It was way back in 2015 that we got news that the Yo-Kai Watch franchise was getting another spin-off in the form of Yo-Kai Watch Busters, but sadly the open-world brawler never made its way out of Japan. Well, if a tidbit of information is anything to go by, this 3DS gem could finally be getting localised for English players.
A Spanish Yo-Kai watch fan account tweeted this image, showing Nintendo of America being thanked for its involvement in the localisation process alongside Nintendo of Korea. So does that mean the game is finally going to get a release over here? We’re big fans of the series here at Nintendo Life (even though Yo-Kai Watch 3 avoided the West completely) so we’re hoping the rumour proves to be true.
Are you a Yo-Kai fan? Would you add Busters to your collection if it gets a release in North America and beyond? Share your thoughts below…
Nintendo Switch has plenty of choices when it comes to different coloured Joy-Cons, but there’s very little choice for the rest of your console’s hardware. There are skins, but plenty of them have left damaging marks on your hardware, so what to do if you’re looking for a little safe customisation?
Dbrand says it’s got the answer with a range of decal skins it claims won’t leave any marks on your console, regardless of how many times you change them. You can order sets of your Joy-Cons, the console unit itself, with a full set costing around $28 (£20). They’re certainly cheaper than buying a colourful new set of Joy-Cons.
You can order some direct from Dbrand here, although we wouldn’t blame you for being a little tentative about sticking any sort of decal on your precious gaming handheld. Let us know what you make of this claim below…
Mario Tennis Aces is just a few short months away, so, as is custom in the build-up to a game, some extra content has unwittingly been revealed in a Japanese pre-order campaign. That extra content seemingly revealing three new characters that may well be joining the roster in June.
The Japanese pre-order gives you access to an officially-licensed bag, which just happens to include special icon badges for each character on the roster. But among the usual suspects we see three potential players we haven’t seen in footage thus far – Birdo, Diddy Kong and the Koopa Paratrooper.
Of course, Nintendo hasn’t officially confirmed any of the characters that may be coming to Mario Tennis Aces – if any – post-launch, but such an item does strongly suggest ol’ Diddy and pals are set to bring up the numbers on the virtual courts.
Let us know what you make of these rumoured additions below and if you’ll be taking any of them to tennis glory when Mario Tennis Aces arrives on 22nd June…
Jon is such a Nintendo fan, he named his son Yoshi, and has been scouring the streets of Tokyo in search of the most random gaming stores and paraphernalia since 2011. He has a fear of identical twins, does a terrible Christopher Walken impression and still wonders why there is no block fort.
Polymega – which began life as RetroBlox – is a name we haven’t heard much of over the past few months.
The modular system aims to offer support for several key vintage gaming formats using removable sections which house the interface for each console’s media and controllers. It’s a really interesting concept, and one that we can’t wait to see more of.
Given the radio silence, there have been mutterings online that the project has stalled, but the company behind the console has moved to counter such claims by showing the 14-layer PCB being manufactured.
According to Polymega maker PLAYMAJI’s Bryan Bernal, more of these “development” videos will be shown prior to a “bigger marketing campaign” which occurs this year. The company is focused on E3 2018, and will be confirming details of the preorder process this year.
Let us know if you’re still keen to see more of Polymega by posting a comment.
Last week was a quiet week for Nintendo Switch in the UK charts, but that doesn’t mean the plucky little handheld didn’t have its fair share of familiar titles mingling with the multiplatform fare. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dropped a couple of places to number five, while Super Mario Odyssey made the jump from eight to six in a single week.
Best of all, launch game extraordinaire The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has fought its way back into the top ten, leaping from twelfth place to ninth. You can’t keep a good Hyrulian down, it seems…
1(NEW) God of War 2(1) Far Cry 5 3(NEW)Yakuza 6: The Song of Life 4(2)FIFA 18 5(3) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 6(8) Super Mario Odyssey 7(7)Fallout 4 8(5)PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds 9(12) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 10(4)Grand Theft Auto V
What do you make of the multiplatform UK charts from last week, and how well do you think Labo will perform when it launches later this week? Let us know below…
Nintendo Switch is getting a new indie puzzler next month in the form of Perfect Angle, an usual little curio from Ivanovich Games that uses perspective and optical illusions to solve some fiendishly challenging 3D conundrums. It’s due to arrive on the Switch eShop on 3rd May.
As the title suggests, it’s all about finding the perfect angle as you maneuver the camera so its 3D shapes form a familiar object or log. Some start out relatively easy, but expect to have that grey matter well and truly tested as you move through its artistic locales.
Check out the trailer above and let us know if you’ll be lining up the best angle come May…
Some games become classics due to innovation or for raising the standard for the entire industry. Others become classics due to the exact opposite, as is the case of 1992 B-Movie horror / interactive video game Night Trap.
Whilst the futuristic ‘interactive movie’ gameplay did not fool players for long, its place in video game history was assured alongside Mortal Kombat as the reason that the video game ratings system were created. It was believed that exposure to sex and violence of any kind in video games would have devastating consequences in Western youths and despite Night Traps truly very mild violence, featuring female actors in several states of undress, the PR storm around the title ensured it would live well beyond it’s hardware generation.
The ESRB was established as a direct result of these events the next year and has been used as the self-regulatory system for video games in America ever since. As of 2003 PEGI performs the same duties for the European Union.
Are you looking forward to own this remastered piece of video game history and spend your time snooping around a indoor security camera system to see what sort of cringe-worthy acting was setting the video game industry on fire? We promise not to deploy S.C.A.T. (Sega Control Attack Team) to your home if you comment below.
The Wonderful 101 was one of the Wii U’s most unique and enjoyable exclusives, but the commercial failure of the console meant it didn’t reach as many people as it should have done.
PlatinumGames’ Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya want to change that by releasing the game on Switch, and during a talk at Reboot Develop 2018 in Croatia, Kamiya issued a rallying cry:
We’re going to knock the audience participation up a bit. They’re still trying to negotiate with Nintendo whether a possible Wonderful 101 Switch release could happen but it always helps when the people in the audience at Reboot clap if they’d actually buy a Switch version of Wonderful 101. So anybody who would buy that, please clap…
After the talk, Eurogamer caught up with Inaba to clarify things. A translator listened to Inaba’s reply and then said:
From their perspective obviously there are things they can’t talk about, about dealings they have with Nintendo. Certainly they can say everything they said during the speech, which was, ‘Hey, we should do that.’ But whether that is a ‘we are going to do that’, and what the likelihood is of that happening, is just going to have to be something you wait to find out.
We certainly wouldn’t be against this incredible game getting a new lease of life on Switch, but what about you? Let us know if you’d double dip if it got a re-release by posting a comment below.
Ninjas. Just like John Cena you can’t see them, but they are always there. Hidden, in your pop culture, in your anime, in your video games, lurking over your shoulder reading this review right now. The ’80s and ’90s, a time when Ninjas were at the height of their western popularity may be last century old, but can Q-Cumber Factory Ninja Striker! Turn back time and instill the discipline needed to become a successful ninjutsu master? Proceed reading silently and strike true.
Profoundly rooted in ancient 8-bit ninja platforming discipline, the game controls could not be simpler. The D-pad moves your character around the screen. ‘B’ jumps and pressing it again will, of course, perform a double-jump. The ‘Y’ will unleash a homing attack in your target of choice, followed by devastating melee strikes. Last but not least, ‘A’ will allow you to perform your character of choice’s individual ‘shinobi action’. However, in a brilliant showcase of the ancient art of misdirection, the game insists you disregard to play it as a straightforward, classic platformer that, at first contact, it appears to be.
Once you select one of the four ninjas available at the start of your quest, you are dropped in the dojo stage. Here, you will learn how the true ninja tackles stages: not setting a single foot on the ground from start to finish. This can be achieved by using and abusing your ‘Y’ dash attack to string along as big a combo as possible, moving swiftly between enemies all the way to the stage exit balloon.
Picking up coins along the way will add to your combo counter, but getting hit will not only take one heart from your energy bar but will also understandably reset your combo counter back to zero. Due to enemy positioning and stage design, you will soon forget that you could indeed play this as a classic platformer and will be doing your absolute best to keep dashing from one enemy to the next and put your combo number into the hundreds. Better yet: it’s truly rewarding when you do manage to pull it off with perfect combination of skill and button timing execution.
Besides the dojo, the main quest is divided into six distinct worlds, each of them made up of three regular stages and one world boss waiting for you on level four. New enemies are introduced at a nice pace along your journey and you will need to learn how to deal with their own individual attacks, number of hits it takes to put them down and best position to attack them from. It keeps the experience fresh and prepares you to take on the world bosses.
These boss fights can sometimes be conquered by brute force (i.e. spamming ‘shinobi action’ at them) but true ninja masters will use them to show off their skills by properly attacking and evading to achieve perfect victories. Every single stage will rank you from none to three starts, with factors like time to completion, number of hits suffered and combo scores taking weight when determining your outcome. Your journey can be completed under one hour, but getting those perfect three stars on every level will probably set you back a few delightful months.
The playable ninja roster effectively gives you four different ways to play the game, with each character using their own ninja quirks to affect gameplay. The Ninja is a balanced character, with no real weakness nor exceeding strong points. His shinobi action is a spin attack that you can use for both attack and moving through the air in the direction of your next victim. The Kunoichi is one agile lady and while her attacks do slightly less damage, she more than makes up for it with her flurry of kunai shinobi action for long range combat. On the subject of reach, no ninja can do it better than the wielder of the Chain Sickle.
This ninja uses his weapon to quickly get within reach of anything an entire single screen’s length away. Last and for the occasions when you really need to dish out a pounding, the Mega Man robo master reject Ninja Robot will deliver mighty hammer strikes to foes and is even able to hover by double-jumping. But since his power comes at the cost of speed, you’ll need to often use its shinobi action that turns him into a rocket. These four distinct characters offer excellent gameplay incentive to master the game four times instead of just giving it a single playthrough.
Both the aesthetics and sound departments are a straight homage to the Master System. If you ever played or owned Sega’s humble 8-bit console, you will be immediately taken back to those simpler days of big pixel, bright primary colours and cheerful chiptunes coming out from your television. But make no mistake, any Master System would possibly melt with the amount of on-screen action going on at most of the time you’re comboing your way to the end of a level. While ninjas may be strong, never underestimate the power of nostalgia. Q-Cumber Factory nailed this to perfection.
The path of the ninja is a solitary affair so you will find no multiplayer here of any sort. It is always a shame to see games on Switch that lack this options, leaving only yourself as your own worst enemy when trying to achieve those perfect three star ranks.
Conclusion
Ninja Striker! is the Sega Master System game of your dreams you never knew you needed on your Nintendo Switch. Easy to pick up, nearly impossible to master flawlessly and thus like a true ninja it will take some dedication and discipline while you keep coming back to its charming mains quest. In either docked or portable mode, for five minutes or two hours this is a pure combo/score chaser that will keep you hooked to the screen for generations of ninjas to come.
