suit and zero suit in stores. Just bought Splatoon 2 and want the unlockable content with the Splatoon 3-pack amiibo? Unless you bought them over 2 years ago, the best you'll be able to do is the Splatoon 2 3-pack, if you're lucky. Little Timmy asks Santa for a Turbo Charged Donkey Kong Amiibo because it can be used in Skylanders, well sorry Timmy, Santa couldn't get you that Amiibo because Santa didn't go to Meijer at midnight because the following morning was the morning of the big presentation. I understand the store's perspective of "I don't want these to sit here for months" (like the Animal Crossing series), but I don't understand why Nintendo won't do more print runs of the really popular ones, especially when new games come out that use them.

In the early days one of the arguments I got frequently from Nintendo apologists was "they're just collectables, like other limited print action figures, it's not like you're missing out on anything if you don't get them." Well, now they're legit DLC, and Nintendo isn't allowing customers to buy it. This has been Happy Gamer, signing off, and instead of Milking us dry, Nintendo is just teasing us. Bye.

Nintendo Switch Won't Have a Browser at Launch, and Why that's a Bad Thing

"Why do you care if the Switch won't have a web browser? Do you use your console web browser at all? The only people harmed will be horny kids who don't have a computer."

When I first heard the news that the Nintendo Switch won't have a web browser, that was basically my first thoughts too. Before I got a computer, I did use the Nintendo DS browser a lot to read wikipedia, but then I got a computer and I barely even open the browsers on my game consoles.

Well...in the comments of the ReviewTechUSA video I heard the news on, I had a major realization on why this is a problem.

"I DO care, how else am I going to login on my university wifi?????"

And this got me thinking, "yes, that is the primary reason I use the web browser on my 3DS."

See, at my old university, to connect your device was more than "enter the router password." After connecting to the wifi, you had to open a web page and log in with your student ID and register your device. If you didn't do that, you wouldn't be able to use hulu, netfix, youtube, or online gaming. If you tried to connect without registering the device by saying "I accept the TOS, register this device to my student account" in the web browser, you couldn't use it.

"OK, that sucks for students and faculty, but that's only...half of the target audience. But I'm not a student, so it's not a problem for me."

Yeah I had that thought as well, but then I remembered when I go places with public wifi, such as fast food restaurants and hotels, especially hotels. I could live without restaurants since I'm normally not there for extended periods of time. But when I go to hotels, I want to connect my device to the internet to use internet apps. At hotels, I like to watch hulu on my 3DS while I surf the web on my laptop. And when I go to hotels, probably 3/4 times I need to open the web browser and say "I accept the TOS" before I can watch hulu. There's also airport wifi. Almost always, if you want to use their wifi, you NEED to sign in at the browser landing page and purchase credits/enter promotional codes.

I get it, the web browser is an easy back door for hacking consoles, and Nintendo doesn't want people hacking their consoles. Also, most people don't use the web browsers with all the better devices for surfing. But it's kind of important for using the internet in many situations. It's a hybrid semi-portable console that I'm guessing many owners will take with their Switches with them on trips, and a reality of those trips will be "I need to go to the in browser log in page to connect to the wifi so I can do various internet connected activities." Plus, it's very tablet like, so people may want to use it for tablet browsing.

Well, this has been Happy Gamer, signing off, and hopefully Nintendo has a solution for "I need a browser to access internet functions."

Physical Games Will Never Die for Me

So I watched ReviewTechUSA's video on "physical media is dying" and this is the comment I left.



I still buy physical and I will as long as I can, because I love seeing the game on my wall. I don't care "how easy to use" and "installs" and all that, I like looking over at my DVD rack and seeing my Wii U, PS3, and XBOX 360 games along my wall. I love looking at my (3)DS game cases lined up on my (3)DS game shelf. I love flipping through my 3DS game case to get to my game. I play mostly single player games so 15 years from now my games will still be mostly functional.

Now for my "burned" story with digital, a story I plan on turning into skit video. I have a bunch of demos on my PS3 and 360 that I downloaded when I didn't really have money back in high school. When I finally got a job to buy games, I tried getting the full games from PSN and XBL. Oh, those games are no longer on the servers, and this was before PS4 and XBOX ONE. Then around the same time, I wanted to buy some launch DS games that I didn't have (Feel the Magic and Sprung to be specific). What did I do? I went on amazon and bought used copies. Now lets look at a more recent example. PT? Yeah, that digital Konami game that was only available for like 9 months and now it's impossible to get if you don't already have it. Now if only it was released physically. Even if there's game breaking bugs and the patches are no longer available, well it's still playable up to a point.

I will ALWAYS prefer physical.

Splatoon Impressions from the Global Testfire

Happy Gamer's Impressions of Splatoon Global Testfire by catholiccontriversy

Thank-you for watching. If you would like to watch pokematic's lets play, click here.