Latest Features
Feature Mega Man, Crash Bandicoot, And Gex - The '90s Inspirations Behind 'Frogun'
We'll tell you what we want, what we really really want
Why is that '90s and 2000s fashion coming back as a new trend is so utterly distressing to those of us that were there, but '90s and '00s video game aesthetics resurfacing is a good thing? We don't have answers for you, but we do have Frogun, a charmingly goofy action-platformer game that...
Talking Point What Does Your Favourite Pokémon Say About You?
Pikachu? Wow, so basic
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are on their way, presumably adding another hundred-or-so critters to our 'Dex, and we can't lie — some of them are already winding their way into our hearts. There's Fidough, the purebread dog that everyone loves, Smoliv and Lechonk, the little guys with meme names, and Pawmi, Gen IX's Pikachu...
Feature Nintendo eShop Selects - July 2022
The best of the last month's eShop games!
Another month has been and gone, and that means it's time for another look back at the eShop last month. July was a pretty big month for physical RPG releases, but the eShop has had a fair few hidden nuggets that may have passed you by. Once again, we've tried to pick the best of the best for you! It's the...
Back Page How To Make Your Own Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Monster Name
The Ballad of Sharpwitted Tracy
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...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (August 6th)
Fight to live, live to play games
It's been a busy week for Nintendo fans, and for us at Nintendo Life! Not only has Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Wave 2 finally dropped, but Game Freak and The Pokémon Company gave us plenty of news on Pokémon Scarlet & Violet! Nintendo also delivered its Q1 financial results, where it reported
Soapbox All I Want From Mario Kart 8's DLC Is More Tracks Like Baby Park
Baby Park > Rainbow Road
As someone who gets paid to have opinions about video games, I have to check myself a fair bit. Do I love a particular game because I'm blinded by nostalgia? Am I kinder to a particular genre because I have a soft spot for it, even if some of the games are a bit pants? Are there developers who I'm willing to forgive for...
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...
Feature Backlog Club: Have You Seriously Not Played Portal Yet?
We do what we must
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!) pick...
Poll How Do You Feel About Wave 2 Of The Mario Kart 8 Booster Course Pack?
Kart's content
The second wave of the new Booster Course tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will be here next week, and we're feeling hyped to try out some new races (and a little disappointed that some of them look more like Mario Kart Tour tracks than Mario Kart 8 tracks). In the spirit of hype, we're trying to gauge how people are feeling about this...
Feature Backlog Club: Hollow Knight Does Things That Other Games Wouldn't. That's Why It's So Good
A game about bugs?! In this economy????
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. Read part one of our Hollow Knight playthrough here! This is the...
Feature SEGA's Astonishing GameCube Rebound Following Defeat In The Console Wars
How SEGA turned its fortunes around and made friends with Nintendo
For gamers old enough to remember the turn of the century, the console landscape looked very different from how it does today. Everyone was excited for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo was getting the GameCube ready to succeed the Nintendo 64. Microsoft's Xbox was also in development...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (July 30th)
Chronicling the weekend
As we reach the end of yet another week in the year 2022, we also sit at the cusp of the eighth month of the year! In the news this week, Nintendo finally unveiled Wave 2 of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's Booster Course Pass. Bandai Namco has asked Digimon Survive fans on social media to not spoil th
Talking Point What's The Highlight Of Your Game Collection?
The things we'll never trade in
Everyone plays games differently. Some of us buy nothing but digital games, preferring to be able to play whatever we want, wherever we want; others meticulously collect every single physical release they can get their mitts on, before prices skyrocket for a second-hand copy on eBay. But one thing most of us have in...
Feature Dynamax Ain’t That Bad - Pokemon’s Recent Battle Mechanics Ranked
VGC pro Wolfe Glick talks Mega Evolutions, Z-Moves, and Dynamax
From Generation III onward, Game Freak has altered Pokémon’s core battle mechanics in some way or another. Double Battles and the Physical/Special move split fundamentally changed the way people play Pokémon both casually and competitively, but it’s the latter three — Mega...
Poll What Order Should You Play Live A Live In? And Does It Even Matter?
Chronologicalive A Live
You might be forgiven for thinking that we here at Nintendo Life are a little too excited by Live A Live, an HD-2D remake of a 1994 JRPG that, by many accounts, was a bit of a flop. But even though not all of us were blown away by the demo, the reviews are in, and they're looking pretty good — so we're anticipating the game...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (July 23rd)
Live for the weekend
School's out for a lot of kids now in the UK — hooray! How many of you will be joining your kids for a summer of gaming? Perhaps Camelot updating its official company website with Golden Sun assets is tempting you to dig into your backlog? Or maybe you'll be going through the 3DS and Wii U eShops after Nintendo gave clearer...
Talking Point What Are The Nintendo Switch's Defining Moments (So Far)?
A timeline of awe and tragedy
The Nintendo Switch has been around for almost five and a half years, and in that time, it's made headlines over and over again in ways that other consoles haven't — for better or worse. And you know what? It's pretty refreshing to be able to talk so much about one piece of hardware. We were there for the Wii U years...
Feature 'Ex-Zodiac' Is The Star Fox Throwback You Wish Nintendo Would Make
And it's got its sights on Switch
It’s been a while since Nintendo did anything of note with Star Fox. The last new entry was 2016’s Star Fox Zero (along with asymmetric tower defence curio Star Fox Guard), with Star Fox Command for DS coming a decade earlier in 2006. Fox McCloud and Falco Lombardi appeared in Smash Bros., but there’s been a...
Exclusive "The Farming Genre Is A Bit Tired" - How SunnySide Aims To Refresh The Farm Sim
"In order to have a Sunny Side, there has to be a dark side…"
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that farming games all have a lot in common. Crops, livestock, and dateable townsfolk are the staples of the genre, and if you've played one, you've likely experienced what a lot of them have to offer — and that's not even necessarily a bad...
Soapbox Mario Gave Us The Powerwashing Fantasy Before It Was Cool
Mario was the original ASMR powerwasher
As Super Mario Sunshine turns 20 on the 19th July, 2022, Kate wants to get a few things off her chest about how the game would have been a massive hit today, probably... ALRIGHT, LISTEN. Whenever I am in polite company, and I mention enjoying Super Mario Sunshine — yes, despite its insistence on collecting...
Soapbox 20 Years Later, Super Mario Sunshine Is Still The Best 3D Mario
Defending the GameCube outing on its 20th birthday
What you lookin' at? 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, the overabundance of sunshine from the current heatwave has clearly got the better of Ollie, as he makes wild declarations...
Soapbox Correcting A Horrifying 15-Year Mistake By Finally Playing Elite Beat Agents
They don’t make rhythm games as bizarre as they used to
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, Lowell makes amends for a poor life choice and finally gets down with that funky, funky beat... Rewind with me all the way back to...
Feature What Is Live A Live? Everything You Need To Know (And Maybe More)
Find out how JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is involved!
If you've been following game news lately, you've probably heard about Live A Live. You probably also belong to one of two camps: Someone who knows what Live A Live is, and someone who can't really tell it apart from all the other HD-2D Square Enix games, like Triangle Strategy and Octopath...
Feature "A Story Without Antagonism Or Violence" - How Blanc Tells The Story Of Two Unlikely Friends
A chat with Casus Ludi
During June's Nintendo Direct Mini, you may have seen a game that looked a little bit like heartbreaking Disney flick The Fox And The Hound — except instead of a fox, it's a wolf, and instead of a hound, it's a deer. This was Blanc, a gorgeous, monochrome, hand-drawn game from French studio Casus Ludi, coming to the Switch...
Feature Is Pokémon Unite Ready For Its Moment At The Pokémon World Championships?
The Pokémon MOBA showcases its competitive chops in August
Before last year, a Pokémon spin-off in the style of League Of Legends felt like an obscure offshoot, even for a franchise that’s pitched Pikachu as a coffee-swilling detective. In many ways, a Pokémon MOBA makes considerable sense – as a world filled with hundreds of unique monsters...
Feature Backlog Club: Hollow Knight Is A Perfect Game For Notebook Cartography
Leaving a paper trail
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. In the first part of our Hollow Knight playthrough, Kate has noticed that Hollow...
Poll So, How Do You Pronounce 'Live A Live'?
Lie-valive? Liver-liv? Gimme five?
We're big fans of noodly linguistic questions around these parts, and if they involve video games, all the better. Whether it's Nintendo-related gaming vocab, Pokémon pronunciation, or finding out how you say the name of Link's sentient sword, we're always down a
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (July 16th)
A fairy finally came to you!
Well, it's felt like quite a hectic week here at Nintendo Life! The biggest news, of course, was the confirmation that Bayonetta 3 will finally be launching in October this year, along with the delightful surprise of a physical edition of the first game. To top it off, Platinum Games confirmed that you can
Feature Resident Evil Netflix Review: Wesker Steals A Show That Lacks Bite
Out of ammo
The live-action adaptations of the Resident Evil franchise have had a real rough time of it, huh? Paul W.S. Anderson’s six-movie take on the series — while commercially successful — was widely slated by fans of the games and critics alike for diverting too far away from the tone and scope of Capcom’s source (plus, some of them...
Talking Point Would You Mind If Nintendo Retired The 'Big' Nintendo Direct Format?
The Joys and Cons, direct to you
With the reveal of a new trailer for Bayonetta 3 along with a launch date announcement, Nintendo fans are looking back over the last couple of weeks with a question on their mind: Why didn't the company bundle up this news with the third-party announcements from the Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase and deliver...
Soapbox Games Go Down Better When Paired With Books, Movies, And TV, Just Like Wine
Well, not JUST like wine. You can't drink a book
I don't know much about wine, but I sure like to pretend I do, and I bet I'm not alone. Who else here — of drinking age, that is — has bought a red wine to accompany dinner, because it "goes well with pasta"? How many times have you been poured a glass of wine to "taste" in a fancy restaurant,...
Exclusive Dogs, Death, And Fantasy Life - An Interview With The Creators Of Potion Permit
(Yes, you can pet the dog. No, the dog doesn't die)
There's a slew of charming life sim-type games on the slate for the Nintendo Switch in 2022 and 2023, and Potion Permit is one of the ones we're most intrigued about. Published by PQube, with a release date of September 22nd, 2022, Potion Permit is all about tending to the ailments to the people...
Talking Point What's Your Favourite Nintendo Switch Screenshot?
LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH
God bless the screenshot. Ever since they were first invented, and then brought to consoles, the world has been a brighter place. Where would we have been in the Animal Crossing Pandemic of 2020 without the images of our homes and islands to share with others? Would Spider-Man be less of a good game without that photo mode?...
Feature Nintendo eShop Selects - June 2022
The best of the last month's eShop games!
Blimey, it's July already? June flew by, but looking back at the month and all of those Switch games, we think we have an answer as to why things went by so quickly — it was a darn good month for video games, wasn't it? How will we ever pick the best of the best? Well, we've tried to! Like always, we're...
Guide Best Switch Games For Short Play Sessions
Perfect for busy people
It used to be that we'd take our 3DSes with us on holiday, public transit, and to hospital waiting rooms, because it was easy to pick up and put down a game on this tiny little handheld, and to put it into sleep mode whenever your attention was needed. These days, we're more likely to take a Nintendo Switch with us whenever...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (July 9th)
Wahoo! It's the weekend!
It's been a little bit milder here n the UK this week, but it looks like things are about to hot up again. The news has also been a bit steadier, too. Nintendo unveiled a brand new Splatoon 3-Themed Switch OLED earlier this week. The upcoming Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion will have some "differences" in
Memory Pak The Best Puzzles Are The Ones That Make You Want To Throw Things At The TV
A puzzling reaction
Welcome to the latest instalment in our new-ish column, Memory Pak, where we're going to be doing a deep-dive into some of the most memorable moments in gaming – good and bad. This time, Kate discusses her puzzle tantrums... The first time I played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, it was under the supervision of my partner. It...
Hands On Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Is A Heck Of An Emotional Ride So Far
Fight to live, live to fight
With just a few more weeks to go now until the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, we've been busy getting to grips with the latest entry in Monolith Soft's epic action-RPG series and, you may be relieved to hear, it's more than living up to our lofty expectations so far. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 introduces us to Aionios,...
Back Page Making The Perfect Nintendo Frankenconsole
Sum of its parts
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 'Live A Live' Gives A Unique 16-Bit RPG A Gorgeous New Lease Of Life
We're LIVE from the past, present, and future
If you have any interest in Super Nintendo RPGs, then you’ve likely heard of Live A Live. Released in 1994 for the Super Famicom in Japan, it came out during what many claim is Square Enix's — then known as Square, or Squaresoft in the West — 'Golden Era', launching just under a year after Secret...
Feature What It Takes To Be A Zelda: Breath Of The Wild World Record Speedrunner
BOTW's best 'runners talk tricks and clips
It’s 1 AM and you have just spent the past 12 hours replaying the same segment of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In your mind, there is no stopping until perfection is achieved – or the more likely option – you pass out from sleep deprivation. For the next few weeks, you continue to hone...
Feature 10 Series We'd Love To See Get The Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy Treatment
On the game's 10th anniversary
Why haven't there been more games like Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy? We have a particular soft spot for music and rhythm games, and even more so music and rhythm games that put their own twist on the usual beat matching. Theatrhythm is just one of those games. The first game launched in North America 10 years ago today...
Feature 13 Best Seniors In Games
These oldies are very goodies
Think of a game in which you control a character (so no Tetris or anything) — go ahead, any game! Now, chances are, whichever game you've picked, its protagonist is either young or, at the most, middle-aged. You've got the likes of Link, Mario, Samus, Cloud, Joker, Neku, Scott Pilgrim... We could go on, but you get...
Feature Backlog Club: July - If You Haven't Played Hollow Knight Yet, Here's Your Chance
Sorry to bug you
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!) pick a...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (July 2nd)
Take a sip
We're over halfway through the year now — isn't that a scary thought? And our calendars are about to get even busier after that Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase! But outside of that mammoth mini, rumours of a Metroid Prime 1 remaster are swirling once again. Sabotage's
Poll What's Your Game Of The Year 2022 So Far?
Yeah, it's already July, sorry
We regret to inform you that 2022 is half over. You might as well just start buying your Christmas presents now, folks, because from here it's a slippery slope to Winter. But before that happens, let's celebrate the six-month mark of 2022 with our games of the year so far, or GOTYSF! The list is stacked this year,...
Feature Mario + Rabbids Producer Talks Free Movement And Fusing Lumas, Rabbids, And Composers
"It was a kid's dream to do that"
As revealed in Nintendo's June 2022 Direct Mini: Partner Showcase, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is launching on Switch on 20th October. This afternoon, Ubisoft's dedicated showcase,
Movie Review GoldenEra - A Celebratory Examination Of GoldenEye 007's Creation And Impact
Worth its weight in gold
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Ah, yes. The classic quote that may or may not have been uttered by Shigeru Miyamoto. With the gaming industry (understandably) experiencing an unusually high number of delays in recent years, the proclamation has been the subject of memes to the point...
Feature Spidersaurs Lands On Switch In July, WayForward Talks Saturday Cartoons And Contra
Everybody walk the spidersaur
Over the past 30 years, WayForward, makers of the Shantae series, has made a name for itself by crafting retro-flavoured gems that combine the best of modern gaming with an unashamedly old-school aesthetic and game feel. Whether it's baked into their own projects (such as the Mighty series or the aforementioned Shantae...
Round Up Every Game And Trailer From The Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase June 2022
What were your favourite announcements?
The June 2022 Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase has come and gone, and left us with a host of fresh announcements, release date news, surprise drops, and other tidbits to feast on. It may not have been the full-fat first-party Nintendo Direct fans have been anticipating all June, but there was something...
