Can you guess number one? Screenshot: Nintendo/Kotaku
Last night on Japanese television, there was a three-hour special to rank the hundred most popular video games of all time as voted by over 50,000 people in Japan.
Since this poll has such a huge sample, the TV Asahi results are probably a fairly accurate barometer of people’s current gaming tastes in the country.
A panel of celebrities commented on the games as they were announced one by one. Famous panelists included Game Center CX’s Shinya Arino, who said his number one choice was Super Mario Bros. 3, entertainer Eiji Wentz, who said his favorite was Final Fantasy VII, and comedian and Famitsu columnist Hikaru Ijuin, who listed his number one choice as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
(Full disclosure: Kotaku broadcasted the English language release of Game Center CX.)
Below is a list of Japan’s top 100 games of all time as recapped on Twitter (here, here, here, here, and, uh, here):
100.Persona 3 99.Pokémon Platinum 98.Persona 4 97.Super Mario World 96.Romance of the Three Kingdoms 95.Mother 94.Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War 93. Persona 5 Royal 92.Monster Hunter 4G 91.Street Fighter II 90. Final Fantasy VIII 89.Super Mario Galaxy 2 88. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 87.Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate 86. Monster Hunter 85. Dragon Quest VI 84. Final Fantasy XI 83.Dragon Quest VII 82. The Legend of Mana 81.Dragon Quest Builders 2 80.The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 79.Metal Gear Solid 78.Nobunaga’s Ambition 77.Mario Kart Wii 76.Kirby Air Ride 75. Animal Crossing: Wild World 74. Super Smash Bros. Brawl 73. Gran Turismo 4 72.Kirby Super Star 71.Dr. Mario 70.Monster Hunter World 69.Super Mario RPG 68. Pokémon X/Y 67.Bloodborne 66.Ghost of Tsushima 65.Suikoden 64.Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver 63. Final Fantasy III 62.Xevious 61.Super Smash Bros. 60. Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 59. Dead by Daylight 58. Animal Crossing 57.Super Donkey Kong 56. Super Mario Galaxy 55. Yokai Watch 2 54. Dragon Quest VIII 53. Tales of the Abyss 52.The Legend of Zelda 51.Final Fantasy IV 50. Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire 49.Kingdom Hearts 48.Nier: Automata 47.Final Fantasy XIV 46. Dragon Quest II 45. Kirby’s Return to Dream Land 44.Dragon Quest X 43.Xenoblade 42.Persona 5 41. Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa, Heisei, Reiwa mo Teiban! 40.Xenogears 39.Dark Souls III 38.Puyo Puyo 37.Final Fantasy IX 36.Pokémon Gold and Silver 35. Xenoblade 2 34.Final Fantasy V 33. Final Fantasy VI 32.Resident Evil 31. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together 30.Apex Legends 29.Okami 28. Mother 2 27. Dragon Quest XI 26. Pokémon Black and White 25. Tetris 24. Pokémon Red and Green 23.Fire Emblem: Three Houses 22.Animal Crossing: New Leaf 21. Splatoon 20. Minecraft 19. Suikoden II 18. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 17. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 16. Kingdom Hearts II 15.Dragon Quest IV 14.Pokémon Sword and Shield 13. Undertale 12. Super Mario Kart 11. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl 10. Super Mario Bros. 3 9. Final Fantasy X 8. Chrono Trigger 7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 6. Dragon Quest III 5. Splatoon 2 4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3. Final Fantasy VII 2. Dragon Quest V 1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild
So you just got a Nintendo Switch. Lucky you! Or maybe you got one for someone else and want to help them make the most of it. How kind! In either case, here are some good things to know after you open up everyone’s favorite portable hybrid console.
While the Switch is pretty easy to set up and straightforward to use, there are some tricks that will make the whole experience even better, from increasing battery life to saving time clicking through the eShop. I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you’ve already gone through the initial process of booting your Switch up, making a user profile, and connecting it to a Nintendo account. If you haven’t: go do that! If you have, then do these things next:
Get a screen protector
Image: InvisibleShield / GameStop
No matter how careful or delicate you think you are, you will nick the screen, I promise you. You might knock it over by accident at one point. Maybe you have a cat who will swat at it. And if nothing else, you will probably move it in and out of the dock a few times during its lifespan, which can also scuff up the display. You can avoid lasting consequences to each of these incidents by purchasing a screen protector. Hori makes an economical but effective plastic one. There are a bunch of other options as well. Carrying cases are a nice way to provide some added protection as well.
Make an extra account
Even if you’re the only person who will be playing your new Switch, do yourself a favor and make an extra user profile. Bonus points if you set its region to Japan. Some games only allow one save file per account. Having an easily accessible alternative will give you more options. And if it’s set to Japan, it will unlock additional games and demos that haven’t made it to North America yet, including some in Switch Online’s subscription-based retro library.
Turn on Dark mode
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
Unless you love accosting your eyeballs, go into the settings menu and turn off the bright white background. It will be more soothing and also cut down on unnecessary battery usage.
Adjust the brightness
This one’s another no-brainer. Unless you are sitting on the beach, odds are you don’t need your Switch’s display projecting at full strength. If you’re in a dark room, turn the brightness all the way down. The auto-brightness setting works well for everywhere else.
Save battery life with Airplane mode
This is the third tip related to battery life, which should tell you how important it is to maximize the limited juice your handheld has access to. Want to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the park like that guy in the commercial? Turn on Airplane mode to disable unnecessary features like WiFi and Bluetooth. It’ll prolong battery life and is easy to toggle back and forth at a moment’s notice from the settings menu.
Remove the Password Requirement for the eShop
The Switch will make you type in your password every time you just want to log onto the eShop unless you disable it. To do that, open the eShop, select your profile icon on the top right, click through to your account information, and update the password-entry settings.
Download free games
Warframe is a deeply kinectic action MMOI you can lose yourself in for free. Screenshot: Digital Extremes
The Switch’s library of free-to-play games isn’t as deep as some platforms, but there’s still plenty you can get your hands on and start enjoying right away without spending a cent. Here are the top three recommendations in that department:
Fortnite – a battle royale shooter where kids yell at each other while showing off cool dance emotes.
Warframe – a slick sci-fi loot shooter with a massive campaign you can grind to your heart’s content.
Pokémon Unite – a super fun, very accessible MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena game) starring your favorite pocket monsters.
There are some other decent options as well including the platform fighter Brawlhalla, alternative battle royale shooter Apex Legends, and Hearthstone-esque card game Eternal.
Build out your library
Free games are great, but the Switch has a lot of other great experiences to offer as well. In addition to stellar first-party games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it’s also been loaded up with ports of blockbusters and indie games alike, as well as remasters and re-issues of older Nintendo games. The “Great Deals” tab on the eShop menu will show you the biggest games that are on sale on any given day, and the “Wishlist” feature will let you keep tabs on stuff you’re interested in and then alert you if and when it ever drops in price.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the Switch’s best selling game for a reason: it’s a must-have. Screenshot: Nintendo
Once you’re ready to throw some bones Nintendo’s way, you can’t go wrong with any of the games on Kotaku’s Switch Bests list. The lists of best-sellingindie games on Switch in recent years are also good places to start.
Back up your data with cloud saves
The Switch didn’t launch with cloud saves but it has them now thanks to Switch Online. Unfortunately, the paid subscription service will cost you $20 a year, but it might be worth it if you plan on investing a lot of time into offline games like Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey in the months and years to come. That way, even if your Switch is stolen, breaks, or otherwise becomes unsalvageable, your save data won’t meet a similar fate.
The Switch Online Expansion Pack still isn’t worth the extra $30, but with dozens of the best NES and SNES games ever released, the base subscription tier is worth trying at the three months for $8 entry point. If and when you ever let your Switch Online subscription lapse, you’ll have 180 days to renew it before whatever saves you had stored in the cloud get deleted.
Find some friends
Nearly four years out, the Switch’s social features remain critically underdeveloped. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist at all. While there’s no party chat (you’ll need to rely on in-game chat features or Discord), you can still friend other players and see what they’ve been playing. There’s even a trending section which will let you know if, say, your pals have all come down with a case of Mario Tennis fever. Nintendo’s console will let you link Facebook and Twitter accounts to quickly scour those platforms for mutuals who are also on Switch.
Buy another controller
The Joy-Con are very cute and come in all sorts of different colors. Unfortunately they also suck to play games with. A clever way to get more gamepads into people’s hands for IRL gaming sessions, they may cause cramping in your hands after a while and will almost certainly start to experience drift malfunctioning at some point. They’re fine in the beginning and serviceable enough in handheld mode, but you will not regret upgrading to a $70 Switch Pro controller. You can also get an Xbox Series X controller (my personal favorite) to work with the Switch by purchasing a cheap third-party dongle. And if you want a cheaper, more versatile option, the 8BitDo Pro 2 is still excellent and only $50.
That’s it! Go enjoy your Switch now. And if you decide to ignore all of this advice, for the love of god please still put a screen protector on it.
Across the country, folks everywhere are unwrapping their new Nintendo portable hardware, booting up their accounts, and trying to buy new digital games. But over the last few hours, per social media, the Nintendo Switch storefront known as the eShop has been in and out of commission. Sometimes it loads, albeit slowly. Other times, you can’t access the strangely laggy orange menus to rebuy Mario Kart 8 for the third time, alas.
Under error code 2811-7429, the message that stares back at you after some loading struggle simply says that the console is unable to connect to server and says that you should try again later. Kotaku has reached out to Nintendo for more information on when users can expect the service to come back. The official online server website says, “We are currently experiencing difficulties with our network services.”
For the most part, this shouldn’t be too disruptive when it comes to enjoying the console. You can still boot up whatever games you already own, you just can’t buy new stuff or download DLC and the like. Granted, you also can’t redeem gift cards, which is likely a bummer for anyone who received them as presents this morning. That’s likely a ton of people, huh? A lot of people who are surely loading and re-loading hoping that something has changed this time…oh, this will probably be a while.
But for the folks who had the prescience to gift or buy physical games, if not download stuff in advance of wrapping—well, you’re probably fine. Everyone else: honestly, stuff like this happens nearly every year, for at least one of the consoles or one of the major games. I know it’s annoying now and likely will be for a chunk of the day. The servers are definitely getting hammered. I guess go spend time with your family or something?
Or, if you’d like some good reading: our suggestion for the very best games the Nintendo Switch has to offer, and the cream of the crop sales that the console has going on right now. You know, for when the shop comes back.
Closest we’re getting to a new Pilotwings. Gif: Microsoft / Nintendo / Illogicoma
We’ve seen how well Microsoft’s Flight Simulator handles interpreting real-world objects and landmarks, but what about something a little more…racy? Modder Illogicoma thought it would be neat to try importing Mario Kart tracks into the sim, and they’re right. It’s very neat.
With the latest version of Flight Simulator, Microsoft has given players a reasonable facsimile of the planet Earth, and I feel as if it is our sovereign duty to screw with that planet as much as possible. Not in a global warming sense—we’ve already got that covered, it seems—but by turning it into the fanciful playground it could be if we could only get over the idea of physics and coherent design. In short, we need more people like Illogicoma to have thoughts like these:
So anyway I thought Mario Kart 8 tracks would also be fun when you play them in Flight Simulator so I put Mario Kart 8 tracks in Flight Simulator and played them and it was true.
I’d fly more often if the sky looked like this. Screenshot: Microsoft / Nintendo / Illogicoma
Not just to have the thoughts, but to actually follow through as well. As Illogicoma explains in another tweet, they got the Mario Kart 8 track models from The Models Resource and created a custom mod with the aid of a Blender2MSFS addon. Basically, they input the models into the Blender 3D Creation Suite and output magical flying race courses for all to enjoy. Witness the glory yourself in the video below, queued up to the 3:26 mark.
As glorious as it all looks, it’s a pretty rudimentary mod. The Mario Kart 8 objects are floating in the air, minding their own business. They do not have collision, so you can fly right through them if you so choose. Flying through rings does not activate checkpoints. There are no coins to collect. It’s just pure and colorful chaos invading a world built from Google Maps and satellite data.
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This is air traffic control, we’re totally screwed. Screenshot: Microsoft / Nintendo / Illogicoma
I’d like to imagine there is a place in the world, high in the sky, where such dream worlds exist, but I’ll accept modders like Illogicoma tossing virtual versions together for us in a pinch. Lovely work.
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Golf isn’t necessarily a bad game, as evidenced by the fact that it’s been a popular hobby all around the world for generations. But it is a stupid game, one that is only redeemed through the use of golf carts, or by stripping away all of the boring stuff where nothing happens and replacing it with windmills and waterfalls and pirates. Until now! Last week, Nintendo released Mario Golf: Super Rush, the latest entry in its ongoing series of Super Mario-themed sports games, and the developers at Camelot seem to have finally fixed mankind’s most boring sport.
This is all thanks to a couple of twists to the regular golf formula: One is that Super Rush allows you and your co-golfers to all play at the same time, playing together in split-screen without needing to patiently wait your turn, or quietly sitting back while your opponents take putt after putt after putt. The other innovation, and one that truly deserves to be integrated into “real” golf, is called Speed Golf. In that mode, it’s all about who gets to the hole first, and also you have to physically run to your ball rather than being automatically transported to it like in most other golf video games. You can even push your opponents out of the way or try to beat them to special powerups while running, and each character has special abilities that can known opponents or their balls out of the way, giving everything that Mario Kart-style edge of constantly being a second away from complete disaster.
It all could probably stand to be just a little wackier—even though the overtly Mario Kart-y battle mode is too hectic and complex to be anything but a chaotic mess—but the game in general is a testament to how good Nintendo can be at injecting some Mario personality into these sports games. This is still recognizably golf, even with some of the wackier options turned on, it’s just a superior version of golf that makes every other version of golf look… you know, stupid.
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Also, Super Rush introduces a fun new line of Mushroom Kingdom fashion, with most of the characters putting on garish golf outfits for their time hitting the links. Bowser has a terrible red and black Guy Fieri number, Peach has a nice golf skirt, and even Toad gets in on the fun by putting a little golfer hat on top of his regular mushroom hat. Oh, wait, Nintendo said it’s actually part of his head and not a hat a few years ago, so his Mario Golf: Super Rush hat is probably just a canonical in-universe confirmation of that fact, which is less funny than it being a hat on a hat. (That one’s for you screenwriters out there.)
Do you know you can hit yourself with a Blue Shell in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners do, and they’re going all out to blow themselves up with the first place-targeting item as quickly as possible.
Skilloz, the current world record-holder for the hilariously named “Blue Yourself” category, uploaded a video yesterday (h/t Polygon) showing that it’s possible to go from the beginning of the race to spinning out in a Blue Shell blast in just under 38 seconds. If you’re a fan of Baby Daisy—there’s got to be at least one of you out there—you might want to look away.
Here’s how Skilloz did it, according to the man himself:
The items you get depend how far away you are from first place. Knowing this, I sandbag at the start to get a good chance of getting a Star. Then I rush to the next set of items and I’m at the point where getting Triple Mushrooms is also a pretty decent chance. These aren’t too terribly difficult to get if you’re able to correctly position yourself.
The toughest part is getting the Blue Shell. There’s no real way to manipulate it. You can only get a Blue Shell if you’re at least 2000 units behind first place. Since that’s the closest you can be, it’s about a 5% chance of receiving a Blue Shell. You can also only get a Blue Shell once 30 seconds have passed in game.
So when I hesitate in front of those item boxes, I’m waiting on those two things: the first-place CPU to get at least 2000 units ahead of me and 30 seconds of in-game time [to pass]. A member in our community, GsFlint, found that these two conditions can basically line up with each other at the same [time] in Mario Circuit.
My favorite speedruns are those that see players take a small, preferably ridiculous part of a game and get very serious about learning how to do it fast. It’s hard to say how low folks will be able to get “Blue Yourself” times in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you can bet I’ll be watching with bated breath.
Mario Kart 9 hasn’t been announced for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite yet, nor has Nintendo even hinted at its existence. However, according to a plethora of rumors, it’s in development for Switch, Switch Lite, and possibly the Super Nintendo Switch. And according to a new rumor, it’s releasing sooner than some may think. In other words, if the rumor is accurate, the turnaround from reveal to release will be a fairly small one, especially compared to other Nintendo games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, Bayonetta 3, and Metroid Prime 4.
According to the new rumor, which comes the way of a “verified insider” over on Reset Era, Mario Kart 9 — or whatever the next mainline installment winds up being called — isn’t just in development but is scheduled to release sometime late this year.
Unfortunately, the insider doesn’t divulge any additional or more specific details about the game or its release, but it sounds like Nintendo is aiming to have it out during the holiday season, which is to say, sometime between October and December.
Not only are details here light, but what is here should be taken with a major grain of salt. While this echoes previous rumors and reports, it’s still all unofficial and completely subject to change.
At the moment of publishing, Nintendo hasn’t provided a comment of any sort on any Mario Kart 9 rumor so far, and at the moment, it’s hard to imagine this changing for this specific rumor. However, if it does, we will be sure to update the article with whatever is provided, salient or not.
For more coverage on all things Mario Kart and all things Nintendo and all things Nintendo Switch — including all of the latest news, rumors, and leaks — click here or check out the relevant links below: