eastasiasoft is bringing its upcoming bullet-hell twin-stick shooter Null Drifter to Nintendo Switch later this week and a brand new trailer has been released to celebrate.

The game promises “simple yet nostalgic presentation while shooting and dashing through single-screen bullet-hell action”. Players will be able to test their skills in a series of gradually evolving challenges, aiming to challenge high scores in worldwide online leaderboards as they go. We’ve got an official description and feature list for you below:

Blast into a 1-bit lo-fi simulation that will gradually train your skills up to become the ultimate space-fighter pilot! Secretly part of the Project Starship world, this twin-stick shooter is designed to prepare pilots for their mission against the awakened forces of the void. By slowly introducing new challenges and more frenetic battles, the Null Drifter simulation will push the limits of any pilot to the next level!

Features:
– Shoot and dash through single-screen bullet hell action!
– Experience simple yet nostalgic presentation.
– Customize video effects and color palettes.
– Test your skills in a series of gradually evolving challenges.
– Upgrade weapons on the fly!
– Enjoy an AI-composed lo-fi soundtrack.

Here’s a better look at that minimalistic art style:

The game’s scheduled to be available on Switch from 9th April, with pricing set at $4.99/€4.99.

Think you might give this one a go? Fire a comment our way below.

At Microsoft, we’re embracing the “new normal” for how we work and live as the world comes together to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The health and safety of our employees, interns, and their families is our highest priority, which means shifting in-person experiences online and working together to find creative solutions to new challenges.

For more than 30 years, Microsoft has hosted students from around the world as part of our summer internship program. This year, more than 4,000 students had plans to join us — the largest and most diverse class in our history — taking on roles spanning all our functions. And while we’re incredibly disappointed that we won’t be with them on our campuses, we’re committed to creating a meaningful and fun virtual internship experience for each one of them, and remain eager to absorb their energy and learn from them as we always do.

As we prepare to welcome our incoming interns, we’re working to set them up for a remote experience that will provide a rewarding professional development opportunity as well as meaningful connections. We’re fortunate to have the infrastructure and support needed to deliver a world-class remote internship program through onboarding tools like Microsoft Dynamics 365, and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams. We also recognize that some individuals may be unable to participate in the virtual internship, so we’re providing an opportunity to defer their internship to next year, if needed.

In short order, the program team will begin hosting remote events that focus on building connections, fostering learning, and empowering interns to achieve their goals and uncover their passions. Participants in the program will connect with one another, build community within their teams, and engage with senior leaders across the company through a variety of virtual events. And we’ll empower our interns to co-create their summer experience with us. In the past, they’ve done everything from hosting their own volunteer projects and sharing TED-style talks to creating a musical.

While this experience is not what anyone expected, we’re embracing this opportunity together with our interns to learn from one another and grow. After all, the power of a growth mindset is that every obstacle is an opportunity to succeed. Adversity often creates some of the biggest leaps in innovation, and I predict that this year’s intern class will not only help us shape our virtual experience, they will have a lasting influence on our program for years to come.

Welcome to our upcoming class of 2020 interns, and thank you in advance for your hard work, creative thinking, and won’t-be-stopped attitude.

Tags: COVID-19, interns, students

Earlier today, we shared a list of the top 15 most-downloaded Switch games in Europe last month and now have yet another list, this time from Japan.

Below, you can see a list of the 20 best-selling games on the Switch eShop in Japan throughout the month of March, 2020. Also included are each game’s release date and, where applicable, information on any title’s adjusted pricing over the data’s time period (thanks, Perfectly Nintendo).

Let’s take a look, shall we?

1) Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo) [20.3.2020]
2) Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (The Pokémon Company) [06.3.2020]
3) Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Level-5) [20.9.2019] (was on sale)
4) GUILTY GEAR XX ACCENT CORE PLUS R (Arc System Works) [16.5.2019] (was 93% off)
5) Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy DX (Level-5) [09.8.2018] (was on sale)
6) Of Mice And Sand -Revised- (Arc System Works) [21.12.2017] (was 91% off)
7) Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold (Level-5) [12.4.2018] (was on sale)
8) Yo-kai Watch 1 for Nintendo Switch (Level-5) [10.10.2019] (was on sale)
9) Cube Creator X (Arc System Works) [26.4.2018] (was 95% off)
10) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo) [07.12.2019]
11) Octopath Traveler (Square-Enix) [13.7.2018] (was 50% off)
12) Guilty Gear (Arc System Works) [16.5.2019] (was 91% off)
13) Cities: Skyline – Nintendo Switch Edition (ParadoxInteractive) [14.9.2018] (was on sale)
14) Human: Fall Flat (Teyon Japan) [28.12.2017]
15) Minecraft (Microsoft Japan) [21.6.2018]
16) Gotcha Racing 2 (Arc System Works) [29.3.2018] (was 91% off)
17) Overcooked! 2 (Team17) [07.8.2018]
18) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo) [28.4.2017]
19) Double Dragon 4 (Arc System Works) [07.9.2017] (was 87% off)
20) Pikuniku (Devolver Digital) [24.1.2019] (was 92% off)

It’s no surprise to see Animal Crossing: New Horizons at the top of the list; the game has been performing ridiculously well in our regular weekly Japanese chart updates.

Any surprises? Tell us below.

Despite appearing in a number of other titles over the years like Super Smash Bros., Popo and Nana have only ever had the one game under the ‘Ice Climber‘ name (well, two if you count the Vs version). So when should this IP be revisited? And why hasn’t that happened already?

Sadly, as with other series like F-Zero, Ice Climber doesn’t seem to be all that high on Nintendo’s list of priorities at present. Still, the gaming giant hasn’t been as controlling over its characters in recent years – Ubisoft has been given access to Mario and Star Fox for Mario + Rabbids and Starlink: Battle for Atlas, and Next Level Games has Luigi’s Mansion covered – so what about giving the Ice Climber property to another trusted studio?

Well, developer of the much-loved SteamWorld series of games, Image & Form, has pondered the possibility on social media today. Before anyone gets too excited, we’re sure this is simply an innocent tweet to spark conversation, but the replies are overwhelmingly in favour of the idea. A SteamWorld Dig-type game, but travelling up rather than down and with the Ice Climber brand in full force, sounds pretty perfect to us.

The SteamWorld series has almost always been a multiplatform affair, but Image & Form is a studio that would rank highly on any Nintendo fan’s list of ‘Nindie’ favourites. We can’t really think of anyone better to take on a name like Ice Climber, so here’s hoping this wonderful theory becomes reality one day.

Let us know if you’d like to see this happen with a comment below; perhaps it could even take the shape of a Paper Ice Climbers game like the idea we saw a while ago.

This Python One-Liner is part of my Python One-Liners book with NoStarch Press.

Here’s the code from the video:

letters_amazon = '''

We spent several years building our own database engine,

Amazon Aurora, a fully-managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible

service with the same or better durability and availability as

the commercial engines, but at one-tenth of the cost. We were

not surprised when this worked. ''' find = lambda x, q: x[x.find(q)-18:x.find(q)+18] if q in x else -1 print(find(letters_amazon, 'SQL'))

Try It Yourself:

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