• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

endzville

Self-requested ban
Banned
Apr 21, 2020
237
Scotland
They could add auto lock or some form of aim assist. I think they simply did the bare minimum to get the collection out there and making it a limited time release guarantees that it'll sell well.

That person was responding to me, someone who hasn't played the game, and, frankly, they and others making the same point are the ones that are right in this thread, both here and in their follow up posts. Someone mentioned the game's Grandmaster Galaxy stages and, without having played the game myself, I found this as at least one example of the difficulty porting this game would entail:



Auto lock isn't a solution here and using the joy cons to replicate the Wii's pointer is out the window, since they can't release this as a part of this collection but at the same time tell Switch Lite owners that they can't play this particular game out of the four unless they own joy cons. To me, it looks like a game clearly stuck on its original system.

Matthewmatosis has a review of the game that touches on the extensive use of the Wiimote that's also quite illustrative of the problem here:

 

JasoNsider

Developer
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,149
Canada
I don't think it has anything to do with any technical limitation. If Galaxy could be included so can Galaxy 2.

Nintendo just doesn't want to give away four Mario games for the price.

The pointer controls are way more prevalent in Galaxy 2. Yoshi, a major part of the second game, relies entirely on being able to point at various elements on the screen and do things with them.

Yes, there would be "workarounds" but I don't think any of them are elegant and you can bet people would not be happy with it. Honestly, I can see why Nintendo is taking it easy with Galaxy 2 given how much compromise and re-invention would be necessary. Hell, I actually think some people might be a bit pissed at even the minimal pointer stuff in Galaxy 1 on this collection.

edit: and yeah, if you look at some of the gameplay above - again, imagine trying to come up with an elegant solution for this pointer/motion control stuff. It's not easy. Even lock-on would piss a lot of people off and wouldn't really be representative of the original game's feel.
 

Deleted member 11413

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
22,961
I would suggest go checking out some videos. It's actually really tightly integrated. People are quick to say "greed" and such, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a way that would work elegantly on handheld or Switch Lite. Even if it were relegated to a right stick, you still need face buttons to jump. It would be a mess. At the very least it wouldn't be anywhere near what kind of dexterity you are expected to work with in the original game.


Supposedly they are porting Skyward Sword though, which is just as heavily motion based if not more so
 

Wariobenotware

Alt Account
Banned
Apr 2, 2020
1,869
The pointer controls are way more prevalent in Galaxy 2. Yoshi, a major part of the second game, relies entirely on being able to point at various elements on the screen and do things with them.

Yes, there would be "workarounds" but I don't think any of them are elegant and you can bet people would not be happy with it. Honestly, I can see why Nintendo is taking it easy with Galaxy 2 given how much compromise and re-invention would be necessary. Hell, I actually think some people might be a bit pissed at even the minimal pointer stuff in Galaxy 1 on this collection.

The pointer usage between the two games is about the same? The pointer is constantly used for starbits and there were stages in Galaxy that required it like the ones where you were inside a bubble and blowing Mario around with the pointer. Or others that use the pull stars to race a Boo and collecting purple coins under a time limit.
 

Rodney McKay

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,205
That person was responding to me, someone who hasn't played the game, and, frankly, they and others making the same point are the ones that are right in this thread, both here and in their follow up posts. Someone mentioned the game's Grandmaster Galaxy stages and, without having played the game myself, I found this as at least one example of the difficulty porting this game would entail:



Auto lock isn't a solution here and using the joy cons to replicate the Wii's pointer is out the window, since they can't release this as a part of this collection but at the same time tell Switch Lite owners that they can't play this particular game out of the four unless they own joy cons. To me, it looks like a game clearly stuck on its original system.

Matthewmatosis has a review of the game that touches on the extensive use of the Wiimote that's also quite illustrative of the problem here:


Maybe I'm missing something from that first video (haven't played Galaxy 2 personally), but can't the Yoshi part at the beginning and the pulling Mario between stars part near the end just be done with the touch screen?

Neither of those two sections seemed to requiring moving Mario or using the face buttons while selecting the points to zip to, which means the right hand could be used to select those stars with the touch screen.
 

JasoNsider

Developer
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,149
Canada
The pointer usage between the two games is about the same? The pointer is constantly used for starbits and there were stages in Galaxy that required it like the ones where you were inside a bubble and blowing Mario around with the pointer. Or others that use the pull stars to race to Boo and collecting purpple coins under s time limit.

I don't think it's the same. I think Yoshi alone pushes it over the edge. Yoshi is a major gameplay feature that you use pretty extensively.

Not to mention, their implementation for pointer controls is touch screen. With yoshi you're required a certain amount of dexterity that couples with running and jumping. With other features like blowing mario around you could arguably say it's probably ok to ask the user to let go of analog stick long enough to balance the Switch in handheld and just touch the screen. This is not the case with Yoshi. It's kind of a Kid Icarus 3DS situation.
 

crimsonECHIDNA

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,426
Florida
Honest opinion? I'm thinking it was all done to prep the reselling of N64, Gamecube, and Wii emulated games on the Switch. Kind of like how people kept assuming that the N64 Classic was going to be on the horizon but then it never happened.

Unlike the NES and SNES games, I'm willing to bet that these games will be sold individually from the eshop. With Galaxy 2 being one of the "flagship" titles of this announcement. And pricing wise I'd even go as far as to say Nintendo will go

N64 - $15
Gamecube - $20
Wii - $25

Yeah it's more expensive than what the N64 titles sold on the Virtual Console but it's what I'm expecting lol
 

bionic77

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,894
Would have been much cooler if they included Galaxy 2.

I would have even been ok with dropping Sunshine if we get Galaxy 2.

I am not really looking forward to replaying 64 or Sunshine. But at least 64 is good and pretty short if you have played it before. Sunshine has some great stuff but some of it is just not fun.
 

JasoNsider

Developer
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,149
Canada
Maybe I'm missing something from that first video (haven't played Galaxy 2 personally), but can't the Yoshi part at the beginning and the pulling Mario between stars part near the end just be done with the touch screen?

Neither of those two sections seemed to requiring moving Mario or using the face buttons while selecting the points to zip to, which means the right hand could be used to select those stars with the touch screen.

Again, go back to another video that shows more Yoshi gameplay on ground. Imagine every time you need to use yoshi's tongue you have to take your hand off of right "grip" (with the face buttons) and go to touch screen on your lap, and then quickly go back to right grip with the face buttons. That would be a nightmare control solution that people in this thread would laugh at.

 

endzville

Self-requested ban
Banned
Apr 21, 2020
237
Scotland
Maybe I'm missing something from that first video (haven't played Galaxy 2 personally), but can't the Yoshi part at the beginning and the pulling Mario between stars part near the end just be done with the touch screen?

Neither of those two sections seemed to requiring moving Mario or using the face buttons while selecting the points to zip to, which means the right hand could be used to select those stars with the touch screen.

This isn't a solution either, it would mean you can't play the game, at least in certain sections, on your TV? But there's plenty of other examples of where jumping, moving, etc. and using the Wiimote are combined, so it doesn't matter anyway. Check out the video posted on page 2!

EDIT: Beaten to the point!

Supposedly they are porting Skyward Sword though, which is just as heavily motion based if not more so

Correct me if I'm wrong, as this is another game I haven't played, but my understanding was that this was mostly tied to combat and aerial stuff, for which there are much simpler solutions than a platformer like Mario. For example, in combat the motion control attacks could be tied to the right analogue stick.
 

Kaim Argonar

Member
Dec 8, 2017
2,271
UB0TV9G.gif
 

JasoNsider

Developer
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
2,149
Canada
Supposedly they are porting Skyward Sword though, which is just as heavily motion based if not more so

This is entirely up in the air.
1. It might not exist.
2. It might be a complete re-invention/re-tuning of the controls. As in, maybe no motion controls at all and a focus of right stick to do "gestures" and
3. Skyward sword had almost no pointer controls and instead had motion gestures. The distinction is important. But either way, Switch Lite would be in trouble without a new approach to translate the foundation design.
 

Dyle

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
29,943
Maybe I'm missing something from that first video (haven't played Galaxy 2 personally), but can't the Yoshi part at the beginning and the pulling Mario between stars part near the end just be done with the touch screen?

Neither of those two sections seemed to requiring moving Mario or using the face buttons while selecting the points to zip to, which means the right hand could be used to select those stars with the touch screen.
The Yoshi part requires the player to flutter jump in between some of the grapple points, so you'd have to not only hold the Switch with you left hand but also do some kind of weird claw position with your right hand. Theoretically you could map jump to L to address that, but it would feel super weird, particularly when ZL is used to jump off Yoshi, and might cause issues since I believe L will be mapped to centering the camera, taking the place of the C button on the nunchuck. The pull star section is manageable and is the kind of thing that appears in Galaxy 1. It's Yoshi stuff like that first section that's unique to Galaxy 2 and would be difficult to port to anything other than the Wii.

The problem isn't whether it would work at all, it's whether it would work well
 
Last edited:

Durden

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
12,511
Super fucking stupid and depressing, but I see it as Nintendo's weird form of consolidating the series. Making it easier to digest to the general audience. As the only numbered sequel on a home console that's not the original trilogy, I bet it just doesn't fit whatever direction they're going for. Which seems very calculated in a Disney-like way.

If this theory's correct, then Galaxy 2 is very unfortunately doomed to be an afterthought by Nintendo in the years to come.
 

Edge

A King's Landing
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,012
Celle, Germany
my fault for not embedding the second tweet, she didn't mean as a NSO free game but released individually for $30 or so on the store digitally except N64 which is likely could be NSO but likely also not coming out anytime soon

Yeah, I can see it as standalone digital release in March when they separate the current collection. I think most people already came to that conclusion. So yeah it definitely will come, the sad part is tho, a collection like this would have been the only chance for a physical release and now where they dropped the ball with that, it will be digital only.
 

KayonXaikyre

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,984
My guess is that they wanted to release the games on marios 35th anniversary, already had the galaxy port from shield to work with, and in order to port galaxy 2 they would have to do some real changes to the way the game works to get the controls setup and it wouldn't be able to be done in time to make it during the 35th anniversary or in budget (And was never planned from the beginning) for this kind of collection. Hopefully it gets some kind of release later though it's a fantastic game.
 

Red

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,696
The cynic in me believes it'll be available later, with its own cost. After the "All Stars" run, Nintendo will make the three collection titles available independently, and add one or two other games for purchase.
 

mopinks

Member
Oct 27, 2017
30,577
yeah I'm buying the Yoshi explanation until further notice

which sucks, because a world without a Galaxy 2 port is a sad world indeed
 

Woylie

Member
May 9, 2018
1,849
The only reason I've got is it'd provide too much value for that $60 for Nintendo's liking. They can get away with providing less and still sell as well

Yeah, this is what I think too. They're probably worried it would devalue the games in the future to have all four of them included for $60, especially when they could honestly probably sell upgraded versions of each of the Galaxy games on their own at full price and get away with it
 
Apr 21, 2018
6,969
I concur that it's Yoshi. There just isn't an elegant way to do that with gyro or touch screen. I don't think Nintendo would release it if that significant portion of gameplay was broken and awkward.

I don't think it means Galaxy 2 is stuck on Wii/WiiU forever, it will just need some major retooling that didn't go into this collection. The same retooling Skyward Sword and Metroid Prime 3 will eventually get.
 

XaviConcept

Art Director for Videogames
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
4,909
I could see them adding it last minute or making it DLC. Either way, as a brand it makes sense to focus on those 3 games as its more "balanced"
 

Hermii

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,685
Has it been confirmed anywhere wether 3D all stars are actual ports/ or is it emulation?

I am seeing people saying Galaxy is the shield version, in which case it's emulation.
 

waugh

Attempted to circumvent ban with an alt-account
Banned
Feb 21, 2020
1,401
It's cute people are trying to invent reasons Galaxy 2 is not here because of pointer controls. When the most realistic scenario is Nintendo values Mario titles too much to put 4 games for $60.
 
Oct 26, 2017
20,440
Nvidia never ported Galaxy 2 over to the Wii emulator Nintendo uses and this collection was just games that had already been ported over to emulators I would guess (with Sunshine having been internally working on their Wii emulator but never released I would guess).
 

endzville

Self-requested ban
Banned
Apr 21, 2020
237
Scotland
It's cute people are trying to invent reasons Galaxy 2 is not here because of pointer controls. When the most realistic scenario is Nintendo values Mario titles too much to put 4 games for $60.

I haven't even played the game and yet it's by far the most (only, in fact) plausible reason I've seen presented for its exclusion. 🤷‍♂️
 

Many

Member
Sep 17, 2018
566
That person was responding to me, someone who hasn't played the game, and, frankly, they and others making the same point are the ones that are right in this thread, both here and in their follow up posts. Someone mentioned the game's Grandmaster Galaxy stages and, without having played the game myself, I found this as at least one example of the difficulty porting this game would entail:



Auto lock isn't a solution here and using the joy cons to replicate the Wii's pointer is out the window, since they can't release this as a part of this collection but at the same time tell Switch Lite owners that they can't play this particular game out of the four unless they own joy cons. To me, it looks like a game clearly stuck on its original system.

Matthewmatosis has a review of the game that touches on the extensive use of the Wiimote that's also quite illustrative of the problem here:


I still see the easy solution, aim to the nearest most important thing in front of Yoshi. Important ranking in this case: flower, then enemy. Even if is not perfect, they could thing on something else, but they didn't, they went for the easy way.
 

Tavernade

Tavernade
Moderator
Sep 18, 2018
8,630
It not being included will likely mean, whenever Nintendo has a way to make it playable again, it'll not only see a rerelease but be further highlighted. Imagine a new Wii Mini when the Wii nostalgia hits, or a Switch 2 that incorporates new joy-cons that allow for that sort of backwards compatibility.

Supposedly they are porting Skyward Sword though, which is just as heavily motion based if not more so

'Supposedly' being the key word.

Also, assuming it's a stand alone release, it's likely getting much more time put into it to get that up and running, compared to Galaxy 2 which is the least well known entry in a bundle that needs to be out by a specific date (made even more important by COVID delaying the rest of the year's crop of releases).

Super fucking stupid and depressing, but I see it as Nintendo's weird form of consolidating the series. Making it easier to digest to the general audience. As the only numbered sequel on a home console that's not the original trilogy, I bet it just doesn't fit whatever direction they're going for. Which seems very calculated in a Disney-like way.

If this theory's correct, then Galaxy 2 is very unfortunately doomed to be an afterthought by Nintendo in the years to come.

This is way over-dramatic. As everyone else has pointed out, there's specific issues with Galaxy 2 that make a port hard.

My guess is that they wanted to release the games on marios 35th anniversary, already had the galaxy port from shield to work with, and in order to port galaxy 2 they would have to do some real changes to the way the game works to get the controls setup and it wouldn't be able to be done in time to make it during the 35th anniversary or in budget (And was never planned from the beginning) for this kind of collection. Hopefully it gets some kind of release later though it's a fantastic game.

There was someone on one of the other threads linking an insider that said it was included initially, but was cut (I imagine due to the pointer issues everyone else on here has noted). You're probably right that they realized they wouldn't get it done in time.
 

endzville

Self-requested ban
Banned
Apr 21, 2020
237
Scotland
I still see the easy solution, aim to the nearest most important thing in front of Yoshi. Important ranking in this case: flower, then enemy. Even if is not perfect, they could thing on something else, but they didn't, they went for the easy way.

I don't think that's an easy fix at all but others in this thread have explained better than me why that is, and they've played the game unlike me! As someone else said, the problem isn't so much coming up with a solution (there's several proposed in this thread) - it's creating one that actually does the job in a satisfactory way.
 

Mekanos

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 17, 2018
44,175
I still see the easy solution, aim to the nearest most important thing in front of Yoshi. Important ranking in this case: flower, then enemy. Even if is not perfect, they could thing on something else, but they didn't, they went for the easy way.

This would ruin levels like Grandmaster Galaxy. It's too drastic of a change for what is meant to be a basic "as you remember it" collection of ports.
 

PlatStrat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
565
I don't see why they couldn't just keep the pointer controls as is and just have the game require joy-cons or pro controller w/ gyro. Not every game is handheld compatible, take Super Mario Party for example. That would probably be the reason to hold it back and sell it as DLC as they wouldn't want to include a game that handheld users wouldn't be able to play.
 
Oct 30, 2017
3,147
I wish it were. I've never played it. Wish companies would honor their back catalogs a little better and stop restricting them to obsolete consoles. :(
 

blondkayvon

Member
Oct 26, 2017
756
Supposedly they are porting Skyward Sword though, which is just as heavily motion based if not more so
Maybe I'm crazy but I was under the impression that Skyward Sword literally -only- uses gyro and no actual pointer/IR. So exactly what the joy cons do (I think?). I might be misunderstanding the tech but I know you could play Skyward Sword with your sensor bar unplugged.
 

JaggiBaggi

Member
Nov 4, 2017
401
Supposedly they are porting Skyward Sword though, which is just as heavily motion based if not more so
Maybe I'm crazy but I was under the impression that Skyward Sword literally -only- uses gyro and no actual pointer/IR. So exactly what the joy cons do (I think?). I might be misunderstanding the tech but I know you could play Skyward Sword with your sensor bar unplugged.

This is correct.

They problem here wouldn't be motion controls, but pointer controls. The Switch has no trouble doing motion controls. It's the pointer stuff what's iffy.

Skyward Sword didn't actually use the pointer at all, it actually used gyro for everything. So it's actually a lot easier to port in that sense.