You probably don’t need us to tell you that Mario Kart is one of Nintendo’s crown jewels; the series has sold a staggering 150 million copies to date, with 35 million of those attributable to the most recent mainline instalment, Mario Kart 8 – which, in a rather unique twist, is currently the best-selling game on both the Wii U and Switch, thanks to its “Deluxe” update.

All of this might lead you to assume that Nintendo would have a full-blown sequel on store shelves by now (Mario Kart 8 came out in 2014, lest we forget), but instead, we’re getting something that has the potential to be even more interesting: Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. Sure, a Mario Kart outing that uses “Mixed Reality” technology and remote-control cars might not have been the first thing on every fan’s wish-list, but a remote demonstration we were given this week illustrates that there’s an awful lot of potential in this seemingly gimmick-heavy concept.

Mario Kart Live, as you’re hopefully aware, hinges around the use of a small RC car which comes equipped with its own camera. This camera displays a live view of the car’s surroundings directly to your Switch console’s screen (or you TV – the game works docked, too), allowing you to control it in very much the same way you’d interact with a virtual one in a game of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Nintendo – along with developer Velan Studios – has even managed to transfer the franchises’ famous power-sliding mechanic to this new setup, complete with trademark speed boosts and the like. Exactly how it has achieved this feat of engineering in a real-world, remote-control toy is something that Nintendo’s representatives couldn’t accurately communicate during the presentation, but it’s definitely there and should ensure that Mario Kart Live ‘feels’ as close as possible to the traditional experience we’re used to.

A big selling point with this mixed reality take on the famous franchise is the fact that the course is located in the real world; using a set of cardboard gates, you can create your own circuit in any room where there’s enough space. While the mocked-up room shown in the presentation we watched was pretty massive, Nintendo is keen to stress that Mario Kart Live is perfectly playable in more compact environments (“at least 3.5 x 3 metres”, or 10×12 feet, is what Nintendo suggests) – a claim which we’ll be sure to investigate once we have the final version in our hands.

Setting up a game of Mario Kart Live is reasonably simple, as you might expect from a Nintendo product. There’s no game card to worry about – the software will be available for free from the eShop for anyone to download, but a car is required to actually play it. The car’s camera is used to scan a QR code on the Switch screen to ‘link’ it with the console – a process which takes seconds and, presumably, will make it easy for friends who don’t own the full package to experience the game on their own consoles by downloading the free game and ‘borrowing’ the car of a friend. The camera is also used to take a snapshot of your face for your in-game driver’s licence.

© Nintendo

Creating your course is fairly straightforward, too. You simply lay out the gates (along with optional direction panels at the side of the track which help guide players around the course) and then you use the car’s view to ‘paint’ the track. A lovely animation is shown of your vehicle’s wheels getting liberally coated in paint, which you then use to draw the outline of the course; crossing the finish line sets the track in stone and you’re ready to race. You can craft some surprisingly complex circuits, too, as it’s possible to have the track overlap itself.

It’s a fun process, which is good news because you’re going to have to do it each and every time you boot the game up, as courses aren’t retained after you turn the system off. The presentation also made it clear that players are expected to add their own touches to circuits to make them more dynamic; an example given was the use of small cardboard boxes which, when hit, would create new obstacles and change the racing line.

Once you’re into the game proper, you have a range of options available. You can engage in the traditional Grand Prix mode – set across eight competitions featuring 24 courses in total (there’s even a mirror mode) – to earn coins which are used to unlock in-game items (more on those in a bit) or you can tackle the Time Trial mode, which is handy for when you’ve got a second person who wants to play but you only possess a single RC car; in this mode, you can race against ‘Ghost’ data to simulate the impression of competing with another person. As we’ve come to expect, different race speeds are available – 50cc, 100cc and 150cc – with the kart’s pace alternating accordingly across all three. Younger players will be best using the lowest setting (as well as the included driving aids, which will be familiar to Mario Kart 8 players), while veterans will no doubt crave the intensity of the 150cc speed.

Given that the game uses real-world karts and AR elements which only appear on your screen, bridging the gap between reality and fiction was always going to be Mario Kart Live’s biggest obstacle – and from the footage we saw, it would seem that Velan Studios and Nintendo have done a pretty convincing job. Naturally, we can’t say for sure until we actually play the game, but the aforementioned drift mechanic seems to work well enough – the on-screen view certainly gave the impression that the kart was sliding on the track, anyway.

A rather more impressive way in which Mario Kart Live mixed realities is seen on a stage which has savage cross-winds; these make the kart move to one side, so the player has to physically wrestle with the controls to maintain the racing line. Elsewhere, a Chain Chomp is attached to the kart, giving it a boost of speed but also dragging it in random directions, potentially ruining your race. All of these in-game elements are reflected in the way the kart behaves in the real world – an impressive combination of the actual reality with virtual reality.

Changing the layout of the track on a regular basis means you can keep the experience feeling fresh, but there are other factors which impact your experience. Some races can take place underwater, for example, which alters handling, while others take place in the wet, which causes speed boost mushrooms to sprout on the circuit. On colder courses, there’s the added risk of being frozen during the race, while another theme drops retro-style Goombas from the original Super Mario Bros. in your way.

In addition to this, you can tinker with the way the gates behave when you’re initially setting up a track; you can choose for them to offer item boxes or speed boosts, or you can give them a negative effect, such as the aforementioned uncontrollable Chain Chomp or a Thwomp. There’s also the Magikoopa effect, which mirrors your view of the course, making it harder to control your kart. Because the gates are effectively one of the main ways you can alter the feel of the course – outside of totally altering its layout, of course – you can go one step further and change which part of the gate offers the effect, which means it’s possible to avoid a negative status change or totally miss an item box. Speaking of the latter, you get all of the traditional items here, including shells, banana skins and Bullet Bills, the latter of which puts your car into auto-pilot for a short period, just like it does in other Mario Kart titles.

As was the case in Mario Kart 7 and 8, it’s possible to unlock different kart designs to use in the game by spending coins earned from racing; you can also unlock outfits for your driver and horn sounds. One outfit sees Mario in a suit of armour, while another is lifted directly from Super Mario Maker (complete with a kart which looks like a yellow digger). While the physical RC car doesn’t change – that’s the kind of magic even Nintendo isn’t capable of yet – your in-game perspective shows the new vehicle, which gives the game some welcome visual variety. Before you get too excited, these outfits and karts are purely cosmetic and don’t impact your in-game performance – something which will naturally limit the scope of Mario Kart Live in comparison to previous entries in the series. Presumably, it may have been too tricky for the developers to manifest different handling and speed stats in a real-world remote control kart.

Speaking of the kart itself, while we’re still itching to get our hands on the real thing, we can confirm a few key points. Yes, the RC car itself is robust enough to withstand collisions during races (there’s no auto-avoidance system in place, a Nintendo representative confirmed to us) and yes, any combination of karts can be used in a multiplayer race.

© Nintendo

Up to four people can take part (with one person acting as the host) and you can have four Marios, four Luigis or any combination of the two (one would hope that Nintendo is planning to release more cars in the future with different characters). It was also illustrated in one video that uneven floors – or wooden floors with rugs – aren’t an issue and can actually make the experience more challenging. Sadly, we weren’t able to get solid answers on battery life or range, but we can confirm that outside of its internal motor, the car itself is totally silent and doesn’t emit any other noises during play. It’s charged using a USB-C connection.

Because we weren’t able to go fully hands-on with Mario Kart Live, we’ve going to reserve judgment on its ability to completely live up to the tantalising promise of mixing real-world karts with the virtual worlds the franchise is famous for; questions remain on how closely the handling matches that seen in the mainline game, and how well the setup works on rooms which are totally carpeted or don’t have a lot of space for twisting bends or sharp turns.

All of these points will be answered fully when the game is safely in our hands, but what we can say at this stage is that Mario Kart Live has us both intrigued and excited; this is pure Nintendo, mixing toys with games in a way that few other companies seem to these days.

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit launches on October 16th, 2020. Check out our guide on where you can pre-order your copy here.

COVID-19 has changed the world in a sustainable way. Suddenly, even the most conservative bosses realized that it is perfectly efficient to allow developers to work from home. Remote work may easily be one of the most transformative trends in the 21st century: It will have an impact on almost every conventional job under the sun—and the year-over-year double-digit growth of freelancing platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr proves this point.

This article helps you to identify the best places to look for work-from-home, remote freelancing jobs—with a focus on jobs or gigs in the attractive programming sector. The average freelancer earns $51-$61 per hour and, thus, it may be an attractive way for you to build a second income stream besides your main job income.

So, without any further introduction, let’s dive into the top places to look for freelancing gigs! Here’s a quick overview of all gigs—ordered by relevance for freelance developers:

1. TopTal Developers
2. StackOverflow Jobs
3. Hacker News Jobs
4. GitHub Jobs
5. Finxter Freelancer
6. PeoplePerHour Developer Jobs
7. Authentic Jobs
8. Vue Jobs
9. Remote Leads
10. Redditors For Hire
11. WeWorkRemotely
12. Upwork
13. Fiverr
14. Twitter Company Remote Jobs

ALL LINKS OPEN IN A NEW TAB!

1. TopTal Developers

2. StackOverflow Jobs

3. Hacker News Jobs

4. GitHub Jobs

5. Finxter Freelancer

6. PeoplePerHour Developer Jobs

7. Authentic Jobs

8. Vue Jobs

9. Remote Leads

10. Redditors For Hire

11. WeWorkRemotely

12. Upwork

13. Fiverr

14. Twitter Company Remote Jobs

What Are The Best Freelancing Sites for Coders? Video Lesson

Want to become a freelance developer earning six-figures? Check out the FINXTER Python freelancer course—the world’s most in-depth Python freelancer program!

The post Top 14 Places to Find Remote Freelance Developer Gigs and Work From Home first appeared on Finxter.

This week at Bungie, we’re summoning some ghosts.

Next week, we’re getting spooky up in the Tower again. Festival of the Lost returns on October 6 for more fright-filled fun. This year’s festival is going to rock!

Eva Levante, or as you all affectionately call her “Space Grandma,” has returned to the Tower to lead Guardians in a celebration of those we’ve lost. We miss you, Cayde.

The Haunted Forest is back and filled with ghoulish enemies. This year, we’ve added five chests to the end of the activity for five times the loot!

To open the chests, you are going to need some Cipher Decoders. Talk to Spider to get started and then they will drop from playing any of your favorite activities across the solar system – similar to Umbral Engrams. Braytech Werewolf and Horror Story will both be rewarded from these chests and each have new perk combinations to hunt for.

You’ve probably been hearing this a lot lately, but it goes double for Festival of the Lost: don’t forget to put on your mask. There are new masks available this year as well as some favorites from the past. Eva has a Masquerader Helmet which you can apply your masks to as ornaments before you head out in the world to start stockpiling candy. The mask mods for the Haunted Forest also return from last year’s event.

Before we wrap up the event on November 3, you are going to want to complete three of the Triumphs for opening chests in the Haunted Forest. Once you finish off the required Triumphs you will be able to trade in some of your candy for a mummified Exotic Sparrow, ship, and Ghost.

Finishing the “Wrapped and Ready” Triumph required to get the Exotic Ghost also unlocks the ability to purchase the Restless Shell Ghost pin through Bungie Rewards.

Speaking of Bungie Rewards, we also have a terrifying new emblem available for free if you finish the initial quest during Festival of the Lost.

That’s the gist of it, but here are a few quick notes that may answer some questions you have:

Direct Relief 

It seems like 2020 has been one disaster after another. It’s easy to get discouraged when times get tough, but the Destiny community always comes together to support those in need.

Here in the United States, more than 500,000 people having been evacuated from their homes across California, Oregon, and Washington, entire towns devoured by flames, and there has been a serious impact on the respiratory health of millions of individuals in and around these areas.

If you purchase an Empathetic Ghost Shell pin you will also instantly receive a code for the “Benevolent Hue” emblem as a thank you for your support.

Thank you all for continuing to step up to every challenge that this year has sent our way and for truly being the most generous and caring gaming community there is.

---

Double Ordeal

Festival of the Lost is not the only reason to log in next week. Double rewards in Nightfall: The Ordeal is back! Grab a few friends or meet some new ones in the matchmade difficulties. It’s a great time to stock up on Enhancement Prisms and Ascendant Shards for your Masterworking needs as well as to grab any missing Exotics or upgrade to a better stat roll.

The strike will be “A Garden World” so watch out for those killer robots. 

PSR BUT IT’S HAUNTED 

Now we turn things over to our Player Support team with the latest on known issues.

This is their report.

Festival of the Lost

Festival of the Lost 2020 is set to begin on October 6, and will conclude at the weekly reset on November 3. Players can view our updated Festival of the Lost Guide for information on event specific activities, rewards, and triumphs.

During the event, players may encounter the following issues:

• Inspecting a Cipher Decoder will incorrectly display Masterworked versions of the Braytech Werewolf and Horror Story auto rifles as potential Haunted Forest Cache drops.
• The Wrapped and Ready Festival of the Lost Triumph refers to the Restless Shell as the mummy Ghost, when it should be called the Festival of the Lost Ghost.
• The lower half of the Warlock Blood Lineage Robes Universal Armor Ornament will experience a visual texture error at the launch of Beyond Light. This issue will be resolved in a patch soon after release. 

Players who observe issues during the event should report to our #Help forum.

KNOWN ISSUES 

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• Players using the feminine character model may see gaps between the neck of Hunter cloaks and certain chest pieces.
• The Artifact is sometimes enabled in Iron Banner.
• Bounties/progress is sometimes not counted in Iron Banner.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Channel Surfing  

Let’s take a quick look at some of the best community-created movies we saw surfing the web this week. Do people still say that? “Surfing the web?” or is that a relic from the early 2000s? Anyways, here’s “Wonderwall.”

Movie of the Week: The Fast Find a Way

Honorable Mention: Smashing

I love this time of year. Any time it’s socially acceptable to put on a costume and eat sweets until you get a stomachache is a good time. It’s extra fun if you have kids/pets to dress up. Can’t wait to also start dressing up my Hunter next week as well. I’m going to make him look so hideous that it gives Dmg a stomachache.

<3 Cozmo 

Remnant: From the Ashes has been out for a year now. Its simple pitch of “Dark Souls with guns” was certainly enough to capture attention in September of 2019, but it came with an additional unusual pitch: thanks to its random level seeding and online community, it had the effect of becoming a live game supported by DLC as well.

That’s turned Gunfire Games from the house that made Darksiders II into a new kind of live game studio, one that relies on support for a single game with some paid DLC, rather than microtransactions, to keep the doors open. After a year of successfully keeping players hooked in its grim, moody world, we wanted to know what’s gone right for the folks at Gunfire, and what other developers might be able to learn from their success.

David Adams, creative director and president of Gunfire Games, joined us for a quick conversation last week, to explain how the Texas-based game developer was able to break away from the broad standards of live games and woo players with a different kind of shared online world.

First, some tablesetting. Remnant: From the Ashes is comparable to Dark Souls in that it’s a linear hardcore action game with a monstrous setting that rewards player reflexes. But one of its core differences is that online co-op takes a more dominant role in the game, and that the levels players pass through are uniquely generated for each player, giving them independent access to different zones with different loot.

So if a player wants a particular item, they need to work with their friends or the online community to figure out who has access to a particular room with a particular boss that needs slaying. And since items are designed to be more unique than the “make numbers and colors go up” method other online RPGs use, the incentive to explore those areas is strong.

Adams says this model has worked for Gunfire over the year in part because the company has pushed far away from the idea that players should need to grind for loot. “The emphasis of Remnant was to make a game that you could play over and over again, and get different content,” he explained. Because content is so expensive to produce, many live games (justifiably so!) rely on a grinding loop to extend previously-made content while new players work on that.

What’s interesting about Adams’ perspective on this model is that it actually strays away from the “forever game” that’s attracted developers to the online RPG genre of late. Adams said there was some desire to make a game that players could walk away feeling satisfied from, with the hopes that new content would lure them back in to capture something like the original experience.

It’s shaped how DLC has informed the team’s long-term success. Since one player, on their own, can’t see all of the bosses or weapons a content has to offer, they have an incentive to not just clear an area, but check in with other players to get access to everything else Gunfire has made.

Factoring in that “away time” from Remnant has helped informed Gunfire’s post-launch decisions. “I fully admit that…we didn’t really design the game to be like, ‘you’re gonna play this literally forever,’ because we didn’t want a game built around the idea of grinding the same content. Once you’ve seen all the random content, and gotten all the cool collectibles and figured out all the secrets and puzzles, we’re totally okay with [players] saying ‘alright, cool, I played Remnant.”

This apparently has borne out in Remnant’s sales numbers as well. Adams explained that releasing DLC for Remnant over the last year hasn’t resulted in what he would call the most “financially optimized” formula for the value of each DLC pack, but continued support for Remnant by way of DLC has attracted new players to the base game. “You get a lot of people on the fence, and they see you’re advertising all this new content, you can bundle the base game with all that DLC and it gets to be a better value proposition for a player,” he pointed out.

Remnant’s unique social situation (players hunting for certain “rooms” to get certain “drops”) raised an interesting discussion about the game’s social factor. Cross-play has been apparently difficult to implement (it only exists between Epic Games and Steam currently), and Adams admits the fact that there’s no way to look for specific instances within Remnant creates a small communication barrier between players.

But Adams says that other social design considerations within Remnant have encouraged players to go online and build their connections there, on platforms like Discord or Reddit. He said there are other ways that developers can make social design considerations to influence player interaction in their games.

“We think about socialization in a way that’s actually counterintuitive to how some people think,” he joked. “I actually think friendly fire is a really cool social mechanic that makes the game more interesting.”

This refers to Remnant’s rule that players’ gunfire can in fact, damage other players, a trait that other team-based or cooperative games have been shying away from. “It requires you to coordinate a little bit more,” he explained. It’s a feature that can be abused, but it helped shape other design choices in Remnant that kept players attached and communicating with one another.

“It just requires you to be aware of your teammates. You can’t just blindly fire and not worry about it…and you can’t just run in front of someone blasting something because you’re gonna get blasted.

If there’s one critical insight Adams has about the time Gunfire spent working on Remnant, it’s the time the team spent “wasting time” getting the initial prototype off the ground. There was a moment where while the rest of Gunfire was working on contract work or other projects, the team behind Remnant just numbered a small few working away at experiments that might not pan out.

“It’s really hard, especially as an independent studio, to resist the urge to just dump everybody [working] on it,” he said. “But we did a good job of getting other contract work and making sure most of the team was employed in other ways, so that we could really have three or four people working on [Remnant’s prototype] as long as possible.”

“That’s extremely valuable, I think.”

There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, specifically the artists among us, in the form of the Be A Creative Superhero Bundle. The primary stars of this bundle are the suite of Corel graphics applications, specifically Painter 2020, Particle Shop and PaintShop, as well as Corel Draw Suite, which unfortunately is only a 6-month subscription. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers, and the tiers in this bundle are:

1$ Tier

• AfterShot Standard

25$ Tier

• PaintShop Pro 2020
• ParticleShop + 11 Brushes
• 6 extensions for PaintShop Pro

30$ Tier

• Corel CAD 2019
• Painter 2020
• CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2020 6-month sub
• 10 Brush packs
• Light Leak Scripts for PaintShop Pro 2020

It should be noted earlier versions of Painter have been featured in prior bundles, but never 2020. PaintShop 2020 was also featured in a prior bundle so be sure to check your Humble inventory before purchasing. As with all Humbles you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks so much if you do) to support GFS by using this link. You can learn more about this bundle in the video below.

Intelligent question-answering is one of the most useful and delightful features of search. As a user, you ask a question (e.g., “what are the benefits of eating apricots”) and can get the answer directly (e.g., info about health and nutrition benefits of apricots) at the top of the page without further need to search for relevant content by yourself. The feature aims to direct users to the most concise and precise answers from web documents, thus saving users time and efforts.

English-language question answering from web has been enabled on Bing for several years, and another dozen of languages, like French and German, have been added within the last year. But our work isn’t done – there are thousands of languages in the world! Not all of them have rich enough web content to derive good answers, but for those that do, uses of those spoken languages deserve the same useful, delightful, time-saving experience.

Recently, Bing expanded its intelligent question-answering feature to more than 100 languages, making AI and Bing itself more inclusive and accessible. What is amazing is this is achieved by using a language agnostic approach. In other words, the AI model generating the intelligent question-answering in Urdu is the same one generating the intelligent question-answering in Romanian.  Here are some examples of this experience in various languages (if you speak a language other than English, feel free to give it a try, but be reminded to set your browser to the relevant language):

Here are search results in different languages for “what are the benefits of eating apricots”:
Example 1 – { what are the benefits of eating apricots }
Example 2 – { hva er fordelene med å spise aprikoser }
Example 3 – { какие витамины есть в абрикосе }
Example 4 – { kayısı yemenin faydaları nelerdir }
Example 5 – { خوبانی کھانے کے کیا فوائد ہیں؟ }
Example 6 – { నేరేడు పండు తినడం వల్ల కలిగే ప్రయోజనాలు ఏమిటి }
 
The magic behind this language agnostic experience is the advanced universal deep pretrained models for natural language understanding and the combination of real-time and near real-time GPU model inference to scale question-answering to markets all around the world.
 

Universal Deep Models for 100+ Languages

Recently, multilingual pre-trained models such as M-BERT, Unicoder, XLM-Roberta and Turing Universal Language Representation model (powered by Microsoft latest cross-lingual innovation InfoXLM) have been developed to learn multilingual language representations by leveraging large-scale multilingual corpuses for cross-lingual pre-training. Those powerful multilingual models are capable of zero-shot or few-shot cross-lingual transferring capabilities. However, when shipping the models to 100 languages, the performance on low resource languages may still have a big gap with rich resource languages (such as English). To further close the gap, a series of cross-lingual techniques have been developed such as task/domain adaption, user feedback-based question answering, data augmentation, etc. Powered by these SOTA cross lingual technologies, our question answering system becomes truly language agnostic.

Serving Universal Models at Scale  

Universal models are difficult to serve at web search scale because common approaches to reduce model complexity like distillation can lead to lower quality results. This is especially problematic for question-answering where precision is essential to ensure a positive user experience. However, without reducing model complexity, real-time model inference can take longer than would be acceptable for search engines where users expect fast results.

To address this serving challenge, we augmented our existing real-time question-answering models with a near real-time inference system. This system efficiently runs sophisticated universal models that would typically be too slow for users to generate high quality answers. These answers will be immediately available the next time a similar question is asked.  By combining both instantaneous and near real-time model inference, we’re able to provide more users with direct answers to their questions in the languages they speak. 
 

Summary

We successfully scaled Bing intelligent question-answering feature to over 100 languages and 200 regions in the world. Existing language understanding techniques and platform evolution have made a big break-through for more natural and language agnostic searching experience. We do believe there is still space to continue to improve answers to users’ questions, so stay tuned as there is more innovation to come.

Beyond question-answering, Bing and Microsoft researchers released XGLUE cross lingual benchmark, which aims to help the research community further advance language-agnostic models and make AI systems more inclusive.

Please give Bing intelligent question-answering a try with your language and region setting. We would love to hear your feedback or suggestions! You can give feedback by using either the thumbs up/down button below the answers or the feedback button in the bottom right corner of the search results page.

The latest Nintendo Download update for North America has arrived, and it’s bringing new games galore to the eShop in your region. As always, be sure to drop a vote in our poll and comment down below with your potential picks for the week. Enjoy!

Switch eShop – Highlights

Super Mario Bros. 35 (Nintendo, 1st Oct, free with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription) – The iconic platforming action of Super Mario Bros. gets a 35-player twist in this free-to-download game that’s exclusive to Nintendo Switch Online players. Race against time, defeat enemies and sabotage your opponents in an online* battle to become the last Mario standing. Each player is given the same timed stage, but defeating enemies will earn you extra time while you attack your opponents. With the right combination of speed, skill and strategy, you just might thrive in Super Mario Bros. 35! (Playable until March 31, 2021).

Rogue Company (Hi-Rez Studios, 30th Sep, $0.00) – Rogue Company is now free to play! The fate of the world is in your hands in this third-person, tactical-action shooter. Suit up as one of the elite agents of Rogue Company, each with their own individual set of skills, and save the day in a variety of different game modes. – Read our Rogue Company review and more about the F2P update

Ys Origin (Dotemu, 1st Oct, $19.99) – Enter the World of Ys and discover the epic Japanese action role-playing game. Following a devastating demonic invasion, the twin Goddesses use their magic to bring the inhabitants of legendary Ys safely into the sky. While the demons work to construct Devil’s Tower and reach the humans’ new abode, the Goddesses disappear. As a mighty warrior or a cunning mage, you must seek the Goddesses in Devil’s Tower. Your swordsmanship and spells will help you banish evil from the land of your ancestors. – Read our Ys Origin review

Switch eShop – New Releases

103 (Dystopia Interactive, 2nd Oct, $9.99) – Lily has never been quite like other people. Since she was a child, her wild imagination and strong memory have given her the talent to create her own home. A place in her mind away from the dangers of the world, to keep her dreams and memories safe. But during a night out with her friends, something happened. Something terrible and now her life has changed forever. Help Lily use her imagination to unlock her memories and relive the events of that night.

9th Dawn III (Valorware, 6th Oct, $15.99) – 9th Dawn III is a huge 2D open world Role Playing Game and collectathon dungeon crawler packed full of adventure! Delve into the depths of the darkest dungeons, fighting over 270 unique monsters and searching for vast amounts of loot, treasures and rare materials.

Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders (Microids, 6th Oct, $29.99) – The ABC Murders is an adventure and investigation game adapted from the classic Agatha Christie novel. The player embodies the famous Hercule Poirot in a 3rd person perspective adventure game packed with mysteries. Once again, the private detective will find himself up against a mysterious opponent who goes by the name of “ABC”. Your intelligence will never have been so challenged! You will have to explore many crime scenes in various cities set in beautiful surroundings across the United Kingdom.

Air Missions: HIND (Grindstone, 24th Sep, $24.99) – Air Missions: HIND is an action combat flight simulator based on the Russian Mi-24 Hind assault helicopter, also known as the ‘Flying Tank’. Equip the weapon of your choice!

Animals for Toddlers (winterworks, 24th Sep, $6.99) – Tap the different animals to interact with them and hear their common sounds or other funny noises. Some animals and little surprises are hidden within the game. Can you find all secrets? The game features SIX different locations: Farm, Antarctica, Desert, Jungle, Ocean, and Australia. The game makes use of the touch screen functionality only. So the menu and every scene can be played with touch controls only.

Arcade Archives BURNIN’ RUBBER (HAMSTER, 24th Sep, $7.99) – “BURNIN’ RUBBER” is an action game released by Data East in 1982. Race the course against enemy vehicles, avoiding obstacles and aiming to be first to the goal. Speeding up will make it possible to jump, allowing you to not only avoid obstacles, but also land on enemy vehicles, exploding them to gain points.

Birthday of Midnight (Ratalaika Games, 2nd Oct, $4.99) – From the creators of Midnight, Midnight Deluxe, and 36 Fragments of Midnight comes another round of golf-like action fun! Everyone’s favorite fairy is back and ready to be once again launched into the sky. But as always, treacherous obstacles like spikes, circular saws, and plenty of other dangerous hazards are par for the course. To earn a perfect score you must accurately complete each level in the minimum number of strokes, providing an additional layer of challenge. Do you have the skill to swing for a hole in one?

Candy Raid: The Factory (KR Game Studios, 1st Oct, $4.99) – Candy Raid: The Factory is a retro top-down puzzle and exploration game. You play the candy-happy witch Candy as she uses her elemental powers to solve puzzles and unlock secrets in her never-ending quest to sate her sweet tooth. Glorious retro pixel art in a top-down adventure style. Family-friendly non-violent puzzle action and adventure.

Charterstone: Digital Edition (Acram, 6th Oct, $24.99) – The official digital adaptation of Jamey Stegmaier’s board game – Charterstone! It’s a campaign strategy game with high replayability, where players build the new Eternal City! Build and discover in Charterstone!

Danger Gazers (Ultimate Games, 5th Oct, $9.99) – Unlock new heroes and relics as you try to conquer the wasteland, master the skills, decisions and patience. Luck is not on your side. It’s all about replayability and maximum randomization. Procedurally generated levels? Check. Random map generation? Check. Random events? Check. Tons of guns and items? Double check!

Farm Builder (LAN – GAMES EOOD, 1st Oct, $9.99) – Farm Builder is strategy puzzle board game in which you have to construct farms, roads and surround windmills and water-towers in order to score points. The game is online multiplayer and in each room can play between 2 and 5 people together. The winner is the player who manages to score the most points.

From Orbit (Tentacle Head Games, 6th Oct, $9.99) – In From Orbit you’ll manage the crew of a small spaceship. Stranded deep in uncharted space, they need to make their way home. Journey from planet to planet, each procedurally generated with unique environments, challenges, and alien creatures.

Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan (Artifex Mundi, 2nd Oct, $14.99) – When a mysterious illness befalls the queen of the Eagle Kingdom, a famous healer is summoned to Eagle Castle to examine her. The Healer’s quest takes a sudden turn when the infant prince vanishes under mysterious circumstances. The queen is accused of practicing dark magic and thrown into the prison tower. According to the kingdom’s law, sorcery is a crime punishable by death. The desperate King, believing his wife is innocent, begs the healer to find a way to exonerate the queen. The protagonist has only one day to reach the ruins of the Swan Kingdom and unravel the mystery behind the ruling family’s curse.

Hot Shot Burn (Forever Entertainment, 1st Oct, $14.99) – Grab some popcorn, invite up to 4 friends, and experience crazy couch battles full of ridiculous flukes and insane skill shots. Can’t invite friends to come over? No problem! Just set up a game night and seamlessly play online. Pick your hero, from an ass-whooping space wrestler to deadly moth assassin and one very confused fluffy alien. Each character has unique skills and playstyles, so find your match and get ready to explode your friends and loved ones for a galactic audience of screaming fans. It’s showtime!

Let’s Sing Queen (Ravenscourt, 2nd Oct, $39.99) – Sing alone or share the stage with your friends in compelling game modes while you follow in the footsteps of Queen, the biggest rock band ever, with the legendary lead singer Freddie Mercury. Let their music take you on a trip through different decades. Master “Bohemian Rhapsody”, challenge your friends to a “Bicycle Race” or rock out to hits like “We Will Rock You”, “Another One Bites The Dust”, “I Want To Break Free” and “We Are The Champions”.

Liege Dragon (1st Oct, $14.99) – With Abigore, the Evil Dragon, coming back to life, the kingdom of Blaze was thrown into confusion. Yuran who has lost his memory witnesses a village being destroyed, and heads for the capital hoping to find something he could do in this time of destruction. Here begins an adventure to find the Dragon Tools of the Three Heroes, to confront the revived dragon and bring peace to the world!

Logic Puzzle Collection: Sudoku – Permudoku – Nonodoku (Diplodocus Games, 2nd Oct, $0.99) – Logic Puzzle Collection is a puzzle game that offers three distinct styles of logic puzzles. In the Sudoku mode, the player is tasked to fill out a 9 x 9 field with numbers from 1 to 9, such that each row, each column and each 3 x 3 sub-field contains exactly one occurance of each of the numbers 1 to 9. Permudoku is a variation of the classic Sudoku puzzle, where instead of numbers, colours have to be placed on a 9 x 9 in such a way that each colour appears exactly once in each column, row and 3 x 3 sub-field.

Make a Killing (Dystopia Interactive, 2nd Oct, $9.99) – Make a killing is an emotional andconfronting, anxiety provoking single-player survival horror game. Played in a first-person perspective, the player takes on the role of protagonist Cole, a man that travels to unhallowed grounds in hopes of saving his brother Jace. Crippled by debt, Jace has been blinded by the pursuit of payout collecting untouched gold deposits, only to fall into the hands of accursed mass murderer Ira King. Despite his noble intentions, Cole has become ensnared in a game of cat and mouse with Ira in an arrangement that will bring about the end.

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix (Game Mill, 6th Oct, $39.99) – Nickelodeon Kart Racers is back and we’re kicking it into overdrive! In Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix, you can select from 30 playable racers and 70 team members to assemble your ultimate pit crew. Choose your favorites from Nickelodeon’s hall of fame, including JoJo Siwa, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the babies from Rugrats, the cool kids from Hey Arnold! , Ren and Stimpy, Lincoln Loud and his sisters, and more!

Nubarron: The adventure of an unlucky gnome (Ultimate Games, 1st Oct, $9.99) – Gnome, one of the merry and lucky inhabitants of the forest, lost his lucky hat. This unfortunate event turns out to be a little bit more important than it may seem at plain sight. Gnome’s hat was the source of his luckiness and with it gone an unpredictable thing happened. The stormy Cloud formed on top of Gnome taking the place of his hat. Gnome wanted his luck back. And so, a shakespearean drama began…

Orangeblood (PLAYISM, 1st Oct, $19.99) – [199X, New Koza] It’s the end of the 20th century, on a historic timeline different from that which we know. A manmade island off the coast of Okinawa is humming with a dirty, exotic vibe – and it’s awesome! Rust and faded concrete glisten in the morning sun and the late-night neon, showing off the various faces of the island.

Powertris (No Gravity Games, 1st Oct, $4.99) – Powertris is a creative mix of two well-known and well-liked classical titles – Tetris and Pipemania. By placing blocks, the player must pay attention to whether both sides of the system are connected with the sockets on the edges of the screen. During the game, the player will have to make quick decisions as well as use special blocks.

Quell (Fallen Tree Games , 3rd Oct, $7.99) – Quell has been critically-acclaimed for its 80+ levels of ingenious gameplay, gorgeous art style, and haunting soundtrack. The objective is simple: slide a droplet around a layout of obstacles, traps and pathways, until you have collected all the pearls. Underneath this simple gameplay lies a world of intricacy! Quell’s appeal lies in its gentle, soothing mood, which makes it a great way to unwind. Try Quell today, and fall in love with this enchanting experience. . .

Red Crow Mysteries: Legion (Ocean Media, 1st Oct, $9.99) – Your extraordinary gift is also your biggest curse. It is a burden you must bare. The ability to see things others cannot is an unbelievable challenge and responsibility. And evil never sleeps. Evil is never far away. He who has many names, has awakened again – hungry for victory and power. Can you past the test and prove you are the one who will defend mankind when judgment day comes? But, remember, fear is your worst enemy!

Retro Classix Collection #1: Data East (Golem Entertainment, 1st Oct, $19.99) – BAD DUDES: The Bad Dudes must pursue the ninjas through the streets of New York City, a moving big rig truck, a large storm sewer and much more, in order to save President Ronnie. JOE & MAC: Grab your club and get ready to go on a wild, prehistoric adventure with the Cavemen Ninjas – Joe & Mac! HEAVY BARREL: Fight through the enemy’s army and collect pieces for a secret weapon to destroy their underground artillery base. EXPRESS RAIDERS: Save the Old West, with your rifle and your horse, from thieving Train Robbers. SUPER REAL DARWIN: The inhabitants of the planet Lakya unwittingly unleash the planet’s life force known as Evol.

SEGA AGES Herzog Zwei (SEGA, 24th Sep, $7.99) – Eins! Zwei! Drei!” In the murky dawn the tyrant’s troops scuffle towards foxholes and tanks. Taking battle position, they quickly check their equipment and load cannons. Then they hunker down, awaiting the cry: “Attacke!” “Hup! Two! Three! Four!” On your order, rebel soldiers race to their war machines! Jets blast into the dawn, afterburners roaring. Convoys rumble toward the advance bases. Their single purpose: attack! War! – Read our SEGA AGES Herzog Zwei review

Shmubedi Boo (Dmytro Derybas, 7th Oct, $9.99) – Trouble has occurred in the lands of Shmubedi Boo! An evil rabbit stole supplies of apples from the inhabitants of the city. Help stop the villain and bring the stolen apples home.Play with your friends on the same screen. Who will defeat all the bosses and save the inhabitants of Shmubedi Boo?

Smoots World Cup Tennis (JanduSoft, 1st Oct, $9.99) – Customize your appearance! Create your Smoot with your own style, and chose amongst lots of fashion complements and accessories. Prepare for a hard season Beat the 66 tournaments in the World Circuit to be the top 1 in the SMOOT ranking. Defeat all your opponents and be a reference!

Space Grunts (5th Oct, $13.99) – Space Grunts combines fast paced arcade action with turn-based gameplay. The year 2476, Earth’s space-federation has been building moon-bases across the galaxy. One of the newer moon-bases has been sending out distress signals. You play as one of the Space Grunts, a team of “problem solvers”, and your mission is to find your way into the moon-base, and figure out what has happened. Find the lower levels of the moon-base, and get to the core of the problems.

The Last Days (Ocean Media, 1st Oct, $9.99) – Can you defeat the enemy and save the earth? An ancient enemy returns and the fate of the world is in your hands when you play The Last Days. Learn about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle, and discover clues left by advanced civilizations eons ago. You’re long overdue for a vacation, so you head out to the Bahamas looking for the refreshment of sun, sea, and sand. Your diving excursions reveal mysterious artifacts strangely out of place. Can you piece together the clues in time?

Unlock The King 3 (QUByte Interactive, 29th Sep, $0.99) – New sequel of the successful Unlock The King, now with 3D boards based on Rubik’s Cubes. An originally designed puzzle game inspired by Chess.

WARSAW (Crunching Koalas, 1st Oct, $19.99) – In a city besieged by enemy forces, the only hope for freedom is to stand up and fight with everything you have. Muster every able body to join the Uprising, loot and salvage what you can to arm your resistance and take on the overwhelming enemy forces that dared invade your home.

Activities

• Celebrate the Coziest Season With the My Nintendo Animal Crossing: New Horizons Fall Sweepstakes! – Redeem your Platinum Points at My Nintendo for a chance to win a package of themed prizes, including the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Official Companion Guide and a Nook Inc. Aloha shirt! Show your island spirit any day of the week with some official Nook Inc. style.

So that’s your lot for this week’s North American Nintendo Download. Go on, be a sport and drop a vote in the poll above, and comment below with your hot picks!