All The Most Important Nintendo Switch News Right Now

E3 2019 is behind us, but even the most devoted video game fans are bound to have missed some news out of the show. The event is just too sprawling to keep up with it all at once. Nintendo keeps its own announcements deeply under wraps and contained mostly within its Nintendo Direct presentation the Tuesday morning of the show, but other announcements are often littered throughout the week in its Nintendo Treehouse streams.

In case you missed any of the news and announcements, we’ve compiled them all below. You can also catch up on all the Xbox news, and despite Sony’s absence, there was plenty of PlayStation news that we’ll be wrapping up soon as well.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel Announced

The biggest announcement of Nintendo’s conference was saved for the very end, when the company revealed the first teaser for a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The brief teaser video gave us scant details about the new game, and no clue about when to expect it, but it did drop some intriguing clues about the story. It showed Link and Zelda together, appearing to explore a tomb before something awakens. In the distance, Hyrule Castle starts to shake and rise.

Series producer Eiji Aonuma has since revealed that the sequel came about because the studio simply had too many ideas to fit into the downloadable content.

“Initially we were thinking of just DLC ideas, but then we had a lot of ideas and we said, ‘This is too many ideas, let’s just make one new game and start from scratch.'”

The teaser has led to plenty of speculation and theories about what it could all mean.

Two More Nintendo Switch Models In The Works

Reports have been circulating that Nintendo is developing new Nintendo Switch models, despite the company staying mum on the subject at E3. A new report indicates that the wheels are still very much in motion, albeit quietly.

According to the report, Nintendo has moved production out of China and into Southeast Asia to avoid newly proposed tarriffs from the United States. That reportedly includes both production of the current model, along with two new ones. The first model is said to be similar to the existing Switch but with better components, while the second is a budget version with lower specs and a new look. Production of these models is reportedly well underway, suggesting their release could be close. The original reports suggested that the cheaper model could come out by the end of June, but that seems unlikely at this point. One or both could still be slated for this year, however.

Animal Crossing Given New Title, But Delayed

Animal Crossing for Switch was slated as a 2019 game, but Nintendo has now pushed it into 2020. It wasn’t all bad news, though, as the presentation also gave us much more detail on what to expect from the newly-dubbed Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

New Horizons takes place on an island of your own, and you begin in a tent. You’ll have more control over both your own look and the management of the society this time around, and you can enjoy the island lifestyle with a friend thanks to the addition of couch co-op. It won’t support cloud saves, though, so this island is an island unto itself.

Though delays are often a bummer, Nintendo explained that this one was an attempt to allow its workers to have a healthy work-life balance. Given the recent spate of studios caught putting their devs through heavy crunch, this explanation seemed to be met pretty positively from the community, although Nintendo’s stock price took a hit in the wake of the news.

Link’s Awakening Is Coming This Fall, With Some Surprises

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is being remade for Nintendo Switch, and the company announced a fall release date during its presentation. The game looks like a neat modernization of the Game Boy classic, but one surprise is the new addition of a Dungeon Editor mode. It will let you collect individual rooms from dungeons and interlock them to make your own dungeon mash-ups.

To mark the game’s release, Europe is getting a lavish collector’s edition complete with Game Boy styled Steelbook case. The game will also release along with a new Amiibo showing Link rendered in the game’s claymation-like art style. For more details check out our pre-order guide.

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Who You Gonna Call? Luigi

The centerpiece of Nintendo’s E3 booth was Luigi’s Mansion 3, the latest in the ghost-hunting adventure series. Luigi is back with the aptly named Gooigi capturing ghosts in a haunted hotel. The new trailer gave us tons of gameplay details, and our own hands-on time showed it to be a funny, engaging parody of survival-horror games.

A Smashing New Set Of Characters

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was last year’s big Nintendo release, but the enduring popularity of the fighting game has made DLC announcements almost as big as game reveals themselves. At E3 Nintendo revealed a bunch of new characters including the heroes of Dragon Quest and the much-requested Banjo-Kazooie.

The Dragon Quest heroes actually count as one character, with the various forms serving as different appearances. Each of them is a sword-wielding character so the skin swapping makes sense. Banjo and Kazooie, meanwhile, are on loan from Microsoft as the two companies have gotten increasingly cozy lately.

Pokemon Sword and Shield: It’s Going to Be Big

The first main Pokemon game for Nintendo Switch, Pokemon Sword and Shield, is dropping this year. Nintendo gave the pair of games their own Nintendo Direct presentation just ahead of E3, revealing the new giant-sized Pokemon mechanic and a bunch of new mons. We’ve also learned how the Raid battles will work, which lets you team up with other trainers to take on one kaiju-sized pocket monster.

Sword and Shield will honor the recent legacy of the series by working with the PokeBall Plus accessory released alongside the Let’s Go games. That’s not the only lesson it’s taking from Let’s Go, as we’ve also learned that it won’t have random encounters.

To the chagrin of some fans, though, Sword and Shield won’t allow you to import your entire collection of monsters from previous generations. And this may be the norm going forward into future Pokemon games as well.

Zelda Spin-Off Cadence of Hyrule Released, Is Great

In addition to the Breath of the Wild 2 announcement and more details about the Link’s Awakening remake, Nintendo ended the week of E3 with the release of Cadence of Hyrule. This Zelda spin-off from the studio behind Crypt of the Necrodancer borrows that game’s signature rhythm gameplay, but set to remixed Zelda tunes in the land of Hyrule.

And wouldn’t you know it, the combination works. GameSpot’s Cadence of Hyrule review concluded that the game wonderfully realizes the spirit of classic Zelda games and exploring the world is consistently fun and rewarding.

“Cadence of Hyrule is a fantastic Zelda game in its own right, even though it adopts the gameplay mechanics of another series,” James O’Connor wrote. “Beyond the aesthetics, it nails the satisfying sense of exploration and increasing power, and it revels in the joy of discovery, as all the best Zelda games do. It’s an extremely successful melding of two great game series and an experience that makes you feel eager for Nintendo to do more interesting things with their major licenses.”

Cadence of Hyrule is now available on the Nintendo eShop for $25.

The Witcher 3 Coming To Nintendo Switch

The Witcher 3 is one of the most massive RPGs of the generation, and soon you can take it with you wherever you go. CD Projekt Red’s critically acclaimed game is coming to Nintendo Switch, complete with its two expansions Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine and all other DLC.

The Switch version will have some visual compromises to fit, but CD Projekt has been sharing screenshots and it certainly looks like the Geralt we all know. We even got a good look at his glistening body in a bathtub. You could see the iconic bathtub scene while playing in the bathtub, but we wouldn’t recommend it as the Switch isn’t waterproof.

Check out our pre-order guide to see all that games in the package.

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Fire Emblems, Daemons, And More

Two more Nintendo-published games got shorter mentions during Nintendo’s presentation. Fire Emblem: Three Houses had only a brief trailer since the game’s release is already around the corner. You can check out our pre-order guide for more details. Similarly, the mech combat game Daemon x Machina got a release date trailer, pinning the game to September. Meanwhile, Astral Chain from PlatinumGames got a fresh look that shows it may scratch the Bayonetta itch.

For those looking for something to play right now, Nintendo Online subscribers can play Double Dragon 2, Volleyball, and City Connection in the updated NES library. Or you can polish up your skills in Splatoon 2 as you prepare for the final Splatfest, scheduled to take place in July.

Gaming PCs From Dell And Alienware Have Serious Discounts Through This Weekend

PC gamers in need of a new rig should check out what Dell is offering this week in a limited sale of 15-20% off on select Dell and Alienware gaming computers. That encompasses three powerful laptops and one desktop, with savings up to $300. The sale is only available now through this Sunday, June 24.

Dell’s G15 gaming laptop is just $850, under the full price of $1000. It features a 15-inch, 1080p display with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5 graphics card to support it, making this a great entry-level gaming computer. Going up from there are the Alienware m15 gaming laptop and Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 laptop/tablet, both for $1,450, down from the full price of $1,780. What the Alienware laptop lacks in functionality relative to the XPS 15, it makes up for with more powerful hardware under the hood with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 graphics card and a hybrid HDD/SSD. Lastly at the top end is the Alienware Aurora gaming desktop for $1,900 down from its usual $2,230. That comes loaded with an i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GDDR6 graphics card and 512GB solid state drive.

If you act fast, Dell’s sale is well-timed with a daily deal running now on Amazon for up to 63% savings on certain Logitech gaming accessories, like mice, keyboards, headsets, and speakers, which are precisely what you might need to complement a brand new gaming computer. Amazon also has a great deal currently on Xbox wireless controllers paired with a PC wireless adapter for just $45. Between these three sales, you should be able to get yourself a great new gaming set-up without breaking the bank.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Isn’t What I Wanted And That’s Why I Like It

We all have those games, the ones forever etched into our memory. No matter how far in the past you need to look, you can recall exactly when and where you acquired it, the setting you played it in, and the sensations you felt as its sights and sounds washed over you for the first time. Final Fantasy 7 is one of these games for me. And because it’s so near and dear, the initial announcement of Final Fantasy 7 Remake in 2015 left me with mixed emotions. I was happy Square Enix was finally giving it a serious go, but all I could think of were the things I expected to get cut, or potentially worse, disfigured by the norms of modern game design. Keep the classics classic, I thought.

Nearly four years later, playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake at this year’s E3, I finally confronted the things that worried me the most: real-time action taking the place of turn-based combat, voice actors speaking for main characters, and a 3D camera system in place of fixed perspectives. I walked out of the demo completely surprised, not by the sweeping changes but by my shift in mindset. I naively thought I wanted a conservative remake of the game I remember, but it turns out the reimagined Final Fantasy 7 is giving me the best gift of all: a chance to fall in love with the world and characters all over again, and potentially for new reasons.

It would be far too premature to claim that the final product will be as amazing as my demo, but at the risk of sounding naive once again, I’m given hope as I recall the experience I had when I first played the original PlayStation demo in 1996, and how that experienced carried over to the full game.

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Stepping into a dingy Mako Reactor–one of the many beating hearts of the corporate-run operation that saps, sells, and profits off the earth’s natural resources–two powerhouses clash. Cloud, a cold-hearted, former super (svelte) soldier of the Shinra Power Company, is just there to do a job. Barret, the hulking environmental activist behind the mission to destroy the reactor, has no choice but to work with Cloud to glean from his experience at Shinra. But as a person who wears his heart on his sleeve and fights for a noble cause, Barret’s contempt for Cloud’s self-centered opportunism is loud and clear. The two grit their teeth through the tension after a few spats and lay down their explosives. Their escape is cut short by a massive crimson mech, the Scorpion Sentinel. Using a little magic, Cloud’s massive sword, and a Gatling gun surgically grafted to Barret’s arm that never runs out of ammo, the two overcome their opponent and accomplish their mission, inflicting a massive blow to Shinra when the reactor ultimately explodes from within.

Core components of Final Fantasy 7 have undergone massive transformations, but these aforementioned beats, the events that made my first taste of Final Fantasy 7 so memorable the first time around, have returned to center stage under a brand-new hi-def spotlight. The attention to visual details, from the environment to special effects in combat, gives everything a dreamlike quality, almost as if I’m seeing my imaginary version of Final Fantasy 7 brought to life. I only have good things to say about the way the remake looks, and my mind runs wild when I consider what the rest of the game will look like in the years to come.

I was equally impressed by the new real-time combat system during my brief stint playing the remake, which I did not see coming. Rather than standing orderly on opposite sides of a rectangular battlefield as before, every character involved in a fight can now run in any direction at will. The ATB Gauge is back, but you needn’t wait for it to fill if you want to throw out basic attacks, which conveniently speed up the refill process too. You only have to wait for a full ATB gauge to do something more substantial, like cast a spell or use an ability. And if you want a taste of the past or simply need to catch your breath, you can also bring combat to a halt while picking commands from menus. This process is somewhat optional as your allies are controlled by AI when they aren’t given explicit instructions, but it’s definitely handy.

I still have questions about the finer points of Materia management–the items that govern what a character is capable of beyond simply attacking and using items–and time will tell how exciting battles remain long run, but it seems like it will strike a good balance between free-flowing action and menu-based mechanics from the past.

The Scorpion Sentinel boss, as seasoned players will recall, has a tail equipped with a powerful laser that’s best avoided. In the past, you would only bear the brunt of it if you attacked the scorpion while its tail was raised. That laser is still dangerous, but it’s guaranteed to attack in the remake’s version of this fight. Once the tail goes up, that’s your cue to run and take cover behind debris strewn around the reactor platform. This occasional threat, along with the scorpion’s leap-and-smash attack, lends a new kick to the familiar foe. My hope is that this is also setting the tone for the rest of the game and that positioning will become a critical component of combat. Juggling priorities was a treat rather than a hassle thanks to the largely intuitive controls, so the ongoing challenge would be most welcome.

I feel silly in retrospect for being so fixated on what Final Fantasy 7 was rather than what it could be, and now I’m more excited than ever to find out.

There was a lot to love about my time with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but it wasn’t without some concern. Even though I’m glad characters can speak for themselves and thus have more natural interactions now, I am a little concerned by Barret’s over-the-top characterization. Final Fantasy 7 has a ton of strange things in it and I don’t want it to be overly self-serious all the time, but in the face of a more realistic presentation overall, Barret’s cartoonish delivery rubs the wrong way.

When Final Fantasy 7 Remake releases in March 2020 I’ll be turning 35. I’ve changed a great deal since my first exposure to Cloud, Barret, and the rest of the gang, and the E3 demo reminded that my relationship to Final Fantasy 7 is a holdover from the past. With that in mind and the overall quality of the new demo, I can’t wait to rekindle my connection to one of my favorite games of all time. I feel silly in retrospect for being so fixated on what Final Fantasy 7 was rather than what it could be, and now I’m more excited than ever to find out. I’ll always have the original if I need it, but this new version is shaping up to be an enlightening trip down memory lane.

One Of My Favorite Games Has Been Removed From Steam And I Am Sad

Alpha Protocol, one of my favorite games, has been removed from Steam and other PC storefronts and is therefore unavailable to purchase.

It was initially believed Sega’s rights to publish the game had expired. However, the company clarified to GameSpot that this is incorrect; it still owns the Alpha Protocol brand and intellectual property–just not some of the music within the game.

A Sega spokesperson told GameSpot: “Due to the expiry of music rights in Alpha Protocol, the title has been removed from Steam and is no longer on sale.”

Alpha Protocol is also unavailable to purchase on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Humble stores, though Sega has assured fans that existing owners of the game (on any platform) will still be able to redownload it in the future.

Alpha Protocol was released for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2010. Although it received a mixed critical reception at the time, it went on to gain a cult following thanks to its deep RPG mechanics and glamorous spy fiction. I once called it the best James Bond game ever, despite 007 not actually being in it.

Eurogamer reported in 2017 that developer Obsidian intended to retain the rights to Alpha Protocol for itself but was forced to give them up to Sega in order to get the contract signed. Obsidian has since been acquired by Microsoft and is now working on The Outer Worlds, which launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 25. Rest in peace, Alpha Protocol.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: New Screenshots Released

Square Enix has released 22 new screenshots and pieces of character art, showing previously unseen parts of Final Fantasy VII remake.

The screenshots include glimpses at the Shinra Building, Aerith gameplay (including what appears to be her Limit Break, Healing Wind), the Air Buster boss and more.

Character art also shows Cloud and Aerith’s new models in more detail. The screenshots run the length of what we expect the first episode of the Remake to encompass – although, as we know, these episodes have been inflated to the size of full games in their own right.

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Child’s Play Review

In 1988, Tom Holland and Don Mancini crafted a surprising horror-thriller about a serial killer who–utilizing mysterious voodoo magic–transports his soul into a popular children’s toy. The wacky premise and practical effects translated to box office success, launching a pop culture icon in Chucky and a sprawling franchise. 31 years later, original distributor MGM has remade the original film–despite the original series continuing under the watchful eye of original writer Don Mancini, with a SYFY TV series currently in development–and though it comes up with an entirely new backstory for the killer doll and stars an intriguing cast, the Child’s Play reboot feels derivative and unnecessary in all the ways that the cult classic felt fresh and boundary pushing.

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12 Minutes Is a Riveting Groundhog Day-Style Murder Mystery

12 Minutes had me at minute one, but playing it only reinforced my gut reaction to it: this is my favorite new game from E3 2019, and if it’s not already on your radar, it’s time to rectify that. The concept is a clever mashup of a roguelike and a traditional point-and-click adventure game, viewed from a top-down perspective: playing as the husband, you and your wife are sitting down to dinner, where she wants to share some big news. She’s prepared something special to eat, and she asks you to set the table. But you can do anything you like and your wife will react. If you sit on the couch, she’ll sit next to you and cuddle in front of the TV. You can wander the apartment – I saw a bathroom, bedroom, and a closet – and it doesn’t appear you can leave. Dialogue options change based on your choices.

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