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...

This thing has Luigi-class legs.

The three comma club has a new member in the Super Mario movie.

Box office estimates for the weekend have the film reaching a worldwide take of US$1.02b following its fourth weekend of worldwide release. This makes it the 52nd film to cross a billion dollars in worldwide gross, the 11th animated movie, and the fifth since the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic began.

It won't just be "play Tears of the Kingdom on the floor", so...?

Nintendo will be attending one of the two major game industry trade shows left following the death of E3.

In a statement today, the German Game Industry Association have announced that Nintendo will be exhibiting at the 2023 edition of Gamescom, which runs in Cologne, Germany from 22 - 27 August.... Read more...

That's now two major markets that have delayed the deal.

Following the lead of the US Federal Trade Commission, a second regulator has said the deal cannot go through. Microsoft is appealing the decision.

In a statement, the Competition and Markets Authority of the UK said that the deal was being blocked on the grounds that it would prevent competition... Read more...

It's just Jon and James this week, so we're all pretty much doomed as it is.

GOOD MORNING/AFTERNOON/EVENING TO ALL MY HATERS

As you may not know, RFN is a wounded animal this week: Greg is out for the NFL Draft and Gui is still on his vacation.

But with God as my witness, I promised you THREE EMAILS. And I lied like a dog. Instead, Jon and I will be hosting TALK RFN!!! a new radio show, right here, in the NWR Discord.

It's Kusoge Week, to be followed by Golden Week and then Golden Turd Week.

Things we missed last week: Teslagrad Remastered, Teslagrad 2, Shadows over Loathing, and Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach as an Indie World hit outta nowhere.

This week presents a high quantity of releases (currently 45 in North America), though the quality of same is HIGHLY questionable.... Read more...

At this point, we're flat out of coin puns so make your own.

The Super Mario movie is racking up records still after its third weekend in the box office.

In the United States, the picture racked up an estimated $58.23m at the box office, for a new US total of $434.33m; worldwide, the film's estimated take is $871m. This is the highest third weekend ever for an animated film, the seventh-largest overall for a third weekend, and is more than the Detective Pikachu movie made in its opening weekend.