Video Games

Players will be able to go straight from the opening sequence to the final boss in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Series producer Eiji Aonuma has confirmed as much. In an interview via Polygon, Aonuma offered up that it’s “not impossible” for players to go straight to the end goal, the final boss, without doing anything else as the developers “created the game like that”. While also suggesting that a player who does this is either a “really good gamer” or a “little crazy”. Aonuma may have also thrown down the proverbial Power Glove (a Nintendo-esque gauntlet) with his comment that in Breath of the Wild it “might be fun for fans to compete in a challenge for who can clear it first.” Nintendo games and gamers are no strangers to speedruns. The Metroid series has long been a field for such speedruns, with players eschewing items ...

There have undoubtedly cases where Nintendo has been a bit old fashioned and overprotective at times. But deriding Nintendo for being parochial and conservative and supposedly not wanting to allow “lesbian love” into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is to fundamentally miss the point. It’s seemingly to push an agenda which is unlikely to even be there. Are games in The Legend of Zelda series really even about love? Eiji Aonuma’s comments (which could be somewhat lost in translation) about “balance in the Triforce” and choosing the “simpler” option of retaining the traditional gameplay roles of the male Link and the female Zelda does not seem unreasonable, given the size and scope of the new Zelda game, the storyline of series, and the nature of the games themselves. They’re about fun, adventure, exploring dungeons and solving puzzles. They are games to be played and enjoyed. Escapism. Where ...

E3 2016 and Nintendo’s major gambit, the new The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild appears to be paying off. Set to be released in 2017 simultaneously on the Wii U and Nintendo’s next console still-in-codename-phase the NX, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma indicated The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would be the “same experience” on both consoles. He didn’t elaborate any further on whether the NX version could see exclusive elements or features. What Nintendo has been conveying since 2014, was that this next big Zelda game would challenge what had become stables, and arguably stale conventions, in the game series. Amongst this has been moving to a more open-world and nonlinear style of RPG for Breath of the Wild, as opposed to the far more on-rails (and often repetitive) Skyward Sword. Aonuma has said that in this new Zelda game, “the world is the main ...

At E3 2016, Todd Howard, head of Bethesda Game Studios officially confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI (that’s The Elder Scrolls 6 for the non-purists) is being worked on. Gamers can expect that much, but they may not expect the game any time sign. Howard confirmed Bethesda is working on three new projects, and TES VI is likely the last to be completed amongst them. With the head of Bethesda calling it “kind of like the elephant in the room” and that “it’s a very long way off”. Further elaborating: “I could sit here and explain the game to you, and you would say: ‘That sounds like you don’t even have the technology. How long is that going to take?’ So it is something that’s going to take a lot of time, what he have in mind for that game, and we actually have two other large projects we’re also ...

Rumours from leaks sprung last week have turned out to be true, Skyrim is getting a remaster. In Bethesda’s E3 conference, Todd Howard announced that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition will be headed to PC and both the PS4 and Xbox One consoles come 28 October 2016. It may not be quite the Skyrim II some wishful-thinking fans were hoping for. Nor is it the highly anticipated and still mysterious Akaviri Elder Scrolls VI, which has been rumoured to be set in locations across Tamriel as different as Black Marsh, Hammerfell, and Elsweyr. Take all of those speculations with a grain of moonsugar though. It might even make Khajiiti lore somewhat comprehensible. Bad news out of the way, the good news is it’s more Skyrim and more Skyrim. With the game to feature beefed up graphics based on technical buzzwords such as “new snow shaders” and “volumetric god ...

It sort of says Pikachu, but there’s something a little more shocking in store for Pokémon fans in Hong Kong. Their beloved, and arguably favourite Pokémon character Pikachu is getting a bit of a name change. Yet it’s not being seen as a good evolution of the character in Hong Kong. The release of Pokémon Sun and Moon in December 2016 in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China will mark the first time that the Pokémon video games have been made available in traditional and simplified Chinese. Previously the Pokémon video games were translated based on local languages and regional dialects. Nintendo now wants to simply and unify all of this. With the Pokémon franchise to officially be called 精靈寶可夢 or Jingling Baokemeng in Mandarin throughout Greater China. The upset for Hong Kong gamers is that Nintendo has chosen Mandarin as the official language for all of its renamed Pokémon, ...

As testament to just how important saved video game data can be to someone, a Japanese man using the Twitter handle Wanikun, has kept his Super Famicom turned on for the past 20 years. The Super Famicom console, or Super Nintendo or SNES as it’s known outside of Japan, has had its power kept on for 20 years by the man to preserve his saved data for the Umihara Kawase video game. ちなみに、20年以上SFCの電源を入れっぱなしにしてある初代 #海腹川背 は、稼働時間は 18万時間を突破しているものと思われます。 電源落とすとリプレイデータは消失します。たぶん pic.twitter.com/6ZJfLi997x — Wanikun (@UMIHARAKawase) September 30, 2015 To retain the saved game data, the game cartridge uses static RAM powered by internal batteries for when the cartridge is removed from the machine. Provided the batteries remain charged, the saved data remains intact. However, when the batteries in the game cartridge started to fail, the only way Wanikun could keep his precious Umihara Kawase saved data, was to leave the cartridge in the Super ...

“Mamma mia,” as Mario Mario would say. A glitch has been found in the Super Mario 64 game! Apart from arguably being the game which first truly brought 3D platforming to the gaming masses, and bearing the fabled Nintendo Seal of Quality, significant glitches in a flagship Nintendo game are just plain rare. (Aside from that game-breaking Song of the Hero quest ordering glitch in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.) Discovered on Twitch, by DOTA_Teabag, the glitch occurred while collecting the red coins in the Tick Tock Clock stage on the Japanese version of Super Mario 64. The glitch warps the player upwards, skipping a chunk of the stage. Think of the SM64 speedrun potential. Or telling Shigeru Miyamoto you’ve confirmed a glitch in SM64. If someone can replicate the glitch then pannenkoek2012 of YouTube gaming fame is offering a $1,000 reward for proof of it, under the following ...