Category: IGN

Nintendo development legend Shigeru Miyamoto has issued a video message thanking the former voice of Mario Charles Martinet.

Last month, Nintendo announced that Martinet, the original voice actor of Mario who has played the character since 1996, is “stepping back from recording character voices for our games” and will now serve as a “Mario Ambassador”. Nintendo later confirmed Martinet does not voice Mario in upcoming Switch exclusive Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

In the special video message issued today, September 7, Miyamoto recalled when Martinet made his debut as the voice of Mario in 1996’s seminal 3D platformer, Super Mario 64, his penchant for calling the Nintendo legend “papa!”, as well as the many trips the pair had taken together promoting Mario and Nintendo across the globe.

Miyamoto said he was “deeply grateful” for Martinet’s work bringing Nintendo characters to life for nearly 30 years. “Charles-san, thank you very much,” Miyamoto said.

Here’s a special video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Charles Martinet regarding the change of Mario’s voice actor, announced on 8/21. pic.twitter.com/4mOpD2Cx3a

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 7, 2023

Over the weekend, Charles Martinet discussed his new role as “Mario Ambassador” for Nintendo, saying: “I don’t know what that is yet.”

Speaking during a Q&A panel at GalaxyCon Austin 2023, Martinet said: “I am now a Mario Ambassador. I don’t know what that is yet. I’m not retired as it were, but I’m an ambassador. As we step forward into the future, I will learn, we’ll all learn exactly what that is.”

In the video message, Miyamoto said Martinet will continue to travel the world promoting Mario at events, performing Nintendo voices for fans, and signing autographs.

As for who’s replacing Martinet as the voice of Mario, Nintendo has yet to say. In a recent interview with IGN, Nintendo of America boss Doug Bowser said the company will leave it to the credits of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

“I think people have recognized this when they see Super Mario Bros. Wonder, they’ll hear a different voice and we’ll let that play out and that’ll be within the credits, and people will learn who the new person is at that point in time, but we don’t plan to make any announcement in advance of that,” Bowser said.

Also in the video message, Miyamoto reveals more than Mario’s voice has changed for Super Mario Bros. Wonder. “The voices of some Mario characters have become new,” Miyamoto said, “so please check them out.” Martinet voiced a number of Mario characters, including Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

When it comes to game night, it’s always a great idea to have a variety of board games around for people to choose from. Unfortunately, building that collection of games can oftentimes cost you more than you’d expect. Have no fear, though, as we’re here to help you out with a variety of deals on board games that are worth picking up. This doesn’t just cater to events like Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday, either. We try to find deals on the best board games all throughout the year, so you can buy your favorites without breaking the bank.

TL;DR – The Best Board Game Deals

Below, you can find a selection of the best board game deals at the moment. Amazon Prime Day may be done and over with for the year, but there are still plenty of sales worth taking advantage of.

The Best Board Game Deals

Board Games: Budget to Best

For when board games aren’t on sale, it’s nice to know you still have options that don’t cost you tons of money. Here, we’ll point you in the direction of more affordable options that are still worth the investment for your next game night.

When Is the Best Time to Find Board Game Deals?

Board games go on sale at sites like Amazon, Target, Walmart, and even GameStop fairly regularly — you can generally find special discounts every month or two. In addition, they absolutely get big discounts during major sale events like Amazon’s Prime Day and Black Friday.

While Prime Day is primarily an Amazon shopping holiday, other retailers always put on competing sales events at the same time. Those are great times to look for board game deals.

As for Black Friday, it’s not just a one-day event: you can often find deals on board games the whole week of Black Friday, as well as on Cyber Monday and throughout that whole following week. Keep in mind that stock runs out (particularly at Amazon), so if you see a good price on a board game you want during one of these major sale events, grab it before it’s gone.

How to Know if it’s Really a Good Board Game Deal

At online board game retailers like Amazon and Walmart, prices are always in flux, to say the least. Many of the board games in the board game section will be discounted to some degree from their MSRP. But there are a few ways to know when a board game is on sale for a notable discount.

For one, you can check Amazon’s daily deals page, where you’ll occasionally find an actual sale on various board games. Sometimes these are from one company, sometimes they’re on the whole category of board games. Target also periodically runs sales on board games, so check their deal page, too.

If you’re looking at a board game and are wondering if the sale price is good, copy the URL and paste it into the search field at camelcamelcamel. That’s an Amazon price tracker that shows you price history. Better yet, it works for any item, not just board games.

Finally, you can follow IGN Deals on Twitter, where we’ll always tweet any notable board game deals we come across.

How Do You Know if a Board Game Is Any Good?

IGN reviews board games fairly regularly, so you can always search to see if we’ve reviewed a game you’re considering picking up. Other websites do, too. We also have a whole lot of board game roundups, ranging from the best classic board games and the best cooperative board games to the best horror board games.

Outside of IGN, the best board game resource around (for my money) is Board Game Geek. It maintains a database of every board and card game you’d want to know about, with all kinds of news, stats, and user reviews all gathered together in one place.

Nintendo reportedly revealed Switch 2 behind closed doors at gamescom 2023 last month, showing off the power of its upcoming next-gen console.

According to Eurogamer, the Switch 2 was shown running a ‘souped up’ version of Switch launch title Zelda: Breath of the Wild, although there’s apparently no suggestion the game will be re-released.

Meanwhile, VGC reported Nintendo showed off Epic’s The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo running on hardware with the specs Nintendo is targeting for its future console. The site said this demo ran using Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology alongside ray tracing, with visuals ‘comparable’ to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles.

Nintendo is reportedly set to release its next-gen console during the second half of 2024, with development kits now with partner studios.

Apparently this new next-gen console can be used in portable mode, like the Nintendo Switch, and has an LCD screen as opposed to an OLED screen in order to keep costs down. It also comes with a cartridge slot for physical games. However, the crucial question of backwards compatibility with Nintendo Switch games remains unclear. Nintendo has yet to comment on the reports.

In May, Nintendo said it’s the long-rumoured Switch successor wouldn’t release until April 2024 at the earliest. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa explained during an investors presentation that the company isn’t considering new hardware in the 2023/24 financial year, which ends March 31, 2024.

This comes despite a decline in Switch sales. The console sold close to 18 million units in the last financial year, down from 23 million sold the year before and 28 million the year before that. Nintendo isn’t looking to rush a new console out to tackle this decline though, as it has forecast another drop for the coming year.

“Sustaining the Switch’s sales momentum will be difficult in its seventh year,” said Furukawa during the presentation. “Our goal of selling 15 million units this fiscal year is a bit of a stretch, but we will do our best to bolster demand going into the holiday season so that we can achieve the goal.”

Rumours surrounding a new console have been circulating for years. The new console was said to offer boosted graphics akin to the PlayStation 4 and its Pro model, but there is no official information regarding the next piece of Nintendo hardware yet.

This week, Nintendo said it had moved on to a brand new The Legend of Zelda game, ruling out Tears of the Kingdom DLC. It seems likely this new Zelda game will launch on Nintendo’s next console. But will Nintendo re-release Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 2?

Meanwhile, Nintendo has announced a raft of games for Switch due out between now and the end of its fiscal year. These include Detective Pikachu Returns, the aforementioned Super Mario Bros. Wonder, WarioWare: Move It!, a Super Mario RPG remake, Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet DLC, a visually enhanced version of Nintendo 3DS game Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and an untitled Princess Peach game. Nintendo still lists the MIA Metroid Prime 4 as a Nintendo Switch game.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

It’s a debate as old as role-playing games themselves: should players have to deal with encumbrance?

The recent release of Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and Bethesda’s Starfield have thrust the encumbrance debate back into the headlines, with both games employing a system that restricts how much stuff you can carry.

While each game employs systems and mechanics that let you carry more and more, it is inevitable that as a player, you’re going to have to spend a decent chunk of your time fussing with managing your character or characters’ carry weight limit.

In Starfield’s case, encumbrance is a big enough issue for some that they are willing to lose access to gaining achievements in order to increase the carry limit via console commands on PC. This in turn has made a mod designed to prevent the achievements from being disabled one of the most popular on NexusMods.

It’s a different situation on Xbox Series X and S, of course. Starfield on console does not grant access to console command cheats, leaving players faced with the dreaded encumbrance mechanic.

Fans of role-playing games are well used to encumbrance, of course, however much they might hate it. Bethesda’s own The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games all have it. But why does it exist in the first place? There’s an argument to be made that encumbrance adds a sense of place to a virtual world, that it makes characters and objects more believable. There’s a game in resource management, too. If you can’t bring everything to a fight, what do you bring? Perhaps there are interesting choices to make with encumbrance.

Beyond that, there are logistical reasons video games use encumbrance. Again, if you can carry everything, how do you visualise everything in an inventory screen? How do you help the player find what they want? Starfield’s inventory user interface is awful. Imagine if all the items in the game world were suddenly weighing it down?

However we feel about it, encumbrance looks like it’s here to stay. People complained about it when Fallout 4 came out eight years ago, and Bethesda will be intimately familiar with the debate surrounding it. With all that, Bethesda made the decision to stick with it for Starfield. Larian, too, seems keen on it. Until such time developers ditch encumbrance, it’s a case of carry on with all that carry on!

There’s a lot going on in the world of Starfield. Its full launch saw over 1 million concurrent players. Players are using Starfield’s ship creator to recreate famous vessels from the likes of Star Wars, Serenity, and Star Trek, and many hidden references to other games like Skyrim have already been discovered. Savvy speedrunners have even figured out how to complete it in under three hours.

However, if you’re still just getting started, here are all the things to do first in Starfield.

IGN’s review explains the pull to seek out Starfield’s “immense amount of quality roleplaying quests and interesting NPCs” is strong, despite a rough start and some core aggravations.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

One of the best things about playing Starfield on PC is the access to console commands.

In Starfield, cheat codes are enabled via console commands, but they only work on the PC version of the game. These cheat codes let you do everything from spawning any item in the game to toggle god mode. Check out IGN’s Starfield console commands guide for a comprehensive rundown of how the cheats work.

Xbox Series X and S owners, however, do not have access to console commands. But players have discovered a workaround that, while limited, does let console players get in on some of the cheating action.

If you own Starfield on Xbox or Xbox Game Pass, you can download it on any PC for free via the Xbox App. Even if your PC is a potato (Starfield and potatoes is an actual thing), just run the game using the same Microsoft account so that your save files from Xbox are transferred across. Then get stuck in to the console commands.

Thanks to Microsoft’s cross-platform save system, the next time you run Starfield on Xbox, your modified save file from PC, along with its enabled cheats, carries over.

Players are using this trick to, for example, get around Starfield’s frustrating weight limit. You can also use commands like add more digipicks, medipacks, and credits on Xbox with this method.

As redditor dimmanxak pointed out, if you use console commands on PC Starfield automatically turns off achievement progress. Thankfully, there’s already a mod on PC that prevents this.

There’s a lot going on in the world of Starfield. Its full launch saw over 1 million concurrent players. Players are using Starfield’s ship creator to recreate famous vessels from the likes of Star Wars, Serenity, and Star Trek, and many hidden references to other games like Skyrim have already been discovered. Savvy speedrunners have even figured out how to complete it in under three hours.

However, if you’re still just getting started, here are all the things to do first in Starfield.

IGN’s review explains the pull to seek out Starfield’s “immense amount of quality roleplaying quests and interesting NPCs” is strong, despite a rough start and some core aggravations.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Bethesda’s Starfield exceeded one million concurrent players across all platforms today, according to CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer.

“Thanks to all the players who helped us reach this great milestone and congrats to [Bethesda Studios],” the Xbox boss added alongside the news.

Starfield exceeded 1 million concurrent players across all platforms today. Thanks to all the players who helped us reach this great milestone and congrats to the @BethesdaStudios https://t.co/5jFaCyPz4G

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) September 7, 2023

Bethesda’s sprawling space epic, which topped sales charts even before its official launch on September 6, has enjoyed a positive start to its life after launch.

Players have been using Starfield’s ship creator to recreate famous vessels from the likes of Star Wars, Serenity, and Star Trek, and many hidden references to other games like Skyrim have already been discovered. Savvy speedrunners have even figured out how to complete it in under three hours.

However, if you’re still just getting started, here are all the things to do first in Starfield.

IGN’s review explains the pull to seek out Starfield’s “immense amount of quality roleplaying quests and interesting NPCs” is strong, despite a rough start and some core aggravations.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

After a quick update on how our Starfield adventures are going, we discuss Phil Spencer and the Xbox leadership team’s big decision to bend the Series X/S parity rules to get Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox, Destin’s big interview with Phil Spencer — including whether or not Microsoft will produce a mid-gen refresh for the Series X — the sad closure of Volition, and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out my June 2023 interview with Todd Howard, who discussed the realization of his vision for Starfield after eight years, how Red Dead Redemption 2 was something of an inspiration, what his future holds, and more!

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Skull and Bones is suffering yet another breach in the hull, as Ubisoft’s long-delayed pirate game has lost another creative director.

According to a report from Kotaku, creative director Elisabeth Pellen left Ubisoft Singapore to return to Ubisoft’s Paris headquarters earlier this summer. Pellen had been working on Skull and Bones since 2018. This marks the third time Skull and Bones has lost a creative director. Kotaku’s report also says Ubisoft Singapore is facing an organized labor campaign from Singapore’s Creative Media and Publishing Union.

“Five years ago, Elisabeth Pellen went to Ubisoft Singapore with a mission to reboot the creative direction of Skull and Bones,” an Ubisoft spokesperson told Kotaku. “She succeeded, and the Skull and Bones team is now fulfilling her vision to deliver a unique naval action RPG experience to our players.”

But when Ubisoft will actually deliver Skull and Bones remains to be seen. At the beginning of 2023, Skull and Bones was delayed for the sixth time. Back then, Ubisoft slated Skull and Bones for sometime in its 2023-24 fiscal year, which we’re in the middle of right now. It seemed like we were finally approaching more concrete news on the game, but that changed when all Ubisoft brought to its Ubisoft Summer Forward presentation was an admittedly catchy musical performance and some closed beta dates.

And, amidst the wait for Skull and Bones, reports have surfaced claiming Ubisoft is working on an Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag remake — which is the very game with the pirate ship combat that kicked off Skull and Bones to begin with. Time really is a flat circle.

We went hands-on with Skull and Bones in August, and had positive impressions of the long-awaited pirate game. “After a good chunk of time climbing the ranks of notoriety in Skull & Bones’ beta, I’m more excited to dive into the full experience than I was even way back when it was announced at E3 all those years ago,” we wrote in our Skull and Bones gameplay impressions.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is out on PlayStation 5 today, finally giving console owners a chance to see what the fuss is all about with Larian Studios’ critically-acclaimed RPG. Many are eager to play with their friends on PC, but Baldur’s Gate 3 does not currently support crossplay… at least not right now.

In a new interview with Eurogamer, Larian Studio’s confirmed that Baldur’s Gate 3 crossplay is “on the roadmap” for a future release. Larian has been working diligently to fix various bugs and performance problems since its release last month, which has kept the studio very busy.

We knew that Wolfenstein developer MachineGames is working on an Indiana Jones video game. But news since its announcement has been minimal. But according to Todd Howard, we might get more information on this mystery game next year.

In an interview with Esquire, Howard did not share much in regards to the upcoming game but teased that he could have more to share down the road. “Howard would talk more about Indiana Jones—I can tell he really wants to—but he’s not allowed,” the article reads. “Instead, as I exit his office, he flashes that smile. ‘We’ll talk next year.'”

The interview also explains how Howard pitched Lucasfilm back in 2009 to make an Indiana Jones game, stating it was on Howard’s “bucket list” to make such a game. Explaining that it “didn’t work out back then, but in the years since,” Disney was interested in the pitch.

Bethesda Softworks announced back in 2021 that it was collaborating with Lucasfilm Games to publish a new game based on the Indiana Jones IP, with MachineGames handling development. Though following its January 2021 announcement, details are slim. We do know that due to the Xbox vs. FTC trial that occurred over the summer, Indiana Jones was originally planned to be released on PS5 until MachineGames and Bethesda Softworks’ parent company, ZeniMax Media, was acquired by Microsoft.

Outside of being an Xbox console exclusive, we know that Todd Howard will serve as the game’s executive producer. In a previous interview, Howard noted that the upcoming Indiana Jones game would be a “mash-up” of different genres.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.