It Takes Two and Split Fiction director Josef Fares has posted the first photo from the set of developer Hazelight Studios’ next project.
The image shows Fares, dressed in a cosy-looking sweater, in front of three actors in performance capture suits. Clearly, work has now begun on Fares’ next game — and intriguingly, he seems to be doing his best to disguise who the actors are.
With his arm outstretched and thumb raised, Fares is successfully blocking most of all three actors’ faces — and this appears to be by design. “Next game in the making,” Fares captioned the post, with a thumbs up emoji. “We’re back in the kitchen, cookin’ up something really delicious,” the official Hazelight Studios social media account responded, adding: “Now with Strategic Arm Placement Tech.”
✌️We’re back in the kitchen, cookin’ up something really delicious! 🥘
Fans of Fares’ games have commented on the post to say they are suitably uncertain who the actors involved might be — though many more have noted the fact that Fares is using this first sneak peek to showcase three actors being visible. Could this signify a three-player game, after the studio’s recent focus on titles featuring a pair of prominent characters?
“Three-player Hazelight Game?” wondered one fan, Spenny99. “It Takes Three?????” questioned Jcbartlett25. “It Takes Three lookin great Mr. Fares,” added hotpicklepizza.
Co-op adventure Split Fiction launched last year to rave reviews, and went on to sell more than 4 million copies. Its story focuses on a pair of writers, Zoe and Mio, who become trapped in their interweaving sci-fi and fantasy narratives.
“An expertly crafted co-op adventure that pinballs from one genre extreme to another, Split Fiction is a rollercoaster of constantly refreshed gameplay ideas and styles – and one that’s very hard to walk away from,” IGN wrote in our Split Fiction review, awarding the game 9/10.
Fares’ previous game It Takes Two also proved popular, with its story focused on a husband and wife who plan to get a divorce. We called it “a beautiful, breakneck-paced, co-op adventure that’s bubbling over with creativity,” in IGN’s It Takes Two review, which also returned a 9/10.
Before that, Fares previously released prison escape adventure A Way Out, starring two convicts, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, starring… two sons. Should Fares actually be making a three-player game, it would indeed be a break from the norm.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Take one look at Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the upcoming RPG from ZA/UM, and you can immediately see the similarities between it and the studio’s previous game, Disco Elysium. It’s an isometric game with a striking art style, featuring dialogue-heavy gameplay where conversations are displayed vertically on the right-hand side of the screen.
Take a closer look and there are even more similarities. There’s a “Conditioning” system that replicates many of the functions of Disco Elysium’s unique Thought Cabinet. Its story aims to be deeply political and introspective. And then there’s the skills system, which manifests as a sentient inner monologue, commenting on your choices and the world around you.
For some Disco Elysium fans, this overlap may feel uneasy. In 2022, game director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov – creatives key to the look, feel, and vision of the celebrated RPG – were among a number of staff who left the studio in an “involuntary” manner. ZA/UM claimed they were fired for misconduct, while Kurvitz and Rostov accused the company’s majority shareholders of fraud. Many fans believe those fired to be victims of corporate conspiracy. Those same fans may now be concerned to see the studio building a Disco Elysium successor based on such similar design foundations without the involvement of those original creatives.
In a recent interview, IGN discussed these concerns with Jim Ashilevi, writer and VO director at ZA/UM, and asked why the studio didn’t consider finding a new direction for Zero Parades.
“I think it would have made sense for us to go in a completely different direction if the entire team was comprised of new talent,” Ashilevi said. “But since such a large number of the key players that built Disco Elysium are here to build Zero Parades, it just didn’t make sense for us to just disregard that part of our experience as amateur game makers and start learning new ways of telling stories.”
ZA/UM’s head of studio, Allen Murray, estimates that around 35% of the studio’s current staff roster is made up of people who worked on either the original version of Disco Elysium or the expanded “Final Cut” release. The studio’s total staff numbers around 90.
“We’re still the same people,” Ashilevi continued. “We still have the same interests. The stuff that interests us in the world of video games, but also in other media – in film and literature and theater – that hasn’t changed. Hopefully it has evolved, but I think we’re still basically the same people.
“We’re just going by our gut, basically, and we’re following our own obsessions,” he said. “And a lot of that was present in Disco Elysium. It will be present in Zero Parades as well, largely due to the fact that those are the same people who were there to build that cool world.”
In a previous interview with members of ZA/UM, which took place just prior to Gamescom 2025, IGN asked Ashilevi and lead technical artist Nicolas Pirot how they felt about fans who may be feeling cautious about a new ZA/UM RPG following the departures of Kurvitz, Rostov, and others.
“I understand why some people might have reservations,” said Pirot. “It’s not up to me to tell them what to think or what to experience. I think what we are trying to do is tell an incredible story. And I think all we can do is hope that, when Zero Parades is ready, that people like it enough to participate and to see who we are as a group.”
“We are here to write more stories,” Ashilevi added. “That’s all we’re here for. And if that upsets people or makes them feel cautious, fair. But there is a new game coming out soon and I hope you check it out. And if you don’t like it, that’s fine. That’s completely fine.”
Blizzard has said that its Warcraft-themed collectible card game Hearthstone is still not available on consoles because the team needs “a level of investment… to make that happen.”
That’s according to executive producer Nathan Lyons-Smith, who recently revealed that because of the 12-year-old game’s aging code — estimated to be 16 years old — any port to console must be done “right” and only when the team finds “the right time to do it.”
“There’s a level of investment that we need to make that happen, primarily in terms of UI and UX, and making sure that it’s very natural to go and play a card game on those platforms,” Lyons-Smith said, as reported by Eurogamer. “I know it’s possible — Duels of the Planeswalkers for Magic [The Gathering], many years ago now, was absolutely delightful with the controller — so I know we can do it.
“I asked an engineer who’d been on the project a long time, and he estimates the code is 16 years old,” Lyons-Smith continued, “and the team was 15 people 16 years ago. And so there’s more of an effort to go: ‘I want to make sure when we go that it’s awesome.’ That it doesn’t just feel like, yeah, they ported it here, and you can play…
“I want to make sure that when we go, we’re going to go, and it’s going to feel awesome for players that love that form factor, whether they’re leaning back on the couch or sitting on the couch with their handheld.”
Hearthstone originally launched in 2014 on PC, with a mobile and tablet version following very shortly after. Over the years there have been numerous calls for the game to launch on consoles — and particularly Nintendo Switch, for handheld play. But Blizzard has never gotten around to it.
Game director Tyler Bielman added: “If we’re going to bring it specifically to that living room big screen platform, we would want to make sure that the full experience is optimized for that mode that you’re in.”
Now, of course, with Blizzard owned by Xbox and parent company Microsoft, there could be more pressure than ever to bring the hugely-successful card game to console players. However, with Xbox’s high-level goal of enabling gamers to play “anywhere,” the Hearthstone team acknowledged an expectation to go “as wide as we could” to reach as many players as possible, regardless of platform.
“In the future, as we explore console and handheld, we’d probably go as wide as we could,” Lyons-Smith added. “Certainly, we have a different owner now than we did three years ago, and they’re more invested in Xbox and ‘anything’s an Xbox’. Their high-level goal [being] games playable anywhere.”
Hearthstone’s Cataclysm-themed expansion is set to launch on March 17, marking the return of Colossal cards and introducing a brand new story.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Addressing fans in a video celebrating the open-world adventure game’s first anniversary, series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto teased that this expansion will be similar to Monster Hunter World‘s Iceborne add-on, but was otherwise coy about the details. He did, however, stress that this will be the “final update” for the monster hunting game.
“We are currently at work on a large-scale expansion similar to Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak for Monster Hunter: Wilds,” Tsujimoto said. “We plan to share more information with you this summer.”
We also learned a little more about the update dropping on February 18, too, including details of Arch-Tempered Arkveld, 10-star Arc-Tempered monsters, a special collaboration with Monster Hunter Stories 3 — a spin-off series that releases next month — plus an anniversary event where all previous awards and quests will be “re-available.”
Players who log in during the anniversary event will receive a free item pack, and each previous seasonal event will return for a weekly rotation. “Almost all” previously released event quests will be made permanent from February 18.
“We have been implementing improvements to game stability and performance since Title Update 4,” Tsujimoto added, “and this update will introduce even further improvements.” Again, we’re told to expect more details closer to the time, so Capcom suggests you monitor its social media accounts for updates.
“While this marks the end of major content updates, the team is currently hard at work on a large-scale expansion to Monster Hunter Wilds,” the team added. “We look forward to sharing the first reveal of the expansion this summer.”
Monster Hunter Wilds has had something of a bumpy ride of late. Title Update 4 arrived at the end of last year and ushered in a long list of gameplay and balance changes, as well as CPU/GPU improvements, load reduction, and the optimization of “PC-specific processes and addition of options and presets to reduce processing load.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Here’s almost seven minutes of Black Myth: Wukong follow-up Black Myth: Zhong Kui. Well, kind of.
While developer Game Science has dropped the new in-engine trailer and labelled it as pertaining to the highly-anticipated sequel, it also features a “non-canon” disclaimer which suggests everything you see here could have no bearing whatsoever on the final game or its story, and has only been released by the team to celebrate Chinese New Year and welcome in the Year of the Horse.
But while you won’t see any gameplay or combat per se, the “non-canon, for entertainment purposes only” trailer nonetheless shows in-engine footage and gives us our best look yet at what to expect from the sequel, particularly in terms of how it looks and sounds. Let me take you through it.
It starts out normally enough as a young woman moves around an al fresco kitchen preparing a meal. Look a little closer, though, and you’ll realize that the figure that passes her near the beginning isn’t quite human, and the guy who opens the gigantic oyster-stroke-mussell shell reveals not a mollusc but, well, a little grey-faced man, uh, thing. She then prepares a slab of meat with blinking eyeballs embedded in it.
There’s more — much more — but it’s such a delight, I’d recommend watching it yourself. Just remember that it’s more of a tech demo and is unlikely to impact the eventual storyline of Black Myth: Zhong Kui, much like the spin-off story Game Science similarly released at Chinese New Year last year.
Black Myth: Wukong developer Game Science revealed sequel Black Myth: Zhong Kui at Opening Night Live 2025 last August. “Set against the backdrop of the classic Chinese folktale ‘Zhong Kui Banishing Evil,’ Black Myth: Zhong Kui is a single-player action role-playing game rooted in ancient Chinese fantasy,” GameScience said.
“The game will deliver distinctive experiences and gameplay features that push our limits, while also bringing fresh ideas and necessary changes to address past flaws and regrets.” As yet, there’s no release window, let alone a firm date.
Predecessor Black Myth: Wukong is the record-breaking action game that launched across PC and PlayStation 5 in 2024, selling 10 million copies in just three days. The Xbox Series X and S versions launched in August 2025. It returned a Great 8/10 in IGN’s Black Myth: Wukong review, in which we wrote: “Despite some frustrating technical issues, Black Myth: Wukong is a great action game with fantastic combat, exciting bosses, tantalizing secrets, and a beautiful world.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Less than a month after the launch of its free-to-play 2v2 tag-team fighting game, 2XKO, Riot Games is scaling back its development team.
Admitting the news was “difficult to share,” producer Tom Cannon said that despite securing a “passionate core audience,” the new game “hasn’t reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term.”
“With a smaller, focused team, we’re going to dig in and make key improvements to the game, including some of the things we’ve already heard you asking for. We’ll share some of our plans soon,” Cannon added. “Our plans for the 2026 Competitive Series are unchanged. We remain committed to partnering with tournament organizers and local communities. Our focus will continue to be on supporting the events and organizers that already power the [fighting game community].”
Cannon stressed that the team that built 2XKO “poured years of creativity, care, and belief into this game. Taking creative risks like this is hard, and the work they did is real and meaningful.”
“We’re committed to supporting impacted Rioters through this transition — including helping them explore opportunities within Riot where possible, and providing a minimum of 6 months of notice pay and severance where it’s not,” he explained.
Cannon closed on promising more information would come in time, and thanked players for playing 2XKO and “caring enough to ask hard questions.”
Riot has also confirmed to IGN that the cuts will affect approximately 80 roles globally, representing less than half of the total team. Figures are not final, however, as some staff may find roles elsewhere within the company.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Control and Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment has named Jean-Charles Gaudechon as its new CEO.
The company’s board of directors announced the news with a post on its website today. Co-founder Markus Mäki will continue to serve as interim CEO until the leadership change takes effect March 1, 2026.
“I’m excited and honored to join Remedy at a pivotal time,” Gaudechon said in a statement. “The studio has a unique creative identity and a strong pipeline. My commitment is to protect what makes it special, deliver exceptional games, and scale Remedy in a way that builds lasting value.”
Mäki took over as interim CEO after former Remedy CEO, Tero Virtala, resigned from his position in October 2025. It was a sudden shakeup that arrived after the studio’s summer multiplayer FPS and its first self-published game, FBC: Firebreak, failed to impress on a commercial and critical level (we gave it a 6/10). Virtala was with Remedy for just over nine years, leaving the Espoo, Finland-based game company to search for a long-term replacement.
We now know Gaudechon has been picked to fill the role. His experience in the industry has seen him serve at EA as a studio head and executive producer over titles like Battlefield Heroes, as well as a general manager and executive producer for Eve Online developer CCP Games. Now, he’ll oversee a company he says “has the voice and the ambition to be a pillar of the industry’s future.”
“We will stay close to players, earn their time and trust, and strengthen our independence in how we build and publish our games, while continuing to work closely with the partners who have supported us along the way,” the soon-to-be CEO added. “I will be moving to Finland with my family and I’m incredibly excited about getting to work directly with the team at the studio.”
Meanwhile, fans of Remedy’s work are looking forward to its mind-bending sequel, Control: Resonant. Announced at the 2025 Game Awards, the follow-up is expected to launch sometime this year for PC and consoles. Max Payne 1 and 2 remakes are also in development and expected to launch at an unspecified point in the future.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
These are just the start of what’s available. Have a look through more of our favorite PS5 games that are currently on sale at Amazon below.
Select PS5 Games on Sale at Amazon
What makes these deals even better is that some of the games above have hit their lowest prices yet at the retailer. Price tracker camelcamelcamel shows that this is the lowest price Silent Hill f, Civ VII, Double Dragon Revive, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (with its coupon) have all hit at Amazon so far. Similar to Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, with the help of the coupon on its store page, this also marks a new low price for Space Marine 2 at the retailer.
And while it’s not the lowest price point it has ever hit at Amazon, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has matched its Black Friday price, which is certainly still a deal to celebrate. If you haven’t added it to your library yet, now is a great time while it’s still on sale for $30.
That applies to all of the available games: This is a great opportunity to scoop them up and save while they’re still on sale. They’re not the only game deals worth taking advantage of right now, though. If you’re looking for more outside of PlayStation, February’s Humble Choice lineup has dropped for PC players as well, offering the chance to add 8 games to your digital library for just $15 when you sign up for a Humble Choice membership. This month leads with Resident Evil Village, which is definitely worth grabbing ahead of Resident Evil: Requiem.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
“Zero Parades is an exploration of failure,” explains Jim Ashilevi, writer and VO director at ZA/UM. “What it means to lose everything and then keep going regardless. And then, since it’s such a painful question, it inevitably becomes an exploration of what it means to be human. How uncomfortable and strange it is to exist in a body that has thoughts and feelings and responsibilities, and a past that they can’t go back and fix.”
“This is why I love working here,” says ZA/UM’s head of studio, Allen Murray, with a smile. “I never had these conversations making Halo games.”
The studio behind Disco Elysium was, of course, never going to follow up its 2019 “disaster cop” RPG with a game about heroes saving the world. That’s not to say that it hasn’t moved into slightly more traditional video game territory, though. Its new game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, is an espionage spy thriller set in a dark, almost psychedelic reflection of the Cold War’s closing years. Global powers conspire, enemy agents lurk in the dark, and the entire world sits on the doorstep of the end of history. But while that could theoretically be the elevator pitch for any number of mainstream, combat-forward RPGs, ZA/UM is doing spycraft the only way it knows: Disco style.
“I think the one North Star that we have is that we have to be genuinely interested in the stories that we are choosing to tell,” says Ashilevi. “If we were to start mimicking someone else, or go bigger and more expensive and add production value and fighting mechanics and multiplayer, I think we would just destroy ourselves in the process.”
This “North Star” means that, on the surface, Zero Parades looks almost identical to Disco Elysium. It’s another dialogue-centric, introspective, isometric RPG with striking art direction. But that’s not to say it’s the exact same game dressed up in a John le Carré skin.
“I think you can see the team has really wanted to exceed their production chops with Zero Parades,” explains Murray, “in terms of having the world seem more reactive, more lived in. There’s more action, more people walking around doing things.”
While ZA/UM had no intention of creating a “traditional” video game RPG, it did want to dig deeper into the genre’s more crunchy elements. This time around there are more skill checks, alongside a mental and physical health system that can be exerted to increase the chances of passing those checks. There’s further emphasis on multiple solutions to individual problems, the very foundation of BioWare’s celebrated Infinity Engine games. By pushing the depth of choice available and enhancing the world’s reactivity to those choices, the team saw the opportunity to create something that stood distinct from Disco Elysium.
“Sophomore efforts are really challenging,” Murray admits. “You don’t want to repeat your first hit, nor can you really.”
It took a lot of time for the team to come to terms with that. During the years following Disco Elysium’s release and subsequent “Final Cut” version, ZA/UM experimented with a number of concepts – some were effectively direct sequels, while others explored “a completely different direction,” according to Ashilevi. The path to Zero Parades arrived with the decision to “not fully reinvent the wheel.” The goal, Murray says, was to “expand on what we know how to do, and make a bigger game, both mechanically and in terms of production scope, and do it well.”
Mission Control
Murray acknowledges that there were “years of drama” before the studio got to that point. For many fans of Disco Elysium, that will mean only one thing: the firing of several key creatives in 2022 and their subsequent accusation that ZA/UM’s executive management had seized control of the company through fraud. It’s a complicated chapter in the studio’s story, in which those exorcised from the company – including game director Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov – are characterised as either toxic disruptors or the victims of corporate conspiracy, depending on your source.
But there’s more to ZA/UM’s troubled recent history than those controversial dismissals: this is a studio that has repeatedly cancelled projects and, in early 2024, made 20 of its staff redundant. It all paints a picture of an inexperienced studio struggling to adapt to life after releasing an unexpected mega hit on the first attempt, with the workers caught in the crossfire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ZA/UM’s UK-based workforce unionised last year.
The artistry comes first, the storytelling comes first. It still feels like the whole video game development side of things is just like a happy accident.
But while collective bargaining is undoubtedly important, those workers also need strong leadership to avoid the woes of the past. Maybe they’ve found that in Murray, a 20-year veteran of the video games industry with previous tenures at Microsoft, Bungie, PopCap, and Private Division. He was appointed as ZA/UM’s new head of studio shortly after news broke about those painful redundancies, and over the past two years his goal has been “coaching the people in the studio, maturing our processes, helping people to really focus on what we’re making, how we’re making it, and why we’re making it.”
“It was easy to have a lot of things sort of floating around,” he admits. “But how are we actually going to animate this, or how are we going to light this? What does this story really mean? What are you really trying to get across to the player?”
Today, ZA/UM is made up of around 90 members of staff. Several of them have, like Murray, been recruited from established developers such as Rocksteady in order to arm the studio with specialist video game experience. But the remaining members of the Disco Elysium team, which makes up approximately 35% of the studio’s total roster, plus many of the new recruits, “come from a background that has nothing to do with game dev,” says Ashilevi.
“As a studio, we still view ourselves pretty much as a collective of artists,” he explains. “The artistry comes first, the storytelling comes first. To me personally, it still feels like the whole video game development side of things is just like a happy accident.”
The Price of Power
That brings us back to Zero Parades, which tells the story of Hershel Wilk, codename “Cascade”, who’s pulled out of retirement for the all-time classic spy trope, One Last Job. By moving into the espionage genre, ZA/UM has been able to work at a notably different scale than it did with Disco Elysium. While Zero Parades takes place in a physical space not too dissimilar to that of the studio’s previous game, by stepping into the shoes of a spy rather than a local detective, the story naturally explores a much grander stage.
“You do have to contend with world powers,” Ashilevi reveals. “It’s not just wallpaper, or stuff that you read from notes that people leave in drawers, or newspapers left on tables. You do have to come into close contact with some of the big players as well.”
This global stage is explored through Hershel’s very personal lens, so while the stakes are certainly heightened this time around, your actions are still conducted at street level. You may be able to turn the cogs of a mega corporation and shift the balance of worldwide politics, for instance, but to do so may require betraying your closest friend. Hershel’s own pain will be tangible, whereas those rotating cogs will feel distant, perhaps even unimportant, to her own life. Such is the toll of espionage.
To create something that reflects Disco Elysium’s triumphs, though, you can’t just tackle issues of the human condition. You’ve got to get at least a little eccentric. And that’s where Hershel’s hobbies come into play.
“She’s deeply fascinated with comic books, music, you name it,” Ashilevi reveals. “So the story is also an exploration of pop culture and what soft power means. Why is it important for us to be obsessed with pop artists and cartoons, and films and pulp novels, and things like that? Why are people so deeply obsessed with retro tech and bootlegged media, like underground forbidden films? What does it do to your soul, and how does it define your identity?”
While music, fashion, TV shows, and retrofuturistic music formats all contribute to the city of Portofiro’s vibrant texture, there is a dark side to it all. What is a consumer as a political entity? How do tiny decisions, like tuning into a particular show or buying a certain magazine, tie into the movements of the big powers? These are potential avenues for Hershel – for you – to investigate.
The battle for soft and hard power, waged between international banks, imperialist states, and communist unions, is something that goes beyond just Hershel’s current mission. “We need to come up with an inspiring enough sandbox so that whatever we choose to do with those characters or this universe next, we can just jump right into it and keep telling stories because the groundwork has been laid,” says Ashilevi. Zero Parades is the starting point for something bigger, then.
At least that’s the hope. The world of Elysium was also envisioned as a space for multiple stories, but it seems that book is now eternally closed. And while Zero Parades may not necessarily need to be as significant a breakout hit as Disco Elysium was to unlock the potential for sequels, it does need to stand tall in a world where the “Disco-like” is a rising genre, made up of games developed both by fans inspired by that RPG masterpiece and new studios set up by the scattered former members of ZA/UM’s original creative team. But by following their own creative North Star, the team behind Zero Parades hopes to captivate players once more.
“We have no clue what kinds of games or stories people are hoping to get out of ZA/UM,” Ashilevi says. “The only thing we can control is whether we’re staying true to our own vision and voice. And that’s what we have done with Zero Parades.”
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
Sports are foundational to gaming as a medium. From Pong to NES Baseball, the infancy of the medium was littered with just-about-recognisable renditions of real-life sports in an attempt to conjure a degree of familiarity to this fledgling form of entertainment. But in the mid ‘90s, the developers at Nintendo collectively had a light bulb appear above their head housing an idea that would change gaming forever – what if Mario and his friends played tennis?
The greatest Mario sports games are a perfect blend of those two words: Mario and sports. It has to be a simulation worth its salt, giving you a reasonable adaptation of what it’s truly like to play the sport in question. However, just as vital is the Mario part, splicing the sport with the Mushroom Kingdom’s trademark personality. In the decades following 1995’s Mario’s Tennis, Nintendo’s sports games evolved from simple sims to wacky adventures, before retreating back to a steady, if uninspiring, run of titles. The early days of Camelot Software’s handheld RPGs and chaos-inducing console sims are seemingly long gone, and today many of Mario’s sporting outings are greeted with more of a shrug than with anticipation.
But with Mario Tennis Fever releasing this month on Nintendo Switch 2, we could be about to enter a new era. So in celebration of a joyful future (or just a magical past) here’s the top 10 Mario sports games, ranked.
10. Mario Hoops 3-on-3
If many modern Mario sports games are poisoned by a lack of personality, games like Mario Hoops are the antidote. 3-on-3’s unique presentation blends 3D models with excellent sprite work, a striking approach that bridges the graphical styles of the GameBoy Advance and Nintendo’s then-new DS handheld. Nothing represents this mix better than the character select screen, the single greatest in all of Mario history, which lays the groundwork for a charming basketball romp.
Hoops could easily claim to be the best use of the DS’ touch screen. Tapping in different areas sees Mario and his friends dribble around the court, keeping the ball away from opponents and collecting coins and items. It’s an intuitive motion, and that use of the stylus extends to all the basics of basketball, like shooting and passing. Regrettably, Nintendo has rarely returned to the idea of basketball in the Mushroom Kingdom, but even if it did try again, few consoles would execute the idea better than the DS… well, as long as you’re not left-handed, that is.
9. Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color)
The early days of handheld Mario sports games produced some of the most unusual oddities in Nintendo’s history, and their lack of Mushroom Kingdom whimsey and focus on regular human characters is often looked back upon with a raised eyebrow. However, actually dive into the Game Boy Color’s Mario Tennis and you’ll find that eyebrow is put firmly back in place.
Mario Tennis features a wonderful RPG “Tour” mode that nails the genre’s basics. Being locked into three-set matches with a far more powerful opponent is akin to boss battles in a more traditional RPG. They become challenges that you relish, always pushing you to move more quickly after a serve or time your smashes to perfection. Working through the tour sees you levelling up your original character via a very satisfying process, with the grind required to improve specific skills never feeling like a chore. The graphics and controls are inherently limited by the console, but that simplicity lends Mario Tennis a lovely rhythmic quality that encourages repeat replays even a quarter of a century later.
8. Mario Golf: World Tour
For as slow and ponderous as the sport of golf can be, it’s a miracle that it consistently dovetails so beautifully with the chaotic and colorful world of Mario. World Tour nails the balance between both sides of the Nintendo sports coin, offering a quick and snappy way to execute precise and considered rounds of golf. With no need for complicated button schemes or deep systems, World Tour gives you a great sense of control that allows you to cut through the fiddly stuff and get to work on the eternal quest of improving your swing, just like a real casual golfer.
The 3DS and Wii U era was a difficult one for Mario sports titles, but World Tour stands out from a lacklustre crowd thanks to its personality-packed game modes like Point Tourney, Star Coin challenges and Speed Golf. Castle Club also adds a story mode centred on your Mii, complete with a fun upgrade system with stat-boosting cosmetics like clothes and clubs, which is reminiscent of Camelot’s handheld glory days.
7. Mario Superstar Baseball
Much like basketball, Nintendo has barely paid any attention to baseball across the past couple decades, despite knocking it out of the park on the first try back in 2005. Mario Superstar Baseball is a wonderful marriage of addictive baseball mechanics and Mushroom Kingdom chaos, played out in iconic Mario locations that have been contorted into baseball fields. Only in Wario Palace could a barrage of environmental hazards turn a home run into a devastating out.
Superstar Baseball boasts one of the Mario sports series’ most engaging story modes thanks to its “chemistry engine”. The relationships between your teammates dictates the speed and accuracy of their passes, meaning you won’t want to pair Mario with Wario and Bowser, but he’ll combine beautifully with Luigi and Peach. It’s a simple and effective way to bring depth to an already smooth experience that belongs in the Nintendo big leagues.
6. Super Mario Strikers
It’s amazing what a little pop of 2D animation and a few guitar riffs can do to make a subset of Mario sports games feel completely unique. Super Mario Strikers, the jumping plumber’s first foray into the world of soccer, has always had a rebellious edge. Anyone who was glued to their GameCube in the mid-2000s will look back on it with a special kind of fondness, especially in the light of its disappointing revival on Switch.
The nostalgia for Strikers isn’t just due to its bold presentation, though: its gameplay is perfectly calibrated. Each character controls just loosely enough to invite exactly the right amount of chaos into each and every match. If the dial was turned too far towards clean passing and shooting, Mario Strikers would be nowhere near as fun. Instead, developer Next Level Games created something aggressively competitive, wholly chaotic, and vibrantly unique – everything a Mario sports game should be.
5. Mario Golf: Advance Tour
Mario Golf: Advance Tour is one of the Game Boy Advance’s true gems, launched during a time when developer Camelot was proving itself as a Nintendo sports powerhouse. Compared to its predecessors it is genuinely beautiful; the GBA was an absolute haven for bright and colorful adventures and Advance Tour benefits greatly from the system’s then-advanced capabilities.
Those vibrant visuals are just the face of a game that takes the proven and perfected RPG structure from Camelot’s previous sports games and introduces even more Mario characters and locations to the mix. On the gameplay front, despite only having two face buttons available, Camelot designed a great-feeling, tight control scheme that ensured each shot you took felt measured and clean. That sharpness became a design philosophy that continues to stick around throughout every installment in the Mario Golf series. Advance Tour remains special to this day, though, thanks to its unique pixel art rendering of otherworldly courses, and the GBA’s form factor making it the perfect game to pack for on-the-go strolls through the Mushroom Kingdom’s premier golf courses.
4. Mario Tennis (Nintendo 64)
The moment you play your first shot in the Nintendo 64 version of Mario Tennis, something just clicks. The responsive gameplay, smooth animations, and freeing analog control creates an indescribable sense of elegance. Long rallies become like trances in which you find yourself less determined to win the point and instead simply addicted to the sensation of knocking the ball back and forth. Well, until you completely mistime a shot, Toad falls flat on his face, and you’re suddenly a couple sets down, that is.
Released in the year 2000, Mario Tennis is another example of deep gameplay that requires just two face buttons and directional controls, representing Nintendo at its most simple and effective. Subsequent tennis games went on to add ideas, gimmicks and modes that undeniably helped them surpass the offerings of this N64 title. But the bones of modern Mario Tennis are all here, a timeless gameplay loop perfected 26 years ago that endures throughout Nintendo’s history.
3. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
So much of what we expect from modern Mario sports games originated back on the GameCube, and the brilliant Mario Golf formula established by Toadstool Tour is one that Nintendo has defaulted to over the last couple decades. Its use of normal and power shots, manual or automatic swinging, and approach to camera control are all now staples of 3D Mario Golf titles for good reason: the simplicity just works.
That simplicity gives Toadstool Tour plenty of space to carry out an overwhelming charm offensive. There are so many different ways to play, especially in multiplayer, from the conventional Doubles and Tournament modes to the more eccentric Coin and Ring attacks, giving Toadstool Tour a shot at being the best party game on this list. It’s also the Mario Golf game that does the sport itself the most justice while still feeling quintessentially Mario. It’s simply a great bit of goofy, golfy goodness.
2. Mario Power Tennis
Everything that made Mario Tennis on the N64 so brilliant is preserved and built upon with the GameCube’s Mario Power Tennis. The console’s extra horsepower is used to add wild flourishes to the courts and characters, allowing the established, excellent 3D tennis formula to thrive alongside a deep collection of crazy Mario-isms. Smartly, developer Camelot decided against making full use of the GameCube’s iconic multi-button controller, understanding the enduring appeal of a simple control scheme, while still finding a way to add deeper mechanics, such as offensive and defensive skill shots.
Along with fun challenge courts that test specific tennis skills and Item Battles which create chaos over the net, Mario Power Tennis boasts feats of creative genius like Artist on the Court, a mode in which you use your tennis skills to paint a mural.These may not be flagship modes, but they add the kind of personality and flavour that you can’t get from anyone else but Nintendo in today’s gaming landscape.
1. Super Mario Strikers Charged
Much like how Power Tennis and Toadstool Tour benefited from the excellent foundations of their predecessors, Super Mario Strikers Charged takes every beloved detail from the original Strikers and advances them several steps further. Its refined design places increased emphasis on tactics; each character now has stats and special abilities, which makes playstyles and team composition as vital to victory as actually kicking the ball.
What makes Strikers Charged the very best game in this list, though, is how that tactical play is enhanced through Super Abilities and Mega Strikes, AKA the greatest gimmicks ever introduced to a Mario sports game. Abilities like Yoshi turning into a giant egg and flattening people across the pitch, or Bowser setting players on fire, or Petey Piranha spraying mud in every direction provides a variety of incredibly silly, yet highly tactical opportunities. The Mega Strikes, meanwhile, increase the level of hype around the proceedings, triggering a cut scene and allowing you to score up to six goals in one go. This is a great arcade soccer game, but Super Mario Strikers Charged is also completely out of its mind, and it’s that wonderful blend that makes a Mario sports game truly great.
And those are our picks for the very best Mario sports games. Did we get a hole in one, or have we suffered a triple bagel? Let us know your thoughts and favourites in the comments.
