Japanese Charts: Mario Vs. Donkey Kong Takes Its Fight To The Top

Over 60,000 copies sold.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong has made its debut over in Japan to great success, shooting to the top of the charts with a total of 61,930 copies sold. This puts the plumber’s flagship platformer, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, at number 2 with a total of 13,036 copies sold, cumulating in 1,745,124 since its release last October.

The second new entry this week, The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak, finds itself at number 6 for its debut, shifting 7,160 units. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones comes in at number 7 on PS5 with 6,635 copies sold.

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Random: Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze Could Have Been About Alien Invaders

Donkey Kong Country: Independence Day?

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is all about snow; that much should be obvious from the game’s title, even for those who have yet to play Retro Studios’ excellent platformer.

According to a recent interview from KiwiTalkz in which he chats with former Retro artists Eric Kozlowsky and Ted Anderson, however, early development included a potential martian theme for the game. This was only briefly considered, as the studio was pretty set on the Snowmad enemies at the time, but the gist would be that aliens living on the moon would invade Donkey Kong Island after DK punched it at the end of Returns.

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Hori Unveils Guitar Controller And ‘Guitar Life: Lesson 1’ For Switch

Another announcement exclusive to Japan’s Direct.

Nintendo’s latest Partner Showcase featured a lot of different announcements and some of them weren’t even in the local broadcast. One surprise during Japan’s stream was accessory maker Hori announcing a new educational game called Guitar Life: Lesson 1.

It’s a bit different to the arcade-style guitar experiences of yesteryear, as it actually teaches you how to play the guitar and comes packed with its very own controller, pick, and instruction manual. There’s no word on a local release right now, but if anything changes, we’ll let you know. It’s due out in Japan this year.

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Nintendo Releases New EarthBound Beginnings Switch Online Icons

“Oh, that’s just mean”.

Mother 3 got a surprise announcement for the Switch Online service yesterday, but the catch is it’s only been confirmed for Japan.

To add to the pain, Nintendo has now released new Switch Online icons based on the Famicom title EarthBound Beginnings. They’ll be available until 28th February 2024, so be sure to redeem them with your Platinum Points while you can.

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Mother 3 Is Getting An Adorable New Set Of Plushies Later This Year

To hug while we wait for our English localisation.

The Mother Project is launching four brand new Mother 3 plush toys later this year to commemorate the GBA game’s release on Nintendo Switch Online in Japan. (Thanks Wario64!)

Look, it’s not the NSO localisation we wanted, but at least this is something we could import, love, and understand without needing a whole translation or an English script, right? Sigh.

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Incredibly Rare GBA Platformer ‘Ninja Five-O’ Is Coming To Switch

Limited Run Games and Konami team up again.

Limited Run Games and Konami are adding another game to the retro specialists’ Carbon Engine rereleases. This time, it’s the GBA platformer Ninja Five-O (or Ninja Cop, as it’s known in Europe) from Hudson Soft. And yep, it’s coming to Switch later this year.

The game was announced at IGN FanFest 2024 and joins Felix the Cat and Rocket Knight Adventures as part of Konami’s slate of LRG rereleases. Originally released on the GBA in 2003, Ninja Five-O was critically acclaimed back in the day, praised for its excellent platforming and level design. However, the game had a pretty low print run, and if you’re a retro games collector, then you probably know that copies sell for over $300 fairly regularly as a result. Thank goodness for this rerelease then, right?

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Guide: Nintendo Direct February 2024: Every Announcement, Game Reveal, Trailer

Round Up: Everything announced in the Partner Showcase.

The first Nintendo Direct of 2024 has been broadcast. The February 2024 presentation was a Partner Showcase highlighting Switch games coming from third-party publishers (so, not Nintendo) in the first half of 2024.

Below you’ll find the video of the full Nintendo Direct February 2024 presentation, every individual game announcement with trailers, plus some official info, or a link to our more detailed coverage. There’s also a poll at the bottom, so let us know your personal highlights from this Nintendo Direct.

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Two Xbox Games Get Nintendo Switch Release Dates

And one is arriving tomorrow.

If there’s one thing we all expected to see at today’s Partner Showcase, it was the reveal of a couple of Xbox titles coming to Switch. And we didn’t just get one — we got two, with release dates!

Two of Obsidian’s Xbox exclusives are jumping ship in 2024 and coming to Switch — the excellent narrative RPG Pentiment and the multiplayer survival game Grounded.

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