Feature Articles
Friday19th Apr 2024
Feature Evolving With Pokémon: How The Games Helped Me Navigate A Confused Childhood
This coping mechanism was super effective!
The Game Boy turns 35 years old on 21st April 2024, and we'll be running several features over the next few days celebrating the system and its games. Today, Tim thinks back on how Pocket Monsters came to his aid in his formative years, and how the series that started on Nintendo's iconic portable would...
Sunday23rd Jul 2023
Soapbox Catching Legendary Pokémon The Old-Fashioned Way Was So Much Better
Mewsings
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Kevin remembers a time when getting your hands on a legendary involved going on a real-life journey... The '90s were a fun time, weren’t they? AOL was brand new, The Simpsons was still...
Sunday26th Feb 2023
Talking Point Which Gaming Moments Made You Question Your Intelligence?
Uh... what... who..?
Human beings are smart. Really smart. We're the only species on earth with the brainpower to comprehend its own existence. We've landed on the moon, built great feats of engineering, constructed huge buildings that pierce the clouds in the sky, and made tremendous leaps in the fields of science and medicine. So yeah, we're a...
Tuesday21st Feb 2023
Talking Point What Will Be Announced On Pokémon Day 2023?
Who's that reveal?
27th February is fast approaching, and you know what that means? Pokémon Day is almost here! Every single year since 2016, which happened to be the franchise's 20th anniversary, The Pokémon Company has shared a number of announcements on this day to celebrate Pokémon, usually in the form of a Nintendo Direct-style Pokémon...
Saturday29th Oct 2022
Feature The Spookiest Levels In Non-Spooky Games
Melloween
Aside from costumes, big bowls of sweets and the impending fear that I'm A Celebrity will soon dominate TV again, if there is one thing that you can bank on over Halloween, it's lots, and lots of scary video games. The spooky season has an annoying habit of seeking out those of us — this writer included — who are not the best with...
Tuesday11th Oct 2022
Talking Point What's Your Favourite Music Track From A Nintendo Game?
A.K.A, the world's toughest choice
One of the most important aspects of any game, in this writer's opinion, is the music. We've all been there: you might be stepping onto a new island in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker or floating through 'Space Junk Galaxy' in Super Mario Galaxy when a new music score plays in the background and completely...
Wednesday3rd Aug 2022
Soapbox For A Jaded Pokémon Fan, Scarlet And Violet Is Exactly What I Need
Just when I thought I was out... They pull me back in
For many years now, I've been buying the mainline Pokémon games primarily out of some twisted sense of obligation. Back in 1999, Pokémon Red and Blue launched at the perfect time for me; I was ten at the time of its release and had already gotten a good sense of what Pokémon was all about...
Saturday4th Jun 2022
Feature How The Quintessential Essence Of Pokémon Games Inspires Gen After Gen
Insight from Pokémon World Champions and Temtem’s Director
In 1998 my Canadian elementary school banned everything to do with Pokémon. The games, the trading cards, and discussions about the anime – all of it was off-limits as Pocket Monster fever swept through North America like a swarm of Rattata, distracting us from our in-class reading of...
Saturday29th Jan 2022
Feature Game Boy's Perfect Pixel Art And Our Obsession With Reclaiming It
Grey and green never looked better
The Game Boy is an iconic piece of gaming hardware, but the quest to elevate and celebrate its games has continued over the course of more than 30 years. Backwards compatibility with the later Game Boy line enabled us all to replay the OG library on updated, improved screens and the quest to present 8-bit retro...
Sunday26th Dec 2021
Back Page To All The Low-Level Enemies I've Slaughtered
It's time to kick ass and feel bad, and I'm all out of ass
In the magazine business, the Back Page is where you'd find all the weird goofs that we couldn't fit in anywhere else. Some may call it "filler"; we prefer "a whole page to make terrible jokes that are tangentially related to the content of the mag". We don't have pages on the internet, but...
Saturday25th Dec 2021
Feature We've Ranked All 151 Gen 1 Pokémon And It Nearly Killed Us
Brother, can you spare two hours?
The term 'genwunners' gets thrown around a lot in the wider Pokémon community, but when forced to actually rank all the original 151 we think many fans would think twice about at least a few of the original 'mon. That's not why we decided to subject ourselves to ranking all 151 of them, but it was an adequate...
Thursday16th Sep 2021
Back Page The Video Game Characters That Snuck Into The 2021 Met Gala
Video games, but make it fashion
On the Venn diagram of video games and fashion, the overlap is probably smaller than the number of people who actually owned a Virtual Boy, but that's alright. I'm here at the centre of the two circles, and if this article only entertains me, so be it! The Met Gala, which took place earlier this week, is a parade of...
Saturday10th Apr 2021
Feature Would You Rather: Eat A Pikachu, Or An Eevee?
Sit down at our table for the most unethical meal you'll ever eat
Welcome to "Would You Rather", where we ask you to choose from two (or more) equally awesome/horrible things, and find out if you're in the majority or the minority. Of course, you can always argue your case in the comments. Bienvenue, hungry diners, and welcome to the Nintendo Life...
Friday25th Dec 2020
Feature The Twelve Games Of Christmas - A Dozen Festive Memories
The games of Christmas past
As we're often told, Christmas is a special time of year, a season of goodwill, generosity and gift-giving. For gamers, festive memories are often tied in with the excitement of receiving a brand new game, perhaps something that released months ago that we had been waiting for, and sliding that lovely cart or disc into...
Monday16th Nov 2020
Soapbox Here's How I'd Fix The Pokémon Series
Alex decides to pika-part the mainline games
Soapbox features enable our individual writers to voice their own opinions on hot topics, opinions that may not necessarily be the voice of the site. In this piece, senior video editor Alex Olney explains how he would "fix" the Pokémon series... Pokémon is a series that has always been extremely dear...
Wednesday5th Feb 2020
Feature Best Pokémon Starters From All Gens, As Voted By You
You voted, we counted
At the end of last year we asked you to pick your favourite Fire-, Grass- and Water-type starter Pokémon from across the Pokémon series to discover y
Wednesday30th Oct 2019
Feature The Most Memorable Ghosts In Nintendo Games
Spooks, spectres and ghosts that stuck around
It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark... Well, perhaps. Yes, Nintendo Switch has its fair share of true horrors, but there's a fair chance that any ghost you happen across on Nintendo platforms could be a Casper-like friendly phantom. With Halloween almost upon us and Luigi up...
Monday21st Oct 2019
Feature How Switch Brings Back Game Boy Multiplayer Memories
A link (cable) to the past
Quite apart from the huge number of great games coming to the system every week, one result of Switch’s success that we’ve really enjoyed is how it has brought back a focus on local multiplayer gaming not seen since the N64 days. Online is still king, of course, but we’d argue there’s nothing quite like the rush of...
Tuesday9th Jul 2019
Feature The Legacy Of Nintendo 64's Transfer Pak
Marrying console and handheld hardware long before Switch
Following the 16-bit glories of the Super Nintendo, its successor often gets short shrift from gamers these days. Of course, it’s adored by Nintendo fans of a certain age who doubled down on it during the PlayStation generation, but it’s a wilfully ‘odd’ system and arguably tough to...
Friday26th Feb 2016
Reaction The Pokémon Direct Was Short and Slick, But Had a Blunted Impact
Sun and Moon remain a mystery despite their leaks and then reveal
Well, the first Nintendo Direct of the year has aired, and it was short and snappy. The Pokémon Direct was confirmed to be around five minutes long when announced, and it only edged up to 'approximately 6 minutes' when it actually arrived; there was no double bluffing to be found...
Monday22nd Feb 2016
Talking Point Pokémon and Mega Man Show Us Extremes of Nostalgia's Value
Will you be putting down the cash for all three gen 1 Pokemon games?
This week brings a delicious nostalgia overload on the 3DS, with Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow making their way to the portable on 27th February, while Mega Man Legacy Collection lands on 23rd February. That's nine games across the two franchises, considering all the parts in...
Wednesday31st Oct 2012
Feature Spooky Levels For Surprising Frights
Sneaking up behind you
The night is finally here, when legend tells of witches, ghosts and ghouls terrorising the people of the world for, well, some reason. It seems a little pointless to learn about the origins of Halloween as it's basically a cheap costume candy-fest, and that's just fine. Grown ups often spend the night watching grisly horror...
