the aac link is broken

Apologies, it's fixed now.

Ready for a 3DS update?

Hell YES!!!

I have never been a handheld gamer, although it has always caught my curiosity.

However, since Nintendo started to release great 3DS titles couple of years ago, I have been thinking to buy one.

However, to me, handheld gaming requires TWO MUSTS: Portability and great battery life. PERIOD.

If none or just one of those conditions are set, then I am not buying

Don't care too much about the price, but always helps....

I can't understand how can someone buy handhelds to play them at home, I can't understand the mentality towards Sony handhelds, who look sexy but anything portable an playable while traveling mid to long distances, also you need fairly "indestructible" handhelds if you want to carry them on your pocket or backpack, tech ready to be squeezed, pushed and smashed!...and that calls NINTENDO, all over the place.

If Nintendo releases a "lite" (more compact than the original) version of the 3DS with better battery life than the original 3ds (and hopefully better than the XL), then I'm buying automatically!...and lots of games with it!......I was hoping for a big announcement like that this past E3 but nothing....sigh...I will have to keep waiting!...and btw I ain't buying that freak of nature called 2DS!

Regarding Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, the lack of some more explicit instruction in-game to those unfamiliar is a shame. Playing as a Conjurer and latter a White Mage, I felt that I was left to my own devices to how to engage in combat in solo and group play. I shouldn't be killing things with my auto-attack at all, stick close to the tank, and to manage my healing to not draw too much aggro or run out of MP.


There is a set of lessons on group play available in the game's Dungeon Finder. I think they are under the tab titled Guildhests and they teach a party of four the basics of aggression, prioritizing, avoiding attack areas, and such. However, these lessons are buried in menus and I don't recall of a quest that draws you to their importance.


Sadly, it's much more efficient to read a guide and watch an instructional video.

I really loved FF XIV AA, what an awesome game. Really my first MMO and wowowow. i love FF so it makes sense that i love the game but ir really is a great addition to the franchise. I haven't been on for a few months now thoug and it can get costly. Also a huge time sink so i've pretty much stopped playing but i do really love it.

Everyone should play Donkey Kong '94. One of the best Mario games, period.

On the question of Summer gaming, I'm just going to steal from the thread I created last year about the same topic.

"...for the last week or so we've being experiencing a spell of unseasonably sunny weather. The mornings have been getting brighter, the afternoons longer, and people's antipathy towards one another, if not dispelled completely, has at least become less acute. As for myself, I've been running more, visiting the park, and taking my pint outside to read a book. All of which is great.

The problem (if you want to call it that), however, is that I find it very difficult to get motivated to play video games in such conditions. Currently, it's still getting dark at about 5 - 6 PM, so there's still plenty of time to get some gaming done during the dark hours. As the days get longer though, I seem to lose the ability to play games for protracted periods of time (which is going to be a problem given that Awakening is released here in April)."

So glad my email was the only listener mail because its a big topic. Good discussion.
So odd that connectivity covering same idea in listener mail too.


Donkey Kong 3 is crap, I played it for like 5 minutes and never wanted to try it again.

Guillaume, seriously, you are NOT praised enough for the amazing job you do, week after week, editing and uploading each podcast episode. As a long-time fan and someone who goes as far as returning to episodes from 2009 on a rather frequent basis, yeah I'm looking at YOU James, when C.O.P The Recruit dominated New Business, (I work a summer job in a dairy cooler...I need something to take my mind off the monotony of emptying milk crates and stacking yogurt!) I need to properly thank you. Not only have you been a terrific new host, following Greg's departure, but you bring an excellent perspective on games to an already all-star cast of co-hosts (yeah, I'm looking at YOU J Lindy...a guy who predicted FFXIV to come to Wii U...gotta love the guy for trying :P ). Alright, enough of my rambling antics. Thank you, Gui, for all your consistent and diligent work in putting out my favorite gaming podcast on a weekly basis for our listening pleasure. I look forward to it every week, and I feel a few good words of encouragement every now and again are in order. I hope these find you well, Good Sir. Now, back to the dairy cooler I go. That milk ain't gettin' put on the shelf itself! :P

Ah, wow. Thanks!

On summer gaming, when I was a teenager, I'd use summertime like Jonny to catch up on RPGs.  Played Chrono Trigger for the first time on PS1 during a summer when I was 16, load times & stutters probably took up half of the time I was playing that game.  I tried playing through Saga Frontier 2 a few times, getting tired of it after a several hours both times. 

Summer as a middle schooler was always about going outside as a kid.  I probably spent more time during the day riding my bike to the local used game store than actually playing games.  At night, i'd quietly stay up past my bedtime to sneak in a few sessions of Street Fighter Alpha 3 or get through Shinra HQ on my 3rd playthrough of Final Fantasy VII. 

When I was younger than that, my gaming memories revolve around handhelds, taking my gameboy with Mario Land 2, Warioland, a handful of other awful games, and swapping games with other kids as bored as I was while waiting to be done with the outside.  If I was home, i'd take my gameboy to my neighbors, and we'd restart pokemon enough times so we could both play the game with all the starter pokemon.  At night, I'd play Sonic 1 or ToeJam & Earl for the 1,000 time trying to inch my way farther in the game to see if I could get to the end.

As an adult, it's not difficult for a job and family to consume the majority of your time.  Over the weekends in the evening I may get to sink my teeth into a meaty action game or churn out a handful of MarioKart online games, but otherwise the week only leaves time for more bite-sized morsels.  This is partially because of having smaller kids that require a lot of attention, but I wonder how much time I'll eventually get back to be a bit more self-sufficient.

Ok firstly anyone who considers the DSi it's own system should have their head checked.

Anyway that aside looking at the OG 3DS after your discussion I feel like it's pretty clear that you haven't used it in a while. The top screen maybe has a bit of wasted space but that bottom part is just cramped. Seriously you could maybe reduce the size of that weird screen border on the bottom screen and fill that up with like about a mm's worth of more screen but that's honestly about it.

I don't see how they could make make the screens on the og 3DS significantly larger.

Also as something I've noticed, pants pocket sizes have increased in general pretty significantly since even the OG 3DS came out.

You're just stretching them out with too many big handhelds.

I think dockers is the one doing the 'stretching' here.

Anyway all I know is that the pair of dockers I got for the 2013-14 school year could fit an OG 3DS in their pockets pretty easily right out of the box. And we're talking with a case that doubles it's thickness.

as much as i hate to agree with james, i don't think we're due for a new handheld anytime soon (as in a new platform, a new 3DS iteration is possible and even likely). i think a lot of the speculation about a new handheld stems from Nintendo's silence on the 3DS front at E3. i fully expect that the 3DS will have a solid lineup for 2015 featuring the usual suspects of SquareEnix, Level 5, Atlus and Nintendo. i think we'll know more about the 3DS in 2015 at an end-of-the-year Nintendo Direct.

also, Guillaume is my favorite. just sayin

Personally I don't see how you can consider the DSi it's own handheld generation thing.

Then again as has been previously discussed console generations aren't very good ways to segment certain systems.

Are there games that only run on the DSi or successor systems? (Yes, DSiWare and a few camera-specific retail games). I can see where they're coming from.

Personally, I do a lot more handheld gaming in the summer, often with a cold drink and the Blue Jays game on the radio, while lounging in my backyard.

Thanks for the great podcast!

When I listened to James talk about Bases Loaded, I thought "Step up your game, son! Bases Loaded II - Second Season is where it's at!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bases_Loaded_II:_Second_Season

I loved that game as a kid. Based on what James said of the first game, it's a definite improvement on its predecessor.

For the first month I had the game, I didn't win a single game I played against the CPU. After I won my first game, I think I only lost less than a dozen games afterwards. The CPU's reactions were second nature to me. I knew where the ball would land in the outfield so I could catch it, even when I couldn't see my player on the field (the camera followed the ball, so on a hard hit ball down the line, you wouldn't see your outfielder on screen until the last second).

The only bad thing about the game was a mercy rule. If you were ahead by 9 runs or more, it would end after the 5th inning. If it could go the whole 9 innings, I know I could have beaten the CPU 100-0 sometimes! If you knew the base running timings, you could steal from first to second to third to home on a single pitch from the CPU pitcher (run in such a way as to get him and the infielders to throw to the wrong base at the 'right' time).

Maybe it wasn't even the best baseball game of the time, but it provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment trying to see how far I could take the CPU and how close to perfect I could play it.