Ethan Gach

Frostpunk‘s New Expansion Is About Digging Through The Past

Frostpunk, a post-apocalyptic city builder, somehow manages to get even darker and more brutal in its latest expansion, a story-based scenario called The Fall of Winterhome. Rather than create and navigate my own messes, the game’s new scenario required me to clean up after somebody else’s with a feverish sense of urgency. In the main…

Hackers Have Already Cracked Open The Switch Online’s NES Library

Nintendo Switch Online hasn’t even been out for a day and hackers have already found a way to upload new NES games to its existing library. Nintendo Switch Online, a paid subscription service required to play most Switch games online starting today, also included other features like cloud backup saves and a downloadable library of…

Gaming peripheral maker Hyperkin is releasing another Duke replica, this time in green. The black version was surprisingly ergonomical for being a $70 nostalgia trap, but if you like a splash of color to go with your ginormous hands, the green Duke has you covered. It’s currently available at Gamestop and Amazon.

You can download the Famicom versions of Switch Online’s NES games from the Japanese eShop using a fake Japanese Nintendo Account. There aren’t many differences in most cases but it’s still pretty neat. Plus the Famicom box art is way cooler, and in the future Japan might get different games.

PSA: Switch Online doesn’t create backup saves for games automatically. You have to manually initiate the process by either loading the game or going into its settings by hovering over top of its icon and clicking “+”. Only afterward doing that will the backup saves stay updated automatically.

Undertale Is Finally On A Nintendo Console Where It Belongs

Undertale is out on Switch today. It took three years for the excellent JRPG-inspired adventure to finally arrive on a Nintendo console. Now it has and, despite the sometimes clumsy Joy-Con controls, the game feels like it’s come home. In Undertale you play as a kid who’s somehow ended up in the underground, a world…

Good news: there’s a new cyberpunk bartending game called N1RV ANN-A. Bad news: it’s not due out until 2020. Sukeban Games, makers of 2016’s VA-11 HALL-A, announced its sequel with a reveal trailer today. Fortunately, that leaves plenty of time to replay VA-11 when it gets ported to Switch and PS4 in early 2019

Here’s What New Gwent Will Be And Why It’s Exciting

Big things are just over the horizon for Gwent, the collectible card game based on the Witcher series that has been playable for two years but is only officially coming out in the coming months. Anyone who has been confused about the long beta, the shifting release dates or the whereabouts of any single player…

YouTube Is Closing YouTube Gaming 

YouTube is getting rid of its dedicated gaming app after it failed to find a big enough audience, the company announced today in a blog post. Instead, gaming-specific content and features will have a new, dedicated home within the main YouTube site. YouTube Gaming originally launched in 2015 after the video game streaming platform Twitch…

The Nintendo Switch’s Online Service Has Some Weird Details

Nintendo Switch Online launches tomorrow on September 18, and in the past few days, we’ve learned a bit about the new features coming as part of the service and how they will affect the games involved. Switch Online is Nintendo’s version of Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus, and like both of those services, it costs…

Completionist Speedruns Of Final Fantasy VII Are No Joke

In September of last year, Caleb Hart first streamed a completionist run of Final Fantasy VII. The PS1-era JRPG is notoriously involved, filled with hyper-difficult extra bosses and complicated sidequests. When it released in 1997 it shocked people by being too big to fit on one disc, instead requiring three. In recent weeks though, Hart…

In Japan, The Nintendo Switch Is Streaming Games That It’s Not Powerful Enough To Run

The oddest announcement from Nintendo yesterday wasn’t on the Nintendo Direct that aired in the West. It happened on on the Japanese Nintendo Direct stream when the company revealed that. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey will be playable on the console when it releases October 5—thanks to streaming. This cloud-based version of the game will only be…

Lucas Pope, the developer behind Papers, Please, says his new game, Return of the Obra Dinn, should be completed this fall. It takes place in the early 1800s and revolves around managing insurance and solving murder mysteries. There’s a brief new trailer as well. Currently, it’s being developed for PC and Mac.

But Seriously Who Is Peachette

Nintendo dropped a bombshell during its Direct yesterday that has added a fascinating and perplexing new layer to our collective understanding of the expanded Mario universe: By placing a gold crown on her head, Toadette can become Peach. Or, more specifically, Peachette. Does this mean Peach has really been a Toad all this time? And…

Nintendo Switch Is Getting NES Controllers

The Switch is getting NES controllers for the library of NES games releasing on September 18 as part of the console’s monthly online subscription service. They’ll come in packs of two, including both a right and left controller, for $60. They charge by being placed on either side of the Switch, just like the Joy-Con…

PS4 Owners Feel Trolled By The New 6.0 Update

Sony released a new firmware update for the PlayStation 4 today—a nice round number, 6.0. Such point-zero updates often mean big new changes for a platform, which is what fans were hoping for. This wishlist possibly even included name changes, because PSN users are nothing if not imaginative dreamers. Unfortunately, the update did not bring…

Beating Dead Cells Fast Is Mostly About Running Away

Behold someone who has clearly played a ton of Dead Cells kicking the game’s ass in record time and making it look easy. Motion Twin’s side-scrolling rogue-lite came out just last month, but before that it spent a year in Early Access on Steam. That’s given a lot of players plenty of time to master…

I Really Want To Help Spider-Man Find All His Backpacks

Spider-Man has done the unthinkable and turned me into a completionist. I hate busy work and repetition, and I’ve never 100%’ed a game in my life, but Spider-Man’s various idiosyncratic collectibles changed all of that. As I said in my review, I enjoyed most of the side missions, but I especially loved hunting for Peter…

Epic Drops Video Capture From Fortnite On Switch, Cites Performance Issues

Earlier today, Epic released a new content update for Fortnite that, among other things, vaulted the game’s overpowered drum gun. Something else went missing though, at least for Switch players: the ability to use the system’s video capture while playing the game. After the new update was pushed out early this morning, Fortnite players on…

Some Switch Games Won’t Support Cloud Saving To Prevent Cheating, Nintendo Says

Last Friday, posters on the gaming forum ResetEra discovered that the Nintendo website information page for Splatoon 2 had been updated with a note saying the game does not support cloud save backups, one of the big new features being added to the Switch when its paid online service launches later this month. It’s to…