Latest Features
Feature Temtem Dev On The Difficulties Of Bringing The Pokémon Rival To Switch
"There were a lot of sacrifices and a lot of difficulties"
First announced back in 2018 before dropping onto Steam Early Access in 2020 and later PS5, Temtem garnered a lot of well-deserved attention as a worthy challenger to Pokémon’s tried-and-true formula, with a focus on developing the online social and competitive elements of Game Freak's...
Feature Backlog Club: Return Of The Obra Dinn Is A Masterpiece Of Deduction And Atmosphere
Dead men tell *some* tales, if you have a magic watch
This article is part of our new experimental series, Backlog Club, where we (Nintendo Life!) pick a game that's likely to be on our list of "games we should get around to playing", and then we (NL + you!) spend the next month playing that game. This is the halfway point, the Part One of two,...
Feature Sonic The Hedgehog Compilations - Every Sonic Collection Before Sonic Origins
Need more ways to play Sonic 1 and 2?
Hurrah for Sonic Origins! The upcoming compilation looks to be a fairly definitive take on the classic Mega Drive and Mega CD Sonic games, with widescreen presentation and various quality of life features. It’s hardly the first time that Sonic has been collected, though, is it? In fact, he’s no stranger to...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (June 11th)
Bask in the warm glow of not-E3
Well folks, it's been another jam-packed week at Nintendo Life, with plenty of highlights to mention! First up, the excellent Mario Strikers: Battle League launched on Friday and we thought it was a great sports game for the Switch in our review. Similarly, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords...
Feature Which Pokémon Is Tastiest? - Food-Based Pokémon, Ranked
Gotta eat ‘em all
We here at Nintendo Life are always hungry because, while not many are aware, writing about Nintendo everyday works up a massive appetite. So it’s only natural that when the new Pokémon Scarlet and Violet trailer revealed another food-themed Pokémon, we couldn’t help but wonder how it would taste.
Back Page So, What Are We Calling This Not-E3 Conference, Anyway?
To E3 or not to E3
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 (paper) pages on the internet, but we still love terrible jokes...
Hands On Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Is Shaping Up To Be A Belter
Choose House Hack 'n' Slash
It's been five whole years already since Nintendo's Fire Emblem and Koei Tecmo's Warriors series first collided, resulting in the rather magnificent Fire Emblem Warriors, a game we called "one of the best Musou outings yet" that "combines enjoyable combat with re
Feature Inclusivity, Frogs, And Petting Dogs - Wholesome Games On What It Means To Be "Wholesome"
Ahead of June 11th's Wholesome Direct
Wholesome. It's a word that gets tossed around a lot these days when it comes to games. If there's a game with a cat, a tea minigame, a pastel palette, and/or some kind of farming mechanic, you bet your buns it'll be called "wholesome" at least once. Wholesome Direct, a showcase of indie games presented by the...
Talking Point Should Sonic Frontiers Be Delayed? We Discuss Its Bizarre Debut And Fan Reaction
Sonic's latest 3D entry stumbles out the gate
After what feels like a lifetime of waiting, we've finally been treated to a glimpse at what the gameplay for Sonic Frontiers will look like — two glimpses, in fact! Thanks to IGN's month-long coverage deal with SEGA, we now have a better idea of how exploration and combat will work in the game, with...
Feature How 'Wayward Strand' Fights Misconceptions To Give Elderly Characters Agency And Dignity
"They have rich interior worlds"
Wayward Strand is a game set in a hospital — specifically, an aged care ward, where many of the patients are struggling with age-related health issues, like dementia. Ahead of the game's July 21st release, we spoke to the game's narrative co-director, Georgia Symons, about what it's like to write about a sensitive...
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...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (June 4th)
What're ya playin'!?
It's June, and this month is PACKED with new game releases and lots of summer gaming events! No, not-E3, although that's what we're calling it — "not-E3". This week, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet got a November release date! And it will officially be the first open-world mainline game. We also got a look at
Feature Our Predictions For The-E3-That-Isn't E3 - Bayonetta, GoldenEye, And... Viva Piñata?!
GE3ff KE3ghley's Video Game Bonanza
It's almost E3! Wait, sorry (presses fingers to headset) really? Hm. Okay. It's not E3! But that doesn't mean we won't still get bombarded with video game announcements for the entire week all the same. Hooray! Our team got together to make our own predictions, from potential Zelda news to our wildest, most...
Talking Point Video Game Music Is More Popular Than Ever, So Why Is Nintendo So Behind?
Make it music to our ears!
There’s been a lot of Nintendo-related music news over the past year that has had me more than a little disappointed. I like to boot up a video game soundtrack while I’m working; I’m a big fan of video game music concerts and I have a small collection of albums and vinyl that I want to keep growing. And with access...
Feature Zero Escape Creator Discusses The Cast Of 'AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative'
A deeper look at new and returning characters with Kotaro Uchkoshi
We're just a little under a month away from the unexpected murder mystery, AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative. This sequel to Spike Chunsoft's 2019 original, AI: The Somnium Files, sees the return of everyone's favourite pipe-wielding badass Mizuki, now an ABIS special agent...
Soapbox Chasing The 'Real' Monster Hunter Rise Ending Has Restored My Faith In Online Gaming
Everyone is so lovely and stylish
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've got on their minds. Today, Tom goes online and finds lots of nice, friendly, helpful people... There's a majority of very normal, charming individuals that love video games. Of course, you...
Hands On Drainus Is A 2D Shmup Masterpiece, So Keep Praying For That Switch Port
(Port-begging works, right?)
Japanese developer Team Ladybug is really good at homages. Its output so far has been dominated by titles with a Metroidvania theme, with the excellent Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth drawing massive inspiration from the game that helped coin the genre's name – Castlevania: Symphony of the Ni
Feature 10 Top Metroid Cosplays - The Best Samus Cosplays We've Ever Seen
Plus a handful of villains
The Metroid series has delighted fans for over 30 years and currently spans 15 different games, with Metroid Prime 4 in development. Samus is the main protagonist of the games, and shocked fans when the fact she was female was first revealed back in Metroid on the NES, but her classic suit and the 'Zero' suit aren’t the...
Soapbox Help, I Can't Stop Buying Japanese Games I Don't Understand And Will Never Play
Nintendo sixty-moarrr
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've got on their minds. Today, Gavin ponders why he's spending time and money importing Nintendo curios from the East that he's not even sure he'll play... It all started with Morita Shogi 64. If you're...
Feature Backlog Club: Week Zero, June - Return Of Backlog Club, Return Of The Obra Dinn
Gather round, mateys
Rule number one of Backlog Club: Work through your pile of unplayed video games one at a time, and discuss them with other people. Rule number two of Backlog Club: Don't talk about Backlog Club. Just kidding! Tell everyone. Please. This article is part of our new experimental series, Backlog Club, where we (Nintendo Life!)...
Feature Backlog Club: EarthBound Part Two - Bees, Backtracking, And Biscuits
Mother I'd Like to Finish
This article is part of our new experimental series, Backlog Club, where we (Nintendo Life!) pick a game that's likely to be on our list of "games we should get around to playing", and then we (NL + you!) spend the next month playing that game. This is the final part of May's game, EarthBound (or Mother 2, if you prefer),...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (May 28th)
Pre-summer doldrums?
We're almost at the end of May, and the "E3" build-up is beginning to kick in, which means that things have been a little steady in the world of video games. Three new NES and SNES games have appeared on NSO this week. A dancing Psyduck toy took the internet by storm. And
Exclusive Kao The Kangaroo Artist Talks Redesigning A Mascot For The Modern Age
Bringing them out from the outback
Kao the Kangaroo isn't the first platforming mascot you might think of when you cast your mind back to the heady days of the late '90s and early 2000s. But in a world where dragons, bandicoots, plumbers, blue hedgehogs, and more duked it out, this punching marsupial stood out with his simplicity. Many hold the Kao...
Hands On Mario Strikers: Battle League Makes A Furiously Good First Impression
Where Mario can kick Yoshi in the face
Yep, we’ve only gone and played Mario Strikers: Battle League (Football) by invitation of Nintendo UK. We’re not boasting or anything, we just didn’t know how else to open the article. Fittingly, we had a good 90 minutes with the game and have been able to get a fairly decent idea of what we can expect...
Soapbox Dragon's Dogma Is A Janky, Weird, Ageing RPG, And Everyone Should Play It
Pawn stars
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen turned 10 years old this week, and to celebrate, Kate's been reminiscing about her first time playing it, and her love for Grocco... On the surface, Dragon's Dogma looks like any other 2010s RPG. It's got dragons, it's got swords, it's got side quests. You've played Skyrim. You've played Dark Souls. You know...
Soapbox Leaving The Comfort Zone - A Quest To Find My New Favourite Games
Old favourites are just that: old
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've got on their minds. Today, yer man Thomas Whitehead discusses sidestepping his considerable backlog and starting a personal quest to try new things... The Switch has been with us for over...
Soapbox Free Game Updates Are Fantastic For Everyone, Except New Players
I want my money back
You wouldn't complain about a free lunch, would you? Well, maybe you would — if the lunch was something you'd never eaten before, and it came with utensils you'd never used before, and no one told you how to actually consume it. That's a bit like how I feel picking up Dead Cells for the first time. Although it's technically...
Feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles On Nintendo Systems - A Half-Shell History
Ninturtles
With the upcoming bounty of TMNT goodness heading to Switch this year in the form of Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection and Dotemu's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, we thought it the perfect time to take a look at the history of Turtles games on Nintendo systems... You could say that the...
Hands On Final Vendetta - The Ultimate Love Letter To Final Fight And Streets Of Rage?
Everybody was Kung-Fu fighting
Beat-em-up fans are like addicts cluttering up the mean streets of an '80s New York, willing to shoot themselves up with almost anything resembling the belt-scrolling boom that swept arcades in the early '90s. Whether pink-mohawked punk or run-of-the-mill gamer, if you’re still experiencing withdrawals despite the...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (May 21st)
Raze hell
Another week has come and gone, and it's been one of those weird "busy but not that busy" kinda weeks. We saw a bit of new footage from Sonic Origins, and it's looking very tasty. An HD texture pack was showcased for Mario Kart 64, and we discovered yet another bonkers
Feature What The Heck Is A 'MetroidBrainia'? Introducing The Newest Genre On The Block
Brain reaction
Recently, I was talking to my partner about my all-time favourite niche genre of games. He's a game developer, so we have these kinds of discussions a lot, usually trying to nail down what it is we like best about a particular game, or scene, or genre — but this time, we were trying to find out exactly what the genre even was. Now,...
Feature Aggro Crab Tells Us All About Their Clawsome New Game, 'Another Crab's Treasure'
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀
You thought I forgot about Crab News Thursday, didn't you? Well I didn't. I was just waiting for the perfect Crab News to surface, and thanks to last week's Indie World presentation, I have finally found it: Another Crab's Treasure, the upcoming PC and Nintendo Switch game from Aggro Crab, the studio behind dystopian...
Memory Pak Forget Zelda And Mario, Thumper Was The Biggest Surprise Of 2017
'Rhythm-Violence' game is now 5 years old
When the Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, I — like many others — devoured The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I was hooked, and it was only when Mario Kart 8 Deluxe launched a month later that I was wrenched away from the land of Hyrule. But while Mario Kart 8 remains as incredible as it was...
Feature 'Spirittea' Is A Heady Brew Of Stardew Valley And Spirited Away, Coming To Switch Soon
Char-vest Moon
Who would have thought that a chance encounter between leaves and hot water would lead to one of the most popular hot drinks in the world? Tea is a necessity for many of us to survive, mostly because the Nintendo Life team is 90% British, but also because it serves as a soothing, relaxing ritual that starts our day. This article?...
Feature The 12 Best Wrestling Games On Nintendo Systems
Grappling for your attention
Ah, professional wrestling, the one true sport. Is there anything better than having a big fake fight? Of course not, which is why kids have play-fights all the time. And, just like wrestling, sometimes those fights become all-too-real when someone works themselves into a shoot. Wrestling, of course, has quite the...
Talking Point In An Age Of Endless Delays, Nintendo's First-Party Flow Is Extraordinary
The hits keep coming
When Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp was postponed earlier this year in response to current events in Ukraine, there was an interesting perspective that did the rounds. It meant a longer than normal gap between Nintendo retail titles, and we'd have to wait — gasp — for a few weeks to play Kirby and the Forgotten Land...
Feature Games That Got Us Through Tough Times
The power of gaming
As you may have seen across the web, May is mental health awareness month. While a lot of the stigma around the topic has eased, the issues and challenges remain across all parts of society. Throughout this month there are efforts to encourage support, understanding and knowledge around the topic. There are various ways to help...
Feature Backlog Club: Earthbound Part One - Getting SNEStalgic With Mother
Mother 2 knows best
This article is part of our new experimental series, Backlog Club, where we (Nintendo Life!) pick a game that's likely to be on our list of "games we should get around to playing", and then we (NL + you!) spend the next month playing that game. This is the halfway point, the Part One of two, where we stop for a minute to check in...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (May 14th)
Go on, tell us
Well, it's certainly been a bit of a busier week for us here at Nintendo Life! Looking at game announcements, we're going to be getting Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards on the Switch Online Expansion Pass, plus Alan Wake has been confirmed for release on the Switch later this year. Finally, of course, we had a brand new Indie World...
Feature There's No Storytelling Like Minecraft's Exquisite Emergent Narrative
Story time!
It's the fifth anniversary of Minecraft's Switch release today, and we're celebrating the only way we know how: By writing lots of words about it. Hooray! I was away from home when my house caught on fire. I didn't even hear about it until the next day, when it was far too late: The beautiful Tudor-style cottage was naught but a...
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...
Poll If Nintendo Released Mother 3 In The West, What Would It Be Called?
EarthBound 2? Earth3ound? MotherEarth?
Last weekend we celebrated Mother's Day by having a real Mother of a blow-out. We began with our weekly Box Art Brawl poll pitting EarthBound against Mother 2. We then took a look back at memories old and new of both EarthBound and the legendary (and legendari
Talking Point As Switch Hardware Sales Slow, How Long Can Nintendo Delay 'Switch 2'?
Stuck between a rock and a global chip shortage
Nintendo's report for the 2021/22 financial year dropped today, and while Switch continues to sell well and software sales are looking healthy, signs that enthusiasm for the five-year-old system is beginning to ebb are also apparent. To be clear, the results present a far from gloomy outlook for the...
Hands On Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge - The Ultimate 'Retro Throwback'?
We chat to Dotemu and Tribute Games about the road from 1987 to 2022
It feels like an age ago now, but when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge was announced it triggered excitement among gamers of all ages. For sure, some of the reaction came from players of a certain vintage that remember the original show and the TMNT arcade game,...
Poll Does Nintendo Really Need To Release Mother 3 In The West Anymore?
We'd be first in line, but have all the fans played it already?
That Mother 3 never got officially localised and released outside Japan has been a source of sadness and frustration for EarthBound fans in the West since the game launched on Game Boy Advance back in 2006. The sequel to cult classic EarthBound — the SNES entry in the Mother series...
Soapbox Mother 3 Isn't Sad, It's Hopeful
It's SMILES and Tears, remember?
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've got on their minds. Today, Alana wants to tell you why you should find hope and not just gloom in Mother 3. You'll still cry, though, don't worry. Now, are you ready? Say… Fuzzy Pickles!...
Memory Pak Making New Memories With Earthbound In 2022
"Getting real big Undertale vibes from this"
I didn't have a SNES growing up. I didn't have a NES, either. I had an N64, though, so I'm not totally hopeless. Lately, I've been able to remedy the gaps in my gaming knowledge, since Nintendo's been adding a ton of games that I either missed (because of being a baby) or missed (as in, bemoaned the...
Back Page Pokémon Moms Speak Out About Palindromic Regions And Raising Champions
A trio of Pokémom
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 (paper) pages on the internet, but we still love terrible jokes...
Feature 11 Switch Games To Play During Mental Health Awareness Month
Inspirational, thought-provoking experiences
Every May you'll see various organisations, groups and individuals taking the opportunity to raise mental health awareness. It's a topic that now has far more research, understanding and knowledge attached to it, in the process helping people recognise and get help for related issues. The stigma around...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (May 7th)
The force is still with us
If you've noticed that things have been a bit quieter this week, that's because it's Golden Week in Japan, a series of four national holidays where a lot of companies grant time off. For others, Star Wars Day was on 4th May (okay, okay, May the 4th), and that's also considered a bit of a holiday, depending on who you talk...