Off The Books

Making games and tools in off hours. Inspired by the #IndieDev and #GameDev communities, and #Nintendo, the #NES and #SNES in particular. Learning I was wrong about something every day.

2025-06-04

I’ll be in my preorder pick up line in less than 24 hours!

2025-06-03

@FatherEnoch @afreytes Well, during my last job search, I sent out 272 applications (yes, I kept a spreadsheet) over two months. Lately, it’s rough out there.

After narrowing down to a handful of companies likely to give offers, and beyond, I continued to get emails to setup initial meetings with recruiters. I was getting some sporadic emails from some companies for easily 4 months after I applied to the roles.

2025-06-03

@jake4480 Just read the interview that this came from. It’s certainly open to interpretation, but based on the caginess of the response to this and other questions, I think it’s still possible that it’s unlockable in the game’s present form.

2025-06-03

My main takeaway from this article is that @GoNintendo thinks it takes almost ten minutes to brush and floss teeth.

gonintendo.com/contents/49176-

2025-06-03

@FatherEnoch @afreytes I think those are a litmus test whether you actually read/reply to emails. Many applicants end up ghosting companies.

2025-06-03

@jake4480 In the original, you need to unlock 150cc.

2025-06-03

@prozacchiwawa If there’s any other time to do that, I haven’t found it yet.

2025-06-03

@jake4480 IIRC, those aren’t unlocked until “beating” every cup in 150cc, so my assumption would be nobody really knows yet. Similar to Rainbow Road info still being held back.

2025-06-03

This take seems to be, “I was expecting more of Free Roam than what was advertised, and I disappointed myself.”

What they’ve said about Free Roam, and what they’ve shown in clips, all seems very consistent with what is there.

ign.com/articles/mario-kart-wo

2025-06-03

One more sleep.

#NintendoSwitch2

2025-06-03

Accountabilty is lost on larger teams as well. It becomes too easy to defer to someone else.

Segmenting a larger “software product” into distinct sub-projects—each with smaller teams—can work. Many modern game projects have clean separation of systems. But this only works if separation is maintained on future work, breaking apart projects to avoid interdependencies.

2025-06-03

2-4 engineers who deeply understand a code base is the ideal size for most projects. Every team I’ve been on with more than five people loses insane amounts of productivity to communication and coordination of moving parts.

Previously at a 20 person company with four engineers, we were once sent 150 holiday cookies from a client, because that was the workforce they imagined behind what we were delivering for them.

2025-06-03

I had assumed the #TearsOfTheKingdom soundtrack would hit Nintendo Music on a big week for added publicity. This is probably as good a week as any for it.

2025-06-03

It’s 344 tracks!

2025-06-03

#TEARSOFTHEKINGDOM ON #NINTENDO MUSIC. SORRY FOR SHOUTING.

sorry for shouting

2025-06-02

@jenny753 My guess is they have a number of things warehoused around the US, possibly even in the hands of shipping partners, but they want that to stay privileged information.

I’ve had an iPhone not show as shipped, and pop up as out for delivery on launch day.

2025-06-01

@jake4480 @chongliss People act like Nintendo first party titles are the only games, but they almost always stagger big titles, even during a console launch. And there are a lot of big titles that are new to the Nintendo audience. This is possibly the *strongest* launch lineup they’ve ever had.

And even just the rest of 2025 is pretty stacked.

2025-05-31

@chongliss It’s hard to know what the casual observer will take away from the Mario Kart World coverage. But I think the multiplayer experience looks a lot better, 24 karts, track variations, new race modes, Game Chat, etc.

And simultaneously, the single player experience… exists now? I’m sure there will be a limit on the variety of the missions, but it looks like there’s still new experiences here, whoever you are.

2025-05-31

This is the first time a console has launched with a new Mario Kart, and it hadn’t occurred to me how significant that might be for Switch 2 appeal.

BotW sold ~33M units
MK 8 Deluxe sold ~68M units

This will be interesting.

2025-05-30

@SuperSelena64 Somehow… this is how I found out this game exists.

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst