Category: Nintendo

Powerful Pro Baseball knocks it out of the park.

We are back with the latest look at the Japanese gaming charts thanks to Famitsu and, unusually, a new Nintendo release has not taken the top spot.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition winds up in third in its debut week, only shifting 27,391 copies. It’s hardly the biggest number for a physical debut (particularly from Nintendo) and it wasn’t nearly enough to topple the Japan-only Powerful Pro Baseball 2024-25, which sold 166,947 copies on Switch and 49,210 on PS4.

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Oh Shadow, what have they done to you?

LEGO has today revealed a Shadow the Hedgehog bust set, which is set to be released on 1st October 2024.

Retailing for £59.99 / $69.99, the 720-piece kit features Shadow’s head mounted on a stand with an attachable nameplate. It all sounds rather sinister when we write it out. Fortunately, the set features “Easter eggs hidden in both the head and the sturdy stand”, so that takes the edge off it, right?

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It’s been spotted in the wild, too.

It looks like another premium Mario Lego set is on the way, and this time it’s based on the SNES hit Super Mario World.

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The Deku Tree is the “first element” represented in bricks.

After ongoing rumours, The Legend of Zelda ‘Great Deku Tree 2-in-1’ set was finally confirmed earlier this year in May.

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Wave 1 is available now.

To celebrate the recent launch of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, a new batch of icons have been released for the Switch Online service.

The first wave is now officially underway and will be available until 31st July 2024. NSO Icons Alerts on social media has shared a closer look at what’s on offer in Wave 1, with each icon available for 10 Platinum Points. As you can see, you can get retro icons based on Super Mario Bros., Kirby, Metroid, and more.

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“If you make a protagonist who just stands there, they will look like an idiot”.

The silent protagonist is a hotly debated topic among RPG enthusiasts. Usually acting as a stand-in for the player, this character is usually the lead, although they have no (or very little) dialogue, and can only interact with characters through basic dialogue options. And the creator of Dragon Quest, Yuji Horii, has weighed in on the difficulties of using silent protagonists in modern video games.

In a chat with the director of the Persona series Katsura Hashino published in Denfaminicogamer (and translated by Automaton Media), Horii admitted that “increasingly-realistic” graphics have made silent protagonists “increasingly difficult to depict”.

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Giant cube-shaped cat fights and “The Schrödinger System”.

BitSummit, held in Kyoto every sweltering hot summer, plays host to an incredible amount of indie developers from across the globe. As you might expect, it can be rather hard to stand out – so much so that it was even difficult for us to curate a list of impressive Switch games down to only 10 titles this year. However, Cassette Boy, with its muted Game Boy-like color palette, exuded so much retro charm that we couldn’t help but play it more than once, chatting with the sole developer Kiyoshi Honda whenever he had a moment to spare from the hordes lining up to play his game.

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More tea, vicar?

Metroidvania fans seem to be living through a golden age. Hollow Knight and the Ori series, indie hits of the last decade, have established themselves as all-time classics, spurring on a horde of imitators, tributes, and new ideas. Even just 2024’s entries range from the imaginative, lo-fi hit Animal Well to the lavishly presented Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus may be yet another Metroidvania, but, remarkably, it’s yet another one worth your time.

The story opens with an atmospheric animated cutscene, in which a “Tentaihana” celestial blossom crashes down from the heavens into a lotus flower. This introduces Bo, a little fox-like creature draped in petals. Although the narrative doesn’t go very far, the tone of the world is developed effectively, with a cheery cast of characters ranging from a two-headed clairvoyant toucan to a fishcake–headed ramen chef. Dialogue never takes itself too seriously, whether it’s referencing classic memes, breaking the fourth wall, or going very tongue-in-cheek.

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Insists it is “not shutting down”.

The entire staff of Humble Games, the publisher behind such games as Unpacking, Slay the Spire, and Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, has been the subject of a mass layoff, according to LinkedIn posts from affected staff members. The news came to light after staff posted announcing that their time with the studio has come to an end (thanks, Eurogamer).

Nicola Kwan, a business development manager at the studio, wrote, “At 9AM this morning, all 36 employees of Humble Games were told that we were being let go and that the company is shutting down.”

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Includes a “free ROM download”.

Well, here’s something you don’t see every day! The arena shooter Xeno Crisis, which launched on the Switch eShop in 2019 (and has already been released on multiple retro platforms), is getting a “physical and digital” release for the Game Boy Advance in Q4 2024.

Pre-orders are already live on the Bitmap Bureau online store. The package comes with a “region-free” GBA cartridge, cardboard tray/inserts, instruction manual, and you’ll also receive a “free ROM download”.

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