Woohoo!! Amazing! Bravo! ... That mouse, though...

-=-=-

My main concern, when they showed off the ability to use the joycon as a mouse would be that, all of a sudden, there'd be an influx of generic mouse-driven ports with little or no thought put into them.
Last week I made a Tower Defence game where the main character is controllable with a thumbstick, instead of everything being mouse-driven.
Mario vs Rabbids is an RTS where you control a little robot thing that acts as a cursor for the game.
And what about Future Cop LAPD? That was a wonderful little RTS style game, especially in Multiplayer mode, and it worked perfectly well without a mouse...

... In the 90s!

It's fun to try new and unique things, and I'm all for going back to old methods to do the important things that need them, but ..

... Oh, there's Civilisation. A game that ran perfectly well already, but..
"Switch 2 Edition", mouse, mouse, mouse!

And there's the things you kinda expect to be there, like "Draw a track for Mario Kart World", which.. Given the open-world-ness would be a fantastic way to edit tracks, but nothing showed up in the trailer.
I mean, that should definitely be in there, right?
Right!?

Hmm..

Meanwhile, there's now the opposite side of the coin, where games like Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S is being shown to have an "All new Mouse Mode", and all of a sudden we're dealing with "shoehorn in Mouse Controls", which neither Puyo, nor Tetris, deserves.


View on YouTube

I saw that, and my jaw dropped.
This is like "Everything must have Motion Controls", from the Wii generation, except we now also need a flat surface whilst playing, too.

And for a while, I was thinking "but it'll be ok.. Because when you're playing in handheld, the touchscreen's there as the substitute." And my head kinda rolled with that concept, thinking "it'll be alright. The mouse is ONLY there to replace the touchscreen when playing on the telly."

And then they showed off "Drag n Drive", the wheelchair basketball game.


View on YouTube

Well, that's not working on a touchscreen, at all, is it?
And how's that going to work when you're playing in Handheld mode? Do you levitate the screen on your knees?

It isn't.
It's going to be "TV or Tabletop, but not Handheld"
It's going to be as bad as trying to play Arms in Handheld. And I can tell you how much fun I got out of playing Arms in Handheld.

ugh.

It'll be alright. I'll "go with the flow", and ignore it like I did with most of the Motion Control shoehorned stuff. The times when Motion Control worked, they were worth it. And I think this will be just that.

And I do hope that developers take into account that a lot of players are playing in Handheld mode, and won't be in a place with a flat mouse-able surface to draw things around with.

There's a reason I don't use a mouse with my laptop when sat on the couch.
And there's a reason why I DO use a mouse with my laptop, when sat at a desk.

Gamedevs, sitting at a desk, are going to have to take a step back whilst developing games. Just because they're ALWAYS using the mouse, doesn't mean that the player is.
.. or we'll end up right back at that situation when all the games had teensy tiny fonts because the gamedev was sat in front of a monitor, but the player was sat across a room struggling to read the tiny text from their telly.

Honestly, I think it's the first time in a VERY long time, that I've actually pictured a Nintendo Developer. Sitting at a desk with a mouse in their hand, coding for hours at a time.

Meanwhile...

...
That said, I'll definitely be preordering one the second I get a chance!

Mario Kart World looks amazing!! And it has a Free Roam mode. \o/yeay\o/
Soul Calibur 2 and FZero GX will be part of the GameCube Online bonus thing. \o/yeay\o/
Tony Hawks 3 and 4 will be silky smooth on it. \o/yeay\o/
Zelda BOTW and TOTK both get updates. \o/yeay\o/
and more. There's a lot of great things in that first hour of introduction, and it definitely makes me want one, RIGHT NOW!!!

OK, back to coding, Jay.

A.I. Corner

Lyrics : By me
Sound Imported : Variable Trick (inst)
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"Cartoon Derek struggles to balance a tablet screen on his knees whilst simultaneously using a mouse in his right hand and a small game controller in his left. Sofa, living room" by Replicate/Flux

... Flux couldn't figure it out, either.

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