Category: Nintendo News

Nintendo has released an investor Q & A following the company’s recent financial results briefing, detailing its stance on the current plans for Switch and 3DS consoles.

Both Tatsumi Kimishima, the current president of Nintendo, and Shuntaro Furukawa, who will take over as president next month, were present to answer questions, with the hottest topic being the newly announced Dragalia Lost for mobile platforms.

When moving on to a discussion about the 3DS’ future, however, some interesting little nuggets of information were put forward. Firstly, Kimishima reiterated the company’s intention to keep selling the console into next year and beyond.

“[The 3DS] has an ample software lineup at a price point that makes the system affordable especially for parents looking to buy for their kids. We expect that demand to continue during this fiscal year as well, so we will continue to sell the product”

He then went on to suggest that Switch sales could have an effect on the 3DS’ longevity; if consumers start to purchase a Switch console for each member of the family instead of one-per-household – just like how many have with the 3DS – the situation may change.

“Given that Nintendo Switch is a home gaming system that can be taken on the go, this situation may change if it grows from being a one-per-household system to a one-per-person system. But the price of Nintendo Switch is not something with which most parents would buy a system for every one of their children in a short period of time. Moving forward, we will work to ascertain what kinds of play people want at which price points, and as long as there is such demand, we will continue to sell the Nintendo 3DS system. I see the product coexisting with Nintendo Switch at this point in time.”

The highlight to take away from this is one that Nintendo has been saying for a while now: the 3DS is still very much alive and well. Of course, time will tell if this approach changes over the coming months, and it will be interesting to see how many more games arrive on the dedicated handheld system.

So, what do you think? Can you see the Switch becoming a one-per-person system? Do you think a price-cut would allow that to happen? Should Nintendo change up its strategy with this combination of 3DS and Switch? Share your thoughts down below.

Thursday has arrived once more, bringing with it another weekly update to all of Nintendo’s current eShop fronts. We’ve got plenty of indie sleeper hits, classic retro throwbacks and big titles all waiting to tempt their way into your virtual collection. As always, feel free to add a vote in the poll and a comment or two with your potential purchases below. Enjoy!

Switch eShop

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Nintendo, $59.99) – Barrel blast into a critically acclaimed Donkey Kong adventure as this beloved franchise makes its Nintendo Switch debut with a (banana) bunch of new features. Traverse islands packed with platforming perfection and nonstop action as the classic Kongs in the original game, or mix things up by playing the story as Funky Kong in new Funky Mode for a more approachable experience for players of all ages and skill levels. The Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze game will be available on May 4. Read our review.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate Edition (WayForward, $27) – Save the day as belly dancing half-genie Shantae, conquer Sequin Land as the evil Risky Boots in “Pirate Queen’s Quest” and swap between Sky, Bolo and Rottytops in “Friends to the End!” Use multiple abilities while in different forms: wall jump as Ninja Shantae, soak up sun as Beach Shantae and serve justice as Officer Shantae. The Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate Edition game will be available on May 8. Read our review.

Cast of the Seven Godsends (Merge Games, $12.99) – Cast of the Seven Godsends harks back to the days when classic 2D, run ’n gun, action-shooter games ruled the arcades. Four levels of difficulty, six worlds to conquer, twelve mid and end-of-level bosses, seven god-like armour sets, five basic weapons and thirty-five magic combat spells!

NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM (Bandai Namco. $19.99) – Players will unleash powerful jutsu attacks, perform acrobatic evasive maneuvers and even run up walls and over water as they pursue their opponent for ninja supremacy. Players will be able to customize their character’s fighting style and recruit up to two support characters to put their own stamp on the action.

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 2 (Bandai Namco, $19.99) – Impressively faithful to the universe of the anime, the game takes players through the Naruto Shippuden story arc with new battle systems enhancing the gameplay. Players must choose the right companions to fight alongside and together unleash explosive Team Special Techniques to lay waste to opponents.

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 Full Burst (Bandai Namco $19.99) – NARUTO SHIPPUDEN Ultimate Ninja STORM 3 has been given a thorough overhaul for its FULL BURST comeback! Not least among the wealth of enhancements is the addition of the feverishly anticipated chapter in which Sasuke and Itachi take on Kabuto in a nail-biting confrontation.

NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja Storm Trilogy (Bandai Namco, $39.99) – All three entries in the NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja Storm series are coming to the Nintendo Switch in a single package! Start with Naruto’s origins in Ultimate Ninja Storm, relive Shippuden and his ferocious battles with Akatsuki in Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, and experience the beginning of the Great Ninja War in Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, all in one game!

Raging Justice (Team17 Digital, $13.49) – Raging Justice is a classic beat ‘em up game of epic proportions, dragging the savage charm of the genre kicking and screaming into the 21st century! Available May 8.

SKYPEACE (Sonic Powered, $0.99) – Exhilarating yet simple action! Soar away into the sky at full speed!

Don’t Die, Mr Robot! DX (Digerati, $8.99) – Don’t Die, Mr. Robot! DX is a remixed version of the much-loved arcade bullet-hell avoid ’em up, completely remastered and rejuvenated for Nintendo Switch. Read our review.

Japanese Mah-jongg (ITL, $5.00) – You can enjoy Mah-jongg, one of major table games easily with Japanese Mah-jongg. 2 Players mode is enjoying competition with your friend by hiding your hand with single device.

Johnny Turbo’s Arcade: Sly Spy (FTE Games, $6.99) – It is the year 199X, Secret Agent Sly must protect the U.S. from a nuclear missile attack from the terrorist organization CWD (Council for World Domination). Play an arcade classic! Secret Agent: Use your jetpack and the golden gun and save the world from Evil.

Nihilumbra (Beautifun Games, $7.99) – Discover the beautiful world of Nihilumbra and join Born on his adventure to find himself whilst trying to escape from his inevitable curse.

Perfect Angle (Ivanovich Games, $9.99) – Challenge your mind with puzzles based on optical illusions. Find the perfect angle by rotating the camera to clean up the chaos and find a shocking story fraught with twists.

Professional Construction – The Simulation (United Independent Entertainment, $39.99) – Experience life on the construction site like the pros, and use heavy equipment and massive machinery. Enter an open world scenario to complete a large variety of assignments. There’s no way you can get bored repairing roads and doing so much more. A wide range of heavy construction equipment stands ready for your use. Utilise pavement milling, bulky cement mixers, powerful dump trucks, practical mini excavators and more!

Timberman VS (Forever Entertainment, $1.99) – The game loved by millions of players all around the world – Timberman, now has a brand new, polished axe! Are you world-class wood chopper? Enter the digital forest and find out! Discover the Nintendo Switch version of this classic, casual game – slice and dice trees in an arcade-style, challenge your friends and be the fastest timberman alive!

ACA NEOGEO STAKES WINNER (HAMSTER, $7.99) – “STAKES WINNER” is a realistic jockey action game released in 1995 by SNK. Use skills such as showing the whip, formation split and hyper dash, collect items on the course, and power-up your beloved horse in this multifaceted game. Ride with your horse through a variety of races as you aim to conquer the GI.

Arcade Archives 10-Yard Fight (HAMSTER, $7.99) – “10-Yard Fight” is a sports game released in 1983 by IREM. Players can enjoy American football with its simple but intense play mechanics. Score touchdowns as you play against increasingly powerful opponents. This version also contains the 1984 version of VS 10-Yard Fight with the additional two-player mode.

Animal Super Squad (DoubleMoose, $9.99) – Animal Super Squad is a physics-based adventure game that lets you play as your favorite animal. Speed through a world full of dangers and bananas. Create your own levels, share them with the community, or forget all that nonsense and just play other people’s stuff.

3DS eShop

3D Retro Dungeon Puzzle Challenge (Skunk Software, $0.70) – A short puzzle adventure game with unique levels. One of the best games under $1. Only for New Nintendo 3DS.

Wii U eShop

Rainbow Snake (RandomSpin, $0.99) – Eating Food, Snake Painted In Different Colors. Collect a colorful snake and avoid the green walls. Over time, the snake is gaining speed!

Demos

Nintendo Switch

Aegis Defenders – Demo Version (Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch)
Midnight Deluxe – Demo Version (Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch) – Available May 4
Portal Knights – Demo Version (Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch) – Available May 7

Activities

Too Cool for Hyrule: May My Nintendo Rewards – May is a special month for The Legend of Zelda fans! The Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition game for the Nintendo Switch system launches on May 18. To celebrate the game’s launch, My Nintendo is offering the Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: Dire Moon Nintendo 3DS HOME Menu theme. You can redeem your My Nintendo points up to five times to receive up to five codes for the theme. Don’t forget to redeem your points for a wallpaper and a May calendar featuring the Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition game. Enjoy the month of May with great discounts on select games in the Legend of Zelda series. For more info, click here.

So that’s your lot for this week’s official update to the North American eShops. Feel free to leave a vote in the poll and a comment below…

In 2018, it’s safe to say Nintendo Switch has its fair share of roguelike titles and pixel art platformers, but there’s always room for games willing to marry the two in new and exciting ways. Dead Cells, the latest creation from French indie studio MotionTwin has all the hallmarks of a modern ‘roguevania’ and it’s shaping up to be one of the console’s most intriguing offerings. We caught up with producer Steve Filby to discuss embracing pixel art, developing for Switch, and more. Enjoy!

Nintendo Life: Could you introduce yourself to the readers of Nintendo Life?

Steve Filby: My name’s Steve, I’m the producer at MotionTwin, and I basically do everything the devs don’t want to do, including that we stay on time.

So, tell us a little bit about Dead Cells…

Dead Cells is a roguelike Metroidvania action platformer, so it’s fast-paced combat and exploration where you’ve got to kill as many monsters and grab as much loot as you can to spend on powers and skills and things before you get killed (and you will inevitably get killed as it’s pretty hard).

As you go through these runs you’re going to unlock various upgrades that are going to give you access to new rooms and areas, so each run is going to give you more choice in the weapons you have and the paths they can take you. But every single time you’re going to start with the standard scabby little sword or scabby little bow or whatever it is you want to play with, and you’ve got to try and get through, beat all the levels and defeat all the bosses.

Is there an ultimate goal, or is it essentially endless?

There is an ultimate goal, although at the moment we haven’t actually finished the game so you won’t be able to find it because it doesn’t exist, but we’re getting there. Basically, what you’re aiming to do is beat The Hand of the King, which is the final boss, and once we’ve finished you’ll discover what happens after that. 

At the moment on the main path there are three bosses, as well as another hidden boss, so really you’re just trying to go as far as you can. For the average player, beating The Hand of the King will probably take about 20-25 hours to get to that point. If you’re a psychopath you can finish the game in two hours once you know it inside and out, as the actual run to the final boss is about 45 minutes in a straight line.

The art style you’ve chosen is a low-resolution pixel style – are all the animations done frame by frame?

Actually, it’s a mix. All the background are hand-drawn, and then the animations and characters are done in 3D and exported into a pixel art style. That means Tom, who does our animation, can do all of the animation in the game by himself, and he can change things and make sure everything marries together well. It’s a style we really wanted to do because we all really enjoy pixel art, a lot of people think it’s a cop-out, but it’s actually quit a difficult style to pull off, and we wanted to do that because we love the SNES-era look, but then it’s also a question of how we can make that feel good and feel more modern than just your standard affair.

The game isn’t exclusive to Switch, so obviously you had to port it over to Nintendo’s system. How easy was that transition?

It’s actually great, we’ve read a lot about other developers and their experiences with the Switch and they’re all saying ‘it’s really positive’ and ‘it’s really great’ blah blah blah, but we come from the PC world where we’re able to push out anything that we want straight away without having to go through any stringent quality standards, but then we came to Nintendo and the process was actually really straightforward. For us, there’s no real difference, we’re just developing for a different set of hardware.

Have there been any elements of the Switch’s unique hardware that you’ve been able to take advantage of?

HD Rumble, obviously, that’s probably the big one. Right at this particular point in time, we’re sticking with the same features for everything, but what we want to do is when we get through the first certification process is look at what else we can add to make the most of the Switch. HD Rumble is really great for this game because if you’re taking damage from the left or the right you can feel which side you’re being attacked from. There’s a lot of feedback you can get into the hands to make the game feel a lot more natural. 

If you’re playing on a bus or something, visual feedback is a little less obvious, so having that physical feedback is a really great way to give the player more information. The thing I really love about the Switch though, is sometimes I’ll take the dev kit home with me, and just being able to play it on the way home, get in and plonk it onto the TV, sit back and relax, it’s nice.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to this Nintendo bunch?

We’re really excited to see what Nintendo players have to say about the game, so if any of you guys have any ideas for anything you’d like to see in the game hit us up on Discord or Reddit or whatever. We’ve built this game with the PC community, but we’re excited to bring this to Switch and its audience. We’d love to hear form you guys, so please, get involved!

We’d like to thank Steve for his time. Dead Cells will arrive on Nintendo Switch in 2018. Be sure to let us know what you make of the game in the comments below…

Publisher Ratalaika Games has teased something that’s coming to the Nintendo Switch eShop next week, and if that logo is anything to by, it’s almost certainly going to be the single-screen bullet hell of Inksplosion. This twin-stick shooter will also be launching on PC and other consoles.

 The colourful shooter includes three game modes (Normal, Arena & Hard), endless levels to blast through, five weapons to choose from, in-game achievements, an original Soundtrack by Levi Bond and voice over work by Barry Dunne

Will you be shooting up a storm when it arrives next week on the Switch eShop? Share your thoughts below…

Owlboy has been fluttering its wings on the Nintendo eShop since February – and it mightily impressed our very own Ryan Craddock, scoring a 9/10 – and now developer D-Pad Studio is teaming up with Dutch publisher Sodesco to launch an extra deluxe physical edition that’s going to send collectors wild.

Alongside the standard physical edition, this deluxe edition is limited to 6,000 units alongside the PS4 version, so if you’re into your physical editions this is one to grab before it sells out. Sodesco will be releasing more news on the contents of this edition soon, and we imagine it’ll be launching alongside the standard version on 29th May.

Will you be investing in a physical edition of Owlboy? Have you waited until now to play it? Share your thoughts on the news below…

Jon Verrall – writer and cinematic designer at Retro Studios – has revealed on Twitter that he’s leaving the company after almost two years.

Verrall – who refers to himself as an “award-winning writer, cinematics director, voice director, choreographer, and performer for video games and Internet television” on this LinkedIn profile – previously wrote, produced and appeared in the web series LARPs.

He joined Retro in 2016. We assume he has been working on the company’s as-yet-unannounced new project; the studio’s last title was Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, released way back in 2014. An enhanced version of the game is about to launch on the Switch.

We wish Jon all the best in the future.

Zen Studios has announced that it will be bringing Disco Dodgeball Remix to the Nintendo Switch on 22nd May, offering an intense mix of arena-based first-person shooter gameplay and classic dodgeball.

The game is actually a port of Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball, a game released on Steam back in 2015 which received “very positive” reviews, as well as recognition from some of the bigger names in the YouTube-sphere such as Markiplier and jacksepticeye. Players are tasked with one-hit killing their opponents with physics-based precision, all while soaking in a bright neon, club-like aesthetic which reminds us of the sweaty depths of laser tag. 

You’ll be throwing glowing dodgeballs at each other, completing objectives in team-based or free-for-all modes, and using a variety of power-ups and aerial trick shots along the way to score extra points.

FEATURES
– Classic PvP, Objective Based, and Single-Player Arcade modes
– Solo and Co-Op leaderboard-based challenges
– 15 levels designed to combine a futuristic dance club and skate park
– A new level-up game progression earning 70+ new fun and wacky customisable items for your robot
– Online multiplayer with frictionless, jump-out matches and automatic hosted room creation
– Gameplay-changing powerups like Boomerang Balls and Jetpacks
– High-energy soundtrack composed by talented independent artists that interact directly with the colorful arena visuals
– Monster truck-style announcer lends his big voice to all the KOs, trick-shots and kill streaks
– Revamped user interface from PC version

It will also come with additional features for Nintendo Switch players including motion control aiming, HD Rumble support, and an option to play split-screen using a single Joy-Con per player. 

Do you like the look of this one? Let us know whether you’ll be picking it up in the comments below.

Tokyo-based developer Onion Games has confirmed its upcoming shooter, Black Bird, will be heading to Nintendo Switch sometime in the summer of 2018. 

Onion Games has also confirmed, via Twitter, that it will also be bringing the game to the annual BitSummit festival in Kyoto, which takes place between 12th and 13th May.

You can check out a trailer (based on a 2016 version of the game) above. Let us know what you make of it in the comments below…