Author: sick skills

8BitDo makes some killer accessories, producing high-quality yet surprisingly affordable controllers that many consider to be better than first-party offerings.

Its Arcade Controller, the leverless alternative to its earlier Arcade Stick, is one of the most affordable options on the market, and a great entry-point for those looking to play fighting game competitively. Its tactile buttons felt satisfying to press, the aesthetics were spot on, and it came with all the features you’d expect to find in a much more premium device at a fraction of the cost.

But for as good as the switches felt to press, they were really bloomin’ loud, and this was easily the biggest downfall for the Arcade Controller. So now, 8Bitdo is offering two new options to mitigate this.

The first is the Arcade Controller – Signature Edition at £79.99 / $94.99, which features a lovely transparent purple colour alongside signatures from professional fighting players Vxbao & Zhen. It boasts pretty much the same features as the original except in one key area: the buttons. Rather than the loud, clicky Kailh Wizard switches, this one contains Purple Glede switches that are practically silent with a much lower profile.

So with a quicker actuation point and a subtle, almost imperceptible cushiony base, the new switches are incredibly responsive with none of the ‘clickity-clackity’ noise that plagued the first model. It’s also much easier to execute sliding techniques now that the buttons sit lower.

So let’s check it out:

Now, if you already own the original Arcade Controller and don’t fancy forking out for the Signature Edition, 8BitDo has also released the Upgrade Pack at $29.99 (there’s no UK price from what we can see).

This includes 16 replacement Purple Glede switches to emulate the Signature Edition along with some swanky golden button caps. We weren’t sure how this would look from the promotional images, but it’s really nice in person, and you can mix and match the black and red colours from the original to great effect.

You’ve also got a standard keycap puller and a plain wrist rest. The latter feels a little superfluous since it’s always good practice to keep your wrists elevated when using arcade controllers, but it feels suitably heavy and high-quality.

Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.

What do you make of 8BitDo’s Signature Edition controller? Do you prefer tactile switches over quieter ones? Let us know with a comment.

We’ve seen a fair few snazzy fan-made Switch dock covers in our time, but few have appealed to our current obsession with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream quite like this one.

Instagram creator rocketlab_design recently popped up on our Reels feed with a Switch dock cover that takes ‘the Dream’ to the extreme. You see, this dock is an accurate replica of the Fresh Kingdom — the in-game supermarket where you find all sorts of food for your Miis.

Packing in all the details you’d hope to see, including the rooftop lettuce and baguettes, the design is capable of holding either a Switch 1 or 2 dock, and rocketlab has put the blueprints up for grabs on their makerworld account.

The finished product is quite the looker (we’ve attached the Reel showcasing it below), but the creator also made a video of the build process, which you should check out if you want to see how all those little pieces fit together.

We never doubted it, but the Tomodachi Life community has come at the Switch entry with all the creativity you’d expect. Sharing those in-game creations hasn’t been the easiest, thanks to Nintendo’s restrictions, but we’ve already seen enough lifelike (and creepy) Mii designs for a lifetime.

What do you make of this fan-made dock cover? Let us know in the comments.

Nintendo of America’s former president, Reggie Fils-Aimè, has described how a request for “an obscene amount of support” from Amazon during the Wii and DS era ultimately led to the withdrawal of both systems from sale on the site.

Speaking at the NYU Game Centre lecture series (thanks, Eurogamer), File-Aimé states that an Amazon executive spoke with him to request enough financial support so that the company could undercut the likes of Walmart on price.

Fils-Aimé rejected the request outright, with Nintendo of America completely withdrawing both the Wii and DS from sale on Amazon. Here’s what he had to say:

“At that time, just in the Americas, I was selling ten million Wiis, DS’ a year. We’re driving a lot of revenue. We had a lot of scale. And, at the time, Amazon was looking to get bigger into the video game space. Amazon’s mentality back then was that they wanted to have the lowest price out in the marketplace, even lower than Walmart.

“One of their executives called me… Well, it was a conversation that got to me after it had progressed through all of the levels of my sales organisation, and essentially what Amazon wanted is an obscene amount of support – financial support – so they could have the lowest price and beat Walmart. I literally said to the executive, ‘You know that’s illegal? I can’t do that’. You know you get silence on the other end, and it’s like: ‘Well, but this is what I want.’

“And literally… Literally, we stopped selling to Amazon, and it’s because I wasn’t going to do something illegal. I wasn’t going to do something that would put at risk the relationship we have with our other retailers. But it also set the stage to say, ‘look, you’re not going to push me around. This is the way we do business’. And so, that’s how, over time, you build respect.”

“Jump forward a number of years, we’re getting ready to launch the Switch. We wanted every retailer to participate with us and go big, and Amazon was right there at the table. Supported the launch exceptionally well. But it was based on mutually beneficial approach that led to that type of strong business result.”

Pretty cool to hear Reggie being so assertive, right? The executive was a huge presence at Nintendo during his time at the company, ultimately retiring in 2019 during the height of the Switch. His successor, Doug Bowser, took over as president until 2025, after which he was then succeeded by current president Devon Pritchard.

What do you make of Reggie’s story here? Share your thoughts with a comment down below.

Pokémon Pokopia and Pokémon Champions launched nearly two months and one month ago, respectively, so today we’re revisiting our reader-ranked list of Pokémon spin-off games to see where they’ve both settled in.

Remember, you can influence the real-time ranking even now by giving any of the games below a User Rating. Enjoy!

If there’s any franchise that’s no stranger to a spin-off or two, it’s Pokémon. The inherent appeal of the little Pocket Monsters makes the series ripe for all kinds of genres and video games. Name a genre, and Pokémon has most likely done it.

But, dear readers, what’s the very best Pokémon spin-off? That’s what we’re here to find out!… Why else would you be here?

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle makes its debut on the Switch 2 later this month, and in case you missed it, the estimated file size has been revealed.

If you plan to embark on this new adventure (which takes place between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade), according to the official Nintendo eShop listing, an estimated 59.7GB of space is required for the digital version. It will set you back £59.99 / $69.99.

A standalone listing for The Order of Giants DLC says this add-on content is estimated to require 4.4GB of free space. This is an all-new story chapter that takes Indy to the ancient streets of Rome, “where forgotten catacombs twist into something far more sinister”, and is priced at £17.99 / $19.99.

Both the game and DLC include pre-order bonuses. For the main game, you can get a Travelling Suit Outfit and Lion Tamer Whip as seen in The Last Crusade, and in the DLC you’ll get Indy’s iconic Temple of Doom outfit. If you would prefer a physical version of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, as we’ve previously mentioned, a full cart edition has been confirmed.

Indy’s latest adventure launches on 12th May 2026 for Switch 2. To find out more, check out our preview. We’ve also had a chat with MachineGames Creative Director Axel Torvenius.

Will you be downloading this one from the Nintendo eShop? Let us know in the comments.

Four months into 2026, and it feels like things aren’t going to be slowing down anytime soon, does it? It also means that it’s time for eShop Selects once again, and we’re looking back at April 2026, a time where many of us have been Living the Dream.

Now, despite what we just said, this month has been a little quieter. But the sun is finally starting to make more of an appearance — just in-between the April showers. Perfect time for games, then?

So, let’s go through the best of this past month, then shall we? Here are the rules: our writers and contributors vote for their top three eShop games we reviewed (and scored at least a 7/10) that launched in April 2026 on the eShop for Switch 1 and/or Switch 2. We’ll then tally up the votes and the three games with the highest number of votes will make up the top three.

Honourable Mentions

It’s been a much steadier month as we approach the summer season of announcements and reveals. We wanted to give a quick shoutout to Darwin’s Paradox and Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, which we didn’t have a chance to review, and inKONBINI — we will have a review of that one soon.

But even a quieter month gave us seven games that met the score threshold. One of these is getting a physical release later in the year, but the rest are available on the eShop only, so now’s the time to download if you want to squeeze some gaming in before Yoshi, Rhythm Heaven, and Splatoon eat up the summer.

Before we get to the top three, here are the four that just missed out:

< Nintendo eShop Selects – March 2026

Do you agree with our ranking? Tell us about your favourite eShop releases of last month by voting in our poll and sharing your thoughts in the comments.

How we decide our eShop Selects top three: As we reach the end of every month, the Nintendo Life staff vote on their favourite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released as a digital-only Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month, and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select the qualifying games based on their review scores.

Staff are then asked to vote for three games that they think deserve to sit right at the very top of that list; first choice gets three points, second choice gets two points, and third choice gets one point. These votes are then tallied to create a top-three list, with the overall winner taking that month’s top prize.

Is everybody ready for another edition of Box Art Brawl? Oh, go on then!

With The Mysterious Book on our minds, we took a look at Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation last time, and it was another pretty close-run competition at the top. North America crashed out of the race with 14% of the vote, leaving Japan and Europe to fight over the remainder. It was ultimately the horizontal Japanese design that took it, though, claiming 46% of the vote while Europe received 41%.

This week, with all the recent talk of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Switch 2, we’ve been thinking an awful lot about those adorable little Chocobo. So yes, it felt only right that we matched up a pair of covers from the DS’ Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.

This delightful little release launched in 2007 and saw us navigating a magical book to take down Darkmaster Bebuzzu. There’s card-based combat, there’s an adorable art style, there’s microgames — come on, what’s not to like?

With Europe and Japan opting for the same design, we have just two covers to choose between this week. Let’s see them, shall we?

North America

The North American design sells Chocobo Tales as the Paper Mario game time forgot. It’s all really rather sweet, with its picture-book aesthetic, bright colours and impressive number of sprites. There’s perhaps a little too much going on at an initial glance, but it sure does feel like one of those covers that grows on you the more you look at it.

If only that central Chocobo was a little bigger, eh?

Europe / Japan

Oh, now that’s bigger! The European and Japanese designs throw all of North America’s detail out the window and opt for a big, eye-catching Chocobo instead. It’s certainly more simplistic, and the bright yellow backdrop stands out from the crowd, but is it actually a case of ‘less is more’?

Thank you for voting! We’ll see you next week for another edition of Box Art Brawl!

The famous fictional spy James Bond will embark on a new mission later this month. Although it’s been shaken by a delay on the Switch 2, the latest round of previews for other platforms still has us excited.

If you haven’t already seen it, we’ve got a full debrief about 007: First Light from our colleagues at Push Square – describing the PlayStation 5 version as a “systems-driven interpretation of what it means to be 007”.

And here’s what other sites had to say:

IGN: “It’s been many years since the last proper 007 game, and the larger Bond franchise seems to be in a state of reassessment. And that certainly puts IO Interactive’s latest in a great position to deliver an exciting new Bond game cleverly. With 007: First Light’s character-first approach to delivering a fully realized Bond adventure, it’s so far got the charm, wit, and raw energy to make this spy thriller one to keep an eye on as its May release fast approaches.”

PC Gamer: “On the surface, Bond might seem a natural fit for IO: all glitz and gadgets that make it feel like barely a skip away from the world of Hitman. But what I saw had me feeling that the studio has not leaned into its strengths, trading the absurd clockwork worlds of Agent 47 for a more tightly choreographed, linear, and “cinematic” game that IO has never been all that good at. The last time it tried was Hitman: Absolution.”

VGC: “What you need to understand, of course, is that this is a different version of Bond – Gibson clearly eyes the other holders of the role, and the version from the books, but does his own thing. I think he has the right mix of cool detachment and smug self-assurance to make the role sing, though.”

Polygon: “I had one big problem with the preview: Bond himself. Although I was inhabiting a very James Bond world and playing in a very James Bond way, at no point did I really feel that the character I was playing was James Bond. As played by Patrick Gibson, he was too young, too eager, and far too chatty, narrating his own actions in the classic manner of the contemporary AAA protagonist. He just didn’t have the cool — or, as Bond would probably call it, the sang froid…Perhaps this is an inherent risk of choosing to tell an origin story, when the character has yet to assume his trademark cynicism and worldliness, or refine his hard edge…Perhaps the character will ease into his own skin over the course of the game. But for now, I’m unconvinced. What’s a James Bond game without a convincing James Bond? And if the answer is “just a very good stealth action game,” will that be enough?”

CGM Online: “I can think of no studio better for this. It nailed the experience and the tone, and used its expertise in a way that feels fresh, engaging and fun. The team knows what it is doing and has gone all out to build a game that is unmistakably James Bond while feeling like a natural evolution for the studio.”

The Sixth Axis: “007: First Light goes far beyond being a pleasant surprise for me. You can certainly see where IO Interactive has adapted key aspects from Hitman, but it’s been done with such a deft touch, using them as highlight moments that fit with a different kind of covert action star. You should put this straight to the top of your wish list.”

So these are the final previews! As you can see, there is a mix of opinions in there about Bond’s new mission and how the character is depicted. 007 First Light is out 27th May 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. It will be followed by a Switch 2 release “later this summer”.

Will you be checking this new James Bond game out when it eventually shows up on the Switch 2? Let us know in the comments.