Category: IGN

I would not be in this line of work without The Legend of Zelda. It’s my favorite franchise of all time – video game or otherwise – and it’s the series that will always draw me back into gaming and Nintendo, no matter what. My story is not unique; I know several IGN editors who feel the exact same way.

It’s not a secret to anyone that Zelda is critically important to so many of us here: we’ve awarded seven different Zelda games a 10/10 since IGN was founded in 1996 (the most of any franchise), we were one of very few outlets to recognize Tears of the Kingdom as Game of the Year in a packed 2023, and we crowned Breath of the Wild as the greatest game ever made on our most recent Top 100 Games of All Time list, compiled in 2021. It’s a series that’s constantly growing alongside us: how many franchises contain a game that’s essentially redefined a genre? You could argue Zelda would appear on that short list at least twice.

So as The Legend of Zelda celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend, a few of us wanted to share our personal memories of this beloved franchise that we hold most dear. These are our legends of Zelda.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link – By Seth Macy

There aren’t a lot of people whose first exposure to The Legend of Zelda franchise was The Adventure of Link. I’d go so far as to say, for most normal, well adjusted people, playing Zelda’s NES sequel as their first foray into the series would turn them away from it forever. But not me. No. I was completely hooked.

I rented Zelda 2 for a weekend and, when I went to school the following Monday, my thumbs hurt from playing for so long. And the thing is, I didn’t really even understand what the hell was going on. I just fell in love with the setting, the weird way it transitioned from an overhead map to self-contained battles, and the massive castles filled with opportunities for Link to die. It set my young imagination on fire and I became obsessed with it from a stylistic and presentational point of view.

I need to point out, at no point did I actually like the gameplay. It was, and remains, brutally difficult, practically impossible for a kid to complete over the course of a rental weekend. The Death Mountain section was where I hung it up many times out of sheer frustration. And even though I was so angry and defeated and saddened to be unable to get through to the end, I still could not resist renting it week after week. I pored through the tattered rental store copy of the manual, captivated by the art style – so distinctively Japanese and at the time, so new and exciting. I borrowed concepts for my own middle-school drawings and rudimentary pen and paper role-playing creations. I also didn’t realize it at the time, but that top-down world view and the experience point grind had awakened in me a love for JRPGs I didn’t even know existed at the time.

It wasn’t until 2018 I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: The Adventure of Link, playing through the version available on Nintendo Switch Online, and only because I spammed the hell out of save states. Still, even all these years later, my imagination roars to life when I look at those classic illustrations, and I get a weird inkling to start up another playthrough. Then I remember how brutally unfun it is and I play something else. But man. What a world changing experience it was when I was a kid.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – By Brian Altano

I hated school. OK, maybe “hated” is too strong a word. I strongly disliked school and it probably didn’t like me very much back. To give the place some credit, I loved cracking jokes with my friends before class started. I loved that the cafeteria sold warm, three-for-a-dollar Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. I loved every art class, the only class where the teacher didn’t have to call my parents after and say “Brian is smart and creative, he just doesn’t seem to care about this class.” See, in 1993, I didn’t want to be in school. All I wanted to do was play video games, talk about video games, read about video games, draw video game characters, and eat video game-themed breakfast cereals.

A particular video game that I could not stop reading about (specifically in a Nintendo Power preview article that made frequent trips with me everywhere in my school backpack) was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the first portable Zelda game ever made, which was making its way to the Nintendo Game Boy. The idea of a Zelda game that I could bring with me everywhere was absolutely mindblowing at the time. I would hop off the school bus every day to do chores, scrounge for coins in the couch cushions, and save money until I had enough to buy Link’s Awakening.

But if I’m being honest, the real cash cow was my daily lunch money. Every day I got three bucks for lunch, which back then was enough to buy a sad cafeteria meal and a drink, usually one of those hockey puck shaped breaded chicken patties smooshed between two wet buns with a canned ice tea made by some questionable bootleg brand like “Ol’ Orchard” or “Teaslees” to wash it down. But one day I realized that if I instead bought three Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, I’d A) still be sort of full, B) get to eat cookies for lunch like some sort of child king, and C) save two whole bucks a day to put towards The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I’d have the game in a few weeks without having to do much of anything for it. There were some downsides to this plan, obviously. For starters, I’d have to hide the money from my parents. I’d also have to find a way to buy the game without them knowing it. And lastly, (and I can confirm this as a father now) there’s a very real science fact that if a little kid eats nothing but sugary breakfast cereals and three chocolate chip cookies all day and then needs to focus on school work, that kid will instead bounce off of the walls like an insane little maniac. By now you’re probably figuring out why my teachers didn’t like me very much.

A few weeks (and probably several detentions and cavities later) I had successfully saved enough money to buy my game. I walked down a highway in New Jersey to that magical, brown roofed, giraffe themed castle known as Toys ‘R’ Us and came home with my treasure tucked inside the big pocket of my winter jacket. To be fair, I paid every penny for it, but by the way I covertly and anxiously snuck it into my house you’d think I stole the thing. To this day, my parents never found out. Dad, if you’re reading this, a different Brian Altano at IGN wrote it, not the one who is your son. He would never steal lunch money to buy a video game. Weird coincidence that there’s two guys here named Brian Altano, right?

Anyway, for the next several months, my Game Boy came with me everywhere, but especially to school. On the bus, I played Zelda. In between classes, I played Zelda. On the playground, I played Zelda. Strangely enough, having video games to play at school between the actual school parts of school helped me focus on my classes more. Instead of day dreaming about when I’d get to play video games next, I’d walk into class feeling fresh after taking down another Zelda dungeon, and then I’d do everything the teacher needed me to do until I could play video games again. My grades started improving and my parents stopped getting as many disappointed phone calls from my teachers. This also coincided with me not eating chocolate chip cookies for lunch anymore, which also definitely helped.

So thank you to Link’s Awakening for being my first portable Zelda game, one of my favorite games ever made, and a game that rescued my academic career and also almost made me fail out of school. Thank you to Otis Spunkmeyer and Geoffrey Giraffe who went on to get married to each other, maybe. Apologies to my teachers and my parents and to the other Brian Altano here who is now in huge trouble with my dad. And happy birthday to The Legend of Zelda, a franchise that I’ll always be there for on day one, to purchase a brand new game with actual money that is no longer earned by eating chocolate chip cookies for lunch.

The Zelda Timeline – By Logan Plant

Spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Hyrule’s history has been passed down countless times from one generation to the next. In that same tradition, I didn’t discover my love for Zelda on my own: I inherited it. Just like every child with pointy ears who gets wrapped up in the never-ending battle for Hyrule, this story begins before my time. My dad played The Legend of Zelda at a friend’s house when he and my mom were in college, which led to them eventually saving to buy an NES of their own, just so they could bomb every last wall in that original 8-bit Hyrule.

Fast-forward roughly a decade to when I entered the picture, born the same year as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s launch on N64. My mom tells me I’d sit on her lap and watch my dad explore a new Hyrule, this time in 3D. Like our favorite childhood bedtime stories, I have no recollection of witnessing Link’s journey to stop Ganondorf. I’ve just always known it. This universe of talking trees and evil pigs and boys without fairies carved a home in my mind during my earliest days and hasn’t budged since.

Which is why it should come as no surprise that my first vivid memory comes from Hyrule, too. I’m four now, and my older sister and I are watching my dad fight the final boss of The Wind Waker. The very first thing I remember is Toon Link leaping into the air and plunging the Master Sword straight into Ganondorf’s skull. I was shocked: it was far and away the most violent, gruesome thing I’d ever seen. I recall walking into the living room to tell my mom what had happened, but then everything goes fuzzy again and all I’m left with is the everlasting image of Ganondorf turning to stone.

No matter where I’ve gone, I’ve taken my love for Zelda with me. Breath of the Wild came out when I was in college, and I spent launch night marathoning it on the enormous, blurry TV in the dormitory lounge as my floormates passed by and watched for a bit on their way out to the evening’s events. Once the hall was empty, and the motion-activated overhead lights went dark, there was nothing left but me and the peaceful glow of the Great Plateau. I was confused when my friends returned just a few moments later. “You’re back already?” I asked, only to learn that four hours had glided by in what felt like minutes. That was the first of dozens of long nights with Breath of the Wild, and later, Tears of the Kingdom, which still managed to hijack my sleep schedule years after the days of going to college parties were long gone. Time changes all things, but Zelda has never seemed to mind.

Zelda tells us a tale about an endless cycle of good rising up to ward off evil, and as we eagerly await its next chapter, I can’t help but wonder where I’ll be when a new 3D entry finally arrives. Maybe I’ll have a child of my own by then, and they’ll watch me take my first steps into whatever wild world Nintendo offers us next. Maybe their first memory will be something creepy or strange in a Zelda game years from now. I like to think they’ll play a new Zelda while off at college, homesick for their childhood but equally giddy to be experiencing a brand new take on Hyrule for themselves. And hopefully, they’ll always call their parents and siblings to talk about Zelda, just like I do to this day. That’s a cycle I wouldn’t mind repeating for generations to come.

Logan Plant is the host of Nintendo Voice Chat and IGN’s Database Manager & Playlist Editor. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game franchise of all time, and he is patiently awaiting the day Nintendo announces a brand new F-Zero. You can find new episodes of NVC every Friday on the IGN Games YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Magic: The Gathering’s crossover frenzy continues, and Marvel is landing in June. It includes plenty of heroes and villains, but the chase card will be infinitely more likely to appear in Collector Boosters.

Ahead of the set’s official spoilers and reveals, here’s all we know about Collector Booster availability for Marvel Super Heroes.

It might not have the same kind of ambition or bells and whistles as its contemporaries, but Styx holds a special place in my heart as one of very few pure stealth game series we have left. Will you find the incredibly creative scenarios of Hitman or the insane level of polish and replayability of Dishonored? Nope. Instead Styx contents itself with simply being a reliable way for stealth fans to get their fix, and Styx: Blades of Greed is no exception. More often than not, the usual playbook of sneaking around, stealing and assassinating everything in sight, is as fun as it’s ever been, and this sequel makes some important tweaks, like removing weak multiplayer mechanics to refocus on a solo stealth experience and swapping smaller, mission-based maps for absolutely massive regions. But it’s also saddled with quite a few of the same issues it’s always had, finicky movement, performance issues, and an unremarkable story, which are as disappointing as they are completely expected.

Like its predecessor from 2017, Blades of Greed puts you in the leather boots of an elderly, grumpy goblin as you sneak into small spaces, stab humans, elves, and monsters in their soft places, and use an arsenal of gadgets and special abilities to overcome the fact that getting spotted will get you killed in two seconds flat. There are some modest additions, like a couple of new gadgets and abilities that let you do things like mind control NPCs from afar or use a grappling hook to close large gaps in a short period of time, but for the most part there’s very little that’s changed about the moment-to-moment gameplay. You’ll still find, for example, the ol’ reliable ability to turn yourself invisible for a short period of time, and will still find yourself hiding inside closets and barrels before popping out to slit the throat of some idiot guard. Good times. As ever, stealth is absolutely the star of the show, and Blades of Greed has the same high quality sneaking around that you’d hope it would.

The story in Styx has never been very good, and Blades of Greed lives up to those low expectations by having a completely forgettable story in spite of the fact that its protagonist is inherently interesting and unique. After developing a craving for magical abilities granted to you by quartz crystals found throughout the world, you begin a repetitive journey to, well, find more of it, and 90% of the campaign is just going from place-to-place stealing these glowing rocks to power yourself up with little in the way of plot in between those scavenger hunts. You meet some characters along the way, like a gadget-obsessed dwarf and an orc who becomes your spiritual guide, but they don’t get enough screen time to leave much of an impression and what they do get isn’t used effectively, with everyone spouting off explanations of telling you what you need to do next and little else. You’re unlikely to have come to the Styx series looking for an engaging story, but just in case you were hoping to be pleasantly surprised: I wouldn’t count on that.

Though the vast majority of Styx’s bones remain the same, one major change is that instead of treading (and sometimes retreading) through mission-specific levels, Blades of Greed lets you loose in three extremely large maps filled with both mandatory and optional areas to explore, pilfer, and fall to your death within. It’s a neat idea that allows for significantly more freedom over prior adventures, and it’s quite easy to become distracted and assassinate your way through an entire region before realizing you didn’t even really have any objective behind any of it, except that it’s just hard to see a guard walking by unaware and not take him down. These huge levels also allow you to express creativity in how you navigate the area and solve the problem of getting around when every 10 feet there’s someone who could kill you by breathing on you. When you’re staring at an objective that’s a mountain’s distance above you, you’ll need to just creep around and try things to figure out how to get there – maybe you’ll find a nice spot on the side of a tower to make daring leaps while avoiding the notice of guards along the way, or maybe you’ll find a quieter path via a sewer system that leads you to the same spot, but is infested with giant bugs that will swarm you if you get too close.

That can be a really interesting stealth challenge to figure out, but comes with some unique drawbacks as well. For one, it can be exhausting to have to cross such a massive area slowly sneaking along all the while, and if you try to just sprint past everything to get to the objective, you should be prepared to reload a whole bunch as you work through the trial and error process of doing so. That travel time feels significantly less focused and curated than the more linear model for level design as well, and oftentimes you’re kinda just half-assedly sneaking through ruins and across rooftops with no real obstacles along the way until you get to the place that the objective marker wants you to be, at which point things start to feel much more focused. In other words, it’s a whole lot of fat before you get to the meat of the main objectives. I actually spent the vast majority of the more than 20 hours it took me to beat Blades of Greed trying to figure out where exactly my next objective was and how to get there, rather than actually pulling off the heist in question.

The good news is that each of these maps is pretty awesome across the board. The Wall is an absurdly cool vertical labyrinth of concrete castles and rickety slums, Turquoise Dawn is a jungle of trees, swamps, and massive, deadly roaches swarming in dark areas, and the Akenash Ruins are a ruined, kingdom where everything floats in the air unnaturally and enemies are extremely weird monsters, like something out of Elden Ring. Each visit to these places throughout the story unlocks new areas to explore, though you’ll also do quite a bit of backtracking through areas you’ve already been, which is a bit of a drag. Still, these are some of the more interesting areas I’ve stalked the halls of in a stealth game and highlights the unique, strange, and magically-infused world that this curmudgeonly goblin calls home.

Though the huge amount of space these maps have can be pretty great to explore, they sometimes feel a bit too big for the much smaller objectives within them. The story’s main objectives are much smaller than a typical stealth mission, usually just requiring you to steal a key and open a locked door, or shut down a machine so you can reach your objective – miniature quests that usually only take a couple minutes to complete, if that. Once you’ve checked it off your list, you’re back to the mostly uneventful traveling stealth as you find a way to the next objective, often requiring you to backtrack through some of the same spots in the process, which is how I have spent the bulk of the adventure so far. On the bright side, this format means you’re basically just locked into a constant stream of pure, unadulterated stealth scenarios for hours on end as you work your way through each set of missions, and since that’s Blades of Greed’s strong suit, you’re getting exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you’re familiar with the shortcomings of the previous Styx games, then you’ll probably be less-than-stoked to hear that Blades of Greed doesn’t address most of these. Combat, which is a last resort, but sometimes required, is quite sloppy and overly simplistic, and moving around, especially jumping onto ledges and the like can be finicky at times and caused me to fall to my death or get caught out in the open dozens of times by this point. Worse than those though, are the usual performance issues and technical challenges, like NPCs becoming invisible while talking to them and frames dropping to horrifyingly low levels after extended play sessions. Framerate issues are actually a fair bit worse than I remember them being in previous games, presumably due to the significantly larger maps, and it can get pretty bad for long stretches when there’s a lot happening on screen. Most of these issues are sort of baked into Styx by this point, but it’s still worth shouting out that the bulk of this stuff has mostly gone unaddressed, seemingly.

Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are coming to Nintendo Switch next week to celebrate the series 30th anniversary. And while The Pokémon Company and Nintendo have already answered a number of questions about the releases that probably shouldn’t have been necessary to ask to begin with, there’s one question we still don’t know the answer to: Will these games be compatible with Pokémon Home?

For the non-Pokénerds out there, Pokémon Home is a cloud-based, paid subscription service that allows users to store Pokémon from various games, as well as move them between certain compatible games. The service has been directly compatible with every new Pokémon game on the Nintendo Switch, as well as Pokémon GO, and it also works with Pokémon Bank, a similar program that existed on the 3DS. The explanations and rules are a bit convoluted, but essentially, it’s only through Bank and Home that Pokémon from older games such as Red/Blue/Yellow and Gold/Silver/Crystal (in their Virtual Console on Nintendo 3DS incarnations) can be brought forward to modern games.

As a result, with some finagling, Pokémon fans can essentially bring a beloved monster from any mainline Pokémon game they’ve ever played (except the original Game Boy cartridges for Red/Blue/Yellow and Gold/Silver/Crystal) to Pokemon Home and, if it’s compatible, transfer it for use into a modern game and continue their adventures. It’s been a cool way for collectors to track their PokéDexes, and for long-time fans to keep beloved monsters from their childhoods by their side as adults.

The original FireRed and LeafGreen are compatible with Home in this way too, though the process is, as suggested above, a bit complicated. In order to get Pokemon OUT of FireRed and LeafGreen into Home, you first have to use the Pal Park feature to transfer them to Diamond, Pearl, or Platinum using a Nintendo DS system. Then, you have to use the Poke Transfer Lab (which requires two Nintendo DS systems) to move them from that game to Pokémon Black, White, Black 2, or White 2. From there, you can move them into Pokémon Bank on a Nintendo 3DS, and then from Bank they can be transferred to Home. It’s convoluted, but it’s possible.

If Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen on Nintendo Switch are compatible with Home directly, players can skip all that and bring monsters directly from those games into Home without having to own three different DS systems and multiple old game cartridges. However, players are concerned that this may not be the case. Earlier today, when the eShop page went live for FireRed and LeafGreen, it initially included the line, “Support for Pokémon HOME is coming soon. You’ll be able to bring the Pokémon you catch and train to the place where all Pokémon gather-support for Pokémon HOME is coming to Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen Version!” However, fans noticed that line was almost immediately removed, leaving the compatibility up in the air.

The journey to Pokémon’s 30th Anniversary has officially begun with these gorgeous illustration rare-style promo cards that commemorate the bonds between a Trainer and their loyal first partner.

Whether you’re a Kanto veteran or new to the world of Pokémon, this new collection encourages you to look back on your favourite adventures from the last 30 years.

Here’s all the information you need to know about Series 1 of the First Partner Illustration Collection Pokémon TCG collection, including release date, preorder information, and what’s next for this set of cards.

Nier: Automata, Yoko Taro and PlatinumGames’ 2017 action RPG follow-up to Nier and the Drakengard series, has officially sold 10 million copies nine years after its release.

This comes from a tweet/X post and YouTube video shared by the official accounts for Nier and publisher Square Enix respectively. The post includes a celebratory piece of Nier: Automata art:

#ニーアオートマタ の全世界累計出荷・ダウンロード販売本数が【1,000万本】を突破しました。本当に……本当にありがとうございました。これからもよろしくお願いいたします。

🔽これまでの軌跡を振り返る動画を公開https://t.co/0i2Q3eiyGb pic.twitter.com/m9bGhLsAJC

— NieR公式PRアカウント (@NieR_JPN) February 20, 2026

In a press release, Square Enix confirmed that in addition to this milestone for Automata, Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139, the remake of Nier released in 2021, has sold two million copies.

The six-minute-long YouTube video provides a recap of everything Nier: Automata-related from the last decade, and unless you’re a superfan, the sheer volume is probably a lot higher than you’d expect. There’s the game itself and its various re-releases and ports, plus multiple concerts, stage presentations, written works, animation, and more.

It ends on a teasing note, with text reading: “Nier: Automata to be continued…”

Tantalyzing as it sounds that this may mean another game is in the works, Nier fans have been here before. A number of the Nier works shown in that video have seemingly teased more Nier to come, but it’s never quite been the AAA video game rendition fans wanted. The story has been told and sequelized through many different mediums at this point, including a no-longer-available mobile game that’s effectively a direct sequel, but no full-blown PC/console game has emerged in the last nine years. Maybe other fans feel differently, but it’s left me a bit jaded at the idea. Even Yoko Taro sounded a bit weary when he was last asked about it, saying that he was trying to make new projects, but they kept getting canceled on him.

Which is a shame, because Nier: Automata rules. We gave it an 8.9/10 when we reviewed it in 2017, saying it’s “a crazy, beautiful, and highly entertaining journey full of nutty ideas and awesome gameplay. It may not include the most sensical story or compelling characters, but its frenzied combat — coupled with beautiful visuals and a stunning soundtrack – make it too much fun to pass up.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Capcom has at last acknowledged the fact that Resident Evil Requiem has now been widely leaked, and promised “firm action” against those responsible.

In a statement posted to social media, Capcom said it believed the “large number of gameplay videos” now floating around the internet — some of which contain huge spoilers and clips of the game’s finale — originated from copies obtained “through illegal means.”

IGN has verified the leaked spoilers as legitimate, but will not be reporting any details of the game’s plot or ending within its own reporting.

Capcom has now said that the posting of these videos constitutes copyright infringement, as well as generally being “an act that offends other customers.” However, the publisher seems somewhat limited in what it can actually do in response — suggesting it will simply delete the videos or issue “warnings.”

“We have found a large number of gameplay videos of Resident Evil Requiem that appear to have been obtained through illegal means,” Capcom wrote. “For the sake of our customers who are eagaerly awaiting this game, we ask that you refrain from publishing or posting gameplay videos on video streaming services or social media before the game’s release date.

“Posting gameplay footage before the release of this game is not only a copyright infringement, but also an act that offends other customers, so we will take firm action, such as deleting videos or issuing warnings, as soon as we become aware of such activity. Additionally, we also ask anyone viewing this post who happens to see the videos in question, please be careful not to watch or share it.

“Through this game, we hope to deliver a ‘story that intertwines mystery and tension’ and a ‘thrilling gaming experience that challenges unknown threats.’ We would appreciate your cooperation in not ruining the excitement for others. Thank you for your understanding.”

Resident Evil Requiem’s February 27 release date is now less than a week away — so for those still trying to avoid spoilers, there’s not too long left to wait. If you were hoping to get your hands on the bizarre Japan-only version of the game that comes with exercise equipment, however, we’re sorry to say that this has now sold out.

“After getting hands-on with a total of about four hours of Resident Evil 9 Requiem at this point, and sharing that experience with colleagues, I’m more excited for the series than I have been in recent memory,” IGN wrote after going hands-on with Resident Evil Requiem recently. “It’s the old mixed with the new, but all in a modern package with two protagonists I already like a lot.”

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

In Japan, Capcom has teamed up with a company known for its shopping channel-style infomercials, to release a bizarre and extremely limited edition of Resident Evil Requiem that includes exercise equipment.

Limited to only 50 sets and priced at 19,800yen ($127), the Terrifying Nightmare Set made in collaboration with e-commerce/talent management Yume Group sold out completely in less than 5 hours, as fans reached for their credit cards faster than they ever ran from Mr. X.

Resident Evil Requiem’s Terrifying Nightmare Set includes a copy of Resident Evil Requiem on either PS5 or Switch 2 and a full-sized pull-up bar for exercising. Yes, you read it right.

『バイオハザード レクイエム』×夢グループのコラボ商品「恐怖の悪夢セット」発売が決定！

夢グループ公式サイトで【おひとり9セットまで】ご購入頂けます。テレビショッピング映像も是非お楽しみください。

▼詳細▼https://t.co/mf15eyvpBu#バイオレクイエム #夢グループ pic.twitter.com/TGHdSoVWW4

— バイオハザード(カプコン)公式 (@BIO_OFFICIAL) February 19, 2026

In Japan, Yume Group (Dream Group) is known for its catchphrase “make it cheaper!” and for selling all sorts of shopping channel-style products via their website and through commercials. Naturally, the Resident Evil Requiem Terrifying Nightmare Set has its own tongue-in-cheek commercial — which you can watch above — in which Yume Group president Shigehiro Ishida and affiliated singer Yuri Hoshina promote the game in their signature style, with Ishida introducing the selling points and Hoshina exclaiming enthusiastically in response.

Brilliantly, the commercial even features Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi, who makes a rather deadpan cameo wearing industrial workwear and an unconvincing wig. Nakanishi mentions Requiem’s dual protagonists Grace and Leon, and the game’s mix of horror and action, while these keywords flash boldly on screen.

But what’s with the pull-up bar? The idea here is apparently so that gamers can use this piece of freestanding exercise equipment — dubbed the “Dream Hanging Health Device” — to release tension after fighting off zombies and getting perplexed by puzzles.

“When you’re tired from gaming, hang on tight. It’ll loosen up your back and shoulders stiff from fright!” advises the product’s store page. The accompanying tongue-in-cheek infomercial advertises the pull-up bar while showing shots of a terrified Grace Ashcroft hanging upside down from the game’s reveal trailer.

Other moments from the commercial include Hoshina cheerfully exclaiming that the game is “easy for even beginners to start playing,” while the ‘You are Dead’ game over screen plays in the background, and an apparent claim that the exercise equipment is also good for drying laundry on a rainy day.

When official Resident Evil accounts in Japan suddenly started posting a Yume Group infomercial on the morning of February 20th, some users thought it was simply a parody. “I started watching it with a smirk, laughing at the image of Grace hanging upside down on the device but then went dead serious when the detailed purchase rules and phone number came up ‘Huh? They’re actually selling this?!'” a user commented in Japanese on X.

However, just five hours later the Terrifying Nightmare Set was sold out. Perhaps some Resident Evil fans aspire to get chainsaw-wielding worthy biceps like Leon S. Kennedy’s, whose new look has won him a bit of a fan following.

Speaking of Leon and unexpected Resident Evil special editions, who can forget Resident Evil 6’s Leather Jacket Edition which came with a replica of Leon’s coat and retailed for 109,000 yen ($1,300) back in 2012?

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

For as long as humanity has existed, we’ve looked up at the stars and wondered how we got here, and whether we were alone. In Causal Loop, the answer to the latter is obvious: no. Or, at least, we might not have been. Causal Loop follows exo-archaeologist Bale and exo-linguist Jen as they land on the planet of Tor Ulsat to study the ruins of the Tor civilization. Whatever was here is gone now. Only the monuments and the structures remain. It’d be a pretty neat set up in and of itself (we need more games about archaeology), but that’s just the start for Causal Loop, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the jump.

Causal Loop starts slowly, letting you get to know its characters, systems, and world before pushing you into the deep end of the pool that’s the actual game. See, Jen and Bale aren’t alone. They’re accompanied by Walter, an AI housed in a drone armature. It’s clear from the jump that Bale and Walter don’t get along. Bale constantly needles Walter and openly resents his presence; it’s clear that the AI is there to supervise him and keep the mission on track because Bale did something in the past that caused issues, and Walter isn’t about to let him forget it. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” Bale crows when his idea to open an early door by shorting it works out. “Until your contract gets terminated again…” Walter shoots back. Even letting Walter have access to his suit so he can activate Bale’s amplifier is something Bale pushes back against. They don’t like each other much, these two.

Ironically, Causal Loop wasn’t always that way. It kind of happened by accident, according to creative director Kai Moosmann. “So the first version of Walter was like, “Hey, Bale, my scans detect this and that. And that’s very interesting.” And Bale would be like, “Oh, thank you Walter, let’s move on to the next thing.” So it was always: they see something, they comment on it, they move on to the next thing. And more by accident, one of the placeholder audios for Walter was a bit snippy, and I was like, ‘That’s interesting.’ That’s interesting stuff right there because now we could maybe have these characters quip with each other and riff off of each other on that emotional level. And the problem was still though that Walter was not really sentient and I was not sure whether or not Walter and Bale, their relationship should be seen as something like a tool versus an actual character. And so we started experimenting and started treating Walter like an actual person, and that’s how all of it happened. That’s how Jen was introduced. That’s how all the other characters got into the mix because now we needed a reason for Bale to dislike Walter.”

The moderating influence is Jen, who is clearly sympathetic to Bale but would like him to try to work with Walter to make things go more smoothly. The pacing here is very deliberate, Moosman tells me. “We said right from the get-go, we didn’t want to lock the player into a playground, into a jungle gym or something like that. We wanted to make sure that the story of Causal Loop and the gameplay are completely inseparable in so many ways… We wanted to make sure that people get to know these characters and that they get to care about the characters and what happens to them. I think one of the rules in the design document was whenever we can do Hollywood, we do Hollywood. That was sort of the rule for all of this, and it led to this slow opening and it was deliberate. We could have made it even slower, but we accelerated it even a little bit because at the beginning we had a scene where we showed the characters arriving on the planet and unpacking their gear, having conversations with each other, but we just wanted to push people into gameplay faster.”

And make no mistake, Causal Loop is teaching you how to play it long before it becomes obvious. Whether it’s Jen’s gentle ribbing about Bale’s speed (he’s not fast; Jen often refers to him as slowpoke), learning how to scan items in the world and determine their purpose, or having Jen and Bale synchronize their actions to open a door or switch on a bridge at the right time so the other one can cross. There’s also some really nice foreshadowing as to what you’re actually dealing with before the characters themselves find out.

As the group progresses, they gradually awaken more of the Tor technology, which culminates in the awakening of what seems to be a power source. Walter is hesitant to check the thing out because they have no idea what it is, but Bale’s full steam ahead, and… well, it goes about as well as you’d expect. Jen gets zapped away, Walter’s drone armature is destroyed, and Bale… Bale dies. When Walter brings him back, things are different. There’s a massive megastructure they didn’t notice before, alien squids are flying through the air, and there are farting plants. Yeah, no seriously. And all of that is intentional, because the developers at Mirebound knew that Tor Ulsat needed to feel alien, despite being a barren planet. What does the ecology of a planet like that look like? What still lives here? And that, in turn, influences the story. The blue goo you see everywhere eventually became something that powered the Tor’s buildings.

But the biggest difference is what that energy source did to Bale. Soon after waking up, Bale is contacted by a Tor named Nala’Tor, who informs him that the device he activated is called the Chronolith, and that Bale’s meddling has “fractured the fabric of reality, altering the very constraints that define [Bale’s] existence.” Fancy. In reality, that means that Bale can now see and interact with phase rifts, which allow him to create echoes of himself. The uses for this start small. Is that button that opens a door too far away from said door for Bale to press the button and run through it? Have an echo do it for you and waltz through once he opens the door. That bridge too far for you to cross before it vanishes? Get an echo to press the button for you and walk on over once it materializes.

The cool thing about echoes is that they’ll repeat their path over and over again until you tell them to stop… or until you run into them, which will kill them. There are some interesting existential questions there, and even Bale doesn’t quite know how to feel about them. What’s better is that everything you need to know about echoes is presented diegetically, as is almost every part of Causal Loop’s UI. Walter color-codes them for you and creates a meter that shows how much time you have while creating one – and where each echo is in their cycle.

After getting a good grasp of the basics, I’m taken to a later part of the game to kick off the training wheels. Now, there are teleporters – which, like doors and bridges, often need to be activated by an echo, and can also be used by echoes. Handy – and square keys that explode if they’re out of a socket for too long. Now, the puzzles become more complicated and more interesting. Make an echo to run down and turn on a teleporter, then stand on it when he does. It takes me to an isolated, outside area with a key. Great. I grab that sucker and head back to the teleporter, and the damn thing promptly explodes in my hands. Okay, so teleporters and keys are out. But there’s a hole in the wall, so I chuck it through there, zap back through the teleporter, and manage to slot the key into another wall slot before it explodes (though it takes me a few attempts).

A couple of pit stops later, and I put it in its lock, which reveals a gravity lift that takes me up real high. A little key-throwing and another gravity lift later, and I get to what is probably my favorite puzzle in my time with Causal Loop, and the first one I play that requires two echoes. I send the first to a lower level and through a teleporter into a sectioned-off room to hit a switch that controls a forcefield. That done, I make another echo (this one’s blue) who runs around the upper level I got to from the gravity left. He needs to hit another button, but the trick is that there’s a forcefield in the way, and running into one means you’ll have a dead echo. To get him through, I have to synchronize my echoes, passing through the forcefield while creating my second after my first has lowered it. It’s not the most elaborate puzzle I play in Causal Loop, but it’s a great example of the strengths of Causal Loop’s puzzle design. When designing them, Daniel Radschun, Mirebound’s Technical Director, told me that he’s often starting from the end goal of the puzzle. “I work my way a little bit backwards, but also not, and I add separate elements step by step and really make sure that each of the elements are already working together.” Every element builds on the last.

I’ll be honest, y’all: I have an extremely poor sense of direction in both video games and real life, and I’m pretty map reliant. Causal Loop doesn’t have one, so my path through it often started with exploring a bit, finding a phase rift, and saying, “Okay, what can I do from here? What can I interact with? If I push that switch, what happens? Where does that teleporter take me?” Then, I’d work out the answers to those questions and see what I could do from there. A lot of my time with Causal Loop was spent in trial and error, learning new mechanics and seeing what did what. Sometimes, that meant doing something dumb and dying. Others, it meant looking at something like a gravity lift over a pit of lava and saying, “I wonder if I can get into that?” and learning I could in the coolest way possible. But I was always learning as I played it.

Radschun and Moosmann assured me that the full game builds these lessons up organically and reiterates the lessons you’ve learned, something I got a feel for even though I was jumping around to several points in the game. The fact that I was solving some of Causal Loop’s later puzzles without help speaks to how well it teaches you, and both developers I spoke to were proud that folks had been finishing Causal Loop’s public demo in ways they hadn’t intended.

Mirebound is rightfully proud of the way story and gameplay are inseparable in Causal Loop, but when I asked the team what they were most proud of, they told me it was Causal Loop’s optimization. Obviously, the build I played was a work-in-progress, but Moosmann told me every decision they made was with optimization in mind so Causal Loop could run on as many computers as possible. It was a ton of work, but the gamble seems to have paid off: other studios are now asking them how they did it. “If there’s a wall, for example,” Moosmann told me, “and that wall is casting a shadow, and in that shadow frustum, inside that shadow frustum, there are several other objects, they’re still casting a shadow even though you don’t see it because that big shadow is on [top of them]. We just disable the shadows of the objects…where you don’t see that they’re casting a shadow. And that might sound stupid. We’ve been called stupid for this. ‘Unreal handles this very well.’ Yeah, up to a point, up to a couple of thousands of objects. But our worlds are made of 7, 8,000, 9,000 objects and yeah, it stacks, so it’s totally worth doing that work.” The result is that as of our interview, they tell me that Causal Loop still runs at around 60 FPS on a 1080 Ti on high settings.

After spending a few hours with Causal Loop, I’m not surprised. You can see the attention to detail Mirebound is putting into everything, whether it’s the story, the characters, or the world. Causal Loop is shaping up to be a brain-bending puzzle game, and an interesting story to boot. It may not have been what I imagined when I first met Bale, Jen, and Walter, but one of the best parts of digging through the past is being surprised at what you find.

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