Nintendolife

Hello Kitty Island Adventure released on Apple Arcade in July 2023 to generally positive reviews. A year and a half later, the Switch release brings a charming cast of Sanrio characters and their island resort to a wider audience—an audience ultimately in for a good time.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure opens on a plane en route to a mysterious resort with lots of familiar faces from the Sanrio franchise on board. After creating an animal avatar of our own (a moody purple bunny), we soon found ourselves jumping out of the plane and gliding to the ground with a handful of balloons. We get our first major quest shortly after touching down: find everyone who was scattered across the island during the descent.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Despite having a big quest to start us off, the game gave us a refreshing amount of free reign to begin exploring and building relationships right off the bat. Within the first hour of gameplay, we’d only tracked down a couple of lost characters bu..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)A few years ago, developers Adglobe and Live Wire (which, fun fact, also developed Harvestella) released a Metroidvania called Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights to high praise. Combining a heavy atmosphere with tough, Soulslike combat in a dark fantasy world, it stood out as a notably quality addition to a genre that feels like it gets at least one new entry every week. The sequel, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the mist, is a strong iteration on its predecessor’s formula. It’s everything a Metroidvania should be and, even if it’s not exactly revolutionary, it executes its vision well.

Ender Magnolia is set a number of years after Ender Lilies, placing you in the role of Lilac, a young girl who awakens from a long slumber in a strange and decaying world. What’s left of society is occupied by two different races: humans and the creepy machines called Homunculi. Some Homunculi could easily pass as human while others have much more monstrous or..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)The problem with the term ‘Metroidvania’ is that it’s a far broader genre classification than some give it credit for. Depending on where they fall on the spectrum between the exploration-heavy Metroid series and the combat-centric Castlevania series, it’s possible for two games to both be considered Metroidvanias while playing, looking, and sounding nothing alike. Neither extreme is more valid than the other. What’s important is understanding which portions of the genre a given title is committed to, and whether it’s successful.

It’s not enough to simply call Blade Chimera a great Metroidvania and leave it at that. What Team Ladybug (Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, Drainus) has cooked up here is a game that is impressively clear-eyed in identifying its priorities — which just so happen to mirror many of the tenets of Konami’s legendary vampire hunting series — and executing on them to incredible effect. It doesn’t do e..

It’s not unfair to say that the gaming landscape was somewhat different when Donkey Kong Country Returns first fell into our laps in 2010; 2D platformers were a rare breed, and ol’ DK himself hadn’t arguably had a mainline entry in his series since 2004’s Jungle Beat. Back then, the title said it all: not only was Donkey Kong back, but Donkey Kong Country had indeed returned. That’s not quite the world we’re living in 15 years later.

Having said that, just like the original, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD explains everything you need to know about it in the title: it’s Donkey Kong Country Returns in HD, and unfortunately, it’s not much more than that. This is that same great game from the Wii era tarted up a bit here and there.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
The Tiki Tak Tribe – a set of manipulative, sentient instruments, naturally – have stolen DK’s beloved banana horde for their own purposes, and have hypnotised the local fauna into turning on our simian superhero. Either th..

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Jim is reliving a childhood trauma to mark Pikmin 2’s 20th anniversary…

To the casual observer, Pikmin must seem like a pretty relaxed experience. Everything is colourful. The characters are cute. There’s even a little dog guy in the latest one. All told, it must just be delightful.
Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube789kWatch on YouTube
It’s no secret that I love Pikmin and, with bloodshot eyes and unbrushed hair, I am here to grab you by the shoulders and tell you that you are wrong.

Pikmin is not a relaxing experience. Sure, your little buddies are cute, but good luck getting to sleep at night after you’ve heard their cute little screams. PNF-404 (which is the planet tha..

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

Soapbox features enable our individual writers and contributors to voice their opinions on hot topics and random stuff they’ve been chewing over. Today, Alana is talking about a Vanillaware oldie — Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a Wii title that is celebrating its 15th anniversary. And, in the wake of 13 Sentinels and Unicorn Overlord’s success, it’s time to give Vanillaware’s older title some love.

Vanillaware has been pretty much everywhere. It’s visited magical, mystical storybook worlds in Odin Sphere. It’s returned to a medieval, warfaring world many times with Grand Knights History and Unicorn Overlord. It’s been to 1980s Japan in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. We’ve even been able to go to witch school thanks to GrimGrimoire. But despite the wide variety of softly painted and gorgeous worlds, I always find myself looking back to Edo..

Over the holiday season, we’re republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!

Four decades after it became an international sales phenomenon and dominated a crowded games market, the Nintendo Entertainment System – the 8-bit box that gave birth to some of the medium’s biggest enduring franchises – today finds itself playing host to something else entirely: new aftermarket IPs that are strikingly polished and joyously fun.
Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube789kWatch on YouTube
The homebrew scene for the NES has flourished over the two decades, especially so with the rise of tools like NESmaker in 2018, which makes developing for the console far more approachable. Inspired by pioneer developers, the minds behind Morphcat Games earned their stripes coding games from scratch using 6502 assembly language.

Enter Micro Mages. An homage to NES-era platformers, the 2019 game was the subject of a viral YouTube m..

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)Here’s the thing about The Thing: Remastered; it’s still very much 2002’s The Thing. Which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much you like your The Thing.

2002’s The Thing, you see, which was developed by Computer Artworks and based on the intensely sexy Kurt Russell movie, The Thing — itself based on a novella that isn’t called The Thing — is a real mixed bag of a game, truth be told. It sets its stall out impressively, digging into the creeping fear and slowly rising paranoia of the classic movie, giving you some light squad control and an intriguing fear/trust system, whilst presenting its tale in environs that, whilst certainly now aged, still absolutely nail the vibe of the thing (didn’t even mean that one). But! It also falls apart quite badly for the second stretch of its slight running time.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Let’s stick with the positives for now, though. This is a game that’s always had ..