As the sun rises on the cobbled market street that ascends from bustling docks on the vibrant Mediterranean waters to the new forum high on the hill above, Anno 117: Pax Romana fills me with delight and civic pride. It took a long time, but I feel like I finally clicked with this series that I’ve had a little bit of a rocky relationship with, having come in a bit late and at an awkward time with 2205. Its complex economics can still seem to wobble spectacularly off their axis and leave you in a dire failure spiral, but resplendent mechanics for trade, naval warfare, and the blending of cultures offer chances to right the ship.
The basic routine in Anno 117 is familiar and effective if you’ve played other games in the series. You start out building modest residences to house hardworking liberti, or freed people– somewhat conspicuously sidestepping the institution of Roman slavery. When their needs are met, they can promote up the social ladder all the way to snobby patricians who demand all kinds of exotic delicacies from around the world.
Part of what influences these promotions is simply access to goods, which is a city-wide thing. But another component is living near high prestige buildings like theaters and shrines… and far away from unpleasant or polluting ones like a charcoal burner. I love the way this naturally creates clusters of higher-class housing on important market streets, tapering off into working class neighborhoods in more industrial areas. It adds to the feel of a real, living city. And since paved roads extend the range of those buildings, that’s an upgrade that lets you immediately see its positive effects.
It’s genuinely delightful to zoom in and watch my little toga-clad citizens going about their business. Every building from a stately villa to an idyllic lavender farm is studded with detail and character. Even the untouched green fields and peaceful blue waters full of marine life create a strong sense of place. The character models for leaders and advisors may be the one thing that didn’t wow me. They’re full of character, but especially in some of the campaign cutscenes, there were some significant lip sync issues that made it look like a much older game or a badly-dubbed movie.
Anno 117 really comes alive with its detailed trade system.
The summery paradise of Latium isn’t the only locale to explore and exploit. Eventually you unlock the ability to sail to foggy, rocky Albion – that is, Britain – with its own resources, aesthetic, and population. I was a bit worried Anno would lean too hard into othering stereotypes about “mystical Celts” here based on some of the marketing, but it’s actually a pretty grounded and sensible depiction. The really interesting choice you have mechanically in this region is whether to stay true to Celtic traditions or fully Romanize your new subjects. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and you can eventually mix and match for some powerful synergies.
Anno 117 really comes alive with its detailed trade system, though. To truly meet the needs of demanding nobles in the two regions, you’ll have to set up production chains for luxury goods that might pull resources from two or three different islands, then ship them across the world map from one region to another. Each delivery requires individual ships assigned to the trade routes, so I can see exactly where my next delivery of cheese is and even reroute it somewhere else.
This is all fairly easy to set up and tweak thanks to the well-organized interface, and naturally creates incentives to build smaller villages that do one specific thing as well as warehouses and waystations to speed things up. My cheese island is quite far away, so I noticed my trade ships spent half their time sailing across Albion. But if I set up a colony close to it that’s basically just a cheese warehouse and some subsistence fisheries, I can constantly be moving cheese there with intra-region trade ships to be picked up at the edge of the map all at once. I adore this kind of logistics stuff.
Anno 117 is a pretty good RTS, too. I’m especially a fan of its naval combat, which I had to master quickly to protect my trade routes from increasingly vicious pirates. Maneuvering ships feels weighty and realistic, with differences in maneuverability based on whether they rely on sails, oars, or both, and I eventually got pretty good at maneuvers like trapping a sneaky little pirate ship in a cove where there would be no escape.
It’s a pretty good RTS, too, and I’m especially a fan of its naval combat.
Ground combat is just fine. It does its job, with a small selection of melee, ranged, and siege units that can fulfill a handful of different roles. It’s possible to succeed without ever getting into a land battle if you have a good navy, but in the few cases where I did, I found some interesting tactics to dig into. It feels like a real RTS at least, as opposed to a half-baked minigame, which I really appreciate.
Diplomacy is pretty basic stuff, with a single interesting wrinkle in that the Emperor works a bit differently. You can’t really make treaties with him, but he will make demands of you, and succeeding, failing, or refusing affects your reputation with Rome. When he likes you, you get bonuses. When he doesn’t, you get penalties. But both ends of the scale culminate in some very powerful rewards. Either you play nice and get appointed Consul, or you defy his authority so effectively that you grant yourself Proconsular authority, Caesar-style.
There is a decent story campaign, but it’s really more of an extended tutorial. It took me less than 10 hours to finish and only really scratches the surface of the mechanics you can play with in endless mode. You can play as either Marcus or Marcia, with the latter being a sort of madcap “Weekend at Bernicus’” scenario where you are taking on the governor duties of your totally-not-dead husband. It’s hardly Shakespeare, but there’s some interesting intrigue going on and a cast of memorable characters. The Canaanite Ben-Baalion was a particularly endearing companion who presented me with an emotionally satisfying choice at the end.
While you can continue from the ending of the campaign as long as you want, most of my playtime was spent in the endless mode, which lets you start in either Albion or Latium and offers a wide range of difficulty options. You can even pick from a set of rival governors with different personalities and playstyles. I don’t think they necessarily play by the same rules that you do as a player, however. Looking at some late game cities they built… I honestly don’t know what’s going on. But they can be compelling adversaries or valuable trade partners nonetheless.
There are still some classic Anno issues kicking around, like the fact that very large economies can become unwieldy and are prone to death spirals. If food is disrupted, population drops, which causes food buildings to become underemployed, leading to even less food and even more population drop. At one point I had to restart because I accidentally changed a large city’s patron god, which made it instantly insolvent and nearly irrecoverable due to lost agricultural bonuses. But trade is kind of the hero here once again, since setting up buy orders for whatever you’re out of can bail you out of a lot of tricky spots as long as you have cash. It’s a little fiddly setting up a lot of different trades at a lot of different harbors the first time, but the interface is easy to work with, and once things were set, I didn’t find I had to mess with them very often.
EA and Battlefield Studios have published update 1.1.1.5 patch notes for Battlefield 6 and REDSEC, delivering a variety of quality-of-life changes for weapons and vehicles and, at long last, a fix for the sledgehammer Recon drone glitch.
The team behind last month’s new Battlefield game detailed everything arriving in the new update in the patch notes posted to social media today. It comes with a full breakdown for tweaks related to weapon accuracy, vehicle countermeasures, and other bug fixes before update 1.1.1.5 rolls out for Battlefield 6 and REDSEC tomorrow, November 11, at 1 a.m. PT / 4 a.m. ET.
Topping the list of changes is a fix for one of the most notorious bugs to arrive since the launch of Battlefield 6: the drone glitch. For the uninitiated, players have figured out that standing on top of a friendly XFGM-6D Recon drone and smacking it with a sledgehammer causes the device to fly upward. It began as a goofy activity for those looking to add a dash of comedy to their matches and quickly evolved into an annoying exploit, as players eventually learned it could be used to reach otherwise inaccessible vantage points.
The Battlefield 6 sledgehammer drone glitch will finally be laid to rest tomorrow, but it’s far from the only change on the way. Update 1.1.1.5 will also introduce a few tweaks to how vehicles operate. Both ground and air vehicle users will be happy to know the glitch affecting the use of countermeasures like flares has been fixed, which should result in more reliable protection against lock-guided missiles. A bug tied to incorrect vehicle spawns in Breakthrough and Conquest will also be fixed with tomorrow’s update.
In addition to general fixes for battle royal match flow as well as progression, audio, and UI, infantry will notice less dispersion when aiming down sights after sprinting. It, as well as other fixes related to player movement and shooting, should have players feeling more accurate when they’re on the move.
We’re rolling out a Quality of Life update on 11 November at 09:00 UTC, bringing refinements to vehicle countermeasure reliability, weapon accuracy, Battle Royale match flow, and overall gameplay stability.
Major Updates for 1.1.1.5:
Fixed an exploit allowing players to ascend and access unintended areas when standing on a XFGM-6D Recon Drone by hitting it with the Sledgehammer.
Fixed an issue where Lock-Guided Missiles did not get countered as expected when met with enemy countermeasures such as flares.
Fixed an issue where vehicles did not spawn correctly in Breakthrough and Conquest.
Fixed multiple Battle Royale issues affecting match flow, squad revives, and End of Round transitions.
Addressed progression, audio, and UI issues, improving overall clarity, reliability, and immersion.
CHANGELOG
PLAYER:
Fixed an issue where dispersion would be higher than intended when going from sprint to firing in ADS.
Fixed an issue where dispersion would incorrectly scale with movement speed and always assume the player is moving at maximum movement speed for the stance.
Tuned landing animation to reduce excessive camera and weapon movement when aiming down sights, improving visual stability during and after landing. This update also resolves instances where the ADS aim could be displaced when sliding.
VEHICLES:
Fixed an issue where Lock-Guided Missiles did not get countered as expected when met with enemy countermeasures such as flares.
GADGETS:
Fixed an exploit allowing players to ascend and access unintended areas when standing on the XFGM-6D Recon Drone by hitting it with the Sledgehammer.
MAPS & MODES:
Fixed an issue where vehicles did not spawn correctly in Breakthrough and Conquest.
Fixed an issue where matches sometimes would start with all sectors and objectives active at the same time.
Fixed an issue in Strikepoint on Siege of Cairo where destruction did not reset at halftime.
UI & HUD:
Fixed an issue in Vehicle Customisation locked Anti-Air Vehicle presets did not display their unlock criteria as intended.
PROGRESSION:
Fixed an issue where the shotgun weapon challenge “Kill 5 Enemies With a Shotgun Without Reloading” did not complete properly.
Fixed an issue where progress for the “Engineer Specialist 3” Assignment did not save correctly.
PORTAL:
Fixed an issue where “SpawnLoot” would not spawn Ammo or Armor.
Fixed an issue where players with community creations privileges set to Block could still access user-generated Community Experiences when the party leader hosted a match.
AUDIO:
Fixed an issue where activating the BF PRO Radio Channel through the Commorose did not play any sound.
REDSEC
PLAYER:
Fixed an issue where Battle Royale (Quads) matches did not end after the last team was eliminated.
Fixed an issue where being killed immediately after a mobile respawn completed could result in the squad being eliminated instead of reviving remaining teammates.
Fixed an issue where players could become stuck in a top-down view of the map after redeploying.
Fixed an issue where players retained their Second Chance after redeploying and did not transition to the End of Round screen after their next elimination.
UI & HUD:
Fixed an issue where all squad members displayed the same highlighted stat on the Squad Placement screen.
PROGRESSION:
Fixed an issue where the “Battle Royal Master Challenge 4” did not track progress correctly.
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).
Clash Royale is a PvP strategy game where you go head-to-head against other players, using cards to deploy units to attack your enemies’ base while defending your own. Below, you’ll find a list of all the Clash Royale codes currently available, and their rewards.
Active Clash Royale Codes (November 2025)
Below are all the working Clash Royale codes we know of, and what you can get for redeeming them. We’ve tested these codes and confirmed they work at the time of publication, but they may expire and stop working at any time.
REINABARRIGA: Snoring Dragon banner set
How to Redeem Clash Royale Codes
You’ll need to redeem Clash Royale codes on the official Supercell store. Log in using your Supercell ID, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for ‘Redeem a Store Code’ and enter your code below.
You must have a Supercell ID to redeem codes, so if you don’t already have one, open up Clash Royale and click the menu icon (3 horizontal lines). At the bottom of the menu, you’ll see a yellow button that says Supercell ID. Create your ID and then head over to the Store to redeem your code.
Once you’ve successfully entered a code, you’ll be able to see the associated rewards and the account you’re redeeming them to. Head back to Clash Royale to receive your reward.
Clash Royale QR Codes (November 2025)
In addition to promo codes, there are also Clash Royale QR codes you can scan to obtain rewards. You’ll need to scan these QR codes using your device, or click on the QR codes on this page using your device’s browser to automatically open the rewards page in your app.
The Clash Royale QR codes currently available are:
67 Emote
Royal Ghost Boo Emote
That’s all we’ve got for Clash Royale codes at the moment, but keep checking back for new ones!
Jen Rothery is a Deputy Editor on the IGN Guides team looking after live service games, and we assume her favorite hobby is playing PEAK and falling down the mountain over and over again, because she does it a lot.
Survival action RPG Enshrouded released in Early Access last year and became an instant hit, reaching more than a million players in four days and currently sitting at “Very Positive” on Steam with nearly 75,000 reviews. Developer Keen Games has consistently updated the game in the months since, and its newly released Update 7, titled Wake of the Water, is its biggest to date.
If you’re not familiar with Enshrouded, it’s a mix of lite survival, exploration, action RPG combat, and base building in a world you can completely terraform. An all-consuming fog known as The Shroud corrupts everything it touches, and you must scavenge for materials you can use to craft gear to survive the unforgiving environment and the mutated monsters it creates.
You can play solo or with up to 16 players in co-op, and voxel-based building allows you to create a home that’s only limited by your imagination and willingness to put in the work. Construction can be shared across servers from around the world, so you can visit them yourself, and there are some truly staggering player builds to see.
Take German YouTuber Kontreck and his community’s build, which you can see here. They fully re-created Isengard from Lord of the Rings, a feat that required more than 22 million voxels and 54,000 decoration items with nearly 4,400 hours of work and 61 days of building time across 15 players. And all the materials were farmed by hand, with no mods or cheats used.
The Wake of the Water’s biggest splash (that’s the only water pun, we promise) is the introduction of swimming and new water-based gameplay. Most of what you can do on land you can do underwater, with new animations. That includes opening treasure chests, collecting plants and other loot, pushing buttons to solve puzzles, and using an underwater mining tool to gather ore. There are also floodgates and new water-based puzzles where you can fill rooms to reach previously inaccessible levels, as well as traps that will try to drown you.
The main thing you can’t do underwater is fight, which is why the new enemy faction of lizard people presents a problem. Called the Drak, they can pursue you underwater with spears drawn, so you always need to be aware of your surroundings and how to get back to the surface quickly. The Drak can fight on land too, but at least then it’s a fair fight.
The other headlining addition in the update is Veilwater Basin, Enshrouded’s first water biome. This being a new type of environment, it brings a lot of other new things with it. That includes quests and lore journals, as well as points of interest ranging from settlements to temples to Shroud Roots and Elixir Wells. There’s also a bunch of new materials and resources for crafting and base building, so many that we couldn’t possibly list them all here. Trust us, there are a lot.
As we all know, you can’t have a water biome without fishing, so that’s been added too. You can now automatically collect worms when terraforming dirt, which can be used as bait. Other types of bait include moths, fireflies, and frogs. There are five fishing rods of varying quality, and casting your line in a body of water will begin a minigame. Fish will bite at a random time, then try to flee to either the right or left. You need to pull your rod in the opposite direction, then reel it in when the fish is tired. Do this repeatedly until it’s caught, and the difficulty of the minigame will depend on what fish is on your line and the quality of the rod you’re using.
If you’re more focused on building up your base, then good news: Water can move dynamically and be used as a source of plant irrigation or to power new parts of your base. You can dig irrigation channels to run water to your plants, which will grow faster in watered soil. And some new plants (like rice and algae) will only grow if submerged.
There’s a new buildable water wheel, which will rotate when in contact with flowing water. And you can connect it to an advanced grinding wheel if the flow of the water is strong enough to power it. There’s also a new watering can, which you can fill up manually at lakes or water barrels, and you can use it to fill pools or water plants at your base. What wild and creative ways to use moving water will the community figure out? Only time will tell, or maybe you can become the trendsetter.
On top of all the water-focused additions, there are also refinements to gameplay and quality-of-life improvements. New spells and skills have been added, stats have been rebalanced on several pieces of gear, wands have more inherent mana regeneration, customizable UI labels for chests and signs have been added, and lots more.
Like we said, there’s a ton here to keep players busy for a long time. For more info on Enshrouded or the Wake of the Water update, you can check out the official website or follow the game or developer Keen Games on Twitter or Discord.
The Elder Scrolls 6 — one of the most hotly anticipated video games in the world — won’t be out for some time yet despite being announced over seven years ago, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard has said.
In an interview with GQ magazine to celebrate the release of Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, Howard said The Elder Scrolls 6 is “still a long way off.” He added: “I’m preaching patience. I don’t want fans to feel anxious.”
Now, in the GQ article, Howard has once again admitted that it’s taken too long to get The Elder Scrolls 6 out the door, but did tease an The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered-style shadowdrop — without confirming anything.
“I do like to have a break between them, where it isn’t like a ‘plus one’ sequel,” Howard said of making The Elder Scrolls games again. “I think it’s also good for an audience to have a break — The Elder Scrolls has been too long, let’s be clear. But we wanted to do something new with Starfield. We needed a creative reset.” Bethesda is currently playtesting The Elder Scrolls 6, Howard revealed.
So when will it actually come out? It seems likely at this point that it will be released for Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox console and PC. Will it also be a PS6 game? A cross-gen title perhaps?
“I like to just announce stuff and release it,” Howard continued. “My perfect version — and I’m not saying this is going to happen — is that it’s going to be a while and then, one day, the game will just appear.” The Oblivion Remastered shadowdrop was “a test run,” Howard teased. “It worked out well.”
As for what Bethesda has going on right now, hundreds of people are working on Fallout, Howard said, across Fallout 76 “and some other things we’re doing, but The Elder Scrolls 6 is the everyday thing.”
Last month, it was confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 6 will include a character designed in memory of a much-missed fan, after a remarkable charity campaign that raised more than $85,000 for Make-A-Wish. Howard revealed that Bethesda has spent some time talking with the group of fans who organized the fundraiser about what they want to see from The Elder Scrolls 6, and commented: “I think we’re aligned.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Video games are synonymous with the name Nintendo. But which of the hundreds of incredible games that have graced the legendary Japanese company’s numerous home and handheld consoles are the best? Well, here at IGN, we’ve teamed up with our friends at Nintendo Life to try and answer that question. What follows is the 100 best Nintendo games of all time, based on a combination of each site’s expert opinions.
From iconic Nintendo in-house series such as Super Mario, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda, to third-party heroes who have made their home on everything from the NES to Switch 2, narrowing down the field was no easy task. These aren’t necessarily the best games to play right now, but a ranking based on a combination of historic innovation, modern ingenuity, and the legacy each has left behind.
Have an opinion on what should be placed where? You can contribute to our public ranking by voting in this Faceoff or let us know in the comments below. Over the course of this week, we’ll be steadily revealing our picks, with 20 being revealed each day until the full ranking is complete on Friday, November 14. So, without further ado, here are the top 100 Nintendo games of all time:
100. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
More than 20 years on, there’s still nothing quite like Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (which, yes, is probably due in part to Nintendo’s now-expired sanity system patent). Not only did it have the temerity to jump between wildly distinct time periods, but it also went to great lengths to mess with your mind should you get spotted by enemies too much. Whether it’s an unsettling noise, a slightly skewed camera angle, or the game straight up simulating a ‘blue screen of death’, it made for one of the most memorable experiences in the horror genre. The Lovecraftian aesthetic still sings to this very day, and a certain bathtub scene is just as sure to give you the willies now as it did back in 2002. A remarkable game that deserves a second chance in the spotlight.
99. GTA: Chinatown Wars
A GTA game releasing exclusively (until its later PSP arrival) for a Nintendo handheld seems like an incongruous proposal. But, in 2009, Rockstar gave the DS Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a standalone story of Triads and tribulations in GTA 4’s modern Liberty City setting. This top-down ode to the series’ roots miraculously converted the open-world cinema we’d come to expect, adapting to its handheld confines through smart touchpad mechanics and a stylised, cell-shaded comic-book-like aesthetic to stunning effect. What could so easily have been a misguided experiment between Rockstar and Nintendo instead became one of the DS’s most essential games.
98. Star Fox
From the days when the word “polygon” was exclusively found in math textbooks comes Nintendo’s 3D evolution of a mainstay arcade genre: the SHMUP. Taxing the SNES hardware so much, even the Super FX chip included inside the cartridge couldn’t get the action to run even at a targeted 12 frames per second, Star Fox followed the linear stage setups of R-Type and co., but played from a behind-the-ship and first-person perspective. The “talking” animals are here to remind you that you’re playing a Nintendo game, but in the end, Star Fox is a highly technical and experimental harbinger of the future. Far from being just a tech demo, it’s also a really fun game, however, thanks to challenging players to play again and again to perfect their runs and experiment to discover alternate paths.
97. Super Castlevania IV
While it’s effectively a re-thread of the original Castlevania, this fourth mainline instalment in the series really does elevate things to an entirely different level of quality. Sure, Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse might be the better game overall, but Super Castlevania IV reimagines Transylvania through a 16-bit lens; the visuals are stunning, with Mode 7 effects adding a new dimension to proceedings, while the music is so good you’d swear it was being streamed from a CD. Subsequent entries would arguably take the franchise to the next level of brilliance, but one thing is clear: Super Castlevania IV remains a masterpiece.
96. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
The Nintendo DS became a haven for visual novel fans; an interactive storybook device that could ease you into a deep night’s sleep. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was far more likely to keep you up all night, however, with its twisted game of life and death. Chunsoft’s first entry into the Zero Escape series, 999 placed you alongside eight other potential victims inside a sinking cruise liner that tested your puzzle and deduction skills as you unraveled the web woven by a mysterious mastermind. It’s twisted, clever, and a great example of handheld experimentation that he console would become known for.
95. Fire Emblem Three Houses
Three Houses is a Fire Emblem game that got it all so right; it’s been hard to readjust to the series in its aftermath. You see, Three Houses gives us the turn-based strategy we’re all fiending for, yes, and it does so with style to spare. However, the real draw here, and the thing that makes this one so worthy of note overall, is the focus and effort that’s been placed on the socialising, customisation, relationships, and all that good stuff that happens between scraps. It’s a game you could quite happily live in for a bit.
94. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
What does Professor Layton hide under that huge hat? Perhaps, a towering cylindrical head of a shape unlike any other in human history. He’d certainly need one to house a brain big enough to solve all of the puzzles thrown his way over the course of his many DS and 3DS adventures. A consistent quality of cosiness mixed with Sherlock Holmes-esque yarns can be found across the Layton series, but we’ve gone with The Unwound Future as our pick of the bunch. Its time-traveling tale, full of memorable twists and turns, thrills just as much as solving one of its dozens of conundrums does, satisfying brains of all shapes and sizes to great effect.
93. WWF No Mercy
25 years later, WWF No Mercy, the THQ-published wrestling game released on the Nintendo 64, is not only still considered to be the pinnacle of the N64 wrestling game boom, but it’s also widely thought of as the greatest wrestling game of all time. Since its release, it’s been the benchmark for what any wrestling game, with or without the WWE license, has aspired to be. It’s developed a cult-like following, with fans still playing (and modding) No Mercy to this day, updating its 25-year-old roster with modern superstars when the latest 2K game doesn’t live up to its standards. It’s not often a game still stands strong after a quarter of a century, and it’s even rarer when it’s a sports game. All of this makes WWF No Mercy not only the greatest-ever wrestling game, but perhaps Nintendo’s greatest-ever sports game that doesn’t include Mario.
92. Kirby: Planet Robobot
Kirby: Planet Robobot, a truly astonishing little game for the Nintendo 3DS that encapsulates all that is best and beloved about the pink puffball. Robobot has everything: a deep roster of unique and useful copy abilities, colorful and creative levels, an interesting one-off gimmick in the robot armor, silly minigames, and a plot that starts with Kirby taking a nap and ends in a giant galactic battle against a superintelligent, planet-sized being.
In addition to all this, Kirby: Planet Robobot is one of the very few games to really make effective use of the Nintendo 3DS’s 3D capabilities. While the game itself takes place on a 2D plane, it features a number of levels that have depth as well as length, and look absolutely fantastic with the 3D turned on, as cars drive directly at the player and giant ice cream cones tip over and spill on the camera. While Kirby has since gained other new copy abilities, minigames, and even his first 3D adventure in the years since, most of them struggle to hold a candle in our hearts to Planet Robobot’s breadth, depth, and pure charm.
91. Diddy Kong Racing
Apart from Nintendo itself, Rare was the N64’s most important developer, and one place the UK-based studio actually outpaced Nintendo was in the kart racer category. Mario Kart 64 is an undeniable classic, but Diddy Kong Racing just inches ahead as our pick for the best kart racer on the 64. In addition to chaotic split-screen kart racing, Diddy Kong Racing drove the genre forward with three vehicle types (your friend could be in a plane flying alternate routes during the same race you were in a car!), an adventure mode complete with boss battles, and an amazing soundtrack from Donkey Kong Country composer David Wise. Plus, it was the first appearance of Banjo and Conker ahead of their solo platformer outings – and it’s the forgotten, cute, family-friendly version of Conker well before he started drinking, smoking, and swearing.
90. The World Ends With You
Though it’s been ported and remade several times, none of the more recent versions of The World Ends With You has managed to capture how excellent this game was back when it first released on Nintendo DS. We could go on all day about what makes it great: the art style, the deep fashion mechanics, its accurate portrayal of Shibuya and Japanese youth culture, its unusual story with multiple wild twists, its incredible cast of characters, the MUSIC.
But maybe the best element of TWEWY that we’ve lost in subsequent editions is its battle system, which made unique and brilliant use of both the system’s dual screen and its touch controls simultaneously with its D-pad to effectively simulate two different characters synchronizing their attacks with one another in two different realms. Combined with a wide variety of “pins” that could be activated with different types of touch attacks, there was endless room for creativity and growth through multiple playthroughs. Which you definitely wanted to do, if only to hear Calling and Three Seconds Clapping one more time.
89. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
After years of being relegated to supporting roles, our little mushroom-headed friend Toad finally got his own game in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Nintendo, over the years, has done a brilliant job of designing games fit and tuned perfectly to the personalities of each of its mascots, and Captain Toad is no exception. The cute, diorama-like levels proved to be magnificent puzzles for our intrepid explorer to navigate one by one, presenting a slower and cozier pace from other Nintendo challenges, yet still being perfectly, whimsically Nintendo. It’s a shame we never got another one of these.
88. Golden Sun: The Lost Age
We could’ve gone with either Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age as our entry on this list, but we’ve settled for the second part of Camelot’s two-act RPG adventure, as it is ultimately the better half. Golden Sun was already an absolute feat, with its creative Psynergy and Djinn systems, gorgeous environments and music, and surprisingly robust open world. In the sequel they quadrupled the size of that world, added even more Psynergy and Djinn and classes, came up with more banger songs and environments, and opened the second act with a wild party switching twist that would go on to be subverted further in a triumphant march to the final battle. Golden Sun and The Lost Age are nuts in the best way, The Lost Age even more so, and are among the best GBA games of all time.
87. Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour
Mario has tried his hand at a lot of different sports over the years, but few have had the staying power of golf. Originally driving off on the NES, before approaching the 3D world of the N64, it’s Toadstool Tour on the GameCube where the plumber really nailed the action on the green. Its sizeable roster of characters and compelling courses offered a great round of multiplayer fun for those looking for a more laid-back time away from the hectic rush of Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, and the furious consequences of Mario Party.
86. Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball’s brilliance lies in the fact that you’re tilting the stage to roll your monkey around rather than directly moving the character itself, and its table maze concept has never been more finely tuned than in Super Monkey Ball 2. The 2002 GameCube sequel is stuffed with 140 stages to clear – ranging from fun and simple courses perfect for laughing at the silly monkeys on family game night to downright brutal challenges that’ll make you go bananas as you lose hundreds of lives trying to clear them. Mastering everything it has to offer is extraordinarily satisfying, and its physics, momentum, and controls are so pinpoint that a study found that surgeons who warm up by playing Super Monkey Ball 2 are more efficient and precise in simulated surgeries compared to the surgeons who didn’t play. Video games really can save lives!
85. Viewtiful Joe
Viewtiful Joe practically attacks your eyeballs with its standout art direction and frantically fun combat. It’s unfiltered Hideki Kamiya at an exciting career crossroads, melding his Devil May Cry action with a colourful paintbrush palette that would later evolve into the likes of Okami and The Wonderful 101. A wholly original side-scroller that threatens to burst out of its purple cube confines if your fingers don’t keep up with its cell-shaded antics, it’s an exciting combo of 2D and 3D platform action that felt fresh in 2003, with an intoxicating style that few have come close to matching since. It spawned sequels, but none truly reached the heights of the original, which has stood the test of time as one of the GameCube’s very best.
84. F-Zero GX
F-Zero is about cheating death to go faster, and F-Zero GX’s uncompromising difficulty and incredibly high skill ceiling represent a peak of the futuristic racing genre. Like F-Zero X before it, GX forces you to sacrifice your machine’s health bar to get a boost, resulting in tense risk-reward scenarios that get your blood pumping every time. And if you fall off the track while trying to shave off an extra split second, Lakitu won’t swoop in to save you – you’re dead. You must master GX’s tight mechanics and memorize its radical track designs to even stand half a chance against its toughest CPUs, and you hit a high most video games can’t reach when you finally cross the finish line in first place. The cold-blooded challenge only works because GX runs perfectly at 60 fps and looks fantastic with strong art direction that rivals the GameCube’s best, like Metroid Prime and Rogue Leader. F-Zero GX is a masterpiece, and probably the most hardcore Nintendo game since the NES.
83. Ring Fit Adventure
Ring Fit Adventure is one of the best-selling Nintendo Switch games, thanks largely to a global pandemic making indoor exercise briefly appealing. Unfortunately, like many other exercise programs, most people who started Ring Fit fell off the game before they could discover how much more than just an exercise game it really is. Ring Fit Adventure is genuinely one of the most unique RPGs of the generation. It has a colorful cast of characters, bolstered by surprisingly good writing, a battle system revolving around your own physical movement, complete with skill trees, elemental weaknesses, and even healing items you can craft through more exercise. Plus, its soundtrack is straight work-out bangers, too.
82. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Nearly every moment of Phoenix Wright’s original courtroom adventure is iconic. From Phoenix’s debut trial against Mr. Sahwit (Or should I say… Mr. Did It!) to cross-examining a literal parrot, the first Ace Attorney fully commits to its completely unhinged world and never looks back. Exposing witnesses’ lies and uncovering the truth of each case is exhilarating, largely because of its excellent soundtrack and lively character animations, and the way Ace Attorney balances its unabashed silliness with genuinely serious, heartfelt moments is nothing short of masterful. It’s also an essential game in its genre, as Ace Attorney’s surprisingly successful sales paved the way for more visual novel and puzzle games to find a footing in the West.
81. Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse
Considered by many to be the apex of the ‘classic’ Castlevania entries, Dracula’s Curse remains a wonderful example of a talented group of developers pushing aging hardware to its maximum potential. By the time it arrived in 1989, the 16-bit era was already in full swing and the NES was looking very old-fashioned. However, despite the humble nature of the host hardware, Konami created a stunning action platformer, boasting multiple playable characters and optional routes through Dracula’s castle. Indeed, many consider this to be superior to the first 16-bit entry in the series, Super Castlevania IV, which arrived just a short time later in 1991.
Come back tomorrow when we’ll be revealing numbers 80 to 61…
Nintendo fans are rejecting a new description found within Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment that describes Link and Princess Zelda as just friends.
An in-game journal entry from Zelda’s ally Lenalia claims that the princesses’ sword training was inspired by “a knight — and friend — from her own time.” But while this description seems clear-cut, fans have compared it to the text found in the game’s original Japanese language version — which simply refers to Link as a “familiar knight,” without the explicit “friend” label.
This latest snippet has reignited the debate over whether Link and Zelda are more than just pals — something that Nintendo itself has kept mysterious for decades.
Of course, Lenalia’s journal entry is just that — one character’s recording of what she has been told by Zelda, who may or may not have been speaking truthfully. In one social media post that has now gone viral, Zelda fan IvyfulWorld put it thus: “she is not fooling ANYBODY.”
“I guess one explanation could be she tried to downplay it out of shyness,” replied big_asutaro.
“Nintendo of America’s localization team has this thing for wanting to portray Link and Zelda’s relationship as purely platonic by adding things that aren’t even present in the original text,” claimed another fan, verieas.
Throughout its almost 40-year history, The Legend of Zelda series has frequently suggested that Link and the princess are romantically involved. The pair hold hands in the finale of Spirit Tracks, and are implied to be settling down as a couple to found Hyrule at the end of Skyward Sword. Zelda even kisses Link (on the cheek) during Oracle of Ages, sending hearts fluttering from the swordsman’s eyes.
Most recently, both Zelda and Link appear to be sharing a house in Tears of the Kingdom — which features the incarnations of Link and Zelda referenced in Age of Imprisonment.
Zelda voice actress Patricia Summersett, who has voiced the same incarnation of Zelda seen from Breath of the Wild onwards, raised eyebrows in 2023 when she stated that she believed the pair were definitively “in a relationship.” However, Summersett swiftly walked back the comments just days later saying her words had been “misconstrued.” (Nintendo did not comment on this kerfuffle at the time, though fans noted it had been unusual for anyone outside the company itself to discuss its characters in such a manner.)
“I will leave it to everyone’s imagination [whether Link and Zelda are in a relationship]. I don’t think that Zelda is a type of game where the development team says, ‘This is what Zelda is, this is what the story is, this is what the game is.’ Everything that the development team wants to convey has already been placed into the game. And the rest is up to the player’s imagination, and their reflection on how they feel… what they’ve experienced in the game.”
Considering the most recent Zelda game features a house lived in by Link and Zelda (with Nintendo placing just a single bed into the bedroom), some fans took Aonuma’s comment to be the clearest sign yet that Nintendo does indeed see the two as a couple — even if it doesn’t want to explicitly apply that label in-game.
Kadokawa, the parent company of Elden Ring: Nightreign developer FromSoftware, has confirmed we’ll get new DLC for the multiplayer game by the end of March 2026, as unhappy players leave negative reviews on Steam.
“We are aiming for further sales growth for Elden Ring Nightreign, original Elden Ring, and its DLC,” the company said in its recent financial report to investors (thanks, GamesRadar+). “We have multiple game titles in the development pipeline. FromSoftware is currently developing Elden Ring Nightreign DLC (planned for release in FY2025) Elden Ring Tarnished Edition (planned for release in 2026 for Nintendo Switch 2), and The Duskbloods (planned for release in 2026).”
FY2025 in this instance means by the end of Kadokawa’s current financial year, so by March 31, 2026. But while the financial report revealed that Nightreign had “performed well beyond initial expectations” and confirmed the DLC — described on the Steam storefront as being available “by Q4 2025” — is still on the way, recent user reviews for the Deluxe Upgrade Pack have dropped to a ‘Mostly Negative’ rating as players express their frustration at the lack of tangible news.
“We’re mid-Q4 2025. No news, no teasers, total silence,” wrote one negative reviewer on November 1. “If you’re thinking about buying Deluxe Upgrade, wait until we get actual news about the content. I can’t recommend you a promise.” Another said: “It’s been half a year now, still no dlc or any new characters in sight even though they got leaked a bit ago. Right now this is a complete scam, as even the soundtrack isnt even full.”
Someone else said they would change their negative review to positive “once FromSoft announces something.”
Nightreign’s ultra-hard difficulty mode, Deep of Night, released back in September, having been discovered by dataminers back in August. Beyond that, though, there’s been very little firm news on what additional content could be on the way. It’s worth noting that even though the Kadokawa financial report guarantees the release of the Nightreign DLC by the end of March 2026, that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t release before the end of calendar year 2025.
“When Elden Ring Nightreign is played exactly as it was designed to be played, it’s one of the finest examples of a three-player co-op game around,” we wrote in IGN’s 7/10 Elden Ring: Nightreign review. “But a lack of crossplay, duo matchmaking, and built-in communication tools makes it hard to create the conditions needed to have this kind of experience unless you’re bringing two real-life friends on every run.”
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.
Arc Raiders has had another bumper weekend, once again breaking its own concurrent record on Steam.
Within a day of its release, Embark Studio’s new extraction shooter hit a Steam concurrent peak player count of 264,673, making it one of the biggest extraction shooters ever on Valve’s platform. And now it’s topped even that record over the weekend, hitting a concurrent peak of 462,488 players according to Valve’s official figures.
Yesterday, November 9, Arc Raiders had a higher concurrent peak than Battlefield 6 (441,035), and placed behind only the eternally popular Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG. Of course, Arc Raiders’ true concurrent player peak will be higher, given the game is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, but neither Sony nor Microsoft make their player numbers public.
As Arc Raiders tears up Steam’s most-played games list, streamer Shroud has continued to call on his fans to vote for it as Game of the Year 2025 over Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, calling multiplayer gamers “the minority” (even though research shows that it’s mostly multiplayer games that retain high player counts).
“I thought I was only going to play five or six hours of Arc Raiders on launch day before sitting down to write this initial review in progress, but after just a handful of matches, I suddenly couldn’t pull myself away – and before I realized it, I’d been playing for 10 hours,” we wrote in IGN’s Arc Raiders review-in-progress.
“This is without question the most hooked I’ve found myself on an extraction shooter (and I’ve played a lot of them), with clean and tense gunplay, a progression system that’s been incredibly satisfying so far, and a loot game that has me sweating over what to put in my backpack and what to leave behind.”
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.
Lieutenant Titus from Space Marine 2 has become one of the most recognizable faces in all Warhammer 40,000 following the enormous success of the video game. We’ve already seen Games Workshop double-down on the Ultramarines hero with merch, an appearance in the Warhammer 40,000 episode of Amazon’s animated anthology, Secret Level, and various cameos across the setting. But now things have leveled up — not just for Titus as a Space Marine, but his place in the ongoing Warhammer 40,000 narrative.
This week, Games Workshop unveiled Captain Demetrian Titus, Master of the Watch, which means Titus has had a much-deserved promotion since the now canon events of Space Marine 2 and Secret Level. Titus is once again Captain of the Ultramarines Second Company, a position he had already held before he was taken into custody on suspicion of heresy by the Inquisition after the events of the first Space Marine game. What does Titus’ promotion mean for Sevastus Acheran, the former captain of the Second Company and Master of the Watch who we see in Space Marine 2? Let’s be real here: he’s probably dead. I guess he couldn’t spare enough men.
For Titus, his promotion comes with bigger and tougher responsibilities: he’s been put in charge of defending the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, the realm of Space Marine poster boys, the Ultramarines. With Primarch Roboute Guilliman off gallivanting with his Indomitus Crusade, Titus is now in charge of keeping things safe and sound back home, where new Necron threats have emerged, as they always do.
Games Workshop released a new trailer, below, to hype up this narrative expansion, and it features Titus front and center as he accepts his new job title and what he calls his “impossible mission.” He’s had an eye-catching glow up since we last saw him, and he has a cool new model for use in the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game to boot. Titus is joined by friends his fans will know well: Ancient Gadriel from Space Marine 2, and Veteran Sergeant Metaurus from Secret Level (he lives!).
500 Worlds: Titus is the name for the next major narrative expansion for Warhammer 40,000. According to a post on Warhammer Community, that includes a set of four books that will tell the story of the Ultramarian Reclamation and the embattled Vespator Front, where Titus and the Ultramarines Second Company “are locked in a desperate struggle against a Necron force rife with the Destroyer curse.”
This is a big moment for Titus but also the Space Marine video game franchise. It is evidence of the importance of the character to Warhammer 40,000, and the seismic impact Space Marine 2 has had on the setting.
Speaking to IGN at gamescom 2025, Tim Willits, development chief at Saber Interactive, said Space Marine 2’s popularity had opened the door to the grimdark Warhammer 40,000 setting for an army of new fans who weren’t necessarily clued up about the intricacies of the universe.
“I heard that lots of people now think that Thousand Sons are the only Chaos faction because that’s what we had in the game,” Willits said, reflecting on Space Marine 2’s first year.
“And so people are like, ‘Oh, I guess Thousand Sons, they’re Chaos.’ It’s like, ‘Actually no it’s not.’ They’re actually just a small faction. But people are just like, ‘That’s the one I played against.’”
This assumption about Chaos extends to the Space Marines themselves. The Ultramaines — the chapter used by Games Workshop itself when introducing newcomers to the tabletop via starter sets — are the protagonists of the Space Marine 2 campaign, although many other factions are available to play as in the PvE and PvP modes.
“People have assumptions about the Warhammer 40,000 universe that are not correct,” Willits continued. “Like Thousand Sons being the only Chaos faction. That is kind of humorous. And like, ‘Oh Space Marines are only blue!’ That has been quite humorous to be honest, which is good for us.”
One of the big questions going into the already confirmed Space Marine 3 is whether Saber will venture beyond the Ultramarines and the Thousand Sons in terms of the next campaign. The story seems to set up the addition of the Necrons, which at this point probably wouldn’t come as much of a surprise for Space Marine 3. But could other Space Marine chapters also appear? Perhaps other Chaos factions, too? We asked Willits about Space Marine 3, but he remained tight-lipped.
But now Titus is firmly back in the fold, we have to wonder, what does the overly suspicious Chaplain Leandros think? He spent pretty much the entirety of Space Marine 2 threatening to end poor Titus at the first sign of corruption, and even after Titus’ heroics, a commendation from Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, and what some think was a word of encouragement from the Emperor himself, Leandros remained unconvinced. If Titus manages to complete this impossible task and defend the 500 worlds, will he finally win Leandros over? Somehow I doubt it.
All of this probably feeds into Space Marine 3 in some way. Assuming Space Marine 3 picks up after the events of 500 Worlds, we may well see Titus lead armies into battle, rather than a single squad.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
