I've heard that Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Hou is a pretty crazy/emotional experience in a bunch of different ways. Hearing that makes me want to play it even more! I hope this game gets a localization, or at the very least, the Japanese eShop release has an English option.

The Seattle Pride Parade took place today, and Nintendo showed up with some support for the event. Not only did they have a car in the parade, they also had a bunch of employees giving out special, "Play it Proud" stickers. Awesome to see Nintendo appearing in the parade, and revamping an old slogan for the event!

Following Nintendo was Niantic, who was also part of the parade, with a special banner a bunch of employees on-hand. Looks like everyone attending had a blast!

GungHo teased a major announcement for Switch prior to E3 2018, and at the big show they delivered on their promise with the reveal of Ninjala. GungHo seems to think Ninjala can make a big splash on Switch, and GungHo Entertainment CEO Kazuki Morishita explained why.

“Making a new intellectual property, we believe we can succeed on console. We wanted to make an action game where you pretend you’re a kid and imitating a ninja. That’s where the inspiration comes from, but we didn’t want to make it too violent.

The Japanese market is really special, where the big emphasis is on mobile. In the West, there are different play styles that are popular. That’s why we want to expand and achieve worldwide growth.”

Morishita also addressed the comments comparing Ninjala to Splatoon.

“It plays very different from Splatoon, but we take that as a compliment. It’s a point game, where you try to rack up the most points. We don’t see that many cartoon action battle games in America or Europe.”

Yoshi Switch wasn't part of Nintendo's E3 2018 showcase, and we know that the game has been pushed back to 2019. Should we start to worry about the title? In an IGN interview, Nintendo's Bill Trinen says things are going quite well for the game.

"It's actually been making really good progress. They decided they wanted to make some improvements, so they're going to take just a little bit more time on it and that's why we're not showing it this year at the show, but I think you can look forward to some updates on it later in 2018."

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Yoku’s Island Express – 8
Smoke and Sacrifice – 6
Just Shapes & Beats – 7

Our stubby hero must dodge dangers and track treasures across many trap-filled courses. Survive smoldering volcanoes, hazardous steam engines, haunted houses, and even new courses based on the Super Mario Odyssey™ game! Watch them come to life in stereoscopic 3D using the touch-controlled game camera.

The following comes from a Nintendo Life interview with Dark Horse editor Patrick Thorpe...

NL: Nintendo and Dark Horse's collaboration is a relatively new partnership. It seems to have been an extremely successful one. Can you give us the insider story of how it all got started?

PT: A lot of it had to do with timing. I’ve been a huge Nintendo fan for my entire life and noticed that they were not doing much in the way of published materials. We had just recently had some success with video game related comics with Mass Effect, and, more importantly, art books. Samantha Robertson, a former Dark Horse editor who now works in Nintendo’s Treehouse division, had created an art book for the Art of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was this big, beautiful 9 x 12 coffee table book of really high quality that would become the template for our whole art book line.

We then did The Art of Alice: Madness Returns and had a book called The Art of the Mass Effect Universe book in the works. It was really obvious that we were on to something really fun and interesting. People really responded to these books. Calling them art books might be a bit of a misnomer because they all include behind the scenes information and development materials. They feature a lot of beautiful artwork, but they’re also 'making of' books.

So in 2011, I tracked down Nintendo’s booth at San Diego Comic Con and met Seth McMahill. We exchanged cards and he put me in contact with Cammy Budd who was Nintendo’s senior third-party marketing manager. She asked me what a partnership with Nintendo might look like. I knew that the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda was coming up, so I pitched her on a book that would be a retrospective look at the whole series. Initially, she told me that she wasn’t sure that they’d have the resources available to support such an endeavor, which is totally reasonable, these are incredibly time intensive to make.

A month or so later, she contacted me again saying that she had talked to NCL and that they were in talks with another company, which I later learned was Shogakukan, who was developing a book very similar to that in Japan. They obviously weren’t going to do two books, but asked if we were interested in doing a localisation of that book. After bringing in Dark Horse's licensing guru Nick McWhorter, we worked out the details and were off and running. Hyrule Historia hit my desk shortly after that.

NL: How many copies of Hyrule Historia have been sold?

PT: I don’t know the exact number of how many copies Hyrule Historia has sold to date, but I believe it’s around 900,000 copies at this point.

NL: Finally, so far Dark Horse has published Zelda, Fire Emblem, Splatoon, and an upcoming Mario hardcover book. What can we expect in the future, and it's a special edition Metroid book, isn't it?

PT: Ha! I believe that I’m on the record somewhere stating that developing Metroid books would be the ultimate dream project for me, so I appreciate your enthusiasm on that front. As far as what is currently being developed? You can certainly expect more from the Dark Horse/Nintendo partnership. As for what? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Ubisoft has had quite the partnerships with Nintendo in recent years. We saw the release of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, the Donkey Kong Adventure DLC for that game is just around the corner, and now we know Team StarFox is going to appear in Starlink: Battle for Atlas. Just how did these collabs come to be? Geoff Keighley talked with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot to get the scoop.

...the fact that Nintendo came with mobility with the Switch...it’s giving all the publishers in our capital cities the abilities, finances actually, to create better games...it’s a booming industry today. Some of those games will use those roots, but the goal is to actually have a bit diversity in the portfolio, we can use the best approach for the experience.

Yes, we are big fans of Mr Miyamoto, in the last 30 years we’ve been looking at what he was doing and learned a lot from him. Being able to approach him and his team, is really something that is a wonderful experience for all the teams at Ubisoft, they love to collaborate and learn from him.

Guillemot was also asked about what other Ubisoft properties could make their way to Switch.

We need to make sure the brands are well adapted to the machine, and that they will fit with the public as well, when we decide to go on the machine we take into consideration those elements and also the capacity of the machine.

One part tennis, other part magical beat down! Play solo or compete with friends by battling across fantastical realms and unleash the power of the Spirit Spheres!