The wacky brawler Bare Butt Boxing will be entering Steam early access on May 4, 2023. Coming from developer Tuatara Games, the game is a multiplayer free-for-all where up to five players select different alien species who are all out to beat each other to a pulp without pants on. Suns out, buns out as they say.

Featuring both local and online multiplayer, Bare Butt Boxing is reminiscent of games such as Gang Beasts or Human Fall Flat. The general gist is a physics-based multiplayer sandbox where winning means using any means possible to defeat your opponent. There is no honor in fighting fair: you need to simply pummel your foes into submission.

"Get ready for a gleefully chaotic, free-for-all party brawl with all your mates in Bare Butt Boxing just in time for summer break," said Tuatara Games founder Klemen Lozar. "The entire team is ecstatic for all of our fans to experience the intensely enjoyable matches that we've had developing over the past few years.

It's hard to deny the color on display, though it will be interesting to see if Bare Butt Boxing can compete in a world that has Fall Guys and Fortnite. This does seem to be carving out its own niche.

After an undisclosed early access period, Bare Butt Boxing will release on PC, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch later in the year. Be sure to hold onto your butts until it drops.

Featured image via Tuatara Games

The Minecraft 1.20 announcement is here to say spring is in the air. Mojang has announced that a cherry blossom biome is coming in the new update. In the spirit of Valentine’s day, Minecraft has shown fans some love with this brand-new pink Cherry Blossom biome to explore. 

The developer shared that the feature will be available within Java snapshots, Bedrock betas, and previews. A specific release date for 1.20 has yet to be confirmed but is set for 2023. 

This charming pink biome will be a sanctuary for you to escape to. Mojang stated that only three neutral mobs will spawn in the biome:

• Pigs
• Sheep
• Bees

Throughout the biome, you'll discover cherry tree saplings that you can plant freely. You'll be able to break down cherry trees into full pink colored wood-sets, and craft a brand new style of hanging sign coming in the update.

Screenshot via Mojang

While the 1.20 update will include other exciting features like archaeology and an ancient sniffer mob that is back from extinction, the Cherry Blossom Biome is plenty to look forward to, and we can’t wait to wander across the pink flower-dappled blocks! For more on Minecraft, including seeds and guides, head over here.

Featured image via Mojang.

Fire Emblem has been around a long time — 33 years, to be exact. The original game released in 1990, and was one of the foundational games in the strategy RPG genre. The series has changed a lot since through its 17 mainline Fire Emblem titles (three of which being remakes) and five spin-offs. We'll only be focusing on mainline entries and their remakes here.

We're going to walk you through the history of Fire Emblem, starting from the 1990 release of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and ending with this year's Fire Emblem: Engage, giving you a general overview of each game and what platforms you can find them on.

Many of these games are Japan-only releases and expensive even secondhand. Those that released digitally on the Wii U and 3DS eShops will soon be unavailable, as the eShop for that generation of Nintendo hardware will be closing on March 23, 2023. You'll have to pick them up before they're lost forever.

Nintendo remade a few of the Japanese-exclusive Fire Emblem games, but most have never been re-released in any form. These do not have official English translations, and obtaining their cartridges is not a cheap effort.

With all that out of the way, let's get down to it.

How to Play the Fire Emblem Games in Order

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (1990)

The original Fire Emblem game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, released in 1990 for the Famicom. Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light introduces Marth, Prince of the Kingdom of Altea, and the continent of Archanea. The story follows Marth's quest to reclaim his throne from the evil sorcerer Gharnef.

Marth and Archanea are major parts of the series and often come back in later entries, so this isn't a bad place to start. Nintendo ported Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to the Nintendo Switch in 2022 (though it was only available for a limited time), so it's one of the only original games in the series playable in the West. That said, it feels very much like a 33-year-old Famicom game.

• Original Platform: Nintendo Famicom
• Available on: Nintendo Switch

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem Gaiden (1992)

A side story sequel to Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Gaiden is set on the continent of Valentia, a continent torn apart by political war. It places in control of two armies, one commanded by Princess Cecilia and another by her childhood friend Alm, and introduced an overworld for players to navigate. It was the last game in the series for the Super Famicom never released outside of Japan.

• Original Platform: Nintendo Famicom
• Available on: N/A

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (1994)

The third game in the series, and the first on the Super Famicom, is divided into two parts. The first is a remake of Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, and the second is a sequel to the original game. It was never released outside of Japan.

• Original Platform: Nintendo Super Famicom
• Available on: N/A

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (1996)

Widely considered one of the best Fire Emblem games, Genealogy of the Holy War takes place on the continent of Jugdral over two generations as our heroes try to defeat a cult bent on resurrecting an evil dragon.

The first follows Sigurd, the Grannvalian prince, while the second follows his son, Seliph. Genealogy of the Holy War was the first game in the series to allow characters to marry and have children, something that would become a feature in later games, but was also never released outside of Japan.

• Original Platform: Nintendo Super Famicom
• Available on: N/A

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (1999)

The third and final game to be released for the Super Famicom, Thracia 776 also marked the start of a drought of Fire Emblem games on home consoles until 2005.

Also set on the continent of Jugdral, Thracia 776 is set in the gap between the first and second parts of Genealogy of the Holy War as main protagonist Leif rallies a private army to defeat the Grannvale Empire and restore the kingdom of Thracia. Like (almost) every other game up until this point, it was never released outside of Japan.

• Original Platform: Nintendo Super Famicom
• Available on: N/A

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (2002)

The first Fire Emblem to appear on the Game Boy Advance, The Binding Blade introduced Roy, a young nobleman from Phrae who leads an army against King Zephiel and the encroaching kingdom of Bern.

Roy would famously appear alongside Marth in Super Smash Bros. Melee, which would lead to later games (finally!) getting released in the West but this game itself was a Japan-exclusive release.

• Original Platform: Nintendo GameBoy Advance
• Available on: N/A

Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (2003)

The Blazing Blade, known simply as Fire Emblem outside of Japan, was a prequel to The Binding Blade and the first Fire Emblem to release in the West.

The Blazing Blade introduced fans to Lyn, Eliwood, and Hector, three young lords who band together to save the kingdom of Phrae and the continent of Elibe. It was re-released on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2014.

• Original Platform: Nintendo GameBoy Advance
• Available on: Wii U eShop

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (2004/2005)

Unlike many previous games in the series, The Sacred Stones is set in its own continuity. It follows twin siblings Eirika and Ephraim, princess and prince of the small kingdom of Renais, as they attempt to stop the invading Grado Empire.

The game features two separate campaigns, as Eirika and Ephraim take separates paths. Units could also take branching paths when promoted instead of locking them into pre-determined roles based on their starting class. The Sacred Stones released to widespread critical acclaim and is widely considered to be one of the best games in the series.

• Original Platform: Nintendo GameBoy Advance
• Available on: Nintendo 3DS (Ambassador Games), Wii U eShop

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (2005)

Path of Radiance was the first game to release on the GameCube, and unlike most games in the series, follows Ike and a band of mercenaries instead of a royal heir.

Path of Radiance's story is darker and more mature than other entries in the series, exploring topics like racism and genocide. Combine that with some of the best tactical combat the series has ever produced, and it's easy to see why Path of Radiance is regarded as peak Fire Emblem. Unfortunately, it has never been re-released and retail copies often go for more than $200 secondhand.

• Original Platform: Nintendo GameCube
• Available on: N/A

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (2007)

A direct sequel to Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn marked the first and only time the series would appear on the Wii, and the last time the series would appear on home consoles for more than a decade.

While the story was made so that players would be able to follow along without having played Path of Radiance, those who did could import their save data to increase characters' stats and allowing the player to view support conversations from the previous game. Like its predecessor, Radiant Dawn was never re-released. Secondhand copies regularly sell for more than $100.

• Original Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Available on: N/A

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (2008)

A remake of the original game, Shadow Dragon was the first game in the series to release on the DS. Shadow Dragon added many of series staples, like the weapon triangle, which weren't in the original release while faithfully retelling Marth's story — and letting Western gamers experience it for the first time. It was later re-released on the Wii U eShop.

• Original Platform: Nintendo DS
• Available on: Wii U eShop

Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (2010)

A remake of the Mystery of the Emblem, New Mystery of the Emblem opted to focus on the original content introduced in Mystery of the Emblem while adding content from Stellaview title BS Fire Emblem and new features like player Avatars. It was never released outside of Japan.

• Original Platform: Nintendo DS
• Available on: N/A

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem Awakening (2012)

Intended to be the series' swan song, Awakening ended up saving it. Awakening was more accessible than ever, making Robin a major part of the story, allowing players to disable permadeath, and allowing characters to marry and have children. Awakening is regarded as one of the best 3DS games — and Fire Emblem titles — ever. It has never been re-released.

• Available on: Nintendo 3DS, 3DS eShop

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem Fates (2015)

Another 3DS title, Fates is unique among Fire Emblem games because it was split into three different releases, each with its own different story: Birthright, which was meant for newer players; Conquest, which was meant for experience fans; and Revelation, the "true" third chapter.

All three versions were released physically, but Revelation's was very limited and it's extremely expensive as a result. Once the 3DS eShop shuts down, it will be all but impossible to obtain, so if you want it, get it now.

• Available on: Nintendo 3DS, 3DS eShop

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (2017)

A remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden and the last Fire Emblem game to release on handhelds, Shadows of Valentia retools Gaiden, adding modern elements to the original game while preserving the original emphasis on dungeon crawling and finally bringing the game to Western audiences.

• Available on: Nintendo 3DS, 3DS eShop

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)

The first game to release on a console in more than a decade and the first on Switch, Three Houses emphasized the social aspects of Fire Emblem while simplifying the combat for newcomers.

You play Byleth, a former mercenary-turned-professor at the Garreg Mach Monastery charged with leading a class of students from one of three rival nations now at peace. There's also a time skip later on, and branching paths that get pretty crazy depending on which class you choose. It was a different direction for Fire Emblem, but its success speaks for itself.

• Available on: Nintendo Switch, Switch eShop

Image via Nintendo

Fire Emblem: Engage (2023)

The new one! If Three Houses was a major series change-up, Engage is a return to the series' more complex map design. It also celebrates the series' history by allowing fans to team up with heroes from past games by equipping Emblem Rings that allow them to pass on their skills.

Players take control of Alear, the Divine Dragon who has just awakened after a thousand-year nap, and build an army to defeat Sombron, the Fell Dragon. Like Three Houses, it was released on Nintendo Switch. 

• Available on: Nintendo Switch, Switch eShop

Still here? Like I said, there are a lot of Fire Emblem games out there. But now you know what they are and where (if anywhere) you can get them. Perhaps more importantly, you know how to play them in order. Good luck, and happy strategizing.

Featured Image via Nintendo

Gnosia is coming to Steam later in 2021, developer Playism announced. While there's no current Gnosia Steam release date yet, it's worth waiting for.

Gnosia is a different kind of social deduction game. You'll uncover imposters and try to save the ship's crew, but in Gnosia, the imposters could be your friends. Gnosia are lifeforms intent on murdering all humans.

Each round gets you closer you your crew mates, learning about their lives, fears, and dreams, but more importantly, it gets you closer to understanding the mystery behind the Gnosia themselves. Unless, of course, you're playing as the Gnosia and just want every human dead.

It's a compelling system where each "loop," or round, gradually peels another layer away from the mystery.

It's always compelling, even when it frustrates, and we called it "a fantastic game with a riveting story and interesting characters supported by rich art and solid gameplay mechanics." Stay tuned for more on the Gnosia Steam release date. 

Rosalina is a playable character in Super Mario 3D World on Switch, alongside the four regulars of Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach. But instead of being available at the start, she's a secret character you must unlock.

If you've been wondering how to add her to the list of characters, we've got everything you need to know about doing so in the guide below.

First, finish the main game by clearing World Bowser and getting 170 Green Stars. After that, one of the Sprixies will leave a rocket in World 1.

Interact with the rocket, and go to 3D World's first bonus area, World Star. Then complete World Star-1, Rainbow Run. Like all bonus locations in the larger series, the stages here have a noticeable increase in difficulty.

Star-1 includes a color-switch platform challenge, Plessie ride with no guard rails, fast-rotating platforms, and more. The catsuit offers some insurance with the platforming challenges.

After beating that level, move on to World Star-2, Super Galaxy. It features a number of Octo Goombas and long stretches of rotating platforms.

If you don't have a cat bell and don't feel like finding one, using a Mario-series amiibo offers a random power-up and might be worth a shot if you've got one lying around.

The teal princess unlocks automatically once you clear World Star-2. Unlike other characters, she has a default spin attack that knocks out nearby enemies. However, the attack disappears once she obtains another power-up. Aside from that, she plays roughly the same as 3D World's other characters.

That's all you need to know about how to unlock Rosalina in Super Mario 3D World, but stick around for more Mario 3D World guides in the coming days.

Golden Sun

Surely, what Golden Sun fans want most is a sequel to the third game in the franchise. Sadly, that seems a bit unlikely at this point, even though fans haven't forgotten those games for even a second.

Golden Sun is an RPG series that started in 2001 on the Game Boy Advance. The second game came out the very next year on the very same handheld, while the third instalment launched on the DS in 2010.

The first two were made available on the Wii U, but it's time for all three to make their triumphant return on Nintendo Switch. If Nintendo started porting GBA and DS games to the Switch, they'd have an insane amount of classics to pull from.

Nintendo has so many beloved, older franchises tucked away, out of sight. It's time to bring the ones on this list, and so many others, back into the light. They've been slowly adding more games to the Switch's NES and SNES collection, but after three years, fans are looking for a bit more.

Which classic franchises would you like to see on the current-gen console? Let us know over on Twitter! 

Pokemon

It's honestly shocking that none of the past mainline Pokemon games have made it to the Nintendo Switch, even as ports.

The 3DS Virtual Console added Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold and Silver, and Crystal not too long ago, so mainline Pokemon ports aren't out of the question.

Even if Nintendo only brought back generations III to VI, fans would go wild. It's guaranteed money at this point.

With the portable nature of the Switch, those Pokemon classics could still be played on the go, just like the good old days. Except, in theory, they'd be able to have better online functionality if brought back today.

Fire Emblem

Currently, the only Fire Emblem games available on the Nintendo Switch are Fire Emblem Warriors, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. For a franchise that includes over 15 games, spanning from 1990 to the present, that isn't much of a selection.

3DS titles such as Echoes, Awakening, and even the annoyingly disconnected Fates would feel right at home on the Switch thanks to their portable origins. It might be asking for too much, but a few Fire Emblem titles from the GBA could also be ported, just like they were on the Wii U. The GameCube installments seem too far out of the realm of possibility, though.

Regardless, the return Fire Emblem's tactical RPG action and loveable casts could create tons of new fans while still managing to please the current ones who just want to comfortably replay old favorites.

Metroid

Metroid Prime 4 has had quite the rough development process, but it's being worked on as we speak. The team is even still in the process of bringing in various new artists and leads. 

It's probably safe to assume that, by the time it does launch, it'll be the first 3D Metroid game that some players can get their hands on without having to buy an older console. If the Wii U's Metroid Prime Trilogy bundle comes to the Switch, that issue will be solved.

The games in the trilogy supported both standard controllers and motion controls at different points, so the transition to the Switch's Pro Controller and Joy-Cons should be a smooth one.

New players will be able to catch up while returning fans get a much-needed refresher leading up to Metroid Prime 4.

Super Mario Galaxy

Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel are some of the very best Mario games of all time. It'd be hard to find any Nintendo fan that would be disappointed if both games returned on the Switch.

Just like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Super Mario Galaxy was rumored to be on its way to the console. Though, it was thought to be coming as a remaster, instead of just a port.

The two-part series first began in 2007, with the sequel coming out three years later. It's been a while. However, the games' motion control features would fit perfectly with the Joy-Cons when playing at home, and who wouldn't want the option to play Super Mario Galaxy on the go, too? It's a no-brainer.

The Legend of Zelda

The 3D Zeldas should have some kind of presence on the Switch by now, if we're being honest. The Wii U Virtual Console had an amazing selection of Nintendo classics that included titles from the NES, N64, Game Boy Advance, and more. Numerous Zelda games were among them.

We're talking masterpieces like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask here — neither of which have made it to the Switch in its three years of being on the market.

Fans would no doubt pay to play those again on the Switch in a heartbeat. Let's not forget Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword as well. The latter even caused a stir when a port was rumored to be in the works.

A lot of the Nintendo franchises on this list are absolute no-brainers in terms of whether or not they should come to the Switch. If Nintendo decided to bring any of these older games forward to current-gen, it would likely be the same as printing money.

Fans are already clamoring for any bit of Direct news they can find that relates to Nintendo's first-party games. Just imagine what would happen if a port or remaster of anything on this list became a reality.

Read on to see six Nintendo franchises that need to come to the Switch ASAP.

In what’s becoming a new trend for Nintendo, the Big N dropped a surprise Pikmin 3 Deluxe announcement trailer on Twitter today. Pikmin 3 is heading to Switch on October 30, bringing along all existing DLC and a bevy of other new features.

Pikmin 3 Switch adds the option to play through the entire story mode in co op mode, so you don’t have to go it alone if you don’t want to. There’s a new set of difficulty options and a new lock-on feature to make targeting easier. That’s on top of the DLC missions from the original Wii U Pikmin 3 release, multiplayer matches, and new side missions starring Louis and Olimar from the first two Pikmin games.

Pikmin 3 very much follows in its predecessors’ footsteps, except you have three space adventurers to control instead of one or two.

You’ve ended up on a strange planet and need to gather fruit, which translates to building up an army of adorable and oh-so-fragile Pikmin to do all the work for you. Pikmin 3 adds two new Pikmin types to shake up the formula: Pink Pikmin that fly and Rock Pikmin that smash things.

Nick Chavez, Nintendo’s Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, said:

Pikmin 3 Deluxe brings this classic franchise to life on Nintendo Switch, introducing a new audience to its beloved characters and gameplay, while also welcoming back returning players with new challenges.

It’s not Pikmin 4, assuming that’s still happening. But it is a chance for what’s widely regarded as one of the Wii U’s underrated classics to get a second chance of life.

Like Nintendo’s other second chances for Wii U games, Pikmin 3 Switch will sell for the usual retail price of $59.99. Stay tuned to GameSkinny for more Pikmin 3 news as it develops.

[Source: Nintendo of America]

Paper Mario Color Splash's True Ending

Paper Mario: Color Splash was bound to be a divisive Paper Mario game, but it still has its fair share of good moments.

Spoilers ahead, of course.

Conceived in that odd period where Nintendo insisted it knew what fans wanted and needed because the Wii and DS sold well, Color Splash continued Sticker Star’s unfortunate — and unnecessary — trend of trying to distinguish itself separate from RPGs. The result was still ultimately an RPG (go figure), but one with a few vital points taken out.

The trade-off was getting to enjoy the gorgeous environments and colorful characters Mario encountered this time around. Huey might not get the most attention, being cursed as the obligatory tutorial character. But he’s one of the best side characters since The Thousand Year Door. That’s largely down to having more personality than the likes of Kersti, who was basically just a Starlow rehash, or the Pixls who just… existed. 

Huey’s a scrappy lil’ guy with a wide range of emotions, some quick-witted retorts, and a penchant for breaking the fourth wall in as dry a way as possible. Maybe it’s because you’re in his world, restoring color that he represents, but Huey also seems more closely tied to Mario and the Color Splash journey.

So you really feel it at the end when that one thing happens, much more so than the end of Sticker Star. It’s the first time since TTYD where Paper Mario managed to pluck the heartstrings again, even more so because you don’t necessarily see what happens next unless you get the secret ending.

There are no Disney-style Mario tears to bring Huey back to life this time. It’s a subtle moment where Huey (in the yellow circle) rejoins the fabric of his world, and this story comes to an end.

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Our picks for the best Paper Mario moments are just the beginning. The series is brimming with memorable moments, so sound off in the comments and let us know yours! Paper Mario: The Origami King is set to release on July 17, here's to hoping for many more memorable moments to this new entry to Mario's most unique spin-offs.

Luigi as Mr. L

Poor Luigi. He’s been in the limelight just as long as his sainted brother, but despite having his very own (and very fun) spinoff series, Luigi never gets the same kind of love and attention. Paper Mario adds insult to injury most of the time.

In the original, Luigi quietly stews in his own jealousy while Mario’s off on a grand adventure. His only reward for tending the home fires, making sure meals are cooked, and generally whiling the time away by pining for a better life is leading the parade on Mario’s return. Mario’s parade — not his.

In The Thousand Year Door, Luigi tries setting off on his own adventure paralleling Mario’s. He’s off to rescue Princess Eclair in the Waffle Kingdom. Do we get to hear about it? Only in long bouts of exposition. 

Super Paper Mario finally sees Luigi come into his own. He’s briefly playable, but more importantly, he’s a recurring enemy. He even has a big destiny and important role to play, as foretold by the ancients.

Granted, Count Bleck brainwashes Luigi and turns him into Mr. L. to “help” him fulfill that destiny. But you gotta know Mr. L constantly harassing Mario, attacking him, and trying to be the hero was really just the true Luigi crying out for validation and love. Poor Weegee.

Bowser Doing Anything in The Thousand Year Door

Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga started Bowser on his road to comedic relief. But Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door proved the Koopa King’s talents were decidedly not strongest in the evil villain department.

TTYD shifted Bowser from the primary antagonist role he occupied in the original Paper Mario to that of wannabe bad guy always left behind.

Bowser never catches up to Mario, let alone Peach, until the very end. Which is just fine, since it leaves plenty of room for a variety of antics between him and Kammy Koopa.

These are definitely some of the game’s — maybe even the series’ — funniest moments, whether Kammy’s mourning the loss of her brown bag blimp lunch after Bowser refuses to take a ride or Bowser’s terrorizing the inhabitants of Rogueport.

His role in TTYD also made Bowser playable for the first time ever in Mario games, which is kind of a big deal. It probably isn’t a stretch to say the Bowser segments were the precursor for the Mega Mushroom. You have two goals: destroy as much as possible and get swole while doing it.

These aren’t touching like Peach’s segments. They’re just fun because breaking things is fun and breaking things as Bowser is even more fun.

Peach + TEC

The first Paper Mario introduced a side story for Peach. It was an interesting way to give Peach a new level of relevance while showing off life under Bowser’s occupation, but it also felt somewhat non-essential.

Peach outwits Bowser’s cruel and dense guards to find information that helps Mario on his quest. Maybe it would have been different if Peach’s segments were more common.

Either way, non-essential is definitely not how you could describe Thousand Year Door’s side story for Peach. It’s miles ahead of the original, and aside from being probably more relevant to the overall story than Mario’s own actions, it actually managed to be touching as well.

Slight spoilers follow.

Peach is once again held captive in an enemy stronghold. This time, she strikes up an unusual friendship — unusual because it’s with a computer, the X-Naut main system TEC XX. It’s friendship for Peach but something more for TEC, who falls in love with the Mushroom Kingdom’s most eligible princess. That’s a strange scenario that could easily just seem farcical.

But repeated conversations and interactions where TEC proves his devotion, plus that bittersweet dancing mini-game and TEC’s final sacrifice, make it touching and add a great deal more weight to Peach’s role in Thousand Year Door, particularly when considering what TEC knows about the X-Naughts’ plans.

Yes, it’s technically a series of best moments, but Peach and TEC’s story is still one of the best Paper Mario moments.

Meeting Your First Partner

Meeting Goombario in the original Paper Mario might seem like a strange choice for one of the best Paper Mario moments, but it was a sign of something big and new for the famous plumber and a big step up from his previous RPG adventure.

Don’t get me wrong. Super Mario RPG is a great game with plenty of memorable characters (looking at you, Geno). It’s also very much a Mario-meets-Squaresoft game.

All of Mario’s new partners and friends in Super Mario RPG, and even the villain, are slightly random. A talking cloud-mellow, what's basically Pinocchio in blue, and an evil sword thing determined to supplant Bowser as Chief Bad.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Heck, it’s the kind of adventurous experimentation a lot of games need anyway — but Mario embarking on a brand-new adventure with Mario characters by his side like we see in Paper Mario is something special.

Here was the start of a journey delving into the Mushroom Kingdom and putting its stars at the forefront instead of leaving them as supporting cast. And more than that, it gave everyone much more personality, even former enemies.

The irony of a Goomba idolizing Mario (how many of your forebears has his squashed, Goombario?) is uniquely Paper Mario, but even aside from setting the game’s comedic tone, it showed there was a lot more to the Mushroom Kingdom than just jumping high.

Paper Mario is one of Nintendo’s most beloved spinoff series, and it’s not hard to see why. Every game, even the iffy ones, are oozing with charm and character. And every game has at least one big standout moment that grabs your heart, breaks new ground for the series, or is just incredibly fun and ridiculous.

With Paper Mario: The Origami King lurking just over the horizon, we’ve combed through the Paper Mario series and picked out five of the best Paper Mario moments ever.

Tell us which of these 14 games you plan on playing by sounding off in the comments below. Be sure to let us know what game takes the edge off for you or which games should be on this list that aren't!

Of course, not everyone will want their gaming to be all teddy bears and rainbows. If you'd rather get your frustration out by fragging hordes of enemies or engaging in a thousand or so turns of a complex strategy battle title, there are still tons of options.

To get started, take a look at all the free games currently available, and stay tuned for our upcoming list of great games with the longest campaigns!

Wattam

Another extremely laid-back game without combat, the oddly intriguing Wattam is all about reconnecting with old friends while dancing, holding hands, and even skyrocketing off by using your odd hat.

Although there's perhaps more poop than you might care for in a relaxing game, Wattam is undeniably charming and a joy to play when you don't want something too heavy.

Gris

Watercolor is already pretty relaxing, so it just makes sense to use it as an art medium in a game meant to offer hope like Gris. You don't have to worry about combat or dying here, and this is one of those rare platformers where you won't be constantly frustrated while trying to figure out the mechanics.

What really makes Gris stand apart is its lack of dialog. Everything in this story is told through emotional connections and visual cues, which makes it extremely soothing to play.

Bejeweled 3

The original time waster. Bejeweled should always be in your backup list of quick and easy games to jump into. When you need the problems of the day to fall away and for your mind to focus on soothing colors and patterns, this is the way to go. 

For that rare group of people who didn't spend hours playing this online back in the day, Bejeweled is a Match-3 where your goal is just to swap jewels around the board causing larger and larger matches (and corresponding cascading explosions if you manage to get 5 in a row). It simple, low stakes, and addicting.

Imminently relaxing even when it was just a simple web game a decade back, Bejeweled has only increased its relaxing gameplay options since then, as the more recent PC and console editions also include Zen Mode.

The Room

Point-and-click puzzle titles may not be the first choice for a relaxing experience, since there are so many opportunities for frustration to arise with obtuse mechanics or high difficulty. The Room avoids those problems through the strength of its gameplay and the overall immersion of its sounds and visuals.

You can get lost in this one, especially if you prefer games to be a little on the creepy side. Essentially, you've got an escape room in digital form, but all the levers, knobs, and pulleys are just really satisfying to play with in this particular iteration of the genre.

A World Of Keflings

Oddball title World Of Keflings probably would have forever faded into obscurity (and let's be honest, it still isn't that well known) if it hadn't been one of the early free Games With Gold to hit the Xbox 360.

If you missed out on it way back when, now is a great time to jump back in, because there's not much room for frustration in this adorable city builder. Your Xbox (or Wii) avatar serves as the only giant in a world of very small inhabitants, so you get to help the Keflings build their utopia.

Gather sand and clay to make glass, stockpile planks to take to the carpenter for making carved wood, and so on until you get into a zen-like groove of harvesting and building.

Eastshade

If you like the idea of Abzu but would prefer the grandeur of the open world of nature instead of what's found beneath the waves, then Eastshade is for you. As a free-spirited traveling painter, your only goal here is to wander around and paint pictures of beautiful scenery.

Along the way, you can help people out with their problems and make the world a little bit better of a place. This is a game that's more about the journey than the destination, as it's basically an open-world simulator but without a ton of objectives other than to enjoy the scenery and chat with some fine folks.

Abzu 

The polar opposite of Subnautica, the ocean-exploring Abzu focuses on the calm, peaceful aspects of life beneath the waves. Swim with whales, weave through coral reefs, and experience life to the fullest while following schools of fish in this incredibly vibrant and visually stunning experience.

There's not a ton of actual "game" here, but that's alright: sometimes you just want to live in an underwater paradise and not have to save the world or rack up a high score.

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

If you've already played My Time At Portia or Stardew Valley, then Yonder is the next farming game that should have your attention. Forget about combat or anything stressful, because The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is a wonderful lazy Sunday of a game.

Unwind while exploring a gorgeous island, building a farm, taking time out for a fishing break, and helping people out while learning skills like carpentry and sewing. It's simple, it's easy, and it's exactly what you need when the real world is too much to handle.

Slime Rancher

Back in the days of yore, heroes slaughtered slimes by the thousands in the various Dragon Quest games. Now we live in more enlightened times and realize slimes are an adorable, intelligent species that should be sustainably farmed in Slime Rancher.

The concept sounds bizarre, but it is wonderfully relaxing to suck up carrots, beets, and even chickens into your suction gun and then plop them out to feed slimes as you build up your ranch.

It is important to note that as you get towards the end, the puzzles can, in fact, become difficult and stressful. That being said, most of the game is wildly comforting and incredibly low stakes.

Animal Crossing New Horizons

New Horizons is just about the best way to take things at your own pace and forget the troubles of the world right now. Dig up fossils, catch bugs, build your house, make animal friends.

This next gen reboot of the classic Nintendo franchise lets you live out your interior (and exterior!) decorator fantasies across a whole island while slowly expanding access to new areas. Whether crafting, buying, hunting, inviting new creatures to live nearby, or just enjoying the scenery, there's also something relaxing (and fun) to do in Animal Crossing.

Stardew Valley

You had to know the country living sim Stardew Valley would make the list, right? Take things at your own pace as you learn to live off the land by farming, fishing, raising animals, and forging relationships with other members of the local community.

Of course, Stardew Valley isn't totally without stress as you manage various resources, especially if you see everything as a challenge to overcome as quickly as possible, but for the most part, this is laid-back gaming at its finest. There are a good number of mods to make things more relaxing. 

Stardew Valley also (finally) features multiplayer, so you and your friends and family can all farm together. 

For those looking to take a darker route, Graveyard Keeper offers a different, but definitely less relaxing, take on the farm-life genre. 

Industrial Petting

Farming and ranching simulators are some of the best go-to titles for relaxing games, and there's no shortage of options there. While the big names like Farming Simulator are worth trying out, there's also plenty to explore if you dig into the indie scene. 

Industrial Petting is one of those lesser-known titles that's currently available in Early Access. While the content isn't overflowing yet, there are still tons of adorable animals to enjoy while building up an empire of ethically sourced, fair trade exotic pets.

Coffee Talk

Sitting somewhere between a visual novel and a barista simulator, there is something weirdly relaxing about brewing up a cup of joe in Coffee Talk while listening to people's problems.

The twist, of course, is that in Coffee Talk's universe, supernatural beings walk among us. Think of it as a low-key Shadowrun, with none of the violence and a lot more coffee. You'll get to offer advice to an elf and a succubus whose parents don't approve of their relationship while learning how to make lattes, teas, and smoothies.

I dunno' if actual real-world baristas will get the same soothing level of therapy out of it, but everyone else is in for a wonderfully relaxing time. Not sure if this format is right for you? Grab the free demo at Steam to try it out before you buy!

Everything

A truly odd and offbeat offering from DoubleFine, Everything is sort of like an anti-Katamari Damacy. Instead of collecting everything and going inward, you constantly expand outward, so far, in fact, that you might start over at the beginning again! There's no end goal and no way to win or lose. You just exist and explore while philosophical concepts are presented as voiceovers.

Everything's non-traditional gameplay is particularly helpful in stressful situations, as this bizarrely wonderful simulator makes you feel connected to the universe at large no matter where you are. 

This imminently weird but wildly intriguing title made our list of the top bizarre games. They aren't all relaxing, but all of them offer something outside the norm. 

It can be pretty relaxing to mow down hordes of gangsters and aliens while imbued with superpowers in Saints Row 4 or to plow through crowds in GTA 5. But not all games are conducive to lowering your stress levels. Fast-paced shooters like Doom Eternal might not be the best way to keep your blood pressure in a happy place.

For those of us in need of something calmer, this list of 14 extremely relaxing games is just the ticket. Core gameplay in all of these titles is explicitly soothing and meant to put you at ease. 

Following a hugely successful Kickstarter funding campaign, Platinum Games' hero game salvaged from the Wii U's wreckage finally has a release date.

The Wonderful 101 Remastered will release for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch on May 19 in North America.

Platinum released a brief trailer showing off some of the action you can expect, with a more cartoonish take on Viewtiful Joe's comic-book action.

In a press release, courtesy of Gematsu, Platinum's Hideki Kamiya also talked about the studio's hopes for the game and why they wanted to give it a second chance it life. Despite low sales on the Wii U after it released in 2013, the studio never regarded it as a failure.

In fact, Kamiya says it's because of the low sales they wanted to give it a new chance at life, saying:

a game is only a failure if it disappoints the gamers who play it. From the start, The Wonderful 101 didn’t quite reach a large enough audience for me to clearly call it either way. 

TW101 isn't a straight-up port either. Platinum has fine-tuned the controls and adjusted gameplay so it's easier to adapt to right away, and the framerate and visual quality were upgraded to suit modern consoles.

We're looking forward to another chance at experiencing this chapter in Platinum's saga, especially now that it has a spiritual follow-up in Platinum's newly announced Project G.G.

Stay tuned to GameSkinny for more The Wonderful 101 Remastered news as it flies our way.

Social media buzzed all weekend about Platinum Games' erstwhile Wii U exclusive The Wonderful 101 being ported to additional platforms as The Wonderful 101: Remastered. As fate would have it, Platinum has officially confirmed a port is in the works, and it's launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund it.

The Wonderful 101's Kickstarter has a $50,000 initial goal so Platinum can self-publish the game on Nintendo Switch. $250,000 will fund it for PC on Steam, and a whopping $500,000 will see The Wonderful 101 on PlayStation 4.

That might seem like a lot. However, in the eight minutes since I first opened the Kickstarter page, I've watched the backing total climb from roughly $3,000 to $33,000. Now it's at $144,000. So it's highly possible we'll actually see The Wonderful 101 ported to PS4 or to PC at the very least.

According to Gematsu, Platinum is also considering an Xbox One port if the backing gets high enough.

Platinum is running a few special Kickstarter promotions to encourage backers as well. There's a Twitter-based minigame where backers join and send a tweet, then the hero Wonder Red progresses towards saving the citizens of Blossom City for every 500 new backers.

And at a very special funding tier, Platinum's Hideki Kamiya will actually block you on Twitter if you want.

For those who missed out on The Wonderful 101 back in the Wii U days — which, let's face it, is most of us — it's a superhero game focused on heroes called The Wonderful 101. Surprising, we know. Their goal is using their special powers to rid Blossom City of the villainous Gacha invaders trying to destroy the human world.

We'll be watching this closely, so stay tuned to GameSkinny for more The Wonderful 101: Remastered port news as it crashes in.

Like many open-world building games, Terraria can move from fun hobby to total obsession when you start playing around with custom servers. There are a seemingly infinite number of things you can do once you start delving into this aspect of the game, and console commands will help you make the most of it.

Setting up a server in Terraria is a fairly simple process, and it will be a big help towards letting you customize the game to your liking. Hosting a server is a great way to bring friends into a persistent world that you can return to over and over. It's also a great way to test new things in a game that rewards experimentation and curiosity.

These console commands help you adjust your server and the players in it as well as helping you to close everything down when you're ready to call it an evening. Here are all the console commands in Terraria and the command line parameters you can use when launching a server. You need to be hosting the server in order to use these commands, by the way.

Terraria Command Line Parameters

When you first run a new Terraria server, you can use these commands to help customize the rules and settings of the server.

• -config — Indicates a specific configuration file to use
• -port — Indicates which port to listen on
• -players OR -maxplayers — Sets a maximum number of players
• -pass OR -password — Assigns a password to your server
• -motd — Sets your server's message of the day
• -world — Loads and automatically launches a world
• -autocreate — Creates a world if none is specified. The number indicates the size. 1 is small, 2 is medium, 3 is large
• -banlist — Specifies the server's banlist .txt file location
• -worldname — Sets the world's name when it is autocreated
• -secure — Adds cheat protection
• -noupnp — Turns off universal plug and play
• -steam — Adds Steam support
• -lobby or — Determines whether friends can join the server

Terraria Console Commands

While you are hosting a Terraria server, you can input any of these commands into the console to change several parameters.

• help — Brings up a command list
• playing — Loads a list of players currently on the server. You can also type /playing in chat to see the same effect.
• clear — Clears the console window
• exit — Save and shutdown the server
• exit-nosave — Shuts down the server without saving
• save — Saves the game world
• kick — Kicks someone off the server
• ban — Bans someone from joining the server
• password — Shows the server password
• password — Changes the server password
• version — Shows the version number
• time — Shows the current game time
• port — Shows the listening port
• maxplayers — Shows the maximum number of players allowed
• say — Sends a message to all players in yellow text from the server name
• motd — Shows the message of the day
• motd — Changes the message of the day
• dawn — Sets the time to 4:30 AM
• noon — Sets the time to 12:00 PM
• dusk — Sets the time to 7:30 PM
• midnight — Sets the time to 12:00 AM
• settle — Settles all water in the game world

That's all there is to it. These console commands will help you customize your Terraria server however you see fit. If you simply can't get enough of Terraria, check out our Terraria guides page for a whole lot more!

The decade is coming to a close, and while there was controversy — and a few franchises flopped — the last 10 years provided some of the best moments in the history of gaming.

If you lived through the 2010s, you witnessed new, powerful console launches, new developers knocking it out of the park, and new, exciting tech releases from the ill-fated Kinect to the still burgeoning VR field.

All of that and more led to an unforgettable 10 years in gaming that rivaled much of what came before. Don't believe me? Let's take a look back at the industry's defining achievements over the past 10 years.  

The Early 2010s

Certain moments will live forever. Lady Gaga's meat outfit. Rebecca Black's Friday. Kony 2012. The color of that stupid dress. Marriage equality. "But her emails." Leo finally getting that damn Oscar. 

For me, the decade began in earnest when I put GLaDOS into a potato in Portal 2. The combination of humor and disturbing horror sold it as much as the game's top-notch voice acting and rock solid gameplay. That overall package had me sitting in awe, thinking: "Did modern video games just become amazing right this second?" 

Aside from the hilarious legacy of Portal's sequel (which itself will never be a follow-up since Valve sadly can't count to three), the 2010s kicked off in earnest with notable returns from major series featuring big changes. Mass Effect 2 ditched the extraneous RPG elements and somehow came out better for it; Dead Space 2 ramped up the horror and gore of the first game; and, of course, Starcraft 2: Wings Of Liberty arrived with a makeover and revamped multiplayer.

The early 2010s proudly brought the gaming universe a re-tooled horde mode in Gears of War 3, and it's one that stood the test of time. Aside from still holding the title of "one of the least toxic cooperative multiplayer modes" ever made, horde in Gears of War 3 remains the gold standard of multiplayer. Horde is one of the primary reasons why fans return to the Gears series even after the IP switched developers.

While those big-name AAA franchises made their marks, Minecraft became a phenomenon. Mojang's smash hit created an enduring legacy that can't be denied, even if the survival/open-world LEGO mashup has been endlessly emulated. Somehow the pop phenomenon still has hundreds of millions of active players, showing Mojang's vision wasn't just a fluke. 

Between an insane number of skins, seeds, maps, and mods, Minecraft has to be one of the most expansive gaming experiences of all time, and it will probably still be up and running long after we are all dead and gone. As we move into the next decade, we're preparing for Minecraft Dungeons, which could possibly be a game we'll still be talking about in 10 years. Who knows?

      OK, maybe it wouldn't have been the worst
thing if we didn't know about this guy...

Another low-key title that had a bigger impact than many realize — though not Minecraft big — came in the horror genre. 

Amnesia: The Dark Descent kicked off the "defenseless" horror subgenre that has seen the likes of Outlast, Layers of Fear, and Alien: Isolation follow in its footsteps. Although the Amnesia series is now quaint when compared to what came after it, it brought the horror genre to the masses. Why? Because big-name streamers loved it.

Reaction videos to Amnesia's scarier scenes caught on like wildfire, and it's partly to thank for the sudden spike in video game streaming personalities in the early part of the decade. Without Amnesia, it's possible that the likes of PewDiePie and Markiplier might remain relatively unknown.

       It is an absolute tragedy that this didn't catch on.

Despite all of the unexpected successes, there were some "sure things" that ended up nosediving in the early part of the decade. Nintendo — normally a pillar of stability — saw the Wii U ultimately flop, even though the hardware itself had some fantastic applications.

If you haven't experienced Rayman Legends local multiplayer using both the Wii U pad and your television screen, then you missed out on a critical piece of amazing gaming history.

While the Wii U has been consigned to the dust bin, other parts of the early 2010 gaming landscape caught on like wildfire and still haven't gone out.

Though I point blank hated Skyrim, credit must be given where it's due. Bethesda captured the imagination of a generation with that particular Elder Scrolls entry, and Skyrim managed to remain popular enough to see re-release some dozen or so times across multiple consoles throughout the decade.

Without question, Skyrim played a large role in the success of the 2010 console cycle, but it had an even bigger impact on the PC landscape. Simply put, Skyrim is the king of mods, and has born an entire generation of modders that have created some truly fantastic experiences. 

To date, Skyrim has more than 56,000 downloads available on Nexus Mods. Yeah, a lot of them are nude mods, but between the total conversion mods and extremely clever gameplay tweaks, Skyrim can be an amazing game with the right modding.

The mod effect went well past Bethesda's fantasy baby this decade. Other open world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 are getting a slew of mods, but everything from XCOM to the Resident Evil 2 remake are finding extra play time through some pretty genius mods.

While story took a back seat to open-world exploration in Skyrim, storytelling as a whole wasn't left in the dust in this early period of the decade. Plenty of games weren't afraid to go with more mature or unexpected themes, from the devastating opening of The Last Of Us to the mind-bending twist in Bioshock Infinite. 

Story rich or story lacking, open world or linear, the early part of the 10s was drowning in genre-defining games... but things would take a turn just a few years later. 

The Mid 2010s

         Telltale looking at Telltale and getting ready to pull the trigger       

Has a developer ever risen so quickly and then fallen so far as Telltale? The Wolf Among Us and the first season of The Walking Dead are still hallmarks of interactive storytelling, but sadly, the development team, under immense pressure, faced insurmountable hurdles.

A badly aging engine, lack of new ideas, and overspending on major franchises weighed the dev down by the time Game Of Thrones Season 1 ended. Sadly, things did not improve, and the company shuttered later in the decade. We never got to see the heights this style could have reached if material like Stranger Things, Hellraiser, or True Detective had been made available.

While the Telltale name is currently clawing back from the dead, it appears this new version of the company won't feature the same people (which may be a good thing) and will work on a much smaller scale. Will we ever get anything as compelling as Bigby's murder mystery or Clementine's journey to adulthood? Probably not, but at least we've still got our memories. 

       Goodbye old friend. You will be missed.

Another amazingly bittersweet moment arrived in April 2016 as the beloved Xbox 360 finally met its end. While Games With Gold is still offering up free titles each month and a handful of games are still hitting the platform, production on this console legend officially stopped. If you've still got a 360, be sure to keep hold of it -- because no more are being made! Microsoft managed to bring out the longest-running console cycle in gaming history, lasting more than 10 solid years. 

The next-gen got off to a rocky start not long before the 360 ceased production (remember the horror that was Assassin's Creed Unity?) but the decade's trend of disappointing trilogy conclusions with Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3 would come to a shattering and conclusive close with The Witcher 3.

Without question, The Witcher 3 put CD Projekt Red on the map and showed that an open-world RPG could be story-rich and offer more than just endless fetch quests and following map markers. Even more impressively, The Witcher 3 remains one of the very few titles to feature DLC that is easily as strong as the base game.

Considering the many amazing ladies of the series (oh, and Geralt too, I guess) just made the leap to a Netflix Original Series, it seems The Witcher franchise is going to live on for quite some time.

The same time period didn't just see the arrival of some truly great games — it also saw a change in how games are developed and the ways in which developers interact with players.

Although the method had been around for some time, it was around the mid-2010s that Early Access started to become a vehicle for on-going development. 

Though Early Access has seen its fair share of hate and has been legitimately abused, it gave us titles as diverse and satisfying as Darkest Dungeon, Slime Rancher, and later, Subnautica. Early Access has shown that supporting developers along the way and allowing tweaks to be made from fan feedback can result in better-finished products.

      Should have called it Baldur's Wind Dale: Temple Of Elemental Torment.

Rising alongside Early Access, the crowd-funding revolution also emerged in the 2010s, giving us an amazing crop of old-school RPGs like Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2. 

Fans wanted classic isometric games utilizing tactical real-time-with-pause or turn-based combat, but publishers just weren't willing to take the risk. They couldn't see that nostalgia equals money. Kickstarter and Indiegogo stepped in.

While Obsidian and InXile got snapped up by Microsoft in 2018 — and it would seem are now cranking out some very off-brand console titles — we still had a good number of years where fans had the final say on what would get released in those instances.

Kickstarter would later grow to feature revitalized classics such as Shenmue 3 and the Castlevania-adjacent Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Whether you asked for a refund and still think its a scam or are eagerly playing along, Star Citizen showed just how massive a crowd funding campaign can become. Somehow its still earning crowd funding revenue, having raked in more than $250 million from fans who know what they want and are willing to pay to get it.

Outside the realm of the typical gaming sphere, a surprising new genre would emerge and make a bigger impact than anyone suspected: absurdist games meant entirely for Let's Plays, reaction vids, and water-cooler talk.

"Classics" like Goat Simulator and Octodad: Dadliest Catch saw gamers re-thinking what truly makes a game great, while also laying the foundation for newer entries like Untitled Goose Game.

The Late 2010s

      Welcome back, Nintendo!

Breath Of The Wild was exactly what Nintendo needed to retake its position near the head of the pack. A major shift in gameplay towards an open-world style gave the Zelda franchise and the Switch a serious shot in the arm.

A brand new design for Nintendo's latest console didn't hurt either, as the combination of permanent home base console and mobile device re-captured the imaginations of gamers. While the controller and movement-based games like 1-2 Switch don't seem to have caught on, Nintendo is still very clearly back into position as console innovator. 

Another open-world game that defined this same period, but on the PlayStation 4, was Horizon Zero Dawn. The combination of old and new styles with a gripping mystery of humanity's past pushed forward by a fiery main character gave many players a reason to stick with the PS4. 

Considering the lauded Red Dead Redemption came out in 2010 and Red Dead Redemption 2 was one of the most highly anticipated titles of 2018, it's clear that the open-world trend has reigned supreme this decade.

One game refutes that claim, though, is Fortnite.

You might love to hate it, but you have to ask yourself: has any other title done more to bring gaming into the public consciousness? When Star Wars and Avengers hold in-game events in Fortnite, I think it's clear we've surpassed fandom boundaries and hit the big time.

The concept of Battle Royale has been around for quite awhile, and one could argue it hit its stride with PUBG not long after getting popular through the DayZ mod to Arma 2. That being said, it wasn't until Fortnite that the term became a household name and a genre giant in its own right. 

The resurgence of Battle Royale aside, Fortnite still plays a major role in live streaming, catapulting it to a previously unknown level of popularity with celebrity appearances and major eSports events. Fortnite managed to hit just about every platform imaginable, including mobile phones, and that's another area of gaming worth looking at that made a huge splash in the '10s.

      Not only is this peak 2010s, I'd argue it was also the
reason the internet was invented

Forget Angry Birds and Candy Crush, because there was an absolute explosion of mobile gaming covering every conceivable genre this decade. Aside from the clear cultural significance, Pokemon Go's launch started the AR craze meant to get gamers off the couch and out into the world of sunlight and exercise.

Even if you didn't care for the change in mechanics from the other monster-collecting titles, Pokemon Go was the gift that just kept on giving, from Pokemoan dildos (yep, they exist) to a Chuck Tingle erotica book, to a news cycle that kept bringing up new insanity every, single day.

While some games got smaller and more mobile, others got larger and more tethered — VR broke into the mainstream. The PSVR brought true virtual reality to console gamers for a (sort of) affordable price for the first time.

Meanwhile, a number of dueling PC VR platforms are now pushing the boundaries and getting the tech where it needs to go. Vive and Oculus are currently duking it out, with the Oculus Quest now ditching wires and even the PC entirely for a more liberated experience. We haven't seen the best VR has to offer yet — that's for sure — but what's available today is already impressive.

If virtual worlds are less important to you than the interactions that occur within them, the late 2010s were a time when communities really started coming together through platforms like Twitch and Discord.

While the former popped up in 2011 and the latter in 2015, it hasn't been until recent years that they've really come into their own. Whether a mobile gacha title or a graphics-intensive PC shooter, pretty much every game worth playing has its own Discord community where players help each other out and forge new relationships.

New consoles, new tech, new ways of communicating, and new and returning franchises made this is a decade to remember in gaming history.

Looking Forward to 2020 and Beyond

That all about brings us to the present: 2019 was filled to the brim with major gaming news. Bungie parted with Activision but kept the Destiny series; Blizzard stepped in it with their poor handling of eSports players discussing Chinese democracy protests; and Xbox Game Studios snapped up Double Fine back in August.

On the release front, the tail end of the decade hasn't slouched with top-notch new games in a number of surprising genres. Disco Elysium came out of nowhere, and yeah, it deserves the hype. If you miss Planescape: Torment style text-heavy experiences, you want to play this one. The movie snippet experimentation with Telling Lies is also well worth experiencing and shows gaming can be just as interesting and story-rich as cinema. That's not to mention Netflix's Bandersnatch.

As the year ends, we're seeing more changes to the gaming landscape with monthly game services like Game Pass, PS Now, EA Access, and more coming into prominence. Even the mobile gaming crowd is getting in on the monthly subscription action with Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass. If you want to try out a bunch of games for a low monthly price, there's never been a better time to explore what's available on console, PC, or mobile devices.

Of course, the obvious next step of this digital revolution was the advent of the all-streaming Stadia and XCloud. The effect of those changes is still anyone's guess, but it sure looks like we're barreling towards a digital future with a Netflix style library of games.

As Google and all-streaming services come into the spotlight, the console wars still raged between Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. The PS4 managed to become the fourth best selling console of all time this gen, and some killer exclusives likely played a big role there. How the PS5 and Xbox Series X stack up against each other still remains to be seen.

Far more happened in this decade than we ever could have covered in one article, and I'm sure you'll be happy to tell me which games and events I missed that made this the best 10 years in gaming history.

For now, it's time to look toward the future, as next-gen consoles are well into development and are expected to arrive next holiday season. Major titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, and The Last Of Us 2 are mere months away, and we can't wait to see what the next 10 years have in store! 

What were your favorite video game moments from 2010-2019, and do you agree that it was the best decade in gaming history? Sound off in the comments below!

The DS and Touch Control

What do you do when you own the handheld gaming market and have brought handheld systems to new heights of efficiency and convenience? You create a chunky device from a 1980s dream of the future, try and market it with would-be sexy touching games and ads, then say screw it, dump a ton of games on it, and sell it to millions upon millions (upon millions) of people.

In case you didn't know, that's what Nintendo did with the original DS.

The DS' big draw was, of course, the revolutionary touch screen on the system's lower half. It threw open the doors of creative possibility and led to what was easily one of the best libraries of handheld gaming — and Nintendo's biggest marketing successes.

The reason was simple. Touch screen use could be as complicated as drawing your own map to get around in a labyrinth or just streamlining menus for RPGs like Pokemon. It pre-dated the Wii U gamepad as the ideal form of inventory management and even offered some truly fun — and sometimes truly hideous — methods of making characters move around.

For the first time since the D-pad, the simple act of moving characters was once again exciting and immersive, like the Wii, capable of re-igniting old gaming passions and sparking new ones.

Sony and Microsoft didn't jump on the touch screen bandwagon quite the same as they had the motion control wagon, just because it's harder to make as an add-on like Kinect, let alone to make it work right (look at the Vita's rear touch screen, for example).

Nintendo itself was iffy with its touch screen support after a while, especially moving into the Wii U era when it basically was just inventory management. Now with the Switch, we see a touch screen that gets very little use indeed. And that's a shame given its potential for creative game design.

---

These are just a few of the major ways Nintendo innovated over the years. There are countless others, and not just from Nintendo, so tell us your favorite gaming innovation in the comments below!

Motion Control

Motion control has technically been around much longer than Nintendo. Arcade cabinets used variations of it, from the boxing glove of Heavyweight Champ to those motion-controlled vehicle games in movie theater lobbies that let us take control of a jet ski or X-Wing. Nintendo and Sega both tried early forms of motion control with home consoles, with the NES' Light Zapper and Sega's Activator, neither of which was really all that successful.

From there, motion control became a gimmick of sorts. Nintendo spin-offs like Kirby Tilt 'N Tumble and Yoshi Topsy Turvy, along with Dreamcast classics Sega Bass Fishing and Samba De Amigo used variations of motion control. But it's telling that these were limited to spin-offs and experimental games. The market wasn't ready for motion control, and neither were developers.

Fast forward to 2005. Nintendo unveils the codename for its newest system, the Nintendo Revolution that would later be dubbed the Wii. Conceived as a way to carve a new place for Nintendo in a market dominated by expensive, powerful consoles, the Revolution was exactly what it sounded like, a huge shake-up for the games industry all thanks to the "revolutionary" input device that relied on motion control.

How the Wii's motion control was revolutionary depends on perspective. It certainly re-invigorated gaming, drawing in hordes of people who'd never before touched a game in their lives while at the same time offering new ways to experience gaming for long-time gamers.

The Wii's brand of motion control inspired Sony and Microsoft versions as well, and though it can't be said for certain, the widespread acceptance of motion control could have had a hand in pushing VR gaming forward as well.

Admittedly, most of these motion control games devolved into gimmicks themselves, with precious few examples that really made good use of motion control. Its real legacy is in bringing people together and pushing gaming further into the mainstream.

Save Batteries

I could just leave the heading here, and that would suffice. Really, save batteries were probably the best things for gaming alongside the NES, and we still benefit from their beneficence today.

“Beneficence” isn’t just used there for snazzy word choice either, as most parents would probably agree, because there is a kind of obligation developers have to make their games actually playable long-term without completely imploding.

Prior to The Legend of Zelda, almost every game had no way of letting you continue your fun. Some arcade cabinets had a kind of suspend feature that let you pop more coins in for additional fuel or whatever to continue going, but there wasn’t any real way to actually back up your progress.

The lines blur a bit as far as who actually innovated with the idea of battery-powered save files. Pop and Chips, a 1985 game on the Super Cassette Vision utilized a literal battery save, where the feature used two AA batteries to power the save file.

Why Pop and Chips used this feature is a little less clear. It’s essentially the same kind of game as Bubble Bobble, not exactly requiring suspended or saved data for progression purposes. However, Nintendo’s Family Basic programming tool for Famicom games used a similar AA battery-powered feature a year prior to Pop and Chips, though of course, a programming tool and an actual game are two different things. 

Regardless, fast forward to 1987’s release of The Legend of Zelda, and Nintendo offers something in that cartridge that would stick around for a long time: a CR2032 battery that lets you record your progress. Games like Zelda would have been nigh-on impossible without this feature, though Nintendo didn’t adopt it full force for a while yet.

Many — too many — SNES-era games relied on password systems that half the time never worked, much to the chagrin of players and parents the world over. However, as the era progressed and transitioned into the next generation of gaming, the save battery sparked changes. Some games used the little CR2032, while others such as Neo-Geo and Sony looked to memory cards for saving salvation.

The Xbox was the first system to use built in memory, and that pretty much takes us where we are today, with systems packing various degrees of internal storage and almost completely removing the need for any kind of external backup — except Nintendo, ironically. The Switch absolutely needs an SD card for storage thanks to its teeny 32GB internal storage system.

Still, the save battery led to these developments and made possible all manner of gaming experiences we never would have had otherwise.

Blurring Console Boundaries

That blurring actually began long, long before the Switch. One could reasonably say it started with the handheld Game & Watch, where Nintendo tried replicating the arcade experience in handheld form, and the Game Boy carved a separate niche for handheld games.

Then came the NES era, when Nintendo Japan released the Wide Boy adapter. It unfortunately never came West.

In the SNES era, though, Nintendo released the Super Game Boy peripheral, which did exactly what the name says: it let you play Game Boy games, and some Game Boy Color games, on your Super Nintendo.

That meant, well, that you could play Game Boy games on your TV. They were blown up to whatever size your screen was, and you could choose several different color palettes and background frames to make the space between the game border and the edge of your screen more interesting.

Fancy it might not have been — the JP-only Super Game Boy 2 had more bells and whistles technically — but looking back, you can see it was a step towards the philosophy that led to the Switch.

The Nintendo 64’s peripheral was for dev-use only, so then we skip ahead to the Game Boy Player. It’s basically a gussied-up version of the Super Game Boy that lets you play Game Boy Advance games on your big screen, and then the console divide widened again after the DS and Wii came on the scene.

It’s not surprising. Both offered their own unique gimmicks that increased sales and solidified Nintendo’s two main audience segments. Why experiment from there and risk alienating either segment when both are so happy to give you money?

Apparently, it’s because Nintendo just couldn’t stay away from the idea of blending console and handheld experiences. We all know the Wii U wasn’t quite what it could have been, thanks to some iffy marketing, lack of third-party support, and, frankly, somewhat confusing main feature.

Still, it was basically the Switch 0.5, offering players the chance to play their console-quality games on a portable device without losing much in quality except some pixels.

That concept blew up enormously in 2017 when the Switch launched, offering games like The Witcher 3, Doom, and Breath of the Wild on a portable device.

With the 3DS basically on Palpatine-levels of life support at this point and the VIta well and truly buried, it’s safe to say Nintendo’s first innovations with the Wide Boy and Super Game Boy paid off big time in creating something completely unprecedented in the games industry.

It’s even more interesting considering Nintendo basically created the handheld gaming market to begin with. Nintendo giveth handheld gaming and Nintendo sort of taketh it away, I guess.

Handheld Gaming

Handheld gaming started long before Gunpei Yokoi’s Game Boy system launched. The first handheld video games can be traced back back to Milton Bradley’s Microvision, that clunky retro gem of a system with the tiny screen. It was innovative on its own and launched with a variety of titles, but it was also highly impractical. The screen broke too easily, and it was so tiny. 

Around the same time, Yokoi headed development of the old handheld Game & Watch devices for Nintendo, most of which featured the silhouette man many now know thanks to Smash Bros..

Others were miniaturized versions of arcade classics, though, like Mario Bros. (the un-super variety) and the Donkey Kong line of games (before the Kongs established their own country).

That fact itself is remarkable in an industry built around games only being played on massive computers, arcade cabinets you couldn’t take home, or units you could take home like Atari that tied you to a TV.

These were mostly short games and very arcade-like in scope and structure, or just copies of what you could get elsewhere, plus even Microvision was able to swap out multiple (expensive) cartridges on one system — something Game & Watch couldn’t do.

That’s why the Game Boy itself was an even bigger innovation. You had the bigger, for its time, screen, plus a decent launch library with tons more games to follow, games that carved their own path completely separate from their console counterparts.

From Metroid II sending Samus into the depths of the bleepy monochrome Metroid home planet to Link exploring the island of his dreams in Link’s Awakening, the Game Boy offered a completely new handheld experience — so long as you had the batteries and just the right light for it.

From there, Nintendo has continued innovating in handheld gaming, improving systems, offering experiences that are sometimes arguably better than console games, and now, of course, coming close to making handheld gaming itself a thing of the past by blurring the console boundaries.

The NES, Gaming's Salvation

What makes the humble Nintendo Entertainment System innovative? You might ask. After all, it wasn’t the first console. Atari had that covered. What Atari didn’t have, though, was quality — not leading up to the 1983 video game crash, at least.

The flood of what today we’d call shovelware meant both that the games industry was very close indeed to collapsing on itself, as consumers balked against the rising tide of garbage games and what basically amounted to advertising material. That's something we still see today, but not at the percentage the industry saw pre-crash.

Enter the NES.

After a failed partnership with Atari and some big redesigns attempting to distinguish it from the Famicom, Nintendo finally released the system in the West. There were a few things that made the NES different from its predecessors and essentially saved the video game industry, but the biggest was the software.

It’s hard to realize it now, but NES games completely revolutionary, unlike anything that came before. Defender kickstarted the sidescroller and Gradius took it a bit further, but Super Mario Bros. refined it by combining platforming adventure with a huge array of obstacles, and a human character instead of the tired spaceship everyone had grown used to.

The Legend of Zelda wasn’t the first adventure game either, but its structure, coherence, and design were all vastly improved from the weird blip that was Atari’s Adventure. Of course, the NES was home to some crap games too, but Nintendo’s licensing policies — where the good ol’ seal of quality came from — prevented the NES from going the same route as Atari and ensured the games industry’s survival.

Ironically, Nintendo later reversed that policy with WiiWare and now the Switch eShop, so we get some titles with lightly questionable quality after all.

Though some credit things like R.O.B. and the NES’s overall style with keeping it from self-destructing, it’s hard to justify those claims. The 1986 survey that tried to find out how many NES owners bought it because of the R.O.B. toy and style only surveyed 200 people.

By the end of the following year, Family Computing Magazine pointed to the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Zelda as reasons to own the NES, saying R.O.B. was cute, but basically pointless. Sorry buddy.

The D-pad

This one should be fairly obvious why it’s innovative and worth discussing. Until Gunpei Yokoi decided the Game & Watch version of arcade classic Donkey Kong would work better with a D-pad, games were played either with a joystick or mouse-and-keyboard combination.

That’s fine under the right circumstances. But plunking an arcade-style joystick in the middle of a small gamepad really just doesn’t work that well, the Commodore 64 had the keyboard covered already, to middling effect, and Coleco’s multi-button phonepad was perfect for octopi only.

EIther way, the goal at this point was differentiating Nintendo’s products from the failed Atari, especially in the West, and joysticks would not be the way to achieve that. So, the humble D-Pad was born and has sort of stayed around ever since after it became a feature of the Famicom/NES gamepad.

And it might be more innovative than you’d initially think. Imagine controlling Link in the first The Legend of Zelda with just a joystick. Along with generally just being clunky, it’d get pretty tiresome after a while. That doesn’t even take into account issues of accuracy, like those jumps in Super Mario Bros. that require absolute precision — something you definitely don’t get with a joystick. 

That’s probably why scholar Alan Richard da Luz argued, at the Human-Computer Interaction conference in 2014, game interfaces like the D-pad evolve over time as complements to the gameplay and narrative experience. A D-pad gives far more tactile response than a joystick, helped along by that general feeling of connection between the direction buttons (conspicuously absent in the base Switch’s four arrows).

Just like that, literally with the press of some buttons, you’re taken out of the gimmicky arcade cabinet experience  and pushed into something much more immersive, where you feel and see your actions on that little pad causing direct effects in the game world. When that coincides with deeper and more varied experiences like the NES and Game Boy offered, then you get a winning combination of convenience and immersion.. 

And then Nintendo takes it away again with the Switch in a move we can only look at and laugh over.

Nintendo might not have been a big player in the gaming market prior to the 1980s, but there's no denying the Big N's left its mark on the industry ever since.

Though lambasted for seemingly inscrutable decisions or appearing out of touch with the modern industry and consumer needs, Nintendo and its innovations were also partly responsible for shaping how the modern gaming industry developed in some key ways.

Not all of its innovations were huge successes of course — hello, Wii U — while some built off the success of previous products and took them to new heights or paved the way for vital parts of modern console construction.

Whether it's something as foundational as a new interface method or as dramatic as rescuing the industry from sliding into the abyss created by shovelware, Nintendo earned its place as one of the foremost companies in the gaming industry. Here are five of the biggest innovations Nintendo's cranked out over the years.

The world of Minecraft is potentially limitless, which means that you can never explore it in its entirety. This also means that you will miss out on a huge chunk of its resources. However, there is one trick you can use to jump to any coordinates in a blink of an eye. We're here to help you learn how to teleport.

Below you will find instructions on teleportation for all versions of Minecraft, including cheats and commands.

How to Teleport in Minecraft Survival Mode

If you don't want to use cheats, you need to obtain an Ender Pearl to teleport in Minecraft. This item cannot be crafted, so you need to look for it either in Stronghold chests or by killing Endermen mobs.

We have guides on that here and here. 

When you have an Ender Pearl in your possession, you can throw it wherever you wish to teleport to, and then use one of the following actions:

• Java Edition: Right-click.
• Pocket Edition: Tap where Ender Pearl lands.
• PS3/PS4: Press "L2" button.
• Xbox 360/Xbox One: Press "LT" button.
• Wii U/Switch: Press "ZL" button.

How to Teleport in Creative Mode

Method 1: For PC and Mobile

In Creative Mode you can use cheats, so make sure that they are activated in the game settings. This applies to Minecraft Java Edition, Bedrock, and Pocket Edition.

When your cheats are activated, you can teleport to any coordinates by following this procedure:

1. Press "T" to open the console
2. Type in "/tp x y z"
3. Press Enter

The "x y z" values correspond to the coordinates of your choice. For example, if you want to teleport to coordinates 100, 75, -100, then type in "/tp 100 75 -100".

Method 2: For Consoles

Unfortunately, on console versions of Minecraft, you can't teleport to any coordinates. You can only teleport to another player in multiplayer mode.

Follow these steps, if you want to teleport to another player:

1. Go to Game Options menu
2. Select Host Priveleges option
3. Press "B" on Xbox 360/Xbox One or "circle" on PS3/PS4
4. Load the game
5. Press "X" on Xbox 360/Xbox One or "PS" on PS3/PS4 
6. Select Host Options
7. Press Teleport to Player

Lastly, choose your friend's name in the list, and you will be immediately teleported to their coordinates.

For more Minecraft guides, check out the list below:

• Bees Guide: How To Craft A Beehive and More!
• Blue Creepers: Where To Find Them And Make Them
• How To Breed Villagers
• Bell Guide: What It Is And How To Get It
• How To Make Fireworks
• The Heart of the Sea Explained

Your Dog — Harvest Moon

You can’t find a video game dog more like a real dog outside of Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and Stardew Valley.

He or she has a lovely little dog house outside for those cool mornings and lazy evenings, and there’s always a place ready to snuggle down for the night inside your house. All that’s really needed to make them happy in life is a smile and a good head pat, though snacks are most welcome of course.

You’ll frequently see your four-legged friend wandering about the farm, casting an eye over the crops and keeping the other animals in line, occasionally wandering over to make sure you’re okay.

It’s getting your dog that really makes the farm first seem like home, too. Before that, you’re a newcomer to a strange place, with a massive farm to look after and a big, empty house to exist in. Add a dog, and just like in real life, you’ve got an instant home, a bright spark of life that makes the future seem good after all.

Unlike your other animals, you technically don’t have to feed your dog either, so pointing to your canine caretaking abilities in Harvest Moon et al probably isn’t the best way to convince someone you can care for a real dog.

Still, in those early days when times are tough, resources are scarce, and crops are slow to grow, it’s a great comfort knowing your dog is perfectly happy eating air.

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It's not really an exaggeration to say none of these games would be quite the same without their fabulous canines.

No matter what your favorite video game dog is and why you love it so much, though, make sure to take some time today and every day to give your real dog some snuggles, snacks, and playtime.

Oh, and if we had to make a list of honorable mentions, it would be: 

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• General Pepper (Star Fox)
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• Dog (Dragon Quest: Origins)
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• Hewie (Haunting Ground)
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• Poppy (Samurai Shodown)
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• Caesar (Wargroove)
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• Vigilance (Skyrim)
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• Chop (Grand Theft Auto V)
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• Riley (Call of Duty: Ghosts)
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Let us know which good doggos you would add by sounding off in the comments below! 

Amaterasu — Okami

Most dogs in video games are your friends, your sidekicks, or your pets. But in Okami, you are the dog — or, more accurately, you are the white lupine representation of the sun goddess Amaterasu on the mortal plane.

Okami is all about Amaterasu and her truly epic journey to preserve creation in the face of Orochi’s impending onslaught of darkness. It’s drawn straight from Japanese legends, though naturally, with some changes and embellishments for game purposes.

Being an almost all-powerful goddess, Ammy, as her villagers call her, is able to change the world around her using a mechanic that makes the game shine as a unique experience almost as much as it is a unique game. You’ll use Ammy’s powers to solve puzzles, bring objects into creation, interact with and change the environment, and take on foes throughout the gorgeous watercolor world.

Amaterasu’s story might be beautiful, but it isn’t always a happy one. She’s tested to the end of her abilities and faces defeat and despair more than once. At her weakest point, though, when all seems lost, she transforms into her true self and suppresses Orochi’s darkness for all time, before ascending to the Celestial Plain.

Now, most dogs aren’t going to have lives quite that active, and hopefully, yours won’t have a face-off against the lord of darkness. But Amaterasu’s actions still embody the essence of being a dog — putting everything on the line for the ones that need them most and trying their hardest to make sure they don’t let anyone down.

Bill Grey — Star Fox

Bill Grey is the quintessential guard dog. Data for Bill existed in the scrapped Star Fox 2 game for the SNES, but he didn’t make a proper debut until Star Fox 64. He’s one of Fox McCloud’s oldest friends, with the two having grown up and attended pilot school together.

In 64, Bill takes charge of Corneria’s defensive squadrons, aptly called the Husky and Bulldog squads because duh. He also makes an appearance in the often-overlooked Star Fox Command, also on a defensive mission with Falco, and then he returns yet again to defend Katina once more in the ill-fated Star Fox Zero.

No matter what he does, Bill is always looking to protect the things that mean the most to him.

He might not be as visible in the series as General Pepper, but he’s certainly got something Pepper doesn’t. Where the General barks orders and maintains a definite distance from the rest of the squad, Bill is right there in the space-trenches alongside everyone else, sharing their burdens as one of the team.

Unfortunately, Bill still manages to be the one left out of the big picture. He gets no special ending in Command and doesn’t have as much chance for character development as a certain frog, falcon, and donkey.

While we hope, one day, Bill gets some more attention, maybe even part of a full-blown adventure like Star Fox Adventures, he serves as a good reminder to give credit where it's due to all the goodest watchdogs in our lives.

Dogmeat — Fallout

What’s the one thing you need if you’re struggling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world that's reeling from the effects of nuclear disaster? Food, radiation protection, and survival gear are all wrong answers because a dog is what you need.

Fortunately for our Fallout hero, a dog is what they get in the form of Dogmeat.

Dogmeat’s appearance isn’t uniform across the Fallout games. He’s sometimes a large black dog, a wolf-like dog, or a German Shepherd, but the basic gist remains the same across the series.

At some point during your travels, you get the chance to find and recruit Dogmeat by helping him out and taking an interest in his wellbeing.

Typically, his owner died sometime in the past, or he just didn’t have one. Though initially spending his days guarding his territory and terrorizing anyone who comes near, he eventually takes up with you and joins your journey for survival as a party member.

Unlike other party members (and JRPG dogs), Dogmeat can’t equip gear or use weapons that you couldn’t normally fit on a dog, but he still holds his own in combat with no trouble, so long as you make sure to look after him.

In return, Dogmeat looks after you, alerting you to the presence of enemies, helping you find items, dealing huge amounts of damage in combat, and generally just being your best friend, especially in Fallout 4.

The world might be dark and deadly in Fallout, but Dogmeat is a good reminder that a loving dog by your side makes every day just a bit easier.

Koromaru — Persona 3

Koromaru is the Persona 3 version of the famous Greyfriars Bobby in Scotland. Bobby was a Skye Terrier who became known throughout the city of Edinburgh during the late 1800s; after his owner died from tuberculosis, Bobby remained in the cemetery for 14 years, faithfully waiting to see his master again.

Koromaru once lived at a shrine on Iwatodai Island with his owner; Shadows killed his owner, but Koromaru stayed at the shrine nonetheless, waiting faithfully, until the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.) comes along and adopts him.

Unlike Bobby, though, Koromaru isn’t real. That key difference means his strength of heart lets him summon a Persona — Cerberus, of course — to take the fight to the Shadows.

He’s one of the only party members with a natural defense against dark magic, has high speed, and lands critical hits often, which lets you get that sweet, sweet “One More” extra attack. Like Repede, Koromaru wields a knife in his mouth.

But more importantly, he wears an unbelievably adorable pair of tiny wings and a T-shirt.

His floofy cuteness actually plays an important role in the story as well. Koromaru keeps Shinji Aramaki from being the stereotypical gruff character with no depth, as he’s the only one Shinji opens up to and acts like a normal human around.

That’s a very important point to note later on, before the very bad thing happens ,and you learn more about Shinji, Akihiko, and Ken’s intertwined past.

He also helps you raise Social Link points with others by taking him for a walk at night. Truly, no one can resist Koro-chan’s charms.

Sandy — Dragon Quest XI

Sandy doesn’t get much screen time in Dragon Quest XI, but what she does get makes her a top-notch canine companion.

The first thing you have to do in the game is climb Cobblestone Tor for a ritual that proves you and your childhood friend Gemma have grown up. The problem with this particular tradition is that the Tor is crawling with monsters. Gemma, grown up though she may be, is no fighter. That leaves Hero to fend off the creatures alone.

He’s not entirely alone, though. Good ol’ Sandy comes to the rescue and joins the party, with some powerful attacks to help see you safely through your trials.

Doing a regular mode run, that might not seem like much of a big deal. This is the first dungeon, after all, a time for extended tutorials and enemies no tougher than pudding.

Take on a Draconian Quest, and it’s a different matter entirely. Without Sandy, these early-game monsters would kick your rear right off the Tor with no effort at all.

Sandy doesn’t play a direct role in the plot, but she’s still important. Hero grows up with Sandy, and like all good dogs, she’s part of everything in daily life — until that fateful day when their world changes.

Thinking about Sandy and Cobblestone like that makes the first gut-punch hurt that much worse and sets a distinctly different tone for Hero’s adventures from that point on.

Zeit — Trails from Zero, Trails of Azure

You’d be hard pressed to find a dog or wolf that’s more of a contradiction than Zeit is in The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero and Trails of Azure.

He’s at once massively important to the plot, themes, and backstory, but simultaneously doesn’t have a big role to play in the plot thanks to an exception in a certain contract he has. (Yes, a wolf has a contract. It’s a thing.)

Zeit is a legendary divine wolf who watches over the land known as Crossbell. After one of the mafia groups from Crossbell City starts wreaking havoc in the countryside, the divine wolves get blamed until the Special Support Section of the Crossbell Police steps in to put things right.

Despite being huge, divine, and legendary, he acts like a normal dog from then on, protecting the SSS headquarters, and generally letting the city’s kids do whatever they want with him.

Outside some indirect combat support, it initially seems like that’s what Zeit’s role is — big, loveable pooch.

As Azure gears up for its final chapter, though, that notion changes in a very big way as you learn about Zeit’s past and his connection with Crossbell. Among other things, you can take control of Zeit as a playable party member, and you quickly find out he can basically end the world with a swipe of his paw.

Yet whether you’re worthy or not, and despite his own circumstances, he chooses to be your friend and help you when times get tough.

It’s a subtle underscoring of the games’ “true bonds” theme — and pretty much what dogs do in our lives every day.

Repede — Tales of Vesperia

Games in the Tales of franchise typically have some sort of animal sidekick. While Mieu in Tales of the Abyss is one of the better ones thanks to being a barometer measuring Luke fon Fabre’s character development, Mieu isn’t a dog.

Repede from Tales of Vesperia is a dog — and one with impeccable style and presence. He carries a pipe in his mouth and swaps it out for weapons during combat, both of which make for a pretty hard act to beat.

Repede doesn’t necessarily have much story significance in Vesperia, other than being a reminder of how difficult protagonist Yuri Lowell’s past has been. Beyond plot necessity, though, he's a genuine friend to the isolated Yuri, with all the loyalty and affection we'd expect from the best dogs — and all that in spite of what Yuri did in the past to Repede's father.

Repede's also a true beast in combat.

He’s one of the first party members you get, and also one of the rare examples of using a “pet” as a full-time party member — outside Breath of Fire III, at least.

While he might not be much of a magic user, Repede is speedy and strong, with powerful technical Artes attacks and the ability to strike and retreat with haste. Add his theft ability on top of that, and he’s a character you’ll want to regularly keep on the field. 

Repede is exactly what all good dogs are: invaluable and adorable.

Angelo — Final Fantasy VIII

Angelo is the very definition of loyal. She’s Rinoa’s dog in Final Fantasy VIII and takes things a big step further than Interceptor. For one, she’s always by Rinoa’s side. Always. Whether it’s at school, in battle, or even after that spoilery thing happens and Rinoa is incapacitated for a while, Angelo is there, offering her support.

Rinoa’s comment about learning so much from Angelo isn’t just cute dog talk either. Unlike Interceptor, Angelo plays a more defined role in combat.

For one thing, she’s Rinoa’s Limit Break, which is obviously the series’ best Limit Break. Rinoa and Angelo start with four basic attacks, but she/you have to read dog magazines to learn new abilities as an improved dog trainer.

Depending on circumstances, Angelo can even help heal an ailing party member or perform a hard-hitting attack at just the right moment to turn the tide.

She gets a biscuit for her troubles during battle, which is sweet. But the endgame is what serves as a perfect metaphor for how our relationships with our dogs usually go.

After staying by Rinoa at all times, saving the party’s skin on countless occasions, and generally just being perfect, what does Angelo get? More biscuits? Head pats?

No. She gets left behind while Rinoa has a moment with Squall.

Whatever.

Rush — Mega Man

Rush is Mega Man’s loyal robo-dog friend in the Mega Man series and spinoffs, starting with Mega Man 3 and staying by the Blue Bomber’s side ever since.

It’s not just one Rush, either. The robo-doggo takes on a wide variety of different forms as the situation calls for it.

The most familiar one is probably spring-mode Rush, aka Rush Coil, where he transforms into a giant springboard and propels Mega Man to greater heights. It’s a lifesaver in certain situations and absolutely necessary if you’re playing spelunker and want to get everything a stage has to offer.

But Rush’s trick repertoire doesn’t end there, and it’s arguable that as the mainline Mega Man games started to lose their luster, Rush himself started getting even better.

Over the course of his long career, he’s mastered the art of turning into the Rush Marine submarine, carrying Mega Man through space as Rush Space, flying through the air as jet-powered Rush, and doing all the things you’d expect from a robotic dog with near-endless capabilities.

Rush’s loyalty is a bit different from most dogs, though. It’s hard to say he had a choice in the matter of staying by Mega Man’s side, when his creator, Dr Light, programmed him to be (Mega) man’s best friend.

But he goes above and beyond to fulfill his duties nonetheless, like the good boy he undoubtedly would be — y’know, if he could make his own choices.

Interceptor — Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VI boasts one of the biggest casts of playable characters in the series, and though Interceptor the dog is just a sidekick to one of those characters, he plays an interesting role in and out of combat.

Interceptor’s master is Shadow, the Ninja. Like all Ninjas in Final Fantasy, Shadow is actually pretty fragile, despite his relative strength. Even though he’s a master of stealth, enemies tend to target him rather often during combat.

Fortunately, Interceptor randomly jumps in and, well, intercepts the attack; he blocks like shields do, only more often. He also randomly attacks an enemy for Shadow, though it’s more adorable than effective in most cases.

Outside of combat, though,  is where Interceptor gets really interesting, and it’s possible to completely miss how his story unfolds. At a certain spot before the game’s halfway point, the party meets Relm, a precocious young artist with a strange affinity for Interceptor, a dog who usually just tolerates Shadow and can’t stand other people. Relm lives with her grandfather and never knew her parents.

You can probably put two and two together from that information. But whether you see it play out in the game depends on a choice you make.

If you’re heartless and leave the Floating Continent without Shadow, his story ends (because he dies, spoiler alert). If not, and you make sure to speak to him at specific points, you learn about his previous relationships and roles in life.

And it’s all because of Interceptor, bringing people together like a good boy.

Isabelle — Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Being an animal-centric game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf naturally has lots of lovely doggos to choose from; if you want to be technical, Tom Nook is even a dog, thanks to the whole Tanooki = racoon-dog thing.

Isabelle stands a cut above the rest for a few reasons, though. Apart from having a distinct personality separate from the rest of the villagers, she always says nice things and doesn’t try to get money from you. That last one alone is worthy of a top ranking.

But it’s Isabelle’s unfailing positivity and optimism that really make her so loveable and charming. Isabelle is almost always happy — and happy to help.

She helps you settle into your new village and pick a spot for your house, always organizes special events and attends big public works unveilings, and even shoulders your mayoral duties for years on end when you forget your village exists.

Of course, that cheerfulness makes seeing Isabelle so capably beat the stuffing out of Pikachu in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate just a bit disconcerting, but it just helps underscore how amazing she really is.

Whether she’s keeping an entire village running or sweeping up the competition, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more amazing dog than Isabelle.

Whether it's International Dog Day or just a regular afternoon of playing games with your pooch, the most pressing question we have any time a new game is revealed — or when a new trailer is shown — that also includes a dog is, "But can you pet the doggo?"

It's a testament not just to how much we all love dogs, but to how often they show up in our favorite video games. Some, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, are pretty much there just for show, keeping the world alive and digging up stuff for you if you feed them.

These dogs are great and all, but they don't always play a substantial role; some of them can't even be pet, no matter how fluffy and oodgie-woodgie they look.

Others play a much bigger part in a game or entire series, though, and some are even the backbone of entire plots.

In honor of International Dog Day 2019, we're taking a look at those dogs playing a starring role in the world of video games.

Whether they're helping you out on the farm, hurling you to new heights, or swatting your enemies away like so much annoying dust, these dogs are versatile, loving, loyal, and everything that makes dogs wonderful in real life.

Capcom made a surprise announcement today about DuckTales: Remastered, saying the game will no longer be available on digital storefronts beginning August 8.

As a refresher, DuckTales: Remastered is currently available on the Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 3, Steam, and Xbox 360.

Until its removal, the game is on sale for up to 75% off.

The approximate times when the game will go offline for good are as follows:

• Wii U – August 9, 4:59 p.m. PDT
• PlayStation 3 – August 9, 8 a.m. PDT
• Xbox 360, Xbox One (via Backwards Compatibility) – August 8, 5 p.m. PDT
• Steam – 4:59 p.m. PDT (we're waiting to hear back from Capcom on the date for this one, but it should be either Aug. 8 or Aug. 9.)

Capcom emphasized the fact that DuckTales: Remastered will still be playable for those who have a physical copy and those who have already downloaded the title. If it's been removed from a user's system, it can also still be re-downloaded.

DuckTales: Remastered received mixed reviews when it launched back in 2013, with appreciation of its retro quirks largely depending on the individual playing it. Our own review noted how nostalgia can often skew how we remember games we played in the distant past, even if the gameplay itself still holds up.

Still, it's not altogether surprising the game, firmly anchored as it is in the previous generation, is bowing out from digital arenas. As we begin moving into the next generation with platforms like Xbox Scarlett and PlayStation 5 (or something), it's likely more games from that era will start disappearing from storefronts as well (although it could just, you know, stay on Steam with all of the other retro games...). 

As we begin a week that has no doubt been marked on many fans' calendars, let us look at who is willing to go toe-to-toe with Rockstar Studio's Wild West Goliath.

On Tuesday, October 23, players are invited to swing back into Spider-Man for its first DLC release, The Heist. Hot on the heels of last week's addition of NG+ and increased difficulty, the DLC brings more Black Cat, more costumes, and more enemies to PS4's high-flying blockbuster.

The Heist is the beginning of Spider-Man's three-part DLC package, The City That Never Sleeps.

Alternatively, fans of Gwent, The Witcher's digital card game, can look forward to Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales on PC.

Set in the world of The Witcher, Thronebreaker features a new story, exploration, and a single-player Gwent experience.

And for those of you who just want to dance, Ubisoft's Just Dance 2019 is bringing Bruno Mars, Cardi B., and 40 chart-toppers to PS4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii, and Wii U.

Then it is Friday, October 26, a yet unrecognized holiday, a day where streets will be empty and a mysterious pandemic will cause millions to call in sick to work. It will be a day where we will all sit down and play Red Dead Redemption 2.

A friendly reminder: If you pre-ordered a digital version of the Western, go pre-load it now because it's quite big. At minimum, the sequel is a 99GB download, and you do not want to be the only person on the planet waiting for the game to load. Do you?

Here's a full list of what's coming out this week: 

Tuesday, October 23:

• Cities: Skylines Industries DLC (PC)
• Just Dance 2019 (PS4, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U)
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers (PS4, Switch, Xbox One)
• PAW Patrol: On A Roll (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One)
• Spider-Man: The Heist DLC (PS4)
• Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (PC)
• Windjammers (Switch)

Wednesday, October 24:

• Stardew Valley (iOS)

Friday, October 26:

• Castlevania Requiem: Symphony of the Night & Rondo of Blood (PS4)
• My Hero One's Justice (PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4, Xbox One)

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Aside from RDR2, which, if any, of these games will you picking up this week? Which are you already adding to your Christmas list? Let us know in the comments below. 

Editors note: Spoiler alert for a very old game.

I knew almost nothing about The Legend of Zelda before Twilight Princess. I mean, I knew it was about Link and Princess Zelda saving the world and/or each other from an evil dude with a fire-engine-red dye job. And I knew that in this particular game, Link was also a furry. But I certainly didn’t know that its prologue was controversial. In fact, for the first two or three hours, I thought maybe running farm-boy errands around Ordon would be the general vibe for the rest of the game, too.

In my defense, I picked the game up in 2014, amid one of my epicly long Animal Crossing benders. Unfortunately, Ordon Village’s long to-do list didn’t captivate me the way AC’s did. Maybe I would’ve spent longer on it if I could’ve redecorated Link’s tree house (really so much underutilized space) or if Zant’s curse turned the hero of Hyrule into a wolf villager instead of a “noble beast” or whatever.

Imagine my surprise when, four years later, I dove back into Twilight Princess to discover over 40 hours of dungeon-crawling and monster-fighting awaited me beyond Ordon Village, with barely any tedious chores to do along the way. 

Dawn of the First (Long) Day

Really, when Link isn’t saving Hyrulians from the Twili monsters, he’s saving them from the humdrum frustrations of daily life instead. Those initial hours of herding goats and tracking down lost cradles were the perfect primer for some of Twilight Princess’ long-game side quests. If the prologue hadn’t taught me that every little peasant worry was not only important, but also Link’s personal responsibility, do you think I would’ve spent more than two seconds tracking down bugs for Agitha’s “ball”? Or single-handedly funding bridge repairs? Not in this economy, baby. The value of the rupee is going down with each HD remake.

And yet, while it wasn’t necessarily a joy to rescue Ordon’s brat pack again and again, their dependence on Link injected our blank-slate hero with some badly needed character. Unlike in Wind Waker (to which TP is frequently compared), this Link has all the lifelike proportions with none of the life. He kind of just goes with the flow, drifting from quest to quest until it seems like he saved Hyrule just because he didn’t have anything better to do that weekend.

Twilight Princess’ cast is very hit or miss for me. Arguably, the pushiest characters are the ones that exude the most personality. I remember wanting to strangle Milo (that is, if I could find his polygonal baby neck), but at least I could remember him to begin with. Meanwhile, each time Colin sniveled back onto the screen, I had to Google who he was and why I should care.

That’s a dichotomy that extends well beyond the prologue. The subtitular Midna is (rightfully) listed as one of the most interesting support characters of the franchise, while this iteration of the series name-maker Zelda is as beautiful as she is bland.

The side quests might start to pile up fast in this one, but Link wouldn’t be the hero (and there wouldn’t be a story) if he weren’t singularly driven by an innate desire to help people -- no matter what. So I caught ever stupid bug in Hyrule and I got Midna back on her Twilight throne because I could get behind a Link that would see value in both. His heroics might make for a one-note performance, but these tasks, no matter how small, keep him in tune with the world's much larger symphony.

Yeah, But Who Cares?

“Okay, sure,” you might be thinking. “The Twilight Princess prologue might thematically imbue the story with meaning, but does it have to spend so long teaching us how to do everything?”

Maybe not. But entering the series with very little base knowledge of Zelda puzzles and items, it was nice for me to ease into things (even if I would never, ever use that slingshot again).

Besides, as a launch title for the Wii, it couldn’t have been a bad idea to give us some guidance on how we were supposed to control the (newly right-handed) Link using the Wii remote. Think of it as the warm-up before we completely exhausted our noodle arms trying to get all those poorly explained sword techniques down.

At the end of the day, I’m glad Twilight Princess kicked off this infamous “gritty, edgelord” Zelda title with a Weenie-Hut-Jr. mode. It made us slow down and consider the world we're tasked with saving. Like the Shire, Ordon Village is a a home for LInk to come back to (and then leave again… after the epilogue).

As far as prologues go, it’s much more goat than G.O.A.T., but it gets the job done.

Fandom Freak-Out

For an old game, I have an old freak-out. This concept fan art for Midna’s Twili armor is everything I wanted for my snarky warrior queen. While the Twilight Princess could serve up all kinds of realness in any outfit, I have to admit I was deeply disappointed when my fave imp (whose cursed form is a fascinating departure from the typical mold of female character design) glowed up into just another slender, scantily clad video game babe.

Silverwolf05, if you're still out there in this post-DeviantArt era, I hope you’re doing the Lord's work: boldly designing practical, stylish outfits for ladies of all body types, classes, and platforms.

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Weekly questions: Which Zelda prologue stands out for you? Are we supposed to remember any of the Ordon villagers' names? Minda for Smash 2018?

Until next time. Stay steamy.

The Tea (never timely, always hot) is a weekly column steeped in gaming culture and the fandom experience. Tune in Thursdays for another cup of steamy content.

Coming out of nowhere and surprising everybody, WayForward has released one final, free DLC campaign for Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, several months after the release of the game's Ultimate Edition. The added campaign is the new "Jammies Mode", which provides a new set of moves for Shantae and a re-written story.

"Jammies Mode" sees Shantae traversing Sequin Land in order to hand out invitations to her ultimate slumber party to everyone she knows, which she's hosting as a way of saying thank you to everyone for helping her on her journey. In this mode, Shantae has the ability to float on a dream cloud, bounce sleepy sheep across the screen, and pillow-fight enemies' pants off.

As yet another added surprise included with the update is a new Transformation Dance for Shantae, allowing her to transform into the tank Sophia III from Blaster Master Zero, in which Shantae made a cameo as DLC. The dance can be obtained from the game's snake merchant lady upon purchasing and trading in the Super Revive Dance

WayForward announced the free update for all versions of the game out of nowhere, and cited it as the team's way of saying "thank you" to everybody that supported the game throughout its long, extensive development process. The most recent update on the game's Kickstarter reads:

"Jammies Mode" is our way of saying [sic] THANK YOU to everyone who supported this campaign! We hope you’ll accept this gift, along with our warmest and most heartfelt appreciation for funding this project. We would never have made this game if it weren’t for you!

On behalf of our Backers, and with the cooperation of our partners at Xseed, Pqube, and Amuzio, we are launching this free content update today on all platforms, all versions, all over the world, to Backers and non-Backers. In this way we hope to spread your generosity to the next generation of Shantae fans!!

"Jammies Mode" and the optional Sophia III transformation dance are now available as free updates for all versions of Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. You can view a trailer for the "Shantae Summer Surprise" Down Below: