Pika-who?
Welcome back, one and all, to this week’s edition of Box Art Brawl!
It was the NSO newbie Fatal Fury Special that got put under the microscope last time, as we matched up two covers for this SNES brawler. Overall, it was a pretty one-sided fight. The colourful Japanese variant walked away with 68% of the vote, leaving the North American design with 32%.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Sega celebrated the ‘Year of Shadow’ in 2024.
Last year, Sega ran a year-long campaign for Shadow the Hedgehog that lined up with the release of Sonic X Shadow Generations and the introduction of the “Ultimate Lifeform” in the live-action Sonic movies.
This was generally well-received by Sonic fans, and it’s now led to some discussion about how Sega could potentially recreate this magic with other Sonic the Hedgehog characters in the future. Speaking in a recent interview, Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka said he would like to continue this trend by spotlighting a different character. Characters in the next movie will apparently play an active role in this.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
“Elevating authenticity to truly global heights”.
The Football Manager series has signed a “multi-year partnership” with the global football governing body FIFA.
This deal will bring official licenses from FIFA’s competitions to the long-running football management series by Sports Interactive. This will include the upcoming FIFA World Cup 26, which will be held in Canada, Mexico and the USA next year.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Don’t miss it.
Last week, Dragon Ball fans got quite a shock when it was announced Bandai Namco would be rolling out a new update for Dragon Ball FighterZ, with an additional DLC character scheduled to follow this in Spring 2026.
If this wasn’t already enough excitement, the official Dragon Ball Games social media account has now confirmed a new “Dragon Ball game project” will be revealed in January 2026. This announcement will take place at the Dragon Ball Genkidamatsuri event in Japan, as part of the series’ 40th anniversary celebrations.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
It’s a busy week for union organisers at Activision Blizzard. Yesterday, in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a group of over 100 developers that work on Hearthstone and the mobile only strategy game Warcraft Rumble voted “strongly in favor of wall-to-wall union representation.” This comes after around 400 Blizzard platform and technology workers voted to unionise, also with the CWA.
I think if you were to travel back in time to around the 14th century to wherever Dante Alighieri was at the time, and showed him Hell Maiden, a roguelike, bullet hell, deckbuilding, ’90s anime-esque, essentially fan fiction sequel to his Divine Comedy, he’d probably say something like “Mama mia” and die on the spot in fear of what his own creation spawn hundreds of years later. Yet as ridiculous a concept as it is – and it is ridiculous – the demo for it is quite good.
It’s been a while since we’ve last seen anything FIFA in the world of video games, namely because EA took a gamble on saying goodbye to the sports association’s official licence back in 2022. Whether that has paid off, literally, is neither here nor there right now though, as FIFA announced this week that it has signed a “multi-year partnership” with Football Manager, once again bringing its recognisable (if potentially tainted) name back to video games.
Like whatever genres you like, but for me personally, I find platformers to be the quintessential video game genre. Even with the most challenging entries, there are very few other genres that (when done well) are as easy and quick to pick up, play, and have fun with. I think that’s why so many of them have such longevity, one such game being N++, a tough but fair platformer that’s celebrating its 10th anniversary with a new update.
The A to Zs of Pokémon Legends, right here.
Welcome to our Pokémon Legends: Z-A walkthrough hub, and to Lumiose City! You’ll be spending a lot of time in this Paris-inspired town in Kalos, so let’s settle in. As the second game bearing the Legends moniker, Z-A is decidedly different from the mainline ‘Generational’ games — but it’s even a big step forward from Arceus.
It’s a good time, and in our 7/10 review of the Switch 2 version, we lavished praise on the new real-time battle system, but found that setting the action in a single city was constricting.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Cult of the Lamb is honestly not a game I expected to still be going for as long as and as strongly as it has. It came out in 2022! That was practically a decade ago, at least in games industry years, and yet here is developer Massive Monster showing off the roguelike’s next big expansion, Woolhaven. There’s no release date other than an early 2026 release window, but a new trailer did at least show off all of that farming you’ll get to do. Or, I guess get your cult to do.
