Category: Nintendo

Retro revival.

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

For many younger gamers, the idea that Atari was once the undisputed king of console gaming might seem somewhat farfetched. Yet in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the gaming giant dominated the market with the Atari 2600, introducing audiences to the likes of Adventure, Yars’ Revenge, and Haunted House. However, after a wave of shovelware and some poor management decisions, the video game market crashed in 1983 and was seemingly done for. Until a little company called Nintendo stepped in, that is.

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Oh boy.

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

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 catch my wrist. “Don’t do that!” she interjects. Clearly this is an item of some delicacy.

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“At the initial idea stage, we collected over 1,000 ideas”.

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

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Skylanders, disc burns, and lethal charity boxes.

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

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 reflects on just some of the eventful episodes from his days working in video game retail…

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And it can only get better.

For the younger readers amongst you, I suspect that many 3D games from the ‘90s and ‘00s seem rather quaint at best and downright unplayable at worst. It was a period in which the medium was geting to grips with a completely new third dimension; couple this with the limited graphical capabilities of the PlayStation and N64, and you could argue that many titles haven’t aged well.

Me, though? I absolutely love this era. I was six when the PS1 launched in the UK; the perfect age to start enjoying classics like WipEout, Spyro the Dragon, and yes, games that perhaps weren’t suitable for me yet like Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil. So when I go back and play titles from this era today, I find them reasonably approachable thanks to an intimate familiarity with the period. Even remasters of games that I’ve not experienced before feel oddly comforting in a way that I can’t quite describe.

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Our personal picks for the best Switch games of 2024.

As we head into the final week of 2024, it’s time to slay the GOTY monster that devours the Decembers of many a gamer.

While Nintendo itself has been in wind-down mode, with most internal resources focused on the next console and a software lineup to kickstart it, Switch itself has had a pretty great year. Nintendo enlisted its various partner studios to shoulder the first-party load as Switch went into its eighth year, and third parties and indies have continued to keep things interesting.

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Edelgard arrives 2026.

The Good Smile Company has already released all sorts of stunning Fire Emblem figures and the latest reveal is Edelgard from Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

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Merry Christmas!

Following Sega’s removal of certain digital titles earlier this month, multiple Cartoon Network Games under the Warner Bros. Discovery label have now been removed from digital stores including Nintendo’s Switch eShop.

There’s no word if they’ll ever return but according to reports, “at least five games” under the Warner Bros. label have been delisted.

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Elemental rage.

Holding the Guinness World Record for “Most prolific developer of danmaku shooters” — a tenuous plaudit seemingly concocted entirely for their receipt — Cave’s five DonPachi entries form bullet points in the company’s evolution, from Toaplan-esque beginnings to a full-blown, bullet hell renaissance.

SaiDaiOuJou, the series’ final entry and Cave’s last arcade shooting game, makes the clean stylings of its predecessor, DaiFukkatsu, even cleaner; a shiny blue aesthetic wrought from 3D renders and a billion pixels. It also carries over adjustable difficulty options and an auto bomb on/off feature. Its core, however, is similar to DoDonPachi DaiOuJou, the greatest and most beautiful of Cave’s work.

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How Nintendo World Championships helped me ‘git gud’.

I’ll admit, I’ve never been fond of speedrunning. The thought of shaving milliseconds off a time in a video game while playing the same sequence over and over sounds, in theory, more frustrating than fun. Sure, as a spectator, there is definitely joy in appreciating the wizardry of players pulling off pixel-perfect feats and shattering a runtime record. But I have neither the time nor the mettle to contemplate doing so myself.

Fortunately, this year gave us a game that weaved together 8-bit era charm, bite-sized accessibility, and addictive skill refinement. Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition was my gateway to finally “getting” speedrunning, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve had gaming in 2024.

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