Eurogamer

Nintendo is ending online play services for both the 3DS and Wii U on 8th April, the company confirmed earlier today. Previously, this shutdown was simply slated for some time in early April.

This shutdown will include online co-operative play, internet rankings, and data distribution

The only exception to this termination of online services (for now) are Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter. While these won't be affected immediately by the end of service, Nintendo has said online services "may also end at some point in the future". For other, non-Nintendo published releases with online features, the company asks users to contact the game's publisher directly.

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Palworld developer Pocketpair has laid out a roadmap of improvements for the early access game.

In the short term, the studio will be addressing critical issues such as bugs and a persistent loading screen. Other improvements will include key configuration and the AI of Pals.

Further down the line, new elements like PvP, end-game Raid Bosses, and a Pal Arena for Pal PvP will be included. Plus, new islands, Pals, bosses and technologies will be added.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Games throw a lot of information at us. If you're playing an open-world game, for instance, there's a lot to track - where to go, what you're supposed to be doing there, what you've collected, what abilities you have. Some games use a suite of menus for this, or a scruffy old journal, but other games use gadgets.

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Acclaimed management game Arcade Paradise is getting the VR treatment, and in the run-up to its release on Meta Quest, developer Nosebleed Interactive has shared a closer look at how the whole thing will play once you've shoved your head into its lovingly grimy recreation of 1993.

As in the 2022 original, Arcade Paradise VR challenges players to turn their family business - a run-down laundrette - into a thriving arcade, one shiny new cabinet at a time. It's a very hands-on kind of thing - each day you manually collect trash, wash and fold clothes, and unclog the toilet in first-person as you strive for greater front-of-shop efficiency and gradually expand your arcade empire - so it's a pretty natural fit for VR, where the whole immersive draw is getting to enthusiastically manipulate your virtual surroundings (and then lob something at a wall).

In Arcade Paradise VR, you can toss, rub, scrub, load, and clean using natural motions, then get stuck into those arcade games when not working your virtual fingers to the bone. Nosebleed's VR adaptation of Arcade Paradise includes 39 playable cabinets, 27 having been carried across from the original - which featured a whole range of completely new, beautifully realised arcade games inspired by retro classics - plus 12 specific to VR.

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Sam Barlow - the developer behind acclaimed investigative FMV adventures Immortality, Telling Lies, and Her Story - has announced he's working on two new horror titles, including a third-person survival horror said to be for old school Barlow fans "that played Silent Hill: Shattered Memories back in the day."

Listings for Barlow's next two projects, to be developed at his Half-Mermaid studio, initially surfaced on Steam. However, as was the case with Immortality's first tease, both pages are heavily redacted, only offering up snatches of legible text and a couple of woozy mood videos.

First, there's Project C, teased with some biblical verse from Corinthians: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Between the redacted words that follow, we can see it'll be a "new cinematic" something promising something for the "first time ever" in a game. "Gifted with the... kaleidoscopic... future," reads the remaining visible description. So there you go!

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As Fortnite continues its apparent mission to feature all other video games within itself in some capacity (until presumably it then puts itself in itself, including all other video games within), developer Epic Games has revealed Solid Snake isn't the only Metal Gear character joining the battle royale line-up - with Raiden also set to appear as a new premium skin.

Fortnite, which is currently a month into Chapter 5 Season 1, released its first major update of the year - officially known as 28.10, number fans - earlier today. It includes new Bonus Reward styles for its Battle Pass skins, and, more notably, unlocks the ability to earn the previously announced Solid Snake Battle Pass skin and themed cosmetics by completing in-game quests.

As is often the case, a range of new store-bound premium cosmetics were also squirrelled away in today's update, and all ten were swiftly unearthed and shared by dataminers - including one depicting Solid Snake's Metal Gear pal Raiden. And the latter has now been given an official welcome to Fortnite in Epic's Solid Snake promotional trailer, which features Raiden sporadically de-camouflaging throughout.

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A little over thirteen months after its grand unveiling, Death Stranding 2 could be readying for another big reveal - with a new leak claiming more information on Hideo Kojima's sequel, including its full title, will be shared in the next few weeks.

That's according to ultra-reliable leaker billbil-kun who, writing on Dealabs, claims Death Stranding 2 will get a fresh showing within the next 15 days - possibly during an upcoming PlayStation State of Play event, as referenced by the ever-leaky Jeff Grubb earlier this year.

Billbil-kun says they're still investigating certain aspects of Death Stranding 2's release - including whether it might launch for PC alongside PlayStation 5 - but does add their sources are pointing to the game's full title being Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

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Genshin Impact has been review bombed and its official Douyin (TikTok) account has lost nearly 1m followers after the recent version 4.4 livestream announced that three only dollops of Intertwined Fate material will be gifted to players during the game's Lantern Rite event.

Before the 4.4 livestream, Genshin's official Douyin account had 9.35m followers, but as of writing, it's down to 8.41m.

Lantern Rite is a yearly event in Genshin Impact that celebrates Chinese New Year in-game, dishing out regular rewards like a free four-star character picker and Primogems, the currency used to buy the Intertwined Fate material used for pulling characters in the gacha system.

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You might have heard about it. Palworld is utterly gigantic, the first big mega-hit of 2024, and potentially the biggest game we'll get all year, at least in terms of sheer popularity and players. And certainly in terms of the controversy and conversation around it at launch.

If you're yet to hop on board and wondering about what you're missing, you can relax. Palworld is big and controversial; it is also absolute rubbish. It's primitive and derivative, a game that appears at first glance almost to be completely fake - the type of thing quickly mocked up for a three-second appearance on a teen's PC monitor in the background of a mid-budget TV drama. A game to be played one-handed with an N64 controller by Tony Soprano - although honestly I think even he'd deserve better.

It's difficult to know where to begin with games like this - how do you break this down into its constituent problems when they're eclipsed by its very nature as a cynical, precision reverse-engineered machine, designed to bottle your attention and refine it into concentrated cash?

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The Ace Attorney games provide some of the most captivating storytelling in gaming. Set in crime scenes and courtrooms, these titles revolve around defending clients while trying to solve cases in abbreviated and eccentric legal proceedings. 2019 and 2021 saw a selection of these portable games released for home consoles, and now to start 2024 we have the final mainline titles hitting PS5, Series X/S and Switch with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy.

Those previous re-releases, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, suffered from their share of technical failings, so does the new game learn from those mistakes and make full use of the console hardware available? And what tweaks and additions can returning players expect?

To start, we're comparing the new port on PS5 against the iPhone port of the original Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney game from 2007 - and differences are evident from the moment the game begins. The opening cutscene has been adapted from 4:3 to a wider 16:9, with the framing punched in to cut off the top and bottom of the image. The underlying sequence here seems to be based off scaling and panning sprites, with occasional bits of pre-rendered video mixed in. The new games do use reasonably high quality assets here, even if the cutscenes do look primitive by modern standards.

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Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth in name alone implies certain themes. Greed. Exploitation. Instability. Appropriate topics for a series (once known as Yakuza, RIP) that so often has our heroes struggle to protect innocence in Japan's criminal underbelly. But Infinite Wealth isn't just a story about excess, it embodies that overabundance with an almost untrackable number of things to see, do, and level up - easily making for the series' grandest entry yet while still (somehow!) tightening up its predecessor's sloppy first attempt at an RPG.

This latest entry takes our loveable goofball Ichiban Kasuga overseas to the shores of Hawaii in search of his long-lost mother, where he also runs into the series' often-resurrected main man Kazuma Kiryu, who happens to be there on a similar mission.

Playing the introductory three hours gives you the basic gist of what to expect for the next 50: violent stakes juxtaposed with some of gaming's most zany side activities; considered cinematography and occasionally overindulgent cutscenes; and protagonists that are impossible to hate, all messily thrown together like loopy soba noodles spilled onto the floor. And, really, where else could you punch up two literal excavators while dressed as a dominatrix?

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Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno has weighed in on fast travel in video games. His thoughts? Travelling the traditional, 'long' way itself isn't boring. It's more about whether the game you are playing is interesting enough to keep you entertained while you travel.

"Travel is boring? That's not true. It's only an issue because your game is boring. All you have to do is make travel fun," Itsuno told IGN when asked about fast travel mechanics.

"That's why you place things in the right location for players to discover, or come up with enemy appearance methods that create different experiences each time, or force players into blind situations where they don't know whether it's safe or not ten metres in front of them."

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Nintendo has revealed new transformations in its forthcoming game Princess Peach: Showtime!.

As previously reported, the Switch game will allow Peach to transform into a number of different roles, all part of an elaborate stage show presentation.

Newly unveiled are Ninja Peach and Cowgirl Peach - check out the trailer below to see all the roles in action.

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I suck at Tekken. Even as someone who considers themselves to be well versed in the fighting game community's language and terminology, I've always found Tekken to be uniquely impenetrable when compared to its contemporaries.

Whether it was due to the wealth of poorly explained legacy mechanics brought over from previous entries, the unnecessarily abstruse instructions in a character's already dauntingly large movelists, or the franchise's weird disdain for tutorials in general, improving in each new Tekken title has felt like an insurmountable task. I have reached a point in every new iteration where I had to turn to YouTube guides - more often than not recorded by some poor nervous guy heavily breathing into his microphone as he umm'd and ahh'd his way through explaining what a just frame move is - because the knowledge required to actually play the game wasn't readily available within the game itself.

Tekken 7 was the epitome of these frustrations for me, a game that only taught you a sliver of what you could actually do during the main story mode, didn't feature a tutorial outside of this, and then had the gall to try to sell players frame data for its practice mode as DLC after the fact. When compared to Tekken 8, the two games could not feel more distinct, and it's all the better for it. For the first time in the series history, I can confidently say that I finally feel like I know what I'm doing.

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Union membership numbers in the UK have risen significantly, following a tumultuous period in the video game industry (which still continues today).

The Game Workers branch of the IWGB union - which aims to "end the institutionalised practice of excessive/unpaid overtime" among other goals - told The Observer it saw its membership numbers increase by almost 50 percent between December 2022 and the end of last year. In October 2023 specifically, the union saw membership rise by 12 percent. This was soon after Fortnite developer Epic announced a wave of job cuts.

"It's felt like a deluge of redundancies in the past five or six months. It just keeps coming and coming," said Austin Kelmore, chair of the IWGB Game Workers branch. "And with this wave, I've seen people saying 'we need to join unions'. Our membership went through the roof. We had the largest growth of new members in any month in our five-year history at the end of last year."

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Developer Teyon has released a major update for RoboCop: Rogue City, adding New Game Plus and more.

New Game Plus will allow players to redo their RoboCop shenanigans, but this time with all of those hard earned skills and Auto-9 upgrades from the first time around. This will provide the "full 'invincible robotic law enforcement officer' experience", the developer said.

RoboCop: Rogue City's New Game Plus can be unlocked by finishing the game after the update is applied. This can be done from an earlier save file, so don't worry, you won't need to replay the whole thing again. Completing the game will also unlock a new Golden Auto-9 skin for you to use, or just admire. Au-right!

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PlayStation head of indies Shuhei Yoshida has suggested Palworld could be on its way to PlayStation.

Yoshida responded to the official Palworld account on X (formerly Twitter) to congratulate the team on its huge success. When a fan requested a PS5 version be released as soon as possible, Yoshida replied with a simple "yes" and tagged Jingwen Zhu, PlayStation's partner development executive for China and Japan, in the post.

So does this mean Palworld could be on its way to PlayStation?

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The Pokémon Company's former chief legal officer Don McGowan said he is "surprised" Palworld has "got this far".

McGowan, who served as the company's chief legal officer between 2008 and 2020, spoke to GameFile about Pocketpair's recent release, which has dominated the gaming landscape over the last few days (most recent figures state Palworld has sold 6m copies since its early access launch on Friday).

"This looks like the usual ripoff nonsense that I would see a thousand times a year when I was Chief Legal Officer of Pokémon," said McGowan. "I'm just surprised it got this far."

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The Embracer-owned studio Piranha Bytes, developer of the Gothic, Risen and Elex games, has acknowledged it's in "a difficult situation" as it faces potential closure.

An announcement from the studio on X (formerly Twitter) states "don't write us off yet" as it aims to "do whatever it takes" to find a partner for its next project.

It's unclear what this next project will be, but this statement suggests it won't be backed by Embracer.

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League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced it's laying off 530 employees - roughly 11 percent of its total global workforce - saying it's making the decision as it refocuses on "fewer, high-impact projects to move us toward a more sustainable future."

In a statement addressing players on its website, Riot - which laid off 46 members of staff in January last year - wrote, "For most of our history, we've managed to avoid days like this, but this decision is critical for the future of Riot. This isn't to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number — it's a necessity."

CEO Dylan Jadeja went into more specific details about the business circumstances leading to today's layoffs in an email to Riot employees, also shared on the studio's website. "Since 2019," he wrote, "we've made a number of big bets across the company with the goal of making it better to be a player. We jumped headfirst into creating new experiences and broadening our portfolio, and grew quickly as we became a multi-game, multi-experience company — expanding our global footprint, changing our operating model, bringing in new talent to match our ambitions, and ultimately doubling the size of Riot in just a few years."

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With a sequel now just months away, developer Ninja Theory has temporarily slashed the price of its acclaimed action-adventure Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice to a mere £2.49 on Steam, meaning you can currently pick up one of 2017's best games for less than the price of an unspecified hypothetical object costing £2.50 or above.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (if you clicked on this story because you can't resist a bargain and not because you have any idea what a Hellblade actually is) tells the story of Senua, a Pict warrior - brilliantly played by Melina Juergens - who ventures into Helheim in a bid to rescue the soul of her dead lover, Dillion, from the goddess Hela.

Its blend of punchy combat and light puzzling is entertaining enough, but it's true strength lies in its often remarkable presentation - its shifting, starkly beautiful vistas and swirling, engulfing soundscapes a reflection of Senua's psychosis.

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Developer Rocksteady has detailed Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's initial post-launch plans, confirming The Joker will arrive as a playable character in a free content update accompanying the game's first "season".

As per Rocksteady's latest Insider video, each of Suicide Squad's post-launch seasons will be themed around a different DC character, with The Joker kicking things off when Season 1 arrives in March. The Joker - well, a Joker technically, seeing as he's an alternate-reality Elseworlds variant hoovered into the Arkhamverse by Brainiac - promises unique traversal abilities and weaponry, including a dainty mace and a rocket-powered umbrella that'll let him launch into the air, drift, and grind on buildings to knock enemies out of the way.

Suicide Squad's Season 1 is also set to include a new Joker-themed playable environment, two new episodes - featuring new missions, activities, and strongholds - new boss fights and enemy variants, new Riddler content, and new DC Villain-themed weapons and gear.

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CD Projekt has confirmed it's "considering" multiplayer elements for its Cyberpunk 2077 sequel during an update on the studio's current development plans - which also included word it's aiming to start the production phase for its next Witcher game this year.

That's according to CD Projekt CEO Adam Badowski, who touched on the Cyberpunk 2077 follow-up - officially codenamed Orion - in an interview with Reuters. While Badowski "would not discuss details" about potential multiplayer elements for the sci-fi sequel beyond confirming the studio was "considering" them, it's an interesting admission all the same.

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered released last week, giving players a native-PS5 version of Ellie and Abby's harrowing experiences.

Along with this rerelease, developer Naughty Dog included some extra bits and pieces to entice players back, such as its roguelike survival mode No Return (see first video below). However, the extra that piqued my interest most when I dived back in this weekend was the game's Lost Levels.

As a reminder, there are three Lost Levels included with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered: Jackson Party, Seattle Sewers and The Hunt. Each offers an interesting bit of background for each level, such as why it didn't make it to the final cut and other development insight. But the bit I want to talk about specifically is how two of the three Lost Levels would address Ellie's trauma. Please note, there will be spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 below.

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UPDATE 23/01/24: Capcom has updated Monster Hunter Rise on Steam to ensure Steam Deck compatibility.

The latest patch notes for ver.16.0.2.0 have now been amended. "We have released a patch that addresses the issue of the game not running on Steam Deck after installing update Ver.16.0.2.0," reads the update. "We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

ORIGINAL STORY 22/01/24: A new update to Monster Hunter Rise on Steam which adds Enigma DRM has caused the game to no longer run on Steam Deck.

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It's been just over a year now since Microsoft delivered its first Developer Direct - and back in the day I called it the "best games show we've seen in years". After its latest episode, I stand by those words and more than that, I also believe it's the perfect way to debut a big new game. I don't think they get much bigger with the hugely promising Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

This new Developer Direct is the main point of discussion in this week's DF Direct (no underscore) Weekly, where myself, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia share our first thoughts on each of the key titles shown in the show - but the key point is that the formula for the Microsoft show fundamentally addresses a key concern we've had with platform holder event coverage and the 'trailerfication' of games. The truth is, it takes a lot of time, money and effort to make a game - so to boil the experience down into a sub-two minute slice of action, often with no context whatsoever, means a game has to work incredibly hard to command attention.

Of course, big games get more of a focus and more time, but the beauty of the Developer Direct format is that Microsoft reduces the amount of games covered but goes into relatively luxurious depth on each project. More than that, while the lines are obviously highly scripted and well-rehersed, the point is that it's the developers telling us about what they're working on. There's a compelling level of authenticity in factoring out the marketing execs and the 'suits' and letting the creators of the games tell us about what they're up to.

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The day the 3DS and WiiU eShop closed was a bitter one for me. For ages I'd been hovering over the trigger for Ace Attorney 5 and 6 (or Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice, to give them their full titles), hoping they'd go on a decent sale, only to miss them altogether when the eShop closed.

I had previously played Ace Attorney 4 (Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney), which was released in Europe in 2008 on the DS, but I missed out on the other two in the trilogy. Both were released on 3DS, in 2013 and 2016 respectively, but I didn't get a 3DS until it was too late. By that time, it wasn't easy to buy a physical copy of Dual Destinies easily, and Spirit of Justice was only available digitally outside of Japan. The two have been made available on mobile at different times over the years, but with the closure of the eShop, there went my dreams of being able to legally own and play the rest of the Ace Attorney series in their rightful homes on console.

Enter Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, another collection from Capcom which bundles together Ace Attorney 4, 5, and 6. I've been looking forward to it since its announcement, and now that I've been able to play it I can say my excitement was well-placed. I'm thrilled to see the lesser celebrated games in a series I love getting the treatment they deserve - resurrected, revamped, and ram-packed with bonus goodies. It's a golden standard for what I think a remaster should be and everything a fan could hope for.

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UPDATE 23/1/24: It was inevitable - footage of Palworld's in-progress Pokémon mod is being scrubbed from the internet via copyright strikes.

"Nintendo has come for me, please leave me in your thoughts and prayers," YouTuber Toasted wrote in a post on X today, highlighting the fact that footage of the Palworld Pokémon mod he'd posted yesterday was now no longer visible.

A message replacing the previous post states: "This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner."

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Palworld developer PocketPair has said it has "no intention" of being found legally at fault for any similarity between it and any other popular pocket monster franchise.

Speaking to Automaton, PocketPair boss Takuro Mizobe said the game had cleared legal reviews and no action had been taken against the project (thus far).

"We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies," Mizobe said.

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Wrestling series WWE will make its yearly return in March, publisher 2K has announced.

WWE 2K24 coincides with the 40th anniversary of WrestleMania, and 2K also revealed a special edition of the game which will celebrate the event. The different editions have separate release dates, with the special editions available three days before the standard on 8th March.

The standard edition cover features Cody Rhodes, while the deluxe edition cover has Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley, marking the first time in history two women have shared a WWE 2K cover. The special Forty Years of WrestleMania edition of the game shows a roster of some of WWE's most famous wrestlers including Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and John Cena.

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Palworld is a bit different on Xbox compared to Steam in part because of Microsoft's certification process.

Over on the Palworld Discord server, the game's community manager Bucky clarified that the versions of Palworld are "not the same between Steam and Xbox", as in Steam v1.2 and Xbox v1.2 are different even though the version numbers are the same.

"There seems to be some confusion that Steam and Xbox are 'missing features'. This isn't entirely true," Bucky wrote on Discord (thanks, Windows Central). "Some features may be slightly different or have different value but other issues like the missing exit game button etc are not a result of an 'older build', these are separate issues."

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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi reckons chocobo smell like horses.

Chocobo are the giant yellow birds seen across the Final Fantasy series as steeds for various characters. So when Hamaguchi was asked by Game Informer if they smell bad, he replied: "It might be similar to a horse".

To be honest, I would've assumed they smell more like a chicken, but a horse certainly makes sense. The real question, though, is what do moogle smell like? I'd say probably nuts.

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A marketing campaign designed to promote recruitment in the British Army using a custom-made Fortnite map looks to have been taken offline.

Social media posts and a slickly-produced trailer for the British Army recruitment drive have now been removed, Eurogamer has spotted.

Their so-far unexplained disappearance follows a backlash to the campaign, which was set to centre on a new Fortnite experience and be promoted by high profile influencers.

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Palworld lets players capture NPC humans in a tiny ball - and then sell them on the black market.

Yes, there's an even darker element to Palworld beyond just "Pokémon with guns". If you thought capturing creatures and squishing them into tiny balls was inhumane, just wait.

In Palworld players meet various human NPCs, some of which can be fought in battle. And, as streamer Coney, found out, they can then be captured.

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Master Chief actor Pablo Schreiber has said he will stake his reputation on Halo's next season being better than the first.

The first season of Paramount's Halo adaptation received mixed reviews on its release in 2022. Many lamented the show's direction, with it veering away from the source material in many ways. This not only included seeing Master Chief without his iconic helmet numerous times over, but also watching the mighty Spartan having a sexual relationship (something Schreiber has said was a "huge mistake").

However, things could be on the up for the show. Ahead of Halo's second season debut on Paramount Plus, the actor stated this series is going to be an improvement on the first. This is thanks to a different tone which is "more appropriate for the franchise", and - perhaps a key factor - better writing.

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UPDATE 23/1/24: The popularity of "Pokémon with guns" game Palworld continues, and has seen another million copies sold over the past 24 hours. For those keeping count, that means 6m copies total have been sold since Palworld launched last Friday for PC and Xbox.

This number refers to sales rather than players, so does not account for those playing the game on Xbox through the Game Pass subscription.

ORIGINAL STORY 22/1/24: Palworld has just blasted through yet another sales milestone - of 5m copies sold in three days.

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Palworld is now the sixth game to ever hit more than a million concurrent players on Steam.

Palworld – described as "Pokémon with guns" – has been breaking records left and right all weekend, and it has now sold more than four million copies since it released in early access on Friday on Steam and Xbox Series X/S.

All weekend, the monster-collecting survival game has been climbing the charts, and not only is it now Steam's most popular game all weekend – with a 1.2m concurrent players peak in the last 24 hours alone (that's more simultaneous players than PUBG, Counter-Strike 2, and Dota 2) – it has also surpassed the concurrent records for games like Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, and Elden Ring.

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Xbox owners have once again hit back at Microsoft for "very disappointing" advertisements.

This time, the full-screen advertisements – which players currently cannot opt-out from – were to raise awareness about last week's Developer Direct showcase.

"The Xbox consoles are not and never were advertised or sold as a subsidised device, but the ads are sure making it feel like one," posted one irate player. "This feels akin to getting an Amazon Kindle at a discount because its ad supported.

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Industry insider Shpeshal Nick believes Final Fantasy 16 is coming to Xbox Series X/S.

Talking on The Infinite Podcast, Nick didn't claim to know when the hitherto PlayStation 5 console exclusive would make the jump to Xbox-flavoured consoles, but given Final Fantasy 16's PS5 exclusivity doesn't expire until June 2024, you probably shouldn't expect it any sooner than Q3 2024 at the earliest.

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Remember the days where you'd hear about an amazing new game, only available in Japan? And when we'd eagerly await news on a North American and European release? I'm trying to channel that kind of excitement into this piece about Ys X: Nordics - the latest entry in Falcom's long running Ys franchise. Put simply, it's one of the most enjoyable game experiences I had in 2023, it is almost certainly heading for the West and I feel compelled to tell you about it.

If you're not familiar with the Ys series, it's a long running action RPG series that started life in 1987 on the NEC PC-88 series of computers. Each series entry puts you in the shoes of famous adventurer Adol Christin as you slash your way through challenges, while following the many stories told within each game. The first three games made their way to the West early on arriving on systems such as the Turbo Grafx 16, Super NES and even the Sega Master System. The Turbo Grafx version was widely praised for its cinematic presentation and served as a very early showcase for CD technology way back in 1989.

However, after Ys 3, the series basically vanished from Western shores. The story continued in Japan, albeit slowly - there were two unique games known as Ys 4 - Mask of the Sun on Super Famicom and The Dawn of Ys on PC Engine which I'm a huge fan of. In the early 2000s, however, Falcom unveiled Ys 6 - The Ark of Napishtim which received ports to both PlayStation 2 and, eventually, PSP. It was at this point that the series returned to the West with each new entry receiving localisations. Between Ys and Trails in the Sky, Falcom finally achieved a new level of success around the world.