We hope you’re feeling all jolly and festive, folks, because today is Mario Day!
Yes, as we’re sure a lot of you lovely readers will know by now, Nintendo has adopted 10th March as being a special day for its famous moustachioed mascot. Why? Well, because ‘MAR 10’ looks a bit like ‘Mario’, and a better reason isn’t required.
So, we want to know you plan to celebrate the special day. Are you hosting a huge Mario Party (excuse the pun)? Are you playing through some of his greatest adventures? Did you not even realise this was a thing and are therefore just getting on with your day as normal? Let us know in the comments.
If you’re still collecting Super Smash Bros. Ultimate amiibo, you might be interested in this exclusive look at the next batch.
During a ‘Made in Asia’ convention held in Belgium this weekend, YouTube channel Gaming Boulevard got up close and personal with four of the upcoming NFC figures. Here’s a look at each one:
Young Link
Pichu
Daisy
Ken
Pre-orders for this next batch are now available. For more information, check out our previous post and our pre-order guide.
Will you be adding any of these to your collection? Are you still buying amiibo on a regular basis? Let us know in the comments.
Last month, German-based game developer Matthias Linda launched a Kickstarter project for his SNES style RPG Chained Echoes. The good news is, it has been a success – earning enough funding for a Switch version to be developed alongside other versions. There’ll even be regular and limited edition physical copies available to purchase.
Here’s the good news from the developer himself:
Chained Echoes has been successfully funded with 130.409€ on Kickstarter and an additional 32.813€ on PayPal for a combined total of 163.222€! We are thrilled that we hit so many great stretch goals along the way, which now enables us to offer Chained Echoes on 2 additional platforms, as physical copies and currently in 3 additional languages.
This has only been made possible thanks to all of your amazing support and help with spreading the word throughout the campaign. We genuinely appreciate everything. Thank you all so much!
If you missed our original post, the game is inspired by fantasy titles of the ’90s and takes place in a 16-bit world where dragons are common as piloted mechanical suits. You take control of a group of heroes who must restore peace to a continent where war has been waged for generations.
The game combines the simplicity of retro titles with modern design principles to offer a fast-paced adventure. Players can expect around 20-25 hours of play time, no random encounters (as enemies are visible within the game world), tons of items to be looted, stolen or crafted, a complex skill and equipment system, the ability to customise your own airship and music inspired by the PSX era.
The game is currently scheduled to be released in September 2021. For more information about this Kickstarter, take a look at the official page.
Did you back this game? Do you like the look of it? Tell us in the comments.
Decreased time after pressing ZR to fire before ink recovery begins by roughly 5/60 of a second.
Splattershot Jr.
Custom Splattershot Jr.
Kensa Splattershot Jr.
Decreased time after pressing ZR to fire before ink recovery begins by roughly 5/60 of a second.
Aerospray MG
Aerospray RG
Decreased time after pressing ZR to fire before ink recovery begins by roughly 5/60 of a second.
Now more likely to ink the turf around your feet when firing.
.52 Gal
.52 Gal Deco
Kensa .52 Gal
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 21%.
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splash Walls by roughly 10%.
.96 Gal
.96 Gal Deco
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 57%.
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splash Walls by roughly 10%.
Luna Blaster
Luna Blaster Neo
Kensa Luna Blaster
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 64%.
Rapid Blaster
Rapid Blaster Deco
Kensa Rapid Blaster
The Main Power Up gear ability will now also increase the radius of explosions while equipped when using these main weapons.
The above effect will be maxed out when 2.9 times the normal amount of gear ability is equipped
Each additional gear ability is worth .3 of the effect of the base gear ability.
Rapid Blaster Pro
Rapid Blaster Pro Deco
The Main Power Up gear ability will now also increase the radius of explosions while equipped when using these main weapons.
The above effect will be maxed out when 2.9 times the normal amount of gear ability is equipped.
Each additional gear ability is worth .3 of the effect of the base gear ability.
Squeezer
Foil Squeezer
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 57%.
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splash Walls by roughly 10%.
Increased damage dealt to opponent Ballers by roughly 17%.
Increased damage dealt to an opponent who is armored while using a Booyah Bomb by roughly 17%.
Increased damage dealt to the Rainmaker barrier by roughly 10%.
Carbon Roller
Carbon Roller Deco
Decreased time after making a horizontal swing before you can switch into squid or octo form or use a sub weapon by roughly 2/60 of a second.
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 13%.
Splat Roller
Krak-On Splat Roller
Kensa Splat Roller
Hero Roller Replica
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 13%.
Flingza Roller
Foil Flingza Roller
Increased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 13%.
Goo Tuber
Custom Goo Tuber
With a charge shot stored, the animation of rising from a submerged position in squid or octo form can now be canceled with ZL, causing you to immediately resume squid or octo form.
Tri-Slosher
Tri-Slosher Nouveau
Extended forward the central shot’s point of impact.
Mini Splatling
Zink Mini Splatling
Kensa Mini Splatling
You can now jump higher than previously when the Splatling is fully charged.
Increased movement speed while charging by roughly 3%.
Increased movement speed while firing by roughly 8%.
H-3 Nozzlenose
H-3 Nozzlenose D
Decreased the effectiveness of the Main Power Up gear ability.
Increased the Main Power Up gear abilities required to reach 49.9 damage from 3.9 to 4.2 times the amount of base gear ability.
Each additional gear ability is worth .3 of the effect of the base gear ability.
Bamboozler 14 Mk I
Bamboozler 14 Mk II
Decreased damage dealt to opponent Splat Brellas, Sorella Brellas, and Hero Brella Replicas by roughly 20%.
Decreased damage dealt to opponent Splash Walls by roughly 20%.
Decreased damage dealt to opponent Ballers by roughly 38%.
Increased damage dealt to an opponent who is armored while using a Booyah Bomb by roughly 31%.
Sloshing Machine
Sloshing Machine Neo
Kensa Sloshing Machine
Increased ink consumption by roughly 20%.
Decreased hit radius of the spiral portion of the shot by roughly 6%.
Explosher
Custom Explosher
Increased ink consumption by roughly 30%.
Decreased radius of splash damage explosion by roughly 7%.
Devolver Digital has announced The Red Strings Club by Deconstructeam will be released on the Switch eShop next week on 14th March. If you enjoy hanging out in dimly lit bars and impersonating people to take down futuristic corporations, this should be right up your alley. Here’s the official trailer:
The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk narrative experience about fate and happiness featuring the extensive use of pottery, bartending and impersonating people on the phone to take down a corporate conspiracy.
The professed altruistic corporation Supercontinent Ltd is on the verge of releasing Social Psyche Welfare: a system that will eliminate depression, anger and fear from society. However, the bartender of a clandestine club and a freelance hacker don’t regard this evolution as an improvement but as brainwashing. Alongside unwitting company employees and a rogue empathy android, the duo will pull all the strings they can to bring down this scheme.
And here are the key features:
Cyberpunk Thriller Narrative Uncover a mysterious corporate program that promises a blissful existence while debating what does happiness means and what lengths are permissible to obtain it.
Psychological Bartending Read your customer’s’ mood and mix the perfect cocktail to manipulate the client’s emotions in order to gather the information you want and progress your agenda of stopping Supercontinent’s plans.
Genetic Implant Pottery Design genetic implants at a high-tech lathe to change the attitude and direction of the corporation’s most influential executives.
Vocal Corporate Espionage Assume the voice of important figures in the Social Psyche Welfare project and play their own motivations against each other over the phone to uncloak their plans.
Are you a fan of cyberpunk-themed narrative experiences? Does this look like your kind of game? Tell us down below.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed that I’m becoming increasingly forgetful, and I was reminded of this sad fact of life recently thanks to Blake J. Harris’ The History of the Future, a book I’ve been lucky enough to have been sent an advance copy of to flick through. While the book – billed as the sequel to the brilliant Console Wars – is primarily concerned with the evolution of VR firm Oculus and its relationship with Facebook, it briefly mentions the Wikipad – a device which, in 2019, feels like it was way ahead of its time.
In case you missed it (and don’t feel bad, because plenty of other people did because it sold so poorly), the Wikipad was an Android tablet which came with a bolt-on gaming interface. The objective was simple: to offer consumers the best of Android-based gaming and marry it with a proper, physical interface that would overcome all of the shortcomings of touch-based control. Flicking through Harris’ book, it’s hard not to become enamoured with the concept; the team behind it was clearly talented and passionate (some of the members would later co-found Oculus) and the Wikipad was even demoed with a glasses-free 3D screen not entirely unlike the one on the Nintendo 3DS. To sweeten the deal, in 2012 it was announced that cloud gaming firm Gaikai – co-founded by Dave Perry of Shiny Entertainment fame – would be integrating its services with the Wikipad.
However, even before it was released, the Wikipad seemed doomed to failure. It had already missed its initial 2011 launch date by the time it was shown off at CES in 2012, and when it eventually limped to market in 2013, it had been outpaced by the Nvidia Shield handheld, which was running a more advanced version of the Tegra chipset and had built-in gaming controls as standard. The much-hyped Gaikai integration also came to nothing, as the company was acquired by Sony two months after confirming its support for the Wikipad. OnLive support was drafted in as a replacement in 2014, but it wasn’t enough to save the product, nor was the ‘glowing’ recommendation of the late, great Stan Lee.
Wikipad – the company, not the device – decided to instead focus on creating a detachable gaming controller for smartphones and would later rebrand as Gamevice (a name which will be familiar to Nintendo fans, for reasons we’ll talk about in a bit).
There are two other things that, in 2019, I find remarkable about the Wikipad. The first is that having read about it in Harris’ book, I was gripped by how cool it sounded, totally oblivious to the fact that in 2013, I actually reviewed the damn thing for Eurogamer, one of our sister sites. “The Wikipad certainly has its heart in the right place,” were some of the words I wrote (and subsequently clean forgot about). “But ultimately there are too many negatives present to make it a worthwhile purchase. The gaming interface makes it bulky, it lacks graphical power, it ships with a version of Android which is over a year old and the price is simply too high.” For a device to sound so cool on paper but be so utterly forgettable in reality is quite an achievement.
The second notable thing is that the Wikipad, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight, feels like some kind of long-long prototype of the Switch (something I no doubt would have commented on following the Switch’s first reveal, had I remembered that the Wikipad was something that exists). It’s a tablet-like device with a touchscreen that is powered by Nvidia hardware, and it comes with a detachable gaming interface (albeit one which doesn’t break out into two different controllers, like the Joy-Con). There’s even TV-out capability, thanks to the included HDMI-out socket. It’s a dead-ringer for Nintendo’s console, but despite reviewing the Wikipad all those years ago, I never made the connection when Switch was launched. (Perhaps it’s time to retire?)
Then again, I shouldn’t be so hard on myself – there’s a good reason that nobody remembers the Wikipad: it was terrible. Unlike the Switch, which is an elegant execution of the same core concept, the Wikipad totally failed to fulfil its promise. Performance was sketchy even for an Android-based piece of hardware, and the bolt-on gaming interface left much to be desired, sporting cheap-feeling buttons and flimsy analogue sticks. Most important of all, the Wikipad wasn’t supported by a range of must-have games and, robbed at the last minute of the planned Gaikai connectivity, it lacked the USP which could have saved it. The glasses-free 3D version also fell by the wayside, and – finally – the price was simply too high for an Android tablet with a plastic bolt-on gamepad.
In fact, the only reason the Wikipad – and perhaps Gamevice – remain in anyone’s memory is due to the repeated legal action the company has undertaken against Nintendo over the past few years. In August 2017, Gamevice (which, unlike your humble scribe, remembered Wikipad existed) sued Nintendo for violating its Wikipad patents with the Nintendo Switch, but would voluntarily drop the lawsuit two months later. Then, in the middle of last year, Gamevice renewed its claim, stating that Switch violated its patents on ‘attachable handheld gamepads’.
At the time the case went public, the United States International Trade Commission said it would issue its verdict in around 45 days; we’ve heard nothing since, which would suggest Gamevice’s attempt to prevent Switch being sold in North America has failed. For its part, the company appears to be doing relatively well, its business no doubt buoyed by the recent popularity of Fortnite (which now comes with full support for the Gamevice on iOS and Android). But it’s remarkable to think that almost a decade ago, Wikipad was effectively chasing the same goal that Nintendo would aim for in 2017 when it launched the Switch, yet for a wide range of reasons, it fell way short and is now so utterly inconsequential that I’d clean forgotten it even existed. Still, those promotional videos sure are something.
Following the reveal of Pokémon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch during last week’s Pokémon Direct, it’s been discovered Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures Inc. filed a trademark in Japan for Armoured Mewtwo earlier on in the same month. The trademark covers videogames, merchandising and events.
If you keep up with Pokémon news, you may or may not have already heard a rumour about armoured pocket monsters coming to the latest generation of games. Alternatively, this trademark could be tied to the official Trading Card Game or the upcoming movie, Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution.
Another busy week has gone by, with rumours of another 2019 Zelda release and Mario game discounts popping up all over the place, but we’ve finally made it to the weekend and it’s time to play some games. As always, team Nintendo Life has gathered together to discuss our plans and we’d love to have you involved. Feel free to join in via the poll and comments below. Enjoy!
Austin Voigt, contributing writer
This weekend we’ll be getting a snowstorm in my neck of the woods, so I’m probably going to hunker down and force myself to get into more of the multiplayer games I’ve purchased and not devoted enough time to playing. I’m definitely more of an RPG/adventure gamer, so it sounds crazy, but I’ve really only played things like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, etc. in short bursts when there have been friends around to play with.
That ends this weekend, whether I have to play online, against some CPUs, or just trap some unsuspecting friends inside of my house to play against. I might also finally give the Stardew Valley multiplayer mode a shot.
Ryan Craddock, staff writer
Dearest NL readers, I have a problem. And that problem is Tetris 99.
As you’ll already know if you saw our stories earlier this week, My Nintendo points are potentially up for grabs if you can claim a victory royale this weekend. As such, and because it’s so addictive, part of me wants to take on this challenge all weekend. The problem is that winning a game is so freakin’ hard. I’ve always liked Tetris casually but haven’t played it to death over the years like some, and when I’m up against the monstrous beasts who seem to play this game, it really shows.
I’ll probably give it a go, but perhaps the biggest challenge here will be accepting defeat!
Dom Reseigh-Lincoln, reviewer
My free time is a little on the thin side this weekend, but when I do fire up my Switch I’ll be taking on the world’s toughest crime lords in RICO. A first-person shooter and a roguelike in one? With slow-mo breaches and gunfights galore? How out of character for my tastes… I’ll be putting it thoroughly through its paces and giving you an official verdict right here on Nintendo Life next week!
Gonçalo Lopes, contributing writer
I am still hooked on Gameloft’s Modern Combat Blackout. Some sort of early-stage midlife crisis perhaps? Nintendo Life’s clan is still very modest, but I am getting the job done every day. A bit of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate here, a bit of Tetris 99 there (I want those 9.99 Gold points!) and back to this week’s eShop offerings: The nostalgia traps of Awesome Pea and Beat Cop, brilliant slices of pixelated shenanigans for very distinct reasons.
In one of those ‘better late than never’ cases, my game of the week goes to the twin-stick shmup perfection named Assault Android Cactus+. The lean Jeff van Dyk soundtrack just sweetens the whole deal further.
Liam Doolan, news reporter
After reading the news about how Octopath Traveler is receiving a mobile prequel, I’ve decided to revisit the original outing on Switch. I’ll admit that I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked to on this release when it arrived last year, so this weekend I’m planning to rectify the situation.
When I’m not playing this, I’ll probably be getting my butt kicked in the Tetris 99 Grand Prix event. And when I’m not playing either of these games, I might finally focus my attention on Wargroove to test out the new quality of life update.
Which games are you playing this weekend? (303 votes)
Last weekend, we shared news about First 4 Figures teasing its long-awaited Mario and Yoshi statue. In the latest update, the statue is now available to pre-order.
If you like the look of it, you can select from the standard edition, exclusive edition or the definitive edition. As you might have guessed, all of these statues cost a small fortune and will probably take up half of your living space they’re so gigantic.
Pre-orders for the definitive and exclusive editions are open until 19th April. It’s also worth noting how you’ll need to return to the F4F website on 22nd March to validate your order. The product is estimated to be released at some point around Q2 2020.
Get a better look at this latest F4F statue in the videos below:
Would you be interested in a large and expensive statue like this one? Tell us down in the comments.
Nintendo of America appears to have accidentally shared new information about Pokémon Sword and Shield ahead of schedule.
According to the Pokémon website Serebii.net, Nintendo of America published a tweet, confirming “once and for all” the stadiums found across the Galar region are in fact Gyms. While this may have already been evident based on the information provided in the recent Pokémon Direct, it’s now reportedly been made official. Gym Leaders also appear to be referred to as Gym Masters in this region. Right now, it’s not clear if this is a simple name change, or it means something else.
Not long after the tweet was posted, Nintendo of America then deleted it. Perhaps one of its social media ninjas jumped the gun or it was incorrect. Fortunately, Twitter user @mngzeno managed to grab a screenshot before it was removed:
What do you make of this? Are you looking forward to the new Pokémon games for Switch? Tell us down in the comments.
