Chris Kohler

Super Mario Bros. 2 and Kirby’s Adventure are coming to Switch Online on February 13, Nintendo said today. Get ready to tear up some turnips. The Japanese NES app will get these two games and also Tsuppari Oozumo, a sumo game made by Tecmo.

The Best WiiWare Games To Buy Before They All Disappear

Nintendo’s first tentative steps into the world of original downloadable games came in 2008 with the launch of WiiWare, for the original Wii. It was a weird, eclectic mix of games, and it’s all going away soon. Before that happens, here are the games you might want to load onto your Wii or Wii U.…

Switch Is Selling Like Wii, Thanks To Traditional Nintendo Games

Nintendo had a wildly successful December in the U.S., the market research company NPD said on Wednesday. Both Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the Switch hardware itself sold in quantities that could legitimately be called “record-breaking.” Nintendo’s dream of selling Wii-like quantities of the Switch is looking more likely today—and it didn’t have to have…

Telling Lies, the next game from Her Story creator Sam Barlow, will have an all-star cast including Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus), Alexandra Shipp (X-Men: Apocalypse), Kerry Bishé (Halt and Catch Fire), and Angela Sarafyan (Westworld). Annapurna Interactive will publish the game this year.

Travis Strikes Again‘s Ending Hints At The Future Of No More Heroes 

The final sequences of Travis Strikes Again have some interesting twists for fans of Grasshopper Manufacture’s games who might want to know what’s coming next from Goichi Suda’s studio. If you want to experience them for yourself, read no further! If you’d rather get spoiled, this is for you. Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, out…

Nintendo’s Adorable 8-Bit Robot Fighting Game Is Now Playable On Switch

As usual with Nintendo’s classic game services, Switch Online’s NES app now has more games in Japan than it does in the rest of the world. While today’s worldwide update included Blaster Master and Zelda II, Japan also got a very cool fighting game called Joy Mech Fight. Fortunately, since Switch is region-free, anyone with…

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes: The Kotaku Review

Goichi “Suda51″ Suda loves video games. Oh, sure, I love video games, and you probably do too. But when you play one of the games from Suda51 and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture, you can’t fail to come away with the impression that he lives and breathes this stuff—the passion for games, players, the culture around…

Super Nintendo Game Names Are Buried In The Switch Online NES App

Switch Online’s NES classics app now has titles and descriptions for 22 Super Nintendo games buried in its code, according to dataminers who have looked at the program. That’s a welcome glimmer of hope for anyone hoping to play Super Mario World on their Switch, but it doesn’t necessarily mean those games will show up…

Monthly Waves Of NES Games Are Triggering Monthly Complaints About Switch Online

Every time Nintendo posts a YouTube video about its NES games for Switch Online, it gets more thumbs down than thumbs up. Some Switch owners are clearly unhappy with how the paid online service is going so far, but they’re not all in agreement about what it is they’re complaining about. That’ll make it a…

The Slightly Sketchy 1990s ‘Computer Fairs,’ A Major Part Of My Gaming History

If you asked me to list some of the games I bought or played in 1994, I’d probably start off with Donkey Kong Country and Final Fantasy III, and it would likely take me a long time before I ever mentioned Barneystein 3D. But it was part of my gaming world in 1994, and there’s…

Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link and Blaster Master are headed to Nintendo Switch Online on January 16 In the immortal words of the teacher from Willy Wonka: “Just two?” Oh well, at least they’re good ones. Looking forward to “special save data” for Zelda II that’ll make it less annoying. Yeah, I said it. Fight…

The ridiculously adorable Yoshi’s Crafted World will launch March 29 on Switch, Nintendo said today. This would be a good time to start stocking up on insulin for the impending sugar overload. Also, Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn, an upgraded version of the Wii game for the 3DS, will hit on March 8.

There’s now an improved version of VGC Online’s Sega Saturn jewel cases on Amazon. I checked them out myself and they don’t have any of the “fall apart immediately” issues of the first run. You can buy with confidence now. (Limited Run Games hasn’t started selling its cases individually yet.)

The Fighting Game Capcom Tried To Get Pulled From Arcades

Capcom once filed suit in an attempt to get Fighter’s History pulled from arcades. And today, you can play it on Switch! So, clearly, the lawsuit didn’t work out. The explosion of the fighting game genre after the release of Street Fighter II in 1991 raised some legal questions. The avalanche of one-on-one martial arts…

The Games That Really Deserve Official Translations

Over at the indispensable Legends of Localization website, author Clyde Mandelin has rounded up a list of the most-requested official game localizations. Of course Mother 3, the sequel to EarthBound, is #1 on that list, but below that are many other excellent Japanese games in popular series that never made it over. The second-place entry…

It’s 2019, which means that for the first time in 20 years, some creative works have now entered the public domain in the U.S., including the first Felix the Cat cartoon and the song “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” It’ll still be a long time before any video games enter the public domain, though, which…

It’s Much More Fun To Play Phantasy Star On Switch

Over my holiday vacation, I played all the way through Phantasy Star, Sega’s classic 1987 Master System role-playing game. I did this by way of playing the new Sega Ages release of the game for Switch—and now that I’m finished, I realize that I’d never have played it any other way. RPGs for 8-bit game…

This day in history: Kids play the Epoch Cassette Vision, an early Japanese home gaming console, in a Tokyo department store on December 20, 1981. Cassette Vision was the most popular game console in Japan until the Nintendo Famicom came along in 1983.

The 64DD Was One Of Nintendo’s Oddest Experiments

Switch Online is Nintendo’s first paid online gaming service, right? Nope. In 1999, Nintendo added the Internet to its Nintendo 64 hardware, by way of a disk drive add-on called the 64DD. It’s one of the company’s most interesting failures. Yes, it’s time once again for Complete In Box, our show that takes a look…

Switch’s New NES Controllers Do More Than You Might Think

Nintendo has shipped out its first batch of classic-style NES controllers for Switch. I got a pair today, and I found them to be much more useful than I originally imagined they would be, in surprising ways. The Nintendo Entertainment System controllers are only available if you’re a member of Nintendo Switch Online, the paid…