Category: Nintendo News

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy has once again managed to bat away the competition, keeping its position at the top of the UK charts for a fourth consecutive week.

With a generous amount of Xbox One price reductions taking place over Amazon Prime Day last week, the top ten is a strange blend of current heavy-hitters and older re-entries this week. Rare’s Xbox One exclusive Sea of Thieves has re-entered the charts thanks to being included in console bundles over the sale, as has Minecraft: Xbox Edition and Forza Horizon 3. LEGO The Incredibles has also seen another impressive week thanks to the Incredibles 2 movie being released earlier this month.

Octopath Traveler has sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, dropped from its third-place spot last week to 16th place this time around with a 60% fall in sales. That drop is relatively normal for a game as niche as Octopath Traveler, however, with the sudden jump of Xbox titles making the chart position drop seem a little more significant.

Interestingly, only 2,000 sales separate all of the top six positions this week so things were very close indeed. Here’s the top ten:

1. (1) Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy
2. (3) LEGO The Incredibles
3. (Re-Entry) Sea of Thieves
4. (Re-Entry) Minecraft: Xbox Edition
5. (New) Sonic Mania Plus
6. (Re-Entry) Forza Horizon 3
7. (5) God of War
8. (11) The Crew 2
9. (6) FIFA 18
10. (10) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Did you buy any of these chart-topping games this week?

Lucky Pokémon are about to be introduced into the mix, if a recent Pokémon GO datamine is anything to go by. Looks like you’re going to have to catch ’em all over again!

In this guide, we’re going to briefly explain the differences between a Lucky and regular Pokémon, and take a look at how you can catch these brand new critters.

Please note that this feature isn’t actually available in Pokémon GO just yet though, so all of the information in this guide is subject to change. We also don’t know of the exact inner workings just yet, so plenty of this is just speculation at this point.

Pokémon GO Lucky Pokémon – What They Are & How They Differ

Lucky Pokémon are a new type of Pokémon in Pokémon GO. We assume they’ll work in a similar manner to Shiny Pokémon, in that you’ll have a small chance to encounter one in the wild.

The difference between a Lucky Pokémon and a regular Pokémon, is that Lucky Pokémon don’t require as much Stardust to power up, and will include a special background while viewing them in your Pokédex. You’ll also see a new counter displaying the number of Lucky Pokémon caught for each species.

You’ll know a Pokémon is Lucky while viewing it in your list of Pokémon. Glance just above its HP and you’ll see a new ‘Lucky Pokémon’ label. Check out our tweet above to see all of that in action.

Though we still need to see the update in action to know for sure, it appears like Lucky Pokémon will receive a 50% discount on Stardust when powering up.

Pokémon GO Lucky Pokémon – How To Catch Them

As the feature isn’t currently live in Pokémon GO, it’s not clear exactly how you go about catching a Lucky Pokémon. Early speculation includes:

• Rare spawn in the wild like Shiny Pokémon
• Only appear when traded

Rest assured that we’ll update this guide as soon as the feature is live in the game and we’re aware of how it all works.

Pokémon GO Lucky Pokémon – Can A Pokémon Be Both Lucky And Shiny?

This is the million dollar question, and one we’ll aim to answer just as soon as the feature has rolled out in a future update.

In today’s episode of ‘Japan gets all the cool stuff and we’re incredibly jealous’, we present to you this new set of Splatoon 2 trading cards that are set to launch next month.

The cards feature beautiful, standalone pieces of artwork on one side, with written chunks of information on the reverse, and even come with edible wafers inside each pack so that you can get addicted to them in more ways than one. There appears to be 25 to collect in total, and packs come with a completely randomised set of cards inside so we imagine buyers are expected to trade with their friends.

A 20-pack of cards is currently available from Amazon Japan, which offers international shipping depending on your location, for ￥2,502 (approximately £17.14 / $22.50 before delivery).

Would you like a complete set of these? Shall we all just move to Japan already? Let us know below.

In 1993, Nintendo UK gave out a Super Mario All-Stars promotional video in the form of a VHS. Despite how odd this might sound by modern standards, at the time it was a relatively normal way of marketing video games and various other forms of entertainment to younger audiences. 

The low-budget and incredibly ’90s production was hosted by Craig Charles – known around the same time for playing Dave Lister in the science-fiction comedy, Red Dwarf. This VHS has now been uploaded to YouTube in its entirety by fellow Nintendo Life contributor and video game journalist, Chris Scullion, as part of a preservation project. 

In it, a young Craig Charles is hanging out on a giant Nintendo spaceship that can beam down its crew to meet members of the Nintendo hotline (a telephone line active during the 1990s that players could call to talk to Nintendo game experts). Of course, being a promotional video, the marketing wasn’t exactly mild, and very much matches up with Craig Charles’ own tone during this era. 

The video consists of a series of favourable game reviews, a history lesson on Super Mario, interviews with the Nintendo hotline staff, a part about how games are made, and even a tips and tricks segment towards the end. It has basically everything you would want to see in a ’90s production, from bad fashion to an over-the-top presenter. 

Tell us in the comments if you remember the glory days of the SNES and Red Dwarf. 

It looks like yet another Data East arcade classic will be making its way across to the Switch eShop. Arriving on 2nd August, Flying Tiger Entertainment is releasing Shoot Out – a shooting gallery-style game originally released in 1985. It will be part of Johnny Turbo’s Arcade line and will set you back a total of $7.99.

Shoot Out requires you to work your way through seven stages. The objective in each level is to shoot a set amount of criminals and avoid shooting any civilians. If the main character is hit or shoots a civilian, you lose a life. Objects located in each stage can be shot for extra points and can also be used as cover. 

Will you be picking up this next release in Johnny Turbo’s Arcade line? Tell us below.

Parents are notoriously bad for being sentimental. Whether it’s watching Monty Python, playing Tetris on the Game Boy or buying sweets by the ounce, I often catch myself getting more excited about introducing my children to the things I loved from my childhood than actually creating new memories with them – and I’ve had one of those sentimental moments with my family recently.

We’ve really loved discovering new experiences on the Nintendo Switch. My son played Zelda: Breath of the Wild to death, and we all love Super Mario Odyssey – in fact, we love it so much we spent one wet weekend making a Mario stop-motion together. 

However, I mentioned Nintendo Land in passing over dinner and their eyes lit up like saucers. They had, it appeared, forgotten how good the ghost hunting, hiding, seeking and shooting were until I reminded them.

They wanted to play it again right away. This took a little time as I had (and I’m not quite sure why) packed my Wii U away when the Switch arrived. Digging it out the loft I also found Wii Sports Resort, complete with some custom Table Tennis controllers. This set off a whole new level of nostalgia, more for me than my kids. The Wii gets a lot of stick these days for its waggle-based gameplay and it’s easy to forget just how groundbreaking it actually was at the time; it felt like a real revolution (pardon the pun) in gameplay terms and, after what feels like a lifetime away, I got that same pang of excitement when I started playing classic Wii titles recently.

That was a good four weeks ago, and we are still regularly playing Wii Sports. I’ve also broken out Zelda: Twilight Princess for my son who played it with me when he was just a few years old. Well, I say “played with me”, in truth, he held an unplugged GameCube controller so I could play without him pestering me. I’m nothing if not a model dad, me.

I think Nintendo are missing a trick here, particularly with Nintendo Labo. Surely it’s the perfect time to release Labo Sports, and let us fold and colour in our very own cardboard tennis rackets, golf clubs and bowling balls? I’d gladly pay through the nose to play Wii Sports Table Tennis on the Switch. Perhaps, for now, Mario Tennis Aces will scratch that itch.

What classic Wii games do you think Nintendo should Labo-ize on the Switch?

Digital Foundry is at it again, this time with a look at the recent Nintendo Switch exclusive, Octopath Traveler. It’s summarised as a hybrid JRPG – combing new and old elements of the genre. The developers Square Enix and Acquire have done an excellent job making it feel right at home among the classics and at the same time exercising modern technical flair. Beyond the visuals, the sound design is credited for the beautifully composed retro tracks, weaving between high-quality samples and live instruments.

In terms of the resolution, Octopath Traveler runs at a native 1280×720 while the Switch is docked under a television. Even if the console is set to 1080p, the text and UI elements scale up from 720p. In handheld mode, you get all the same effects but it runs at a lower resolution of 1024×576. The UI also stays fixed at 720p. As for performance, the framerate in both the docked and portable mode is locked at 30fps, with no drops, but a few small issues of frame pacing – particularly during battles where the frame time can fluctuate. Fortunately, this does not detract too much from the overall experience.

The final verdict is Octopath Traveler is a smaller project that has given Square Enix a rare but necessary chance to experiment, revisit older ideas and reinvent them. Take a look at the full analysis above and tell us in the comments about your own time with the game so far. 

Spanish-based studio, MercurySteam, is best known for developing Metroid: Samus Returns and also working on Konami’s Castlevania series – including the 3DS entry, Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate. Although the studio’s history has been well documented in the past, during an interview earlier this week, MercurySteam boss Enric Álvarez shared his side of the story, explaining how the company was essentially saved by a chain of fortunate events:

Back in 2005 when we were about to disappear, and we created a small demo, based on a moment from The Exorcist – the movie. Back in the days, the Epic people were showing off their new Gears of War game, and we saw a few pics from a monster and we thought, “hey we can do that as well, let’s do it” and we produced a quite impressive visual test.

This led to the studio working with Codemasters, helping to develop Clive Barker’s Jericho, and eventually working with Konami and Nintendo:

The result was so impressive, that I still remember, Codemasters told us, don’t show it to anyone else, and come here, and come with a PC because we don’t believe this is real. That very day we saved the studio. We also went [and] visited Konami, and that day we met with Dave Cox, and we felt an immediate connection between us. A few years later, Dave Cox himself called us and told us “hey guys do you want to reboot Castlevania?” and that is how it all started.

And then, this has been explained many times by Nintendo people … how they got interested – we collaborated with them doing Metroid: Samus Returns. In short, it was because of Castlevania: Mirror of Fate. [Nintendo] liked it and they thought we were up to the task of doing what we did, and the rest is history.

When asked about the differences between Japanese and Western publishers, Enric Álvarez made the following observation:

Especially with Nintendo, the biggest difference is all they care about is quality. All they care about is polish. All they care about is giving satisfaction to their players. The rest is secondary. You can’t find this working for a western publisher because there’s always time constraints, there’s always a lot of pressure. There’s also pressure working in any environment, especially when we’re talking about massive amounts of money – they’re always somewhat very worried about that money, which is normal and fair. 

But I think that the biggest difference we’ve found is in our direction. It’s not saying there’s no pressure involved in both sides, but the pressure from a publisher, from a Japanese publisher comes from that aspect – quality. And the pressure in our experience, I can’t talk any other experiences, just in our experience – the pressure coming from a western publisher comes from many other directions.

As for what the future holds for MecurySteam, half the studio is currently focused on Spacelords (formerly known as Raiders of the Broken Planet), and the other half is assigned to providing more stable revenue through partnerships with major publishers and the handling of big-name IP. Enric also said Spacelords would be a great fit for the Switch library, but due to the small-sized and self-financed team, the studio didn’t have the capacity to include it in development. Though, it was still open to the idea of a possible port in the future.  

Did you play Samus Returns or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate on the 3DS? Do you agree Japanese publishers care more about the quality of their games? Would you like to see MercurySteam bring its latest project to the Switch? Tell us below. 

Romino Games released multiple versions of its side-scrolling RTS, Swords & Soldiers, on Nintendo devices over the years. The series started out exclusively on WiiWare in 2009, received a 3D makeover in 2013 and then made a few appearances during the Wii U’s life cycle. Fast forward to 2018 and Romino, in partnership with Engine Software, has now announced a port of Swords & Soldiers II Shawarmageddon will be released on the Switch eShop in the near future.

Here’s some information about the title from the Steam page: 

Side-scrolling RTS is back! Swords & Soldiers 2 Shawaramageddon lets you command the Vikings, Demons, and Persian armies. You can take on the campaign or face off against other players in online multiplayer and challenge your friends in custom battles!

Gather gold and mana, send out armies, and support your forces with a wide arsenal of magical spells – all from a side-scrolling perspective. That doesn’t mean Swords & Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon is easy to master: only the most cunning of Chiefs can lead their side to victory! Think you’re ready to face the hordes of evil? Prove it in online matchmaking!

View the game’s Kickstarter trailer below, and tell us in the comments if you have played Swords & Soldiers previously. 

It was a pleasant surprise when Nintendo originally made the Hori Pokkén Tournament DX Pro Controller compatible with multiple other Switch games – enabling the use of it in the likes of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and even Sonic Mania. In general, it’s been praised for its quality build that is ideal for fighting games and platformers, despite the obvious limitations.

For anyone with a large library of games on Steam, you might be pleased to hear Valve has now added official support for the Hori Pokkén Tournament DX Pro Controller. To use the wired USB controller on Steam, all you’ll have to do is update your client to the latest version and then plug it into your PC. Again, the controller is perfect for fighting games and platformers, particularly of the 2D variety. This isn’t the first controller for the Switch to be added to Steam, either. In May this year, Valve added support for the Switch Pro Controller.

Tell us in the comments if you’ll be making use of Hori’s Pokkén controller on Steam.