Author Archives: Matt Roszak

Nintendo Switch Review

Hey guys, I’ve had my Nintendo Switch for a few weeks now, so I feel qualified to rant about it for a little while. Since this console is often praised as one of the best things Nintendo has ever made, I felt I’d chip in a contrary opinion.

If you’re a protective Nintendo fan, look away now!

tl;dr: As a home console, the Nintendo Switch is just a WiiU with less features. The portability is not a feature that is useful to me.

Let me begin by saying that it’s still a fun console, and it’s worth the money, for most people. Anyone who didn’t own a WiiU, or wants a handheld, will love it.

But as the only person who bought a WiiU, I feel like I’ve just paid £350+ to keep playing WiiU games. Graphically it’s not even a noticeable improvement – you’d have to compare them side by side to notice a difference. I’m not expecting cutting edge-graphics, but 1080p has been the standard for around 10 years now – you could at least give me that. Half the games are ports or sequels of WiiU games, and the new games look like they could run on WiiU hardware anyway. Nothing is backwards compatible – not the games, and not even the controllers! (I purchased a Mayflash Magic adapter which lets me use my old WiiU Pro controller on the Switch. Very cool life-hack. That should totally be a built in feature of the console.)

Why did I say it has less features? The WiiU and previous Nintendo consoles had fun charts for showing you which games you’ve played every day and for how long. Those are gone. Now you have to play a game for 10 days to see a rough estimate of your playtime (rounded to the nearest 5 hours, wtf?). Very primitive and confusing.

As for online features, they are the same as what the WiiU had – but now you have to pay for them! Talk about cutting out existing features and putting them behind a paywall.

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Anyway, if you want a new handheld to replace your Nintendo 3DS, then it’s a huge improvement. But as a home console for the living room, it doesn’t offer anything new or exciting. I wish Nintendo would make consoles again.

When I was a kid, the Nintendo 64 revolutionized 3D video games. The GameCube took those games and made them look 5x better. The Wii was gimmicky, but offered some unique controls for the time. The WiiU… looked a little bit better than the Wii. And then the Switch… is a WiiU that you can carry around.

It would be nice to see some groundbreaking innovation from Nintendo again. They should be the company working on making VR more accessible. But instead, you’ve got Sony making better Mario games than Nintendo. (see Astro Bot: Rescue Mission) And yes, I’m aware that Nintendo is a company and needs to make money, and that my favourite gaming products seem to be those that don’t make much money. That sucks for me.

Oh well. I just wanted to get that out there.
If you just want a handheld and love your Switch, probably none of this applies to you.

Lightning Laser’s Epic Battle Fantasy 5 Mod

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Hey guys, I made a video showing off some scenes from an EBF5 mod that’s being worked on. It adds new side-quests, skills and harder enemy behaviour.

There’s a new mod channel on the EBF Discord, where you can talk about this and other mod-related stuff.

When the mod is ready, it’ll be available for everyone who owns EBF5 on Steam, and should be compatible with your existing saves.

EBF Modding

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Hey guys, I’m chatting with EBF modders and trying to figure out what is possible and what isn’t. With current Flash decompiling tools, it looks like it’s fairly straightforward to change text and images. Editing code is also possible but a bit tricky. We’ve also got the debugging tools to view errors and variables while Flash games are running.

A lot can already be done with that, but it’s still somewhat limited, and adding completely new animations, for example, is more trouble than it’s worth. So I’m thinking about releasing the full compilable source code for my games, starting with EBF3, and then moving on to all of the others eventually. I’m currently looking into the best way to handle this. They’re all made with older versions of Adobe Flash Pro, which isn’t sold any more, so you don’t have to worry about buying any expensive software. (if you know what I mean) But a decent amount of Flash animation skills or object-oriented-programming knowledge will be required to get much done.

We’ve made a modding channel on the EBF Discord, so feel free to check it out if you want to learn about modding, or just to annoy people with your ideas.

Anyway, here’s some new EBF5 skill icons that I’ve made for modders to use.
They’re all for existing enemy skills, that are now usable by players.
In my next post I’ll show off the mod that EBF fan Lightning Laser is working on.

I should be working on the mobile version of EBF5, but you know, a lot’s going on in the world right now.

EBF5: Mods and Source Code

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Hey guys, I’ve been taking time off work, but here’s a recap of stuff that’s going on with EBF5.

I’ve published EBF5 on Itch.io – it’s exactly the same as the Steam version, except that Steam will only let you download the game on Windows. If you want to run it as a Flash game on Linux or Mac, buy the game on Itch.io and you can download the files on any operating system. Running it as a Flash game does not change any content, it only disables a few application features, such as Steam integration and some fullscreen options.

EBF3 and EBF4 are also on there, but EBF4 is still Windows-only.
All 3 games are DRM-free on both Itch.io and Steam. (except for EBF4 on Steam, I’ll definitely need to update it at some point…)

I’ve also updated the EBF5 source code on my Patreon – for $2 you can have a look at all the class code in EBF5. Animation assets are not included, so it won’t compile, but it could still be useful for personal education or datamining.

Finally, EBF fan Lightning Laser is working on an EBF5 mod – It gives foes new spells, effects, and behaviours, and generally just makes battles a lot more challenging. When it’s done it’ll be available to anyone who owns the full version of EBF5 on Steam. You can chat with Lightning Laser and give him ideas on the EBF Discord. At some point I’ll post a YouTube video showing off some of the changes he’s made so far.

That’s all. I’m off to play the Nintendo.

Epic Battle Fantasy 5 v2.1.4 is live!

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Hey guys, EBF5 on Steam has been updated, mainly with some minor bug and typo fixes. There’s two new features though: Bosses now have some resistance to the HP debuff from Scorch, and NoLegs can now use Art Attack!

Once again I’m hoping this will be the final version, so I can start work on the mobile port. I’m not sure what to expect yet, so wish me luck! It may go surprisingly fast, or it may be hell. Who knows? Like I said before, the game already works on mobile, it’s just a case of improving the performance, changing the UI a bit, and making sure it’s all up to mobile standards.

In other news, I caved and bought a Nintendo Switch.
As the only person who bought a WiiU, it doesn’t look like much of an upgrade, which is why I waited so long. But I missed having a console in the living room for Mario Kart and Smash Bros, so here we are.