Review: Under Defeat (Switch) – A Boldly Hardcore, Cult-Classic Shoot ‘Em Up

About 15 pounds per square inch at sea level.

Developer G.Rev may not be all that familiar to those who weren’t fully immersed in the shoot-’em-up scene of the early noughties. A boutique independent, it was assembled by former Taito employees who previously contributed to the likes of RayStorm and G-Darius. G.Rev’s most famous work, and the one that put it on the map, is Border Down: a wonderfully original 2003 shooting game for Sega’s Naomi arcade hardware and Dreamcast console. It was followed in 2006 by Under Defeat, switching from the horizontal to the vertical and trading sci-fi for a grounded militaristic theme.

Not to be confused with that other Dreamcast helicopter shoot ’em up, Psikyo’s Zero Gunner 2, Under Defeat pits pink-haired German soldier girls against the enemy forces of “The Union”. While any real-world similarities are dispelled by impossibly giant gunships torn from the pages of anime fiction, one of Under Defeat’s more interesting aspects is how hard-boiled it feels.

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Opinion: With Forecasts Slashed (Again), Absolutely Everyone’s Antsy For Switch 2 ASAP

Sobering sales, analyst angst, obvious answer.

Nintendo has lowered sales forecasts for Switch hardware sales for the second time in a row with the publication of its Q3 results for FY2024/5.

With a 30.6% year-on-year drop in console sales across the Switch range, the platform holder now forecasts 11 million unit sales for the year ending March 31st 2025. For comparison, that’s down 1.5 million on its forecast back in November, which had already been cut from 13.5 million.

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Takaya Imamura On Nintendo’s Future: Talented And Charismatic Devs Are “Crucial”

Relying exclusively on big IP would be a “big mistake”.

Former Nintendo artist Takaya Imamura has kicked off the new year with a new blog post titled “Why I Left Nintendo” more than four years after departing from the company’s Japanese headquarters.

While he goes into all sorts of history about his career, he’s also shared his thoughts about Nintendo’s future and how “crucial” talented and charismatic developers are to the success of the company and the value of its IP.

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Capcom’s Best-Selling Mega Man Game Reaches Another Sales Milestone

Mega news for the eleventh major entry.

Back in 2022, Capcom announced the blue bomber’s latest outing Mega Man 11 had become the best-selling entry in the series’ history.

Capcom has now delivered an update on this a few years later – with the news sales have jumped from 1.60 million units to surpass the two million sales milestone. Once again, this puts it ahead of the Mega Man 2 lifetime sales (1.51M) as well as the Mega Man Legacy Collection which has sold 1.60 million units.

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“Nintendo Is Probably The Easiest To Scam” – Devs Discuss The Current State Of The eShop

The rise of “eSlop”.

We all know that in the year of our lord 2025, the Switch eShop has its fair share of problems. It’s slow, it’s clunky and it’s flooded with games that we’d really rather not have to wade through, but what’s it like from the other side? How does the storefront hold up if you’re the one trying to sell games on it?

That was a question recently asked by IGN in a new feature that put Nintendo’s storefront (and Sony’s, Microsoft’s and Valve’s) under the microscope. Unsurprisingly, the devs are just as tired of it as we all are.

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Feature: 12 Things Switch 2’s Mysterious Not-C-Button Might Do, Maybe

Probably. Possibly.

We’re all here, playing the waiting game as Nintendo assembles its April Direct and reveals more juicy details about Switch 2. Well, we hope; it feels like we’ve been in the realms of rumour and speculation for a good half-decade and after the first trailer we’ve got our fingers crossed for a real mother of a blow-out come 2nd April.

Until then, though? Thoughts, feelings, ideas, dreams (and possibly some more leaks) — that’s what we’ve got. That new button previously rumoured for the right Joy-Con is one of few things we can confirm from the reveal, and it’s not even a ‘C’ button anymore – at least it doesn’t have the letter imprinted on the top.

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Random: Speedrunner Takes Donkey Kong Run To New Heights By Beating The Kill Screen

But wait, there’s more!

44 years after its release, you’d think that the speedrunning community would have pushed the Donkey Kong arcade game to its limit. But, as it turns out, there are a handful of extra levels hidden behind the game’s long-assumed unbeatable kill screen. All you’ve got to do is beat it.

That’s the challenge that was recently undertaken by Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Kosmic. In a 29-minute YouTube video, the Mario pro explains that Donkey Kong’s US arcade release (the one used for competitive play) maxes out at the first barrel stage of level 22. This comes as a product of a glitch in the game’s bonus timer algorithm, where the game will prematurely end after just 400 bonus points have passed — nowhere near long enough to make it all the way to Pauline at the top of the tower.

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