Yep, the game based on the original 1999 PlayStation release, will allow players to customise their ride with different kart bodies, paint jobs, decals, stickers, wheels and there’ll even be insane character skins to top it off. These cosmetics can be unlocked by playing through the game’s adventure mode or collecting in-game Wumpa coins in regular races and then spending them at the store.
If you missed it, Crash Team Racing will also include remastered tracks, karts, arenas and battle modes from the 2003 PlayStation 2, Xbox One and GameCube title, Crash Nitro Kart.
Are you looking forward to customising your ride in the new CTR game? Tell us below.
Although there was no mention of future games support for the 3DS at Nintendo’s financial briefing last month, a recently translated Q&A has revealed the system is still performing, sales-wise.
Despite a scaled-back sales plan for the 3DS this fiscal year, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa believes the demand for the unit is “stable” and reiterated how it would continue to be sold as an entry-level video game device:
“Our plans for Nintendo 3DS sales this fiscal year are lower compared to the previous fiscal year, but the demand for Nintendo 3DS is stable and I expect steady sales as we continue to position it as an entry-level game system, differentiated from Nintendo Switch.”
If this wasn’t enough evidence the 3DS is going strong in its later years, last month it was revealed Mario Kart 7 is still selling like hotcakes. The game shifted 1.21 million across the globe over the past financial year. Admittedly, the affordable 2DS Mario Kart bundle probably helped.
In regards to existing game series, once exclusive to Nintendo handhelds, Shuntaro says the plan is to bring more and more of these franchises across to the Switch:
“As for the Nintendo Switch, the lineup of software planned for release this year includes titles for series that in the past were developed for our handheld game systems. Since the Nintendo Switch can be played in handheld mode, these titles will potentially give consumers who previously played games on handheld systems to purchase a Nintendo Switch.”
Are you surprised the 3DS is still in a stable state? What Nintendo handheld series would you like to see released on the Switch? Tell us down in the comments.
After ongoing requests from the community, Nintendo has today dropped Tetris 99 DLC that allows players to enjoy two new modes – both of which can be played offline.
The Big Block DLC is a one-time purchase of $9.99. It includes CPU Battle, allowing you to play Tetris 99 offline against 98 bots and a Marathon Mode, where you challenge yourself to clear as many lines as you can and score big. Information about additional upcoming game modes will be revealed at a later date.
As both of the above-mentioned modes are offline, this means any user can play the game without the need for a Nintendo Switch Online membership. Of course, you’ll still need to fork out some coin if you want to play against others online.
In addition to this, the third Maximus Cup has been announced. Once again, this free event awards various points for each match played – even if you don’t win. The higher you place each match, the more points you earn (1st: 100, 2nd: 50, 3rd: 30, 4-10: 20, 11-30: 10, 31-50: 5, 51-80: 2). If you manage to earn 100 points during this event, you’ll unlock a special in-game theme inspired by Tetris on Game Boy. This event takes place next weekend from 17th May until 19th May.
The #Tetris99 3rd MAXIMUS CUP is set for 5/17, 12 AM PT – 5/19, 11:59 PM PT! Celebrate the @tetris_official 35th anniversary with this special event! All participants who earn 100 event points will unlock an in-game theme inspired by the original Game Boy game!
Will you be buying this DLC? Are you looking forward to unlocking a special Game Boy theme in the Maximus Cup? Tell us below.
Following on from last week’s epicannouncement, the Rocket League developer Psyonix has now released a summer roadmap for the popular vehicular soccer video game to put any concerned minds at ease.
This roadmap highlights all of the new features and improvements coming to the game over the next several months. The developer also reassured fans Rocket League would continue to be shaped by the same team as well as the passion and feedback of the community. As for the acquisition itself, there’s nothing new to report just yet:
For fans looking to find out more regarding what our acquisition by Epic Games means for Rocket League and Psyonix in the long-term — there’s nothing new to report just yet, but we’ll keep you informed as soon as we have an update.
So, what updates can players look forward to? Next month Psyonix will hold the biggest in-game event Rocket League has ever had, featuring several limited time events, new items and more. Here’s the rundown:
While the event on the whole will share the same in-game currency for items that can be redeemed inside the event store, the items found in the event store itself will change as we move through different points in the promotion; giving you more in-game items to earn than ever before.
We know that players can sometimes earn more event currency than they sometimes use, so we’re addressing that by adding XP Level-Up Packs in the event store as well (a Rocket League first)! That means that players will be able to redeem event currency for XP Level-Up Packs that grant 10 Tier Points for Rocket Pass — allowing you to boost your Rocket Pass Tiers in a super-fast and super-convenient way!
More details about this upcoming event will be revealed soon. In addition to this, a party-up system will be added to the game along with a better inventory management tool. A number of quality of life updates will be made the trading system as well:
The community has been asking us for quicker ways to party-up with strangers following a good match. That functionality will be coming later this year. Soon, you’ll be able to easily party-up with teammates from the post-game screen.
Inventories are growing too, and that calls for better ways to organize all of your in-game items. We’re happy to say that additional inventory management tools will also be added via a future update.
Finally, one of our long-term goals for 2019 and beyond is to make a number of under-the-hood, quality-of-life updates to our trading system. We’ll have more to share on that later this year.
The RLCS Season 7 World Championship is also happening in June from 21st to the 23rd. It’s taking place at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey and you can purchase your tickets now to catch all the live action from the world’s best Rocket League teams.
Are you still playing Rocket League? How do you feel about the recent acquisition? Tell us below.
Once upon a time, Saints Row was tipped as the ‘new’ Grand Theft Auto, with its sprawling urban open-world and a big focus on gang warfare – and while it didn’t take long for us to realise developer Volition didn’t quite have the pedigree of Rockstar, once the series started embracing its over-the-top action and violence, it really came into its own. Whether you liked its slapstick silliness and purposefully offensive humour or not, Saints Row: The Third perfected that formula and made for one of the best virtual playgrounds of the previous generation.
And here it is, bold as brass, on Nintendo Switch as Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package. It’s one of those games you never expected to be remastered for a new generation, especially this close to the end of the current one. But Koch Media has been plunging deep into the recesses of its IP archive, and it has revived Volition’s best crack of the open-world whip. The result is a proper little sandbox, full of races, side-activities and collectables. Steelport may not be the most thrilling of urban locales, but there’s just so much to do amid its soaring skyscrapers and sprawling highways that you’re unlikely to notice.
Much like the previous entries, Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package follows the continued rise of the fun-loving titular faction. Starting out as nothing more than a bunch of gang bangers in the first game, Johnny Gat and co are now a media empire with some serious clout. However, their rivals have also grown in power and confidence, and when a heist goes awry the Third Street Saints find themselves suddenly forced to start again with nothing more than some purple clothes, a handful of guns and a whole lot of bad intentions. It’s a neat way to show you just how many fun toys you can eventually earn – ranging from guided missile-launching drones to armoured VTOL aircraft – as you slowly rebuild your status.
You can design your own character, including a choice of four voices that are fully represented in cutscenes and in-game chatter. There’s even a zombie voice, which still makes for laugh-out-loud moments when your character is slurring their way through a heated conversation or gurgling along to a song while driving between missions. Saints Row’s characters aren’t as well realised as Grand Theft Auto’s, but the attention to detail in ambient conversations and character reactions shows just how far the series had come by this point. You’ll get access to a lot of costumes and clothing items thanks to the raft of included DLC, and you can buy more with in-game cash from various stores across the map.
Much like every other open-world game out there, Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package is inundated with side-activities to complete when you’re not hanging off the side of a skyscraper sniping members of the Morning Star gang or skydiving into a gunfight to the sounds of Kanye West. What makes this extra content so enjoyable is just how silly it is. For instance, you can play Insurance Fraud and turn on ragdoll physics as you launch yourself into oncoming traffic in order to rack up the biggest claim.
Or, perhaps, you’ll take on Professor Genki’s Super Ethical Reality Climax, an insane cross between a Japanese game show and an instalment of Saw. Want to make money while dodging traps and killing people dressed as colourful mascots? Of course you do, and Genki’s side activities never fail to entertain and challenge in equal measure. It’s all throwaway, much like the game itself, but it refuses to take itself seriously in the way the Watch Dogs or Mafia games often do, and that sense of comedic self-awareness makes Steelport more of a playground than most other sandboxes outside of Rockstar’s finest.
You can really tell this is a game from 2011, though. The gunplay can sometimes be a little unsatisfying as hitboxes are intermittent at best and some guns are so woefully underpowered that until you upgrade them they almost feel useless. There are still way too many escort missions with difficulty spikes that can occasionally take the fun out of the experience. Oh, and those brutes are just as ridiculously fast, despite being built like tanks. You can tell no changes have been made to Saints Row: The Third’s mechanics, just technical changes to make it fit on Switch.
There’s still no means of manually taking cover, so it’s either a case of crouching behind something high enough or simply standing behind a piece of scenery long enough to set up your next shot. Then again, this isn’t really a game that wants you to catch your breath; instead, it wants you to leap into every gunfight with a rocket launcher and a dildo-shaped baseball bat. Sure, some of the mission checkpoints are a little unfair, but considering Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package rarely repeats itself or runs out of barmy ideas, some sins can be forgiven. This is, however, a game that revels in its comedic approach to sex and violence, and some missions – such as one that requires you to get a sex change – might offend more contemporary sensibilities.
As a port, the Nintendo Switch version of Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package looks and runs really well – especially for a game as old as Skyrim. The frame rate only ever stutters during cutscenes, and runs super-smooth during actual gameplay. Draw distances are solid and there is some pop-in here and there – especially when you’re gunning down a highway on a souped-up motorbike or cutting through the air in a VTOL. There’s quite a lot of motion blur employed when you’re skydiving or putting the pedal to the metal, but most of the dynamic lighting effects and texturing have been retained. Yes, it’s a seven-and-a-half-year-old game, but it still looks rather good on Switch.
Furthermore, there’s now support for co-op, including local play and online sessions. Whether you’re running through the streets naked shooting a gun that fires mind-controlling octopuses or going on a rampage with a purple-branded tank, Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package only gets better with a friend causing equal amounts of destruction in tow. And with three full-story expansions and over 30 DLC items all as standard, it lives up to its new subtitle.
Conclusion
While no one expected it – and we dare say that no one asked for it – Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package revives an often forgotten open-world adventure on a new console generation, complete with a huge amount of cosmetic and expansion DLC. While it’s showing its age mechanically (and in terms of taste), in visual terms it’s a robust sandbox filled with outlandish activities, hyperactive ideas and the kind of diverse mission design most open-world titles fail to fully realise. With support for both local and online co-op, this version of Saints Row’s best outing is a steal. We might not ever get a Grand Theft Auto on Switch, but this is probably the next best thing.
If you’re fond of retro sports titles, you’ll be pleased to hear Hamster will soon release the 1987 arcade game, Tecmo Bowl, on the Nintendo Switch in the next few weeks. This new entry in the Arcade Archives line, as the name suggests, was originally developed by the Japanese company Tecmo.
Nintendo fans are likely to be more familiar with the NES iteration of Tecmo Bowl, which has previously been released on multiple digital platforms including the Wii Shop, 3DS eShop and Wii U eShop. The original cabinet version was last added to the Virtual Console Arcade line on the Wii in 2009.
It’s a nice change of pace to have a slightly rarer retro release on its way to the Switch eShop. Apart from a number of gameplay differences to the NES version, one other bonus of the arcade release is improved visuals – with a larger colour palette and more detailed sprite work. For more information about this game, take a look at our review.
Let us know in the comments if this is one of the classic games you’ve been wanting to play on your Switch.
Remember that Ninja Warriors sequel we reported on a while back? We’ve not heard anything about it for a while, but last month (sorry, we must have been asleep) Taito confirmed that the game – which is being developed in conjunction with Natsume Atari – will hit Japanese PS4 and Switches in July of this year.
Taito has also released a bunch of screenshots for Ninja Warriors Once Again which show new characters Yaksha and Raiden getting in on the action with the original three Ninja Warriors. As you can see, Raiden is an absolute unit.
Here’s some PR:
Based on the 1994-released The Ninja Warriors: Again, which is a Super Famicom arrangement of the 1987-released arcade game The Ninja Warriors, The Ninja Warriors: Once Again is a 25-year-later remake from the Tengo Project main staff that brought you the original games. While retaining its 16-bit style, The Ninja Warriors: Once Again significantly enhances the character resolution, pattern amount, and more to match the latest hardware. In addition to two new playable characters, The Ninja Warriors: Once Again implements a two-player co-op mode that was not available in The Ninja Warriors: Again.
There’s no word on pricing yet, but will you be downloading this when it launches in Japan? Let us know with a comment.
Before you head off to your local cinema tomorrow to catch Pokémon Detective Pikachu, you might want to give this fanmade demake video a watch. You know, for a healthy mix of fresh excitement and nostalgia.
The folks over at Nintendo Wire have shared this Game Boy Color-inspired demake of the film’s first official trailer, reimagining particular scenes in the style of the early Pokémon games. The use of Pokémon Yellow‘s Pikachu face box to show emotion is a nice touch – as is the chiptune version of The Turtles’ ‘Happy Together’.
You can compare it with the real trailer below if you like; the opening scene in Nintendo Wire’s version kicks in at around 0:34, with other scenes being chosen throughout.
What do you think? A clever little project? We’d happily buy a copy of Pokémon Yellow: Detective Pikachu Edition based on this…
UK publisher Bitmap Books has announced that it is producing an officially-licenced history of SNK’s beloved Metal Slug franchise, and has been given “unprecedented access” to the company’s archives in order to compile the publication.
Metal Slug: The Ultimate History is the first officially-licenced book of its kind, and covers the history of the series from its inception in 1996 all the way up to the present day. It will showcase original art, concept material, screenshots and 11 “exclusive and incredibly detailed interviews” with key members of the development team, including Kazuma Kujo and Toshikazu Tanaka.
Bitmap Books, as you may recall, has previously published the excellent NEOGEO: A Visual History, another book that was given SNK’s official blessing. It is also the company behind Super Famicom: Box Art Collection and the long-running Visual Compendium range, which has covered the NES and SNES so far, with a Master System edition shipping this year.
Metal Slug: The Ultimate History will be available to pre-order in July, and is expected to ship in September.
Launching today on Nintendo Switch is Masquerada: Songs and Shadows, an RPG which first appeared on PC back in 2016.
Actually described as a tactical RPG, Masquerada: Songs and Shadows is a fully-voiced adventure featuring a cast which includes Jennifer Hale (of Mass Effect, Mortal Kombat 11, and DuckTales), Matt Mercer (of Kingdom Hearts III, Critical Role, and Attack on Titan), and Ashly Burch of (Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands 2, and Steven Universe).
If you want to learn a little more about it, this synopsis should do the trick:
Cicero Gavar searches for a missing friend in Ombre, a fantastical city inspired by Renaissance-era Venice and brought to life in a rich, vibrant hand-drawn art style. As Cicero and his companions navigate a society steeped in class inequality, they must wield the four elements in devastating combos and crush their foes together in real-time combat with tactical pause.
Five years of civil war have rocked this city-state and claimed more than human casualties. Numerous Mascherines, mysterious masks that grant magical powers, have been lost to the destruction. Cicero’s party will discover how their pasts are entwined with not only the war, but with the history of those ancient masks and the ruins of civilization on which their home is built.
The game has received “very positive” user reviews on Steam so far, although our chums over at Push Square had mixed feelings on the PS4 version.
It’s available to buy right now on Nintendo Switch for $19.99 / £17.99. Will you be giving it a go?
