Category: Nintendo

And it has landed a new R&D division.

Monolith Soft, the studio behind the Xenoblade Chronicles series, is expanding its in-house engine for use on future titles thanks to its newly-founded R&D department (thanks, Automaton).

That is according to the company’s Chief Creative Officer Tetsuya Takahashi and lead programmer Michihiko Inaba, who, in a recent interview with Japanese outlet CGworld, spoke about the company’s plans for the future as it plans to tackle bigger development projects.

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No Nintendo ‘nnouncements?

We’re now one full week into October following the first September since 2016 without a really big Nintendo Direct.

Looking back at our Nintendo Direct broadcast history guide, it’s all there in black and white (well, red and white). 2020’s Direct might have been a Super Mario-focused job themed around that series’ 35th anniversary, but that caveat aside, 2016 — the year before the Switch launched — was the last year there wasn’t a full, flagship Nintendo Direct in September.

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The GameCube version, that is.

If you were lucky enough to own a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition promotional disc for GameCube and still happen to have it lying around, you might want to dig it out and try out this neat little easter egg hidden within The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.

As highlighted by YANIS4224 over on Paste Bin (thanks, Gaming Reinvented), if you enter a specific combination of button presses during gameplay, you’ll be treated to a single credits screen showcasing the developers responsible for engineering the N64 emulator for the GameCube release.

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Our picks for the best eShop games in September.

We’re fast approaching GOTY season, so it’s time to strap in and look back at the best of September in this month’s edition of eShop Selects.

Wait, what do you mean “a brand-new Zelda game came out last month”? We know, don’t worry — but what about all of those eShop exclusives, eh? We’ll be looking at September’s eShop releases, and it was yet another busy month for the digital storefront. As always, our staff and contributors voted for their top three eShop games from the list of games we’ve reviewed, with the top three listed below (but all of the other really good ones are here, too)

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A portable party.

Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s edition of Box Art Brawl!

Last time, we saw three 3DS covers go head-to-head as we matched up the regional variants for Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask. Despite having all those options, it was Europe that walked away with a commanding win after taking 56% of the vote. North America followed behind with 27%, while the paired-back Japanese edition brought up the rear with 17%.

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Feature updates, bug fixes and more.

The retro fighter SNK vs. Capcom SVC Chaos this week received a new update adding feature improvements and bug fixes.

This includes some handy new additions as well as fixes and corrections which will resolve “rare crashes” and a few other things. Below are the full patch notes, courtesy of Code Mystics on social media:

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New features, fixes and improvements.

Since arriving on the Switch and other platforms in August, the turn-based action title SteamWorld Heist II has received ongoing support from the development team, and the latest update (Version 1.5) is now live.

“The headliner” according to the team, is that you can now “buy back rare items” you’ve sold from the new ‘Used Goods’ section at ‘Argent’s Articles’. There are also some new options to improve the ‘ship firing angle’ and adjust the text speed.

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Celebrating one million sales.

Vanillaware’s smash-hit tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord is currently celebrating more than one million sales, and as part of this, the game’s developers recently held a special program. This included Atlus revealing the top 10 most popular characters in the game, as voted by players.

These picks were based on each character’s design, personality as well as their usefulness in combat. Nigel was also apparently on the list (between Benrengaria and Virginia) but according to the source “he’s not technically part of the ranking”.

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In the c(Link).

My first hour in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom left me with a single, unshakeable thought: God, Hyrule’s prisons are terrible.

Yes, I was besotted with how traditional the whole thing felt and still somewhat in shock that I had a brand new Zelda game in my hands a mere 18 months after its predecessor. But all that went out of my mind the second I saw our titular hero get thrown into a cell. Come on, there’s a flipping massive hole right above that bench that may as well have “Climb me!” etched into it!

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Slipped through the net.

Oh, hello there. You must be here for our bi-annual Games We Missed callout.

It’s a familiar story. Loads of Switch games — too many, perhaps — and while the majority of the eShop deliveries each week are a load of old AI-generated pap, there’s also a load of great games which, unfortunately, we just aren’t able to cover with a review.

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