Episode 997: For Waluigi, Death Is the Happy Ending

Radio Free Nintendo

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by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Guillaume Veillette - October 18, 2026, 9:34 pm EDT
Total comments: 2

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Writing a short article this week because we have a lot of stuff to get through!

This week we have a ton of New Business. James wrapped up Part 2 of Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave and is taking a break before digging back into another route with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. Jon, "The Platinum Man," has no idea how to spend his Platinum Points and "finds a way." Guillaume gives us an update on the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 8-player local experience. He also has some more thoughts on Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Greg closes out New Business with Kururin Paradise, new to the NSO Expansion Pack.

After a break we tackle one email. It asks if Nintendo will move away from "Open World" design. This goes places, but most of those places are "our entire time budget for Listener Mail."

Hey, did we tell you about Episode 1000 this week? We did! It's in a few weeks: Saturday, November 14 at 10 PM UTC. The plans are almost done and I'll be posting them on Monday, so stay tuned.

I was going to do them today, but they're not done and I'm tired. Sue me.

(00:02:40) New Business - Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave.
(00:13:53) Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.
(00:37:02) Platinum Points Panic.
(00:44:17) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's 8 player couch multiplayer update. Old Maid and Pop Tarts.
(00:50:52) Onimusha: Way of the Sword.
(01:03:16) I for one welcome our Game Key Card overlords.
(01:10:33) New GBA games on NSO Expansion Pack, including Kururin Paradise.
(01:21:44) Listener Mail - Open world Nintendo games: a trend?

This episode was edited by Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Perry's SoundCloud. The Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See what he's up to at his website.

Talkback

Evan_BYesterday at 08:49 pm

I think the amount of “big damn Nintendo games” feels a bit higher when you consider Nintendo-adjacent properties that are leaning in the same direction: namely, Pokémon and Kirby, and assumedly Xenoblade (which I am hoping will be an honest-to-goodness Open-World Xenoblade like X and not the others), with Pokémon already having an open-world installment on Switch. Not saying that’s a necessarily valid argument, as I think Zelda and Mario Kart are the only ones to which you could apply the “Nintendo” moniker.

Your commentary on Mario Kart World was very valid, though, and everyone brought up great points. It seems like something got lost in the sauce during development, or maybe the developers just didn’t quite know what else they could add that was novel in order to contrast the might of MK8D. But some of the ideas mentioned here would have been excellent nuances- particularly the Forza Lakitu.

Excited for 1000. I’ll have to pen something especially cruel for you all, since I know how easygoing my emails can be.

jarodea2 hours ago

The box art desktop displays are really nice. I do the NSO platinum point missions each week and have way too many platinum points for what I find interesting (I get around 800 a month). Thank goodness Nintendo made them, though I’m going to need them to make something new here soon.

As for HDR, I was surprised how difficult it was to get it set correctly with the Switch 2. I had to find a YouTube video showing how to do it with my specific TV model to finally get it to look good. Mario Kart World doesn’t quite look right, but meh.

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Episode 997: For Waluigi, Death Is the Happy Ending

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