Back in the day, it was pretty well understood that seeing a popular show or brand on a licensed video game didn’t necessarily mean that you were in for a great time. Though titles such as DuckTales or GoldenEye 007 broke through as exceptional titles for their respective eras, the majority of licensed games were usually the sort of passable chaff that eventually made its way to the bargain bin to be forgotten about when the generation passed.
Yet, video game preservation is an increasingly discussed topic these days, and with nostalgia always being a reliable means of making a decent return on investment, many publishers have been investing more into collections that preserve legacy content by offering it to a new generation.
Enter Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection, a middling basket of old platformers and mini-game collections whose main selling point at the time was that they were related to the popular Nicktoon. Now available on modern platforms, you can experience ‘memorable classics’ like Rugrats: Studio Tour and Rugrats in Paris: The Movie in all their janky glory, with save states and scans of original manuals to sweeten the deal.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Suffice to say, you’re not missing out on much if you choose to pass this one up, but it may hold some value to you if you played any of these games when you were a kid.
Six (technically eight) of the licensed Rugrats games are included here, covering the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation. The headlining game is Rugrats: Search for Reptar, joined by Rugrats: Studio Tour, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, The Rugrats Movie, Rugrats: Time Travelers, and Rugrats: Castle Capers. That’s a lot of Rugrats content and… well, none of it is really that good.
Let’s start with the 3D titles, which demonstrate some basic, fun ideas marred by the severe technology and design restrictions of the generation in which they debuted. In all too fleeting glimpses, the mission-based level design, simple mini-games, and charming atmosphere reveal the bones of an enjoyable 3D action game with some unique protagonists and objectives.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
How many platformers place you in the role of a baby who can’t jump and needs to figure out how to navigate a house by figuring out how to crawl and climb on various furniture objects? That’s interesting, and a great basis for something that could be innovative and distinct.
Yet it’s difficult to get drawn too far into it, as you’ll be constantly fighting for your life against a primitive camera that’s more challenging to manage than any of the game content. Similarly, navigating the environments with sluggish and unresponsive controls makes it feel like you’re constantly wading through a shallow pool.
I’ll grant you that it’s kind of ‘punching down’ to criticise a 3D game from 1998 for having odd controls and a poor camera system, but such foundational issues severely undercut the fun factor of these games before they can really get any traction.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
The 2D entries fare a little bit better, offering up some serviceable platforming action. These are much simpler in nature and adhere more closely to tried and tested 2D platforming conventions—you move through set stages, nab collectables while avoiding enemies, and aim to get the highest score you can.
Each game is only a couple of hours long at most, and on the whole, I would say that they are more enjoyable than their 3D counterparts simply by virtue of how competently they’re made. Few would seriously contend that any of these deserve to be topping any ‘best of’ lists, but they at least offer decent challenge, minigames, and level design—none of which prove to feel too frustrating or unfair.
Across all titles, modern emulation features are included to help round out some of their rougher edges, giving you tools that can enable you to brute force jankier sections much more easily than you could in the past. Dropping a save state before a tough race can save you tons of time spent watching loading screen, while you can feather a toggle for a rewind feature to quickly undo mistakes and practice difficult manoeuvres or minigames with minimal consequence.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
These tools are far from a new idea in modern retro game collections, but it’s still nice to see how seamlessly they’re integrated here and how well they can cover over the uglier aspects of some more antiquated game design.
The developers saw fit to also include a bit of museum content in here, with hi-res scans of all the original boxes and manuals available for you to peruse and a soundtrack feature to listen to tracks from across all the games. Compared to the developer interviews, concept art, and extensive marketing materials included in other retro collections, the content here feels a little thin, though perhaps this could be due to limited rights issues over the Rugrats IP.
Conclusion
Looking at the whole package, Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection is the epitome of a release that’s carried solely by nostalgia. If you happened to love the show or any of the games in this collection in younger years, there’s certainly a case to be made for picking this one up just to take a trip down memory lane and remind yourself of the simpler times. Yet when you take that aspect away, you’re left with a weird amalgamation of mid-tier games that exemplify many of the game design shortcomings and limitations of this era of the gaming industry.
At their worst, these games are janky, difficult to control, and relatively thin when it comes to meaningful content. At their best, they’re inoffensive and passable distractions that you’ll probably never feel like playing again after you put them down. There are much worse games out there, but Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection makes an unconvincing case for why it’s worth both your time and money. It’s a cool novelty and I think fans of the original show or games will get a bit more out of it, but this isn’t something that I can recommend as something you ought to pick up. If you must, I’d suggest you at least wait for a sale.
I’ve covered a lot of gaming conventions in my time. Innumerable PAXes, E3 once, and a few Tokyo Game Shows. None of them match the immaculate vibes of BitSummit, Japan’s indie gaming convention.
Image: BitSummit
From developers fresh out of University to seasoned vets striking out on their own, an infectious enthusiasm for this hobby we all love takes over Kyoto for a weekend – made all the better this year as the showrunners bumped BitSummit up from a sweltering July to a bearable May.
Despite the heat, last year I saw a renewed enthusiasm for Nintendo as the Switch 2 had just been released. This year, it was almost impossible to choose just 10 games that will eventually make their way onto the Switch 1 or 2, so I’ve upped it to 12.
I’ve confirmed with each and every developer below that their game is either coming to a Switch console or they’re earnestly trying to get there, as Nintendo is still playing a bit coy with Switch 2 dev kits.
BitSummit 2026 – Every (Eventual) Switch 1 & 2 Game We Played
When the director behind Penguin Colony, Tali Faulkner, reached out for a meeting to show me his demo, I expected something more along the lines of an Animal Crossing clone based on the title alone. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Instead, Penguin Colony is best described as Lovecraftian cosmic horror seen through the eyes of penguins. Yes, you read that right. Coming from Origame Digital (Umurangi Generation), the penguins — which you can swap between and have different traversal strengths based on their size — explore a very John Carpenter-esque Antarctic, slowly unravelling the mystery of what happened to a Nazi expedition.
As I slid on my belly across large swathes of ice (first as a large penguin and then a baby penguin that could squeeze through gaps), I uncovered camps inhabited by insane Nazis. Well, more insane than usual. Some mumbled and rambled about unimaginable horrors as I waddled on by, while others had carved the skin from their faces, revealing a gruesome mask beneath. One’s head exploded as I shimmied a bit too close.
I won’t spoil much more because Penguin Colony is one of those games you have to play yourself, but I will say if you’re a fan of Disco Elysium you might recognise the narrator’s voice.
This one you can expect on Switch 2 sometime in October, along with a demo this summer.
As a Canadian, I didn’t know Australia had its own style of football, but after sitting down to play Pro Jank Footy, now I do.
As the title implies, Pro Jank Footy takes an arcade-like Aussie-rules football game and adds a lot of roguelite jank to it, making for an absurdly hectic party game that anyone can pick up and play – even Canadians!
Controls are simple: you can pass between the players on your team and kick the ball about. Pro Jank Footy complicates this simple formula by giving the player who lets in a goal a choice or cards that manipulate the match. These cards can be anything from swapping scores to adding a literal car to your team that runs down opponents.
As I played a few matches, I saw cards that turned everyone on the field into footballs, added extra goals all around the field, spawned a DVD Video logo that obstructed the screen (and didn’t quite hit the corners), and even more absurdity.
This uniquely Australian game is confirmed for Switches 1 and 2 sometime in 2026.
Monowave is a colourful little platformer from Studio BBB Inc., a developer based in South Korea. In this adorable game, you control Mono as he shifts between different emotions that give him different powers to progress.
An angry Mono can wall jump. A happy Mono moves quicker and jumps higher. A sorrowful Mono can squeeze through gaps as a depressed little blob, and an anxious Mono has too much to worry about to mind spikey obstacles.
These emotions extend to the other critters in each stage. An angry red crocodile will attack you. On the other hand, a sad crocodile turns into a springboard to reach greater heights. The empathetic Mono can give his emotion to the creatures you come across, which is necessary to clear each level and find difficult-to-reach collectibles.
You can expect to play Monowave on Switch 1 sometime in 2026.
FEAR FA 98 was by far the most bizarre game I played at BitSummit this year, and I think developer Jacob Jazz would be glad to hear me say so. It combines arcade-soccer gameplay with the horror of Silent Hill 2 and then adds a few dashes of grotesque absurdity for good measure.
It’s really two games in one: an old-school FIFA but with power-ups and a lot of blood and a single-player Silent Hill-esque campaign. If you want to ignore the campaign entirely, you can do so, but playing the versus mode will unlock items that help you progress the story further.
I spent most of my time getting wrecked by Jazz and the computer alike as I tried my very best as a team of sexy, murderous nurses to score some goals. The more I played, the more bizarre things got, as power-ups would trigger Final Fantasy-like summons that scored for me with massive energy beams.
I’m looking forward to seeing more of it when it enters Early Access later this year – especially with online play. It will come to Nintendo consoles sometime after that.
Owlboy is one of the most beautiful pixel-based games I’ve played, and D-Pad Studios may have outshone it with their next game, Vikings on Trampolines. Thematically and gameplay-wise, the two games couldn’t be more different: where Owlboy was an action platformer with its fair share of puzzles, Vikings on Trampolines is a brawler featuring both a co-op adventure mode and friendship-ruining versus mode.
In the former, you and up to three friends take on Balloonie and his balloon-based henchmen because Vikings are their natural enemies with their pointy helms. The problem is the Vikings can’t touch the ground and have to continue bouncing on trampolines; if they do fall off, they lose a heart and if there’s none left, it’s game over.
In the first stage I played with Art Director Simon Anderson, I had little problem popping some evil balloon guys and staying aloft, jumping off his viking to achieve even greater heights – though I did get distracted by the gorgeously rendered forest and mountain in the background quite often.
I didn’t last long in the latter stages, however, as trampolines flew by on speedy minecarts or a massive whale chomped apart half of the ship that the trampolines rested on, though I definitely improved in my short time with the game because it’s incredibly easy and intuitive to play.
Vikings on Trampolines can be played with only the left control stick, making it more accessible for players of different ages and abilities. In fact, Anderson told me he played with deaf people who sign with one hand while playing with the other, conspiring to take him out in the game’s versus mode in a language he couldn’t follow.
Speaking of the versus mode, Vikings on Trampolines will absolutely wreck friendships. Power-ups spawn frequently and give you abilities like hammer attacks that send your soon-to-be former friends flying off-screen as if they were a Super Smash Bros. character.
These Vikings will likely make it to a Nintendo Switch someday, although nothing is officially confirmed quite yet.
Starpath (Consoles TBC)
Image: Jonathan Smårs
Starpath is all about building and maintaining your starship as you explore a vast universe, and though that might sound rather chill, I couldn’t shake a feeling of existential dread as my character woke up alone – though I’m told by the developer Jonathan Smårs that you can bring some co-op friends with you.
What calmed my nerves after I got the hang of navigating zero gravity was finding several floppy discs strewn about. I collected one after another as the ship slowly drifted through the cosmos, plopping them into a little computer and playing little retro-style games on them. One of the games was a simple racing game while another was a Minesweeper clone that I probably spent too much time on, as I had a notification in the top-right corner telling me to fix a ship leak.
Donning a nearby space suit, I tried not to panic as I exited the starship and drifted a little bit too far from it. Luckily, you have some fairly powerful thrusters that helped me get back and find the leak. Here, I learned about the build mode and how you can greatly expand and customise your ship.
Once repaired, it was off to orbit nearby planets to find out whether or not I was truly alone in the universe. Presumably. I ended the demo there because I panicked when I noticed my oxygen was getting a little bit low and I couldn’t find the entry hatch.
There’s no release date yet but Smårs — lead engineer and designer of Valheim — assures me Switch 2 is the eventual goal.
Starless Umbra (Consoles TBC)
Image: Alcuria Games
When a game channels as much Secret of Mana energy as Starless Umbra, it’s impossible for me to pass up. I played through 30 minutes or so of an early section, switching between friends Amalia and Illari as they hunted little round rabbits and venomous snakes in a grassy region that wouldn’t look out of place on a Super NES.
If I had a friend of my own, I could have passed a second controller off to them so we could play together, though I found the computer-controlled companion more than capable enough. Much like its direct inspiration, Starless Umbra isn’t turn-based but rather features fast-paced action-RPG combat.
While I only played an early section, a sizzle reel nearby showcased dramatic story moments, different playable characters, and varied environments.
Developer Alcuria Games has every intention to bring this one to the Nintendo Switch consoles, but it’s still relatively early in development.
Lunars (Consoles TBC)
Image: Anubis Arts
Lunars is a party game based on zodiac animals that reminded me of Mario Party mixed with the visual style of Little Big Planet. You’ve got your boards, your dice rolls, your minigames, but the characters are also made of felt with plenty of ways to customise them to your liking.
Lunars features a lot that sets it apart from its direct inspiration. Hanny and Waleed Agawani — the brothers behind Anubis Arts — love and hate party games like Mario Party, respectively, giving them perspectives to streamline the frustrating parts of the board-based party game experience while also tapping into what makes the genre so fun to play with your frienemies.
Take, for instance, their Blitz mode, where everyone hits their dice at once instead of taking turns. This speeds up games exponentially without sacrificing strategy, as you can still use items to mess with your opponents in real-time.
After every shared turn, you hop into one of 30+ minigames. One had me running around collecting musical notes more quickly than my opponents, while another had me floating up from bubble to bubble. If I missed a bubble, I’d fall all the way back down. My favourite was a little King of the Hill mode that had me controlling a little tank, complete with tank controls.
Naturally, I lost horribly to a group of incredibly competent computer players but I’m looking forward to bullying real people on a Nintendo console sometime after it leaves Early Access on Steam.
WTF – Waifu Tactical Force (Consoles TBC)
Image: Extremely Normal
WTF – Waifu Tactical Force was sold to me as ‘Waifu Titanfall‘ and after playing a few rounds of deathmatch, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration, though I didn’t get to pilot any mechs in this build. The speed, wallrunning, and incredibly tight first-person shooting (including a Titanfall 2-style Smart Pistol) were here, however.
Except, y’know, I was an anime Waifu girl with a kitten-shaped reticle on my bright pink-and-blue gun, running around a vibrant arena full of cherry blossoms. I played a handful of matches against WTF’s Executive Producer, Raya Winterhalter, and didn’t do half bad if I do say so myself.
WTF didn’t only remind me of Titanfall. Your Waifu of choice also comes equipped with abilities like grenades that deal no damage but send opponents flying and even a bubble shield that felt right out of Halo 3. Except it, of course, had sparkly musical notes shimmering all around it.
For a game with WTF as an acronym, it was no less sweaty than those juggernaut FPS titles we grew up with. While I played on a Steam Deck — on which it ran smoothly — this one is hopefully coming to the Switch 2 after it releases in Early Access sometime next year.
Midnight Horde (Consoles TBC)
Image: Carry Castle
Midnight Horde is one of those slick, pixel-based roguelites that grab your attention immediately. It sets itself apart from similar titles like Vampire Survivors in the way it uses verticality and a kind of parkour system on a 2D plane to keep you on your toes as hordes of skeletons clamber after you.
In the demo I played, I started as the Wanderer, though I had the option to play as a Gunslinger as well. The Wander begins with the Silver Blades skill that, every few seconds, spawns a Silver Blade that slashes in a wide arc around the Wanderer automatically. As I levelled up, I unlocked a rifle that targeted a nearby foe for some high damage and a shotgun that melted everything in front of me every few moments.
As you can tell, weapons auto-attack, freeing you up to leap around and avoid the deadly hordes as you collect treasure chests containing upgrades. While I didn’t experience the build mode myself, you can customise each run with different buildings that grant boons. Not only do they change the landscape, but also the run itself.
Midnight Horde will release on Steam first in 2026 with the eventual goal of bringing it to the Nintendo Switches.
Sleepover (Consoles TBC)
Image: KittyWampus
Last year, I highlighted a 3D platformer from KittyWampus, an up-and-coming developer out of New Zealand, called Bashful Adoration. While Bashful Adoration looks better than ever, KittyWampus also showed off a new, smaller project with completely different vibes: Sleepover, a visual novel where you take control of Yuna, the sole survivor of humanity trying to find meaning in an empty world.
In the short demo I played, I controlled Yuna as she wandered around her house, getting lost in memories of her brother and their complicated relationship with her mother. As you might expect, these memories start to get a little weird and downright creepy, accentuated by a unique, sketchy art style and shocking bursts of animation.
The demo concludes when a mysterious girl arrives at Yuna’s door – not a phantom of her tortured memories. It left me with many questions that I want answers to.
I’ll have to wait a while, though, because Sleepover is still in early development with eventual plans for a Switch release.
Petal Runner (Consoles TBC)
Image: Nano Park Studios
Last, I won’t talk too much about Petal Runner as I’ve done a full hands-on of the demo I played, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the most visually striking — and Nintendo-coded — game that I played at BitSummit this year.
Keep an eye out for a deeper look soon. Despite looking like a Pokémon clone, it’s far more than that.
While there were many more amazing games that didn’t make this list, what do you think of the ones that did? Are there any you’re particularly excited for? Let us know in this poll and the comments.
Which of these games are you most interested in? (271 votes)
It’s no secret that Nintendo was in a bit of a dark time at the end of the Wii U era. With sales down and everyone awaiting the next console (or should we say ‘NX console’?), the company needed something to bring in the big bucks over the holidays. The answer, alongside amiibo, was the NES and SNES Classic systems, and boy, did they work.
Ever ready to give a cracking PR response, Reggie was ready for the mini systems’ launch. We all knew that they were something of a stopgap for the big N while the Switch was still in the oven, and the then-NOA president told Kotaku as much at the time: “these were limited time opportunities that were a way for us as a business to bridge from the conclusion of Wii U as a hardware system to the launch of Nintendo Switch”.
One decade on, Reggie touched on the topic again in a recent addition to the NYU Game Centre Lecture Series (found around the 57:30 mark in the above video), though the gift of time has meant that there’s less need for business pleasantries in 2026 — he can be a lot more to-the-point these days, it seems (thanks for the heads up, Nintendo Everything).
“We did that to sustain our business,” Reggie said of the NES and SNES Classic launches, “because we needed something to sell at volume come the holiday season”. A rather candid breakdown, we’d say, but there’s more. These systems, alongside cutting the 8GB Wii U SKU and advertising more indie content, were “a series of commercial ideas,” he continued, “knowing full well that the Wii U was on life support”.
It was a smart move, it turns out. By late 2019, the two classic systems had combined for more than 10 million sales, tiding Nintendo over as the Switch picked up steam. There were those of us who believed that more classic systems were in the pipeline (never forget those ‘N64 Classic Mini’ rumours), but with business booming and NSO expanding every month, we think it’s safe to assume that such merch is a thing of the past.
Did you pick up an NES or SNES Classic console in the Wii U trenches? Let us know in the comments.
The game launched to mixed reception and earned a score of 5/10 from us. We said, “there’s no getting around the fact that the developer has made a mess of the accuracy. Purists will be dismayed, and those attempting to play through it will feel incredibly frustrated by the increased and frankly unfair difficulty level”.
ININ has promised that fixes are on the way, but for the time being, it’s prioritising instances of crashing on Xbox, so there’s no timeframe on when the hitbox/collision issues will be resolved.
Here’s the statement in full:
Dear ININ Community
Following yesterday’s digital release of R-Type Dimensions III, we have received numerous feedback from fans regarding bugs, technical issues like hitbox/collision problems, affecting the game experience.
First and foremost, we want to sincerely thank every one of you who has shared detailed feedback about the issue you’ve encountered. Your feedback means a lot to us and it helps us identify and fix issues more efficiently.
Our development team is fully aware of the situation and is hard at work on fixes and improvements, with the Xbox crashes being our top priority right now. We have been going through reported issues across affected areas, and we will evaluate how to mitigate those issues as soon as as possible.
We understand the frustration these problems have caused and truly appreciate the community’s patience and continued support while we work on resolving them.
We’ll keep you posted as soon as we have more concrete updates to share.
Thank you for sticking with us.
Your ININ Team
It’s nice that this is seemingly being addressed so quickly, but nevertheless disappointing that games are still being launched in sorry states before being improved after the fact. R-Type Dimensions III could well prove to be a cracking experience at some point in the future, but that 5/10 score will forever remain.
What are your thoughts on this, dear reader? Have you held off on purchasing Dimensions III following the initial reception? Let us know.
At the Rocket League Championship Series Paris Major this weekend, the game’s developer Psyonix has officially announced a “new era” of the popular multiplayer game alongside the reveal of Unreal Engine 6.
The free-to-play title, powered by UE3, will shift to Epic Games’ new engine in the future. Fortnite was also featured in the trailer.
Image: Epic Games
Rocket League is currently available for the Switch and received an update for the Switch 2 earlier this year, which included visual and performance improvements.
When more about this new era of Rocket League and Unreal Engine 6 is revealed, we’ll provide an update.
Apple will be adding support for Google Cast and other alternatives to AirPlay as part of iOS 27, in order to appease the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
The Digital Markets Act is viewed by Apple as a problem, due to a lack of clarity about regulatory requirements and their effects. While this has so far meant the blocking of some features from reaching the continent, Apple is meeting halfway by abiding by some elements.
One of those will apparently be a change to iOS 27 for connecting to other devices. While Apple already has AirPlay for that, it will be moving to add more support for other solutions.
Sources told Mark Gurman that third-party streaming support is on the way, according to his “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg on Sunday. This would chiefly include supporting Google Cast, the Android-centric alternative.
Users will be able to set AirPlay or another framework as the default way of beaming content between devices.
It isn’t made clear whether the third-party solutions would be available as a global option or just for users in the EU. Apple hasn’t been consistent with how it implements such regulatory-based features, like with alternative app stores in the EU versus emulators being available everywhere.
There will be more changes on the way for iOS 27 to appease more EU demands, too. This apparently involves third-party app storefront support as well as sideloading.
Giving a digital inch
Apple’s compliance with the DMA with iOS 27 changes are inevitable, despite Apple’s defiance on the matter. Apple has been concerned about being pushed to comply, especially when dealing with the inherent security risks of opening up access.
The dislike of DMA and the EU’s push to comply has already led to various features not being available to European users.
This includes macOS Tahoe‘s Live Activities, mirroring those from the user’s iPhone. There’s also iPhone mirroring, a feature that displays the iPhone display on a Mac‘s screen, which has been absent since 2024.
While the iOS 27 changes won’t necessarily include already-blocked elements, it is a step on the long road for Apple to do so.
The latest adventure of T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas hit Switch 2 earlier this week, and we’re sure the biggest Yoshi fans among you have been spending this weekend with it. It seems to have gone down well with plenty of critics, currently flutter-jumping with an impressive 81 on Metacritic.
In our review of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Ollie wasn’t quite as enthralled as some, though he didn’t think it was bad, which is why he gave it an appropriate ‘Not Bad – 6/10’ score, citing a lack of engaging mechanics and a handheld resolution that was a touch fuzzy (not quite enough to get dizzy, but disappointing all the same):
“There’s a lot of fun to be had in discovering the many creatures hidden within Mr. E’s pages, though it also suffers from a repetitive structure that doesn’t evolve or provide any sense of meaningful challenge. Visually, it also lacks the punch that Woolly World and Crafted World offered, and it frankly looks pretty bad in handheld mode.”
If you haven’t played it yet, no sweat – you’re free to return and rate the game at your leisure via the game’s page should the fancy take you. However, if you have been rinsing your way through Yoshi’s book over the last four days, oh, have we a poll for you!
How would you rate this one? We’re keen to get your thoughts, so share your rating below, and remember, you’re free to change your mind and adjust your score at any time via the aforementioned game page.
What score would you give Yoshi and the Mysterious Book (Switch 2)? (69 ratings)
10 – Outstanding10%
9 – Excellent17%
8 – Great29%
7 – Good17%
6 – Not Bad9%
5 – Average6%
4 – Poor4%
3 – Bad0%
2 – Terrible3%
1 – Abysmal4%
Thanks for your ‘vote’. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, eh? Sounds like a follow-up to the recent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, no? Tough to beat a good Proper Noun and the Adjective Noun.
The recently released Switch title Pokémon Champions has announced a new mystery gift event is now live.
If you enter the event code before31st May 2026 (akanext week), you’ll be able to add a Gyarados to your party. As highlighted by Serebii.net, this was announced at the Pokémon Trainers Cup at ‘Pokémon Sports Day’ in South Korea.
The Gyarados is equipped with the following moveset – Waterfall, Earthquake, Ice Fang and Dragon Dance, and also has the ‘Intimidate’ ability. It’s the first Pokémon distributed with a title and is officially known as ‘Gyarados the Festive’.
The code to redeem it is DRAG0NDANCEPTC26 – from the main menu, select the ‘Submenu’ icon, and from here, navigate to the ‘Mystery Gifts’ option and input the code.
Image: Nintendo Life / The Pokémon Company
As we’ve previously noted, if the game says the code has already been redeemed, or you’ve exceeded the maximum limit of code inputs within a certain time frame, don’t worry. Navigate back to the menu, and there should be a notification in your ‘Mailbox’. And if there is no notice, try restarting the game.
Have you tried out this title on the Switch or Switch 2 yet? How are you finding it so far? Let us know in the comments.
Mlem. Howdy partners! Hop on board your nearest dinosaur, because it’s time to set off on another edition of Box Art Brawl.
Last time, we went virtual, as we took a look at Galactic Pinball for the Virtual Boy. There were just two options to choose between, and it wasn’t even close. North America walked away with a staggering 71% of the vote, leaving the trippy Japanese variant to deal with the remaining 29%.
This week, with Yoshi turning to a new chapter on Switch 2, we’re taking a look at his first solo outing in the aptly named Yoshi (or Mario & Yoshi, for those in Europe) on the NES. Was it the best tile-matching puzzler we’d ever played? No. Heck, it’s not even the best Yoshi tile-matching puzzler. But there’s a certain retro charm from this Game Freak joint that’s left us turning to it on NSO on more than one occasion in the years since.
There are three covers to choose between this week, so let’s match ’em up!
We’ve got to give it to the North American design, this really is rather sweet. We’ve got a smiling little Yoshi cracking out of his egg, surrounded by a cascade of falling enemies and eggshell. It’s simple, but it’s charming.
Crowbarring the prized plumber in there to reflect the regional name change, Mario & Yoshi’s European design is similar to its NA counterpart, but with added Mario. Yoshi is still cracking out of his egg, and enemies are still falling around him, but Mario’s there this time, plates in hand, to… help? Hey, whatever it takes to up the brand recognition, we suppose.
Things are much more simplistic in the Japanese cover, dropping the falling enemies to focus solely on Yoshi’s egg cracking — which makes sense, given the Yoshi’s Egg title change in the region. We like how the titular dino is positively springing from his eggy casing in this one, with a big old smile on his face.
Which region got the best Yoshi (NES) box art? (1,084 votes)
North America39%
Europe50%
Japan11%
Thank you for voting! We’ll see you next week for another edition of Box Art Brawl!
When the Kingdom Hearts cloud versions were originally made available via the Switch eShop, players could test out a “free demo” before actually buying the full experience.
In an update, the same demos have now been removed from Nintendo’s digital shop in the US (thanks for the heads up, My Nintendo News). In saying this, the full cloud versions of these games can still be purchased.
The following text also remains on each cloud version’s page listing: “This game requires an internet connection to play. Please try out the free demo before purchase”.
Although the demos are no longer listed on the US store pages, they’re still available in locations such as the UK and Japan. Square Enix hasn’t shared any official announcements about the removal of these demos, but if we hear any updates, we’ll let you know.
Unsurprisingly, there’s already plenty of speculation – with some suggesting it could just be related to licensing or an error, while others are hopeful it might lead to something more. There have also been some rumours.
Have you tried out the cloud versions of these games on Switch? Would you like to see these titles get a proper release on Nintendo’s platform? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
