There are two blue wolves inside you. One is actually a hedgehog, prone to loop-the-loops and drowning in caves. The other one is actually a dolphin, who is also prone to loop-the-loops and drowning in caves. Clarification: when I said you I meant me. I’m referring to my own squalid psychological architecture as a Sega Mega Drive player with vivid memories of Sonic the Hedgehog (especially the Star Light Zone) and Ecco the Dolphin.
While Sega’s pugnacious pinball mascot continues to star in videogames of all flavours, poor Ecco has been absent from screens since the early noughties. No longer: this year shall be the year of Ecco. Developers A&R Atelier – whose members include the character’s original creator, Ed Annunziata – have declared that they are working on “several” new Ecco things, including a videogame. No, I won’t accommodate any criticism of my framing here. If we can have a year of Luigi and a year of Shadow, we can have a year of Ecco.
We’ll heave him up an away we’ll go. ‘Way, me Assassin’s Creeda! We’ll heave him up an away we’ll go. We’re all bound over to Ubisoft’s official music YouTube channel! We’ll heave him up from down below. ‘Way, me Assassin’s Creeda! Oh, this is where a bunch of the original Black Flag‘s sea shanties have just been reuploaded, potentially providing yet another hint that we’re all soon bound to be playing that long-rumoured remake of the pirassassin adventure!
This sudden influx of classic ditties might not have meant much in a vacuum, but it follows many reports about the badly kept secret that is the remake and a PEGI rating that’s about as close as you can get to a seal of approval short of Ubisoft finally giving up the ghost anmd revealing the thing themselves.
After the mildly disappointing Spider-Man set, though, we’re hoping the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collab will be a little more tubular.
And, if you’re already sold on meeting up with cardboard versions of the Heroes in a Half Shell, their friends, and their foes, then good news – Amazon is once again discounting boxes of Play Boosters, now down to their lowest ever price.
In December, the price dropped to $159.99, bringing the Universes Beyond box of Play Boosters to around the standard price of a Universes Within box, but this now drops even further to $148.20 – the lowest we’ve seen at Amazon.
With 30 packs, that’s less than five bucks per one ($4.94, to be precise), which is a couple of bucks off what you’d usually pay when buying them individually.
We saw similar drops for Spider-Man, which would be a little worrisome if Avatar hadn’t got the same treatment – and that set was great.
For more on Magic: The Gathering, check out the wild ride that is the game’s 2026 set lineup, as well as our guide to preordering the first set of the year, Lorwyn Eclipsed.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties launches for the Switch 2 next month, and in case you missed it, Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio will be adding a variety of retro games.
Nintendo has announced its first Switch Online game trial of 2026 for North America. It’s also apparently the first time a trial has been exclusive to the Switch 2.
It’s EA Sports Madden NFL 26, which launched on the Switch 2 in August last year. This game trial is available between now and 21st January 2026, and gives players access to the “full” game. If you don’t have a subscription, Nintendo is also currently offering a free 7-day online trial in this region.
In 2020, the major players in the console space Nintendo, Sony and Xbox announced a “shared commitment to safer gaming” to improve player safety across each platform.
Fast forward to this year, and these shared principles have now been updated to ensure they represent the “constant efforts” to keep each of these game communities safe. Here’s a bit more about this via Nintendo’s official news release:
Following the surprise release of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for the Switch and Switch 2 last November, Aspyr said it would continue to update the Nintendo versions with patches over time to provide the “best possible experience for all players”.
Attention Everyone: Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a jump button now!
You can also walk backwards, and sideways!!!
Why am I freaking out over this? Look. This is almost as exciting as when we all learned New Horizons would give us the ability to sit down on the ground.
This comes as a part of Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s 3.0 update, which dropped a day early today, giving access to a new Hotel area, loads of new decorative items, some quality of life features like bulk crafting, and Dream Islands you can build alongside friends. But as players have discovered since, it’s also added a subtle new feature to aid in construction and placement: essentially, a controlled way to step in the cardinal directions in very precise ways.
This feature is now tutorialed as part of obtaining the Construction App, though it’s possible it may be available prior to that, and it’s very easy to activate. You can use it any time by pressing the L button. Pressing it once will snap your character into place with a tiny little hop. Holding it down and moving the stick in a direction will let you take exactly one step in that direction, effectively the size of one “square” of space. This is ideal for activities such as precise furniture placement, or lining yourself up perfectly to hit rocks or even catch bugs.
So, sure, it’s not actually a huge deal – just a fun quality of life feature. It’s not like a REAL jump (and you can already jump small gaps automatically anyway). But Animal Crossing’s audience has historically gotten very excited about little touches like this, such as the wave of excitement when sitting on the ground was confirmed to be in the game, or the love for any number of other tiny details players have found over the years.
Anyway, if they ever add jump attacks it’s over for you people.
We’ve got a comprehensive guide to the 3.0 update, including how to unlock everything and what’s included, as a part of our Animal Crossing: New Horizons Wiki guide. If you’re just getting back to New Horizons today after a long hiatus, we also have a number of tips for people getting back into the swing of things.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
It’s kind of baffling how Mirror’s Edge came out almost two full decades ago, and there’s hardly a whisper of a game that’s managed to match its art direction. The thing is just too clean, too specific, there’s a purpose to every detail. It feels like the future distilled into digital form, though no one really followed suit in the years since, opting for drab, lifeless realism instead. Except, as it turns out, that’s almost what Mirror’s Edge looked like too.
Anyone order a point-and-click adventure puzzle game for later this month featuring a cast of British actors that’ll make you go “oh, right, them!” when you Google them? Well, someone must have, because Earth Must Die, the next game from Lair of the Clockwork God developer Size Five Games, now has a release date. Come on, it’s getting cold!
