Latest Features
Feature How Do Game Developers And Artists Feel About The Rise Of AI Art?
Should we all be worried, or is it just a fad?
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...
Soapbox After 10 Years I Finally Got A Wii U, Here’s What I Thought
The good, the bad, and the ugly
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, following up on his piece from a few weeks back, Jim delivers his verdict on the ten-year-old console and how it holds up in 2022 ... Picture the scene. The year...
Feature Mecha And Memories - How 16-Bit Nostalgia Influenced SNES-Style JRPG 'Chained Echoes'
"Xenoblade Chronicles 3 nearly caused a delay"
A world where dragons exist and people pilot mechs? Not the most common of combinations — despite both elements often appearing in RPGs frequently over the years — but for SNES and PS1-inspired JRPG Chained Echoes, this is completely the norm. Revealed back in 2019, the game blasted through its...
Talking Point Which Zelda Game Should You Play First?
Where should you start if you're new to The Legend?
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...
Feature How Stardew Valley Grew The Farm Sim While Harvest Moon Went To Seed
The Concerned Ape and the Golden Egg
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...
Soapbox If You Thought Last Year Was "Sad" For Switch, 2023 Might Be Hard To Handle
Am I in a different timeline?
I'm not even going to mention this one below, but this was another great 2022 game Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Gavin glances at some hot 2022 takes and instantly transforms into that confuddled...
Feature "No Man's Sky Will Never Run On That" - Sean Murray Talks Defying The Odds On Switch
"I have a good history of being right sometimes and totally wrong other times"
Anyone who has played or has even been remotely interested in No Man's Sky over the past six years will most likely have heard of Sean Murray. The founder of development studio Hello Games and creator of No Man's Sky's ever-expanding universe, Murray's name sits above the...
Talking Point What Game Do You Replay Every Year?
New year, old game
We did it everyone! 2022 is finally behind us and 2023 stretches happily into the great beyond. This is to be a year full of promise, a year of hope, a year of enough Nintendo releases (with any luck) to squeeze out an almost literal cry from our bank accounts. But for the moment we're not thinking about the future, we're looking...
Editorial Happy New Year From All Of Us At Nintendo Life
Here be 2023!
Congratulations — you made it through 2022! Welcome, one and all, to an entirely brand-new year of sweet, sweet vidyagames. Yes, lovely people, meet 2023. 2023, lovely people. Now the introductions are out of the way, what's on the menu in the coming months? We've recapped last year enough already — we were all there, we've all...
Feature Why Is Splatoon So Popular In Japan?
Nintendo is squids in
It happened almost overnight. One day in May 2015, Splatoon merch appeared everywhere in Japan. Baby inklings dangled from kids’ backpacks. Squid-girl stickers adorned pencil cases. Convenience stores advertised raffles for figurines, coffee cups, and Splatoon-branded bags. This explosion of Splat-swag was perhaps more of a...
Talking Point What Was The Video Gaming 'Theme' Of 2022?
Maybe it was just "more video games"
Hey, remember in 2022's Summer Game Fest when every other trailer was about scary things happening in space? It was like, "hey, what if Dead Space was everything"? What a fun time that was. But it highlighted something important in video games: The fact that every year more or less has a trend. Like how 2017 was...
Another year in the bag
Well, folks, 2023 is almost here. Another year has passed us by and it was undoubtedly an interesting, busy period for Switch owners, even if it lacked a mainline Mario or Zelda. We've seen major industry players make huge acquisitions, two major new Pokémon titles launch, and the delay of what may well be the most...
Noir goes lucid
One of the biggest surprises and standouts during the 13th September Nintendo Direct was the reveal of Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE, a brand new mystery game from Kazutaka Kodaka, the creator of the Danganronpa series. Set in a rainy city full of bright lights, and embracing a more dark fantasy style compared to the pink...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (December 31st)
High res resolutions
Happy New Year's Eve good reader! Congratulations! You've almost made it through 2022 and we think it is fair to say that we have had some good gaming to show for it. Here at Nintendo Life, we have spent the week looking back over the past year with fondness, re-reading some of our favourite pieces from 2022 and putting them...
Feature Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Trailer Breakdown - Theories And Speculation
A thorough Sheikdown
We've finally found out the title of Breath of the Wild 2 (which means we can stop calling it Breath of the Wild 2) alongside a brand-new trailer in the latest Nintendo Direct — and it's called Tears of the Kingdom, which has already set off a ton of theories. You know what that means, Zelda fans — it's time to put our...
Feature The History Of Monolith Soft - From Baten Kaitos To Xenoblade And Zelda
A monolithic tale
Monolith Soft has become one of the most recognisable of Nintendo's first-party developers in recent times. Led by legendary RPG writer and director Tetsuya Takahashi, the studio is renowned for the monolithic (pun intended) Xenoblade series. Combining MMORPG-style, memorable worlds, stunning music, and philosophical writing, the...
Soapbox 2022 Was A Watershed For Companies Taking Retro Compilations Seriously
Eclipsing the competition
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Gavin is encouraged to see how old games have been getting the appropriate TLC on Switch this year... We've had plenty of retro compilations and collections come to...
Soapbox Splatoon 3's Midnight Launch Felt A Bit Different
Veteran video game journalist James Mielke camps out
Ah, the venerable midnight launch. The once-expected tradition of camping out for midnight game launches — so timed as to technically adhere to official game street dates while still capitalising on gamer obsessions and enthusiasm — is, at least in New York City, on the verge of extinction...
Feature "Unfinished Business" - Why Gilbert & Grossman Returned To Monkey Island
Working with Disney, Devolver, and fans
Does Guybrush Threepwood still want to be a pirate? This, after all, was the Monkey Island protagonist’s very first proclamation 32 years ago: “My name is Guybrush Threepwood, and I want to be a pirate!” But given the fact that he’s only set sail in five previous Monkey Island adventures sprinkled...
Feature 25 Years Of GoldenEye 007 - 25 Facts You Didn't Know (Or Forgot You Knew)
I watched you from the shadows as a child
As you've probably noticed, GoldenEye 007 is now 25 years old and can legally hire a car in a foreign country. The influence of Rare's seminal shooter on the FPS genre and console video gaming in general is enormous, and gamers have now been poring over it and picking apart its secrets for the last...
Soapbox This SNES-Style RPG Is The Biggest And Best Surprise Of 2022
Links to the past
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. And with Chained Echoes finally releasing in December, Alana is begging you to consider it as a GOTY candidate despite its late release... I'm about two-thirds of the way through...
Soapbox Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie Is Still One Of The Greatest Adaptations Ever
Shoooryuken!
If you're into anime, then chances are you can remember the first movie or TV show that got you hooked on the medium; your "gateway drug", if you will. For some, it might be TV shows like DragonBall Z or One Piece, others perhaps a specific movie like Ghost in the Shell or Akira (indeed, I had to really go back through the memory...
Soapbox Crossing The Line: How I Helped Corrupt The Animal Crossing Economy
New Horizons for NMT fungibility
It's midnight by the pier. I check I’m alone, feel nervously into my pocket and count the money with my fingers. It's all there: 40 massive sacks of coins. Big pocket. I flip up the lid of the wheelie bin and dump the lot. 4 million bells erased from the universe and no one need ever know. How did it come to this?...
Feature Nintendo Switch Ports We'd Love To See In 2023
Gimme gimme gimme!
Early in 2022, we put out a list of 14 games we'd love to have on Switch. Since then, we've got at least five of them on Switch, so we're either prescient or powerful. So, in hopes that 2023 will be similarly rewarding, we're aiming this feature at you, Doug Bowser — we'd love to see the following games ported onto Nintendo's...
Poll Budget Line Box Art - Is It 'Fine' Or A Sin Against All That Is Good And Pure?
Player's choice? Surely not!
The world's greatest secret agent really blending in there When it comes to box art, we're sticklers here at Nintendo Life Towers. Our Box Art Brawl series — which compares and contrasts regional box art variations and asks you to vote for your favourite — made a welcome return recently following a hiatus, and it...
Soapbox Yes, You Really Should Do All Of Xenoblade Chronicles 3's Sidequests
Live to sidequest
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Alana says you should do all of the sidequests in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 because they're that good. Or at least most of them… The Xenoblade series is known for many things...
Feature Backlog Club: Nintendo Life's Games Of Not-This-Year Awards 2022
The "Late to the Party" category
The thing with Game of the Year awards is that it pre-supposes that we are all adults with lots of free time to keep up with the ever-increasing firehose of game releases. You would think that games journalists, of all the types of adult, would be more on top of this than most... and you would be wrong! Like any...
Feature How Video Games Can Be Brilliant For Your Mental Health
Escapism, education, and being "alone together"
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as part of our mental health coverage, I spoke to two psychologists from Take This — a non-profit dedicated to reducing the stigma of mental health in the gaming community, as well as raising awareness of the areas in which games and mental health intersect...
Soapbox 'Twin Peaks Meets Winnie The Pooh'? GOTY Or Not, This Game Deserves More Love
Pining for more
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Here, Jim delves into a game he found both wonderful and strange... When I first heard about the "Twin Peaks-meets-Winnie the Pooh" cuddly adventure Beacon Pines, you could say that I was...
Feature An Interview With ZANE_ROCKS_36, The Cool Dude Behind DOOM-Style Shooter 'Slayers X'
The real Hypnospace Outlaw
Erm, so... Have you played Hypnospace Outlaw? If so, great; if not, here's a quick primer: Hypnospace Outlaw is a simulation game made by Jay Tholen, Corey Cochran, and Xalavier Nelson Jr. in which you play an enforcer of rules on "Hypnospace", a '90s-style version of the internet that happens while you sleep. In your...
Feature Which Is The Absolute Best Nintendo Console Generation?
Nintendo: The Best Generation
Looking back over nearly four decades of video game output from Nintendo in both hardware and software form, it's easy to pick out highlights, both historical and personal. Super Mario Bros. was a seminal release in the history of the medium; A Link To The Past codified the design template that the Zelda series would...
Feature Artist Larry Achiampong's Life Of Nintendo, Creativity And Inspiration
"That’s the beauty of video games, it’s our way of life"
While there are often discussions around the merits of gaming as an artform, we perhaps talk less about examples of games helping to inspire other contemporary art. Yet as years pass it's an inevitability, as the role of games in the lives of millions has transformed since the mid- to...
Feature The Best Hidden Gems And Underrated Switch Games Of 2022
Some overlooked games you might have missed
Another year has gone by and we've seen a positive smorgasbord of new Switch eShop releases, with handfuls of games launching each and every week. Naturally, we've been unable to cover everything that's graced the Nintendo Switch in 2022; we are human after all (or are we..?), but we've done our level...
Feature Hot Zelda: Link To The Past Takes From '90s Game Mags, 30 Years Later
A link to the Link to the Past past
Let us set the scene: The year is 1992. You are sitting in your living room, wearing something with massive shoulder pads, probably. Guns N' Roses is playing on the radio. Social media does not yet exist. Raise your sword if you miss the '90s It is into this peaceful scene that we can add a sprinkling of video...
Soapbox Sega's Greatest RPG Is 20 Years Old And Long Overdue A Remaster
A (sky) pirate's life for me
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, on the GameCube port's 20th anniversary, Alana is desperate to see Skies of Arcadia Legends on modern consoles... Sega isn’t really known as an RPG developer, but it...
The perils of dipping a toe in a franchise
It started with a simple question: Which Dragon Quest should I play first? It's one of my gaming shames that I've never touched Square Enix's hallowed RPG series, and I've been wanting to dig into something really meaty for many months now. Sure, I've got about 30 unplayed RPGs ready and waiting on Switch...
Feature The Story Of Affordable Space Adventures, The Wii U eShop's Best Exclusive
"I don’t know why, but Nicklas was hanging around in the office!"
When Nintendo confirmed the upcoming closure of the Wii U eShop (and the 3DS store, too), thoughts immediately turned to exclusives that'll be lost. The most prominent of these on the system, we'd suggest, is Affordable Space Adventures, a unique game only on Wii U and destined to...
Talking Point How's Your Switch Holding Up After 5 Years?
Memories and mistreatment
Switch is officially five years old now, and it's got us thinking back half a decade to our very first interactions with the little console that could. Whether we were lucky enough to get our hands on an early review unit, or marched down to our local video game emporium to pick up a pre-order, or winged it on the...
Feature From Chrono Trigger To Super Mario RPG, The Varied Influences Of Sea Of Stars
"Just like with The Messenger, with the genre we want to present our 'definitive edition'"
The Messenger made a notable impact when it arrived back in 2018, with its sharp design and Ninja Gaiden-inspired gameplay also giving way to a major twist and very modern design. In that case developer Sabotage captured the imagination of retro gamers and...
Feature "Shovel Knight Feels Like Our 'Mario', But We Kept Wondering What Our 'Zelda' Might Be"
Yacht Club Games discusses the creative process for Mina the Hollower
Yacht Club Games is a company that needs little introduction, particularly thanks to the huge success and acclaim for Shovel Knight, a title that had multiple major expansions and campaigns over a number of years. The company has been busy beyond that too; last year it published...
Editorial Happy Holidays From Nintendo Life
Later we'll have some pumpkin pie
T'is here, the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, Season's Greetings to all you lovely people. Grab yourself a beverage, get comfy, and get ready — it's party time! If by 'party' you mean sweating profusely and wishing you hadn't said 'yes' to a fifth mince pie or similarly stodgy sweetmeat. 2022 has been a...
Soapbox Why Can't Nintendo Offer Both Virtual Console And Switch Online?
Says the writer that will need to redownload a lot of VC purchases on Wii U and 3DS
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Thomas discusses the unnecessary 'choice' by Nintendo between Virtual Console and Nintendo Switch Online...
Soapbox One Of My GOTYs Is A Game You Probably Haven't Played (But You Should)
A masterpiece of narrative design
Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they've been chewing over. Today, Kate gets green fingers... Come here. Sit down. Shut up. Why haven't you played Strange Horticulture yet? No, that was rhetorical. And also, a trap. I said shut...
Full server shutdowns could be coming sooner than you think, too
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 —...
Feature Nintendo Life's Alternative Game Awards 2022
Best soundtrack, best $5 game, best 'Game That Doesn't Fit Neatly On Any Of Our Genre Lists'
It's Christmas time once more, which for many of us means time off work and a glut of food. But for us in the video game journalism career path, it also means doling out awards to all the games we loved this year. But a lot of games don't quite make it into...
Feature 16 Theories About Link's Weird Arm In Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2
Zelda: Arms
We know surprisingly little about the game currently titled The Sequel To The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. [Oof, it's Tears of the Kingdom, past-Kate! We'll forgive you for not knowing the name of the new Zelda game before it was announced, though. Carry on! - Ed] But that won't stop me from furiously speculating about it all the...
Talking Point What Are You Playing This Weekend? (December 24th)
Festive edition!
"So this is Christmas, and what have you done?" These were the words sung by the legendary John Lennon in perhaps the most depressing Christmas song of all time. But in answer to your question, John, we're having quite a busy one, actually. We have been prepping all things game of the year this week, with us Nintendo Life staff...
Feature Remembering The Newest Nintendo IP You'd Forgotten All About
We've been expecting you, Buddy Mission BOND
Did you know that every year Nintendo publishes at least one new IP? It’s true, they haven’t missed a year since 1983, the year the Famicom launched in Japan. [Editor's note. Except for 2022, it seems. You were on a roll, Nintendo!] In 2020 we had Good Job!, Astral Chain in 2019, Sushi Striker in...
Back Page "My Uncle Works At Nintendo" - The Man, The Myth, And The Mendacity
It’s all lies… until it’s all true
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...
Feature WayForward On Expanding The 'River City Girls' Universe, And Future Plans
"Hopefully players are interested in us expanding this further"
The Kunio-kun spin-off River City Girls returned earlier this month with the release of River City Girls 2, and Nintendo Life was lucky enough to catch up recently with game director Bannon Rudis as well as WayForward's director of business development, Adam Tierney. Before we dive in,...