Chip Talk (2/27/21) | main/menu with nicholas grayson

// Hello, welcome to main/menu, a weekly newsletter about video games. Every Friday, Fanbyte Social Editor+ Nicholas Grayson will hand deliver a bunch of words about the intersection between games and culture to your inbox. If you have questions or comments, you can hit me at niki@fanbyte.com. Apologies for this issue being late, our newsletter service was down on Friday.

Okay, time to do the newsletter! //

We made it to the end of February, which means that it’s the one year anniversary of all of us being trapped indoors because of the pandy! Hooray! What a nice anniversary! I’m so happy to be here, inside, instead of at PAX East with my friends and co-workers doing a panel and hanging out. :) I love the ineptitude of the US government and many of the people who live here whose selfishness contributed to the deaths of a half a million people. :)

anyway

GAME FREAK IS DOING IT BABY

THEY’RE BREATH OF THE WILDIN’ (kinda) THE POKEMON GAMES

If you missed it, there was a Pokémon Direct today celebrating the franchise’s 25th anniversary. There was a very cute video outlining the history of the series, and it was also kind of educational? I didn’t know that there was an adaptor in Japan that let you connect your cell phone to your Game Boy so you could trade Pokémon in Crystal. Did you know that? Wild.

Anyway, they announced two real Pokémon games today! One of them is a remake of Diamond and Pearl, called Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. I’m not in love with the way it looks. I mean, here, look:

Look at the hands. They suck. The hands are bad. The chibi shit is bad. I dunno. It looks fine in the battles:

But this? This sucks:

Whatever. It’s fine. I’ll buy it. I’m excited for the re-orchestrations of these tracks. But this game! Isn’t being developed! By Game Freak! (it’s being developed by Ilca, the team who worked on Pokémon Home)

Game Freak is working on Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which seems to be a re-imagining of the franchise. It’s like Breath of the Wild asthetically, straight up. I mean, look at this:

It takes place in ancient Sinnoh (where Diamond/Pearl/Platinum take place), and looks to be an open world epic. You get a sweet dodge roll! The Pokémon are just in the world! That’s basically everything we know!

Also it looks like the game is running TERRIBLY on the regular Switch. There are shots in the (very early – the game doesn’t launch until 2022) gameplay trailer where the game looks like it’s running at like, 10fps. It looks worse than the Wild Area in Sword/Shield, and that looked awful.

This got me thinking: the Switch Pro is all but confirmed, at this point, right? I assume this game and Breath of the Wild 2 are going to be launch titles for this cranked Switch, too. But what… chip is gonna be in it?

The Nintendo Switch runs on the Nvidia X1, which is an SoC that is about as powerful as an Xbox 360. It also powers the Nvidia Shield. There’s a successor to that chip, the X2, which runs the computer vision stuff in Teslas, the Magic Leap One (that AR headset that will never manifest to anything meaningful), and the Skydio 2 (which is that cool ass drone that flies itself). There’s no mobile chip after this, and then the Skydio and Magic Leap cost almost $1000. The only reason Nintendo was able to swing a bunch of X1 chips is because Nvidia made too many – they thought they were going to sell way way way more Nvidia Shields than they did. It was the perfect chip for that console. Is Nintendo working with Nvidia on a more powerful version of the X1? Did they get a stupid good deal on the X2? Are they just gonna put a Dorito in there and call it a day? WHO KNOWS. I asked Imran (he knows everything) and he said he didn’t know, so no one knows.

If you have any ideas on what chip is gonna be in the Switch Pro, let me know.

I’ve been playing a lot of Fortnite lately. Did you know they put the Xenomorph from Alien in it?

Dumb as hell. Fortnite rules.

We’ve got a lot of good stuff on the site today. We actually posted over 20 pieces! That’s the most we’ve ever done in a day!

Imran rounded up the news of the week in this week’s This Week In News.

Natalie Weiner wrote a great piece about trans athletes.

John wrote about his dog, Ziggy. It’s very cute.

I asked Jordan what the best podcast was this week and he said “This week’s Best Camp was really good.”

Fernanda re-watched Mortal Kombat (1995)!

This week in the GSZ, we have a video of the Snoopy Tuck-In service that was offered at the Knott’s Berry Farm Hotel here in California.

The best part of this video is when Snoopy tries to push the child into the bed. It’s very funny. John says when the world opens up we’re gonna go do this. I’m really excited.

Well, that’s it! Thanks for hanging with us this week. I’m so happy the week’s over, this one was a long one. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you know (at least vaguely) when you’re gonna be able to get vaccinated.