Around 1997-98, a hack-and-slash game under the name Dragon Sword was in development for the Nintendo 64. Sadly, it was never completed, and players never got to see it as it was truly intended, but that might be about to change.
The game was originally being created by Team Storm at Interactive Studios, the team behind 1998 platformer, Glover), but unknown complications relating to its publisher meant that it never made it to store shelves. A beta of sorts was eventually released in 2010 thanks to an anonymous collector, shared online for those intrigued to experience the game at the point at which it had been abandoned, but its unfinished state and unresolved bugs meant that it was more of a novelty than a fully working game.
Now, though, Piko Interactive has confirmed that it has acquired the rights to the game along with its source code, hinting that it may well go on to finally finish the game’s development 20 years later. Piko Interactive has a history of restoring lost games, notably resurrecting another lost N64 title, 40 Winks, via Kickstarter just last year.
We could well see a similar crowdfunding campaign for this project in the near future – potentially being something for any eager retro fans to keep their beady eyes on. If you’re interested in rare or lost games and have fond memories of the N64 era, make sure to keep an eye out for this one.
If you happen to enjoy your gaming with the odd beverage or two, this NES controller-shaped bottle opener might come in particularly handy – and it just so happens to be one of the coolest takes on a generic household item we’ve seen, too.
Part of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign which has gone live today, the bottle opener is actually offered in two variants: standard and slim. Both of these are of the same height and width as Nintendo’s very own controller, with all of the buttons exactly where you’d expect to find them. As the Kickstarter page states, “your fingers will fall naturally into place on the buttons and direction pad, ready to punch a few blocks, leap onto a mushroom, or enter your favourite cheat code”.
You can see close-ups of both variants side by side below. Each comes with an “Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A – Start Drinking!” sticker, with the standard version being made of 1/2 inch aluminium and the slim being cut from stainless steel. Each one comes tucked away in its own little box, and delivery is expected by no later than May should the project be a success.
At the time of writing, early bird backing options are still available, allowing you to get the slim and standard variants for $20 and $40 respectively. Feel free to check out the product’s Kickstarter page to see the bottle opener in action and to snag your own.
Would you like one of these for yourself? Do you collect gaming-influenced products for your home? Let us know if you’ll be getting one of these in the comments.
PlayFusion and Games Workshop have announced that the super-popular and hugely successful trading card game Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Champions is headed to Nintendo Switch.
For those not in the know, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Champions is a collectable card game that blends physical and digital card collections; essentially, players can scan physical cards into their collections to claim them and then take them on to conquer the battlefield. The game has now sold more than 20 million physical cards and more than 1 million digital matches have been played.
Players can take the custom-crafted decks from one of the four Grand Alliances and challenge friends across the world, with cross-platform play being supported across all playable devices. Mark Gerhard, CEO and Co-Founder of PlayFusion, has said the following in a press release today:
“The team are utterly thrilled with the opportunity to bring Warhammer Champions to new audiences and new platforms. The response for the physical and digital game has already been incredible, and we just can’t wait to watch that grow to new heights. With the release of our Set 2 cards in Onslaught, and a whole heap of new features we have planned, there’s always going to be something new to try. And now, there will be a much bigger community to try with!”
Today’s announcement also reveals that the game is coming to Steam in February; the Nintendo Switch version is expected later in “Q1” 2019.
Are you a Warhammer fan? Will you be picking this up on Switch? Tell us below.
Last summer, Nintendo released the Octo Expansion DLC for Splatoon 2, giving all squids and kids the chance to tuck into some great single-player content. In case you’d forgotten and hadn’t got round to it yet, the game’s producer has shared his five favourite things about the expansion.
As you might expect, Nogami-san’s choices include the obvious options like the 80 new challenges and the expansion’s new story elements, but there are some other more surprising picks, too. If you haven’t checked out Octo Expansion yet, hopefully these reasons will persuade you to give it a go – it really is rather good.
If you haven’t picked up a copy of the Octo Expansion yet, it’s available directly from the eShop for £17.99 / $19.99. Alternatively, you can download a bundle including the expansion and full game together for £67.98 / $79.98 (you’ll need the full game to be able to play Octo Expansion).
Did you already play through the whole expansion? Would you like to see more single-player Splatoon content in the future? Let us know in the comments.
If you’re a Pokémon fan, chances are that you have a bit of a soft spot for Pikachu. If your love for the little electric bundle of cuteness goes beyond mild adoration, though, then these new clothing options might be just your thing.
Launching in Japan later this year, these new trainers and jumper (or sneakers and sweater, for our friends in North America) come from clothing brand Glamb. You likely don’t need to be shown why these should be purchased immediately, but the stylishly moody and bored-but-still-posing models below demonstrate exactly how it all looks when put together.
They’re actually launching as part of a larger range which will also include this Pikachu shirt, Eevee shirt, and an absolutely fabulous Jigglypuff jumper.
The items are limited in quantity, and are releasing at various different times over the next few months – the Pikachu sweater and sneakers are scheduled to be shipped in April and May respectively. As you might expect (although maybe not quite to this extent), all options are pretty expensive. The sweater costs 18,360 yen (approx. £127 / $168), and the sneakers cost 27,000 yen (approx. £187 / $247). Still, if you have a spare $400 knocking around, why not spend it all on looking like a Pikachu?
Review aggregator site Metacritic has published its yearly rankings of video game publishers, providing a list which shows how well each company performed as a whole throughout the year based on average review scores. Nintendo ranked fourth amongst all “major publishers”.
For the rankings, all game publishers have been split into two lists, “major” and “mid-size”; to qualify for the “major” list, a publisher must have released 12 or more games in 2018. From there, the lists are based solely on the quality of each publisher’s 2018 games as determined by qualifying critics’ scores; sales and user reviews are not counted towards the totals. As well as the average review score, other factors such as the number of high-scoring and low-scoring releases per publisher also affect the ranking.
So, without further ado, here’s the list of the best-perofmring major publishers of 2018 based on Metacritic’s data (the average review score is written in brackets):
1. Capcom — 79.3 2. Sega — 78.5 3. EA — 77.5 4. Nintendo — 76.4 5. Ubisoft — 73.7 6. Sony — 71.8 7. Square Enix — 71.0 8. Bandai Namco — 71.8 9. Digerati Distribution — 69.9 10. NIS America — 69.5 11. Plug In Digital — 69.4 12. Focus Home Interactive — 69.8 13. THQ Nordic — 64.4
One “mid-sized” publisher, Activision Blizzard, did also beat Nintendo’s average review score with a total of 77.4. This list, which also features publishers like Bethesda, Microsoft, Team17, Warner Bros., and Konami, can be viewed here.
Any surprises on that list? Do you have a favourite publisher of 2018? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
At the end of last week, an in-game message for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate revealed that an update to Version 2.0.0 would be released within the next seven days. It would appear that the update is now just hours away, with new information suggesting that it could land tonight.
The news comes from an automated system set up by data miner OatmealDome, which aims to detect any pop-up messages scheduled to appear in the game ahead of time. According to this system, version 2.0.0 will launch at 1:00 GMT on Wednesday 30th January (so that’s 5pm PST / 8pm EST tonight, 29th January, in North America).
So why should we be so excited for an update? Well, while nothing is confirmed just yet, the update is expected to bring with it all necessary character data for the game’s first slice of DLC, Piranha Plant. Registrations for claiming this character as free content end on the 31st, and the fighter has been confirmed to become available “around February“; the update to a full version “2” certainly suggests that this could be the start of the DLC process.
It’s worth noting that this doesn’t necessarily mean that Piranha Plant will be playable from tonight, but we’re definitely one step closer to having our 75th(!) option on the roster.
Are you still enjoying your time with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate? Are you looking forward to playing as Piranha Plant? Tell us below.
If fiction has taught us anything, it’s that Vikings have all the fun. Pillaging gold. Killing enemy soldiers by the dozen. Getting drunk before, during or after said events. They’re living the reaver’s dream. So, of course, they make a fine fit for video games with their love of violence, alcohol and cooked meat – and Swords & Soldiers has all three in cartoonish abundance. Whether you’re stockpiling money or simply chasing barbarians into the sea, this former WiiWare gem still has a mischievous look in its eye as it makes a surprise appearance on the Nintendo Switch eShop.
There’s a good chance you’ve played it before as well. First launched in 2009, it’s appeared on a ton of platforms, including the Wii U and 3DS, as well as the aforementioned Wii. It’s one of those games that’s following the Minecraft or Doom ethos of appearing on every possible device with a screen attached. Ubiquitous in presence as it may be, Swords & Soldiers is still a charming strategy game that takes a mobile gaming approach to the genre by adding in the need to juggle resource management and activate magical powers.
Set on a 2D plane, your chosen horde begins on the left side of the map and will need to plunder and smash their way to a goal on the right. Sound simple enough? Well, there are plenty of obstacles to overcome on your way, which all differ depending on the mission at hand. You start off with a finite amount of gold and mana (your source of magic, naturally), so you’ll need to head into the upgrade menu to spend your cash to unlock everything from character types (ranging from axe-throwing brutes to gold miners with ample assets) to lightning strikes and healing rays. You’ll need to do this for each new mission, so choosing the right upgrade is key in each instance.
Soldiers, miners and other members of your clan act automatically, so soldiers will always head towards the nearest fight as soon as they emerge from your base. Taking certain parts of the side-scrolling map might enable you to take a mine and keep your gold (and, thus, your tactical choices) far broader, while other times you’ll need to collect chests of gold in order to boost your bank balance with one-off top-ups. Paths will often diverge when you reach areas with these chests, often requiring you to choose between a safer (yet less lucrative route) or a more dangerous one filled with loot.
The single-player campaign comes with four different stories following slapstick adventures of the Vikings, the Aztecs, the Chinese and the extra Chief Meat questline. Each one flits between different challenges and objectives, which forces you to think differently about your upgrades and how you spend your money/mana. When defending your own base, you’ll need to research and buy lots of axe throwers to man your towers, use a storm of permafrost to freeze groups of attacking foes and employ slow-but-powerful frosthammer troops.
As short as battles are (usually no more than seven or eight minutes), they can easily go sideways if you’re not careful. The real fun comes in learning when to commit to mining for gold over producing troops, and when to send your soldiers barreling into the fight. Do you spend your slowly-refilling mana on a burst of rage that increases a unit’s speed and damage output? Or do you hoard your money and upgrade your mana regen rate? It’s those decisions that can win or lose a battle, and Swords & Soldiers’ relentless pace means it never takes long to restart and make the right choice next time.
As a port, Swords & Soldiers is pretty decent. Visually, there’s an odd amount of blurriness that really stands out when there’s text on screen, but it doesn’t affect the flow of gameplay and you’re very unlikely to notice in the heat of battle. You can use both the Joy-Con and the touchscreen, and you can seamlessly switch between the two at will. There’s also support for local multiplayer, including sharing the touchscreen for some splitscreen tower defence/siege on the go. Sure, it looks and plays very much like a mobile game, but with no in-game purchases to worry about, you can enjoy everything it has to offer in all its silly glory on Nintendo Switch.
Conclusion
As surprise release games go, Swords & Soldiers’ age – and the sheer number of platforms it’s appeared on – might lead you to sleep on it. But despite having appeared on plenty of Nintendo consoles already, Two Tribes’ comical mix of resource management and real-time strategy is just as fun, silly and rewarding as it was back in 2009. Its looks are a little blurry in places, but the simplicity of its concept (and the short nature of its matches) make it a perfect fit for handheld play.
After a very slow and steady start, Imagineer’s Nintendo-published title Fitness Boxing appears to be blooming in Japan, all thanks to players sharing their weight loss stories online.
Since its release in the country last month, Fitness Boxing has been slowly gathering a small handful of sales each week without making much of a dent on the charts (it scraped into 20th place a couple of weeks ago thanks to relatively low sales across the board). Now, though, reports suggest that the game has completely sold out across all Yodobashi stores nationwide, one of the country’s leading electronic retailers.
It would appear that the sudden interest has been sparked by those who purchased the game early on, who have been sharing their experiences with the title on social media platforms such as Twitter. The tweet below has been shared almost 16,000 times.
Other users note how they have seen significant weight loss thanks to playing the game regularly; @bibresin says that they have lost 4.8kg after playing the game for 35 minutes every day over the last month, while @wez152403 has already lost 2.9kg.
Perhaps Fitness Boxing will turn out to be the new Wii Fit after all? Only time will tell.
Have you tried out Fitness Boxing? Do you play the game regularly? Let us know about your experiences in the comments.
We’re happy to exclusively share the first Nintendo Switch trailer for Iron Crypticle, an arcade twin-stick dungeon shooter arriving on the console next month.
In the game, the glorious Royal Treasures of Cryptonia have been stolen, and now the King’s washed-up knights must suit up and descend into the ancient palace crypts to return all of those golden goodies. Players must grab loot and gobble up food to build up their XP, upgrading their abilities to help face the challenges presented by the lower floors.
You’ll be unlocking new weapons and magical items as you progress, collecting magical gauntlets to power your explosive ‘Atomic Fist’; the whole thing draws inspiration from classics like Smash TV and Ghosts ‘n Goblins, as is not-so-subtly hinted at in this brief description:
“Get ready for GHOULISH arcade action in this epic medieval twin-stick dungeon shooter. Up to 4 players (local co-op) can fight together to SMASH through all manner of ghouls and fiends.”
As mentioned above, you can play this one solo or via local co-op with up to four players in total. It’ll be available to pre-order from the 30th January with a 10% discount, and officially launched on Switch on 13th February.
Do you like the look of what you see here? Will you be pre-ordering this one on Switch? Let us know in the comments.
