so yea to absolutely no one's surprise Nintendo's big brained plan of saying pretty please to not leak their super duper secret playtest (which is like such an unnecessary thing to even limit information of a publicly announced program like they did anyways?). Yeah wont harp on it too much.
Anywaaaays, wowie it sure is... a test for a game. Honestly I was in camp "dont expect literally anything interesting", especially not Gamecube games. If Nintendo wanted to test Gamecube games they can just do that internally. My best guess was testing some kind of social feature like adding lobbies into NSO or something (which I guess tbf might not need 2 weeks of stress testing).
But yea it a game, and what a game it is. I have no idea what the heck to make of it really. The best way I've heard the vibe described is as a cancelled N64DD game and it sure does have that. I'm really hoping that the caveman avatars are just placeholders, there was this fake "Nintendo Park" leak that's not really important but the concept of a realized playable "Mii Plaza" type space for social features would be a dream for me as described here. Basically a Nintendo version of Playstation Home or something.
But it doesn't realllllly seem to be that? Idk the whole premise to me seems pretty confused on what it wants to be other than Not-Roblox. I think an emphasis on social features and player interaction is awesome that's exactly what I wanted a potential Nintendo Home to be at the very least... but PvP??
Why is there PvP? How does PvP work? How does enemy combat and PvP fit into a what I'd assume to be some kind of social application? At least I'm hoping its a social application type bundled in software but idk.
The other hope was that its all placeholder stuff and not representative of the final,,, project(?) I guess. Idk I'd rather use my Mii for a social thing like this (especially if its included software) and also the whole thing seems kinda weirdly dark? Like not tonally, though tonally it seems weirdly isolating with having to make beacons. But literally dark, and kind of maybe too "High Concept" for what might potentially be Nintendo Roblox what with having to compete for territory and setting up beacons just so you can then get to the actual socialization part of the program and make a base.
The datamines definitely don't make this out to be some simple placeholder either, mostly cause it has an entire OST which is pretty dang good. Really like HQ_01 and the Satellite tracks which give that Wii DS era nostalgic vibe so good. Some of it's also giving that Mario Artist type vibe which definitely adds to the N64DD vibe as well, groovy.
But yeah I guess the irony in fretting or complaining about the vibe is that my fears and hesitation will literally get legitimized or dismissed on Wednesday so we'll see then.
12AM EDIT
Okay so guess who just changed it's mind on the whole thing?? Basically when thinking about why cavemen and then also seeing bluesky posts about text strings for lore in the game alluding to some kind of god-like figure and *then* the Mario Artist type beats for the OST my stuffing filled head immediately went to Doshin the Giant and my attitude totally flipped.
Doshin the Giant might be one of my favorite albums lol, there's no way in hell that Nintendo in the year 2024 is like "yeah lets greenlight an MMO sequel to Doshin the Giant" but if this game keeps the cavemen and stuff this is always going to be a funky little Doshin successor in my heart and that makes me immediately quite like the premise. At least more so as a premise as its own *thing*, if the pack-in social app for like the Switch 2 or something is a funky little cavemen game idk how well that'll be recieved on a wider scale and I'd be more skeptical of it too. But as its own thing I think I can accept it in my heart as a strange Doshin 2 that never was (I know theres the 64DD expansion pack but thats not a sequel lol, has some more good music tho)