Nintendo Switch and Frito-Lay Variety Packs make snack time a little more super (Mario)
Nintendo is teaming up with Frito-Lay to add superstar characters from some of its hit Nintendo Switch games to the in-store packaging of various Frito-Lay Variety Packs. Starting on March 25 and running through May 19, the spring promotion will include package art featuring the three characters Mario, Luigi and Yoshi from various Nintendo Switch games like New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Super Mario Party, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Tennis Aces and Yoshi’s Crafted World. Like Frito-Lay Variety Packs, all of these Nintendo Switch games are fun for families to enjoy together.
Fans who purchase the specially marked Frito-Lay Variety Packs will also have the chance to win a Nintendo Switch system and three Nintendo Switch games selected by Frito-Lay*. Frito-Lay Variety Packs are giving away these Nintendo Switch prize packs every hour between March 25 and May 19, so there are plenty of opportunities to win. Participants just have to look for the unique code on each specially marked package and enter the code at FLVPGameGiveaway.com for a chance to win.
“This partnership with Frito-Lay Variety Packs is another way for us to expand the Nintendo brand and bring it directly to families,” said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “Mario and Frito-Lay Variety Packs are a great fit, as both are loved by people of all ages.”
This year will see a lineup of new Nintendo Switch games, starting with the new platforming adventure Yoshi’s Crafted World on March 29. Other notable upcoming releases include Super Mario Maker 2 in June and major updates to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The games featured in the promotion with Frito-Lay Variety Packs like New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Tennis Aces are currently available in stores and digitally in Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch. For more information about Nintendo Switch, visit https://www.nintendo.com/switch/.
*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open to legal residents of 50 US/DC, 13+. Void where prohibited. Begins 12:00:00pm CT 3/25/19 & ends 11:59:59pm CT 5/19/19. Limit 3 Code submissions per day. For a free Code, send a 3″ x 5″ card or piece of paper with your full name, address, city, state, zip code, date of birth & email address, to be received by 5/15/19, to: Frito-Lay Variety Packs Game Giveaway Code Request, PO Box 760006, Dept. 882-715, El Paso, TX 88576-0006. Code will be emailed. See Official Rules at FLVPGameGiveaway.com. Sponsor: Frito-Lay, Inc., 7701 Legacy Drive, Plano, TX 75024-4099. Nintendo is not a sponsor, co-sponsor or administrator of this sweepstakes.
Yesterday’s reveal of Stadia, the boxless ‘future of gaming’ from Google, was certainly intriguing. It promises seamless browser-based streaming of AAA games at 4K and 60 frames-per-second to all manner of devices you already own. The proposition is a clear and clean one for people with cluttered houses chock full of tech that’s slowly turning obsolete with every annual hardware revision. Google’s message is strong: everyone, everywhere can join in.
Setting aside the massive hit to office productivity that implies, Stadia has the potential to transform the gaming industry and affect every company working in it. While Google’s presentation itself was formulaic and dry, the content spoke for itself and initial hands-on reports and first impressions signal that the tech appears to perform admirably.
If this turns out to be the case in a ‘real-world’ context, it should give the ‘big three’ players in the console market something to think about, especially as the next hardware generation peeks its head over the horizon. If Stadia’s launch later this year is a success, how is that likely to affect Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft?
Obviously, as a Nintendo site, we’re primarily concerned with the House of Mario, and from what we’ve seen so far, Nintendo should be somewhat insulated thanks to the portable nature of Switch. As toweringly impressive as the Stadia tech may be, WiFi blackspots and disruptions will still scupper your entire game, not just the online portion. Switch’s modest chipset is hardly bleeding edge, but it’s able to deliver incredible gaming experiences without being tied to an internet connection, meaning it’s likely to be the best portable gaming option for a good while yet. You can’t stop Switch by going through a tunnel.
The need for a strong and stable internet connection will always be Stadia’s Achilles’ heel, but homes where that isn’t an issue present more of a worry for the traditional console companies. While Nintendo may well be affected inside the home – where every screen is turned into a more powerful console – the company has some breathing space until 5G (and beyond) really takes off and lightning fast WiFi (with reasonable data plan pricing) is the norm when you’re out and about. The section of the Stadia presentation detailing Stream Connect has the potential to usurp Nintendo as king of couch co-op, but there’s a big difference between a tech demo and an actual game. It’ll be a while before Switch isn’t a fixture at the hip roof-top barbecue parties we throw every weekend.
Nintendo also has its enviable catalogue of IP to bolster its hand. Those video game franchises cultivated for over three and a half decades are hugely valuable and have seen the company through some rocky periods. Content is king for all platforms, and putting aside some colossal hardware misstep, people will continue to go to Nintendo systems for Nintendo content.
One of the most potent weapons Google used in its presentation was the elimination of the update bar, and this should be more of a worry for Sony and Microsoft. Anybody with one of their consoles is all-too-familiar with the process of firing it up for a quick session and facing a barrage of firmware and software updates, often at comically slow download speeds, before you can finally play the damn thing. We had half an hour spare the other day, sat down for a little Forza Horizon 4 and 27 minutes later the game finally booted. It’s okay, we played some Switch while we waited.
The other huge advantage Google has is that ‘boxless’ selling point. Offering a very similar AAA experience to the competition over devices you already have in your house with no £300 hardware purchase is massive. Hardcore gamers may baulk at the latency figures, but Google’s proposition could be hugely disruptive for a more casual audience or for gamers that only really play one game (FIFA, say). Although it may well depend on the type of game you’re playing, spending $400 on a big noisy console and having to wait for installation, update bars and all that bother may well seem like far too much trouble. Stadia removes a very large barrier to entry for a lot of people, and that’s good for the industry as a whole.
Microsoft is reportedly lining up its own cloud-based streaming solution – perhaps in a very similar mould; it certainly has the resources to do something similar. Whether Sony is in a position to compete is up for debate, although it’s been in the streaming space for a long time already with PS Now, the platform formerly known as Gaikai. Stadia appears to be a significant upgrade to that streaming tech, though, with broad and powerful integration across the web. Whether Sony’s system could be broadened to compete is difficult to know at this stage, but it has more than a foot in the door.
There are still many unknowns and ‘unspokens’ regarding Stadia at present; namely the price. A subscription model would be the obvious choice, although subscription fatigue seems to be setting in already – there must be a limit to the number of services consumers are willing – and are able to – pay for on a monthly basis. Google is likely to offer a suite of options, perhaps billing based on playtime or the number of games you access. Outright ‘purchase’ of games is certainly possible, although that would seem strange seeing as you can only ever ‘access’ the games rather than download and ‘own’ them.
The total loss of ownership is one thing which may give many gamers pause. While we technically only purchase licences to play digital games on Switch, for example, we can download them, back them up on multiple microSD cards and ‘have’ them indefinitely. Stadia moves away from all this, enabling some impressive integration with YouTube and distilling game states and sharable experiences to a mere hyperlink; a true streaming platform. Thanks to Netflix, Hulu, Spotify and the like, the world is now very comfortable with streaming, although gamers are historically very protective of their physical media.
While Google has always been an online entity, Nintendo’s history with the physical product gives its products a kind of prestige that enthusiasts cherish. For everyone who’s gone digital-only on Switch, there’s someone else who’s willing to pay through the nose for boxed physical copies of games for a number of reasons. Make no mistake, physical media is destined to go the way of the dodo, but many Nintendo fans, young and old, still value it, giving the company another small (and ever-shrinking) cushion for the inevitable, fast-approaching bump when the ephemeral digital option becomes the only option.
This inflection point heralded by Stadia’s arrival could have a startling knock-on effect on game design itself. The technology requires Google to register (and presumably log) every single byte of player input, enabling constant analysis, tweaking and honing. This information will no-doubt influence design choices, with bottlenecks, player trends and choices examined and planned around. ‘Games as a service’ has primed us for this – the product shipped on disc in the beginning may have very little in common with the live game six months down the line – but the elimination of client-side code or calculation means gamers are truly at the mercy of Google and developers.
If successful, this has ramifications across all facets of gaming. What will happen to mods, for example? And as exciting as playing on any screen in the house may be, it’s also concerning for game preservationists – if code only ever exists on mainframes at Google’s ominous sounding ‘data centres’, how do you preserve these games for posterity? This is something that video game historians are already struggling with as thousands of iOS and Android titles are taken offline each year and vanish forever.
Hardcore gamers may well be bristling at this relinquishment of ownership and control, let alone the unavoidable lag which will likely keep high-level players of fighting games and twitch-based first-person shooters playing locally. Realistically, it could be another decade or more before the tech reduces lag to the point where it’s indistinguishable to a game running under the TV in a way that will satisfy the hardcore community, but Google isn’t really making a play for hardcore gamers – a difficult-to-please and small (in Google terms) demographic that isn’t worth chasing, at least at this stage. As Nintendo has done in the past with its Blue Ocean strategising, it’s looking to access a wider audience instead, to grow the market in a broader sense through the scalability of its platform and the fact that Chrome is already sitting on millions of devices across the globe.
All this begs the question: Could Switch become one of these ‘screens’ we play Stadia on at some point? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. It’s conceivable it could work as well on Switch as any other device and as we’ve seen with the Japanese cloud-based experiments with Resident Evil 7 and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, there’s plenty of room for improvement over the existing methods companies are employing to get around the limitations of Switch’s silicon. As an aside, it’s curious to note that Stadia isn’t scheduled to launch in Japan this year – a country with an excellent internet infrastructure.
All the possibilities Stadia offers and the direction in which Nintendo and others might head if it’s a success are dizzying, but there’s also a tinge of sadness in the air. Instant access and gratification is a concept that younger gamers today naturally take for granted, and the further elimination of that delicious moment of anticipation puts dinosaurs like us in a melancholy mood. In the presentation, industry veteran Phil Harrison – part of the team that launched the original PlayStation, for crying out loud – highlighted how you could click a button in a YouTube trailer and be playing the game in as little as five seconds. Incredibly impressive, certainly, but for people who used to pore over tiny screenshots in games mags and devour instruction manuals in the car on the way home until we could finally plug our fresh cart into the console, the reality of always-online, always-accessible is bittersweet. As attention spans get ever shorter, we’ve got nostalgia for the old ways (because we’re old) and that anticipation from our youth – something we even occasionally try to emulate now by not tearing directly into a present or new purchase – is now reduced to a click and five short seconds. Oy.
But that’s been the past for a long time already. The future arrived a while ago but if Google can make a success of Stadia, we’re on the cusp of a massive leap towards the console-less future people have been predicting for years. Whatever happens, it’s going to be interesting…
Fortnite on Nintendo Switch is the game that keeps on giving. Updates to the game are coming thick and fast, the latest version 8.11 looks like a good one. It offers a new weapon (in keeping with the pirate theme) as well as a new game mode, and much more besides.
Let’s take a look at the patch notes…
WHAT’S NEW?
Flint-Knock Pistol Knock, knock…who’s there? Flint-Knock, that’s who! Pick the perfect time and knock yourself or enemies back with this new weapon!
WEAPONS + ITEMS
Flint-Knock Pistol
Available in Common and Uncommon Rarities. Found from Floor Loot. Knocks back the shooter. Can also knock back the target if they’re close enough. The closer you are to the target, the farther they get knocked away. The shooter can crouch to prevent the knockback. Close range damage: 86/90 Significant damage falloff. Must reload after each shot. 3 second reload time. Uses Heavy Ammo.
Unvaulted the Impulse Grenade Impulse strength against vehicles has been increased by 344%
Increased the impulse strength of explosive weapons against vehicles by 233%
Scoped Assault Rifle Increased base damage from 24/23 to 27/26 Reduced the spawn rate of the Baller from 100% to 50%
LIMITED TIME MODE: ONE SHOT Low Gravity. Every player has 50 health. Snipers are the only weapon and Bandages are the only healing item. Jump high and aim well!
Mode Details
Gravity is set lower than normal. The Storm wait time has been greatly reduced in all phases of the game. The only weapons in this mode are Hunting Rifles and Sniper Rifles. Semi-Auto Snipers and Bounce Pads have been removed from the Vault in this mode. Players will spawn with 50 health, and can only heal if they find Bandages.
EVENTS
Tournament Update: Gauntlet Solo Test Event & Gauntlet Duo Test Event Added two additional extended sessions, which will run 24 hours a day. 3/19/2019 00:00 UTC until 3/23/2019 00:00 UTC 3/23/2019 00:00 UTC until 3/26/2019 00:00 UTC New Tournament: Blackheart Cup (March 23rd & 24th) [$100,000 in Cash Prizes!] Participation in this event requires players to have placed in the Top 3% (global) of any Gauntlet Test Event session prior to the start of the tournament. The prize pool will be distributed across all server regions, with official rules and details released later this week. Format: March 23rd – Round One: All Eligible Players March 24th – Round Two: Top 3000 Players from Round One Participating in tournaments and the Gauntlet Test now requires a minimum account level of 15. The requirement was previously at level 10.
AUDIO
Bug Fixes Fixed an issue that caused The Baller’s tow-hook “release” sound to trigger twice each time.
UI
Bug Fixes The new style for the Whiteout Outfit can now be selected. Event leaderboards no longer display everyone as being at rank #0.
ART + ANIMATION
Adjusted lighting. Increased lighting contrast in areas of shadow. Increased color vibrancy.
CREATIVE MODE
WHAT’S NEW?
Black Glass Island Reflect your creativity onto this brand new island!
ISLANDS Black Glass Island
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where grenades were thrown from outside the save volume of islands, toward the island, would apply grenade effects (eg. knockback, chiller effects) to other players and vehicles.
CREATIVE TOOLS + PHONE
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where some objects had become un-targetable with the Phone, such as Llamas and Vehicles. Those now react correctly when targeted by the Phone.
DEVICES
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where a Sentry would occasionally not cause damage to players.
PERFORMANCE
Bug Fixes
Made stability improvements around ending and leaving games in Creative Mode.
Let us know if you’ve had a chance to try out Fortnite since this latest patch. Is the game a better experience for it? As always, let us know with a comment below.
There are plenty of smaller titles that cropped up over the 25 minutes of today’s Nindies presentation. Here’s our roundup of some of the smaller titles and their trailers.
Finji delivers a new game from Adam Saltsman, the creator of Canabalt. In this turn-based survival game, players take care of a group of travelers on a post-apocalyptic road trip across the United States. Fight off scary creatures, rescue stranded survivors and scavenge for supplies like fuel, first aid kits and weapons. There are consequences for every action. The game launches on Nintendo Switch this fall.
Fellow Traveller and Chance Agency offer an emotional survival game about staying human in a world disrupted by automation. Lina, the last human driver on the neon-drenched streets of Los Ojos, California, interacts with a diverse cast of characters with individual story arcs. Players must balance their income, sustain a positive rating and manage their emotions, as fulfilling Lina’s job as a rideshare driver is the only way they might reunite with her best friend Savy, who’s mysteriously gone missing. The game launches on Nintendo Switch this summer.
Devolver Digital and askiisoft have created a stylish neo-noir action-platformer featuring breakneck action and instant-death combat. Players take on the role of an assassin, the Dragon, to slash, dash and manipulate time to unravel their past in a beautifully brutal acrobatic display. Players can overcome the opposition however the situation requires, as each level is uniquely designed for countless methods of completion. Deflect gunfire back at foes, dodge oncoming attacks and manipulate enemies and environments with traps and explosives. Leave no survivors. The game launches on Nintendo Switch on April 18, and is available for pre-purchase starting today.
Flight School Studio challenges players to this top-down, pinball-inspired hack-and-slash dungeon crawler. Players venture deep into a desert mountain haunted by a desperate Creature to restore power to an ancient facility by charging energy orbs and having them bounce around and ricochet to reactivate dormant machinery. They will uncover and upgrade powerful gear to help them save the city of Mirage from a deadly sandstorm. The game launches on Nintendo Switch this summer.
Paper Cult delivers ultraviolence in a twisted Western revenge tale with a deranged cast of characters. Betrayed and left for dead, Mr. Wolf is hell-bent on finding his attacker and exacting revenge. Players can choreograph spectacular, bloody combos by making use of everything around them, from hatchets and ladders to … carrots? The game launches on Nintendo Switch this summer.
Kongregate and Twirlbound offer a stirring open-world adventure with beautiful biomes to explore, puzzles to solve and secrets to discover. Players take on the role of Hue, a brave young adult who belongs to the last remaining tribe of humans on the island of Albamare. The island’s factions trade and fight with each other over food and territory, while Hue learns about ways to influence the ecology in search for a new home for the humans. The game launches on Nintendo Switch in August.
Vlambeer’s Super Crate Box is coming to bring back the glory of the golden arcade age, when all that really mattered was getting on that high score list. The Nintendo Switch version will include exclusive two-player co-operative and competitive multiplayer for even more arcade mayhem. Prepare for an arcade delight with tight controls, refreshing game mechanics, cracking retro art and a terribly hip chiptune soundtrack when Super Crate Box launches in April.
Vlambeer’s post-apocalyptic roguelike-like top-down shooter challenges players to fight their way through the wastelands with powerful weaponry, collecting radiation to mutate some new limbs and abilities. The game offers 12 playable characters, seven playable main worlds, 30 ways to mutate characters and more than 120 weapons. The game launches on Nintendo Switch – today!
Decoy Games takes a deep dive with this multiplayer underwater shooter with action-packed co-op and versus game modes, all supported by online and local play. The game comes with an ocean of content, with more than 150 challenges across eight game modes. Players can toggle between classic dual-stick controls and motion aiming, whether they’re playing locally or online*. The game launches on Nintendo Switch this summer.
And here are a couple without trailers – check out the entire presentation below for footage:
Vlambeer Arcade with ULTRABUGS
Vlambeer Arcade is a collection of bite-sized games with a growing catalog that starts with ULTRABUGS, a fast-paced, high-score-centric game in which players pilot a ship to fight endless space bugs. The only problem is that those bugs then split up into more space bugs when they’re defeated. By beating boss monsters, players will unlock enemy DNA that they can use to customize their ship. Vlambeer Arcade with ULTRABUGS is coming to Nintendo Switch later this year.
Acid Wizard Studio and Crunching Koalas set their survivor horror game in East-Central Europe, in a forest possessed by unknown evil forces that corrupt all the inhabitants of the woods: people, animals and even the plants. Players can get new powers by extracting a strange essence from mutated fauna and flora and injecting it into their bloodstream. The game builds an atmospheric, psychological feeling of tension without the usual horror tricks of jump scares and creaking doors. The game launches on Nintendo Switch in May.
So, what from that little lot takes your fancy? Let us know in the usual place.
Gather your friends, stockpile some Eggos, and get ready to play through the events of Stranger Things’ third season from your Nintendo Switch beginning this July.
Stranger Things 3: The Game was on display during today’s Nindies Direct stream, and finally given a concrete release date of July 4. While previously revealed at the 2018 Game Awards in December – and slated to appear on “all platforms”, including the Nintendo Switch – it was unclear precisely when this would occur.
At the time, there were very few additional details available on the latest instalment in the Stranger Things video game series, outside of a short teaser trailer revealing 16-bit arcade-style graphics. Aside from the isometric orientation, the game’s appearance is similar to the original Stranger Things: The Game mobile title loosely based on the show’s first season.
However, we now know the game – developed by BonusXP, in partnership with Netflix – will allow you to play as 12 different main characters from the show, adventuring through numerous events from the upcoming season, and even utilizing full local co-op (the Switch’s bread and butter).
The convergence of television and videogames seems to be a major focus for Netflix recently – with the availability of content like Bandersnatch and Minecraft: Story Mode – and fans definitely seem to be on board with these immersive experiences. Playing through the new season of Stranger Things on your Switch while simultaneously watching the episodes will definitely appeal to many fans looking for a more multi-faceted experience.
Are you a fan of Stranger Things? Do you plan to play through the new game while watching season 3, or will you watch the show first to avoid spoilers? Let us know in the comments below.
Veteran developer Double Fine today announced an all-new game coming to Switch this summer. RAD is a 3D action game set in the Fallow, a wasteland of a world that has been ravaged by not one, but two apocalypses.
Players will have to battle all sorts of creatures and work to heal the cracked and barren land you can see the the trailer and the screenshots below. It appears that your teenage protagonist doesn’t react very well to the toxic radioactivity he encounters, with various mutations that will help, and we assume hinder, your progress.
From the official blurb:
The fate of the world depends on the player, a sweet bat, and whatever new abilities they gain as the world around them ravages their body, twisting and mutating them into something far less than human, but far more powerful.
The old favourite term ‘roguelike’ got rolled out again for this one, but Double Fine’s trademark humour (glimpsed in the trailer reveal as studio head Tim Schafer put in a cameo appearance) should help stop this particular apocalypse from getting stodgy – we’ll find out more this summer.
Are you a fan of Double Fine’s games? Let us know if this catches your eye in the comments below.
During the latest Nindies Showcase it was revealed that Blaster Master Zero 2 – the sequel to the much-liked original – will land on the Switch eShop today for just $9.99.
The first game was a Switch launch title, but it seems that this follow-up is both bigger and better, with the protagonist Jason blasting off into space with his buggy chum. With exciting new weapons and boss battles, this looks like a winner.
Check out the trailer above and let us know if you plan to pick this up today with a comment below. We’ll be reviewing it in the not-too-distant future!
Publisher Devolver Digital has had a good track record of bringing quality games to the Switch eShop, and My Friend Pedro from Deadtoast Entertainment looks like no exception.
The game bio alone has us sold:
My Friend Pedro is a violent ballet about friendship, imagination, and one man’s struggle to obliterate anyone in his path at the behest of a sentient banana. The strategic use of split aiming, slow motion, and the ol’ stylish window breach create one sensational action sequence after another in an explosive battle through the violent underworld.
Check out the trailer above and let us know if you plan on picking this up when it comes to the Switch eShop in June.
Coming from Timberline Studios, The Red Lantern is confirmed to be coming to Switch sometime this year. Lindsay Rostal, the game’s director, presented game footage in today’s Nindie Direct detailing some of the things you’ll be getting up to in this story-driven dog sled sim.
Featuring roguelike elements and ‘hundreds’ of possible unique events, the game follows a woman as she takes part in real life annual Iditarod dog race. From the trailer, it looks very much like a journey of self-discovery along the lines of Firewatch.
In handheld mode, gyro controls will enable you to look around without using the right stick, and it looks like you’ll be facing some predicaments as you struggle with yourself and your dogs as much as the environment and the dangers it presents.
Strong Firewatch vibes, no? Have you ever fancied riding a digital dog sled? Let us know in the comments below.
The surprise announcement of today’s Nindies Direct was the news that the award-winning Crypt of the NecroDancer is getting a Legend of Zelda-themed expansion.
Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer includes both Zelda and Link, but uses the same beat-based gameplay of the original. However, we’re also getting new stages and enemies, again based on the Zelda franchise.
Here’s some official info:
In the latest rhythmic action-adventure from Brace Yourself Games, you can enjoy the gameplay of Crypt of the NecroDancer in the setting of The Legend of Zelda series. As Link or Princess Zelda, players explore randomly generated overworld and dungeons on a quest to save Hyrule, and every beat of the 25 remixed Legend of Zelda tunes is a chance to move, attack, defend and more. From modern-looking Lynels to the Hyrulean Soldiers of old, players must master the instinctive movements of each pixel-art enemy and strategically outstep them in rhythmic combat using an arsenal of iconic items from The Legend of Zelda, as well as the spells and weapons from Crypt of the NecroDancer.
Given how acclaimed the original Crypt of the Necrodancer was, we can’t wait to play this – and the fact that Nintendo has allowed developer Brace Yourself Games to use one of its most treasured properties speaks volumes about how the company has embraced the indie sector.
