We’re positively swimming in new Nintendo Switch releases every week at this point – our constantly overflowing inbox serves as a regular, major indicator of this (send help) – but we don’t expect to see new games arrive for the nearly-30-years-old SNES.

That’s exactly what we’ve been treated to today, however, with the launch of Yo-Yo Shuriken. The game comes from the same developer who recently brought us a new Game Boy title, DMG Deals Damage, and is an action game designed for one to two players. An action game with ninjas and robots, no less.

Its core gameplay revolves around shooting a single shuriken that you can magically recall at any time, which incidentally allows you to hit enemies both from the front or from behind. It’s available on an actual, working SNES cartridge with a cardboard box and manual, or you can buy a copy for emulation online.

If you fancy picking up the physical SNES cartridge for this, let us treat you to some money off with the following code: ‘BF2019’. This Black Friday discount will get you 10% off until December 2nd.

What do you think? Intrigued by a 2019 SNES game? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Black Friday 2019 Deals & News

• Black Friday 2019 Start Times, Store Hours: GameStop, Best Buy, Target, And More
• Black Friday 2019: The Best PS4 Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: The Best Xbox One Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: When Does It Start, Deals To Expect, And More
• Black Friday 2019 Best Gaming Deals: PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, And PC

Today is all about Black Friday, naturally, so make sure you check out our dedicated post for the latest app deals we’ve spotted. Back in the day when Apple still offered their affiliate scheme this used to be a great day for us, but now it’s less so. Still – public service and all that, and the deals ARE pretty good, so we want to make sure you’re all aware of them.

Apologies it’s been a bit slower on the content front this week – we finally got out Football Manager 2020 review done. It’s unlikely we’ll review the iPad-specific Touch version, in case any of you were wondering. Also, despite having two Apple Arcade Roulette drops in as many weeks, there’s unlikely going to be one next week as I’ve got everyone working on other things. This Arcade thing is still proving a difficult one to tackle in terms of worthwhile coverage, but I hope everyone who is reading our columns is enjoying them.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away…

Out Now

We’ve struggled to get code in advance of Weekender columns recently, so the below shout-outs aren’t based on any actual play-time, but they’ve appealed to us for specific reasons which we’ll go into.

GRID Autosport

We’re not massively into our racing games here, but we are fans of the work Feral Interactive does in terms of porting games to mobile. Company of Heroes next month is what we’re really looking forward to, but if you’re a fan of GRID Autosport you might be pleased to know that it’s finally made its way over to Android. Check here for a list of supported devices and requirements:

Wanna Survive

Any strategy game with a premium price-tag gets a look in here, and Wanna Survive is exactly that. It’s a stream-lined turn-based tactics game which seems to be more puzzle based than anything else. Movement and actions are simplified, and it’s about making using each character’s turn to maximum effect (i.e, kill as many zombies as possible). It looks interesting enough that I might add it to the review list, although be warned there are IAPs for ‘Coins’, and as yet we don’t know what this means. Available on iOS and Android.

Little White Rocket

We got an email about this one earlier in the week. It’s a very mellow, one-touch game where you need to guide a rocket through levels while also reading some inspired poetry. Might be a nice change of pace from all of the action-heavy games we’re used to, although this one’s only on iOS.

There’s also been a new DLC released for Talisman: Origins called The Eternal Conflict that costs £1.99

Updates

Lots of minor updates to various games this week, and of course there’s the big Stardew Valley 1.4 update, but it’s yet to officially hit mobile so we’ll probably cover it in more detail when it does.

Meanwhile DOTA Underlords has received a new update this week that adds a new alliance, and a new quicker gamemode. ‘Knockout’ mode gives players a choice of five pieces to start with, and you’re knocked out when you lose four times. There are other rules like only needing two copies to combine for a four-star, and players level up automatically every other round. Overall matches last about 10 minutes, and Knockout is meant to offer a quicker way to play the game.

Sales

Check our Black Friday 2019 Sales post for all the details on today’s top discounts.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

Toolbox allows you to sort and manage your development environments in containers without requiring root privileges or manually attaching volumes. It creates a container where you can install your own CLI tools, without installing them on the base system itself. You can also utilize it when you do not have root access or cannot install programs directly. This article gives you an introduction to toolbox and what it does.

Installing Toolbox

Silverblue includes Toolbox by default. For the Workstation and Server editions, you can grab it from the default repositories using dnf install toolbox.

Creating Toolboxes

Open your terminal and run toolbox enter. The utility will automatically request permission to download the latest image, create your first container, and place your shell inside this container.

$ toolbox enter

No toolbox containers found. Create now? [y/N] y

Image required to create toolbox container.

Download registry.fedoraproject.org/f30/fedora-toolbox:30 (500MB)? [y/N]: y

Currently there is no difference between the toolbox and your base system. Your filesystems and packages appear unchanged. Here is an example using a repository that contains documentation source for a resume under a ~/src/resume folder. The resume is built using the pandoc tool.

$ pwd /home/rwaltr $ cd src/resume/ $ head -n 5 Makefile all: pdf html rtf text docx pdf: init pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.pdf markdown/* $ make pdf

bash: make: command not found

$ pandoc -v

bash: pandoc: command not found

This toolbox does not have the programs required to build the resume. You can remedy this by installing the tools with dnf. You will not be prompted for the root password, because you are running in a container.

$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Authoring and Publishing" -y && sudo dnf install pandoc make -y

... $ make all #Successful builds

mkdir -p BUILDS

pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.pdf markdown/*

pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.html markdown/*

pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.rtf markdown/*

pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.txt markdown/*

pandoc -s -o BUILDS/resume.docx markdown/*

$ ls BUILDS/

resume.docx resume.html resume.pdf resume.rtf resume.txt

Run exit at any time to exit the toolbox.

$ cd BUILDS/

$ pandoc --version || ls

pandoc 2.2.1

Compiled with pandoc-types 1.17.5.4, texmath 0.11.1.2, skylighting 0.7.5

...

for a particular purpose.

resume.docx resume.html resume.pdf resume.rtf resume.txt

$ exit logout

$ pandoc --version || ls

bash: pandoc: command not found...

resume.docx resume.html resume.pdf resume.rtf resume.txt

You retain the files created by your toolbox in your home directory. None of the programs installed in your toolbox will be available outside of it.

Tips and tricks

This introduction to toolbox only scratches the surface. Here are some additional tips, but you can also check out the official documentation.

• Toolbox –help will show you the man page for Toolbox
• You can have multiple toolboxes at once. Use toolbox create -c Toolboxname and toolbox enter -c Toolboxname
• Toolbox uses Podman to do the heavy lifting. Use toolbox list to find the IDs of the containers Toolbox creates. Podman can use these IDs to perform actions such as rm and stop. (You can also read more about Podman in this Magazine article.)

Photo courtesy of Florian Richter from Flickr.

Update: The game’s eShop release has been delayed until the 30th November, but the physical release is out there.

Original Story [Tue 26th Nov, 2019 14:45 GMT]: Remember LastFight? We’ll forgive you if you don’t, but we covered it a while back when it was just a ‘maybe’ for a Nintendo release (it launched elsewhere in 2016).

Fast forward to the present day, and the game has – according to the publisher – just surprise-launched on the console; it wasn’t even mentioned as part of the North American or Europe download updates last week.

Based on the French comic series Lastman, Last Fight is a Power Stone-style arena brawler where the aim is to eliminate your rivals using either your fists or nearby objects.

The game apparently hit European retail stores on November 20th, and was released on the eShop two days later. However, we’ve checked both the NA and EU eShops and it’s nowhere to be seen – and, judging by the replies to the initial launch tweet, it would appear that other people are having the same problems. We’ve reached out to the publisher to find out what’s happening and will update this story if we hear back.

Have you managed to pick up a physical copy of the game? Is LastFight available in your region’s eShop? Let us know with a comment below.

Black Friday 2019 Deals & News

• Black Friday 2019 Start Times, Store Hours: GameStop, Best Buy, Target, And More
• Black Friday 2019: The Best PS4 Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: The Best Xbox One Deals So Far
• Black Friday 2019: When Does It Start, Deals To Expect, And More
• Black Friday 2019 Best Gaming Deals: PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, And PC

By Christine McKee
Friday, November 29, 2019, 12:33 pm PT (03:33 pm ET)

In a final Black Friday push, Apple Authorized Resellers are slashing prices on Apple’s 2019 iPad Air, dropping prices to all-time lows. Supplies are extremely limited and these offers may sell out at any time, so do not hesitate to act now if there’s an offer to your liking.

Already selling out

Amazon initiated the Apple iPad Air Black Friday markdowns by matching the lowest price we’ve seen to date on the 64GB Wi-Fi model at $399. B&H Photo then upped the ante with even steeper price cuts on LTE models, with savings of up to $180 off. There’s a small window of time to snap up the B&H offers before online checkout closes at sundown Eastern Time. When checkout resumes tomorrow evening, there’s no guarantee the price drops will still be in effect.

Here’s a rundown of the best iPad Air Black Friday deals, with more offers available in our Black Friday iPad Savings Guide and iPad Air Price Comparison Guide.

2019 iPad Air deals

Additional Apple Black Friday deals

AppleInsider and Apple authorized resellers are also running additional exclusive savings on Apple hardware for Black Friday that will not only deliver the lowest prices on many of the items, but also throw in bonus discounts on AppleCare, software and more. These deals are as follows:

Interested in additional Apple hardware? See if there is a Mac, iPad or Apple Watch deal that will save you $100s by checking out prices.appleinsider.com.

Leading up to the Nintendo Switch Online service’s launch back in September 2018, and during the few months that followed, it was impossible to get away from talk surrounding people’s like or dislike for its offerings, including its library of retro games.

As subscribers will be aware, being a member of Nintendo Switch Online grants you access to a number of NES and SNES games on the go. Whether you enjoyed your batch of retro games to play anytime, anywhere, or weren’t particularly fussed about the whole thing, the regular updates at least added some value to the service and helped younger generations experience classics for the first time.

Fast forward to the present day, though, and the updates seem to have just stopped.

Loading up the NES app today presents you with 63 titles (including the SP version games that would appear each month), the most of recent of which were added way back in August. As September 2019 rolled around, a batch of 20 SNES games arrived, but nothing else has been added to that collection since either. So what’s going on, Nintendo? Why have the games stopped coming?

Nintendo

In September, when the SNES games first appeared on Switch, Nintendo revealed that new titles would appear “irregularly”, rather than as part of the previous monthly system. It was said that this new ‘irregular’ strategy would also apply to the NES app, meaning that we’d no longer get the usual batch of three to four games on an easy-to-predict schedule.

That’s fine – we don’t need the same number of new games to appear on the exact same day each month, but we expected to have heard something by now. It’s been almost three whole months since the SNES games launched and it’s been more than three months since we last had a NES update, so are we wrong to have assumed that we’d have at least a couple of new titles by this point?

Are we about to get a bumper edition update for Christmas? Does Nintendo have something special lined up that we don’t know about, or has it completely forgot that these services exist? We guess only time will tell… Hopefully.

Pokémon Sword and Shield are great games in our eyes – and in the eyes of many others – but there’s no hiding from the fact that the level of difficulty is, shall we say, a little on the accessible side. That’s great if you’re just looking to have a fun adventure, but for some people, a little strife can make things even sweeter.

So here are a few ways you can make the games harder for yourself through self-imposed rules, whether you’re a series veteran looking for greater oomph, you want to start a new playthrough after already becoming champion, or you’ve just heard whispers that it’s too easy and want something more engaging.

In ascending order of difficulty:

Ditch Your Starter

The simplest and most straightforward of all the possible ways to ramp up the challenge, you can just flat-out ditch your starter Pokémon. Grookey, Scorbunny, Sobble, whomever you choose, they’re designed to be powerful very early on in the game and be the backbone of your team from start to finish. They’re also really quick to climb the level ladder, and they also evolve fairly quickly all things considered. Dropping them off at the first possible opportunity definitely makes the earlier parts of the game tougher.

Doing this is as simple as the concept itself; all you need to do is catch a wild Pokémon on Route 1 after you’ve been to the Slumbering Weald and add it to your party. Then make a beeline for the Pokémon Center in Wedgehurst and drop your starter Pokémon in a Box to relax whilst you do all the hard stuff.

If you’re worried you might be tempted to use it in the future, you could either release it to say goodbye to it (and temptation) for good, or trade it to a friend you can trust so you can use it again once your adventure is complete.

Try A Monotype Team

Dropping your starter off may be tough at first, but you’ll soon adapt in time, so if you want to really test your wits you might want to consider using what’s called a monotype team.

A monotype team is basically a team of any Pokémon that share a single type between them, much like most gym leaders do throughout the series. A team like this means you’ll not only have trouble with strong foes that are super effective against potentially your entire party, but you’ll also have to think much harder about what moves and Pokémon you choose in an effort to counter this as much as you possibly can.

Although not absolutely necessary, we recommend choosing what type your team will share before you start your adventure. You can either choose ahead of time or if you’re feeling especially daring you can let the magic of HTML choose for you by clicking on this link. If you do you’ll also be shown a list of all the Pokémon available in Sword and Shield that you can pick from – aren’t we lovely?

To start your team, you’ll likely have to ditch your starter Pokémon as well, unless you chose or were assigned Grass, Fire, or Water. You’ll have to take them through the Slumbering Weald no matter what, but as soon as you’re able to catch a Pokémon of your monotype team, you’ll have to drop your starter as soon as you can. This can be tricky with certain types, such as Fairy, as they won’t appear on Route 1 or Route 2, so you’ll have to push through until you get into the Wild Area and start your monotype team from there.

One last thing to mention, there are plenty of Pokémon that gain a type when they evolve, such as Rookidee gaining the Steel type when it ultimately evolves into Corviknight. Is it acceptable to have a Rookidee in a Steel monotype team for example? Well at the end of the day it’s your call, but in our personal view it’s perfectly acceptable as although it’s not Steel to begin with, its final form includes it, and that’s what you’ll be using for the majority of your adventure.

However, there are also Pokémon that actively lose a type when they evolve. For example, Onix is Rock and Ground-type, but upon evolving into Steelix it becomes Steel and Ground. For our money, the final evolution is the restriction you should place upon yourself, so whilst Onix would be fine in a Steel-type team (provided you intend to evolve it, which you should), Steelix would not be OK in a Rock-type team. However, these rules are 100% self-imposed, so if you want to bend our stipulations a little for any reason whatsoever, you’re perfectly free to do so. It’s your choice to do this after all.

Nuzlocke In Your Life

Now we’re in big trousers territory. You may well have heard of Nuzlocke at some point, and for good reason – it amps up the difficulty of the games so significantly that poor planning can even result in deleting your save file. Yikes.

The Nuzlocke challenge was created by Nick Franco and named after his webcomic series of the same name. The very basic principles of it are simple:

• If one of your Pokémon faints, you must release it.
• You may only catch the first Pokémon you find in each area, and nothing else.

People have evolved upon the ideas of Nuzlocke over time and there are naturally going to be a few questions with rules as simple as these; “what about the Slumbering Weald?”, “does it have to be the first overworld Pokémon I see or the first rustle of a grassy patch?”, “can I keep my starter Pokémon?”, “where are the toilets?”, and so on.

So we’ve compiled our own list of Nuzlocke rules specifically for the 8th generation, including some optional ones if you fancy a bit more pep.

Mandatory Nuzlocke Rules

These must be followed throughout your entire playthrough.

1. You may choose your starter Pokémon gifted to you by Leon.
2. You may only capture the first Pokémon you battle in each area. This can either be an overworld Pokémon, a random encounter from entering a grassy patch, a Pokémon you reel in from a fishing spot, a Pokémon that falls out of a Berry Tree to attack you, or a Max Raid Battle (you may not leave the Den if you do not want that Pokémon, and you must use NPCs rather than other players over the internet or via local wireless). If you fail to capture this Pokémon for whatever reason, be it because it fainted or ran away, you may not catch another from that area. This rule comes into effect only once you receive the Poké Balls you get from talking to your mum after visiting the Slumbering Weald for the first time. Each area within the Wild Area is considered a separate location, so you may catch a total of 17 Pokémon in the Wild Area, one for each location contained within it.
3. You may not trade or interact with other users via local wireless or over the internet. This includes the Surprise Trade option and Max Raid Battles. Pokémon that require evolution through trading such as Gengar are exempt from this, provided they are traded back immediately.
4. You may trade Pokémon with in-game NPCs, as long as the Pokémon they request has been caught in accordance with the restrictions listed in rule 2. You may also accept Pokémon given to you by in-game NPCs without trading, such as Toxel.
5. You may not use Mystery Gift or event Pokémon, such as Gigantamax Meowth.
6. You must nickname every Pokémon you capture, including your starter. This will make you appreciate them and bond with them more than you would otherwise.
7. If one of your Pokémon faints, you must transfer it to a Box immediately and release it. This means you may not use any items that revive the Pokémon either, it is considered permanently fainted and must be released, no exceptions. You may however heal your Pokémon using items such as Potions and Antidotes.
8. You may store additional Pokémon you have caught in Boxes to be used if you wish to switch out any member of your party (or one of your party faints) provided they are caught in accordance with the restrictions listed in rule 2.
9. You must have the Autosave feature active at all times, and you may not reload a previous save at any time. Each action in-game is considered permanent and must be treated as such.
10. Should all of your party Pokémon faint, resulting in a white-out, it is considered a game over and you must start your entire adventure over from the beginning, even if you have reserve Pokémon in Boxes.

Optional Nuzlocke Rules

Feel free to mix and match as many of these as you wish, or ignore them entirely.

• You may not use in-game healing items to heal your Pokémon. This includes status-healing items such as Antidote.
• You may not purchase additional Poké Balls of any kind, you may only use those you find on the ground.
• You may not use held items with your Pokémon.
• You may not use the Pokémon Link Box to access your Boxes outside of a Pokémon Center.
• You may not use any items at all besides Poké Balls and mandatory Key Items.
• You may not use the Pokémon Camp feature to heal your Pokémon with curries.
• You may not use the Pokémon Camp feature at all.
• You may not use starter Pokémon, and they must be released as soon as you have a Pokémon to replace them.
• You may not use the Box system to hold reserve Pokémon.
• You may not run from any battle.
• You must use the ‘Set’ style of battle rather than the default ‘Switch’. This can be found in the Options menu.
• You may not use the Move Tutor.
• You may not use the Flying Taxis.
• You may not Dynamax your Pokémon.

We told you it was big trousers time, didn’t we? Nuzlocke is undoubtedly not for everyone, but if you’ve been looking to get some more challenge in your Pokémon games, you’ll certainly find it with this!