I beat Mario 3D world with my kids, basically just carrying them through the whole thing. If you completely run out of lives, you just get kicked back to the world map with ~10 lives. So, as long as I could beat a single level with only a death or two, I could continue to make progress even if they just died over and over.
The same can’t be said for Yoshi’s Crafted World. While you can float / bubble through a stage, a lot of the flowers require actual execution to get them, like managing egg counts or specific navigation tricks, which are hard to do when somebody is actively sabotaging you by eating you and stealing all the eggs. I basically gave up on that one after a couple worlds.
My younger one can play Kirby adequately by herself though, with me only occasionally taking over to get past a tricky bit.
The problem with Bowser’s Fury is that with 2 kids, if they’re both playing…I’m not. Which means I can’t power through with them, and one of them has to sit on the sidelines while we’re playing if we’re to make progress.
New Super Mario Bros U, I think we tried, but its not very kid-friendly, if its the one I’m thinking of. Progress is tied to checkpoints that only occur every 4-5 stages, so you can’t drop in and out as easily, and it’s relatively easy to sabotage each other by jumping on each others heads, etc.
Paper Mario is one of the series on my shortlist of games I really want to play someday. Maybe when my son can read it I’ll finally sit down and play through some of them with him. They look like really great games.
Good to know. Right now I’ve bought Odyssey and Mario Party, and Luigi’s Mansion in a physical cart coming when it’s back in stock for his birthday. I can probably get away with adding one more and keeping it in reserve. That’s the annoying thing with Nintendo sales; it feels like if I don’t buy these now it won’t go back on sale till Black Friday!
Bowsers Fury sounds pretty fun. Ok, one more game in the cart :)
Edit: Technically, two games!
Excellent! It’s my favorite Mario game, and that’s saying a lot, considering how much I love the 3D games. Especially Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy.
I beat Metroid Prime yesterday, took me some 16hrs which was a loooong time for me. But! I only played it while crosstraining over about 15 sessions, so I was kinda slow with my progress especially since I wasn’t using any guides and tried to 100% it. I finally got used to the experience and stopped falling off my crosstrainer after about 4 hrs. All in all, as a conservative estimate I was averaging about 10km an hour so it took me 160km (100mi) to beat it.
I hated crosstraining due to how boring I’d find it, could usually only manage 25min sessions before quitting. Now it’s something I actually look forward to - I completed my 3rd consecutive day today which is a first as I usually alternate with a ‘rest’ day between. Ok, my pace isn’t as good as it was since I can’t hold onto the handlebars to stabilise myself, but I upped the resistance to compensate and my sessions are now three times as long.
My only concern is that I’m going to ruin these cool looking Splatoon Joy-Cons by sweatin’ all over them so I’ve ordered some spares (unfortunately couldn’t find the ones @Thraeg recommended in the UK, plus they looked a bit big for me anyway).
Really great. So pleased to have bought a Switch and thought of doing this. (I’m hoping to have thighs like Chun-Li by the time I’ve worked my way through the must-play Switch catalogue)
Nice! Congratulations!
I had to look up Chun-Li. A Street Fighter reference! :)
Unfortunately missed this discussion. Much of the advice given is the same I would give, but I’d also suggest Rayman Legends.
Not a Mario game, but it’s an awesome platformer and the colourful and whimsical levels and characters made this a huge hit with my two boys when they were younger. It’s quite frequently on sale and definitely worth the money on those (there’s also a free demo available, I believe).
geggis
4862
Yeah, Rayman Origins and Legends are among my favourite 2D platformers, and they’re great co-op too. They’ve got such a wonderful sense of flow and are wildly unpredictable.
geewhiz
4863
Has anyone played Power Wash Simulator on the Switch? I was thinking of getting it for my wife.
I know this isn’t playable on the Switch, but to me Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is the gold standard of co-op play. My son and I started playing together when he was three years old—me driving, him throwing items—and those are still some of our best gaming memories. Skidding around the final turn into 3rd, he throws a red shell, we pass the 2nd place guy and win in 1st. Then we started switching so he could drive. By four years old, he could beat my wife in races. By five, he could beat me and got gold in every cup.
I really hope they bring that gameplay back someday. It really was an amazing experience, and turned my son into a lifelong gamer.
This sounds suspiciously like the digital equivalent of gifting a vacuum cleaner.
geggis
4866
Yeah in the Mario Kart series this is still one of my favourites. Back in the day, when I was working at a restaurant down the road, at the end of the night I used to go home with a colleague and friend and we’d try to beat the all-tour cup on 150cc (me driving, him on weapons). Something few people talk about when it comes to the Mario Kart games (and I think only F-Zero GX explicitly leans into this) is that depending on which characters you choose, you’ll get ‘nemesis’ drivers who are basically hardwired to come first. If you were aiming for gold, you’d have to prioritise dislodging them from the top spot. With the all-tour cup taking so long, you really had to make sure you were getting those points and denying them others.
I recall one time we got all the way to the end and it was super tight. We were perched for gold and on the final lap of the final section on the final course (Rainbow Road), right at the top of the grav shaft, we got rekt by our nemesis and they snagged gold while we ended up with silver. It was hilarious and devastating because the all-tour cup took ages so the stakes were so much higher! It’s still one of my favourite co-op experiences looking back.
Same here!
Interesting fact: I swapped Ikaruga for Double Dash!!(!!) :) I remember at the time feeling like I was handing in some of my gamer cred. How silly.
geewhiz
4867
My son told my wife about the Power Wash game and she was interested in it (which is rare).
Haha, I had the same thought.
Coincidentally, I played a bit of Powerwash Simulator on the PS5, and it is literally the game that caused my non-videogame-playing partner to ask me how to boot up the console so she could occasionally play on her own. It is incredibly calming and I think even folks without much interest in games can sense that when seeing it in action.
Editer
4870
The OLED Switch is on sale for $309.99 on woot.com today.
Tempted, as I sold my Switch a while a back, but I figure they gotta be doing a Switch 2 within the next year.
I got Luigi’s Mansion 3 in the last sale for my son’s birthday. Along with Mario Party Superstar and Yoshi’s Crafted World. LM3 is what he has gravitated towards in the last few days since his birthday. Terrible timing by the way, his birthday. I’d have much preferred he keep playing Breath of the Wild like he had been. But a birthday is a birthday.
Anyway, so Luigi’s Mansion 3 is this really weird hybrid of camera relative controls and tank controls. The left stick controls Luigi like most normal games, relative to the camera. But the right control stick controls the direction he’s facing, and that’s tank controls, i.e., relative to the character. So left on the right stick turns him counterclockwise from whichever direction he’s facing, and right on the right thumbstick makes him turn clockwise. It’s a deliberate design decision to make him harder to control, and to make the game more challenging.
And it kind of works? The whole game is sort of designed to be played with Luigi as a scarety cat character who doesn’t want this role thrust upon him. But with Mario and everyone else already captured, the job falls to him. And he’s terrible at it. And how do you show that? Well, through the terrible controls, of course. So yeah, I kind of admire it as a way of showing the player that Luigi should be scared, since he’s a bit incompetent, and the controls do a good job of making the player feel that reality.
Welcome to why many of us hold Nintendo in such high regard. Their game design is almost always uniquely appropriate and consistently well considered for the setting of the game.
A lot of the time that’s because they designed the mechanics first and then decide the characters and story second.
New Indie Showcase Nintendo Direct starts in slightly less than one hour.
