Category: Nintendo News

With the recent release of five Super Famicom Great Battle games still fresh in our minds, Aeon Genesis and his group are back again with a complete English translation patch for one of the most iconic games in the whole Super Robot Wars saga: Super Robot Wars Gaiden: – Masōkishin – The Lord Of Elemental. However, according to the patch notes this was far from an easy project to pull off:

This project’s history is long and fraught with trouble. The initial script translation turned out to be wrong more often than it was accurate; it was eventually decided that the entire script would need to be retranslated.

Work on the script essentially re-started from scratch in late 2013 after TheMajinZenki graciously offered to double check the older version of the translation. Though a variety of factors (lack of resources, split attention, and the like) contributed to a less-than-optimal velocity, the script was considered to be fully re-translated in April of 2017.

Work on the technical pieces resumed at this time; additionally, at this point we passed it off to Caitlin, who worked closely with Zenki as an editor, to produce the script as it currently stands. She finished in
October. Play testing began in February and completed in mid May.

This Winkysoft developed 1996 late generation release was the first game in the series where Banpresto used its own original characters and original, non-SD mecha (‘Elementals’ in this game) designs. It was also the first to use an isometric view not too dissimilar to Front Mission replacing the traditional overhead view.

The game is actually split into two separate timelines, with the first being a prequel to all the entire saga while the second part picks up after the events from the 4th Super Robot Taisen title, also on the Super Famicom. This game was later re-released on the Nintendo DS and Sony’s PlayStation Portable. Neither ever got the chance at Western localisation, leaving fans of the series outside Japan guessing the plot.

You can grab the translation patch from AGTP website and if you have clone hardware that supports IPS soft patching you can use it along with your original Super Famicom import cartridge. Any fans of the Super Robot Wars series out there in the NL community? Were you a ‘Lord of Elemental’ back in the day? Deploy those replies below.

The hype is real for this year’s E3. We’ve got a resurgent Nintendo, riding on the crest of Switch’s enormous success. As a result, every publisher and their mum is trying to squeeze games onto the hybrid console faster than you can say Call of Duty (apart from, it would seem, Activision).

But the real excitement about this year’s E3 stems from the fact that we really don’t know what Nintendo is planning for the latter half of this year. Sure, there have been plenty of rumours – and we’ll get to those – but nothing concrete. And we here at Nintendo Life Towers prefer to work with concrete (not just when it comes to building stuff, either).

In this guide we’re going to detail Nintendo’s E3 plans, including the Nintendo Spotlight, where we’ll learn about most, or all, of the exciting upcoming games, Nintendo Treehouse Live, where we’ll see some of them being played, and Live Tournaments for Splatoon 2 and Super Smash Bros. Exciting!

When will E3 2018 take place?

E3 2018 will take place between Tuesday 12th June and Friday 15th June this year.

When will Nintendo’s E3 video presentation ‘Nintendo Spotlight’ take place?

Nintendo has announced that its major video presentation will take place on 12th June at the following times:

BST	PT	ET
5PM	9AM	12PM

Though it’s yet to receive its full title (our money’s on Nintendo Spotlight), we do know that it will showcase a selection of Nintendo Switch games for 2018, and it will definitely include Super Smash Bros.

There will be plenty of first-party games (again, we’ll get to those rumours in a moment!), but Nintendo will also showcase a handful of third-party titles. Last year we saw the likes of Skyrim, Rocket League, FIFA 18, and Sonic Forces. What could we see this year? Don’t make us say Fortnite. Dammit!

What about the ‘Nintendo Treehouse Live’?

Again, this isn’t the official title for Nintendo’s E3 livestream, but we’ve put a lot of money on that name returning this year. The main event will happen directly after the Nintendo Spotlight, the times of which are above.

Nintendo has also announced that a bunch of livestream events will happen throughout E3 as well. We haven’t got a schedule just yet though, so stay tuned. We’ll update this as soon as we know more.

When will the Splatoon 2 World Championship and Super Smash Bros. Invitational Live Tournaments take place?

The Splatoon 2 World Championship will kick off with the semi-finals first on 11th June at the following times:

BST	PT	ET
11:30PM – 2AM	3:30PM – 6PM	6:30PM – 9PM

The finals will then take place on 12th June, though Nintendo hasn’t released an exact schedule yet. The same goes for the Super Smash Bros. invitational, which will take place, “right after,” the Splatoon 2 World Championship final. Again, stay tuned and we’ll update this with a full schedule once Nintendo has revealed it.

What Nintendo games will we likely see?

Super Smash Bros. is currently the only confirmed game we’ll see from Nintendo, but there are a bunch more that are highly likely.

Yoshi

Yoshi was announced at last year’s E3, and we haven’t heard a peep from it since. It’s highly likely that we’ll see it in some form at this year’s E3, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it gets a 2018 release.

Metroid Prime 4

The highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4 was also revealed at last year’s E3, and we’ve since learned that Bandai Namco is at the helm. It’s likely too early for this to make a 2018 release, but we’d settle for a bit of footage. Like, even 30 seconds will do.

Fire Emblem

Again, Fire Emblem was announced for Switch at last year’s E3, and the trail has gone freezing cold since. We’ll hopefully get a full title, gameplay footage, and a 2018 release date with this one.

Pokémon

We think it’s safe to say that Pokémon is the most-anticipated Switch game on this list. The next entry in the Pokémon franchise is definitely coming to Switch at some point between, “2018 or later.” We’d settle for a look at it at this point, but a release this year would be the icing on the cake.

Are there any outlandish rumours we should know about?

As ever, there are rumours, yes, and they’re suitably outlandish. Here’s stuff that’s popped up on our radar recently:

Star Fox Grand Prix

Star Fox Grand Prix is apparently under development over at Retro Studios (we reported as much earlier), the team responsible for Donkey Kong Country Returns, its sequel, and the three Metroid Primes. It’s a bit of an about turn from them, and we’re not even going to ask why it isn’t F-Zero, but it does still sound interesting nonetheless.

Fortnite

Yes, we know you’re all eagerly praying that Epic will finally announce Fortnite for Switch and everyone can finally stop playing any other games to focus solely on this. Fortnite on Switch isn’t a particularly outlandish rumour though. It’s already available on every current gen platform – including mobile – so Switch is only a matter of time. What better time to announce it than E3?

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

Skyward Sword HD did the rumour rounds a while ago, and it makes some sense as a Switch release. Nintendo has already released Twilight Princess and Wind Waker as HD titles on the Wii U, and the Joy-Cons can double up as quasi-Wii remotes. They’re not quite as sophisticated as the Wii Remote Plus though, so we’re not sure how well this would work in practice.

DOOM 2

DOOM 2 is heavily rumoured for E3 2018, and we’re hoping it will be a full multi-platform release. The first DOOM was impossibly squished onto Switch, so why can’t the sequel be too?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

Sadly, this rumour has just been crushed by Activision itself. Still, it doesn’t mean we won’t see Call of Duty in some form on Switch this year. Perhaps Modern Warfare or the rumoured Modern Warfare 2 Remastered instead?

Should we expect anything new from Nintendo itself?

Yoshiaki Koizumi will likely helm the live showcase, as he has grown accustomed to lately. We’ll also likely see Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime, Miyamoto, and perhaps an introduction for the new Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa.

In terms of what to expect, it’s anyone’s guess. Traditionally, we’ve seen some crazy stuff from Nintendo, like puppets of Iwata, Miyamoto, and Reggie, and even a Robot Chicken animation.

What first-party Wii U games could launch on Switch?

Nintendo has steadily drip-fed Wii U games onto the Switch, and we imagine that trend will continue to plug the gap between high profile releases. Here’s a bunch of Wii U first-party games we haven’t seen on Switch yet, along with a few third-party exclusives that could happen: 

What Nintendo and third-party franchises do we hope will return?

There’s a bunch of stuff that we are praying to see that haven’t even remotely done the rumour rounds. Here’s a list:

First-Party:

• Advance Wars
• Animal Crossing
• Donkey Kong Country Returns
• Earthbound / Mother
• F-Zero
• Pikmin
• WarioWare
• Wave Race

Third-Party:

• Ace Attorney
• Castlevania
• Dragon Quest
• Yo-Kai Watch
• Call of Duty
• Harvest Moon

What are you hoping from Nintendo and third-party developers at this year’s E3? Have we missed any crazy rumours? Let us know in the comments and we might include it here!

More than two years after its initial release on PC, the strategic battles of The Banner Saga 2 are set to arrive on Nintendo Switch with a release date of 7th June. Publisher Versus Evil is once again teaming up with developer Stoic Studio for the port, the role-playing game continues its emotional journey across a breaking and war-torn world.

Expect more beautifully 2D hand-drawn combat sequences and animations are further enhanced with special effects, once again accompanied by an evocative score from Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory. Your story continues based on choices made in the first game as well as hard choices you have to make in this one. There are new characters and a brand new race to encounter, an improved combat system with greater depth to its strategic choices.

Will you be adding The Banner Saga 2 to your digital collection? Share your thoughts with the rest of the Nintendo Life community below…

A new wave of rewards have been added to the European My Nintendo website, celebrating some of the 3DS and Wii U’s best indie titles with free download offers.

Of course, by “free” we mean “you’ll have to spend some of those Gold Points you’ve been earning”, but these offers do seem pretty tasty to us this time around. Why not have a gander at the full list below.

If you’ve got the Gold Points to spare and haven’t checked out some of these games, this could be a great opportunity to explore any missed treasures. Remember that you can also spend your Gold Points on the Switch eShop as a discount on any digital purchases.

Will you be giving any of these a go? Let us know if you plan to spend any of your hard-earned points down below.

The release of Sonic the Hedgehog in the early ’90s was one of the key moments in the famous ‘console war’ between Sega and Nintendo, and would enable the former to challenge the latter’s dominance of the global games market.

Given the success of that first game, you would have imagined that a sequel was put into production without any delay, but amazingly the core team behind the first Sonic melted away after its release. It took the efforts of Mark Cerny – who more recently served as chief system architect on the PS Vita and PS4 – to reunite as many members of the team as possible to work on Sonic 2 at Sega Technical Institute in North America.

The story of how Sonic 2 was made – and how it became arguably the character’s best outing – is pretty remarkable, and YouTube channel Splash Wave has done an amazing job of summing it all up. Check out the video above and let us know what you think by posting a comment.

Historical hack and slash title Wulverblade is going on sale to mark the release of version 1.1, which brings a raft of new features to the title, along with changes based on player feedback.

The patch arrives Thursday and will be accompanied by a 33 percent price reduction on the US eShop for one week. It will be on sale in Europe a week or so later.

Wulverblade v1.1 will include the following, as explained by Fully Illustrated’s Michael Heald:

+ Easy Mode – This was the single most requested feature that we heard from both Nintendo Life readers and the web as a whole. It was a tough at first as we were getting other feedback saying that the game was too easy. So this patch now gives you an easier mode to play with which includes…
+ Boss Checkpoints – The other big request was boss checkpoints. For the folks struggling with the difficulty the check-pointing was making things even harder, so there is now a checkpoint before each boss in easy mode!
+ BEAST mode – This is the extra mode that is currently locked on the main menu. Once you’ve complete the game this unlocks and, well, let’s just say you’ll be wanting to play the game through again! For those that have completed the game on other systems and had access to this mode, they’ve loved it and we hope you do to. It’s seriously good fun!
+ Performance boost – We’ve been able to reduce the loading times between levels! We’ve also boosted the frame rate in a many areas too.
+ Missing achievements – A few folks had mentioned that their achievements had disappeared. Worry not, they’re not gone, they just weren’t visible due to a small glitch which has now been quashed.
+ Bug fixes – We’ve addressed all the known bugs in the game and they should all now be gone.

The update was originally supposed to arrive late last year, but was delayed due to the discovery of a bug which the team behind the game couldn’t replicate for quite some time. With no idea of how to fix the issue, the launch was pushed back.

Here’s Heald to explain: 

This update was originally complete and submitted to Nintendo back in December with the plan of it going live whilst we were still in our exclusivity window with Nintendo. Sadly, we hit some HUGE roadblocks. Namely, one monster bug that only Nintendo could see. We’d bug tested the patch like crazy on all our available systems and it ran like a dream, but at Nintendo, they were seeing a crash bug that we simply couldn’t replicate on any device. You can imagine how hard it is to fix a bug that you simply cannot see nor reproduce. After many months of back and forth we finally got to the bottom of the issue. The bad news was that the sheer degree of changes we’d had to make to uncover this bug and then fix it in turn created some new issues. Many months and many changes later the patch has now been greenlit by Nintendo and is running like a dream.

We were gutted that we couldn’t get this out earlier, especially for the fact that the update flew through first time on all other systems without a hitch. You can imagine our dismay when this initial bug was still causing us issues months later on Switch. You can rest assured that the Switch version has had way more time lavished on it than any other version to date. 

 Heald also shared a little information with us about sales figures for the game: 

Switch sales were MUCH higher than the other systems. In fact, Switch sales are way beyond all the other systems combined! And last but not least, one stat that still blows us away is that we don’t foresee Steam’s year one sales even matching Switches DAY 1 sales! The Switch certainly has proven to be a fab system for us. We’ve not got a point of breaking even yet but sales have been good in general and it’s just a joy to hear people’s enjoyment of the game.

So there you have it; if you already own Wulverblade then all of this new content will make it worth another look, and if you’ve yet to make the purchase then the sale gives you the perfect excuse. 

That Nintendo remains top dog in Japan this week in terms of sales perhaps isn’t the most shocking news – the company regularly finds itself in pole position in its homeland.

However, the Media Create sales figures for the 14th of May to the 20th show that a PlayStation 4 game came in at number one – but no matter, as the rest of the top 20 is dominated by Switch and 3DS games. 

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze managed to slot into second place, and has now sold an impressive 129,760 copies since its release. Splatoon 2 is in third position with 2,323,048 units now shifted, while further down the chart the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit is performing well, considering the inflated price.

Out of the top 20, 14 entries are on Nintendo hardware.

1. [PS4] Caligula Overdose – 20,399 / NEW
2. [NSW] Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze – 15,452 / 129,760
3. [NSW] Splatoon 2 – 12,646 / 2,323,048
4. [PS4] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 10,240 / 189,672
5. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 10,071 / 1,542,271
6. [NSW] Kirby Star Allies – 8,392 / 500,622
7. [NSW] Nintendo Labo – Variety Kit – 8,151 / 166,536
8. [NSW] Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 5,687 / 991,867
9. [NSW] Super Mario Odyssey – 4,632 / 1,725,867
10. [PSV] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 4,073 / 83,955
11. [NSW] The Snack World: Trejarers Gold – 3,549 / 82,504
12. [PS4] God of War – 3,124 / 101,703
13. [3DS] Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon – 2,927 / 1,634,916
14. [PS4] Rainbow Six Siege Advanced Edition – 2,238 / 53,533
15. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome amiibo – 1,791 / 408,980
16. [NSW] Nintendo Labo – Robot Kit – 1,762 / 44,911
17. [NSW] 1-2 Switch – 1,680 / 445,228
18. [PS4] Cities: Skylines – 1,658 / 28,724
19. [NSW] Pokken Tournament DX – 1,562 / 262,871
20. [NSW] ARMS – 1,527 / 406,645

On the hardware side of things, Switch was the winner as well:

Switch – 33,125
PS4 – 12,404
PS4 Pro – 4,536
New 2DS LL – 3,489
New 3DS LL – 2,353
Vita – 2,219
2DS – 413
Xbox One – 146
Xbox One X – 54

Let us know if you’re even the least bit surprised by this news by posting a comment below.