Ogbert

What does it mean?

I'd say it means they really want you to buy Age of Imprisonment.

Intriguing. I love the key art though and wish the game were all that style.

Alan Wake 2 deserves more love. It would be great to see a decent port of it come to Switch 2. Psychonauts feels like such an obvious port too now that Xbox is ditching exclusives.

In terms of new stuff I really want to see more of Orbitals and Witchbrook.

Yeah I'm with Sugimori, interesting that that's the actual reason for them feeling so out of place. I do think a handful of them could pass as regular Pokemon though.

I need to hear more about the Koopaling stuff to know if I'll bother with this. I don't want the multiplayer stuff as best as it looks, I just never liked 2D Mario in multiplayer, Rayman Origins/Legends was the best for that.

Closer than I expected so far.

NA is undoubtedly cool but quite generic, I feel I've see that box before, it doesn't stand out.

Japan is different and would make me double take. Plus it leans in to the headset nature of things, so it gets my vote.

Wow everyone I know Pikmin 2 is already on Switch but it still makes sense to add it here.

The point of this is to be a comprehensive library (eventually) and an enticing upgrade to the online subscription. It just gives the option for those who didn’t buy it to play here and adds more value for those who didn’t buy it and don’t yet have the NSO expansion pack.

Seems like nostalgia won this one because that Japan box art is soooo much nicer!

Honestly I wish it was called ‘Final Fantasy 7 Remake part 3’. All this remake, rebirth, intergrade, reunion, crisis core shenanigans was incredibly confusing.

Oh now why would you throw a Captain Toad in there!?! I've been so good at only getting Splatoon amiibo for so long!

I mean I can't not get him, he's adorable!

Hhhm, I was initially excited from that team but I think like many others the trailer has left me confused and unsure. Either way I wish them all the best of luck and look forward to seeing more!

@JohnnyMind I guess. You just usually don't have the CEO involved in that level of things regardless of their past.

Why is the CEO writing it? Also I suspect from previous articles that means he's asking ChatGPT to write it for him.

@Kiz3000 says 'pre-order' for Eevee and Pikachu for me and 'Coming Soon' for the starter trio for me.

I'm sure any that do sell out that fast will get more made.

The sets aren't even out yet, they're readily available on the Lego website (where you need to buy from to get the free badge set). If you're buying this on eBay before it's even out you're either a complete fool or you're helping in some kind of money laundering scheme.

@sportymariosonicmixx "Most Nintendo users do not buy things online."

I don't think that's true at all. I assume you're talking about digitally rather than ordering a physical copy from a website, but digital sales of Nintendo and third party titles are going strong.

There's no evidence I've seen to say people don't buy digital games on Nintendo. Sure if you come here where a small, core, vocal group hangs out then you'll hear that a fair bit. But there's a few hundred regulars here that comment and, according to the Nintendo Japan sales data, Switch 2 has already sold 10 million and Switch 1 sold 154 million, so it's an absolutely tiny percentage of players here. You can't take what is said here in the comments as the general opinion and fact.

If anything, the fact the eShop is so flooded with cheap and quick titles shows that Nintendo players do very much buy digitally, hence the rush to get something on the store to try and earn a bit of the pie. Anecdotal again though I do admit, but I dont see why everyone would be clamouring to get onto the eShop if not true to some degree.

Hundreds will loose their jobs, another part of the community taken away, but hey at least a CEO gets billions as a reward.

Europe has too much going on, Japan had too little. Both have terrible lighting and shadows.

I voted Japan just to balance out the "this has more characters so is better" votes for Europe. It's at least trying something more than a generic ensemble shot (With no female characters? Not even Peach?) But I don't much like either.

I can't believe we're still getting the same amiibo grumbles and disbeliefs we've had since they launched.

Most people buy them as figures first and weird DLC curios second. If you don't want the figure but you do want the content that's perfectly reasonable and Google can help.

I like the colours but what I really want is the main body of the controller to be colourful again.

I really like this! I’ve loaded most of my sets up with over-priced third party light kits, and some of the old ones are a real mess of wires. The idea that there could be ones now that come with the lights built in via wireless magic bricks?? Sign me up!

Planning on buying this digitally anyway, like Animal Crossing this is something I want to dip in and out of between other games, so download works best for me.

I don't really think the prices should be all that different between versions as its the software I'm buying not the bitter tasting rectangle of red/black plastic. But if they were it should be digital download cheapest, then a jump up to GKC and then a small step to on the card. Because the digital download doesn't require all the manufacturing and materials and storage and transit that both GKC and physical do. And I know the cart is cheaper due to far less storage on it, but on an individual basis it's not that much cheaper. And then if they did do that it would certainly encourage a lot more people to go all digital, which is not what I think the people bemoaning GKCs want.

Hopefully those smaller cards will happen soon which should lessen the use of GKCs, but certainly wont eradicate them as an option.

I keep forgetting about Yoshi even though it's one of the more exciting titles for me!

I hope the new FE is good, been a little while since that series excited me but this next one looked great!

Anyone who votes anything other than EU here is just wrong sorry. The tall spooky trees casting long shadows with the creepy figure standing amongst them and the birds flying overhead. And then they inverted it and made it mostly white, bucking the usual dark schemes of horror covers. It’s genius is only let down slightly by the over-rendered logo with that white glow.

The other is the most bog-standard, bland cover possible. It would not grab my attention in a shop full of games at all. I don’t care that it shows Leon in it, at the point it was released I didn’t actually know who he was anyway so he just looked like yet another army/police dude with a gun.

I’d be fine if we didn’t see Mario for a bit.
I’d love a Luigi’s Mansion 4 and a Pikmin 5. It’s been a while but weirdly doesn’t feel all that long somehow?

I’d love to see some new IP and obscure titles come back or get an HD remake. Or some more of the old Zelda games like the Oracle duo get the remake treatment. Arms 2 would be very exciting to see. Or just Kirby Robobot 2.

I think I’m still overwhelmed with games from last year that I’m actually kind of ok if 2026 is a quiet year!

Good job there are more than enough games coming out and out already to fill the gaps left by me not buying Level 5 games anymore. They are more interested in using gen AI to push out quick sequels than actually crafting a unique and rich experience for me.

Why would I pay you for a product you just got a computer to generate for you?

Also genAI is killing the planet can we please stop ignoring this fact for goodness sake? Even if it did do all these magical promises and not at the expense of creatives, it is not worth the cost.

Technology is only inevitable if we believe it so and let it be.

Also, I wanted to play as all the different characters but I didn’t want to have easy mode on so I couldn’t ever pick Nabbit or Yoshi.

It really needed to be a set of per-player toggles.

@Ooyah or as it’s not Project S for ‘Sadness’ but a spiritual successor maybe, perhaps Project M stands for a similar word; ‘Misery’.

And my backlog keeps on growing…

I’d seen ‘Dear Me, I Was’ in the eShop and completely dismissed it as a copy of Another Code (I remember thinking it was an oddly obscure title to rip-off). It’s not just the same art style it’s the same composition, colour palette and font. It’s a lovely art style but you gotta mix it up a bit more than that.

They didn't just cover the women, they covered the guy at the back's pubes as well.

I mean for a storefront image I'd imagine violence and gore and drugs would also be censored. I doubt the content of the pack is though.

AI has no place in creative areas. And frankly in it's current economic disaster state, beast mode-ing it's way through water and electricity (which by the way is why all our energy bills have gone up) and being owned and run to the advantage of some of the most despicable 'humans' to ever grace this earth, it has no place anywhere.

Technology is not an inevitability if we don't let it become one. That's yet another falsehood pushed by those with an invested interest in making it inevitable. I'm disappointed everytime I see another games company announce "we don't want to be left behind". Left behind how? By who? The customers are going to still buy it if you don't use AI. In fact it seems like more people are willing to buy it if it's not. And aren't the customers meant to be your primary concern after the devs themselves? Oops guess you just revealed your "all-in for the shareholders" hand there.

Also the initial ideation is THE WORST time to use generative AI. It's generating from a limited and stolen pool. And you can't say at this point it's trained on your own data because if you have that data to put in, you don't need gen AI to spit it back out at you. Not if you're keeping your artists anyway. The very early stages should be unknown exploration, that's the whole damn point! You don't know what you might find that sparks the imagination. And it can be literally anything! You might find a cool pose, some fantastic lighting, a fun pattern or colour combination, even just an interesting shape. Gen AI doesn't think like an artist so it can't put that together. It can't look at a mid-century toaster and say "wow the curves and colours are really cool here, I should work those into my lizardman armour's pladrins". Sure you can tell it to do that but at that point you're now using it to generate the art itself and replacing the artists, which they all claim.not to be doing. Except they are the ones that think that way so you can't replace them, you need them to be there for the idea in the first place and they aren't going to use gen AI to replace their years of craft and dedication that landed them their dream job.

Ultimately AI is another cigarette scam pushed by the super rich 0.0001%. It's unhelpful, immoral, upping our bills, numbing our brains and killing our planet.

Get it out of my games.

This is great news! Honestly given the superhero cartoon stylings 30fps might actually feel more authentic! But I’ll take the 60 on my 2.

Very excited to finally give this one a go!

@Misima because a single rendering choice is not the only thing that affects memory usage and frame rate.

This is excellent! So many great browser games to port over, I can’t wait!

It’s not all that ‘Disney’ it’s just hand-animated and 2D, but the hand animation is lovely and nice to see.

The environment art really lets it down though and sadly drags the visuals as a whole. There are point where, nice animation aside, it was unpleasant to look at. You should never have backgrounds with thicker line art than your characters’ line art for one. A shame, but at least it looks done by a human and that goes a long way for me!

The kid is still creepy. Gameplay looks interesting, but the kid is extremely off-putting.

I'd pay for a skin to make her just a regular regular looking robot.

"With Metroid Prime Remastered, the seemingly impossible was achieved: a masterpiece was made even better"

Then it's placed at 5 with the original at 2.

LOGIC.

It's just attention seeking. If this was the pack-in it should have been nobody would be complaining it was bad and GameStop wouldn't have hopped on the bandwagon and this would be going to a different game.

We all know if you truly, objectively looked at all the games released this year, there would be several hundred Roblox and AI slop titles all equally deserving. Most of which nobody has ever heard of so there wouldn't be any point handing them this distinction because it would get zero attention.

A great machine! But I can’t deny it’s a little lacking in first party exclusives.

I don’t really care about the Switch 2 versions of older games and I don’t know how to feel about the paid upgrades for new ones (shouldn’t they just be better on the better machine?). But Mario Kart World and Bananza have been standout for me. I’m glad I have it for them alone.

Third party support is good, some huge AAA ports that seem to hold up well. Not of personal interest but it’s nice to see. I think someone else mentioned there are some ‘indie’ games sadly missing like Claire Obscure and Dispatch but they may come later.

Personally I think key cards are a great addition for games that would otherwise be fully digital only. And more options is just better.

Welcome Tour absolutely should have been a pack-in. And I’ve not played Drag X Drive but…yeah it’s just a bit disappointing for the first experimental new IP of the system compared to the likes of Arms, Dillon and Pushmo.

Mouse mode gimmick is not exciting for me, I’ve not tried it and I’m not likely too. Sometimes it does feel a shame that the Switch2 is lacking a new Nintendo gimmick and I have to remind myself that is it and it’s just not for me.

Overall I’m very happy. I just need a few more actual exclusives and would still buy a 3DS-style 3D version in a heartbeat and continue to be sad that tech had been ditched. Also Ever Oasis 2 please!

@TimelessJubilee "It was no MK8, that's for sure."

No Mario Kart 8, or no Mario Kart 8 Deluxe + DLC?

People forget MK8 had a small fraction of the final MK8D+DLC content when it launched. 4 new cups and 4 classic, then there was a big paid DLC pack and some small free updates, then a deluxe rerelease that added a couple more small features, then a few more rounds of paid/subscription DLC.

A tough one this week. Well, mostly, Europe’s sucks. I really like NA’s one, but Hitler looming in the background of Japan’s is hilarious! I’m struggling to pick between the two but I think I like NA’s just that bit more.

Lost most of my interest in this when they revealed the cussing monkey that was tonally at odds with the first game.

I lost more interest when they said it was going to be not just open-world, but multiple planets of open world.

I lost further still when they then begged people to make free content for those worlds.

Now Ubisoft is fully embracing the environmental disaster that is generative AI, I'd rather this game just no longer exist. I won't be playing it, even if by some miracle it's ok and not a bloated, sloppy mess.

this looks great! Don't like that UI though. Why those bright outlines on the health draws attention too much and the purple colour isn't neutral enough to work in all the levels. Plus that score box.

Ah well, it's still in dev so hopefully those things will get an upgrade. The rest looks lovely!

Japan by a landslide. Then Europe comfortably in second place. Then NA dragging behind.

The front is meant to look cool and grab your attention, which Japan does in spades and Europe does well. The back is where you get the details of all the games and contents. NA's looks like I'm looking at the back of the box.

Terrible name but the gameplay looks like a smart twist on the genres and quite fun.

Ah yes Roblox, where only the most discerning of players go.

Honestly I’ve seen gen AI used for images and half the time it’s reductive and requires an artist to redo it anyway. I’ve seen it used for scripts and the same happens. I’ve seen it used for code to even worse effects, often making something that technically works but is horribly inefficient and causes problems further down the line.

It does have some uses in some places but it’s generally not helpful, not worth the job losses and certainly not the environmental cost.

The simple fact is we don’t need more media to be churned out. There is already too much new stuff on top of all the older stuff. There is more than anyone can consume in a lifetime. Not to mention none of us can afford it anymore because we’re loosing our jobs to AI and the money is being hoarded by billionaires and multi-millionaires.

So who is it actually benefitting? I heard a good comparison that AI is like cigarettes, we were sold them as a positive, as something we should have, so we invested, then the rug was pulled out and we saw that there is actually only negatives but now we’re co-dependant and need them to function. That’s all these AI pushers want, you to become co-dependant on their new product.

Worst part is when the bubble bursts it’s going to hurt everyone, whether you partook or not this time.

I like the detailing of the Triforce pattern on Zelda’s clothing up close.

It’s hard to tell if they are too clean and new looking right now. Obviously Zelda is a princess and if this is simply before the action takes place she will have nicer clothing. And Link’s does look more durable and ready for action even if it’s not seen it yet.

I’m actually excited to see more! I hope they keep the weird tone of Zelda somehow. I highly doubt we’ll see Tingle but they have to have some of that oddity. Even if it’s just Agitha or someone else less weird.

Will there be Goron? There’s gotta be Bokoblin right? Zora? There’s so much that could go either way.

Oh good to know the port lets it down. I was thinking of getting this on Switch but I’ll go for PS5 then.