 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime and we got some fun stories for you today. Three pack of stories today, one dealing with Pokemon, one dealing with Nintendo, making an acquisition, and then a third that's tangentially related, but hey it is about Super Mario Odyssey so that's always fun. That being said, before we get into that I want to remind you we are giving away a Nintendo Switch OLED, a PlayStation 5, and an Xbox Series X. You have time to enter from now through the end of March. This was our February giveaway, it has been extended just due to extenuating circumstances that have led to the studio being renovated and obviously not having the time to put into the giveaway the way that I had planned to, but that's okay, it just gives you more time to enter. We're still giving away a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or Switch OLED to one lucky winner. You just have an extra month to enter. That being said, let's get right into these stories and the first one, the big one, the one that just popped off this morning and all of you have been waiting, maybe even anticipating for is a Pokemon Presents, aka a Pokemon Nintendo Direct. Now we already knew they were doing daily announcements leading up to Pokemon Day, which happens in February every single year, and yeah, they didn't really announce at the very beginning. There will be a Pokemon Presents at the end of it. However, we kind of expected it because they have done Pokemon Presents several times on Pokemon Day, which this year is February 27th, which lands on a Sunday. And that's exactly when the Pokemon Presents will be happening at 8am central time. It will be 14 minutes long and you know we will be live reacting to Pokemon Presents. Maybe. It's gonna be an interesting time because I'm not so sure if my studio will be put back together, but I will attempt to get some sort of set up, pseudo set up going for Sunday at least to at least give you that, you know, react with it. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to let the lack of studio prevent me from being able to live react with all of you to that Pokemon Presents. As for what we can expect at that Pokemon Presents, I think the safe bet is to get some Pokemon Legends DLC. On that, it's anyone's guess. What people are probably most looking forward to besides Pokemon Legends DLC is any potential announcement of a new game for this year, be it a Generation 9, be it another remake, let's go, whatever they have in store because chances are the Pokemon Company probably has something coming out this holiday season. I guess this is where we find out, are we gonna get Detective Pikachu too? Are we going to get another Pockin Tournament game? This is where we find out. The big announcements happen from Pokemon at Pokemon Presents or Pokemon Directs are essentially the exact same thing. So I can't wait to see. This is going to be a really fun thing to look forward to on a Sunday of all things, right? Sundays, man. What's up with the news on Sundays? I, hey, I'll take it. Next up, we have another bit of news that you guys might have heard already this morning. I'm not sure. I will say it's not the biggest of deals, but Nintendo has acquired SRD. For those who don't know who SRD is, they actually work right out of Nintendo's headquarters. Of course, so does Game Freak, and Game Freak still occasionally makes games besides Pokemon. That being said, SRD has actually been working with Nintendo longer than Game Freak and the Pokemon Company even existed. SRD has been working on coding Nintendo games since 1979. And now you might go, okay, what's the deal with this company? Well, the history of SRD essentially goes back to the fact that when Nintendo got into the video game, you know, Kingdom, they didn't have programmers. Nintendo didn't actually have anyone on their staff that could program video games. So they hired SRD to be the programmers behind the creative visions of Shigeru Miyamoto, which obviously this includes the original Donkey Kong back in the arcades. So they've been working with Nintendo since 1979 and working out of Nintendo's headquarters since sometime in the 80s. And to be honest, it's essentially already a Nintendo company and they've been working exclusively on Nintendo games for over 30 years, but they did make the acquisition official today. It was announced on their company, Twitter. So yeah, they now fully own SRD, which was technically operating as an independent company. As for the reasoning for why SRD is being purchased at this point when it's obviously been a well-working relationship for 30 plus years. No one's really sure. There are some rumors floating out there that there were some inquiries from other outside companies into potentially purchasing SRD. And that obviously, you know, Nintendo said, Hey, if anyone ever comes after our partners, we'll step in and stop that. The approval for this doesn't go through until about April 1st of 2022. So it's going to be a little bit of time before the sale is complete, but I can't imagine there's going to be any issues here. They already only work exclusively with Nintendo and they already work outside of, you know, inside of Nintendo's headquarters. So it should be a rather seamless. If you want to know some of their more recent work, they were the company that helped code and create Ring Fit Adventure 1.2 Switch. So they do make more of the casual family friendly games at this point. They also help out all around Nintendo and they've had their imprints over the years on all of Nintendo's major IPs, whether it's Star Fox or Metroid or Zelda, Mario. They've really kind of monolous off it back in the day where they just kind of had their imprints on everything. Now obviously they do operate as, you know, their own sort of development studio inside Nintendo, making things like Ring Fit Adventure and 1.2 Switch. So we'll see what they have in the works obviously next, but this is obviously good news for Nintendo. They get to retain one of their core developers. I don't think there was ever a racist company who was going to go anywhere, but it's sort of like next level games. It just, it's one of those acquisitions that just made sense and obviously was a bit forced because if other companies are trying to inquire about buying them, Nintendo is going to feel forced to keep that development talent at their studio. So that being said, let's get into the last one. And this is a fun one because we get to talk about a little bit of something outside of Switch, but it's got some tangential relatedness. And that is Super Mario Odyssey and Elden Ring. What do these two have in common? Well, in the last 24 hours, what they have in common is trading places on open critic.com. So Elden Ring reviews have come out and they are stellar. Essentially, if you want to know what Elden Ring is, imagine the best of the best Dark Souls has ever provided from a gameplay perspective given to you in a fully open world. Elden Ring is made by the makers behind the Dark Souls IP. So that's not too surprising. But yes, it is essentially the quintessential Dark Souls fan game. And Elden Ring is reviewing incredibly well. I think it's like the 14th or 15th highest rated game on Metacritic. But what really got people buzzing was when open critic themselves tweeted out that Elden Ring had become the highest rated game in open critic history. Now that was at the time when there was only 40 reviews. Since then, there's now 110, 115 plus. And it did drop a point behind Super Mario Odyssey. Super Mario Odyssey took over back in October 27th of 2017. When it came out, the reviews put it at the top of open critic at 97. And yes, now Elden Ring is situated there, tied with a number of other games at 96 on open critic, including Grand Theft Auto 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. Now, technically, its position on the list being at number two ahead of things like Breath of the Wild at number three is an indicator that it is percentage points ahead of Breath of the Wild, just not enough to maintain a 97 rating. So this is really awesome to me. And when you look at more recent releases, like another potential game of the year contender in like Horizon Forbidden West, that is still a full seven points ahead of that. And you consider that we might get Breath of the Wild 2 this year. It's going to be a lot of fun debating over what is the game of the year. I still stand, by the way, that Pokemon Legends Archie as well. It's nowhere near the top of the ratings list. Should be in consideration for game of the year. I also think some of the debates out there, like putting down Horizon Forbidden West because of Elden Ring or putting Elden Ring down because of Horizon Forbidden West is absolutely silly. I don't think the games even remotely belong in the same conversation besides the fact that they're open world. Imagine putting down Breath of the Wild 2 because of Elden Ring or putting down Legends Archie because of Elden Ring or putting Elden Ring down because of Horizon or Zelda or Splatoon 3 or something crazy like that. So look, I think all these games are amazing. I'm glad that gaming is in a good place. I'm thinking about this. We're in 2022 and a game released that for a moment was the highest rated game in video game history. I think it's safe to say in 2022, we are re-entering or reinvigorating or potentially having one of the greatest games or one of the greatest years, I should say, in video game history. We already know what Nintendo's got cooking, right? It's going to be a baller year there. But Sony's got things cooking, third party's got things cooking. And yeah, so does Microsoft. Hello, what's going to happen with Starfield? Looks like it's going to be a potential goatee contender as well. There is so much goodness coming this year. It feels like we're finally over that pandemic hump that might have been holding back the industry a little bit the last couple of years. And now we're getting all the great games. So this is going to be really exciting to see what happens. And I can't wait to have that game of the year debate with all of you guys at the end of it. I can't wait to dive into Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West, which I am holding out until I get another PlayStation 5. And then I'll be deep diving into that game as well. Probably over the summer. I can't wait, guys. We have so many great things to play this year. We are truly blessed as gamers at this moment. Congratulations, by the way, to From Software and all the hard work they did on Elden Ring. I know it took many, many years to put that game together. I'm glad to see the fruits of your labor paying off in the review scores. We'll see what happens with the user scores and fan opinions because, you know, the game's not technically here just quite yet, but I am really glad to see that it reviewed extremely well. I'm obviously happy for Sony and the Sony fans and obviously how well Horizon Forbidden West reviewed it hit 89 on OpenCritic. And obviously we all know as Zelda fans, as Nintendo fans, we have so much to look forward to. We've already had a baller start to the year with Legends Arceus. We have Kirby and Mouthful Mode coming next month. And don't forget about that triangle strategy. Sneaky game like Octopath Traveler could sell extremely well and will likely be a really, really good game. But if you're not in that HD2D old school turn-based RPG stuff, strategy stuff, that's fine. That's why we have Kirby, Mouthful Mode. And is that going to be the greatest Kirby game of all time? I don't know. We are having a crazy year as gamers. And I think everyone should mostly be happy. So at least when it comes to playing games, I think no matter what platform you own this year, PC, you know, even your mobile devices have some good stuff coming out this year, look, everyone wins in 2022. And I think that should be the mantra for this year in gaming. Everyone wins. All right, folks, I'm Nathan Der Rubble, Jance from The Tender Prime. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.