As part of a recent agreement with Brazil’s competition regulator CADE (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica), Apple is introducing changes to iOS that create new options for developers’ apps in Brazil. Beginning with iOS 26.5, developers can distribute apps on alternative app marketplaces, operate alternative app marketplaces, process app payments for digital goods and services outside of Apple In-App Purchase in iOS, and more.
The new options for downloading apps from alternative app marketplaces and making app payments open new avenues for malware, fraud, scams, and privacy and security risks. Apple has worked with CADE to introduce protections from these new threats — with a special emphasis on child safety. Those protections include Notarization for iOS apps, an authorization process for app marketplaces, and requirements that help protect children from inappropriate content and scams.
By July 6, 2026, all current members of the Apple Developer Program will need to agree to the latest update to the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, which includes new terms that allow for these options in Brazil.
Since the announcement of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake for Switch 2, the desire to go back and experience the original in preparation has proven overwhelming for some of us. It didn’t take long until I booted the NSO version up again, N64 pad grasped in my mitts, ready to step out of Kokiri Forest once again.
The game is just as beautiful and wonderful as ever, but one thing that almost always catches me off guard is how funny it is. Maybe it’s the dark undertones and Ganondorf’s iron grip on the land that sticks in my memory, but it’s also chock full of moments that make me giggle and grin from ear to ear.
In some ways, it’s difficult to imagine how these moments might look with vastly improved visuals. Will they still have the same impact? Might a hyper-realistic King Zora scooching to the side on his bum actually look weirdly…unsettling?
It’s too early to answer such questions, so for now, I thought I’d go through seven hysterical Ocarina of Time moments that I’m intrigued to see recreated. Spoilers if you haven’t played Ocarina (tut tut)…
#1 Darunia boogies to a hot beat
Darunia, the leader of the Gorons, is a little down in the dumps when you first encounter him. Yet after a few hints from his compatriots, it becomes clear that music is the way to his heart.
Upon playing Saria’s Song on the Ocarina, Darunia launches into a wild dance, throwing his face from side-to-side and waving his arms around with unrestrained joy. Punctuated with the occasional “C’mon!” and “WHOOOOAH!”, it’s a wonderful moment.
#2 Goron group hug
The moment when Darunia whacks Link on top of the head as way of saying thanks for defeating King Dodongo is funny enough, but the real hilarity comes immediately afterwards, when two Gorons drop from above to give Link a big hug.
Why do they go about it in such a creepy way?! Naturally, Link isn’t too keen on being crushed by living boulders, so he legs it before any of them can reach him. The scream of sheer terror is the icing on the cake.
#3 Kaepora Gaebora punishes impatient players
Okay, this is less laugh-out-loud, yet I can’t help but titter at Nintendo’s temerity for mixing up the confirmation options when cycling through Kaepora Gaebora’s text.
It definitely feels designed to punish eager beavers rushing through as fast as possible, as mashing ‘A’ repeatedly will only force you to listen to the whole thing again. It’s so devious, and I love it.
Did you get all that?
#4 Koume and Kotake bicker as they perish
After defeating Koume and Kotake at the end of the Spirit Temple, the twins don’t just fade away quietly. They start bickering about their age after lamenting that they’re simply too young to die. The back and forth escalates to the point where they both just kind of give up and float up into oblivion, promising to return to haunt Link.
It’s a great showcase of Ocarina’s writing which, for its time, was pretty excellent throughout. Poor Koume and Kotake, though. I shouldn’t laugh at your demise, but it’s just too hard to resist.
#5 Ingo loses
Ingo is an absolute tool. Completely selling out to Ganondorf to gain control of Lon Lon Ranch is despicable. Yet this makes it all the more satisfying — and hilarious — when you defeat him in two horse races to earn the legendary Epona.
The way he melts down and clutches his head while moaning about his defeat is glorious. I only wish there were more opportunities to humiliate him.
#6 Princess Ruto gets close and personal
When we meet Princess Ruto within the depths of Jabu-Jabu’s belly, she comes across as a bit of a spoiled brat. Using her royal status to full effect, she demands Link carry her around to locate Zora’s Sapphire. But upon leaving, she becomes a little more enamoured with our Hylian hero…
Immediately upon their return to the outside world, Ruto gets unusually close to Link, having decided that, yes, this is the boy for her. Link reacts exactly as you’d expect, recoiling with horror and falling into the water, letting out that delightfully over-the-top scream of his.
#7 King Zora’s shuffle
The first time you witness King Zora shuffling out of the way after you show him Princess Ruto’s letter is simply unforgettable. Just when you think he might be done, he just… keeps going. And going. And going.
It’s utterly ridiculous, and it makes for what might be the funniest moment in the game. My fear is that Nintendo might see the reputation it’s garnered and think players want a much shorter sequence in the remake.
Don’t you dare, though. If anything, make it longer.
Ocarina of Time is crammed with more humorous moments, but frankly we’d be here all day. Regardless, I’m itching to see how Nintendo handle these scenes in the upcoming Switch 2 remake.
If there’s anything you think we’ve egregiously missed, do let us know with a comment down below.
Nintendo has expanded its ‘My Mario’ range in Japan with a selection of adorable apparel for youngsters (thanks, Go Nintendo).
The new items include two dresses designed after Peach and Rosalina, a peach-coloured t-shirt featuring the princess herself, a blue t-shirt featuring Roslina, two additional t-shirts featuring Bowser and Bowser Jr. (the former of which is designed for adults, i.e. parents), and finally, a reversible Bowser Jr. bib.
It’s all lovely, though we daresay the Bowser t-shirts are a tad underwhelming. That bib though? Make that in an adult size, Nintendo! We’re proper mucky pups over here.
Prices range from 1,650 JYP for the reversible bib to 4,290 JYP for the adult t-shirt, the maximum of which equates to around £20 / $26.
So let’s take a look at the newbies, hm?
We’ll let you know if and when the new apparel comes to the west.
What do you make of these? Do you have little ones that would absolutely jump (or at least wriggle) for joy at the sight of these new items? Let us know with a comment.
The Granblue Fantasy series has never particularly appealed to me. Perhaps the likes of Persona, Xenoblade, and Fire Emblem are to blame — my ‘beautiful anime people in big fights’ cup overfloweth — making the thought of taking on another big anime-flavoured RPG a little too intimidating. Well, after 45 minutes with action-RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok, I think I’m starting to see the appeal.
Originally released in 2024 for PC, PS5, and PS4, Relink was a major step for the series’ foray into gaming. It’s been a mighty popular sausage in the years since, racking up over two million purchases and pulling in a desire for ‘more’ in the process.
Three post-launch expansions were planned, Cygames tells us accumulated journos at the preview event before revealing the hands-on demo, but the dev felt that the game’s unexpected popularity called for something meatier. Enter Endless Ragnarok.
This is the first time that the game will be available on Switch 2, it’s true, but this version adds more besides a new platform. There are new characters and storylines, fresh combat mechanics and bosses to use them on, and an all-new Conflux mode for those after something a little more roguelike-y.
I didn’t get to see all of this in my hands-on time — the devs estimate that the game is roughly 1.5x bigger now, with nearly double the playtime (HLTB puts the previous version’s ‘Main + Sides’ at 32 hours) — but from what I did catch, Switch 2 feels like an almighty fitting home for this.
For series newbies like me, Relink is a little overwhelming from the jump. I was met by two tutorials on starting up my demo, which introduced me to the game’s Summon and Master Trait mechanics via a huge monster battle.
Said tutorials were refreshingly hands-off, with the game opting for a ‘you’ll figure it out yourself’ approach over constant pop-ups, though it did mean that things became a little much as I was welcomed to the world of Skills, Team Up attacks, and giant transformations, all while trying to make sense of the gameplay’s constant damage/healing numbers and impact marks. PlatinumGames was initially on the project before Cygames took over, and it really shows — there’s Bayonetta and NieR energy throughout all of this.
With enough beginner’s knowledge under my belt, I was thrown into my first quest, a battle against a massive foe. This flying one-eyed beastie called for some more teamwork proficiency, and I soon settled into the rhythms of using Gran’s buff and healing skills to target my allies and help them out accordingly.
The chaos of the whole thing became a little easier to parse, too. I wasn’t being hit by nearly as many attacks (praise the lord for the ‘Hold Y to recover’ knockdown system), and dare I say, I even started to fire off my skills and summons without needing to remind myself of their purpose first.
It would all be child’s play for those well-versed in the game, I’m sure, but for someone fresh-faced, it’s the kind of milestone that I don’t manage to hit with all ARPGs. Strong work there, then. If it doesn’t hit like that for you but you want to push through regardless, there’s a new Assist Mode this time around to make the combat that bit more accessible.
Image: Cygames
I particularly appreciated the smaller challenges thrown in during the quests, giving me a series of subtasks to think about (defeat the monster within the allotted time, don’t get downed too much, destroy X number of environmental hazards) when the battle got a little hit-spongey. These giant monsters can take a hit or two hundred, so it’s nice to have some other objectives on the go to keep the ol’ brain box active.
It all seemed to hold up really rather well on Switch 2, too. There’s so much happening on screen at any one time that I wouldn’t want to try and put a precise number on the frame rate, but I noticed very few drops even when things got especially hectic. The visual style looks a little too similar to every other pretty fantasy anime series on the system for my liking, but that’s not to say it’s remotely harsh on the eye.
Having wrapped up a quest to two, I was thrown forward into the new Conflux game mode, where the combat really started to sing.
Every game has a roguelike spin these days, and Relink is no exception. This mode had me battling through waves of enemies before hopping into one of two portals, each offering me a series of risk/reward possibilities. It’s a similar loop to what we’ve seen previously with the likes of Shredder’s Revenge’s Dimension Shellshock DLC or even Hades, but there’s no denying that it’s a format that works.
Every few portals, there’s a boss stage, tasking you and your party to take out a bigger enemy before moving on and sweeping up some larger rewards in the process. Firing on all cylinders with the controls by this point (again, rookie stuff compared to what some people out there are capable of, I’m sure), I liked the increased challenge of every stage and the potential to try out different techniques on the fly.
Did it get a little repetitive the longer I played? Of course it did, but I’m sure the scaling challenge would have kept things interesting if I had longer than ~20 minutes with it.
There’s still a lot of Relink that I’m yet to see (I got only a whiff of the stacked character roster, and didn’t touch the single-player campaign), but assuming it all holds up as well as the slice I got to go hands-on with, I can see this being a hit on Switch 2.
As anyone who played the 2024 release will tell you, co-op is where Relink really comes into its own. It’s another feature that I didn’t get to see for myself this time, but Cygames has promised full crossplay and Switch 2 wireless local co-op, too. If you’ve been dying for some late-night monster hunting with pals, this might be the place to look.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok launches on Switch 2 on 9th July 2026. A downloadable demo will be available later today. Will you be checking it out? Let us know in the comments.
Following yesterday’s announcement the Pokémon Pokopia Switch 2 bundle would be coming to Europe this July, The Pokémon Company has now revealed its new event for the relaxing life simulation.
This event gets underway next week on 23rd June 2026 and the spotlight is on Jirachi. Until 8th July 2026 you can befriend Jirachi “the Wish Pokémon”. And if you collect the shining wish notes during this event, you’ll also be able to redeem special themed items inspired by the starry sky.
“To kick off the event, talk to Jirachi to get a recipe for wish notes. From there, interact with other Pokémon and fulfill their requests to transform wish notes into sparkling wish notes. Visit Jirachi at your Pokémon Center of choice to exchange sparkling wish notes for furniture and décor inspired by the starry sky.
“Don’t forget that Jirachi can only visit towns with a rebuilt Pokémon Center—if you want to participate in this event, make sure you have at least one up and running.”
Below is another look at what to expect from this upcoming in-game event. As noted on Pokopia’s Japanese website, if your Switch 2’s date and time are not matched up with this event period, the event will not occur.
If you haven’t played Pokémon Pokopia yet, be sure to check out our review here on Nintendo Life. We awarded it 8 out of 10 stars, calling it one of the most enticing Pokémon experiences ever.
“Pokémon Pokopia is the freshest Pokémon experience in a long time, bursting at the seams with charm and content that rewards both curiosity and creativity.”
And if you need help, or just want to know more about everything this title has to offer, take a look at our extensive guide coverage for the game.
Will you be revisiting Pokémon Pokopia to participate in this event? Let us know in the comments.
It’s Sonic‘s 35th birthday this month, and during Epic’s ‘State of Unreal’ showcase this week, a new collaboration was teased with the ever-expanding free-to-play universe Fortnite.
While no specifics have been shared, based on the slide featured during the presentation, it’s a partnership specifically with the latest game release Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. This new partner will be “coming soon” to the Epic Store and Fortnite.
Image: Epic Games
Sega recently announced a second year of DLC and updates for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, with more details to be revealed about this new content later on in 2026.
As you can see, the same Fortnite teaser slide also includes some other partners. This includes an upcoming collaboration with Vampire Survivors, Control Resonant and Phantom Blade Zero. Additionally, more partners will be teaming up with Epic and Fortnite in the future.
Epic is also expanding on its collaboration with The Simpsons by adding Springfield and all of its characters and locations to Unreal Editor for Fortnite.
When we hear more about Fortnite’s collab with Sonic and these other partnerships, we’ll let you know.
It seems Street Fighter 6 fans won’t have to wait too long for the next batch of DLC fighters, with Capcom confirming the new character Yasmine will be arriving on 3rd August 2026.
Alongside this news is a first-look gameplay trailer. This character will be available in the “Year 4” Character Pass, or she can be purchased separately. Here’s a bit about her courtesy of Capcom’s official PR:
“Hailing from the Philippines, Yasmine will rush you down with her skills in Eskrima on August 3! Pay close attention to her movement lest you be on the wrong side of her karambit.
“Yasmine can be purchased individually with Fighter Coins and the owners of the Year 4 Character Pass / Ultimate Pass will automatically get access to her when she releases.”
Yasmine will eventually be joined by Arjun (autumn 2026), Bosch (spring 2027) and the guest character Tifa (early 2027) from Square Enix’s Final Fantasy series. You can get teaser of each of these upcoming DLC releases in the trailer below:
You can learn more about Street Fighter 6 in our review here on Nintendo Life. There’s also a demo available on the Nintendo eShop. The latest entry recently surpassed a combined total of seven million sales worldwide.
What do you think of the next batch of characters coming to Street Fighter 6? Let us know in the comments.
If you haven’t already taken a look at our own review here on Nintendo Life, we’re impressed with not only Elliot’s adventure, but also Square Enix’s ability to adapt the art style to the action combat genre. Admittedly, we did encounter some performance issues on Switch 2, but thankfully it didn’t get in the way of the variety and fun exploration the title has to offer.
Here’s what other outlets had to say about Square Enix’s new Switch 2 release:
“All in all, my time with The Adventures of Elliot has resulted in a game that I’m always excited to return to. I want to see and do more, I want to delve deeper, I want to tackle one more shrine. The meat and potatoes of gameplay are top-tier, and the bells and whistles like Faie abilities and Magicite make for an even sweeter meal
“Still…I can’t shake the feeling that with a few more tweaks and quality of life features, The Adventures of Elliot could shine even brighter. What we have now is stellar and addictive and all kinds of entertaining, but with the tiniest bit of TLC, The Adventures of Elliot could be iconic.”
“The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a game that should have appeal not only to fans of Team Asano, the HD-2D series, or RPGs in general – but mass appeal across gamers of all stripes. Its focus on exploration, story, and tight gameplay make it one of the best executed action-adventure titles in years.”
“The Adventures of Elliot: The Millenium Tales is not just an attempt to recreate the classic feel of Super Nintendo’s best action-adventure titles, it is a confident attempt to modernise and reinterpret it. A memorable world, flexible combat system, rewarding exploration and an endearing cast, it stands as one of the best, most engaging HD-2D classic by Square Enix to date. Some minor issues with depth perception and an overstuffed combat system stop it from being an all-time classic, but they do little to diminish what is otherwise an incredibly enjoyable adventure.”
“The Adventures of Elliot has won us over with its approach and many of its ideas: a complete and accessible adventure for everyone, which looks fondly at the classic Zelda games, and perhaps even too much.
“In practice, the game is more action-oriented than puzzle-solving, making it a challenging experience at higher levels. Exploring space and time is an original mechanic that works brilliantly, giving each era its own distinct personality and a compelling reason to revisit previous levels.”
“If The Adventures of Elliot become as numerous as the legends of Zelda, you’ll find me a willing participant, despite the shortcomings of this maiden voyage. The inspirations are clear, but so too is the understanding of what makes for enjoyable minute-to-minute gameplay. The longer you play, the more the cracks begin to show, but the story manages to push you forward and the hidden plots beneath it make going out of your way an oft fulfilling detour. The red mage-looking Elliot has made a fan out of me, and if Link ever wants to take a break from stopping Ganon, Square Enix has a capable backup waiting in the wings.”
So, that’s what the critics think of the Switch 2 version of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. If you are still not sure whether or not to try it out, you can download the demo from the Nintendo eShop.
Will you be adding this game to your collection this week? Let us know in the comments.
Following its recent announcement of a “new era” of Rocket League alongside the reveal of Unreal Engine 6, Epic Games has today released Unreal Engine 5.8.
As part of this, lumen dynamic global illumination now offers a “Lumen Lite” mode. As Epic explains, this comes with benefits for games running on Switch 2:
“Lumen dynamic global illumination now offers a Lumen Lite mode, which is designed to preserve much of the visual impact at a significantly lower GPU cost by using irradiance fields with probe occlusion. Twice as fast as Lumen High Quality, it means that games that rely on global illumination for artistic purposes can run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 fps. It’s also supported on PC.”
It elaborates on this, explaining how the medium scalability level targets 60fps on Switch 2 and includes handheld mode.
Unreal Engine’s Vice President of Engineering Simon Tourangeau made the following comments about Lumen Lite at Epic’s State of Unreal event this week and how it’s now easier to scale to different platforms:
“Lumen, our dynamic global illumination system, now has a lightweight mode called Lumen Lite, designed to preserve much of the visual impact at a significantly lower GPU cost. That makes Lumen viable where it wasn’t before, including on Switch 2. And that work is already helping drive further nanite optimization efforts for the platform.”
Epic’s newer version of its Unreal game engine powers games such as the battle royale Fortnite. Epic says UE 5.8 is its last planned “major” Unreal Engine 5 update on its roadmap, and it will now ramp up work on Unreal Engine 6.
WebKit has met its match, as the prototype Blink schools Apple’s well-worn browser engine and hints at the future of web browsing on iOS.
WebKit, Apple’s well-used browser rendering engine, has not had to deal with alternatives for quite some time. Even after the EU’s Digital Markets Act changed the game and forced Apple to allow others to be used on iOS, via BrowserEngineKit.
However, a LinkedIn post from Microsoft Edge Web Platform Group Product Manager Kyle Pflug on June 15 indicates that a change is in progress. All based on a Chromium project using the Blink browser engine that dates back to February 2023.
In the post, Pflug explains that the Edge web platform team has helped contribute to Chromium to create the Blink-based prototype. It’s the same rendering engine that the Edge browser uses on other platforms.
A development build of the prototype browser was tried out against a number of browser benchmarks, and put against Safari. All were based on an average of three runs, all on an iPhone 17 Pro Max running iOS 26.5.1.
In Speedometer 3.1’s Web Responsiveness test, Blink managed a score of 49.27 versus 38.3 for WebKit, a 28.6% difference. For Jetstream 3’s JavaScript and Wasm throughput testing, the gap was narrower at 306.35 for Blink and 270.9 for WebKit.
Results of testing prototype Blink vs WebKit on an iPhone 17 Pro Max – Image Credit: Kyle Pflug/Microsoft Edge
Lastly, Motionmark 1.3.1’s graphics rendering test of canvas graphics saw a score of 4,773.52 for Blink, 4,673.68 for WebKit. This, too, was a very narrow victory for the Chromium project.
Curious to see how fast it was, Pflug went to an Apple Store to try Speedometer on an M5 iPad Pro running Safari. On that hardware, he still saw a slower score of 45.7.
Beyond speed, but also not public
While the benchmarks are a good way to check the prototype, other tests were carried out to check against so-called pain points. This list, on a “Top Developer Needs dashboard, includes elements such as corner-shape, handling squircles and notches properly in CSS.
Interpolate-size() and calc-size() is the automatic animating to height in CSS, while Temporal is referred to as “sane data & time handling” in JavaScript.
Pflug concludes the post by pointing out that this is still a research prototype and tests based on his personal device, not lab results. It’s also not a product announcement, with no hint as to when a browser using Blink would ever emerge from development.
He goes on to say that the tests do at least show the prototype offers some real competition to the established WebKit when it comes to performance.
This is not the only Chromium-related drumbeat to have occurred this month. On June 4, a Chromium blog post declared that it had set new records in browser benchmarks thanks to Chrome optimizations.
In both cases, they are warning shots in the direction of WebKit. While Safari still dominates on iPhone, it’s possible for Chrome or even Microsoft’s Edge browser to take some of the mobile browser market by providing a faster and better browsing experience.
It would require a lot more than just that to pull away brand-loyal consumers from Safari. But at the very least, it would show that browser makers have options, instead of just using WebKit like everybody else.
