Category: Nintendo

Answering the question, “what if Kirby had an eye patch”.

In the magazine business, the Back Page is where you’d find all the weird goofs that we couldn’t fit in anywhere else. Some may call it “filler”; we prefer “a whole page to make terrible jokes that are tangentially related to the content of the mag”.

We don’t have (paper) pages on the internet, but we still love terrible jokes — so welcome to our semi-regular feature, Back Page. Today, Kate wonders where our gritty Netflix series have gotten to…

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No alien wars, thankfully.

Over the years, narratives in pop culture mediums have hypothesised over how the future might turn out for the human race: in James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1997 would have seen Earth decimated by Skynet’s new-found sentience; Back to the Future Part II visualised a 2015 in which we’d all be cruising around on hoverboards and rocking self-drying jackets; Blade Runner went wild and thought that the year 2019 would see bioengineered replicants roaming about Earth after escaping off-world colonies.

Now, it’s the turn of Perfect Dark. Released back in 2000 for the N64, Rare’s first-person shooter depicted a world set in the year 2023 during which two alien races – the Maians and the Skedar – are locked in an interstellar war. On Earth, two rival corporations known as The Carrington Institute and dataDyne are both in league with the Maians and the Skedar respectively. Joanna Dark, the game’s protagonist, carries out multiple missions including the elimination of a clone of the President, and the destruction of the Skedar leader on the alien homeworld.

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But will it make it out West?

For most of us Nintendo fans, Level-5 holds a special place in our hearts. Between the Professor Laytons, Inazuma Elevens and Yo-Kai Watches, the chances are that we have all come across the studio at least once or twice in our gaming days. Now, it looks like a new IP is on the horizon.

Shared in the company’s ‘Happy New Year’ card (one of the many compiled by Famitsu), Level-5 announced that 2023 will see us receiving a whole lot of fresh news. This will include details on the upcoming Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road of Heroes (if this title hangs around, that is), as well as the inclusion of a brand new IP.

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Sharpen your blades.

Many game companies are jumping straight into the announcements this year and this includes Koei Tecmo. Just a few days ago it lifted the lid on the new Type-Moon project, Fate/Samurai Remnant.

This title, based on the popular anime game series, will be arriving on the Nintendo Switch at some point in 2023 and takes on the form of an action RPG. It’s being created in collaboration with Aniplex.

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The year will start with the releases of P3P and P4G.

In the same Famitsu article, the Persona developer Atlus has taken the time to thank fans for their support last year. It has also provided a teaser of what’s ahead for 2023.

After the release of titles like Persona 5 Royal and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim in 2022, the company will look torwards the remastered releases of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden. In addition to this, it apparently has “several new unannounced titles” in the making (via Persona Central).

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Should we all be worried, or is it just a fad?

Over the holidays we’re republishing some choice features from the last 12 months. A mix of talking points, interviews, opinion pieces and more from NL staff and contributors, you’ll find our usual blend of thoughtfulness, expertise, frivolity, retro nostalgia, and — of course — enthusiasm for all things Nintendo. Happy holidays!

If you’ve had your ear to the ground for the past couple of years, you’ll have heard at least some of the rumbles of debate over the ethics and impact of AI art. You may have even heard the names of some tools used to create AI art, like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E. But you may also be wondering why these tools have spawned such strong opinions in the news, on social media, and even among people you know. After all, haven’t we been having the “robots will take our jobs” discussion for decades, now?

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The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Over the holidays we’re republishing some choice features from the last 12 months. A mix of talking points, interviews, opinion pieces and more from NL staff and contributors, you’ll find our usual blend of thoughtfulness, expertise, frivolity, retro nostalgia, and — of course — enthusiasm for all things Nintendo. Happy holidays!

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Where should you start if you’re new to The Legend?

Over the holidays we’re republishing some choice features from the last 12 months. A mix of talking points, interviews, opinion pieces and more from NL staff and contributors, you’ll find our usual blend of thoughtfulness, expertise, frivolity, retro nostalgia, and — of course — enthusiasm for all things Nintendo. Happy holidays!

The announcement of a solid release date for BOTW2 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom marked the beginning of a new, more intense phase of enthusiasm for one of the most anticipated sequels of the decade. Sure, a new Zelda game is always big news, but when it’s a follow-up to one of the most warmly-received video games of all time — and one that gave the Nintendo Switch a launch title to rival the likes of Super Mario 64 — excitement levels will be reaching fever pitch in the coming months as we approach its May 2023 launch.

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This reminds me of a puzzle…

Over the holidays we’re republishing some choice features from the last 12 months. A mix of talking points, interviews, opinion pieces and more from NL staff and contributors, you’ll find our usual blend of thoughtfulness, expertise, frivolity, retro nostalgia, and — of course — enthusiasm for all things Nintendo. Happy holidays!

From the late 2000s to the mid-2010s, my gaming experience was all about learning to become a gentleman. This was a central topic which ran throughout the Professor Layton series. If Professor Hershel Layton wore a trench coat, I wore a trench coat; if he drank fruity tea, I drank fruity tea; if he was reminded of a puzzle during the most inappropriate of times…well, you get the idea. This is to say that the Professor Layton games were a huge part of my formative gaming and indeed, my self-education. So why is it that, today, my views of the series are so often tainted?

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The Concerned Ape and the Golden Egg.

Over the holidays we’re republishing some choice features from the last 12 months. A mix of talking points, interviews, opinion pieces and more from NL staff and contributors, you’ll find our usual blend of thoughtfulness, expertise, frivolity, retro nostalgia, and — of course — enthusiasm for all things Nintendo. Happy holidays!

In August of 1996, the same year that Spice Girls released their debut single and The English Patient swept awards season, a little game called Bokujō Monogatari came out in Japan on the Super Famicom. All signs pointed to it being a flop: its development had been plagued by bankruptcy and downsizing; it came out on a last-generation console just after the release of the Nintendo 64; and worst of all, it was a game about… farming. This was an era where kids wanted to fly spaceships and save princesses, not till soil and pull weeds.

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