Feature Articles
Wednesday10th Apr 2024
Book Review 'The Most Relaxing Video Games' - More Than Just Cute 'N' Cosy
Ahhhhhhhhh...
When it comes to relaxing games, you probably already have a reasonably sound idea of what these might look like and entail. Perhaps it’s a jaunty farm sim like Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons, a laid-back puzzler like Unpacking, or even a cute adventure like A Short Hike. The point is that many of us have preconceived notions of...
Tuesday12th Mar 2024
Review LEGO Animal Crossing - Kapp’n’s Island Boat Tour - Is It Any Good?
Aye, Kapp'n
The five Animal Crossing-themed Lego sets which launched on 1st March 2024 bring a selection of Animal Crossing: New Horizons characters to life in minifigure form. They range in price from $15 to $75: Julian's Birthday Party is the most affordable, while Nook's Cranny and Rosie's House
Monday11th Mar 2024
Review LEGO Animal Crossing - Julian’s Birthday Party - Is It Any Good?
Party of one
The LEGO Animal Crossing sets bring Animal Crossing: New Horizons to life in plastic brick form, featuring minifigures of some of the series' most beloved characters at home and around their island. The first wave of sets launched in March 2024, with Julian's Birthday Party among them. This is the cheapest set in the range (at launch),...
Saturday9th Mar 2024
Review LEGO Animal Crossing - Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House - Is It Any Good?
The Rose and Cranny
The LEGO Animal Crossing range brings a variety of Animal Crossing: New Horizons characters to blocky life across five sets (initially, at least) that enable you to connect them and create your own Animal Crossing island in Lego form. Keen Lego fans will spy a similarity to the defunct Fabuland theme, now with a Nintendo...
Friday8th Mar 2024
Review LEGO Animal Crossing - Isabelle’s House Visit - Is It Any Good?
House call
The LEGO Animal Crossing sets released in March 2024 feature a range of different minifigures and island elements bringing back memories of 2020's Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the form of everyone's favourite plastic bricks. As we run through each of the sets to see which one is best, here we're looking at Isabelle's House Visit —...
Wednesday6th Mar 2024
Review LEGO Animal Crossing - Bunnie's Outdoor Activities - Is It Any Good?
New Horizons on the block
Nintendo's latest collaboration with Lego has resulted in a handful of Animal Crossing sets, a crossover that fans have been begging for ever since the firms' first collaboration, the LEGO Super Mario sets, were announced back in March 2020 — coincidentally Animal Crossing: New Horizons' launch month. In the years since,...
Saturday17th Feb 2024
Back Page The Best Cows On The Nintendo Switch
We would never steer you wrong
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 we still love terrible...
Sunday11th Feb 2024
Back Page 15 Superb Owls On Nintendo Switch
What a hoot
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 we still love terrible jokes — so welcome to...
Monday1st Jan 2024
Feature A Look Inside Seattle's Real-Life Animal Crossing Aquarium
Seattle creatures
Eager to compare Critterpedias, Caitlin Johnson recently headed down to Seattle Aquarium to check out its new Nintendo collaboration... If you ever wanted to have Animal Crossing’s long-time museum curator Blathers teach you about marine life in reality, now is your chance. Nintendo and the Seattle Aquarium announced last month...
Friday6th Oct 2023
Talking Point What Are Your Hopes For Animal Crossing LEGO?
LEGO to the City
Following rumours that LEGO was set to team up with Nintendo and unleash Animal Crossing-themed sets on unsuspecting wallets the world over, a short teaser yesterday revealed... well, very little really. But the leaks were true, and Animal Crossing Lego exists! Yes, official Tom Nook and Isabelle minifigs will be available to...
Saturday5th Aug 2023
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (August 5th)
Let's Gooigi
Woohoo, the weekend! Yes, another week is almost done, which means it's time to look back on some of the highlights from the last few days. First up, kicking off the week with a bang, it was rumoured that Nintendo is targeting a 2024 release for its next major piece of hardware. Details so far are scarce, but it sounds like the...
Saturday6th May 2023
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (May 6th)
Tears of the countdown
We are so nearly there, folks. We have hit our final What Are You Playing discussion before all of our entries become "Tears of the Kingdom, duh" from next week — relish the variety in our plans while you can! This week has been a bit of a 'calm before the storm' in the world of Nintendo, but that doesn't mean that we...
Saturday8th Apr 2023
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (April 8th)
Easter gaming
We did it, everyone! We made it through the opening week of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and still live to tell the tale. Yes, this week finally saw the release of the hotly anticipated Nintendo and Illumination co-production and was it worth the wait? Well, sort of. While we certainly had mixed feelings in our review, the stellar box...
Saturday1st Apr 2023
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (April 1st)
Flame on
One week ago today we were looking at the calendar and commenting on how things seemed pretty quiet for Nintendo to round out March and then out of nowhere — boom! — we're hit with our first proper look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and everything changed. Yes, this was the week that we fell thoroughly back into the...
Saturday25th Mar 2023
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (March 25th)
Sunsetting those eShops
Ahh... The weekend. It's been a bit of a quieter week in the world of Nintendo, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been a number of interesting stories to highlight. In confirmation of rumours circling the internet, Sega announced that it will be releasing Sonic Origins Plus in June, bringing Amy to the fold and adding...
Wednesday28th Dec 2022
Soapbox Crossing The Line: How I Helped Corrupt The Animal Crossing Economy
New Horizons for NMT fungibility
It's midnight by the pier. I check I’m alone, feel nervously into my pocket and count the money with my fingers. It's all there: 40 massive sacks of coins. Big pocket. I flip up the lid of the wheelie bin and dump the lot. 4 million bells erased from the universe and no one need ever know. How did it come to this?...
Saturday29th Oct 2022
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (October 29th)
BAEonetta
After two weeks of back-and-forth drama, we are pleased that Bayonetta 3 is finally out to rave reviews. We are never going to have to talk about another VA dispute ever again, right? Yes, the gun-slinging, crowd-winning Umbra Witch is back and (not to spoil the following feature) we are excited to play. While we awaited the game's...
Saturday10th Sep 2022
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (September 10th)
What a week for franchises
It's finally here, folks. After what feels like an age of trailers and Directs galore, this week finally saw the release of Splatoon 3! Here at Nintendo Life, we have you covered for all things concerning ink, squids and merchandise (or should we say Murch-andice?) We have put together a comprehensive Tips, Tricks and...
Friday19th Aug 2022
Talking Point Which Nintendo Series Would Work Best As A Free-To-Play Game?
Hear us out! We've got some good ideas!
Live service, free-to-play games are the new hotness. With massive fanbases built around games like Genshin Impact, Destiny, and Fortnite, which are regularly updated with new characters, content, and quests, it's easy to see how other game development studios might be tempted over to the dark side...
Thursday11th Aug 2022
Lamb do the slaughter
Devolver Digital's latest game in their stables of gory, bizarre, and irreverent releases is Massive Monster's Cult of the Lamb, a game so perfectly-pitched to the Devolver crowd that it's hard to believe it wasn't an in-house project. It's a cult simulator, but with cute li'l woodland animals instead of bloodthirsty...
Thursday12th May 2022
Feature Just How Accessible Are Switch Games Like Xenoblade, Pokémon, And Mario Odyssey?
Seven Switch games from an accessibility perspective
When it comes to accessibility features in video games, things have improved somewhat in recent years, with many developers now consciously providing elementary options that tweak the gameplay experience to better suit players of different abilities and with specific impairments. There remains...
Friday31st Dec 2021
Back Page The Dark Secrets Of Brewster's 'Pigeon Milk' In Animal Crossing
We've got a latte questions
Brewster is finally coming to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and we're going to find out more about everyone's favourite coffee-loving winged beast on Friday the 15th October — which is Brewster's birthday, don'tcha know. Players have been asking about/demanding Brewster for ages, like that one clip from The Mandalorian...
Wednesday29th Dec 2021
Feature Nintendo Life's Alternative Game Awards 2021
Best Late Arrival! Best Non-2021 Game! Best Game That Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else!
Ah yes, that idle final week in December where some people head back to work, and others relax until new year filling their days with what they love — video games, for example. Good choice! We've already totted up our personal scores and bestowed our staff Game of...
Tuesday28th Dec 2021
Feature How Accessible Are Zelda, Pokémon And Animal Crossing For Blind Gamers?
Top Nintendo Switch games evaluated for players with vision loss
When it comes to accessibility options in video games, some companies have been quicker than others to acknowledge the need and introduce basic features into their games. While progress has been made over the past few years, there's still much room for improvement and even the most...
Saturday27th Nov 2021
Feature Psychologists Talk Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 And Keeping Fun Ahead Of FOMO
Keep the "happy" in Happy Home Paradise
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was supposed to be just a game. Through a series of weird coincidences, it instead became a cultural phenomenon, and a record of the first few months of a global pandemic. It’s not surprising that a lot of us have complicated feelings about it. Granted, a lot of those feelings...
Monday22nd Nov 2021
Gyroids? Brewster? The return of Tortimer?
It's been about two weeks since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' massive 2.0 update, as well as the Happy Home Paradise DLC, so hopefully most of you have had a good crack at it so far! With two weeks of Brewster,
Monday15th Nov 2021
Gallery You Can Put Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Gyroids In The Bath... Or The Microwave
Don't worry, they don't mind
Gyroids are somewhere in-between pets, instruments, and weird little guys that live in your house. But one of their secret features is that they come with a little shelf, so you can put them on the wall... and some people have discovered that they can clip through furniture to create the effect of being in, or on, the...
Soapbox Even If GTA Trilogy Were Perfect, I'd Rather Be Shooting Balloons And Burying Gyroids
Scale vs. scope
The wider gaming internet is currently in a funk of bitter disappointment due to the launch state of GTA The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, an anniversary package which, unfortunately, isn't so definitive. For Nintendo gamers who have waited years to be able to play a fully-3D Grand Theft Auto of any sort, it's infinitely sad to...
Saturday13th Nov 2021
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (November 13th)
Tell us your weekend gaming plans
We're almost at the halfway point through November, and it's been a busy old time all right. With Pokémon arriving very soon, we've been digging into the minutiae of the excellent Animal Crossing DLC while we have the time. Elsewhere, Twitch appeared o
Wednesday10th Nov 2021
Feature Our Verdict On Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Update 2.0, The "Last Major Free Content"
Was it worth the wait?
After playing the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update for the last week, our resident representative extraordinaire Kate Gray delivers the Nintendo Life verdict on what Nintendo has stated is the final "major" free update for many a Switch owner's Game of the Year 2020... Stop me if you've heard this one before. I...
