Category: Nintendo

Yes, TWENTY years.

Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Jim is manifesting a comeback for Zelda’s most iconic NPC…

If you have made it past the headline, chances are you fall into one of the following camps. One: You believe that Tingle deserves another mainline Zelda appearance. Two: You hate Tingle and everything he stands for. Three: You think we must have made a typo because there’s no way it’s been 20 years since Tingle last appeared in a mainline game. Four: A strange combination of all the above. Well, buckle up buddy, because here comes the cold, hard facts.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Fight fire with fire.

Believe it or not, today marks five years since Fire Emblem: Three Houses launched on Switch. We’d imagine that most of you SRPG fans out there have polished it off by this point — we’d go even further to wager that you have likely done the same for its successor, Fire Emblem Engage, which is now a little over a year old.

Despite existing in the same series, anyone who has played the two latest titles will have noticed the staggering differences between them. Three Houses (the first home console release for the franchise in over a decade, let’s not forget) took things in a bold new direction, with a game that was just as tied to its social sim appeal as it was to the tactical battles. The turn-based shenanigans were all still present and correct — bar the removal of the iconic Weapon Triangle — but the moments between were packed with OTT drama, romance and slice-of-life activities to make the whole experience feel that bit different. Brilliant, but different.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

And it’s called… Date Everything!

Team17 and Sassy Chap Games have announced a brand new video game that will let you date 100 different objects. Yes, we said objects, that’s not a typo.

Date Everything is coming to all platforms, including Switch, “soon”. Described as a sandbox dating simulator, your character is given a pair of magical glasses that makes their entire house come alive — which somehow leads you to fall in love with household items like a computer, a basket, and obviously pets.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

In the thick of it.

Anyone who’s tried to cultivate a garden knows it’s hard work. You can’t just plant some flowers, water them once a week, and leave it at that. Every single flower, plant, and tree requires a different level of care; seasons and weather affect plants’ growth, and some can’t survive certain seasons. But, as English poet Albert Austin wrote in his book The Garden that I Love, “The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”

carrotcake’s debut game, The Garden Path, fits this mantra to a tee. Solo developer and artist Louis Durrant started working on this passion project over seven years ago; upon planting the seeds for this entirely different slice-of-life sim, he worked to meticulously care for and nurture every single aspect of the game. From the art to the mechanics to the vibe, The Garden Path is the most accurate representation of gardening in a video game, and it’s both the game’s biggest strength and biggest weakness.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Three more chapters are coming soon.

Following another update earlier this week, the Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes social media account has shared a reminder about the upcoming story expansion DLC, which will be released between now and the end of 2024.

The expansion content will kick off in August 2024 with Marisa’s story:

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

One of the “top 10” global licensors.

The Pokémon Company has plenty of huge money-makers from video games to trading cards, and we’ve now got a look at how it ranked alongside certain other companies over the past year, courtesy of License Global’s latest retail report.

It seems it made a whopping $10.8 billion in retail sales – making it seventh on the list of “top 10 global licensors”. This placed it ahead of brands like Mattel but it’s still behind other companies such as Hasbro and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Walt Disney Company took out the top spot – banking $62 billion. This has pushed total retail and merchandise sales to $91.6 billion.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Golden axiom.

Pow Pixel Games slices its way onto the indie game scene with Abathor, an arcade-style throwback to fantasy belt scrollers of the ’80s and ’90s. It’s a pleasingly old-fashioned hack-‘n’-slash platformer that will conjure memories of childhood couch co-op.

Golden Axe is the obvious influence, despite the side-on perspective, but there are also shades of more recent pixelated homages. A heavy metal aesthetic recalls the dark fantasy of Slain and Blasphemous, though its tone is much lighter than those games. Character designs, power-ups, and enemies are ripped straight from genre media. Abathor wears these influences proudly. It isn’t trying to do anything different and it’s all the more entertaining for it.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

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.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

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?

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

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.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com