Category: Nintendo News

If you’re a bit of a smartphone gamer, you will have likely heard of Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf by developer Forge Reply, which has been a popular game pushing the boundaries of what is possible on those platforms. The game features a unique blend of non-linear storytelling and RPG combat and is coming to the Nintendo Switch on the 16th February with a special introductory offer, which will be revealed at 5pm GMT today in the eShop.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf is based on the “choose your own adventure” gamebooks of the ’80s, written by worldwide famous author (you guessed it) Joe Dever. The author was involved personally in the development, writing the story and driving the work of the whole development team at Forge Reply with his inspiring passion.

Lone Wolf, the last of the order of the Kai Lords, must face yet another threat posed by the dreaded Darklords. No-one has heard from the border village of Rockstarn in weeks, and Lone Wolf travels to the very frontier of the Kingdom of Sommerlund to find out what happened. He will find challenges and adventures awaiting for him, as well as memorable characters and meaningful choices to make as the story progresses. Epic battles will take place at the wild frontier, deep down in ancient ruins and even across the border, trespassing into the terrible Darklands.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf presents the player with an enhanced gamebook that includes classic RPG elements, such as an interactive world map, quests and merchants, from which you can acquire and upgrade powerful battle gear. When the moment for action comes, battles are played in dynamic turns, with abilities that range from melee to ranged, to the mighty magical attacks of the Sommerswerd, the legendary Sword of the Sun.

It certainly looks like this will be one to watch out for when it arrives on the Switch eShop next week. Watch the trailer above and let us know if you plan to pick this up with a comment below.

10 years after its initial release on PS2, THQ Nordic revived and rezzed up martial arts platformer Legend Of Kay Anniversary for Wii U. Now, a good three years later, the publisher is bringing the game back yet again with a Nintendo Switch slated for sometime in 2018.

If you’ve never played or heard about it before, you play as Kay, a hot-headed young cat who must master the power of the sword, the hammer and the claws across 25 Eastern-styled levels. It’s very PS2 in terms of gameplay, but THQ Nordic did a decent enough job of porting it before so we’re looking forward to seeing how well it performs on Switch. There’s even a new trailer. Huzzah!

Be sure to let us know what you think about Legend Of Kay Anniversary heading to Switch this year. Did you play it on Wii U? Will you try it for the first time on Switch? Discuss…

You might have noticed that besides many other things, the Nintendo Switch is becoming quite a treasure trove for shmups both old and new. 

Thankfully it seems we’re not likely to run out of aliens or evil dictators to shoot down any time soon on Nintendo’s current console, so to spice things up Nintendo Life community member OorWullie has decided to organise a community event based around the timed high score challenge modes (also known as ‘caravan’) – something we’re keen to support officially. 

We’ll let the man himself explain:

With all the great arcade classic shoot-em-ups we have on Switch I thought it would be fun to have a place to show off our high scores and try to beat each others. I was thinking we could have a weekly challenge too, where we pick a specific game and whoever has the highest score on it at the end of the week gets to choose the next one. I’ve thought up some loose rules to get us started and we’ll see how it goes.

For the weekly challenge, I think we should keep it limited to Caravan Mode only, where we have 5 minutes to set as high a score as possible. This should keep things pretty tight and give us all a chance of winning. I’ll choose the first game to get things started and whoever is in first place in 7 days from now gets to select the next game. Obviously we won’t all have the same games but I’ll keep a record of the weekly challenge top scores and include the link on this post, so they are still there to be beaten if you do buy that game in future.

For all time high scores, we can use High Score Mode with the Hamster games. The Psikyo shooters unfortunately don’t have a similar mode so it’ll just have to be taken from normal play. No shenanigans please.

To have your high score registered it should be accompanied with a screenshot of your place on the Hamster leaderboard. For Psikyo shooters a screenshot of the in-game leaderboard. Try and remember to put your initials or whatever you use instead of AAA like I always do. Also give me a mention when posting your score and screenshot so I know to edit it in.

So if you think you got what it takes to be the best of the Nintendo Life best, head on over to our forum and submit your finest score! This week the challenge is Pulstar’s Caravan Mode from stage 1. Also note that we don’t take any Billy Mitchell style VHS shenanigans here, so play fair.

Of course, we’re not saying you have to play to the sound of Kenny Loggins “Danger Zone“… but we’re not expressly forbidding it, either. Good luck, pilots!

Metroid Prime 4 is one of the next big games coming to Nintendo Switch, but all that lack of concrete detail has led to countless rumours. At one point we learned Retro Studios (which worked on the original Metroid Prime trilogy) wouldn’t be on development duties, then there were murmurs that id Software might be stepping in to work on the title. Then it was Bandai Namco’s turn to be centre of all MP4 rumours.

Well, Eurogamer has today confirmed (via multiple sources) that Bandai Namco is indeed working on Metroid Prime 4, specifically its Bandai Namco Singapore studio. Obviously, there are very few details on the ground – and no real certainty we’ll see it before 2019 – but at least we now know which studio is bringing Samus back to the FPS party.

Let us know your thoughts on this MP4 news and whether you think the studio is the right choice for the game…

Thanks to the nature of the gaming industry at present, playing host to constant leaks of information and having rumours flying around all over the place, it is perhaps unsurprising that Nintendo would hold back as much information on its major projects during development as possible. It would seem that even those lucky enough to be working on such projects are sometimes kept in the dark, too.

Joe Hernandez, the voice behind Daruk and Yunobo in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, has revealed in an interview with CatWithMonocle that he was never specifically told what he was auditioning for.

Cat With Monocle: How did you get the roles of Daruk and Yunobo in Zelda: Breath of the Wild? What did you enjoy the most while recording as these characters?

Joe Hernandez: Originally, I was sent the audition around March of 2016. As is the case with some high profile video games, we were never told specifically what we were auditioning for. I remember the specs calling for a British/Mid-Atlantic voice, which was in my wheelhouse. I remember nothing in any of the audition copy made reference to Link, Zelda, Hyrule, etc. so again, we were a little in the dark as to what project it was.

Now, if you ask any voice actors out there, rare is the day that the entirety of info is shared with talent by the time they audition. Some of that is done by design, because they don’t want any important info getting leaked, but another reason is that so much of the games are still in various stages of development, so things can change drastically, (Daruk wasn’t called by that name when I had gone into audition).

The casting director had given me a sort of Lord of the Rings direction as to the world in which these characters lived. He wanted me to think of my character as this big, larger than life kind of gentle giant, (a la Gimli in LotR). it helped set the tone for what I had read for and allowed me get specific with his voice and characterization. After the initial audition, I was called back again to re-read for them. Shortly thereafter, I was told that I had booked it and we didn’t begin recording until August/September of that year.

Joe isn’t the only one that was kept in the dark, either; Patricia Summersett, the English voice actress for Zelda herself, revealed that she only found out what she was auditioning for well after landing the role.

Can you imagine finding out that your most recent job interview was actually for the next big Zelda title? Of course, we might need to learn how to actually act before that can happen.

Indie developer and publisher tinyBuild has announced that they will be revealing a whopping six games coming soon to the Nintendo Switch in a live stream tomorrow.

The publisher, which already has the existing Switch titles Phantom Trigger and Mr. Shifty under its belt, will be hosting the live stream under the name ‘#HelloSwitch’ on the studio’s YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook accounts. You can check out the announcement tweet below.

It all kicks off at 10am PST / 1pm EST (and therefore 6pm UK / 7pm CET) on Saturday 10th February and, just to hammer home the fact that the Switch is of utmost importance, the studio has already told us that even more titles will be announced later in the year so there is sure to be something for everyone.

Will you be tuning in? Why not take a look at this list of the studio’s titles and let us know which games you’d like to see announced for the Switch?

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The saga of Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong high score continues to rumble along following accusations from score-verifier Jeremy Young that Mitchell – who was a key figure in the cult movie King of Kong – used MAME to record his record-breaking runs on the game, as opposed to original hardware, as Mitchell has claimed.

Mitchell was quick to respond to the claims, stating that he’d never played MAME and suggesting that the footage he had submitted had somehow been switched. Young has now responded to Mitchell’s comments, pointing out the sheer implausibility of what he’s claiming.

Mitchell said:

And the film footage that he has, that Jeremy has, shows MAME play. Now, I contend, that if he gets the original tape, or he gets the original room shot, he will see that what I say is true. I’m not disputing what he says. What I’m disputing is the fact that I want him to have the original tape.

According to Young, the only person who could have possibly switched the tapes is Dwayne Richard, a world-record holder in several games on Twin Galaxies:

Claiming the video footage in the evidence is not real does not make sense to me. In regards to video sources and their potential fabrication, I would label that so unlikely as to be impossible. The amount of foresight, patience, and technical knowledge required would be staggering.

Dwayne claims [the Mitchell tapes] were given to him directly by [disgraced competitive gamer Todd Rogers], by request of Billy Mitchell. Dwayne uploaded a copy of [the 1.047 million run] to YouTube a couple of years ago… All of this uploaded footage directly matches segments shown in both the theatrical release of King of Kong and a screener version that has circulated over the years.

In fact, Mitchell’s entire defence rests on the idea that Richard swapped the tapes. Young explains why this is highly, highly unlikely:

By my reckoning, Dwayne would have to:

1) Know, for over a decade, this bug existed in MAME, and not tell anyone
2) Know every potential independent source that would, in the future, publish clips of Billy’s gameplay, know exactly what that footage would contain, and whether that footage would contain the MAME signature
3) Either: A) know that the press conference video is also MAME, or B) organize a conspiracy to swap the tapes being shown that day.
4) In the case of 3A…why wait this long?
5) In the case of 3B…he would have had only a few days to craft a full performance of TWO games (DK and DKJR) faithful enough to fool Billy himself AND convince someone to swap the tapes at the event.
6) Apart from 3A, he would need to craft at least 2 full-length (~2.5 hours) games to match the independent footage. These would have to match Billy’s original gameplay, pixel-for-pixel, frame-for-frame.
7) Wait, for years, for the right amount of general skepticism and technical knowledge to coalesce.

Mitchell will no doubt respond to these comments in due course, and you can sure this isn’t the last we’ve heard of this saga. It’s a sorry end for one of the most famous figures in the world of video game high score-chasing.

We’ve known for a little while that a port of The Snack World – a Japan-only RPG that’s evolved into a multimedia hit brand with its own film and a line of super popular toys – will be getting a Nintendo Switch port, but now we finally have a date. Developer Level 5 has confirmed the game – called The Snack World Trejarers Gold – will release on 12th April, 2018.

The port marks Level 5’s first game on Nintendo’s latest hardware, and will include a whole host of improvements, including tweaked graphics, an improved battle system and all the DLC released for the 3DS version. It’ll set you back a good ¥6,458, should you be a Nintendo Life reader based in Japan. No word on a western release just yet, but we hope Level 5 gets round to one because The Snack World is a hit just waiting to happen in the West.

Drop us a comment or two below on The Snack World Trejarers Gold and all things Japan-only on Nintendo Switch…