Today’s Level-5 Vision 2026 Showcase… certainly happened. And while fans of Professor Layton are probably happy, the same can’t be said for those who are waiting for updates on other Level-5 games.
Part way through the showcase, president Akihiro Hino introduced a sizzle reel-type video featuring three of the studio’s upcoming titles: Inazuma Eleven RE, a remake of the first Inazuma Eleven game; Decapolice, an upcoming detective RPG; and Holy Horror Mansion, the next project in the Yokai Watch series.
The former two have been slated to releasein 2026, but for Inazuma Eleven, no date was reiterated (but a Switch 2 version was confirmed). As for Decapolice, well, that’s now sitting on an “In Development” in the trailer, but on the official website, it’s still saying 2026. Fortunately, RPG Site has spotted that the upcoming RPG’s release platforms have changed, and it now shows Switch 2 instead of Switch.
No doubt disappointing news for those who haven’t upgraded to the new console yet, but there might still be time. Decapolice has been delayed multiple times, so another one wouldn’t surprise us, but there’s conflicting information out there.
Holy Horror Mansion (which never had a release date) got the most footage in the reel, but also ended its section with “Still a ways to go…”. Sooo 2027? 2028? We have no idea.
Of course, game development is tough right now, and if you’re a Level-5 fan, you’re probably used to endless delays or vague dates at this point.
But fan frustration is seemingly at a tipping point following the showcase, particularly as president Hino has been one of the bigger proponents of GenAI in video games in recent months, going as far as to call it an “efficiency improvement” and even defending using it in game development.
Today’s Level-5 showcase might not have been overflowing with release dates, but it did give us a new look at Professor Layton and The New World of Steam, with the confirmation that it’s still on track for 2026 (thank god).
The new trailer is our best look yet at the upcoming puzzler, diving deep into Layton and Luke’s adventures in Steam Bison and introducing a bunch of side-characters we’ll meet along the way — keep an eye out for the Don Paolo cameo! Things stay pretty cutscene-focused for the most part, but there’s a nice little bit of gameplay slotted into the middle, showcasing even more of those all-important puzzles.
We also got a reminder of the game’s main Japanese voice cast (we already know about Yo Oizumi and Mio Imada, let’s not forget) and the confirmation that the theme song is being penned by none other than composing legend Joe Hisaishi, renowned for his work on Studio Ghibli titles like Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.
While Level-5 president Akihiro Hino wasn’t able to provide a firm release date, he confirmed that the game is “nearing completion” and announced no change to the current 2026 release window.
We’ll be keeping an eye out for more information over the coming months, while Level-5 continues “focusing on the visuals and overall presentation” as well as the itty bitty job of localisation.
What do you make of the new trailer? Let us know in the comments.
Apple Pay is a quick and safe way to make purchases in person and online, but a new type of scam may use your faith in the system to steal thousands of dollars from you.
That’s the warning from consumer advocacy outfit Consumer Affairs following a spate of Apple Pay-related scams. Fraudsters know that people trust Apple and the Apple Pay system, and they’re using that trust as the basis for their scams.
The goal, as ever, is to confuse people to such an extent that they can be convinced to hand over their money. How that happens can vary from scam to scam, but there’s one constant: Apple Pay.
While these scams aren’t new, they seem to be on the rise. Consumer Affairs reports that a scammer claimed to be an official investigator and convinced one woman to withdraw $15,000 as a result. A bank teller realized what was happening before it was too late.
Thankfully, there are some common-sense steps that you can follow to protect yourself and your money.
A familiar con
Fraudsters have long used technology as a way to try to part their marks from their hard-earned cash. This latest bout of Apple Pay scams is no different in that regard.
The process starts with an official-looking text message or email. Sometimes it claims to be from your bank or law enforcement. Othertimes, it claims to be from Apple itself, Consumer Affairs explains in its warning.
The story is usually a variation on a theme, regardless of the supposed sender. They claim that a purchase was attempted or declined, or that your account is locked or under some sort of investigation.
The message always tries to ratchet up the pressure by claiming that immediate action is required. It’s this perceived time criticality that often catches people off guard, causing them to do things they wouldn’t normally do.
Apple Pay is quick and easy to use [Image credit: Apple]
Such messages always include a phone number for you to call or a link for you to click. Then, you’re instructed to do something to protect your money. Ironically, that often includes sending it somewhere via Apple Pay.
Another favorite of scammers is to instruct an unsuspecting victim to buy gift cards, often for the Google Play Store. They then have the victim provide the codes for these cards, which, ultimately, wind up being sold on unscrupulous websites.
Whatever the method, the goal is to get you to take your money and give it to them under the pretence of safekeeping.
How to stay safe
While it may seem obvious that these emails and messages are scams right now, it’s also easy to see how people fall for them. Being caught off guard by someone saying your money is at risk is often enough. If not, the time pressure they apply usually is.
It’s important to remember that neither Apple nor your bank will ever ask you for passwords. They won’t ask you to move money to an account of their choosing, either.
The same goes for buying any kind of gift cards, too. Thankfully, retailers are often now trained to look for the signs that a customer may be buying cards to pay scammers.
It’s also vital not to click any links or call any numbers provided by these messages. If you want to check the legitimacy of these messages, contact Apple or your bank via their published methods only.
Finally, if you think that you may have been targeted by a scammer, contact your bank immediately. You can also report the incident to the authorities, including the FTC.
Keeping up with competitive Pokémon battling has always been a hassle. As the mainline series shifts from generation to generation, so does which Pokémon are available, access to specific Pokémon, methods for training those Pokémon, the introduction of new moves, abilities, and held items, as well as a continued cycle of overpowered strategies and how to counter them. It’s very easy to fall behind.
I myself fell behind after skipping most of the Pokémon Scarlet & Violet era that ran from November 2022 to April 2026. After such a long break, I was excited to hop back in to the next era with Pokémon Champions.
Champions, you see, is the new free-to-play home of competitive Pokémon, releasing on both Switches and eventually mobile devices. It promises to both centralise and streamline battling; what’s more, Champions’ structure alludes to the eventual return to older battle gimmicks like Z-Moves and Dynamax, which aren’t available in Scarlet & Violet and likely won’t be programmed into the upcoming Pokémon Wind & Waves.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Which all sounds great if you’re a veteran player or a newcomer curious about competitive Pokémon, right? Well, yes and no – Champions has released in a sorry state that creates more problems than it solves, though it does solve one massive issue that overshadows all others.
With Champions, training Pocket Monsters has never been easier. Traditionally, breeding for perfect Individual Values (IVs), Effort Values (EVs), specific moves, and hidden abilities could take hours per ‘mon; for an average player like myself, experimenting with different Pokémon and stat spreads was not worth the time commitment.
That is no longer the case. In Champions, you can hop into the training menu and simply set your desired EVs, abilities, and moves. IVs thankfully have gone the way of the Aerodactyl.
Before, if I wanted to make a Trick Room team — a move that allows slower Pokémon to act first — I’d need to catch Ditto with the lowest possible Speed IV to breed the rest of the team with. Then, I’d need to hatch dozens upon dozens of eggs per Pokémon until they were all as slow as possible, allowing me to beat out other Trick Room teams.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
It took me less than five minutes to put a Trick Room team together before queuing up for ranked battles in Champions. When I wanted to use my slow Incineroar on a faster team, I quickly switched the infamously overpowered Pokémon’s stats around for the low price of some in-game resources – more on those later.
Champions further streamlines things by introducing a way to recruit Pokémon, sidestepping the need to boot up a different game, transfer a ‘mon to Pokémon HOME, and then transfer it into Champions – though that option is still available and likely preferable to those that already have battle-ready rosters, because recruiting relies on a bit of luck.
You can roll a random lineup of 10 Pokémon once a day — or spend a resource called Quick Tickets to do so immediately — and recruit one of them on a trial or permanent basis with the latter requiring a different type of ticket, though unfortunately these recruited ‘mons can’t be transferred to other games.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
I found this immensely helpful to bring myself up to competitive speed because I did not have a Sinischa, Basculegion, or Sneasler ready to go, which are three of the most powerful Pokémon currently playable. I simply spent some Quick Tickets to roll the gatcha-like system a few times until these Pokémon appeared and voilà – a handful of competitive monsters were born.
No longer do I feel like there’s a massive Mount Coronet to climb before I can even think about competing on a ranked ladder. As a result, I do think Champions will draw more people into the scene – especially if future updates solve the new problems introduced alongside these boons.
Foremost is the convoluted monetisation. It’s ‘free-to-play’ but offers a $6.99 / £5.99 Starter Pack that entices with some resources and much more space to store Pokémon, as the initial limit of 30 is incredibly restrictive. There’s a premium in-game battle pass that — thankfully — only locks cosmetics behind a $9.99 / £7.99 price tag, and then a $4.99 / £4.19 monthly Membership (or $49.99 / £41.99 for 12 months) that provides more missions to obtain resources to train and recruit Pokémon, even more spaces to store Pokémon, and some other goodies.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Then there’s a Pokémon HOME subscription ($2.99 / £2.69 monthly or $15.99 / £14.39 annually) that you’ll probably want so you can bring over Pokémon from other games more easily, as the free version is also restrictive on space. Other than the Starter Pack, these are all recurring monthly or yearly charges.
Having transferred over and trained lots of Pokémon already, I can say with confidence that most of the paid content is unnecessary – especially the Battle Pass. I have plenty of tickets of every type to use if I wish to customise teams further. That said, I could definitely see resources becoming scarce in the future when more Pokémon are added.
Regardless, Champions can get expensive quickly for what amounts to not much more than an online mode available in every other mainline Pokémon game. Other than some helpful tutorials and some quirky characters that act as glorified menus, there’s no story here, nor are there any unique ways to battle or — inexplicably — options to customise rulesets in private matches.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Making matters worse are technical issues and oversights. Certain mechanics — like the order Mega abilities trigger in — are broken at launch, though there are plans to squash these bugs in the works.
I’m personally more annoyed about the poor performance on Switch 2. I assumed the promised free Switch 2 upgrade was delayed at first because Champions looks rough and runs at 30 fps. Turns out there’s a bug where you have to undock and redock your Switch 2 for it to load 4K visuals. However, I was certain some 60fps update was on the horizon when an opponent’s Politoed set up the rain weather effect and the frame rate dropped further.
But no – it seems that update was automatically installed and this is the best it gets on Switch 2. Pokémon Legends: Z-A and the Switch 2 version of Scarlet & Violet ran at 60fps, so I found it bizarre that Champions launched in this state on the more powerful console. I didn’t mind this as much when playing undocked, which quickly became my preferred way to battle. Champions looks good on the smaller Switch 2 screen.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
I do, however, disagree with a common criticism I’ve seen online that Champions has too few Pokémon or removes too many staple held items like Life Orbs and Choice Specs. We don’t know the timeline for new additions, but this restrictive start has two things going for it: it allows newer players to get up to speed and recruit good Pokémon, and it creates a unique meta where veterans can enjoy figuring out what works and what doesn’t instead of falling back on known, overpowered combinations and steamrolling the competition.
It’s simultaneously the most accessible and flawed competitive Pokémon has ever been.
Conclusion
With that all said, the core mechanics of online competitive Pokémon battles remain as solid as a Steelix. Predicting whether your opponent will switch out their Whimsicott, protect with their Mega Charizard Y, or try to catch you off guard with a powerful, offensive attack creates mind games as addictive and intense as ever.
And as someone who has participated in competitive Pokémon on-and-off since 2011’s Pokémon Black & White, the ease with which I can now train Pokémon has me hopeful that Champions will, much like Scarlet & Violet before it, evolve into a more complete, comprehensive experience. But as it stands, the convoluted monetisation, disappointing performance, and inexplicable bugs make this another lacklustre Pokémon experience to add to the pile.
Even if we overlook the limited launch Pokémon, the swathe of bugs, and the strange monetisation, Pokémon Champions still had more issues up its sleeve — talk about a dramatic launch, eh?
Those playing in Docked Mode on Switch 2 might have noticed that the latest battler looked… a bit naff. Up on the TV, the game still doesn’t hit the promised 4K resolution, with the stretched image looking all the worse as a consequence. Thankfully, there is a fix, but it relies on (you guessed it) another bug.
As spotted by Serebii‘s Joe Merrick, you can encourage Champions to improve its docked resolution by starting the game up on the big screen, removing your Switch 2 from the dock, and then reinserting it again. Just like that, the game gets the kick up the backside it needs and pushes things up to a native 3840x2160p. Hardly the neatest solution, but hey, whatever works!
Matthew Reynolds over at One More Catch reached out to Digital Foundry‘s Tom Morgan for a comment on this bug and received the following:
It’s true, Pokemon Champions runs natively at 1920×1080 when booting Switch 2 in docked mode. All signs point to a bug that has the game run in a ‘portable state’ even when connected to a TV. The problem is made more egregious by the lack of aliasing treatment to the image overall – meaning its rough, jagged edges are scaled from 1080p to 4K to disastrous results. The fix works well, of course – lifting and re-docking your Switch 2 gives the system the necessary trigger to flip to native 3840×2160 – but still it’s an issue that needs attending to.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, this was apparently the first time that Tom had seen such a quirk from the Unity Engine, though he recalled that PAYDAY 2 had a similar, but opposite, issue on its Switch 2 launch, where portable play was accidentally boosted up to docked resolution.
It’s a slight resolution bump, admittedly, but we’ve included One More Catch’s before and after Pokémon Champions footage at the bottom of this article, so you can see the game as it was meant to be played.
The Champions devs have already announced that they are working on the game’s first bug-squashing patch, though the resolution quirk was not one of the issues they specifically mentioned they are targeting. We’ll wait and see what other tweaks come to Champions in the coming months because, at launch, it has a long way to go.
Will you be trying out this Champions resolution fix? Dock and undock your thoughts in the comments below.
If you’re a fan of Toby Fox’s bangers in Undertale, you might be interested to hear these tracks are on the way to Rift of the NecroDancer.
This new “Undertale Music Pack” crossover is now available in the Steam version of this rhythm title, and according to the developer Brace Yourself Games (Crypt of the NecroDancer, Cadence of Hyrule), the Switch version of this paid DLC is on the way.
When it does eventually arrive, fans of Undertale can look forward to six tracks (including the one and only Megalovania), a bonus track, multiple difficulties and various other features. Here’s the rundown via the Steam page:
Featuring SIX new Rhythm Rifts by Toby Fox:
Hopes and Dreams
Death by Glamour
Bergentrückung / Asgore
Battle Against a True Hero
Megalovania
As a bonus to celebrate this release, enjoy a free Rhythm Rift:
Spider Dance
Each UNDERTALE Rhythm Rift features:
A member of the Rift cast in their favourite UNDERTALE cosplay
Background visualizer with custom particle FX
Four Difficulties: Easy, Medium, Hard and Impossible
Remix Mode: Experience a fresh beatmap your way every playthrough while enjoying the original level’s rhythmic design
Buying this Music Pack also unlocks custom UNDERTALE items to equip in your Rift Profile!
There are no dogs in this Music Pack, sorry.
Image: Brace Yourself Games
Rift of the NecroDancer was originally released on Switch in 2025. We thought it was great, awarding it eight out of ten stars:
Would you be interested in this music pack? Have you played Rift of the NecroDancer yet? Let us know in the comments.
Warhammer has revealed its new game – borrowing the template of the insanely addictive roguelike Vampire Survivors and adding characters, weapons and enemies from its own tabletop universe – will be coming to the Switch 1 and 2 at some point this year.
This new standalone release, officially titled Warhammer Survivors, is developed by Auroch Digital (Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun) in partnership with Warhammer and poncle (the small development studio founded by Vampire Survivors creator Luca Galante). This title will include a roster of playable characters from both the Warhammer 40K and Age of Sigmar universes.
“Thrust into a universe of relentless war, become the embodiment of bullet hell in Warhammer Survivors, a fast-paced roguelite survivors game. Play as characters from the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar universes, collect and evolve iconic weapons and destroy endless swarms of enemies.”
Mortal Kombat‘s movie reboot is well underway, with the second film Mortal Kombat II due out in cinemas next month on 8th May 2026.
To build some excitement (and promote the fact that tickets are now on sale) a new trailer for the sequel has today been released. Apart from many new and returning faces, there’s also a major cameo in the trailer… spoiler alert, it’s the Mortal Kombat co-creator and games industry veteran, Ed Boon!
You can see him behind a bar around the one-minute mark, in a scene alongside Johnny Cage (played by ‘The Boys‘ star Karl Urban). Of course, this sequel will also be loaded with various other characters. Here’s the official description about the story and cast:
From New Line Cinema comes the latest high-stakes installment in the blockbuster video game franchise in all its brutal glory, Mortal Kombat II. This time, the fan favorite champions—now joined by Johnny Cage himself—are pitted against one another in the ultimate, no-holds barred, gory battle to defeat the dark rule of Shao Kahn that threatens the very existence of the Earthrealm and its defenders.
Karl Urban stars as Johnny Cage, alongside Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, Damon Herriman, with Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano as Lord Raiden, Joe Taslim as Bi-Han, and Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzo Hasashi and Scorpion.
In some other Mortal Kombat news this week, NetherRealm Studios yesterday announced the latest video game entry Mortal Kombat 1 has now sold over eight million units worldwide.
Will you be taking a trip to the cinemas to see this new Mortal Kombat movie next month? Have you watched the first movie yet? Let us know in the comments.
Will you be watching the Mortal Kombat II movie? (226 votes)
At the end of last month, Nintendo released a major update for its Switch 2 launch title Mario Kart World – adding Bob-omb Blast to the game’s Battle mode. It also included various adjustments and fixes.
Now, in a new update today, the Mario Kart team has released a smaller update resolves some minor issues. This includes one fix when players would “sometimes” not get a speed boost, and the other patch note says an issue with the game ending when switching between modes with multiple players has now been resolved.
Here’s what you can expect from Version 1.6.1, courtesy of Nintendo’s official support page. If we hear anything else about this latest update for Mario Kart World, we’ll let you know.
Mario Kart World: Ver. 1.6.1 (Released April 9, 2026)
Fixed Issues
Fixed an issue where you would sometimes not get a speed boost upon landing after starting a rail ride following a Jump Boost or similar action.
Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes end when switching between TV mode and handheld mode / tabletop mode after starting a game with three or more players in Multiplayer.
You can find out more about the previous Version 1.6.0 update and see Bob-omb Blast in action in our previous post here on Nintendo Life. This new Battle mode joins Balloon Battle and Coin Runners. And if you haven’t even played Mario Kart World yet, be sure to check our review.
