Furukawa: “It’s important for our long-term growth”.
Despite a downturn in sales and profits for Nintendo in its third quarter, it’s reportedly raising the base salaries of its employees by 10% in its homeland.
A report by Reuters reveals the Japanese video game giant is taking action to secure the “long-term growth” of its workforce. It follows calls from the country’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida – asking local companies to increase pay for workers to combat inflation.
Amazon is running another of its excellent buy one, get one 50% off deals. Now I will admit, I was thrown a bit by the “Buy 2, Get 1 50% Off” phrasing, but according to the sale page, that just means if you buy two items, one of them will be half-priced. Specifically, the lower-priced of the two items you buy. But holy crap is there a lot to choose from, including new release games like Dead Space and board games galore.
Amazon Buy One Get One Half Off Sale
This is but a tiny sliver of what’s available on the sale. Note: the items change quite frequently, so if I were you and I saw something I liked, I’d scoop it up.
Also, if you’ve never had an Audible subscription before, you can get 3 months of Audible Plus Premium for free right now. That’s a bonus. Amazon seems to really be going hard with the sales today.
Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.
Nintendo fans, rejoice! A brand-new Nintendo Direct is on its way and it will be here tomorrow, February 8, with roughly 40 minutes of updates focused mostly on Switch games planned for release in the first half of 2023.
IGN is carrying the stream and, as usual, this watch guide will provide you with everything you need to know to watch the show, including when it starts, a list of places you can watch it with us, and what you can expect to see from the Nintendo Direct.
Nintendo Direct February 2023 Start Time
February 2023’s Nintendo Direct will take place on Wednesday, February 8, and will start at 2pm PT/5pm ET/10pm GMT. If you live in Australia, that translates to 9am AEDT on Thursday, February 9.
Where to Watch the Nintendo Direct February 2023
If you’re interested in watching the latest Nintendo Direct, we’ll be hosting the stream here and across our many channels on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Here’s the full list of places you can watch the show with us:
What it did reveal, however, is that the Nintendo Direct will last roughly 40 minutes. So, what can we expect in those 40 minutes? Well, a good bet would be The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This incredibly anticipated sequel to 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is set to be released on May 12, 2023, and we still don’t know all that much about it.
This would be the perfect time to show us more gameplay, reveal a bit more about the story, or even share with the world any special collector’s editions or themed Switch consoles that may be planned for this momentous launch.
Speaking of Mario, it’s been quite some time since we’ve been treated to a brand-new, mainline Mario adventure, and this could be the best time to tease our favorite plumber’s next adventure. Could it be Super Mario Odyssey 2 with a The Super Mario Bros. Movie Kingdom? Maybe a new 2D adventure we’ll be playing this holiday? The options are limitless.
We’re also still very much waiting for these supposed ports of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but it may not be the right time with Tears of the Kingdom right around the corner. One can hope though!
Oh! We have to mention Hollow Knight: Silksong and Mother 3, because those two titles are always some of the most requested to show up in Nintendo Directs!
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
OpenTTD 13.0 been released, which is “one of the largest releases we’ve done in several years” according to the developers. If you don’t know OpenTTD, it’s an open source and free fan remake of Transport Tycoon which greatly expands, polishes and modernises the beloved business sim. This latest update improves the interface further, tweaks the world generation, and more.
Azul is named after azuleijos, the brightly coloured geometric tiles sported by beautiful buildings across North Africa and Portugal; the Portuguese learned to make them from the Moors. The board game has become a celebrated design in its own right, popular enough to launch several sequels which use the same core mechanics and the same beautiful printed plastic tiles. We’re revisiting the original to try and find out what makes this game about decorating palace walls quite so compelling.
What’s in the Box
Like many other abstracts, Azul is a little short on the components front, but what it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for in quality. Underneath the rules sheet, you’ll find four colorful, clear, sturdy playboards, one for each player. There are also a number of cardboard discs and some classic wooden cubes.
The most impressive eye candy is the piles of plastic tiles and the big cloth drawstring bag you keep them in. They’re an absolute delight: smooth and chunky, bright and colorful and some are embossed with intricate geometric designs. The game has them on display for full effect and they’re really satisfying to handle and rummage around in when you pull them from the bag.
Rules and how it Plays
Again, like many other abstracts Azul is a fairly simple game to get to grips with, although its slight oddity may prove a bit of a stumbling block. Each player gets a play board and a number of card circles, called factories, each of which starts with four tiles drawn at random from the bag. On your turn, you choose one of the factories, take all tiles of one matching color from it, and then place the rest in the centre of the table. After the first turn, this central offering is treated like another factory from which players can select tiles.
The tiles you’ve chosen go in one of the five rows of your playboard. You can put them in any row, which holds from one to five tiles, so long as a row doesn’t hold more than one color at once. If you do end up with tiles you can’t find on your play board then they “fall” to the bottom and smash, costing you penalty points.
This continues until all the tiles have been taken. Then from any rows that are full, you’re allowed to take a tile and transfer it to the same row on your wall, a grid of color-coded squares, on the matching colored space. That row can no longer hold tiles of that color. You’ll then score points depending on how many tiles are adjacent to the one that you’ve placed. After one player has completed a whole row of tiles, it’s time for final scoring where you get fat bonuses for having completed rows, columns or diagonals of the same color.
From this description, you might imagine Azul to be a somewhat humdrum affair, the kind of mediocre abstract that amuses for a few sessions before being forgotten. But it has a great deal more to it than the pretty face of its toothsome tiles. At first, it’s tempting to look at Azul purely from the perspective of filing lines efficiently: if there’s a trio of tiles, it makes sense to fit them into your three-long space. But because scoring each placement is based on adjacency, that’s a quick way to lose.
Instead, you’ll start to try and pick colours that fill rows and columns. And then you’re in the teeth of a dilemma because, of course, the need to fill lines efficiently is still a thing. If you don’t take that trio of tiles, then someone else might. So you begin to glance around at the boards of other players, frantically trying to second guess who’s going to pip you to the post on a pick you want, and how much following players might benefit if you leave particularly sweet groups for them and when you reach this point the game becomes really interesting.
Consider: unless you’re picking from the center, every pick you make radically changes the tiles on offer to other players because your discards end up in the middle. That might accidentally create a very valuable group for someone else. It might also spoil another player’s choices because they wanted a specific amount to fit onto their board and now there are too many, so if they take it they’ll smash the excess and take penalty points. Best of all, you might actually be laying a trap for following players because the restrictions caused by what they’ve already placed could force them into take a whole pile of tiles they can’t fit, merely to merrily smash on their floor alongside the tinkling amusement of their opponents.
All this to think about on every turn and we haven’t even reached trying to complete rows, columns and colors for bonus points. There really is a whole lot to Azul and what’s particularly joyous about it is how your choices impact those of your fellow players, often very strongly, without a whiff of zero-sum interaction where what makes one player stronger makes another weaker. The game is well-balanced, deep and, unless you can calculate all the probabilities a dozen moves ahead, often quite exciting as you wait to see what the other players leave you.
The game is well-balanced and deep.
Against this, there is a certain degree of repetition to consider. From a thematic standpoint, this is essentially a game about tiling walls, hardly the most thrilling and dramatic subject matter for a clash of minds. There aren’t a lot of moving parts to Azul which, even though it makes the relative depth of strategy all the more impressive, doesn’t give you the variety many players want to sustain interest over a prolonged period of plays. Those who can maintain focus on a single game, however, will find a lot to reward them.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was delayed until April so that Respawn could polish their lightsaber until it truly glowed. Now IGN have released a new, nine minute video showing some exploration and much stabbing from an early section of the game.
Atari is celebrating its 50th anniversary in style with a $999.99 collectible boxset that features 10 Atari 2600 cartridges with reimagined artwork, acrylic toppers that light up when inserted into the console, and more. Oh, and there will only be 100 of them available worldwide.
As detailed by Atari, these cartridges — which hold Adventure, Missile Command, Warlords, Super Breakout, Crystal Castles, Haunted House, Yars’ Revenge, Centipede, Asteroids, and Gravitar — also feature a remastered version of their original key art.
Also included are cardstock posters, instructional manuals with bonus material, hard enamel pins, patches, certificates of authenticity, and a digital copy of each game that can be played on the Atari VCS. If that wasn’t enough, when you put all 10 cartridges together, they display the Atari 50th Anniversary logo, making it a perfect item for any collector’s shelf.
The collection is currently in pre-production and Atari notes that any artwork is subject to change. Pre-orders are now open, and those who wish to secure one will have to wait three to four months to get their product. It’s also important to note that once the pre-order window closes, all orders will be considered final and will not be able to be canceled.
This is only one way Atari is celebrating this big milestone, as it previously released Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, and we fell in love with it.
In our Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration review, we said that it “offers a completely new, very fun way to explore several decades of Atari arcade machines, consoles, handhelds, and PCs.”
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Minecraft Legends, the upcoming game from Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive is “not your normal strategy game,” according to Principal Design Director, Craig Leigh. Appearing on the Xbox Podcast last week, Leigh dove into multiple ways the new title (coming on April 18 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (Steam & Windows), Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4|5) offers a very new twist on the genre. “We get that all time,” he explained, “People are like, ‘This is not the game I thought it was, this is an action game!’, and that’s what I love about it.”
When you’re blending genres, you need to come up with fresh ideas for how it will work, not least in Minecraft Legends’ 4v4 PvP mode, which was introduced during the Developer_Direct last month. The developers have come up with multiple ways to do that, and Leigh explained several of the ways PvP has been innovated on in this new twist on the formula.
Fast Travel
Not something you’d necessarily associate with strategy games, Minecraft Legends introduces a fast travel system to help players balance the various activities they’ll need to do to conquer their enemies. While base building is a key part of the picture, players will also need to venture out, explore, gather resources, and attack enemies to win a round – and that means offering them an easy way home to keep their base safe.
“So if you’re out in the world and you’re far away from your base and you hear that you’re under attack, you can fast travel,” Leigh explained. “So you can open the map, click on your base and go ‘whoosh’, be back home really quickly, because we didn’t want players running, panicked, ‘oh I can’t get back home in time’.”
Fast travel doesn’t just apply to player-characters, either. “If you’re at home as well, and you get attacked, you can go to a spawn and recall units, units that are out in thew world that maybe aren’t doing anything, you can call them back quickly to your base,” Leigh added. “You’re not running around looking for them, ‘Where are those Cobblestone Golems?’, you can just pull them back to help you with defence.”
PvPvE
It’s clear that Minecraft Legends will have players doing a lot during rounds, but its NPCs are pretty busy too – and may even offer players new ways to take down their opponents’ base:
“The thing I think people will be most surprised about is the game’s PvP, but there’s a little PvE in there as well,” Leigh revealed. “The Piglins [the enemies in the game’s story-led campaign] are also in PvP, and the Piglins do whatever the Piglins want. So the Piglins are attacking both teams, and there’s a day-night cycle going on during the battles, but the Piglins attack more ferociously at night – so do you time your strategy when the Piglins attack at night and wait for them to break the walls down and sneak in? So you’re not only dealing with the other team, you’re dealing with the Piglins are well.”
The Ping System
With a shared pool of resources, multiple activities to do, and attacks on multiple fronts, communication is key in Minecraft Legends’ PvP. Thankfully, the team has a neat solution for that, beyond the expected:
“We also have ping system,” Leigh said. “It’s really important to work together, because you’re sharing resources and so with the ping system you can say, ‘I want to build a Redstone Launcher’, and the team go, ‘OK, let’s save up our Redstone. Or you could be like, ‘I want coal!’, and so people go ‘OK let’s save up our coal’. You can use voice chat, and it’s great, but also we wanted to make sure there was a system that people could give out the basic commands because you are sharing resources.”
Game Time
Seasoned strategy players will be used to multiplayer matches that can take a very long time to finish, battling through stalemates to earn a hard-earned victory. Minecraft Legends wants to offer that same experience, but in a more manageable time frame, letting players constantly start new games, with procedurally generated maps offering fresh experiences every time they play.
“We’ve worked really hard, so games last between 20 and 30 minutes,” Leigh explained. “It does depend on the strategy; if teams have a crazy strategy they might win earlier if they take the team by surprise, or if both teams decide, ‘We’re going to build bastions with stone walls and massive towers,’ then the games might go on a little bit longer.
“But we’ve been working really hard to balance the games this way, because we don’t want it to be a 14-day siege of the Blue Team, and so our longer games have lasted around 30 minutes. It’s an old-fashioned thing to think about, but we wanted players to get two games in in a lunchtime, be able to play a couple of games in they were playing in their lunch. “
Cross-Platform Ease
Strategy games are traditionally the dominion of PC, but Minecraft Legends is coming out on every major gaming platform, simultaneously. In doing that, the team’s worked to make sure that not only can you play with anyone, on any platform, but that no one will be disadvantaged by playing on a specific machine.
“We thought it was really important, regardless of what platform you’re on that you could play together, we want as many players as possible playing together,” Leigh made clear.
“It doesn’t matter where you play, on launch day you’ll be able to play on any of those platforms in PvP and it plays perfectly on any platform. The way we’ve designed it there’s no advantage to be on a keyboard and mouse versus a controller, it’s not a first-person shooter or anything, so it’s been designed that way, so it’s perfect for cross-platform play. We thought that was really important, so we’ve designed it that way.”
And with a huge pool of players across platforms and continents playing together, that just means there will be more twists to PvP that even the developers can’t see coming.
“I’m particularly excited to see the crazy strategies that people come up with in PvP,” finished Leigh. “Because we think we’ve done everything and then someone will come in and just do something crazy that we haven’t thought of. We all joke on the team that we’re going to be good at the PvP for about and hour and then all the community will just crush us because they’ll come up with new strategies.”
Minecraft Legends launches April 18 on Windows PC (day one with PC Game Pass), Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One (day one with Xbox Game Pass), Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.
The piglins’ Nether corruption is spreading across the Overworld, scorching everything it touches. Are you the hero who will protect this gentle land? Plan your strategy and face the piglins in epic battles – but be warned: they always fight back. Take on piglin bases by day and defend your allies after dusk. Explore lush biomes filled with treasures and perils, meet new friends, and reunite with familiar mobs. With the allays by your side, all that’s left to do is save the world.
Experience an epic legend from the Minecraft universe and the Overworld as you’ve never seen it before
Form alliances with new friends and familiar mobs, then lead the charge in epic battles against the fierce piglins to defend the Overworld
Traverse a lush, dynamic world that’s rich in resources and different in each playthrough
Challenge your friends or team up in intense battles as you defend your village while leading your units to destroy your opponents’ settlements
OpenTTD 13.0 been released, which is “one of the largest releases we’ve done in several years” according to the developers. If you don’t know OpenTTD, it’s an open source and free fan remake of Transport Tycoon which greatly expands, polishes and modernises the beloved business sim. This latest update improves the interface further, tweaks the world generation, and more.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was delayed until April so that Respawn could polish their lightsaber until it truly glowed. Now IGN have released a new, nine minute video showing some exploration and much stabbing from an early section of the game.
Sonic Colours: Ultimate is finally available on PC.
