News and Reviews

Blaze has revealed two new Evercade cartridges, both of which are launching in February 2026. First up is The Turrican Collection, which includes the home computer and console versions of the famous run-and-gun franchise. Included in this collection are: Turrican Turrican II: The Final Fight Turrican 3 Super Turrican Super Turrican Director’s Cut Super Turrican 2 Super Turrican Score Attack Mega Turrican Mega Turrican Director’s Cut Mega Turrican Score Attack The other release is Taito Arcade 3, which includes: CADASH CAMELTRY CRAZY BALLOON THE FAIRYLAND STORY FOOTBALL CHAMP LUNAR RESCUE PUZZLE BOBBLE QIX ZOO KEEPER Both carts will be priced at £19.99 / $24.99 / €24.99.

Publisher Meridiem Games has announced a March 2026 release date for action-adventure dark fantasy game The Bearer & the Last Flame; it has also revealed that the game will be available digitally and physically. Developed by Dark Reaper Studio, the game is inspired by classic Soulslike titles and set in a world ravaged by death. In a land where man has become extinct, darkness has ravaged all other signs of life. The darkest creatures and soulless sorcerers live in the underworld, where the bloodthirsty warriors are seeking rest. Only faint traces of light remain in the world: a glimmer of hope emerges from the high mountains of Selender. A living soul has received it…

Four new games have arrived onto the Nintendo Switch Online retro catalog service. Two are NES games, and two are Game Boy titles. Available to play now for subscribers on the NES front are Battletoads and Ninja Gaiden: II The Dark Sword of Chaos. As for the Game Boy games, Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters and Bionic Commando have been added to the lineup.

Just two weeks to the day after its PS5, PS4 release, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is already on sale on the PS Store. This is a separate offer from the huge PS Store Black Friday sale, and it's only live until midnight on Tuesday, 2nd December 2025. Between now and then, you can save 15% on the base version of the game, making it £59.49 / $59.49. This is an incredibly quick turnaround from a full-priced release to a sale, with the game having only been available for 14 days. Compared to past entries in the series, Black Ops 7 has been selling poorly and below the expectations of Activision. Its main competitor, Battlefield 6, is comfortably outselling it, and it's recordin…

Xbox's big Black Friday sale has been live for more than a week now, featuring some massive AAA titles from a broad range of publishers and developers. One game that seemingly missed the Black Friday boat — mostly due to its very recent release date — was Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, but Microsoft has decided to put it on special discount for the coming weekend only. Yep, live now on the Xbox Store (and indeed PlayStation Network), Black Ops 7 is currently 15% off; the game's first digital discount. The new Call of Duty title is on offer until December 1st, a few days before Xbox's main Black Friday sale ends on December 3rd. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Cross-Gen Bundle (Xbox…

Little Rocket Lab is a sweet pixel art automation game from No More Robots and Teenage Astronauts. It arrived on Steam and Xbox last month, and we have been wondering when a Switch release would follow ever since. Well, it's coming real soon. What's more, there's a Switch 2 Edition in tow. Little Rocket Lab - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, and its Switch 1 counterpart, will be available on the eShop from 10th December for £15.99 / $19.99 (or as a free upgrade for those who make the jump between systems down the road), and it boasts some pretty slick performance on the new hardware. Alongside the promise of boosted resolution, Teenage Astronauts have also got things running at…

November might not be in the rear-view mirror yet, but Nintendo's already feeling festive with its new range of Animal Crossing: New Horizons in-game Christmas jumpers (or sweaters, if you'd prefer). If you want to deck out your New Horizons avatar in the holiday gear, you can pick up all three custom designs by heading to the company's official Ninten Island via Luna's Dream Address service (Island code: DA-6382-1459-4417), or by using the kiosk at the back of the Able Sisters' shop and entering the following Design-ID codes: Jingle Sweater: MO-T2XL-S43L-9JTW Image: Nintendo Bells Sweater: MO-5KL7-989R-MTP5 Image: Nintendo Wreath Sweater: MO-DP24-0WP7-6D2J Image: N…

Update #2 [Fri 28th Nov 2025, 7am]: We now have a release date for Rigel Gameworks' BioMenace remaster. According to the developer and publisher, the game is now scheduled to launch on December 18th, 2025, and will be available to buy across both Steam and GOG. To coincide with this piece of news, a new trailer for the remaster has also been released, going over again what folks can expect from this new version of the 1993 Apogee title. This includes a better look at its newly improved graphics, parallax backgrounds, and controller support. You can watch the trailer below: Update #1 [Thu 10th Jul 2025, 2:30am]: Dosgamert has announced on social media that a demo for BioMe…

After the release of the near universally acclaimed Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter back in September, it was revealed that developer Falcom was already well into making another full-on remake with Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter. Although we don't have an official release window for it, the remade sequel is expected to launch next year — and expectations are sky high (pun intended) given how beloved the original title is. But what happens after 2nd Chapter? Well, you'd think that Falcom's most obvious course of action would be to then remake the third game in the Sky trilogy — Trails in the Sky The 3rd. The name basically fits with the remakes and everything! Apparently, tho…

Ever since Assassin's Creed Origins, Ubisoft has pushed the series towards a live service model, opting to support each game over a long period of time with free updates and DLC. And to be fair, it's a model that's proven to be successful; Assassin's Creed Valhalla ended up being the franchise's most profitable instalment to date off the back of two whole years of support. But these major updates and DLCs do, of course, have a cost in terms of resources — and that's what Assassin's Creed Shadows director Simon Lemay-Comtois gets at in a new interview with YouTube channel Access the Animus. Ubisoft has explained its methods in the past, but Lemay-Comtois reiterates: "Micro…

Update [Thu 27th Nov 2025, 5:30pm]: SHUTEN ORDER's Switch 2 Edition and upgrade is now available today. Once again, it supports a higher frame rate, including variable frame rate between 60 to 120 fps in docked and portable modes. There is also Joy-Con 2 mouse controls in areas of the game where it's supported. The Upgrade Pack for existing Switch owners will set you back $2.49 (or your regional equivalent). And the Switch 2 and Switch versions of the full game are currently on sale in select locations. Original Story: Following the release of SHUTEN ORDER on the Switch in September, a Switch 2 Edition has now been officially announced. It will arrive later this month on …

All the way back in 2019, before the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S were even fully revealed, there was skepticism that Xbox would be ditching consoles and/or turning into a third-party publisher. The more things change, the more they stay the same! Xbox boss Phil Spencer was asked about this at the time in an interview with Kotaku, and as pointed out by the interviewee (Stephen Totilo) on Game File this week, it's a fascinating look back at a strategy that still remains very relevant here in 2025. For example, Phil spent a lot of time discussing the idea of playing "the games you want, with the people you want and on the devices [you want]", mentioning the team was "dri…

Well, here's a welcome surprise! Hot off the back of Silent Hill 2 and Cronos: The New Dawn, Bloober Team has shared with us the next project that it's working on for Switch 2, and it's none other than an all-new Layers of Fear package. Layers of Fear: Final Masterpiece Edition will arrive on Switch 2 on 19th December, bundling together Layers of Fear, Layers of Fear 2, every DLC expansion, and brand-new chapters into one spooky edition fully optimised for the new system. There are the added bonuses of HDR, ray tracing, and dynamic lighting, too, and you have the option to play with motion controls or touchscreen inputs if you see fit. Here's the official blurb from Bloob…

If you like your retro first-person shooters to be colorful, gory, and feature extravagant, larger-than-life characters, then Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation could be exactly the game you're looking for. Released earlier this month exclusively on Steam, the "fast-action" shooter has previously been described by its creators as "half game, half cartoon" and features detailed hand-drawn graphics, gallons of blood, and a charismatic "cigar-huffing", "hot pink-wearing" ship captain as its lead. It is the creation of a small studio, called Ciaran Games, and was built using GZDoom, a fork of the ZDoom source port of the original Doom games. As you'll see, though, from look…

Fireproof Games, the British studio behind the acclaimed puzzle series The Room, is soon to release its latest title on PSVR2. It's called Ghost Town, and it's set for release on Sony's virtual reality hardware on 1st December 2025: You play as Edith Penrose, a witch who turns her talents to ghost hunting in this supernatural thriller. You'll use her magical abilities to solve puzzles and track down clues to the whereabouts of her missing brother. Here's the Steam version's launch trailer to put you in the mood: The Room series is held in high regard, so there's every reason to be hopeful about this new title. Ghost Town was very well received when it launched for PC VR f…

Two legendary developers have joined forces once again, and it's a game that's a teensy bit outside what they're best known for. From Steve Ellis and David Doak, two of the minds behind renowned shooters GoldenEye 007 and TimeSplitters, comes Beyond Words, a strategic, roguelike word game. Coming to PS5 in early 2026, the easiest way to describe Beyond Words is that it's a combination of Scrabble and Balatro. You'll be spelling out words in a similar vein to the legendary board game, and it seems combos, alongside hundreds of gameplay modifiers, will help you reach enormous scores. Each board will challenge you in different ways, and there are even bosses, seeded runs, ti…

Techland has unveiled update 1.4 for Dying Light: The Beast, an enormous update for the action title that incorporates brand new features and hundreds of improvements. Largely based on feedback from the community, update 1.4 brings fixes, improvements, and features requested by players. Here's a quick rundown of all the major additions in the update: New Game + mode: New Game + is added to the game, meaning you can replay the adventure while keeping all your gear, weapons, and character progression from your first playthrough. Each time you start New Game +, the level of challenge increases, but so does the power and rarity of the weapons you find. Legend Levels: This is …

PS5 console sales in Japan have skyrocketed in the past week, as the new model designed specifically for the country enters the market. Accounting for around two to three days' worth of sales, there were exactly 23,381 purchases of the PS5 Digital Edition in Japan through until 23rd November. In comparison, PS5 sales the week before slumped to just 5,855. This means that the Japan-specific PS5 model, which has launched at a lower price and is essentially region-locked to Japan, has resulted in roughly four times as many sales upon its first few days on the market. The Switch 2 is still very comfortably outselling it, with 126,000+ purchases recorded between 17th and 23rd …

It's been a few months now since Dying Light: The Beast launched on Xbox and other platforms, and the game has just received its biggest update since release today - perfect timing considering it's part of the Xbox Black Friday Sale 2025! This update adds a New Game+ mode, ray tracing on PC, three new finishers and Legend Levels that provide you with the "classic Dying Light end-game progression system". Here's a bit more on the main two features on Xbox: In addition to all this, there are over 400 improvements as mentioned above, spanning the likes of environmental & navigational fixes, gameplay fixes, graphical improvements and much more. If you're interested, th…

Fancy topping up your Microsoft Rewards earnings over the next week? Well, there's a new promotion on the Microsoft Rewards dashboard that's allowing you to "double your points" until early December through Bing searches, which you can do on PC, mobile or through the Microsoft Edge browser on Xbox. To find it, you just need to head to the Microsoft Rewards dashboard and look for the relevant banner and "activate now" button that'll hopefully show up in your region. Here's what it looks like: After this, you'll get a brief explanation of what "double your points" means: For me personally, I can see that the cap of earning 90 Microsoft Rewards points through Bing searches…

As far as micro consoles go, The C64 Mini has been a resounding success, and, according to its manufacturer, is the best-selling 'mini computer' yet released. I can certainly believe that – The C64 Mini was one of the first devices of its kind to hit the market, and the allure of the Commodore name carries significant weight among retro gamers. Now, Retro Games Ltd. is back with a new variant of the system that sports a new colour scheme and a totally new selection of pre-loaded games. While the original beige model came with 64 titles that included the likes of Attack of the Mutant Camels, Boulder Dash, Impossible Mission, Monty Mole and Speedball 2, this new variant shi…

When people rank their favorite Mega Man X games, the PS1 title Mega Man X6 usually winds up appearing towards the bottom of the list. Released in 2001 (or 2002 if you live in Europe), the sixth entry in the Mega Man sub-series is often viewed by many fans online as a bit of a rush job, with the game coming out a mere 12 months after Mega Man X5, which was originally envisioned by series producer Keiji Inafune to be the end of the story. Because of this tight production timeline, it ultimately ended up featuring a lot of rough edges and ideas that didn't necessarily come together (like the Nightmare System), making it one of the more challenging games to recommend to newc…

Well, well, well... How the tables turn. For a long time now, Atlus, and by extension, parent company SEGA, have dabbled in re-releasing their games. Typically, these re-releases feature expanded and / or improved content, and are often labelled as 'definitive' versions of the original title. Generally speaking, potential buyers have become more and more critical of this practice over the years. An increased focus on expansions, DLC, and updates has largely painted re-releases as an anti-consumer approach, as they're essentially asking fans to pay up for two versions of the same game. And according to SEGA, this once fairly common strategy could now be having a negative i…

It's actually mad to look back on the beginnings of Cyberpunk 2077 and compare that time to where the game is now. It's taken basically five solid years of updates — along with one hell of an expansion — to turn things around, but the open world RPG is now a colossal commercial success, with developer CD Projekt Red confirming that it's topped 35 million sales in its latest business briefing. That's a ridiculous achievement for any title, but in Cyberpunk's case, it just goes to show how things can (eventually) turn around. At this point it's worth mentioning that we're fast approaching the game's fifth anniversary. It first launched for PS4 on the 10th December, 2020. An…

Our good friends over at Digital Foundry have delivered their tech review of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, which shadow dropped onto Switch 1 and 2 last week, and it's something of a mixed bag. Starting on a positive note, the Switch 2 version of the game sets out to hit 60fps, and it does so consistently. DF's Thomas Morgan notes that he noticed "barely any drops" when playing in either handheld or docked modes, so that's a big bonus for fans of smoothness. What's more, the Switch/Switch 2 'Definitive Edition' boasts many of the re-release 'pros' over the PS3 original — upgraded textures, foliage placement, colour grading, etc. — and renders at 1920x1080p resolution i…