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On March 10, retailers will be offering up some discounts for select Mario games with the purchase of a Nintendo Switch in celebration of Mario Day. You can purchase a Nintendo Switch and one of its Mario games for a total of $330. GameStop will be offering the Switch deal only on March 10, while other retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Target will have the deal from March 10-16. If you already own a Switch, you can purchase a digital download code for any of the five Mario games being offered for $40.

Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb has announced that Crackdown 2 is now Xbox One backwards compatible. The game is also now free on the Xbox Live store.

With this announcement, you can now own the entire Crackdown trilogy without spending a dime, provided you already have a subscription to Xbox Game Pass. Prior to the release of the third game, the original Crackdown was made free on the Xbox Live marketplace, and Crackdown 3 is included in the list of games offered through Game Pass. Both Crackdown and Crackdown 2 can be played on Xbox One via backwards compatibility–along with a long list of other games.

In our Crackdown review, Jeff Gerstmann gave the game a 7.8/10, writing, “Crackdown feels unfinished. It feels like the developers sat down and crafted a wonderful-looking city and carefully considered how the gameplay and abilities should work, and then they didn’t have enough time to plug in enough activities to take advantage of it all.”

In our Crackdown 2 review, Chris Watters gave the game a 7/10, writing, “What Crackdown 2 does offer is a whole bunch of room to have fun. Exploring the vast city, grabbing orbs, pulling off stunts, and flexing your abilities can keep you entertained for hours, and it’s even more enjoyable when you have some friends along to add their own sparks of diversion.”

Finally, in our Crackdown 3 review, Chris Pereira gave the game a 5/10, writing, “…it soon becomes apparent that the game has little new to offer beyond cool destruction tech that never gets put to good use. It certainly delivers on letting you blow things up and jump around the city. However, a dozen years after the first Crackdown offered that same experience but failed to provide you with enough interesting content surrounding that, it’s truly disappointing to see this latest iteration suffer from the very same problems.”

With March having finally arrived, we’re slowly, but steadily moving through 2019. Capcom and Square Enix capped off January with two tremendous games, the Resident Evil 2 remake and Kingdom Hearts 3. On the other hand, we saw the release of three big-name games in February, which included Anthem, Metro Exodus, and Far Cry: New Dawn. Suffice to say, we’ve got a pretty steady lineup of new games so far. However, March is looking to shake things up further with even more exciting new games.

Starting off March’s big releases are Dead or Alive 6 and Devil May Cry 5, which will be closely followed by Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 in the middle of the month. The latter end of March will see the launch of From Software’s new epic, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, as well as Nintendo’s adorable platformer, Yoshi’s Crafted World.

There are plenty of other more smaller experiences and remasters on the way this month as well. You can see all of the biggest game releases for March 2019 below. For a wider look at what’s ahead this year, be sure to check out our complete list of game release dates in 2019.

Devil May Cry 5 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) — March 8

After a six-year hiatus, the Devil May Cry franchise makes its long-awaited return with this month’s release of Devil May Cry 5. The highly anticipated installment features the series’ trademark stylish, over-the-top action, but this time around, it stars three playable characters: Dante, Nero, and newcomer V, who battles by summoning demonic familiars. That isn’t the only way it diverges from previous games; it also introduces a new mechanic called the Cameo System, which allows players to team up online.

Further reading:

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (PS4, Xbox Once, PC) — March 15

The Division 2 is Ubisoft Massive’s follow-up to its 2016 open-world shooter. This time around it’s set in Washington DC and deals with the exploits of the Division attempting to reclaim the capital. Likes its predecessor, you work alongside other players to complete objectives while collecting all sorts of loot in the process.

Further reading:

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PS4, Xbox One, PC) — March 22

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the long-awaited new game from acclaimed studio From Software. You play as a mysterious shinobi, known as the one-armed wolf, with a weaponized prosthetic arm seeking to save his kidnapped lord and exact revenge on the one who cut off his arm. It appears to be expanding upon the classic Dark Souls formula by introducing stealth-action elements and more acrobatic maneuvers.

Further reading:

Yoshi’s Crafted World (Switch) — March 29

While Yoshi’s Crafted World appears to be a rather straightforward 2D side-scroller, it offers a subtle twist to the formula in which levels appear as dioramas, and you switch from the front view to a behind-the-scenes look to reveal the stages’ secrets. Revealed during Nintendo’s E3 2017 presentation, Yoshi’s Crafted World looks like one of Nintendo’s most adorable games yet.

Further reading:

Full March Release Schedule

It’s hard to imagine a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie without Stan Lee popping up make fans laugh via some kind of cameo. The co-creator of so many Marvel characters, from Spider-Man to Scarlet Witch, has been a regular fixture in the MCU, appearing briefly in each film, along with a handful of non-Marvel Studios titles.

With Lee’s passing in late 2018, though, there was some fear that his cameo in Captain Marvel would be the last. Thankfully, that’s not the case. In an interview with ET Online, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirms that more appearances were filmed before Lee’s death. Warning: The following contains spoilers for Lee’s role in Captain Marvel. If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading now.

“We shot a couple of others, so we’re coming up on the last of them, yes,” he said. Feige also confirmed that one of said cameos is for the next MCU movie, Avengers: Endgame. When asked about Spider-Man: Far From Home, he offered, “We’ll see.”

Lee’s role in Captain Marvel actually finds him playing none other than Stan Lee. In a scene set on a train, he can be seen holding the script to Kevin Smith’s 1994 movie Mallrats–in which he plays himself–rehearsing dialogue. For a moment, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) thinks he’s a Skrull in disguise but instead acknowledges him with a small smile before moving onto the next potential suspect.

As a further tribute to Lee, the film also opens up with a modified version of the Marvel Studios signature, in which all of the MCU’s heroes have been replaced by his cameo appearances from over the years. The introduction is followed with a simple, “Thank you Stan.”

According to Feige, the idea to honor the comics icon this way came to fruition shortly after his passing. “We figured, as we always have, the way to pay honor to him is the way we’ve been trying to do while he was alive, which is the movies. I had always thought in the back of my head, should that day ever come–which as I’ve previously said, I wasn’t sure it would. Like, I envisioned him at 127–that I would want something sort of touching and rousing up front, as opposed to sort of depressing at the end.”

For a look at all of Lee’s cameo contributions to Marvel movies, take a look at our definitive ranking. Also, make sure to check out this behind-the-scenes look at how the Spider-Man co-creator has not just one, but dozens of cameos in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Captain Marvel is the final stop on the Marvel Cinematic Universe space train that’s been hurtling inexorably towards Avengers: Endgame for an entire decade. What Marvel has accomplished with the MCU is basically a miracle, tying disparate franchises with varying tones and dozens of characters together into one masterful tapestry that somehow, against all odds, really works. This has never been done before–or even attempted–which means there’s no set template for how to end it. Marvel had to sit down and decide, at some point, whether they’d make Captain Marvel so integral to the plot of Endgame that this penultimate MCU movie would be essential viewing.

That’s an important question for the more casual MCU fans among us: Is Captain Marvel essential viewing? Do you have to go see Marvel’s first movie starring a female superhero if you want to have any hope of understanding what’s going on in Endgame? The answer, ultimately, is probably not–but at this point, we can’t exactly be 100% certain, considering Endgame is still on the horizon.

Here are the facts: Avengers: Infinity War ended with a pretty killer Captain Marvel tease, as Nick Fury’s final act before disintegrating into cosmic dust was to send a message using what appeared–and indeed turned out–to be a modified 1990s era pager. As the camera zoomed in on that strange, retro plot device, an unmistakable logo appeared: Captain Marvel’s red-and-blue-flanked star.

The Captain Marvel movie had already been announced as Marvel’s first female-led MCU adventure way back in 2014–five years ago!–and Brie Larson was introduced as the actress playing Carol Danvers in 2016. The movie was eventually delayed from a planned 2018 release date into 2019, but other than that, we heard very little about Captain Marvel between 2016 and Infinity War’s release last year. But with the teaser following Thanos’s Snap, it became clear that Carol Danvers will play a part in the finale of the MCU’s first three phases in Avengers: Endgame.

That leads us to the question: Do you need to see Captain Marvel’s standalone movie if you want to understand the hero’s role in Endgame? We say probably not, because whatever her role in the upcoming movie is, Marvel will likely take some time to re-introduce her to audiences in Endgame itself. There’s a perfect opportunity built into the plot, as the rest of the remaining Avengers and other heroes–Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hulk, Ant Man, Rocket, Nebula, and War Machine–currently have no idea who she is, and they’ll have to meet her at some point. (We have a recap if you want to know what happens in Captain Marvel’s end credits scenes.)

Even if Endgame brushes quickly past this introduction–the movie will no doubt have a lot to jam in when it comes to undoing Thanos’s victory–there will be countless ways to catch up on Captain Marvel’s story before Endgame comes out. If you just can’t bring yourself to head to the theater in the coming weeks and see it for yourself, you can still check out our explainers for everything the movie establishes, from how Captain Marvel got her powers to what it reveals about Nick Fury’s origins and the beginnings of the Avengers Initiative.

All that said: Even if Captain Marvel feels like a somewhat unnecessary narrative cul-de-sac this close to Avengers: Endgame’s release on April 26 (which I argue in my review), it’s still an extremely solid entry in the MCU in its own right. It certainly doesn’t reach the previous heights of movies like Civil War, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, and Infinity War–or even worthy side stories like the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie–but Carol’s origin story is a fun adventure with a strong hero front and center, the great blend of action, drama, and comedy we’ve come to expect from the MCU, and a fun mystery at its core.

If you have the ability to go see Captain Marvel, absolutely do. We can’t be completely sure at this point whether or not Carol’s origin story will be integral to understanding everything that’s about to go down in Avengers: Endgame. But if you’re wondering whether Captain Marvel is absolutely essential viewing in the build-up to the Avengers’ final fight, my money is on “no.”