Dave the Diver's In the Jungle DLC may not arrive until 2026, but Godzilla is back
Mintrocket Studio Head Jaeho Hwang also said the team is extending the availability of the recent DLC, Ichiban's Holiday , which will remain available through next year as well. After hearing feedback from fans about the pricing, that pack will get "regular discounts" to make it cheaper.
The game just landed on the Epic Games Store and according Hwang, a free upgrade for Nintendo Switch 2 is coming "in a few months" and will bring a higher frame rate. More info on that is coming soon, Hwang said. In the meantime, you can catch a sneak peek of In the Jungle about four minutes into the anniversary video.
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Gizmodo
5 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
‘Kirby Air Riders' on Switch 2 Makes a Better Case for the GameCube Than Nintendo Ever Did
'I have no idea what is happening right now.' I sigh several variations of that phrase in the hour I spent playing through a sliver of Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2 exclusive Kirby Air Riders. I'm tired after a full day's work—somewhere between fried and manic—but the racing game, which director Masahiro Sakurai quipped in his Tuesday Nintendo Direct was 'basically Mario Kart,' is akin to being thrown hurtling down the mouth of a kaleidoscope at 200 miles per hour. I know I won some races and battles and lost in others, but if I try and recreate the scene of my pink puffball hurtling down a track or smacking other racers, it turns into a vague, vibrant blur in my memory. Like Nintendo's 2001-era console itself, the original Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube was an odd duckling when it hit the scene in 2003. At the time, critics were surprised by the game's simplicity. Unlike most other kart racers, you didn't need to press any button to speed off at full tilt—the game did it for you. Air Rider used a single button for controls alongside the thumbstick to turn left and right. Players only had a single racer to choose from at the start (Kirby, in pink or a variety of pastel shades) and a paltry few characters to unlock later. That earlier title was limited by its system and its scope. Kirby Air Riders on the Switch 2 can make use of the necessary processing power for more action on-screen, and it seems the scope for this sequel has expanded beyond anything Sakurai and his old compatriots at the studio HAL Laboratory could ever consider two decades ago. Kirby Air Riders gets its name not just through the old Aliens gimmick of adding an 'S' to a sequel title, but because you now have a full selection of different characters and your riding 'Machines'—both air and land-based—to choose from. There's the expected Meta Knight and King Dedede, but if you never played another Kirby game, you may be confused by characters such as Chef Kawasaki and Knuckle Joe. Each character has different stats, such as weight, speed, and flight, as well as a special ability that changes how each plays. Similarly, each craft offers a unique twist. The 'Winged Star' may be able to glide for longer, but the tank lets racers drive in one direction and boost in another. While the original Kirby Air Ride notoriously only used a single button for controls, the big landmark addition to the controls is the second button. Now, when your special meter hits a peak from defeating on-track enemies or smashing your fellow racers, you can hit Y to unleash a special move that's different for every racer. Otherwise, you flick the joystick around to attack opponents and enemies as you rocket through each track. Pulling back on the stick off a jump allows most craft to glide for a certain amount of time, and landing perfectly offers a small boost. Still, you're only ever focusing on the joystick and a single button at any one time. The 'B' button stops your craft and builds up boost (though some Machines like the 'Cart' can't generate boost). Releasing the button shoots you forward. This allows for expert players to drift around corners and hit the NOS to slip past their competitors. The button has even more functions. Tapping it lets each character—not just Kirby—suck up enemies to gain a temporary power to attack your fellow racers with. On the GameCube, this control scheme was oversimplified. On the Switch 2 sequel 22 years later, it's necessary. You are rocketing so fast down each course that remembering any more buttons would only result in even worse headaches. If Mario Kart World's wall riding and rail grinding features rely on technical finesse, winning in Kirby Air Riders is about how much information you can process in the blink of an eye. I had the chance to take a few turns around the typical Air Ride mode on two tracks, both of which were full of bright, colorful environments, music that combined cutesy with high-octane, and enough shit flying at the screen that I couldn't get a grip. Then I went through several full matches of the new City Trial mode. Racers hop into a large single city environment where they have a limited time to collect as many stat power-ups as possible from the environment or off their fellow riders. Then, each player participates in a mini-game where you try to use your stats to beat your opponents. One such mini-game was an air-based race where those with the right Machines and flying stats would have the edge. Another asked me to collect the most food on a small section of the map. I won both, and I still couldn't tell you how I did it. I had collected so many speed upgrades I could hardly control the character. I can imagine City Trial would get boring if it's confined to the same map. Though I asked, Nintendo wouldn't say how many tracks there are in the final game. I also begged company reps to tell me whether Nintendo planned to add extra control options, but the company is keeping mum as we head toward the Nov. 20 release date. The Switch 2 is built with unique control options such as gyro and mouse mode, but it's unclear if either will make an appearance in the game. With the need for only two buttons, you could technically play Kirby Air Riders on one of the refreshed NES controllers Nintendo launched back on the original Switch. That's when I considered the Switch 2's exclusive options, and it was all too obvious. The best controller for this game may be the revitalized GameCube Switch 2 gamepad. The big green 'A' button was built for this kind of minimalist control scheme. The full-range joystick would be a boon when trying to pull off any spin attacks or when trying to take a tight turn. The closest game that can claim to offer the same sense of blistering speed is, funnily enough, F-Zero GX for the GameCube. In that game and other modern takes on the antigravity racing genre, like 2024's Redout, you only ever had to worry about your fellow racers, boost pads, and a few track hazards. In Kirby Air Riders, you need to be concerned with opposing racers' special attacks, enemies on the track, boost circles, ramps, aerial shortcuts, and more besides. I never felt sick playing the game, but the speed was enough; I bet there are some players who will get overstimulated until they're green in the face after one too many rounds. Nintendo's Switch 2 has been effective in making a stronger case for the GameCube than it ever did when the company released the boxy console more than 20 years ago. On Aug. 21, the Mario maker is dropping Chibi-Robo, a cult classic, available for Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers. Based on my limited preview, Kirby Air Riders seems like the final form of the 2003 original without the 'S.' Now we just need to see if Metroid Prime 4: Beyond can offer the same magic as the original Metroid Prime did in 2002. Nintendo has consistently claimed the game starring Samus is coming in 2025, but we'll need to wait and see if that promise holds true.
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Xbox game ‘Indiana Jones and the Great Circle' coming to Switch 2 in 2026
Nintendo (NTDOY) announced that 2024 video game 'Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,' published by Microsoft's (MSFT) Bethesda,' will arrive in Nintendo Switch 2 consoles in 2026. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>>
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Kirby Air Riders Isn't Mario Kart—It's Super Smash Bros. at Speed
When Nintendo revealed the Switch 2, the one thing nobody saw coming was a sequel to Kirby Air Ride on the GameCube. Though the imperfect lens of time may have endeared some people to the game, it wasn't exactly beloved upon its release more than 20 years ago. The existence of this new installment, Kirby Air Riders, seemed even more confounding in the context of Mario Kart World's presence on the system's launch day. But Kirby Air Riders is coming this year—on November 20, to be precise—and it's worth keeping an eye on, after this morning's 45-minute Nintendo Direct on the title led by its director, Masahiro Sakurai. Many Nintendo fans know Sakurai as the architect behind the Super Smash Bros. series, but he's also the father of Kirby, and, apparently, was asked to create a sequel to Air Ride by Nintendo's software development chief some years back. This seemed to surprise Sakurai, given the similarity to the publisher's other, enormously popular racing series. 'You might be asking yourself if it's basically Mario Kart,' Sakurai said at the start of the presentation, which is embedded below. 'You race and battle with familiar characters around courses with different features, or so they say. OK, so it basically is like Mario Kart. I even mentioned this when I received the request to make the game.' Isn't he the best? Anyway, in the broadest strokes, yes—they don't seem too different from one another. But pick up and play them, and it should be immediately apparent that Air Riders' control scheme and mechanics are fundamentally unlike Mario Kart's. Acceleration happens automatically and, in the original, you really had just two inputs to worry about: the control stick, to steer; and the 'Boost Charge' button, which was B on the GameCube pad. This slowed your craft down as you held it, allowing you to drift around tight corners. Upon releasing it, you'd get a burst of speed proportional to the length of time you charged for. Slow in, fast out, as they say. Air Riders barely complicates this with the addition of a 'Special' function, mapped to Y on the Joy-Con. This unleashes an attack that can be triggered after a meter refills. Still, three inputs are pretty light for modern games. Hell, Mario Kart lets you ride walls and grind now by pressing the jump button, which also happens to be the drift button. I appreciate this game's relative physical simplicity, especially because it still seems quite deep—just in a different way. In Air Riders, you can mix and match riders and machines, and the differences between those permutations aren't just reflected in stat bars (though those do exist). Some machines operate in a completely unique way from others. One, for example, cannot Boost Charge; while another comes to a full stop every time it does; and another still continues moving in a straight line when Boost Charging is initiated, but doesn't drift because it has tank treads. Instead, when you let your finger off of B using this vehicle, its treads instantly pivot to move in the direction you're steering. What intrigues me about Air Riders—on paper, anyway—is that it's not following the Mario Kart model of tacking things onto what was a simple racing game, encouraging players to exploit the level design so they're barely ever touching the ground. Instead, the depth here is more inherent to the fundamentals of lateral movement, and how some rider and machine combinations manipulate or completely invert them. Such breadth of vehicle behavior is rare in a racing game, even a kart racer. It makes strategy before the race even more important, which is why, Sakurai says, you choose the track before your character and craft in Air Riders, rather than the other way around. Oh, and another thing: The track design seems absolutely bonkers. I have played a little of Mario Kart World, and while I had a decent time, it did sort of confirm my fears that the switch to an open world would dull the series' imaginative courses a bit, which used to be its strength. The environments we saw in this Air Riders Direct, though, seem extremely dynamic and lively by comparison. The Waveflow Waters course, which starts by driving through a parted sea and dives in and out of whirlpools and massive waves, is magnificently chaotic. There's also the City Trial, a hybrid sandbox and mini-game mode where players roam around a small map for five minutes in search of building the best possible machine through power-ups, then compete in a range of challenges well beyond basic racing. Those who played the original Air Ride seem to be more excited about this party-style mode than anything else, and it seems perfect for endless, addictive online multiplayer sessions—something that wasn't possible in the GameCube version. 'Chaotic,' though, is the operative word here. The control scheme in Air Riders may be simple, but plenty can happen on the ground, especially in the more battle-focused modes when players are attacking each other in a frenzy. In these moments, it does remind me a little of Super Smash Bros., in how the speed of play can become overwhelming at times, and you have a limited tool set to navigate the circumstances. Fortunately, there is an option to slow the game speed, which Sakurai recommends for new players learning how everything works. So, Kirby Air Riders does seem like a pretty singular experience, despite whatever surface similarities it might have to other kart racers. There seems to be plenty here though, and at $70 (hey, at least it's not $80!), you have to wonder how many people are going to be curious enough to take that plunge. I would if I had a Switch 2, though, which is perhaps more than I'd say for Mario Kart World. Got tips? Send 'em to tips@
