Latest Features
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 How Video Games Can Be Brilliant For Your Mental Health
Escapism, education, and being "alone together"
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as part of our mental health coverage, I spoke to two psychologists from Take This — a non-profit dedicated to reducing the stigma of mental health in the gaming community, as well as raising awareness of the areas in which games and mental health intersect...
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
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 Nintendo Switch OLED Model Vs Steam Deck
Which of these expensive monsters belongs on your credit card bill?
When Valve announced that it planned to make a handheld called the Steam Deck, it was immediately compared to the Nintendo Switch. You can understand that kneejerk reaction. They both let you play “proper games” on the go, they share a similar shape, and they would both have you...
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...
Back Page EVERYONE STAY CALM. Here's How To Game Safely On Friday 13th
Oh god Mercury is in retrograde as well, we're all doomed
Right. Okay. Are you sitting down? Good. Don't move. It's Friday the 13th of May, and you know what that means, right? No, it's not Jason Vorhees' birthday — it's the unluckiest day of the year, for... reasons. And this one's especially bad, if you believe in superstition and astrology,...
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...
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?...
Poll Budget Line Box Art - Is It 'Fine', Or A Sin Against All That Is Good And Pure?
Player's choice? Surely not!
The world's greatest secret agent really blending in there When it comes to box art, we're sticklers here at Nintendo Life Towers. Our Box Art Brawl series — which compares and contrasts regional box art variations and asks you to vote for your favourite — made a welcome return recently following a hiatus, and it...
Feature Save Me, Mr. Tako! Dev On Japan, 'Franglais', And Parting Ways With Nicalis
"Since it was delisted and not transferred, I can’t legally use the original version"
It's a year to the day since Save Me Mr Tako: Definitive Edition arrived on Switch eShop, and with an anniversary update and physical version now available to pre-order, we thought it was a great time to revisit this interview with the game's creator. Enjoy! In...
Talking Point If 1-2-Switch Sequel Rumours Are Somehow True, How Could Nintendo Improve It?
1-2-Switch-2
Nintendo rumours and the world of 'insiders' can occasionally be a strange, baffling place. While there's no shortage of legitimate leaks, some of the speculation can come across as tall tales, fever dreams, or even the potential machinations of Nintendo trying to bait and identify internal leakers. One bit of speculation that just...
Feature 18 Best Credits Sequences And Loading Screens That Let You Do Stuff
Who said waiting had to be boring?
Credits and loading screens within video games generally aren't particularly interesting for players. Credits sequences are a great way to take note of the amazing developers that make our favourite games, but they're more often than not devoid of any interactive element. Loading screens, meanwhile, are just that:...
Feature Will These 10 Classic Western RPGs Ever Come To Switch?
We maxed out our Intelligence to make these predictions
Month after month, the Nintendo Switch continues to add classic Japanese role-playing games through remakes, ports, and its online emulation service. Recently, we took a look at 10 classic JRPGs that – surprisingly – hadn’t made it to Switch yet. But what about RPGs developed west of...
Feature Backlog Club: Week Zero, May - It's Time To Play Earthbound
Sorry, "Mother 2"
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. Hello again, and welcome back to Backlog Club, our new and experimental feature which forces us to...
Feature Nintendo Life eShop Selects - April 2022
The best of the last month's eShop games!
The year is moving along quickly, and the Switch has been relatively busy in terms of major releases. On the eShop, though, April proved to be another packed month with a range of highly regarded ports and awesome new games. Once again, then, it's time to try and pick the best of them all from the last...
Soapbox Please, Please, Please Release Sonic Advance Trilogy On Nintendo Switch Online
Don't make us blue
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, Stuart pleads with the powers that be to get a certain trilogy on Nintendo Switch Online... Game Boy Advance is coming to Switch Online! Maybe! Almost certainly, anyway!...
Feature Backlog Club: Slay The Spire Part Two - A Tale Of Frustration, Obsession, And Poison
Slay The Spire? Not bloody likely
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 April's game, Slay The Spire, a fantastic...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (April 30th)
Wanna play ball?
Hold on, it's May on Sunday? We're a little bit confused about that here at Nintendo Life Towers — how are we already in the fifth month of 2022? Blimey. Anyway, after the release date chaos of last week, this week has been decidedly more steady. Reggie Fils-Aimé's SXSW talk is now available, and in it, he reveals how the...
Feature What's Your Biggest Nintendo Launch Day Regret?
Regrets, we've had a few
There are few moments more exciting than a console launch, especially for a whole new generation. Objectively speaking it's not the best time for a system - the pricing of everything is at its peak, there won't be many games, and early titles may also struggle to fully show off the technology. Yet the buzz is captivating,...
Memory Pak The Best And Most Chaotic Way To Play Puyo Puyo Tetris
Pi pi pi pi! PI PIIII
Today, Puyo Puyo Tetris turns five years old. I think that maybe very few people will care about this — it's just Tetris with more colours and annoying characters, really — but for me, Puyo Puyo Tetris was the foundation upon which my current relationship was built. Come back in time with me to 2017, and I'll tell you a...
Guide 85 Must-Have Games You Should Pick Up In The Switch eShop Sale (Europe)
Every 9/10 game in Nintendo's Spring sale
In many parts of Europe we have Spring in full bloom — the smell of cut grass, trees coming back to life, flowers opening up. It's all rather lovely, and of course we can both enjoy nature and play our Switch on the go; we need fresh air but, yikes, those backlogs won't play themselves. To celebrate the...
Guide Best Funny Games On Switch - Games That'll Make You Wii Yourself
Urine for a treat
Updated with everyone's favourite meta-comedy game, The Stanley Parable, which is out now on Switch. What does it mean to be funny? Merriam-Webster defines funny as "affording light mirth and laughter", and in these dark times, don't we all need a little bit of Light Mirth? Well, do we have the mirth-inducing games for you! From...
Feature 'AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative' Director Talks New Gameplay Features
We delve into the Somnium of Akira Okada
As we approach the summer release of AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative, we've been introduced to a new protagonist, new gameplay elements, and a brand new mystery. The blend of character interaction and unusual detective elements from the predecessor look like they'll be amped up to eleven in the...
