Retro Features
Feature Why Play Final Fantasy VII Remake When You Could Play FFVII 'Demake'?
"more than just pirate versions"
You’re probably aware of Square Enix’s lengthy and somewhat lavish efforts to remake the 1997 game Final Fantasy VII. The second instalment of this ambitious remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, was released just recently, and we’re still likely to be years away from any sort of conclusion. But you might not be...
Feature 10 Game Boy Deep Cuts That Aren’t On Nintendo Switch Online
And should be
The Game Boy turns 35 years old today, and we've been running features over the past couple of days celebrating the handheld and its games. Today, Nile digs up 10 lesser-known gems in the system's remarkable library. 35 years ago, the Game Boy changed handheld gaming – not because it was powerful, but because it wasn’t. Premised...
Feature Meet Four Developers Making Brand-New Game Boy Titles In 2024
35 years and stronger than ever
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, George speaks with four talented individuals keeping the candle burning for the DMG-001 in the 21st century... The humble Game Boy may be turning 35, but that...
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...
Soapbox 30 Years Later, Super Metroid's Foreboding Atmosphere Is Still Unmatched
Zeb-easily the best
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, to celebrate Super Metroid's 30th anniversary, Ollie sings the praises of the game's enduring foreboding atmosphere... The Metroid series is perhaps best known for its...
Feature "The Odds Seemed Just Astronomical" - Reviving Lost Media With Shantae Advance
"Decisions made by younger me created a ton of headaches for modern me"
It's not often that a developer gets to revisit a chapter of their past and pick up where they left off on a project two decades prior, but the revival of Shantae Advance in the form of Risky Revolution has given WayForward creative director Matt Bozon just that opportunity...
Feature Meet Morphcat Games, The New-Gen NES Devs Pushing The 8-Bit Envelope
"No one has come close to exhausting its full capabilities"
Four decades after it became an international sales phenomenon and dominated a crowded games market, the Nintendo Entertainment System – the 8-bit box that gave birth to some of the medium’s biggest enduring franchises – today finds itself playing host to something else entirely: new...
Soapbox With Switch Online, It's The Perfect Time To Bring Back These Wii U Gems
An absolute NES-cessity
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Ethan looks back on a pair of Wii U games — and a 3DS sibling — which could help curious gamers navigate the Switch Online retro library if they were given a second...
Talking Point As A Nintendo Fan, Do You Really Need To Play The Virtual Boy?
Oh boy
It’s Christmas morning, and amidst the thick haze of food already cooking for lunch and the soothing laughter of our children enjoying their new toys, my wife approaches me with a small, square package. I hadn’t seen this under the tree. “That’s your last one,” she says. I instinctively go to shake it – she knows me well enough to...
Feature 21 Game Boy Advance Games We'd Love To See Added To Nintendo Switch Online
GBA gems we'd dig on Switch
With Golden Sun and The Lost Age making their arrival on Nintendo Switch Online, we've given this list a bit of a spruce up and added a few more dream titles to the service. Plus, we've got a cheeky little poll at the end of the article too — so make sure you vote and let us know what you want to see on NSO. The Game...
Soapbox The 'Recharged' Series Proves Atari Is No Longer A Spent Force
A look at Atari's lineup of neo-retro revivals
Before there was Nintendo, there was Atari. Once the dominant player in the gaming industry, its story is one of a dramatic rise and fall. For years, Atari had done little more than sell licensed T-shirts and low-quality plug-and-play consoles. But since coming under new management in 2021, Atari looks...
Feature 'The Art Of Nintendo Power' Exhibit - A Guided Tour
"The whole mission is to share the work"
Have you ever seen an original Contra up close? What about an original Mario Kart? For Stephan Reese, organizer and showrunner for the non-profit Interactive Art Collection (and a Senior Producer at video game developer Bungie when he’s not busy doing that), it’s his life’s mission that you might have...
Feature Game Boy Color - A Quarter Century Of Colour Nintendo Handhelds
GBC memories
It's now 25 years since Game Boy Color launched, and for many of us in the West, it was on this system that we first caught and traded Pocket Monsters with pals back in 1998. Backwards compatible with the entire Game Boy library, the Game Boy Color refined the DMG and the smaller Game Boy Pocket with its sharp little colour screen...
Feature Meet The Virtual Boy Fan Making New Tech And Games For Nintendo's Console Curio
"I thought, 'Hey, I can probably do that'"
As the reputed black sheep of the Nintendo console family, one might think 1995’s Virtual Boy to be the last piece of hardware capable of garnering an enthusiast following today. Discontinued after less than a year on the market and never released in Europe, the elusive red-and-black headset is remembered...
Feature Digital Doppelgangers - Home Vs. Handheld Adaptations In The 2000s
To Urbz is human
When I was working on my MFA in Game Design, I referenced Urbz: Sims in the City in a meeting with my thesis advisor, and he asked if I had played the console or the handheld version. I was confident that I’d played the console version growing up. I could recall the memory quite clearly—sitting against a study pillow on my...
Feature How Super Mario World Became An Award-Winning Book Of Verse
“Super Mario World has one of my most difficult experiences wound through its code"
Most of us have some childhood memory of games – be it Pokémon Blue, Tetris, or Super Mario Bros. When we dust off those old consoles, the games often trigger memories of our lives outside the screen too. In his heart-wrenching series of poems, If All the World...
Feature The One Thing Wii Did Much Better Than Switch
Point taken
The Sensor Bar. Flimsy little plastic box with the world's longest, spindliest cable. An irritation to every Wii owner who has ever had to move their console. What was it good for? There's not a lot to the Sensor Bar. A little device that emits some infrared light. If the Wii Remote is pointed at one, it recognises that's where the TV...
Soapbox It's Time For A Zelda 1 Remake, Please
Or a 'temporal localisation', if you like
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, as TOTK anticipation increases to dangerous levels, Gavin explores why it's time for Nintendo to go back to a very specific well... Look, I'm all for...
Feature 8-Bit Wolf - Remembering The NES Game Teaching Kids To Conquer Wall Street
It’s all about bucks, kid
When you think back to being in middle school, staying up all night with your friends playing video games, what games are you playing? Is it Mass Effect? Maybe some iteration of Smash or Mario Kart? The big one when I was that age was Street Fighter II in all its iterations. But there's another game that brings back the...
Feature A Visit To '84 Hashi', Tokyo's Secret Nintendo Staff Bar Now Open To You
Eiji Aonuma? “Drinking buddy.” Shigeru Miyamoto?...
There’s no shortage of fascinating Nintendo-related places to visit in Tokyo. You could explore shops for boxed Famicom games, sit down and eat a Kirby burger, or play Punch-Out!! in its original cabinet at a retro arcade. Yet one attraction was hidden from Nintendo diehards for years. A...
Soapbox 15 Years Ago, The Action Replay Ruined Pokémon For Me
Infinite Master Balls. Maxed out stats. Walking through walls.
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Ethan remembers a time when he flew too close to the sun... This is the power fantasy eight-year-old me dreamed of when I slotted an...
Soapbox 20 Years Later, Why Do We Still Not Have A New Sonic Battle?
Bare Knuckles
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, on the 20th anniversary of Sonic's last fighting game, Paul looks back and wonders why Sonic hasn't in two decades... In the early- to mid-2000s, Nintendo handhelds were home to many...
Soapbox 20 Years On, It's About Time These Pokémon Games Got Switch Remasters
Gotta snag em’ all
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, ahead of its 20th anniversary on 21st November, Nathanial looks back on a Pokémon region that's been pretty much ignored for two decades... A common mislabelling seen online...
Soapbox Lavender Town Isn’t Pokémon’s Scariest Location, It’s Someplace Far More Sinister
Trainers beware, you’re in for a scare
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Ethan chateaus himself in the creepiest place in the Pokémon world... Ah, Lavender Town — the place where the journeys of old Pokémon end and the...
Soapbox Pokémon X & Y - The Series' Greatest Paradoxes
You can’t be groundbreaking without leaving a few cracks
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Andy looks back at a pivotal juncture in the Pocket Monster series which hinted at the path it would take over the following decade...
Anniversary Happy Birthday To Nintendo's Ugliest, Most Indestructible Console
Slated
It's that time of year when video game anniversary enthusiasts can enjoy the birthday of a significant game or console nearly every day of the week. It's the turn of Pokémon X & Y which turns 10 today (look out for a feature on that coming up a little later), but it's also a decade since one of Nintendo's lowest-key console launches...
Talking Point Which Classic Cartoons Deserve The Shredder's Revenge Treatment?
By the power of Grayskull!
We have been back on something of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge kick recently thanks to the release of the excellent Dimension Shellshock DLC. The heroes in a half shell are firmly back in our hearts thanks to developer Tribute Games and, after a recent interview from Xbox Expansion Pass with the...
Feature Harvest Moon 64’s Relationship With Alcohol, The "Magic Liquid" Of Flowerbud Village
Surviving the censors
Alcohol takes on an almost spiritual quality in Harvest Moon 64 Update: Of course, three months after this article went live, Nintendo expanded its roster of N64 games on Nintendo Switch Online to include this one. Cheers! Nintendo games are usually all-ages affairs, but every once in a while a game breaks the...
Talking Point The Games We Got Rid Of - What Were We Thinking?
Give it away, give it away now
We've all done it. Whether through necessity to fund a new purchase or streamlining our collection during a spring clean, we've all sold, traded, donated, or just given away a game or console at some point and then wished we hadn’t. Sometimes cold hard cash was required, other times we were just in a different...
Review 'The Art Of The Box' Celebrates A Time When Cover Art Could Sell A Game
Judge a book by its cover?
When you're looking to make a video game purchase these days, chances are there are many factors which contribute to your ultimate decision. Pre-release hype and online opinion will almost certainly influence your choice, but the image on the cover on the box is unlikely to carry quite as much weight. We're not saying that...
Talking Point How Do You Store Your Games Collection?
Shoebox showcase
Call us sentimental, call us paranoid, call us what you will, but around these parts we still love the physical article when it comes to our media, especially video games. While many of us have gone at least part-digital for the sake of saving space and sheer convenience, especially with the portable Switch, even the eShop-only...
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...
Poll How Many Of You Have Actually Visited 'Minus World' In Super Mario Bros.?
Minus points
In terms of video game legends, it's up there with the best of them. A secret world accessible in Super Mario Bros.! A gateway to an underwater stage you can never leave! A hidden, secret zone that only the most elite Mario Bros. enthusiasts will ever find!... It was the stuff of playground hearsay back in the '80s and '90s, but...
Anniversary Nintendo Famicom, The NES' Japanese Sibling, Is 40 Years Old
History was made
40 years ago today, video game history changed for the better. That might sound a bit hyperbolic, but there's no denying that Nintendo's first home console — or at least the first one with interchangeable cartridges in a form we still recognise as a 'console' today — made a huge impact. Video games would not be where they would...
Feature 21 Vintage Nintendo Games You Can Now Only Buy For Original Hardware
'80s and '90s Nintendo games on the 'endangered' list
You may have read a recent study by the Video Games History Foundation that suggests an eye-watering 87% of video games are "critically endangered". The organisation, which is devoted to video game preservation and archiving, found that just 13% of games released prior to 2010 were still 'in...
Feature The Mysterious Absence Of A Famicom Gem On Switch
Castle's in the air
Update [31st Oct 2023]: Well, would you believe it? Nintendo only went and dropped the game on Switch Online as a Halloween treat. Enjoy! Something very mysterious is going on with a sadly obscure but fondly remembered gem from the Famicom era. It was built on the same game engine as the original Legend of Zelda, but unlike...
Feature A Kou Shibusawa Production - Changing History With Koei Tecmo's OG Strategy Studio
“The more we learn…the more it fuels our creativity”
History fans love to ask a good 'what if?' question. A completely hypothetical situation to explore how small changes could impact the course of world events. Video games that explore these kinds of questions usually fall into the grand strategy genre, putting players at the head of a...
Feature Nintendo's Satellaview Blazed A Trail For Today's Season-Based, Ephemeral Games
Total BS-X
The most considerable game industry development in the last decade has been the rise of live-service games. When MMOs first launched, the idea of an always-online game was considered a novelty, but today most AAA studios are making live-service titles, and most non-live-service games from those companies have online features. The modern...
Soapbox Obstinate And Addictive - Playing Final Fantasy For The First Time In 2023
OG fantasy
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Henry experiences his very first Fantasy... I admit it – I’ve never played Final Fantasy. It wasn’t on my radar as a kid, and by the time I was paying attention, it had jumped to...
Anniversary LostWinds First Launched 15 Years Ago Today
Let's Toku 'bout it
Today marks the 15th anniversary of LostWinds in North America, a launch title for WiiWare and (in this writer's opinion) one of the console's finest bite-sized games. The title was developed and published by Frontier Developments out West, though Square Enix took care of publishing duties for LostWinds' Japan release in...
Soapbox Game & Watch Still Scratches A Very Particular Itch, And I Need More
An itch the Switch can’t fix
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Nile is pining for something a little smaller and simpler on his commute... Not too long ago, my niece taught me something heartening about the staying power of old...
Ninterview Menko Cards And Niche Nintendo History - The Hunt For Mario's Rookie Card
A different kind of 'game card'
If you have ever read up on the history of Nintendo, you know that before it went into the video game business, the company began life by making cards and other novelties. The hanafuda and playing cards which Nintendo produced from its formation in 1889 took a back seat following the popularity of toys like the Ultra...
M2's Masanori Yagi talks Assault Suits Valken Declassified
The Assault Suits mecha action games arguably deserve a little more attention than they enjoy here in the West. Back in the 1990s, their distinct blend of platforming and run ‘n’ gun design did indeed see ports from their native Japan to the rest of the world – sometimes in a heavily...
Talking Point What's The Best Year In Gaming?
Cream of the crop
Games are so good, right? Looking back over the years and decades, it's difficult to actually think of a year that's been objectively bad in terms of gaming output; generally speaking, with the wealth of consoles and developers out there, there's always been at least a handful of games every year that spoke to us in a meaningful...
Soapbox Alone In The Dark On GBC Is A Bizarre Relic You Should Play At Least Once
Be afraid?
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Ollie sits down with the least loved entry in the current Nintendo Switch Online Game Boy library and finds an odd, twisted version of a game he loves... Alone in the Dark: The New...
Talking Point 20 Years Of The Best Game Boy Ever - How Did You Get Your GBA SP?
Love letters to our SPecial ones
On 14th February 2003, Nintendo gave Japanese gamers a Valentine's to remember when it released the Game Boy Advance SP. Those outside Japan would have to wait until March to get their hands on this gorgeous clamshell redesign of the GBA which came — mercifully — with a front-lit screen (the back-lit AGS-101...
Soapbox Wario Land 4 Deserves More Love, And Indie Devs Are Doing What Nintendon't
Wario wary? HURRY UP! and play
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Scott ponders how Mario's nemesis number 2 deserves more respect... In the conversation of all-time great video games you have many Nintendo faces who show up near...
Feature "Arcade Games Are Poetry" - 'Strider' Director On The Return Of 'Cannon Dancer'
"Now you can enjoy the miracle of a timeless classic of the past"
One of 2023's biggest surprises is the return of Cannon Dancer - Osman. Developed by Mitchell Corporation and released in arcades in 1996, thanks to a limited run of arcade machines for the game in the west, this side-scrolling gem was once lost to time. But very soon — 9th March...
Talking Point What Game Do You Replay Every Year?
New year, old game
We did it everyone! 2022 is finally behind us and 2023 stretches happily into the great beyond. This is to be a year full of promise, a year of hope, a year of enough Nintendo releases (with any luck) to squeeze out an almost literal cry from our bank accounts. But for the moment we're not thinking about the future, we're looking...
Feature 25 Years Of GoldenEye 007 - 25 Facts You Didn't Know (Or Forgot You Knew)
I watched you from the shadows as a child
As you've probably noticed, GoldenEye 007 is now 25 years old and can legally hire a car in a foreign country. The influence of Rare's seminal shooter on the FPS genre and console video gaming in general is enormous, and gamers have now been poring over it and picking apart its secrets for the last...