Poochy ain't stupid. ALLEGEDLY.

Just in time for the digital release of the Super Mario Bros movie, a trio of remixed Mario titles are hitting a Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack library.

The first three Super Mario Advance games - GBA remakes of Super Mario Bros. 2, World, and Yoshi's Island - will be available in the Game Boy Advance library following an update on May 26. The remixes add new voices and features to the classic Mario adventures.

Including free gifts for transferring in. (Hold up on that, though.)

UPDATE 2:50 p.m. EDT May 19: The Pokemon Company has now retracted the below story.

We put the cart before the Mudsdale! Earlier we mistakenly posted that Pokémon HOME version 3.0.0 would launch on May 23/24. However, the actual release date is yet to be announced. 3.0.0 is coming soon though, so please continue to follow our pages for more information! https://t.co/a8NZqJIPAn

Huh, didn't see that one koming.

It appears that Mortal Kombat is getting rebooted, and it will be available on Switch in some form.

A website for "Mortal Kombat 1", a story reboot of the classic fighting game series. It will launch on September 19 and lists Switch among its platforms, but it isn't clear if the Switch version is launching the same day as the other versions.

...when you type "NPD" for nearly a decade, it's still tough to get used to.

In the final month before a ten-million selling Zelda title, Nintendo's three headed monster fared quite well in the April US sales survey.

All data based on revenue from April 2 - 29 unless otherwise indicated. NIntendo digital sales are not counted, third parties may report eShop revenue if they choose.

Faster than a +6 Ninjask

It didn't take long for Tears of the Kingdom to move into second in the Zelda sales race.

Nintendo have confirmed that the May 12 release sold more than 10m copies in its opening weekend worldwide. This includes more than 4m sold in the United States alone - the biggest opening weekend in NoA history.

Now if only the legions of people who squid party in matches would go splat themselves.

Splatoon 3's fourth "season" of content is bringing another round of options to the game.

Launching on June 1, "Sizzle Season" will include a new Challenge mode that involves playing Turf War matches with restrictions, such as the only weapon being the Trizooka special. The first run of the mode will be on June 3, and will take place on the season's new stage.

That leaves a retro-game-turned-battle-royale hole in the service to hopefully be filled by the return of Super Mario 35.

Pac-Man 99's online play is about to give up the ghost.

Bandai Namco have confirmed that the 99-player maze game will end service on October 9 at 12:00 a.m. ET (October 8, 9 p.m. PT). The game's paid content will also be brought down, with custom themes based on older Namco properties going off sale on August 8 and content DLC (including paid offline play which will be available after the shutdown) will not be sold after September 8.

Leaving just the biggest market and an increasingly smaller one.

Although a part of Europe has moved to block the acquisition of Activision Blzzard King by Microsoft, the European Union proper is on board.

European Union regulators have approved the proposed $68.7b deal. Following the UK's move to block on the grounds that it would negatively impact cloud gaming,... Read more...

Rather than spend the weekend in a fundamentally broken open world game, the news desk did the Chesnaught raid in Pokemon Scarlet.

Things we missed last week: Mazinger Z (Banpresto developed anime-based shooter via Bandai Namco) came into the store... and it wasn't just Zelda who broke a price barrier last week, as it was $14.99 US instead of the standard $7.99. Given that Mazinger Z is tangentially related to Macross, you can probably guess that some people had to get paid off for that to happen.

You can disagree with the three I put in the headline being the most important. Check the rest of the article for the full list.

EA Sports and Metalhead Software revealed a slew of new real-life pro baseball Legends that will be playable in Super Mega Baseball 4 when it launches on Switch on June 2.

The Legends will be playable in the classic league with other fictional characters as well as the specific Legends League... Read more...

Not exactly the partnership we were expecting today. (Also it's not coming out for a few years.)

GameFreak is firing up its non-Pokemon project machine once again, and this time they have a Western publisher to go with it.

Private Division - the Take Two Interactive indie publishing label - has announced an agreement with GameFreak for a new project called "Project Bloom". The only other detail given was that the game would launch sometime in Take Two's 2026 fiscal year (April 2025 - March 2026) for unspecified platforms.

Potential spoilers ahead.

In an interview posted today with several key members of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's development team, series producer Eiji Aonuma let slip a key detail that may finally cement the game's place in the Zelda timeline. While speaking on the game's theming around the concept of hands Aonuma made the following comment.

How many people Engaged with the new Fire Emblem?

The first quarter of calendar 2023 was busier than the holidays for Nintendo on release count, and it showed in their final fiscal results for the 2023 fiscal year released earlier today.

All figures are annual, with numbers for the 4th quarter broken out. A comparison to the US dollar at a rate of $1 US = ¥134.877 is also provided for information only.

Welp, Donald's already out.

We have a date and opportunities to attend Nintendo Live, but it's largely US only.

The live show will run from September 1 - 4 (Labor Day long weekend) at the Seattle Convention Center, the same weekend as the PAX show in Seattle. PAX attendees can request tickets separately, or registration will be open from May 31 - June 22 on the event website.

Wise man say "Forgiveness is divine, but never break price barrier for game with stamina meter".

Things we missed last week: No lawman can catch The Man of Medan.

OK, we all know what's coming out this week, so moving on... The poor bastards stuck running up against Matt Mercer's Tears of the Kingdom include another sequel that might be worth playing in Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 - now with... Read more...

Beaten by a project that is technically also available on Switch. (In cloud form, hence the disclaimer.)

Mario's reign atop the box office has ended in the United States, though it's still the leading Chris Pratt project of the year.

The April 5 release was second in the US box office for its fifth weekend, pulling in an estimated $18.6m for a new US total of $518m. It trailed the third Guardians... Read more...

Worst vacation ever, I gotta say.

Like a fine ghost, Bandai Namco has dropped a horror series on Switch out of nowhere.

One of today's surprise eShop releases is Man of Medan, the first game in the Dark Pictures Anthology developed by Supermassive Games. Originally released in 2019, Man of Medan is the first of four stories that have released on a once-per-year pace since.

Superhero strategy will not be going portable.

Another dose of strategy will not be coming to Switch after all.

A version of the Firaxis-developed turn based strategy game Marvel's Midnight Suns was announced for Switch release alongside other versions in 2021 with a target date of March, but the game ended up slipping to December 2022 and... Read more...

EA Sports returns to console baseball with the help of Metalhead Software for the latest Super Mega Baseball game.

Super Mega Baseball 4 is coming to Nintendo Switch (among other platforms) on June 2. The first new entry in the series since 2020, this is also the first game developer Metalhead Software is releasing with their new owner, publisher EA Sports.

The fourth release in the sports series will be the... Read more...

For the record, the news desk observes Sith Orthodox Star Wars Day, so see you on the Revenge of the Fifth (Saturday).

Things we missed last week: Namco's Galaga '88 was the Archives game of the week.

We nearly broke the record last week with 63 releases by the end of the week, including some TRUE kusoge, and with the mothership taking the week off hopefully the shadowdrop quotient will be kept to a minimum. The... Read more...