Month: March 2018

A bunch of new games are now available on Nintendo Switch. It’s yet another busy week for the hybrid console, with a total of 20 titles arriving on the Eshop over the course of the week, in addition to a big new update for the open-world JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Headlining this week’s releases is Mulaka, a Zelda-inspired 3D adventure game steeped in Tarahumara culture. Switch owners can also now pick up the co-op heist game Payday 2; Outlast: Bundle of Terror, which includes the base adventure and its Whistleblower DLC expansion; and Bridge Constructor Portal, a mash-up between the Bridge Constructor series and Valve’s inventive puzzle game Portal. You can learn more about the titles in this week’s episode of New Releases.

Other notable releases this week include another pair of classic Arcade Archives games, Sengoku 2 and Star Force; the critically acclaimed text adventure Subsurface Circular; the horror game Detention; the investigative game A Normal Lost Phone; the 2D platformer Little Triangle; and the Q-Bert-like puzzler Totes the Goat. You can see the full list of this week’s new Switch games below.

In addition to this week’s releases, Nintendo is rolling out a new update for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 tonight, March 1. Players who’ve purchased the game’s expansion pass will receive another DLC items pack, which contains eight Legendary Core Crystals, upgrade parts for Poppi, and other useful items. On top of that, tonight’s update adds a New Game+ mode for all players who’ve cleared the main adventure, which unlocks “many new features” in the game.

This month’s big first-party game for Switch is Kirby Star Allies, which arrives on March 16. Ahead of its release, Nintendo has added a free demo of the game to the Eshop–but so far only in Europe. While Nintendo hasn’t said if it will release the same demo in North America, all Switch owners are able to access the European Eshop and download the demo by creating a new Nintendo Account (with your region set as Europe) and linking it to your console.

This Week’s New Nintendo Switch Releases

February 26

• Spot the Difference

February 27

• Outlast: Bundle of Terror
• Payday 2

February 28

• Air Hockey
• Bridge Constructor Portal

March 1

• ACA Neo Geo: Sengoku 2
• Arcade Archives: Star Force
• Damascus Gear Operation Tokyo
• Detention
• Guilt Battle Arena
• Little Triangle
• Mulaka
• A Normal Lost Phone
• Packet Queen#
• Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder Devastated
• Poisoft Thud Card
• Subsurface Circular
• Totes the Goat

March 2

• Grid Mania
• Super Toy Cars

Amazon is continuing its push into genre television.

According to Deadline, Amazon is developing TV shows based on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time  novels and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Deadline reported these developments in a larger story about Amazon acquiring the rights to turn Iain M. Banks’ Culture series into a television series, and no other details were announced.

IGN previously reported that Jordan’s Wheel of Time had found its showrunner, Rafe Judkins. Judkins, a former Survivor contestant, has written for Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Chuck.

Continue reading…

Happy Birthdays, the upcoming world-creation game, has an official release date for the Nintendo Switch. The game is a slightly improved version Birthdays the Beginning, out now for PS4 and PC. The Nintendo version will hit store shelves this June.

Happy Birthdays is essentially a gardening game, designed by Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada, where you create ecosystems in the form of cube gardens and raise prehistoric creatures, guiding them through their evolution, right up until the emergence of human beings. You raise and lower blocks to form valleys, mountains, and oceans, while placing limited-use items like rivers. Your ecological choices determine what kinds of life come into existence and flourish.

The Nintendo Switch release will make a few changes from the existing version. It will fix a few elements of the game’s UI so it’s easier to play and understand, improve some of the gameplay elements, and also introduce new characters.

In GameSpot’s review of Birthdays the Beginning, reviewer Heidi Kemps applauded the game’s bright, colorful visuals that give it a unique look among the god-game genre but also took issue with the game’s UI. She said there was lots of content and secrets to discover, despite the game’s clunky, cumbersome interface (an issue that is hopefully remedied in this latest version). Happy Birthdays will release on Nintendo Switch on June 5 in North America, and in Europe on June 8.

The first trailer for the upcoming Marvel show Cloak and Dagger has been released. The show premieres on June 6 on Freeform, the channel previously known as ABC Family. It focuses on a pair of runaway teenagers who are given super powers after they are fed a dangerous drug.

This first teaser doesn’t have any dialogue, but uses an interesting split screen effect to highlight the two heroes’ contrasting powers–Cloak controls the power of darkness, while Dagger throws deadly blades of pure light. It shows them living on the streets, committing small crimes to survive, and slowly coming to terms with their abilities. Check it out below:

Cloak and Dagger stars former Disney star Olivia Holt (Ultimate Spider-Man) as Tandy Bowen (aka Dagger), and Aubrey Joseph (Run All Night) as Tyrone Johnson (aka Cloak). The first season will feature 10 episodes.

Although the show is technically part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, like many of Marvel’s TV shows, it is not expected to have much crossover with the studio’s movies or other series. In July last year, Marvel TV boss Jeph Loeb told The Hollywood Reporter that while Hulu’s similarly-themed teen superhero show Runaways was part of the same connected universe, we shouldn’t expect to see any interaction between the characters, even though they sometimes appeared together in Marvel’s comic books.

Cloak and Dagger were created by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan, and first appeared in a 1982 issue of The Spectacular Spider-Man. A successful four-issue limited series was followed by an ongoing bi-monthly comic book in 1985, and the characters have appeared in a variety of titles over the decades.

If you need a little pick me up, look no further than the Black Panther. In addition to saving his home country of Wakanda–and the world–the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero is also giving thanks to the fans that have made Black Panther such a successful movie.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman surprised fans who explained why they were so thankful to see him portrayed as a superhero on-screen–including one who admitted to bootlegging the film. “For me, as the mother of a young son, my son’s childhood has been defined by Barack Obama and now Black Panther,” one fan says without realizing Boseman is actually listening. “So thank you.”

It’s clear that the actor is as touched by what the fans have to say as they were by the movie itself. While he surprised many of them with a joke, it’s the final fan–a woman who praises the movie’s strong female characters–that elicits the most emotional response as Boseman offers a simple “Wakanda forever” in his T’Challa accent before shaking the woman’s hand and giving her a hug.

As it turns out, Wakanda forever is an appropriate sentiment for the film. Heading into its third weekend, Black Panther has amassed over $700 million at the worldwide box office and is already the third biggest domestic film in the MCU–behind Marvel’s The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron. It will took top Ultron, sliding into the number two slot.