There doesn’t seem to be much balance over on the social media platform Facebook. Often you’ll hear stories about the company censoring images that don’t really need to be and other times it doesn’t do enough to protect its users from graphic content. This particular story is one of those cases where it’s probably gone a tad overboard.
According to Team Meat – the masterminds behind the insanely tough platform game Super Meat Boy, which is available on multiple platforms including the Switch eShop – Facebook recently rejected its ad, deeming it sexually explicit. As can be seen below, it’s Meat Boy and Bandage Girl with their butts on display:
Other than the cracks on show, it’s hard to say why Facebook had such a problem with the artwork for this advertisement. It’s not even that bad when compared to the game itself which contains many violent and bloody scenarios. This was the Team Meat Twitter account response:
“Good thing Facebook is so on top of the content on their site!!! Now if you’ll excuse me I found a very interesting and factual facebook group about how the earth is flat.”
What do you think about this? Has Facebook lost the plot? Do you find this picture offensive? Tell us below.
After being recognised as the indie title of the year at the 2018 Game Awards, Celeste by Matt Makes Games has now sold over 500,000 copies in 2018. This is the first major sales milestone for the retro-inspired indie platformer since it arrived at the start of the year. Although the Switch version was reportedly the most popular on release, exact sale figures for each platform have not been revealed.
In addition to revealing the game had sold this amount, the creator Matt Thorson said the team was working on some farewell levels for the title, which are going to be “very hard” and will be ready early on in 2019. Matt Makes Games will also be announcing what’s next for them in the new year.
Indie success is widespread across the Switch. Yesterday, Thimbleweed Park developer Ron Gilbert shared a sales chart, revealing the Switch was the leading platform in terms of sales. Over the last quarter, the Switch version performed three times better than the Steam version. It’s worth noting how Celeste will also be receiving a Limited Run physical release early on in 2019, which is sure to boost sales.
Are you at all surprised to hear Celeste has sold 500,000 copies? Have you downloaded it from the Switch eShop yet? Tell us below.
Damon Baker might not be quite as famous as certain other employees who work at Nintendo of America, but he’s definitely not far off. Now, in an unexpected announcement, Baker has revealed via Twitter he will leave Nintendo after more than 12 years. In 2019, he will pursue a new opportunity and promises fans this won’t be the last time they hear from him. Here’s the full message below:
Baker started out at Nintendo as the global manager of brand licensing in 2006 and transferred across to the role of head of third-party marketing and communications after three years. He began his current position as head of partner management in 2016 and has since become more involved with the Nindie scene. Below is an amusing clip where he helped promote Runbow:
From the entire community here at Nintendo Life, we wish Damon all the best in his future endeavors.
Can you seriously believe it’s been a year since the 2017 Game of the Year awards? That’s right – it’s time for everyone to come together yet again and decide on their favourite games of 2018.
This year we’ll be doing things a little differently; instead of providing you with a limited shortlist we’ve opened things up so you can vote for any game in our database, which should include everything released in 2018. Remember, only games that were released in the UK or US first in 2018 are eligible. If you can’t find the game you want to vote for, please contact us so we can investigate.
Rules: You must be logged in to vote. You can only vote once per category but can vote for up to three games. Your first choice will receive 3 points, second choice 2 points and third choice 1 point. Votes will then be tallied and revealed on the 31st Dec. Voting will close at midnight, Sunday 30th Dec 2018.
Switch Retail Game Of The Year – 2018
Switch eShop Game Of The Year – 2018
3DS Game Of The Year – 2018
eShop Developer Of The Year – 2018
Please search for your favourite developer(s) by searching by the game title they released this year.
Art Style Game Of The Year – 2018
Multiplayer Game Of The Year – 2018
Overall Game Of The Year – 2018
If you have any issues voting for the game you want, simply contact us so we can investigate. Otherwise, get voting and let us know in the comments below your predictions on the results.
As we get closer and closer to entering the mysterious future of 2019, there’s one thing that all Nintendo fans definitely need to remember – the birthdays of every single Animal Crossing character.
Amazingly, to help us all do just that, Nintendo has released a 2019 Birthday Calendar featuring the special dates for “almost” every character. Now you’ll finally know exactly when you need to grab a cheap supermarket birthday card and a generic set of toiletries, and your parents can stop pestering you with messages asking if you’ve remembered to get something for good ol’ Uncle Egbert (who just so happens to be a chicken).
Of course, silliness aside, the calendar will actually come in useful for Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp players, as you’ll be able to trade gifts with any villagers who are celebrating their birthday on that day in-game. You can find the calendar for yourself on the My Nintendo rewards site (links below) – it’s available in both Europe and North America for 80 Platinum points.
Here’s what January’s page looks like
The North American My Nintendo site actually has a couple of extra Animal Crossing goodies, too, with a set of printable holiday cards and snowy wallpapers. They’re available for 30 and 50 Platinum points respectively.
Do we have any Animal Crossing fans in the house? Will you be grabbing any of these rewards for yourself? Let us know with a comment.
As you may well know already, subscribing to Nintendo’s Switch Online service presents you with the wonderfully generous option of spending even more money on a set of NES-style controllers for your Switch. These are, of course, designed to make your collection of online NES games feel more authentic, and double up as a particularly funky pair of Joy-Con that can be attached to your console – even if they don’t work in the traditional sense.
Originally, we were told that the NES controllers would only work with the NES games on the system, but it was soon found out that they can actually be used with other titles, too. The catch here is that the limited number of buttons and the change in layout cause far too many issues, and the majority of games are pretty much unplayable as a result.
It looks like we’re about to get one game that breaks the mould, though, as the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe appears to play just fine with the new NES controllers. The folks over at GameXplain tested one of the shiny new controllers out with the game recently and, after a bit of menu tweaking, managed to get along perfectly well.
So there you have it. If you’ve treated yourself to a pair of NES controllers, you’ll be able to use them to bop around as Mario and friends in his latest adventure on Switch next month. Neat, huh?
The Switch’s early days were full of amazing stories from indie game developers, with the console being regarded as one of the best places to generate sales for your beloved creations. As fans of the console hoovered up every delightful indie the Switch had going, many games saw huge boosts in sales, slowly but surely driving more and more developers to the console as a result.
Of course, as well now know, this has led to a situation where it’s not uncommon for us to see around 25-30 new games release every single week on Switch. It’s a crazy number of games for one platform to hold, and some fantastic titles which would have prospered in the early days of the console’s life are now being lost thanks to the avalanche of competitors around it.
As such, it’s particularly interesting to see this up-to-date sales report from Thimbleweed Park developer Ron Gilbert. Thimbleweed Park arrived on Switch in September 2017, bringing its classics-inspired point-and-click goodness to Nintendo’s platform just a few months after its initial launch on Steam and Xbox One. The chart below shows how the game has performed across all platforms during its entire time on the market.
As you can see, the Switch version of the game is just leading the way in terms of sales, closely followed by Steam. Interestingly, Gilbert notes that in the last quarter, the Switch version did three times as well as the Steam version, and describes the Sony sales as “perplexing”. It certainly is strange to see the console with the largest install base offer the lowest number of sales, particularly considering Europe is where Thimbleweed Park sales are apparently strongest, but you can’t really argue with facts.
If you’re interested, you can check out Gilbert’s full report here.
Before you go, though, let us know your thoughts on this data in the comments. Does anything about the chart surprise you?
We’re seeing more and more titles using crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter to get up and running these days, and the latest project to catch our attention is Freja and the False Prophecy – a hand-drawn Metroidvania game that is aiming to launch on Switch.
The game will have players exploring the magical and expansive world of Norse mythology. It will fuse a charming hand-drawn aesthetic with “exciting combat, richly detailed environments and a thrilling story”, as protagonist Freja goes on a perilous journey through a world full of monsters, giants and gods.
As well as being classed as a Metroidvania, the game also focuses on its narrative and features RPG elements. There are nine realms to explore, each with their own uniquely crafted environments, and plenty more to do besides. Here’s a gameplay feature list:
– Character Progression: Unlock awesome abilities, warcries and rune stones. – Battle: Diverse enemies and challenging boss encounters punctuate the nine realms. You’ll have to rely on your wits and abilities to defeat them. – Tight Controls: Responsive and engaging controls that give you full control over Freja and her array of abilities and acrobatics. – Explore: A meticulously crafted world with multiple paths and secret areas to discover. – Platform: Navigate your way through exciting obstacles and puzzles. – Be Challenged: A fair yet satisfying default difficulty level. – Or not… A Story Mode option for those who would like to experience the tale of Freja without the combat or platforming challenge.
If you’re interested in this one, make sure to check out its Kickstarter page for more info and to pledge your support. The project has a Switch stretch goal of $23,750 (it needs to make another $12,000 in the next ten days to make it) and the development team is very eager to have a version running on Nintendo’s machine.
What do you think of this one? Would you like to see it launch on Switch? Share your thoughts with us below.
If you cast your minds back a short while, you’ll recall that we reviewed the BittBoy Portable Video Game Handheld, a dinky little Game Boy clone that came packed with 300 NES games, many of which were pretty dire – not to mention legally questionable. Despite this, we couldn’t help warming to this truly pocket-sized portable, thanks in no small part to the excellent IPS screen rechargeable battery. Tantalisingly, the unit came with a slot in its casing into which a MicroSD card would fit, but inside there was no actual card-reading tech – it was a tease, but one which the console’s manufacturer would eventually remedy.
You see, the ‘New’ BittBoy has just launched and it does support MicroSD cards – in fact, if you don’t insert one, it’s little more than a paperweight. This new model doesn’t have any games pre-loaded – a handy way of avoiding any potential legal action from copyright holders – but instead expects buyers to get their hands dirty by loading up ROM images for NES, Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
Before we get into that, it’s worth noting that the New BittBoy has a larger 2.4-inch IPS LCD screen this time around, and it’s fantastic. Colours really pop and viewing angles are superb; it really says something about how far screen tech has come in the past few years that a device which costs $40 can ship with such an amazing display.
The other big news is that the console is packing the very capable AllWinner F1C500S system-on-a-chip – it’s not the most powerful piece of silicon on the planet but it more than gets the job done here. Elsewhere, the 3.5mm headphone socket remains in place, and this doubles as a composite AV output if you fancy running this on your TV – the image quality is predictably poor, however. The internal lithium battery has been boosted from 500mAh to 700mAh, but that still only results in around three hours of use between charges (it comes with a Micro USB cable) – pretty much the same as the original BittBoy.
The New BittBoy comes with a suite of emulators under the ‘Miyoo’ banner: NES, Game Boy and Game Boy Color. All you need to do is drag-and-drop your ROM files onto a MicroSD card and insert it into the console – the Miyoo software will automatically sort the files into their respective systems, which are then presented in three different categories from the main menu.
During play, hitting the ‘R’ button located beneath the screen brings up the emulator’s sub-menu. From here, you can adjust the ratio of the screen (‘Full’ stretches the image out so it uses all 2.4-inches, while ‘Default’ aims for the original aspect ratio, leaving black borders around the image). You can also create and load save states – which is vital as in-game saves don’t work – and toggle between the console’s display and your TV when using the AV-out cable. Holding down the R button in-game will return you to the main menu.
Outside of this menu, all other functions are mapped rather clumsily to button combinations. ‘Select’ and either A or B held together raises and lowers the volume, while ‘Select’ and either TA or TB (two additional buttons which simply replicate the action of the A and B buttons in-game) changes the brightness. It’s not an elegant system and the lack of any instructions in the box means you’re largely ignorant of such shortcuts.
So how does the New BittBoy actually perform? Well, getting it to play nice with a MicroSD card could well be your first battle. We tried three different Samsung cards (1GB, 8GB and 32GB) and only the 32GB card worked; with the other two, the console simply paused on the boot screen and refused to load up the Miyoo emulator menu. There doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast rules on which cards work and which don’t, but we’d recommend going for one with a relatively fast read/write rating (our 32GB card was an Evo variant). If your card was purchased in the past few years, you should be fine.
Once you’ve gotten past that potential hurdle, it’s relatively plain sailing. The New BittBoy recognised every ROM we threw at it and performance is generally good, especially on NES games; switch the viewing mode to ‘Default’ and you get an almost pixel-perfect replication of what these titles looked like running on a proper TV. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles, which, even when running in ‘Default’ video mode, have an odd distortion effect which makes everything shimmer when there’s movement. It’s a real shame as it makes some titles look downright ugly, although they’re all perfectly playable. Interestingly, Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulation doesn’t seem to be quite as smooth as NES emulation in the Miyoo software; during Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition we noticed a small amount of stutter when moving around the game world, and audio is also rather patchy.
Speaking of which, the New BittBoy’s mono speaker is surprisingly powerful but awfully tinny. There are a few bum notes as far as audio emulation is concerned, but sometimes it feels like it’s the fault of the speaker rather than the software, which makes certain notes seem more painful than you remember. Playing via headphones isn’t much better.
Other things to note: built quality is predictably average; there’s a lot of light bleed through the plastic casing and there was a large speck of dirt under the screen on our review unit, which we’d have to take the console apart in order to remove. These issues aside, the New BittBoy is exactly how you’d expect a $40 portable console to feel – cheap, but not so cheap that you wouldn’t dare take it out of the house. In fact, the New BittBoy makes for the perfect travelling companion, as it’s small enough to fit in your pocket and will slip into your bag without you even noticing – in fact, it would probably get hopelessly lost in most rucksacks. It’s a shame that the battery life isn’t better, but you can always carry a spare; the battery is user-serviceable and is actually an aftermarket replacement for the one inside the Game Boy Advance SP.
As with the original BittBoy, we can’t help but warm to this revised product, despite the obvious legal issues involved with sourcing ROMs to play on it – a process which, in 2018, has become a lot more difficult thanks to Nintendo’s moves to shut down sites which illegally distribute its software. Given this moral quandary, you may wish to avoid the New BittBoy if you’d rather keep your hands clean; for less ethically-minded individuals, however, this is a cheap way of keeping your hands busy when you’re travelling and rediscovering some classic titles in the process.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has revealed that the company is still confident in reaching its 100 million Switch software sales target for the financial year, with holiday season sales progressing well.
Sales of Switch software reached 42.13 million during the period between April and September this year, with games like Super Mario Party, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate releasing slightly afterwards. With top games such as these greatly boosting that number – Smash has already sold 5 million copies worldwide on its own – the Japanese gaming giant looks set to reach its lofty goals when the end of the financial year comes around in March.
The news comes from an article in Japanese daily newspaper, Kyoto Shimbun, where Furukawa also briefly touched upon Nintendo’s 20 million Switch console sales target for the same time period. In his comments, Furukawa reiterated the fact that the 20 million target was purposefully challenging – perhaps hinting that it might be looking slightly out of reach – before noting that the company will continue to release popular titles on the console going forward.
Do you believe Nintendo can reach those targets? How do you expect the next few months to go in terms of sales? Let us know in the comments.
