IGN is celebrating its 30th Anniversary on September 29, 2026. Before it was later rebranded IGN64, our first site, N64.com launched the same day the Nintendo 64 came out in the US back in 1996.

While we didn’t found the company, IGN Entertainment, until February 1999, IGN’s first article – a news story about Howard Lincoln commenting on the decision to drop the N64’s launch price from $249 to $199 – is dated September 23, 1996 and published a few days before IGN’s first site launch: N64.com.

A Celebration of 3D Gaming

IGN's story began with the advent of 3D console gaming and the desire to go beyond the monthly magazines with long lead times and share daily content about N64, PlayStation, and Saturn for our favorite pasttime. Content preservation wasn’t a big thing in the ‘90s, but many of the original articles are still online, along with prelaunch damage control like “Why is the site so slow?”, early examples of story formats that now dominate the internet (like text-and-image-only unboxings), and previews of games that would never see the light of day. Other content is lost to the ages, victims of media server migrations gone wrong, or someone not confirming with the content team that yes, we would like to keep the articles written on Saturnworld.com after merging them all into the new site, IGN.com, in 1999.

Spun out from publisher Imagine Media, IGN.com combined existing gaming content from a few formerly standalone websites, such as IGN64 and PSXPower, the movies and lifestyle site The DEN (Daily Entertainment Network), and GameSages, a gaming community with codes and tips. From there, we expanded IGN with new channels, new formats, experimented with new platforms, and eventually got to where we are today: a content brand covering the things you love that you can find wherever you like to hang out. I’ll spare you the corporate rah-rah with reach and follower numbers, but we’ll never forget to be thankful for the many fans that watch and read our content and use our tools every day.

Though one of gaming’s biggest players, Nintendo, is nearly as old as Hollywood, video games were still a relatively young art form when IGN first arrived on the scene. Sticking with the example of 1889’s hippest playing card company turned video game giant, we witnessed the rise and fall and rise of Nintendo, SEGA doing what nintendidn’t and making games for all platforms, FPS dev royalty Steam and Epic making fortunes by building stores and making engines, and a little comic book company rising from bankruptcy to become one of the biggest players in entertainment. The heroes we once only read about are now the characters we watch and play as. In a glorious full-circle, the heroes we played as are now greeting us at theme parks and packing seats in movie theaters.

Party Like It's 1996

Creating content for YouTube, podcasts platforms, and social media has ensured that IGN has continued to grow over the years even as the way people browse the “internet” has fundamentally changed. Those of you who have visited us via office tours, hung out at IGN Live in LA, or tuned in to our podcasts hopefully encountered that same small team spirit that we feel whenever we get together to plan a new event, video, article, strategy guide, or map.

Lots of work goes into publishing IGN every day – and I’m just as thankful for the contributions from staff members present and past – but instead of making this anniversary celebration entirely about us, we’ll be rolling out lots of fun pieces of content that celebrate the last 30 years of games and entertainment throughout 2026.

If you’re interested in traveling down memory lane with us, IGN’s newly crafted editorial lead, Justin Davis, is sharing what we’ve got in store all year long for IGN30. Check that article out here: Why Now is the Most Exciting Time for IGN.

If you’re not sick of me yet, take a look at my occasional retro gaming column, Forgotten Gems, or join Daemon, Sam, Justin, and me for a special video episode of IGN Game Scoop as we open some dusty boxes with gaming artifacts in IGN’s storage space, right here and now:

Thanks for sticking with us! I hope you enjoy our lookbacks throughout 2026 -- and see you in 2046 for IGN50! (In space.)

Peer Schneider is one of the founders of IGN Entertainment, the company that runs IGN. After two decades of heading up editorial, he created a tools and game help group a few years ago and oversees the next generation of content publishing via IGN Guides, Maxroll, Map Genie, Gamer Network, HowLongtoBeat, and more.

IGN is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and I couldn’t be more excited to give you all a sneak peek at the year-long festivities we have in store. From deep dive retrospective interviews with the biggest names in entertainment, to an in-person celebration in downtown Los Angeles, we’re inviting you to celebrate 30 years of pop culture with us.

Everything Everywhere All At Once

It’s fitting we’re celebrating this milestone now, at such an incredible time for games, movies, and streaming. Super Mario is now a huge movie franchise. The Last of Us and Fallout are smash-hit shows. Netflix now hosts an ever-growing collection of video games. And in turn some games, like Dispatch, look and behave a lot like Netflix shows. Thanks to the rise of collab culture in general, fans of everything from Stranger Things to Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn can show off their fandom in Fortnite. You can get Dwight Schrute as a Magic: the Gathering card.

Crucially, it isn’t just the megabrands that have benefitted. At this same time, the expansion of digital distribution platforms like Steam and streaming have empowered formerly niche communities to reach new heights as well. If you like chill, cozy games, they’ve never been bigger. Or if you’re like me and want to optimize conveyor belts and production chains, automation games are also having a moment. On the streaming side, we all have a friend that has found some amazing new subtitled show no one is watching but them, but might blow up into the next big thing (looking at you, Peer). Nowhere is this feeling more prevalent than the incredible growth of anime and manga over the last three decades.

In other words, whatever you’re into, pop culture has evolved to allow you to go deeper into your passions, or discover something amazing and new you didn’t even know you were interested in.

In short, it’s an exciting time to be a fan of…. just about anything.

At IGN, we’re privileged to have been right in the middle of this all for 30 years. IGN Entertainment company co-founder Peer Schneider has published an image gallery from the very earliest days of IGN you have to see.

"I am what I choose to become"

In some ways the entertainment landscape has been completely transformed from what it was in our earliest days. One somewhat startling fact is that IGN has been around longer than YouTube, Netflix, and Xbox, just to name a few. But in other ways, everything old becomes new again. In 1996 we were dreaming about what Zelda would look like on the Nintendo 64. In 2026, we’re dreaming about what Zelda will look like in theaters. Tomb Raider made its debut in 1996, and now in 2026 we’re excited to be covering both the new show and the duo of upcoming games. It’s like poetry… they rhyme.

But it’s these rare periods of more rapid transformation - like the one we’re in right now - that have always fascinated me most. I joined IGN in 2011 as Mobile Games Editor, reviewing games like Angry Birds Star Wars and Infinity Blade (bring it back you cowards!). I spent another couple years running features, and had a lot of fun (and headaches) shepherding insane projects like the Top 125 Nintendo Games. I recently moved into a role overseeing IGN’s absolutely amazing editorial team.

After more than 15 years, the thing that excites me most about working here is still the same: it’s the moment when someone says “...what if we tried this?” when thinking about how to solve a tricky problem.

Around 20 years ago, a little website called YouTube was just taking off. More video game fans were interested in watching videos about their favorite games and movies, and not just reading about them. IGN adapted quickly, and we now have 35 million subscribers watching more than 2 billion videos every year.

Around 10 years ago, Snapchat was the biggest thing on the planet, with TikTok and Instagram reels hot on its heels. IGN got on board, and now has more than 60 million social followers watching more than 5 billion vertical videos annually.

A decade later, we’re now in the midst of another transformative moment. In an online landscape increasingly dominated by text, videos, and entire people that were created at the click of a button, authenticity, transparency, and helpfulness are more important than ever.

You’ve seen a little bit of this from us already, and we’re excited to double down across the rest of 2026 and beyond. As one small step, we’re now including an extended discussion with our critics at the end of most reviews, to learn more about the reviewer’s specific tastes, history with the genre or franchise, and more.

Every single piece of IGN content is created by a human. We will give you more opportunities to get to know individual creators’ quirks and tastes in ways beyond just our stable of podcasts, including more letters from the editor like this one. (Seriously - hit me up if you’re playing any new factory automation games).

We’re also doubling down on making ourselves as helpful to all of you as possible, in big ways and small. HowLongToBeat does exactly what's in the name: work with the community to log data on exactly how many hours it takes to clear any video game. Tools like Maxroll and Mapgenie have also joined the IGN family in recent years, serving as complement to our human-powered cultural commentary, helping you get the most out of your games.

Finally, just as we want to find more opportunities for you to get to know us, we’re also excited to connect with and open a closer conversation with all of you more directly, as well. Again, this isn’t something brand new. Among other things, our annual Reddit AMA gives us a chance to chat with you all directly and hopefully demystify how IGN works a bit. The AMA has been one opportunity for us to remind everyone that IGN reviews have never and will never be paid for - every once in a while it’s important to restate the obvious.

But for me personally, IGN Live is the most exciting way we show up for our audience, and it’s been amazing to see so many of you show up for us, too. The (for now) once-a-year event kicked off in 2024, with attendees getting to play dozens of unreleased games, and to see live on-stage interviews with head of Xbox Phil Spencer, the cast of Critical Role, film director Eli Roth, and plenty more. We grew to a second floor in 2025. And in 2026 we’re excited to share more soon about what we have in store. But it may not surprise you to hear it's not just going to be a look ahead at this year’s biggest games, shows, and movies, but will double as a massive celebration 30 years in the making.

I’d love to see you there this June.

A Year-Long Celebration

In addition to IGN Live, you’re going to see special 30th anniversary-themed content on IGN all year long.

In IGN30: Icons, we’re conducting deep dive, longform interviews with industry luminaries from across gaming and entertainment to learn more about what they were doing in 1996, get their take on the last 30 years of groundbreaking changes, as well as their look ahead at the next 30 years.

1996 was an incredible year for games, featuring the debut of Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Pokemon Red & Blue, just to name a few. And although we didn’t want too much of our IGN30 celebration to just be pure nostalgia, we couldn’t pass up this opportunity to revisit those all-time greats. So this year we’ll be producing special IGN30 editions of Art of the Level, Is It Still Fun Today?, and more. IGN Cinefix is also joining in on the fun, with Art of the Scene: IGN30 Edition.

This year we’re getting you involved in the celebrations too, via interactive face-offs, polls, and brackets to help settle some of the greatest and most storied characters, games, and consoles from the past three decades.

Finally, IGN Store and Humble Bundle will be getting in on the IGN30 celebrations, with throwback merchandise and a best-of-the-best game bundle.

I want to close with a genuine thank you, whether you’re here with us every day, or if this is your first time back in a while. I grew up poring over issues of EGM, and then just a few short years later obsessively checking websites like CheatCC, AICN, The GIA and yes, ign64.com (among so many others). So to have the opportunity to talk about the games, movies, and shows I love for a living is truly a dream come true.

It’s an honor and a privilege to have you here with us at all, and on behalf of everyone at IGN, I’m so excited to celebrate with you this year.

The Fallout TV show is packed full of characters, factions, locations, and items familiar to any who has played the beloved RPGs. There are so many easter eggs to spot that we found 111 video game details in Season 1 alone. With Season 2 heading to a fan-favourite region of the Fallout universe, New Vegas, there's naturally a whole new flood of iconography set to make its way from the games into the Prime Video series. So, we’ll be digging into each and every episode and picking out everything we’ve noticed that relates to the source material. Without further ado, let's take a look at every video game easter egg and details we spotted in the season premiere of Fallout Season 2.

Characters and Factions

1. The likes of Lucy and The Ghoul obviously return in Fallout Season 2, but one less obvious returning character is Robert House, who first appeared at the end of Season 1, albeit looking a little different. That’s because he’s now been recast, with Justin Theroux taking over (sort of) from Rafi Silver, in anticipation of a presumably larger role this time around. It makes sense, too, as New Vegas is where the founder of RobCo Industries is found in the game, declaring himself as CEO, President, and Sole Proprietor of the New Vegas strip. We first see him in a flashback sequence at a local bar.

2. New Vegas is also home to some iconic factions that battle for control over the Mojave wasteland. One we see prominently in this episode is the Great Khans, a raider tribe inspired by Mongolian culture of the old world. This can clearly be seen in their horned helmets and recognisable logo that’s proudly on display in Novac.

3. A number of corpses wearing fur hats can be seen as Lucy and The Ghoul investigate an abandoned vault. These are similar to the hats worn by the People's Liberation Army, as seen in Fallout 3 and its Operation: Anchorage DLC, although these are not actually dead members of the PLA, but the rotting carcasses of Americans brainwashed into thinking they’re communists.

4. Before the bombs dropped, we also get a look at a Vault-Tec salesman who looks to be dressed pretty much exactly like the one who rings your doorbell at the start of Fallout 4. We’d be highly surprised if it’s the exact same one, considering they’d have to be in both Boston and Los Angeles near the beginning of the apocalypse, but it's great to see that Vault-Tec enforces a strict dress code policy.

Locations

5. In fact, the whole neighborhood that the salesman is roaming around is similar to the one seen at the beginning of Fallout 4. Even a military Vertibird can be seen flying over the street, exactly like it does in the 2015 game.

6. Lucy and The Ghoul walk past a sign pointing towards the Starlight Drive-In Theater as they wander the wasteland. This drive-in cinema is actually a location you can visit in Fallout 4, but I guess there must have been a large chain of these that spread throughout America.

7. Vault 24 is a curious one. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t exist in Fallout: New Vegas, but following its 2010 release, a Vault 24 jumpsuit has been found in the game files of Obsidian’s RPG. It seems like this was a location that was ultimately cut, so it's nice to see it get its moment in the limelight here, even if it doesn’t seem the most welcoming of places.

8. One location that is definitely in Fallout: New Vegas is the Dino Dee-lite Motel. Arguably one of the Mojave wasteland’s most iconic landmarks, in this part of the timeline, the Great Khans have seemingly taken control of it at the expense of the game’s previous occupant, Jeannie May Crawford, who ran it fifteen years earlier in 2281.

9. Dinky the T-Rex is the motel’s looming dinosaur mascot, and he looks just like he does in New Vegas. In a clear reference to the video game, Lucy uses its gaping mouth as a sniper’s nest, just as Craig Boone and Manny Vargas once did.

10. The Dino Dee-Lite motel is what the town of Novac is built around, having gotten its name from the damaged “No Vacancy” sign that sits outside of it. In the game, its residents describe it as “a small oasis in a big desert”, but it looks like it's seen better days in the show.

Items and Iconography

11. A nice little detail is the shield and skull decoration seen in Novac. This is a reference to the Great Khans ending slide from the first Fallout, which you may have seen based on the choices you’d made in that original Interplay Productions game.

12. And of course, it wouldn’t be Fallout with Nuka Cola. A vending machine for the wasteland’s favourite carbonated drink can be seen in Novac by the motel.

13. Caffeine isn’t the only drug rife in the Mojave, though. This Great Khan member can be seen inhaling some Jet, a powerful hallucinogenic chem that gives the user a brief period of enhanced awareness. In the games, this translates as slowing down the action around you to give the player an edge in combat. Incidentally, the most common form of Jet is created using the fumes emanating from the dung of Brahmin (Fallout’s multi-headed bovine).

14. The Ghoul can be seen using a device that produces a green light or mist to heal the cuts on his neck. We initially wondered if this was a miniaturised version of Fallout 76’s Stimpack Diffuser, which creates a cloud of green healing mist. However, IGN reader ZaFreesh pointed out this is actually a damaged Fusion Core, the devices used to power many of the universe's devices (you can see its yellow body and connecting prongs through The Ghoul's fingers.) In all of Bethesda's Fallout games, ghouls are able to use radiation to heal. That green light is leaking ionizing radiation.

15. Of course, there are also more traditional ways of harming your insides. Big Boss cigarettes are a very common brand in the Fallout universe, and we can see Mr House with a pack of them in the opening.

16. If you’re more of a straight-edge kinda person, perhaps we can interest you in some of the wasteland’s more precious items – purified water. A bottle can be seen on the floor of a vault back in Los Angeles.

17. Another great way to restore some health in the Fallout games is by eating some Sugar Bombs. An incredibly sugary breakfast cereal, a box can be spotted in the far less sweet-looking medical facility inside Vault 24.

18. Back in the very Fallout 4-looking town in the middle of the episode, we can spot a Vault-Tec van, presumably belonging to the aforementioned salesman. In case you don’t know, Vault-Tec is the company responsible for building and maintaining the hundreds of nuclear bunkers across North America.

19. And don’t get too excited, but that isn’t the only van-related detail, as in the episode’s opening scene we are shown a Radiation King van behind Robert House. Radiation King is an electronics company that, among other items, makes many of the televisions spotted across Fallout’s wasteland.

20. Speaking of technology and Mr House, could the neck-mounted radio chips that he uses to overpower the construction worker’s brain be an early prototype of the Mesmetron, or perhaps a competing design from RobCo Industries? The Mesmetron is a mind control device that we’ve only previously seen in Fallout 3. This unique weapon was developed by Implied Hypnotics Inc. and grants the player the ability to confuse enemies, and even make their heads explode.

21. Speaking of non-Fallout: New Vegas-related items from the games making their way into the TV show, the Whack a Commie! arcade machine from Fallout 4’s Nuka World expansion can be seen being played by Cooper’s daughter, Janey, in a flashback.

Music

22. Music is a huge part of the Fallout games, and that’s no different in the show. During the Novac shootout, we can hear “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins. This track features in Fallout: New Vegas and has lived a long life since, becoming a meme in its own right.

23. “It’s All Over” by The Ink Spots can also be heard in the episode. This is from Fallout 4, with The Ink Spots being a 1930s and ‘40s group that has become synonymous with the games, having had songs featured in multiple entries.

24. “Make the World Go Away” is a country song originally written by Hank Cochran. Though not in any Fallout, a cover of it has been used in a video game: GTA San Andreas, which also visits Las Vegas as one of its key locations.

25. A couple of other tracks also get aired throughout the season two premiere: A cover of “Cheek to Cheek” by Frank Sinatra, and “Workin’ For the Man” by Roy Orbison. These have no connection to the already established Fallout universe as far as we can tell, but do fit the vibe perfectly.

And that’s everything we spotted in the first episode of season two of the Fallout TV show. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments. For more Fallout, check out our review of the premiere, and stay tuned next week for all of episode two’s easter eggs.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

The Games Done Quick (GDQ) community regularly celebrates the art of speedrunning while raising money for different charities. Last year’s Awesome Games Done Quick event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania raised approximately $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, marking the organization as one of the largest global fundraisers. Not only is each event a testament to the skills of runners, but it also highlights the generosity of this subsection of the gaming community.

GDQ is not just known for its impressive speedruns, though. It’s commonly praised for its diversity. From Games Done Queer, to Black in a Flash, the speedrunning charity regularly creates safe spaces for marginalized identities. And this year, across the weekend of November 29-30, disabled and neurodivergent runners and community members alike will have their own platform to raise awareness and money for the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network, as well as showcase their speedrunning skills in games such as Tetris, Tunic, Dark Souls 3, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.

Speaking with IGN, GDQ Disability and Neurodivergence Special event leads and speedrunners Madeleine “SatanHerself” Callan and Jaida “Anarchyasf” George discuss the importance of disability representation in the speedrunning scene, as well as the logistics of planning this event.

Making Speedrunning Inclusive

In March, Callan joined the GDQ team. She notes that the organization actively encourages the creation of different showcases, sometimes focused on specific games, and other times rooted in communities, like disabled and neurodivergent. After conferring with GDQ and formulating the idea for several months, she thought it appropriate to align the first disability speedrunning charity drive with International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which takes place on December 3. And to help organize and host the showcase, Callan brought on George, a speedrunner known for highlighting marginalized voices.

“I jumped at the opportunity when Maddie asked me to be on,” George says. “My Hotfix show [part of GDQ’s regular scheduled programming] that I started last November is called Hidden Heroes, and the point is to showcase marginalized speedrunners. Sometimes, when you are looking at the speedrunning space, it can seem overwhelmingly one kind of person, and you don’t often see people like me or people like Maddie on the big stage.”

George explains that her presence in the speedrunning scene is directly attributed to black speedrunners offering her opportunities to perform and compete. With over a decade of experience in the hobby, she was welcomed within black-led spaces and events at GDQ. And for Callan, her speedrunning career at GDQ is a tribute to the Frame Fatales community, an all women and femme speedrunning group. These groups, which offer safe and welcoming spaces within the greater speedrunning scene, were direct catalysts for the creation of the GDQ Disability and Neurodivergence Special. For Callan and George, elevating this community speedrunners, just as they were welcomed, is the most important aspect of building a new showcase.

“I often feel in professional spaces I can’t say the word Autism,” says Callan. “It makes people feel uncomfortable. I can’t say a myriad of the types of [disabilities] we’re going to be talking about during the event. I feel like in this space we made for ourselves, we can talk about [disabilities], and so many people are excited to.”

Callan explains that some runners have designed their showcases to highlight and educate audience members about their specific disabilities. “If you provide the safe space then people are going to flock to you. Do something that you’re excited about. And if you need more time, float around the space, and then, maybe you’ll feel more comfortable.”

Making Speedrunning Accessible

Establishing a safe and healthy environment for disabled and neurodivergent speedrunners is only one part of the overarching challenge of creating an accessible event. While most modern triple-A and indie games include some form of accessibility options or inclusive designs, they still cannot fully account for the individualistic nature of the disabled experience. This, according to Callan and George, helped drive discussions around ensuring that competitors could run from the comfort of their own homes.

That’s just one of many decisions made by the team to ensure the event is accessible to all. Another example is particularly beneficial for cognitive disabilities: “People who have speech impediments, or who are nervous about speaking for one reason or another, can get commentary buddies,” Callan reveals. “We’ve been linking people up with people who will help them with commentary, sort of like having a buddy support system. I’ve been enjoying seeing that come together and seeing people look at their limitations and saying, ‘I still want to try and see what I can do within this space.’”

To coincide with providing accessibility for casters and their specific runs, the disability and neurodivergent event also removes any kind of restriction on controls and control types. GDQ does traditionally allow unique controllers and control schemes to complete runs, like using a bicycle to beat Undertale or Peanut Butter the Dog’s makeshift paddles to beat Gyromite. But for disabled runners that need accessible controllers or schemes, George is making it very clear that GDQ encourages everyone to use what is necessary.

“Whatever it is you need to do to complete your run in a way that allows you to do it is encouraged,” she says. “I know there are people who play with alternative control styles. There is a particular person I know, who did not submit for the event, but uses a modified controller in a way that is helpful for them to do the hobby that they like to enjoy. Whatever people need to use, we are totally accepting.”

Callan does explain that there’s a chance that runs may be denied, not from an accessibility standpoint, but from a “technological limitation on the type of run that we can do, not the actual control scheme.”

Disability inclusion is still lacking across the greater gaming industry. From official fighting game tournaments restricting certain controls and settings, to companies like Microsoft outright banning third-party hardware, it’s difficult for disabled players to participate in events. Combine the lack of controls with little representation across major events, and disabled individuals struggle to fully belong in the scene. Callan and George ultimately want to rectify these missteps with the GDQ Disability and Neurodivergence Special. And, as Callan notes, creating a space where disabled runners can be welcomed and supported is what’s most important.

“My main message with this [event] and in general, as a person in this space, is to be proud of yourself,” she says. “Look at our positions in life and say ‘This sucks, and the world isn’t built for us, and it’s difficult when the world doesn’t want us to succeed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t come together and have fun and make a space for ourselves in the world that we want to see.’”

The GDQ Disability and Neurodivergence Special takes place this weekend, November 29-30, ahead of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, on December 3. You can watch the event streamed live on the GamesDoneQuick Twitch channel from 1pm ET/10am PT each day. You can find the schedule here.

Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.

Forgotten Gems is a column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, check out the previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section.

It’s been four years since Nintendo brought the first batch of Nintendo 64 games to its Nintendo Switch Online service, now redubbed Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Classics. For someone who started his games media career covering N64 games, this modern take on Nintendo’s legendary Virtual Console era was a very welcome addition. I ended up playing through a few of the games over the months that followed and was surprised how well some of them aged (special shoutout to Rare’s Banjo games)!

It’s not all sunshine, of course. The games aren’t running natively and may not feel as snappy as you remember them. Some early emulation challenges, like Ocarina of Time’s fog rendering, were addressed pretty quickly, even if some others still linger (F-Zero X is still not as we remember it). And while there are many all-time classics to be found in the emulated library, I would’ve honestly expected a bigger lineup by now with a few more first-party hits as well as some third-party gems that have firmly entered the forgotten gems realm. Which means, Nintendo Classics is a convenient and cost-effective solution to relive the N64 age, but not a perfect one.

Analogue 3D: Nintendo 64's 2025 Offspring

Enter the Analogue 3D, a modern – but costly – take on the Nintendo 64 hardware. See Seth’s review for more:

If you’re not familiar with the company, it’s known for making extremely capable high-end solutions to play classic games on modern screens, such as the Analogue Duo (PC Engine/TurboGrafx), the Super NT (SNES), Mega NT ( Genesis/Mega Drive), the Analogue Pocket (all Game Boy systems – with adapters for Game Gear, NGPC, Lynx, and more), and now, the $270 Analogue 3D, capable of bringing both NTSC and PAL games to 4K screens, lag-free, and with additional bells and whistles, like CRT-style display options, overclocking, and VFR. It’s not a replacement for the Switch consoles’ ability to emulate Nintendo 64 on the go, but for purists who have or are willing to build a sizable N64 cartridge collection and want the games to feel and look as good (or better) as they remember, it’s surely the best way to play them on modern screens.

I preordered one day one, mostly because I anticipated some major N64 games that I still own to never come to the Switch service – though I’ll concede that Nintendo has surprised me before. For starters, I did not have the Japan-only Custom Robo and Custom Robo V2 on my Switch Online bingo card. Perhaps there’s more where that came from?

People interested in game preservation usually know their way around a classic gaming library and if you’re part of the Analogue 3D club, you likely have some N64 carts at home already. But as someone who reviewed Nintendo 64 games for a living some three decades ago, I humbly present this non-exhaustive list of personal favorites that are worth going back to and AREN’T yet – and in some cases never will be – on Nintendo’s service.

10 Nintendo 64 Must-Plays

Let’s kick it off with 10 must-plays, in alphabetical order. I've included IGN's Top 25 N64 games at the bottom of this article -- but these picks and other picks in this column are specifically games you can't get yet play on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.

Beetle Adventure Racing

I wrote a whole column about this one as well, but EA’s Battle Adventure Racing is more than just a – now – obscure entry in the Need for Speed series. It’s a genuinely good racer in which the hunt for its imaginative shortcuts is as entertaining as the actual racing action. Given that the VW Beetle car license comes with strings attached (VW isn’t making Beetles anymore and may not be motivated to rubberstamp an emulated re-release), the Analogue 3D is surely the best way to play it today!

Read my column, Raising the BAR, for more on the history of Beetle Adventure Racing -- and its canceled sequel.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day

Conker’s Bad Fur Day didn’t age as well as Rare’s best platformers, Banjo Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, partially because of its dated humor and references, but it’s still a great time. I actually played the original saccharine Conker’s game before it was retooled into the M-rated adventure we all know and love today. Historic significance of that “design 180” aside, there still isn’t anything as outrageously funny as the Great Mighty Poo boss battle -- even without the context of Conker’s roots. Perhaps replaying it will finally purge the Ugas’ chant from my brain, too. Note also that the Conker: Live and Reloaded remake is playable on modern Xbox consoles via backwards compatibility.

Diddy Kong Racing

It’s very strange Nintendo added Rare’s much worse Jet Force Gemini to Nintendo Switch Online before adding Diddy Kong Racing, but perhaps the combination of Microsoft-owned game code with Nintendo characters made it a much trickier title to negotiate a re-release contract for. Or maybe it’s still coming. Regardless, Diddy Kong Racing merged the stylings of Mario Kart and Mario 64 into a racing game with multiple vehicle types and an explorable overworld hub – decades before Mario Kart World. The Analogue 3D even smoothes out some of DKR’s framerate issues thanks to its ability to overclock. Given how long it takes Nintendo to make a new Mario Kart, I’m still hoping we’ll eventually get a true remake or a sequel – but lest you want to grow Cranky Kong's beard waiting, you may want to just cave and revisit the original.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon

Bonus Pick: Goemon's Great Adventure

Konami’s been issuing classic game collections left and right, which is why we haven’t seen some of its best classics, like the Castlevania GBA games, on Nintendo's service. Goemon games may be more likely additions since Konami hasn’t revisited them in a long time, but the fact that the only Mystical Ninja game playable on modern hardware today is the obscure arcade original should tell you something. Though they’re not as good as Goemon’s best outings on SNES, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon is a surprisingly daring Ocarina of Time-style 3D action adventure – and it came out before Nintendo’s mega hit. Plus, with overclocking, it’s actually much more playable than ever. Great Adventure, on the other hand, is a return to the 2D side-scrolling co-op action that may not be as original, but aged much better. Both are still fun to play.

See my column, Life and Death of the Mystical Ninja for more.

Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber

I wrote an entire column about this true gem of strategy RPG and its predecessor, but at the risk of repeating myself: Ogre Battle 64 still rocks. Unfortunately, it’s also exceedingly rare and will cost more than a hundred bucks (without box or manual). If you don’t own it yet, always keep a weather eye out for a copy at the next neighborhood garage sale. See: Forgotten Gems: The Legendary Ogre Battle for more.

Rocket: Robot on Wheels

You’ve probably never heard of Rocket, but its developer’s pedigree has improved a thousand fold since its debut back in 1999. I’ve always had a soft sport for developer Sucker Punch’s inaugural game, but those curious what the people behind Ghost of Yotei, Infamous, and Sly Cooper did before they were famous will find a slower-paced, physics-based puzzle platformer featuring a long-forgotten unicycle robot mascot. Given that Sony owns Sucker Punch and publisher Ubisoft likely let the license lapse, here’s probably your one chance to play it again or for the first time. Criminally underplayed when it first came out, Rocket is worth another look.

Space Station Silicon Valley

I’m convinced that DMA’s Space Station Silicon Valley will eventually join the Nintendo Classics lineup – after all, both its publisher, Take Two, and the developer – known now as Rockstar – are still alive and well. But until then, this obscure platform puzzle game is best played on original N64 hardware or the Analogue 3D. Silicon Valley has you switch between a variety of robotic animals to solve increasingly complicated puzzles. It’s odd, funny, and endlessly creative.

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Bonus Pick: Star Wars: Battle for Naboo

It’s surprising this graphical showcase hasn’t returned to a Nintendo platform given that you can buy the PC port for a few bucks on Steam. Until it does, you could do worse than play the Expansion Pak-enhanced shooter on an Analogue 3D or original hardware today. A technical achievement for its time, Rogue Squadron is still a very playable and fun experience today. I was actually surprised how good it looks compared to pretty much every other N64 game when I plugged it into my Analogue 3D. The Analogue, of course, also supports the high resolution display mode that requires the 4MB Expansion Pak on original hardware. Bonus: try Star Wars: Episode I Battle for Naboo. It may not have the benefit of the more memorable battles from the original trilogy, but it’s a quality shooter in its own right.

Super Smash Bros.

Yes, I know. It’s insane the original Smash Bros. has not been released on Nintendo 64 Classics. Whatever the reasons, it still feels great and is a wonderful reminder as to how even the biggest hits started small. It’s the weakest game in the series with its limited roster of just 12 characters, but the genius of the series is already on full display here.

WWF No Mercy

Bonus Picks: WWF Wrestlemania 2000, WCW/NWO: Revenge, WCW vs. NWO: World Tour

I’m not a wrestling guy, but even I could tell that developer Aki’s run of Nintendo 64 wrestlers was something special. WWF No Mercy was always our internal top pick at IGN64 (we played it for many late, late hours), but any of the four Aki-made games are still worth playing. And given the complications with character and league licenses, the chances of them ever coming to Nintendo’s service are very slim.

Those 10 picks should be enough to get you started.

Even More N64 Picks for Your Analogue 3D

And here are a few more games worth checking out, based either on gameplay quality or historical significance, as noted:

Bakuretsu Muteki Bangai-O

Inferior to the Dreamcast version, but still a great example of what made Treasure’s games such rare delights, Bangai-O has you steer a tiny flying mech through a maze filled with enemies and relentlessly blast the opposition. Only released in Japan in limited numbers, it’s so ridiculously expensive to buy for N64, it would be really nice to get a digital rerelease.

BattleTanx and BattleTanx: Global Assault

Nintendo 64 was the multiplayer console of the ‘90s – but some of us kept playing four-player split-screen years afterwards, too. Stemming from failed console-maker 3DO, the two BattleTanx games were lesser known, but managed to serve up such addictive tank PVP gameplay, we ended up playing it almost as much as GoldenEye. Sadly, 3DO went under before they managed to pull off a hat trick. Prism Entertainment snapped up the license and maintains the trademarks for BattleTanx, but hasn’t done anything with them. Might as well grab the carts for cheap at a garage sale.

Body Harvest

Body Harvest is not a great game – and its visuals definitely didn’t age well. But it’s an experiment so ahead of its time, it deserves to be played again. From the makers of Grand Theft Auto comes a fully polygonal alien invasion action adventure that lets you command any vehicle you see. If you’re intrigued, please see my column for more: Body Harvest: The Game Nintendo Walked Away From. Killer soundtrack, too.

Bomberman X4

Nintendo 64 is home to four Bomberman games. Let me break them all down so you know which one's which. The first, Bomberman 64, known as Baku Bomberman in Japan, is notable mostly for bringing Bomberman into polygonal 3D. It’s not as snappy as its 2D predecessors, but it’s still fun to revisit. It was followed by the single-player Bomberman Hero. The lack of multiplayer was confounding and the action is decent enough, but it's at the bottom of the Bomberman list for me. It was followed by Bomberman 64: Second Attack. This underrated sequel to the inaugural 64 outing ffeatures more multiplayer options, including two-player co-op and a four-player splitscreen mode. Not all of them hit, but it’s still a quality game to revisit.

Now, things get confusing. There’s also: Bomberman 64.

No, you’re not seeing double. This Racjin-developed game takes everything back to 2D. Which much better results. Only released in Japan, it’s a shame the real Bomberman 64 from the makers of Snowbo Kids is more obscure than the inferior earlier title.

Castlevania: Legacy Of Darkness

Konami tried really hard – and struggled – to bring all its classic 2D series into the third dimension. It gave up on Contra 64 outright and canceled the project, while Goemon fared slightly better and saw two N64 releases, covered above. But you have to laud Konami for not giving up. Legacy of Darkness is basically a redo of Castlevania [64]. Its foggy, blurry visuals won’t dazzle you, but it’s a flawed and forgotten gem worth remembering. I still love that oversized “Home Depot Skeleton” battle.

Cruis’n USA and Cruis’n World

Take a deep breath. I don’t love these games. Actually, I don’t even like these games. I had some fun with Cruis’n USA in the arcades, but only when there weren’t better racers around to play – which was rare, because contemporaries like Daytona USA were always near. The N64 version isn’t a great conversion, but I know many older arcade fans are nostalgic for both Cruis’n games, so it feels right to include them with a special callout. I do appreciate Williams/Midway's early attempts to recreate arcade games on Nintendo 64 -- a key reason why Nintendo of America included them in their much-publicized Dream Team.

Donkey Kong 64

While I’m making old-school N64 fans cranky, let me tell you that I have very mixed feelings about DK 64 as well. The two Banjo games are definitely superior in every way, which is no doubt why both were prioritized for release on Switch. But for all the collection bloat, Donkey Kong 64 still has some memorable moments -- and music -- that make it worth revisiting. Plus, that yellow cartridge looks mighty good in either the white or the black Analogue 3D. Overclocking helps with its erratic framerate, but the drop in quality from Banjo-Kazooie is palpable when you play them back to back.

Doubutsu no Mori (Animal Crossing)

Animal Crossing on GameCube was actually a port of Doubutsu no Mori, a Nintendo 64 “communication game” that predates it by a full year. You’ll have to be able to read Japanese kana to fully enjoy it – but also note that you’ll mostly be playing the same game that later came to GameCube as Animal Crossing and Doubutsu no Mori+.

San Francisco Rush and Rush 2049

The original arcade conversion was surprisingly competent, but the Nintendo 64 version of its sequel, Rush 2049, manages the rare feat of being better than the arcade original. The key to its success was the ability to control the vehicles while airborne, which made all the difference for this version’s battle and stunt modes. “Rush… It’s DANGEROUS.”

Gauntlet Legends

Atari was intent on reinventing each one of its arcade classics in 3D for the new millennium, and Gauntlet Legends turned out to be one of the few that made it and left an impression. Ironically, its blocky polygonal graphics didn’t age as well as the OG’s top-down sprites, but I remember having a plenty of fun playing four-player in both the arcades and at home on N64.

Hybrid Heaven

It’s not as good as you remember it to be, but it remains a really unique attempt at marrying Metal Gear-style action with classic roleplaying gameplay. Ultimately, the world you explore is just not interesting enough to keep most player’s attention, but it’s historically interesting as the only sci-fi action RPG from Konami’s Osaka team and because it featured a widescreen mode way back in 1999. Hybrid Heaven supported the physical Expansion Pak for higher resolution output on N64 hardware, which the Analogue 3D supports virtually as well. For all its faults, Hybrid Heaven remains a cool experimental game that unfortunately ended up a mere footnote in Konami console game history.

Mickey’s Speedway USA

I’m no fan of Mickey’s Speedway USA – to me, it’s the game where Rare’s considerable design chops fell victim to having to color in the lines of a high-profile license. But it’s unlikely we’ll ever see this Disney take on Mario Kart (with way too wide tracks) re-released, so snap it up if you encounter it in the wild. The marriage of Nintendo, Rare, and Disney seemed like the start of a beautiful friendship and Speedway USA is more of a dead end -- but it's still cool to see Rare try something very "American", even if its NASCAR with mice and dogs didn't quite work out.

Micro Machines 64 Turbo

Here’s a surprisingly good racing game, on the other hand. Unfairly overlooked, Micro Machines 64 Turbo is a top-down multiplayer racer that offers up super-fun four player action with 32 different vehicle types – cars, tanks, boats, helicopters – across 48 different tracks. It even features an eight-player mode via what it calls “pad share” (yes, it’s as awkward as it sounds, but you have to appreciate the total commitment to create the ultimate party game).

Mischief Makers

Mischief Makers bucked the trend of making every game 3D on N64 and it’s still good for some fast and fluid action from storied developer Treasure. It’s not as good as Treasure’s own Gunstar Heroes for Genesis, but hey, not many games let you play as a brawling robot maid. We haven't gotten a new Treasure game since 2014, so even its lesser efforts are worth digging up.

Mission: Impossible

The movie-licensed Mission: Impossible may not be a great game, but it's worth adding to your physical cart collection as something that will likely never see a re-release on any platform due to licensing issues and the fact that it's a better museum piece than a video game. Mission: Impossible was a hugely ambitious game development project that didn’t quite make it to the desired finish line. It was pared down and became considerably less ambitious to get it out the door, but some of the great ideas are still to be found in what could’ve been a Hitman game before there were Hitman games.

Rayman 2: The Great Escape

Though not as good as the Dreamcast version, Rayman 2: The Great Escape on Nintendo 64 is an excellent platformer that shows the limbless hero could hang with Mario and Banjo (unlike Ubi’s very similar 3D platformer attempt that year, Tonic Trouble). Rayman’s 2D outings have aged better, but The Great Escape is still surprisingly good.

December 2025 Update: Rayman 2 and the inferior Tonic Trouble are available as part of Switch Online as of December 17, 2025.

Snowboard Kids 1 and 2

Nintendo 64’s four controller ports and early success with Mario Kart 64 multiplayer inspired some developers to experiment with “Mario Kart, but with…” games. With Snowboard Kids, Osaka-based Racjin found the winning formula. Never as good as Mario Kart – or 1080, for that matter – both Snowbo Kids games do conjure up plenty of happy memories of playing against friends.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

I know there are plenty of N64 fans who would put this in their top 10 based on the strength of its excellent Hoth level. Visually, it was way ahead of its time. But unfortunately, most of the game is marred by sluggish and unbalanced first-person shooter sections and a repetitive, highly compressed mono soundtrack. It’s an interesting failure that has its fans. Worth playing just for the Snowspeeder bits and the fuzzy memories.

Top Gear and Friends

I wrote about the original Top Gear on SNES in a previous installment of this column, but N64 is a home to a slew of Top Gear titles, all quite different from each other. There’s Top Gear Rally, Top Gear Rally 2, Top Gear Overdrive, and Top Gear Hyperbike. The first one is still arguably the best in the bunch – Boss Game Studios, how you’re missed! Top Gear Rally and the Boss-developed street racing successor World Drive Championship showed what was graphically possible on Nintendo 64, while the Saffire-developed Top Gear Rally 2 added equipment failure to the mix for a more authentic endurance racing experience. Top Gear Overdrive, finally, is an obscure attempt at challenging Beetle Adventure Racing – and it’s quite competent. It’s from Snowblind Studios, the people behind Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. That same team also made Top Gear Hyperbike – a decent racer, but not in the same league as Excitebike 64.

Tetrisphere, The New Tetris, Tetris 64, and Magical Tetris Challenge

Nintendo 64 was home to many quality puzzle games, some of which have already been released on Nintendo Switch. But there’s a quadrilogy of Tetris games that never got there that’s still worth playing. The visually-exciting but also confusing Tetrisphere and the more traditional The New Tetris are mostly notable for their kicking soundtrack (the same composer scored both), while the Japan-only Tetris 64 mixed things up significantly with new block sizes and different modes (and a bio sensor you can clamp to your ear). Capcom’s quality attempt, Magical Tetris Challenge, combines two complicated licenses – Disney and Tetris – and thus will never be seen again outside its limited console run (and the arcade original it’s based on).

There's Even More

How’s that for a list to keep you busy? No, they're not all great -- but they're all interesting games that are surely worth another look. There’s plenty more, of course, from the oddball liquid puzzler Wetrix, to WipEout 64, platformers Chameleon Twist and Glover, box animal sim Cubivore, rally racer MRC, and some quality sports games like NFL Blitz, ISS ‘98, and NBA Courtside. Bored with GoldenEye? Eurocom’s The World is Not Enough isn’t bad. Plus, there are the excellent (but widely available) Worms Armageddon, Spider-Man, Vigilante 8, and some fun and goofy ports of StarCraft 64, Command & Conquer, Quake, Quake II, Rainbow Six, and Duke Nukem to keep you busy. Speaking of ports, Residen Evil 2 on N64 may not be the best version, but it's a landmark of clever programming to squeeze it into cartridge form. And yes, I know about Quest 64 and the Army Men games – more power to you if you enjoy them – but they’re not on my Christmas List.

Do you have any favorite Nintendo 64 games that I didn’t mention? Share your recommendations with others – and let me know if you’ve gotten your hands on an Analogue 3D and what your first impressions are.

Peer Schneider heads up Game Help & Tools across IGN, Maxroll, Map Genie, Eurogamer, RockPaperShotgun, and VG247 and has played every single game named in this article. Likely before you were born (no offense).

Phil Spencer has been the head of Xbox (now officially the CEO of Microsoft Gaming) for over a decade now. And up until very recently, I’d argue that under his watch, the brand really did put players first, even if Xbox has continued to lose market share to PlayStation. As a reminder: Phil immediately unbundled the Kinect from the Xbox One, removing the $100 albatross weighing the console down. His first big initiative as boss was championing backwards compatibility, which is inarguably a huge success. FPS Boost on Xbox Series later made many of those old games run even better. He dragged Sony kicking and screaming into normalizing cross-play. The Xbox One X one-upped the PS4 Pro by offering true, native 4K. And Xbox gaming has undeniably become more inclusive in the Phil Spencer Era thanks to the Xbox Adaptive Controller as well as laudable ASL features in multiple first-party games. Finally, there’s Xbox Game Pass, whose mystery economics continue to make it controversial amongst both gamers and developers alike, but has nevertheless been a tremendous value for subscribers.

Until now, at least. On IGN’s Unlocked podcast, I (far too) often make reference to that Simpsons gif where Sideshow Bob keeps stepping on the rakes he’s surrounded by. And the reason I do that is because Xbox always seems to find a way to ruin any momentum it builds up, typically through no fault of anyone but itself. Take the month of October, for instance. Microsoft is shipping not one or two but three really exciting new games in the next 30 days: the very-awesome-so-far Ninja Gaiden 4, which revives the beloved fast-action franchise after a dormant decade; Double Fine’s promising Keeper, the studio’s next project after its Game Awards Game of the Year-nominated Psychonauts 2; and ever-reliable Obsidian Entertainment’s RPG/shooter sequel The Outer Worlds 2, which we’ve loved every time we’ve seen or played it. That’s a potentially huge month for Xbox – particularly when so many Xbox fans remember how it wasn’t long ago when we’d be lucky to get three ultra-promising first-party releases in an entire year, let alone a single month.

All three will drop onto Xbox Game Pass on day one – but this is the part where Xbox starts stepping on all those rakes. Effective immediately, you’ll need to pay a whopping 50% more for that privilege. Microsoft has raised Game Pass prices for the third year in a row, with the give-me-all-the-day-one-releases tier now setting players back $30 per month. Fourteen months ago, by the way, Game Pass Ultimate was $17. That’s how high and how fast the price has risen.

In fairness to Microsoft, the company has added more to Ultimate: Ubisoft+ Classics, Fortnite Crew, and higher-resolution cloud gaming. It’s also worth mentioning that multiple likely Game of the Year candidates hit Game Pass Ultimate on day one this year: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Blue Prince. But we all know that the biggest appeal of Game Pass are those day-one benefits for Xbox-published games, and this price increase feels directly targeted at that. (For the record, PC Game Pass is going from $12 to $16.49 per month.)

This comes immediately on the heels of the company jacking up Xbox console prices for the second time in the past four months, with the top-end Xbox Series X now carrying an eye-watering price tag of $800. But that $800 almost sounds like a damn bargain next to the much-hyped ROG Xbox Ally X handheld gaming PC, which weighs in at NINE-HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE U.S. DOLLARS. Sure, there’s a less powerful, more affordable version for $599, but nobody knows if that one’s worth a damn, because Microsoft has only ever let media and influencers get their hands on the more powerful Ally X. Hopefully it proves useful, as the Series S has for the non-hardcore gamer part of the market.

Heck, the only thing the Xbox folks haven’t raised prices on are first-party games. Oh, they tried with The Outer Worlds 2, to be clear – and they inevitably will next year when Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, Forza Horizon 6, etc. drop – but the Xbox community wasn’t having any of that, and Microsoft relented.

I realize we live in crazy times, and that Sony and Nintendo are not exactly blameless here either after each of them raised prices on their own aging hardware in the past year (with Nintendo also aggressively raising software prices for the Switch 2 generation as well). Blame the Trump tariffs if you want to (heck, Microsoft does), but I’m sorry: at the end of the day, the buck stops with Microsoft. This is a company with a market cap of nearly $4 trillion, who has done layoff after layoff, after spending upwards of $80 billion on studio and publisher acquisitions. And it’s fair to wonder if those naysayers who question the sustainability of Game Pass and its business model are being proven right with this latest, deepest round of price hikes.

What’s worse is that, in the bigger picture, we’ve reached a sad point where gaming is becoming less accessible to new players rather than more. Historically, console prices go down and the size and quality of the game library goes up over the course of a generation, leading to more units sold and a healthier ecosystem for everyone inside it. And while again, the blame for the absence of that this generation does not rest squarely on Microsoft’s shoulders, the actions of Team Xbox are of a company that isn’t showing a lot of empathy towards its customers as the cost of groceries, gas, and other bare essentials keeps going up. Again, these larger economic issues aren’t Microsoft’s fault, and it has to contend with rising development costs too, but they are choosing profit over players.

As such, while I recognize that this Xbox console generation isn’t over yet, it’s almost certainly going to be remembered first and foremost for Microsoft’s greed: two hardware price increases (and counting), three Xbox Game Pass price increases (and counting), one software price increase (so far), and tens of thousands of layoffs as well as multiple studio closures.

It’s kind of a monkey’s paw situation, really: all Xbox gamers have wanted since the start of the catastrophic Xbox One generation was a steady supply of great first-party games. Well, in 2025 we’re finally getting that – and as I’ve already mentioned, 2026 is shaping up to be a banger too – but it’s coming at the cost of, well…practically everything else. But it’s not our fault. Instead, Microsoft’s greed is to blame.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

After years of waiting, Hollow Knight: Silksong is finally in the hands of the people. By this point, many will even have completed it. Gone are the days of applying clown makeup during each major gaming event, replaced instead by widespread love for Team Cherry’s sequel. Yet, for me, I’m struggling to be excited about Silksong, despite the fact it’s the latest entry in one of my favorite genres.

For this issue of Access Designed, I’m not going to be analysing Hollow Knight: Silksong in the traditional sense. The game’s demands of speed and precision, combined with a lack of accessibility features and my own disability, has meant that I physically can’t play it. And so I’m unable to give an accurate analysis of gameplay, story, and even the art direction of different zones, all of which can be examined through an accessible lens. Instead, I want to talk about the overarching problems of the Metroidvania genre itself, and how Silksong is just perpetuating and reinforcing inaccessible barriers.

It Goes Beyond Difficulty

Like its predecessor, Silksong continues the trend of challenging players with complex platforming and boss battles. While difficult experiences have become mainstream successes in recent years, some Hollow Knight players have noted that Silksong can be particularly punishing. Those concerns have been at least partially addressed by the developers, who notably nerfed two early game bosses within the first week of Silksong’s release. And while difficulty is absolutely an accessibility issue, I’m not going to argue for or against it in Silksong.

Difficulty is the proverbial low hanging fruit of accessibility critiques. Accessibility consultants, champions and journalists have written articles about what difficulty is or isn’t, produced clips or reels talking about the importance of difficulty settings, and created countless threads on social media, advocating for more diverse accessibility tools to adjust a game’s difficulty. We spend so much time championing the inclusion of difficulty options that we often miss other crucial barriers that prevent a variety of disabled individuals from enjoying a new game. Is Silksong difficult? According to reviews and conversations, yes. Should we focus all our accessibility arguments on that alone? Absolutely not.

What Silksong Lacks

Aside from no accessibility settings for difficulty, Silksong’s overall settings options are minimal, especially for a game released in 2025. Volume can be adjusted through sliders, the HUD can increase in size, and some actions can be rebound, but only on specific buttons. For disabled players looking for a variety of accessibility menus, Silksong is objectively a disappointment.

While I acknowledge that studios do not all share the same engine and thus don’t have a unified toolbase to create accessible options, nor do developers all have the same level of knowledge to implement these features, I do wish Team Cherry had taken direct inspiration from Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s Memory Shards system. Ubisoft’s smart new addition to Metroidvanias allows you to take a screenshot of a location and pin it to the map, which provides a persistent reminder of previously-visited zones that may require specific items to traverse, or places to return to once you’ve become stronger. This option revolutionized the Metroidvania genre, with The Lost Crown becoming one of last year’s most accessible games. While Silksong does feature the ability to purchase and place markers on your map to help remember safe areas and other important points of interest, there’s nothing that comes close to The Lost Crown’s Memory Shards. I understand Team Cherry may not have the same resources as Ubisoft, but to offer nothing that aids accessibility beyond the bare minimum in the form of map markers is frustrating.

What Silksong Gives

As I’ve mentioned through previous editions of Access Designed, options are not the only form of accessibility. While Silksong fails to provide numerous accessible settings, its use of inclusive design, particularly through Tools, can give some relief. The Fractured Mask, for instance, prevents a fatal blow from killing Hornet. This is fantastic for physically disabled players that struggle with precise motions, or cognitively disabled players that need more time to memorize boss attack and movement patterns, allowing for a second chance at life before returning to a rest bench. The Fractured Mask is also great for difficult parkour sections, and the fact that this Tool recharges on rest means you always get that second chance on every attempt. The Compass, meanwhile, tracks your position on Silksong’s sprawling map, and is another helpful item for cognitively disabled players. And my personal favorite Tool that I’ve discovered through watching let’s plays is the Magnetite Dice, which randomly nullifies a single hit. Despite the random chance associated with this item, this is great for physically disabled players that may lack energy during extensive play sessions.

But these Tools aren’t offered immediately. Players are forced to progress through the game, beating challenging bosses and completing side quests before unlocking them. While I’m a firm believer that disabled people deserve to be challenged by the games they play, offering crucial pieces of accessibility from the very start of the game doesn’t limit that challenge – it just enables us to play like everyone else. In Silksong, some players may not make it far enough to unlock the Tool that would provide them with a vital accessibility feature.

The Overarching Metroidvania Problem

Silksong’s difficulty and lack of accessibility offerings make for an inaccessible challenge, but that’s not why I can’t play. As my disability progressed and I lost function in my hands, I found the speed and precision required to play Metroidvanias became too much. Even The Lost Crown, with its accessibility offerings, was too taxing for me to finish.

Before I decided to purchase Silksong, a friend advised me to wait until he could play. After several hours, he told me not to buy the game because the speed, combined with the dexterity needed to platform, fight, and use items, would undoubtedly leave me exhausted and frustrated. Therein lies my biggest critique of this genre – beyond what we’ve seen in The Lost Crown, no accessibility settings or system designs have yet to address the speed and inaccessibility of the core combat and platforming gameplay.

I am the first person to admit I am no game designer. I also acknowledge it’s virtually impossible to make every game accessible to every disabled player. Yet, as a lifelong fan of the genre, I genuinely miss playing these games. I’m not critiquing them out of baseless anger, but rather a desire to play one of my favorite genres once again.

Hollow Knight: Silksong, from the perspective of a sequel, is an achievement. Yet, for disabled players looking to dive deep into Team Cherry’s newest game, it’s an accessibility failure. Difficulty aside, disabled players have few offerings to help them navigate the map and defeat challenging enemies. And for those comments undoubtedly proclaiming that not every game is made for everyone, let it be for the individual to decide – not based on inaccessible practices, but rather just a fondness of the genre. For developers looking to Silksong’s success, I ask that they please use its lack of accessibility as motivation. As a lifelong fan of the Metroidvania genre, I hope someone will use Silksong’s failures as inspiration to make me return.

Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.

When I was 13, my dad let me drive his car for the first time. It wasn’t on city streets – just in a big, empty parking lot – but I will never forget that’s the day I learned that a car creeps forward even when the driver’s not pressing the gas. Sure, I was only going a few miles an hour, but as a terrified, inexperienced driver, my heart was pounding and I felt totally out of control. I hit the brakes like a kick drum, starting, stopping, starting, and stopping, until I finally got a handle on the machine. It was a steep learning curve; before then, the closest experiences I had to real-life driving were go karts and Mario Kart, and I naively thought my hundreds of laps of motion control steering on Coconut Mall would give me some idea of what to expect.

Strangely, I thought about this memory a lot just a few days ago during my first hands-on demo with Kirby Air Riders. There are certainly a number of similarities: your character moves forward automatically without pressing any buttons, I was going completely off the rails and heavily relying on the brakes until I got the hang of things, and – most notably – my Mario Kart skills didn’t transfer whatsoever. But surprisingly, it was my Smash Bros. muscles that I found flexing instead, with Air Riders feeling like a strange pseudo-sequel to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the same way that Donkey Kong Bananza gave the Super Mario Odyssey treatment to another franchise. Let me explain.

Ever since Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders were formally revealed for Switch 2 back in April, lots of us have wondered the same thing: “Why is Nintendo releasing two kart racers in the same year?” It’s a fair question, one that even Air Riders director – and the creator of Kirby himself – Masahiro Sakurai posed in his presentation last month, joking that it “basically is like Mario Kart,” and one that he even brought up when Nintendo asked him to make Air Riders years ago.

On the surface, it’s an obvious comparison. Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders both feature a large roster of characters racing through colorful courses on various karts/machines, as they weaponize a wide lineup of power-ups to try to take first place. It’s easy to see why onlookers (and even Sakurai himself) would question the choice to place both of these games in Switch 2’s first six months on the market. But once I got Air Riders in my hands, I realized that Mario Kart World and Air Riders really don’t play like each other at all, even in their respective racing modes.

I got to try out the same pair of race courses as our previewer Leanne Butkovic did late last month, first speeding through the starter track, Floria Fields, before taking on the more intense Waveflow Waters. I was immediately struck by how fast Air Riders is compared to the GameCube original, where the racing always felt a bit sluggish. It echoes the jump from Smash 64 to Smash Melee: Melee is faster, more competitive, and stacks a ton of new mechanics on top of the original, just as Air Riders does when compared to Air Ride.

The difference is that Melee came out two years after the first one, and Air Riders is arriving more than two decades after its original, and it’s honestly really cool to see Sakurai pick up right where he left off, creating an iterative sequel that builds upon and fixes issues of what came before as if no time has passed at all. When Air Riders was first teased, I didn’t know what to expect from a legacy Sakurai sequel as he returned to a series from so long ago, and the answer being that it’s basically a GameCube game, but better, is a pretty cool direction to take.

Air Riders felt like a roller coaster ride at first, as I swung around tight turns and glided through exciting setpieces like a stretch of road with rumbling waterfalls on either side of it. The strategy for these races is nothing like Mario Kart World, where it’s all about knowing your route on the track, crossing your fingers for the right item at the right time, and executing shortcuts when you get the power-up you’re looking for. Air Riders is more about attacking and reacting to your opponents – Nintendo even opened its behind-closed-doors presentation to the media by calling it a “Vehicle Action Game” rather than a kart racer. To play Air Riders successfully, I needed to focus on combat and my opponent’s positioning while racing around the course, both by attacking enemies to charge up my devastating special and following the leader’s exact path to take advantage of the new Star Slide ability that increases your speed when you collect the trail of stars machines leave behind. Once I wrapped my head around these core mechanics, I started to understand that from a gameplay perspective, Mario Kart World isn’t the immediate comparison point for Kirby Air Riders: it’s Sakurai’s other darling, Super Smash Bros.

Smash is technically classified as a fighting game, but it has really carved out its own niche with its focus on advanced platforming and knocking opponents out of the arena rather than depleting a health bar, and the same concept can be applied to Kirby Air Riders. Both Smash and Air Riders exist on the outskirts of their traditional genres, resulting in games that can be intimidating at first glance due to how they defy expectations, but ones that provide shocking mechanical depth to those who heavily invest in their systems. As I said, I was incredibly overwhelmed during my first Air Riders play session, but determined to understand its intricacies, I returned to the demo three additional times during PAX West, gradually getting better and more confident each time. I was reminded of the first time I played an eight-player match of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. It was overstimulating, chaotic, and hard to follow, and I thought there was no way it was a mode I’d ever get attached to. But Sakurai games have a way of drawing you in, and it wasn’t long before eight-player matches became a staple on game nights with friends.

I could see the same thing happening with Air Riders’ City Trial mode, which I’ve now had the chance to play eight times. This returning fan-favorite from the GameCube original drops you into an open city alongside up to 15 other players, giving you five minutes to find a better machine to ride and upgrade, with stats and powerups that spawn throughout the map. At the end of five minutes, you compete in one of a lineup of competitions with the machine you developed which range from seeing who can glide the furthest to the straight-up speed test of a drag race.

Despite Sakurai warning against it in his presentation, I spent my first few City Trial runs gobbling up every power-up I could find, and it resulted in a machine that was way too fast for the minigames that followed. I was completely off the rails, and I initially felt punished for being too greedy during the exploration segment of City Trial. But for subsequent runs, I started being more selective about which power-ups I grabbed and which I left behind, trying to make a machine well-suited for any of the possible minigames that could show up.

Sakurai’s fingerprints are truly all over Air Riders. From the slick menu and UI design – which is traditionally designed by his wife, Michiko Sakurai – to the dramatic, slow-motion, red and black finish zoom that punctuates destroying an opponent’s machine just like the final knockout in a match of Ultimate. Even the main menu’s basic black title set on a white background is the same style as Ultimate, and Air Riders’ Japanese website could easily be confused with Sakurai’s other series at a quick glance, complete with character renders and alternate costume designs that scream Smash Bros. Each character’s unique special move instantly reminded me of a Final Smash, and the sheer level of polish and attention to detail across every facet of my demo was unmistakably Sakurai.

I’m so interested to see how the public perceives Air Riders when it comes out in a couple of months. It’s more nuanced than it appears, and for that reason, I don’t think Air Riders demos very well to people playing it for the first time. I spent about two hours watching various groups demo it at PAX West, and the vibe of players felt very familiar to my very first hands-on session: overstimulated, overwhelmed, and generally confused. Air Riders presents itself as a cute, simple, approachable racer that only uses the control stick and a couple of buttons, but in reality, it’s a deep, complex action game that demands your full attention. That tough, contradictory first impression, combined with the surface-level comparisons to Mario Kart, and Air Riders’ hefty $70 price tag, makes me worried that people won’t give it the time of day when it launches in November. I hope not, because after meeting Air Riders on its own terms and working across several demo sessions to understand it, I walked away very excited for a fascinating sequel from one of my favorite creators.

Logan Plant is the host of Nintendo Voice Chat and IGN's Database Manager & Playlist Editor. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game franchise of all time, and he is patiently awaiting the day Nintendo announces a brand new F-Zero. You can find him online @LoganJPlant.

The Steam Deck came out more than three years ago now, starting at $399. Even at the time it seemed incredibly affordable for a system that let you play pretty much any PC game you threw at it. But fast forward to 2025, on the eve of a new generation of handheld gaming PCs powered by the AMD Z2 Extreme, and it seems like a downright bargain.

We finally got pricing for one of these new handhelds, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, and that'll start at $1,099. That's already a steep bump from the last-gen version, which started at $699, but it only gets more expensive – if you want it with the Z2 Extreme, you're looking at up to $1,479. That's getting into gaming laptop territory, for a system that almost certainly won't be as fast as a gaming laptop. And while the Legion Go 2 is only a single system, it does signal that the entire category is about to see a massive price bump next month.

The Ally In The Room

We know the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X are coming out October 16, but at the time of writing neither Asus nor Microsoft have revealed the price tag. Hell, you can't even preorder the thing yet, and it comes out in six short weeks. But given that the new Ally's specs line up pretty closely with the $1,049 Legion Go 2, it's really starting to look like the Xbox handheld is going to be a pricey little handheld.

It's possible that Microsoft's involvement means Asus can subsidize the cost of the Xbox Ally a bit, but I don't know if it'll be enough to keep it around the same price as its predecessor, which launched for $599 with the non-extreme AMD Z1. There's a universe where the ROG Xbox Ally costs nearly twice as much as its predecessor.

However, the Legion Go 2 and the ROG Xbox Ally are not the same system. The Legion Go 2 has removable controllers, along with an OLED display – both things that apply a bit of upward pressure on the price. The Xbox Ally, on the other hand, is a single unit with a more traditional LCD screen, even if the weird controller grips make it look quite different. This more traditional design could stop the new Ally X from seeing the same steep price jump as the Legion Go 2 – but only time will tell.

Is It Worth It?

It's easy to look at these new handhelds with their shiny new processors and say the speed justifies the higher price. That's the thing though, we don't actually know how fast the Z2 Extreme will actually end up being. The AMD Z1 Extreme is still a powerful little chip, packing 12 RDNA 3 graphics cores, along with 8 Zen 4 CPU cores. The Z2 Extreme does upgrade that, but only updates the GPU to RDNA 3.5, rather than just going all-in with RDNA 4.

What RDNA 3.5 is especially good at is graphics performance in low-power packages, like, well, the Z2 Extreme. It should greatly improve efficiency, leading to longer battery life, which is definitely something this first generation of Z-powered handhelds has struggled with. However, even though the Z2 Extreme does pack 4 extra graphics cores, it probably won't improve gaming performance that much – at least not enough to justify nearly doubling the price.

I'll ultimately have to wait until I get either the Legion Go 2 or the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X in the lab, but I expect the gen-on-gen difference to be the most pronounced when it comes to battery life. At the end of the day, these handheld gaming systems are probably going to struggle with high-end AAA games in the same way their predecessors did.

Whether the extra battery life is worth the cost is up to you ultimately, but if handheld gaming PCs are going to cost as much as a budget-to-mid-range gaming laptop, it's going to be harder to recommend them to just anyone. I'm definitely still in that niche audience, but the rising price is only going to narrow the appeal.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

The Switch 2 has been out for over a month after what felt like an eternity of waiting. Gone are the days of speculating over how powerful it is, what features it has, and, for disabled players especially, how accessible it will be. The answer is here: Nintendo’s newest system is certainly an upgrade, and for me, the most accessible Nintendo system to date.

Unlike Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo and accessibility are not synonymous, at least in the traditional sense. The company’s first-party titles don’t offer dozens of accessibility options like PlayStation and Xbox games do, and Nintendo has no official accessibility controller. While they recently joined other publishers as part of ESA’s Accessible Games Initiative, a resource that gives accessibility information for games through a tag system, some disabled players are still hesitant to call their games and systems accessible. And while I acknowledge these criticisms and fears, the refined system settings, mouse movement, and new Joy-Cons push the Switch 2 towards better accessibility.

System Settings

Like its predecessor, the Switch 2 features a variety of system accessibility options that benefit multiple disabilities. Returning settings include options to zoom on the screen, switch to mono audio, and even change the display colors. But the most important returning feature for me is the fully customizable controls, with five presets for each controller. That means each Joy-Con, as well as alternatives like the Pro Controller, can have separate control presets depending on the game. It’s one of my favorite features introduced on the Switch, and it’s especially helpful for physically disabled players. Even better, my Switch control profiles automatically carried over when I transferred my data to the Switch 2. This allows me to seamlessly begin playing games like Pokémon Violet without needing to remember how I configured it previously.

Thankfully, the Switch 2 adds several new options that further improve the overall accessibility of the system. Players can now adjust the text size, enable speech-to-text for Game Chat, and even enable a screen reader, an important tool for blind and low-vision players. While these offerings are available on both Xbox and PlayStation systems already, it’s nice to see Nintendo finally add these options and help welcome more disabled individuals to the platform.

The Pros and Cons of Mouse Movement

The Switch 2 adds a unique function to each Joy-Con – mouse movement. By flipping Joy-Cons face down on its sensors, players can drag the controller on any surface to mimic a computer mouse. And surprisingly, the transition from standard controller to mouse is perfectly seamless. There is minimal lag, and aside from the awkwardness of holding a Joy-Con on its side, mouse movement is one of the few Nintendo system gimmicks that I can use.

However, its longevity and extended use cause severe fatigue and strain on my wrists. Games like Drag X Drive – releasing on August 14 – which purport to rely heavily on mouse movement, will undoubtedly become inaccessible after a few matches. Even now, as I use mouse movement to search the eShop, I regularly find myself reverting to standard Joycon movements because of how uncomfortable it is to hold. Yes, the mouse cursor glides with ease, but constantly needing to slide back and forth is not conducive to my needs. For example, my computer mouse has a DPI (Dots Per Inch, which measures mouse sensitivity) of 11000. Anything lower mimics the Joy-Con’s mouse movement, and that’s not something I can use long term.

Joy-Con Upgrades

The Switch 2 keeps the same relative button layout as its predecessor despite being larger. However, I find the new size is beneficial for my disability. As it has progressed, so too did the atrophy in my hands, forcing me to rely on larger controllers, mice, and keyboards. The new Joy-Cons, while not substantially bigger, allow me to easily glide my hand over the buttons, especially when placed on a table.

Nintendo also reduced the resistance on each button. On the original Switch, I regularly struggled to press the ‘Home’ button unless the Joy-Con was positioned in the exact same spot on my desk each time. And the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ buttons were impossible to use without outside assistance. With the Switch 2, I no longer struggle to press any button, nor do I need each Joy-Con to be precisely placed. For some, this is a relatively minor improvement, but for me, the ease of pressing buttons drastically increases my independence when using the system.

My only critique when using the Switch 2 in handheld mode isn’t with the button layout or system settings. It’s with the handheld battery life. While in handheld mode, the Switch 2 battery life lasts for approximately two hours before I get a notification that I need to charge the device.

If my hands worked, and I could use the Switch 2 in docked mode, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, because I require the system to be on a surface as the same height as my desk, I can only play my Switch 2 on my desk, away from any TV. And because this is uniquely a me issue, I can’t necessarily fault Nintendo. Yes, it’s annoying that the Switch 2’s battery means I have to regularly stop playing to charge the system, but at least I can play the system without fatigue or physical discomfort.

The Switch 2 is unmistakably an upgrade over its predecessor in terms of accessibility. I would go as far as to say it’s the Nintendo system I’ve been needing for years. Its gimmicks aren’t detrimental to playing, at least not yet, its controllers are beyond comfortable and conducive to my needs, and most importantly it’s just fun to play. Is it perfect? No, but no system can be, especially when accounting for the individualistic nature of the disabled experience. And the Switch 2, even in the early stages of its cycle, is by far my favorite console to play. And as more games are released, I’m sure it will undoubtedly replace my other systems.

Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry No, Netflix Isn't Saving Hollywood (But It Isn't Killing It, Either)

This column contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Last of Us on HBO Max as well as The Last of Us Part II game.

When Joel was brutally killed in the second episode of HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2, it confirmed what many fans of the games expected was coming. But as the season progressed after that point, Joel’s death came and went without any significance. Replacing it was, for me, a certainty: what was a controversial decision for the The Last of Us game franchise would prove to be a killing blow for the television series.

Now, I realize that an adaptation fundamentally deviating from its source material can be polarizing in and of itself, but the HBO series simply did not need to kill Joel to successfully tell its story.

First and foremost, I think it’s important to note that there’s a reason that this column is being written at the end of the season rather than immediately after Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) death in Episode 2. I did want to be wrong, for whatever that sentiment might be worth. I dutifully watched the rest of the season, hoping that the show’s writers would find a way to reset their story and carry on their narrative in any kind of meaningful way. But, despite the best efforts of Bella Ramsey and newcomers Isabela Merced, Kaitlyn Dever and Young Mazino, there’s little to be done when your blockbuster show’s first season was fully reliant on a relationship that no longer exists. The show’s audience — which is made up of plenty of folks who have never played the games — signed up for a series that no longer exists.

The Last Of Us Series Messes With Canon, But the Wrong Parts

The Last of Us has implemented a series of story elements that deviate from the game, and vary in impact, but have broadly served the medium shift. Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlet) Season 1 episode wasn’t just the best of the series, it was one of the best episodes of television that year, it hasn’t mattered at all that Dever’s Abby isn’t jacked the way she is in the game, Season 1 had tendrils instead of spores, Stalkers play more of a role in the series than they did during gameplay, etc.

But the Big Joel Death Scene™ features both 1:1 scenes and major canon divergence, and the core problem with the majority of Season 2 is that the series stayed loyal where it shouldn’t have and diverted where it should have remained true to story. In killing Joel and revealing Abby’s motives from the start, The Last of Us series removed any reason for the audience to return in Season 3.

In the game, players stuck around when it came time to play Abby because they needed to know why the hell she did what she did. By the time that information is revealed, Abby had become interesting enough for people to keep playing. In the series, since Abby’s motivations were revealed pretty much in the season premiere, all viewers have to look forward to now is wondering who’s going to shoot who or who is going to forgive who first. And, with respect to what I know is a long adored franchise, I’m forced to ask why should the television audience care?

The series either needed to keep Joel alive, choosing to have Abby beat him within an inch of his life and have Ellie believe that he was dead before leaving Jackson on her revenge tour, or leave Abby’s motives a mystery. Joel may have been the inciting incident that made the forgiveness meaningful in the game, but let’s not pretend it’s the only way to get to the desired end result. This series has wildly talented writers attached. It can be done. Meanwhile, while the mystery of Abby’s motivations wouldn’t have been enough to keep me around personally, I can see why it would appeal to a broader television audience. Now though, we’re all stuck in an impending future of no catharsis.

Not One, Not Two, But Three Shows in One [Derogatory]

Ellie spent much of this season insisting she’s not like Abby despite her rising body count and similar obsession. This will remain a throughline for the upcoming season (or seasons, if co-creator Craig Mazin has his way) even though Ellie will continue to make rash decisions on her quest for revenge. All of this will come after Ellie’s current pickle, as we left her with Abby’s gun pointed squarely at her face.

Season 2’s odd “cliffhanger” is another 1:1 pull from the game, as this is the moment where you shift from playing Ellie to playing Abby. This means that we can likely expect the central focus of the series to shift yet again, giving us not one show, not two shows, but a surprise third show.

The thing about these focus and perspective shifts is that they totally could have worked if they had billed The Last of Us as an anthology series with the overall wrap-around (the narrative treatment surrounding the individual stories that ties everything together) being the apocalypse they’re all sharing. But because this was presented as a traditional prestige series, there are rules and expectations as to how the story is meant to play out. Storytelling rules are made to be broken, but Season 2 does not inspire any faith that the rest of The Last of Us series will succeed in doing so.

Television has always played with the death of the mentor. It’s a trope that often offers more meaning than most, forcing the protagonist to finally take said mentor’s lessons to heart or otherwise reckon with the devastation of their loss. The difference here is that there is typically a broader ensemble to rely on to avoid shaking up the core of the series. We get a little bit of that from Season 2 in Merced’s Dina and Mazino’s Jesse, but they aren’t meaningfully established before the core relationship of the series is destroyed. By introducing them later — and then giving us little reason to care about them until after that still — the foundation of the series remains fractured in a way that seems beyond repair. But that fracture was always avoidable.

Season 1 set the expectation for television viewers that this was a show about Joel and Ellie. Season 2 haphazardly shifted that focus to a story about Ellie, Dina and their quest for revenge against Abby. All signs point to Season 3 being told from Abby’s perspective as she rescues defecting Seraphites Lev and Yara three days before murdering Jesse and holding Ellie and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) at gunpoint.

While I cannot stress enough that Kaitlyn Dever is doing great work with the material she has been given, what reason do folks have to stick around at this point? Television viewers with no knowledge of the games aren’t going to buy into the show suddenly being told from the perspective of someone that they’ve been given no reason to care about. I am from the outside looking in when it comes to the game, but it doesn’t seem likely that the WLF vs. Seraphites war was engaging enough to watch a second time in TV form, even with Isaac’s (Jeffrey Wright) expanded involvement in the series. Is there enough interest in seeing Ellie and Abby’s anticlimactic ending to keep viewers already in the know around?

It’s All a Competition

Games as a medium have plenty of hurdles, but they have the benefit of fewer releases than television by a remarkable margin and, whether the audience loves or hates a game, it’s already bought and paid for. The Last of Us Part II may be plenty controversial (all of the best art is!) but a key factor in any television show’s success is giving the audience a reason to return episode after episode. The story format's constantly shifting perspective is a tremendous hurdle in and of itself. Add in The Last of Us’ wildly short seasons, long hiatuses, and Season 2’s lackluster story, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a pickle when it comes to getting fans back for Season 3.

The rest of The Last of Us Part II’s arc is one focused on forgiveness and how being hellbent on revenge tears everything apart. Sometimes the journey on the way to an already well-known ending is worth it for the ride (looking at you, Andor)! But given that The Last of Us Season 2 featured exactly one compelling episode focused on a flashback with its now long-dead protagonist, is that journey worth it? The cast sure is doing their damndest to ensure that’s the case, but will that be enough for the audience?

Season 2’s penultimate episode may have been great, and Neil Druckmann has confirmed that we’ll have more Joel flashbacks to come, but it’s just not a bandaid to the show’s problem. No amount of strong performances or stellar production value can fix a failure to adapt your story to a new medium. Joel ain’t coming back to life and there’s no putting Abby’s reveal back in the proverbial bag. The Season 2 finale was lackluster at best, the rest of the season wasn’t much better, and knowing where the story heads next forces me to wonder if The Last of Us’ best days are behind it.

It’s a dog eat dog world in the land of TV, and people’s time is a zero-sum game. With such high competition and waning interest from viewers, maybe it’s just time to take the show to look at a pretty lake while it rides out its last moments before losing itself to the infection…

Put simply, there’s nothing on PlayStation 5 quite like Forza Horizon 5.

The Crew Motorfest? Close. Leaning hard into the philosophy of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, its fully fledged festival approach certainly makes Motorfest more like the Forza Horizon series than either of its predecessors.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown? Sadly, no. The Forza Horizon series itself may owe a significant debt to the trendsetting MMO racing of the original Test Drive Unlimited, but Solar Crown went on to fly too close to the sun in this department. An always-online racer with no dedicated solo component? The Horizon series has allowed players to seamlessly slip between offline and online play since 2014’s Forza Horizon 2!

Need for Speed Unbound? Well, there are definitely several areas of Need for Speed’s impressive customisation suite that handily eclipse Horizon, but Unbound’s arcade focus on high speed hot pursuits means it’s not really a like-for-like comparison.

No, the pound-for-pound champ of modern open world racing is Forza Horizon 5 – and now it’s available on PlayStation 5 for the very first time. Its broad and beautiful Mexico map. Its delectably drift-friendly vehicle dynamics. Its mammoth, 900-odd car garage that goes way beyond just featuring the essentials, and is brimming with cult favourite cars that simply aren’t available in any other racing game. The whole box and dice. PlayStation users are being immersed in all of this, many for the very first time.

The reaction has been fun to watch.

This influx of brand new players has been something the team has been particularly looking forward to.

“Yeah, I’m super excited,” confirms Playground Games art director Don Arceta. “Like, brand new people; for many, this will probably be the first Forza Horizon game that they’ve ever played. So it’s super exciting just to think about that, and think about what our first Horizon experiences were.”

Arceta is especially keen to see what kinds of places and races PlayStation 5 players begin creating with Forza Horizon 5’s huge set of customisation tools – the Event Lab.

“We have over 800 props now in the Event Lab, and just seeing what the community’s done with that feature and mode – and the creativity of the community – it’s just mind blowing,” he continues. “I’m super excited, once we get into the PlayStation 5 users, about what they'll build, and the creativity that will come from that community.”

“You’ll actually get some pretty good Halo content too on the PlayStation, with the event lab props!”

In pleasing news, the port itself is proving to be as technically impeccable as its Xbox and PC counterparts, which is some flex considering the sheer girth of the game – and the fact that the engine that underpins it has never been unleashed on PlayStation before.

“As you can imagine, because the series has been based around the Xbox environment and architecture, there’s a lot of code and engineering that’s worked with that,” says Arceta. “So when we brought it to the PS5, it was no small undertaking. It was quite a huge task.”

“The PlayStation 5 version was developed by Panic Button, in collaboration with Turn 10 and ourselves, but Panic Button did an amazing job. So you get that amazing, quality experience that you get on Xbox and PC – now you get on the PlayStation, and it’s just amazing work that Panic Button has done.”

Personally I’ve never been able to look past the Forza series as a whole as home to the biggest and best bag of Hot Wheels on the block. No other racing series contains more weird and wonderful cars that I want, piled on top of a cavalcade of cars I didn’t even know I wanted. As a car fan, I love the idea of a whole new cohort of players potentially discovering their favourite cars in Forza Horizon 5 – cars their other racing games just haven’t been serving them.

For Playground Games lead game designer David Orton, however, it’s the sheer breadth of Forza Horizon 5 that he’s anticipating will impress new players.

“The breadth of Horizon is quite staggering,” says Orton. “I think what we find is players go in and find what they really enjoy but, because there’s so much freedom, that can really be whatever you want it to be.”

“We always pride ourselves on giving the player that kind of agency and freedom to do whatever they want, and the game will reward them and react in that way. I’m really looking forward to players just discovering the breadth of the content. If you just want to do road racing, or if you’re really into Rivals and track racing, you can totally do that. But if you love taking incredible photos, you can totally do that. If you’re into Event Lab, and you want to create content for other people, you can totally do that. Horizon is the space where really everyone is welcome, and there’s something in it for everyone. I think the feeling of people going in and realising this is more than just a racing game is what’s really exciting for me.”

“For me, a victory would be, like, ‘I can’t believe I’ve never played this game before,’” says Arceta. “I think the surprise.”

“That, for me, is a victory, because once they’re surprised, they’re engaged – and they want to learn more. So I’m really looking for that. The delight from players; just hearing their surprise and hearing their stories.”

Here, Orton is in agreement.

“Yeah, I think it’s that,” he adds. “Players who’ve never tried Horizon before – whether that’s because it’s on a different platform, or they’ve just never had the time to do it – to actually jump into this world and realise that it’s actually a really warm, welcoming place that’s full of fun, and finding a home at Horizon.”

“Players who’ve never played before realising that, ‘Oh my goodness, how have I never played this game before? This is incredible.’ That, to me, is a win. We’re about to target a cohort of players who may have never played a Forza title before. There’s a bit of an unknown to how people react to that, but I think when you look at the history of our titles, we’re continually perfecting our craft. We feel so excited to bring this to PlayStation. I think we’re going to bring in a whole load of new players and that’s really exciting.”

If there’s any hobby that’s more tribal than car culture, it’s those who hinge their identities on their video game console of choice. For racing game fans, however, one big wall has come down.

Let’s hope it’s not the last.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry Mythic Quest Just Changed Its Series Finale and Now You Can't Even Watch the Original Version

Despite Yoda’s advice (“Only Siths yadda yadda…”), media commentary has become a culture of absolutes. It’s common that people insist a film, show or game is always the best or worst ever, when the reality is that the vast majority of art is just OK (and, perhaps more importantly, it’s OK that most art is just OK). It’s that acknowledgement that makes Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos’ commentary on whether or not he believed Netflix was killing Hollywood all the more funny. His response to the question was a very simple “no, we’re saving Hollywood,” followed by an interesting tidbit about theaters.

I’m going to give you a moment to pause and take that quote in before I get rolling because phew… much to unpack here. (And yeah, we're gonna get to the theater shenanigans in a bit.)

Let’s set aside the fact that it was a silly question to begin with. Sarandos was never going to agree that he was killing his own industry. The best that you can hope for is the “maybe the industry needs breaking,” that so many self-labeled “disruptors” such as Netflix, Uber and AirBnB like to lean into. The overused and often trite sentiment of “move fast and break things” would have ultimately been closer to the truth than either the question presented or the answer given, because there are certainly plenty of things about Hollywood that need fixin’. But Netflix isn’t the sole problem and it could not be further from the solution.

Right now, Netflix has two key problems: competition and ego. So much of Netflix’s strategy still operates as if they are the only streamer in town, something that hasn’t been true for years at this point. Once they started competing with streaming originals from studios with more experience in creating original works, their name started coming up less and less in conversation. They’ve succeeded from time to time with savvy acquisitions like Cobra Kai and the Fear Street trilogy, and for a time had a remarkable original series output that included heavy-hitters like Ozark, Narcos, Orange Is the New Black, Mindhunter and more. But the last remaining vestiges of that heyday — shows like Stranger Things and Bridgerton — are right on the cusp of ending or far enough into their runs that it’s well past time that Netflix should be sweating about their next move. That’s the competition part covered, but the ego aspect of it goes hand in hand.

With so many players in the streaming landscape, most of which are lapping Netflix on series quality (with a few noteworthy exceptions like the first seasons of Squid Game and The Sandman), the way for Netflix to return to being a meaningful service for its customer base is also the very last thing it’s ever going to do. It needs to scale back its original production significantly (and get smarter about its spend on the films and shows that it does move forward with) and go back to being the primary destination to watch films missed in theater and shows for folks who broke up with cable. Why is that never going to happen? About 30% business acumen and 70% hubris.

The legitimate concern of going back to its roots and returning to being the premier watch-from-home destination for cord cutters and folks who missed movies in theater is that you never want your business model to be reliant on someone else’s. Of course, there’s less risk to that when your business model is reliant on an entire industry vs. one or two companies. Still, it’s a risk. But that whole ego thing takes us back to Sarandos’ follow-up comment to his “hollywood saving” nonsense.

“I believe it is an outmoded idea, for most people — not for everybody,” Sarandos said of the theatrical experience after admitting that he himself quite enjoyed going.

There’s an ocean-sized can of worms to be opened with this statement alone, but for the sake of this column I’m going to boil it down to two truths that exist in tandem: movie theaters are too damn expensive, making it difficult for the average American to enjoy theatrical releases in the way we used to, and people still love going to the movies.

The theatrical experience isn’t an outmoded (which means unfashionable or unusable for those who don’t speak old rich guy) idea. It’s just an un-economic one when the federal minimum wage remains at $7.25 and the average movie ticket is $11.31. Theaters large and small alike have tried to find ways around this problem in the post-quarantine era to varying degrees of success, but the model still needs a drastic shift if it’s going to survive. Meanwhile, Netflix has raised prices consistently since 2014 when its service has actively gotten worse according to 1 out of 4 users. Movie theaters aren’t a perfect experience currently either, with so many people treating them like their personal living rooms, but there’s a glass house aspect to be had there when no matter which industry or corporation is on top, it’s the average American that continues to lose out.

Streaming’s existential threat to the theatrical experience may not rest solely on Netflix’s shoulders, but if Netflix was “a very consumer-focused company” that “deliver[s] the program to you in a way you want to watch it,” as Sarandos said at the event, it would be thinking of their customers rather than their algorithms, constant price hikes, and consistently lighting money on fire to make borderline unwatchable nonsense like The Electric State, Red Notice, Rebel Moon and The Gray Man (even if I have been laughing about Chris Evans’ delivery of “I was shot in the ass, Susanne!” since 2022).

Ask most gamers who were around for the Xbox 360 and, Red Ring of Death aside, odds are most of them will share a lot of fond memories with you. And The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion generated plenty of those memories for a lot of Xbox 360 owners. I’m one of them. I worked at Official Xbox Magazine at the time, and for whatever reason, the hugely successful port of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to Xbox never quite hooked me. But right from the jump, Oblivion – which was initially planned to be a day-one launch title for the second Xbox – did. We did multiple cover stories on Oblivion leading up to launch – the screenshots alone blew everyone away – and I eagerly volunteered for each trip out to Bethesda in sleepy Rockville, Maryland.

Then, when it finally came time to review Oblivion – and this is back in the days when exclusive reviews were a common, accepted thing – I again eagerly jumped at the chance. I returned to Rockville one more time and holed up in a conference room in Bethesda’s basement for four days. I spent four consecutive – and glorious – 11-hour days almost literally living in Cyrodiil, spending almost every waking moment inside this stunning, wide-open, next-gen medieval fantasy world. Before I boarded my return flight home, I’d clocked 44 hours prior to penning OXM’s 9.5 out of 10 review of Oblivion, which I wholeheartedly stand by to this day. It was an incredible game, filled with gripping quests (Dark Brotherhood, anyone?), off-the-beaten-path surprises (if you know about the unicorn, you know), and so much more. Because I was playing a submission build at Bethesda – meaning, a mostly finished version of the game on an Xbox 360 debug kit rather than a regular retail console – I had to start over when I got my final boxed disc copy of the game I’d already put about two full real-life days into.

I dropped another 130 hours or so into The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion without hesitation,so it’s probably no surprise to hear that I’m absolutely thrilled it’s been remastered and re-released on modern platforms.

In fact, I’m envious of the whole generation of younger gamers who grew up with Skyrim and thus, that is The Elder Scrolls for them. Because for them, the just-released The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered will be their first “new” mainline Elder Scrolls game since Skyrim released (for the first of many, many times) over 13 years ago – while franchise fans of all ages continue to wait for The Elder Scrolls VI, which is likely another 4-5 years away.

Although if I’m being honest, I doubt Oblivion will hit the same way for them as it did for me in March of 2006, because, for starters, it’s a two-decade-old game (side note: shout-out to Bethesda for delivering this week instead of waiting an extra year when Oblivion will hit its far-more-elegant-sounding 20th anniversary instead of just having passed its 19th). Other games have built upon what Oblivion did, including several by Bethesda itself: Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield. And second, it just doesn’t pack the same visual punch that it did in 2006, when I’d argue it was the first true next-gen game of the HD Era ushered in by the Xbox 360. Obviously the remaster looks better than the original release – that’s the point, of course – but it doesn’t stand head and shoulders above nearly every other game as something that you’ve never seen before. By definition – or at least in practice – remasters aim to make an older game look modern on current platforms. It’s a sharp contrast to a proper remake a la Resident Evil, which carries the expectation of starting from scratch and, in turn, looking as good or better than anything else on the market.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was the right game at the right time. By taking full advantage of HD televisions and expanding the scope and scale of what gamers could expect from an open-world game, it was a punch in the face to console gamers who, up to that point, had spent their entire gaming lives seeing their interactive worlds through an interlaced 640x480 television. (Although speaking of punches in the face, prior to Oblivion’s March release, in February 2006, EA released Fight Night Round 3, which was jaw-droppingly gorgeous itself.)

My memories of Oblivion are plenty, as it was a world with so much to discover and so much to do. For first-time Oblivion players, let me give you a recommendation: either blast through the main quest as quickly as possible, or save it until you’ve exhausted every last sidequest or open-world activity. Why? Well, the Oblivion gates will start randomly spawning and pestering you once you start down that main questline’s path, so for my money it’s best to seal them off straight away.

Anyway, the technological leap made from Morrowind to Oblivion might not ever happen again – though I suppose if we wait long enough for The Elder Scrolls 6, maybe it will. But at the very least, playing Oblivion Remastered won’t present such a staunch difference from any release of Skyrim, and for that I suppose those same younger gamers who grew up with Skyrim won’t get what I had. But no matter if you’re playing Oblivion for the first time or you’ve clocked hundreds of hours with it, its fully realized medieval fantasy world and the surprises and adventures contained within it have always made it my favorite Elder Scrolls game. And I’m thrilled it’s back, even if its surprise release was spoiled many times over before it finally showed up again.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry Did Daredevil: Born Again Just Confirm A Popular Foggy Nelson Fan Theory?

This column entry contains spoilers for the series finale of Mythic Quest.

For those who may have missed it, Mythic Quest, Apple TV+’s beautifully weird show about a game studio and its messed up leadership, has come to an end. Apple TV+ announced that the series was cancelled after Season 4’s, uh, polarizing season finale about two weeks after it aired on March 26, leaving fans of the show somehow more frustrated than they were before. As a result of the cancellation, Apple TV+ has decided to pull the original ending entirely, replacing it with a different finale meant to “tie up loose ends”. But the change isn’t only unsuccessful, it also continues an ugly precedent in streaming.

The original finale was met with mixed response due to a sudden kiss between leads Ian (Rob McElhenney) and Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao). Some found the out of the blue smooch jarring, while others have been waiting the duration of the series for it to finally happen. But the real ire came when fans learned that the shocking moment wouldn’t have any followup after the series’ messy leads finally made out. The original plan had been that Mythic Quest Season 5 would explore the fallout of Ian and Poppy’s kiss.

With future episodes off the table, series producers Megan Ganz, David Hornsby and Rob McElhenney issued a joint statement that ended with “Because endings are hard, with Apple’s blessing we made one final update to our last episode — so we could say goodbye, instead of just game over.”

The updated episode, released on April 18, removes the controversial kiss, swapping it out for a hug and returning Ian and Poppy to their previously existing status quo as they plan to continue work on their game expansion. Is the new ending more palatable? Perhaps. But no one has ever once described a good finale — season or series — as palatable. Big swings might not always work but they are, at least, always interesting. The update does nothing to assuage the disappointment of the cancellation and, worse still, the original ending no longer exists on Apple TV+ at all. This means that the change to the ending doesn’t just mean the series comes to a close with a whisper instead of a bang, it also opens a complicated can of worms when it comes to movie and TV curation and streaming as a whole.

Ultimately, the fact that Poppy and Ian work as characters because of their complicated platonic relationship doesn’t end up being what’s most important here. Hell, even the fact that they made a weaker ending for their series isn’t even the biggest issue. It’s that the original ending was removed entirely that leaves me with so much concern. Alternate endings existed long before streaming, though they’re mostly relegated to film rather than television. But removing access to the original ending entirely is a separate can of worms, one more akin to what Max and Netflix have been up to as they’ve started disappearing films and television series from their respective platforms.

When you exist solely in a digital space, erasure from platforms means that you simply cease to exist. Though there’s a chance that Apple TV+ eventually decides to add the original ending back or offer it later in special features should the series ever get a physical release, its current non-existence continues a frustrating trend in digital media. Having a boring ending is obnoxious in and of itself, but knowing that there was another one that dared to take a risk even when that risk didn’t ultimately pan out? Infuriating!

The change was made to “tie up loose ends,” but all it really accomplishes is watering down the final version for all to see. The creators may have instituted the change themselves, but erasing the original version entirely is a disservice to both them and the fans of the series. Said erasure feels especially egregious given that we were discussing Netflix playing with the Mandela Effect just last week when the streamer released two different versions of the same episode of Black Mirror to mess with fans’ heads. There is absolutely no reason that both versions of the finale can’t exist alongside each other.

It’s a pity that Season 4 of Mythic Quest came and went with little fanfare despite Apple TV+ having enough confidence in the story to give it a spinoff (an anthology series set in the world but without any of the existing characters), but it’s a much bigger bummer that we’re seeing the trend of art disappearance continue, whether that art is good, bad, messy or absurd notwithstanding.

After months of intense speculation, rumors, and leaks, Nintendo fully unveiled the Switch 2 with its own Direct. Not only did we receive trailers for new games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and even Nintendo GameCube games exclusive to Switch 2 Online, maybe more importantly we also got a good look at the system itself. I’m happy to report that, from an accessibility perspective, the Switch 2 is looking undoubtedly like an upgrade to its predecessor in almost every way.

Several months ago, I explored my accessibility predictions for Nintendo’s latest console. I wanted more robust accessibility offerings, better usage of Joy-Con controllers, and unique inclusive design practices. And to my surprise, Nintendo answered every wish while also giving extras. For this Access Designed, let’s examine the exciting and confirmed accessibility of the Switch 2

New Accessibility Settings

The Direct offered little in terms of tangible accessibility options, aside from fully customizable controls for each virtual GameCube game, respective of the system settings. Instead, Nintendo released an accessibility page detailing a bevy of returning and new features.

Fully customizable controls are back, with the feature performing exactly like the original Switch. Settings to adjust text size to three different variants also return but with the additional capability to also implement High Contrast and change general display colors. Even the Zoom functionality is making a comeback, a necessary inclusion for blind/low vision players. Yet, Nintendo’s biggest surprise comes in the form of a new “Screen Reader” setting.

Blind/low vision individuals often need settings like Text-to-Speech to help navigate menus and settings. While the option is only available for the HOME menu and system settings, this accessibility feature is a necessary tool, allowing disabled players to independently navigate the Switch 2. Options to choose different voices, read speeds, and volume levels accompany the Screen Reader feature. We still don’t know if individual games will support these tools or come equipped with their own accessibility offerings, but Nintendo’s acknowledgment of their disabled audience is a welcome sight, one that absolutely piques my interest regarding the future of accessibility at the company.

Innovative Design

While not within a specific menu, Nintendo did advertise a new inclusive tool that not only adds more depth to a beloved franchise, but also vastly improves the cognitive, physical, and blind/low vision accessibility. Within the renamed Nintendo Switch App, is Zelda Notes, a companion app for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. With the Navigation option in the app, players can choose to locate shops, areas of interest, and even the elusive Korok’s all within the app’s GPS-like UI. The app, which comes with audio cues and voices, will direct players to the exact location of their selected object. While not perfect, as the app does not help with precise navigation or enemies, it helps blind/low vision individuals navigate the overworld while reducing the cognitive overload of having to travel across a vast world.

For cognitive, blind/low vision, and physically disabled players in particular, another feature in the app — the Autobuild Sharing tool — lets players share their custom Zonai tech creations. By scanning a QR code, disabled individuals can automatically build a Zonai machine if they have the corresponding materials. For me, especially, I immensely struggled with the control layout and required buttons to properly build Zonai machinery in Tears of the Kingdom. But thanks to this new tool, I only need to worry about gathering materials, and not the actual building process of Zonai contraptions. And all of this is done with Inclusive design, something I’ve regularly praised Nintendo for in the past.

Finally, disabled individuals can even share items with one another through Item Sharing, a feature identical to Autobuild Sharing. By scanning a QR code, I can immediately access items that my friends send me, reducing physical strain by no longer having to continuously scour the world for weapons and food. Does this make Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom fully accessible? Absolutely not. However, it’s an incredible step forward.

Wheelchair Sports

The biggest surprise for me was by far the announcement of Drag X Drive, a Rocket League-esque game that lets players control characters in manual wheelchairs on a basketball court. Not only is this surprising announcement a fantastic way to show proper disability representation, but it also highlights one of the Switch 2’s few new hardware changes – mouse control.

By flipping the Joy-Con on its side, players can move the controller across any surface, making the device behave similarly to a computer mouse. While we still don’t know how much force is required to move the cursor, – for comparison, my mouse on my ultrawide monitor has a DPI of 6400. But any new way to play will no doubt have accessibility benefits for an array of disabled players. It’s exciting to imagine just how Nintendo will utilize this new feature, but more importantly, it’s yet another tool for disabled individuals. Combine this with the multitude of controller types already available on the Switch and Switch 2, and Nintendo continues to innovate with controller usage.

As a Nintendo fan, I’m beyond excited for the Switch 2. While I’m admittedly hesitant to spend upwards of $450 for the system, my love of gaming began with Nintendo. And with each new system comes exciting accessibility additions that continue to demonstrate Nintendo’s commitment to accessibility and inclusive design. While we still don’t have a first party accessible device like the Xbox Adaptive Controller and PlayStation Access Controller, Nintendo is in its own way innovating with new ways to play for disabled individuals.Combine these innovations with the recent announcement of Nintendo joining other developers to create standardized accessibility tags, and I believe we'll see Nintendo continue to elevate accessibility for the better.

Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.

Super Hero Worship is a regular opinion column by IGN’s Senior Staff Writer Jesse Schedeen. Check out the previous Super Hero Worship entry, Robert Pattinson's Batman Has No Business Being in James Gunn's DCU.

Doctor Doom has well and truly cemented his status as Marvel’s greatest villain by now. What’s not to love? He’s got boundless ambition and an even bigger ego. He’s successfully taken over the world more than once. He had a brief stint as the self-proclaimed God Emperor of all reality. And none of that can fully disguise the fact that he’s a deeply flawed and self-loathing man who can’t get over his decades-old feud with his intellectual rival and former roommate.

Strangely enough, Doom has also emerged as Marvel’s most compelling hero over the past two years. Not the traditional Doom, who’s currently reigning over the Marvel Universe yet again in Marvel’s One World Under Doom crossover. Rather, the Doom of the new Ultimate Universe. He represents a very different yet still utterly fascinating take on this iconic Marvel character.

The Ultimate Universe’s Rebirth

To understand why this version of Doom is so compelling, you first need to wrap your head around the concept of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe imprint. The original Ultimate line, which ran from 2000-2015, was dedicated to giving readers updated and streamlined versions of characters like Spider-Man, the Avengers (rebranded as The Ultimates), and the X-Men, all reimagined to suit the 21st Century and the age of the War on Terror. It was great stuff… up until Marvel lost the plot after a few years.

The new Ultimate line, which kicked off in 2023, is more purposeful and directed in how it changes the traditional Marvel formula. This world, Earth-6160, was meant to be a close copy of the regular Marvel Universe, Earth-616. But thanks to the time-traveling machinations of The Maker (the twisted version of Reed Richards from the original Ultimate Universe), Earth-6160 has gone badly astray. The Maker worked to systematically suppress the emergence of Earth’s superheroes. Most of those superhumans that do exist serve on The Maker’s Council, a shadowy, autocratic cabal that secretly rules this dystopian world.

Yet, there is a resistance movement. Together, the Earth-6160 versions of Tony Stark and Reed Richards have been seeking out those who were robbed of their opportunity to be heroes and giving them a second chance. That’s the whole premise behind Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s chart-topping Ultimate Spider-Man, which features a married, older Peter Parker becoming Spidey for the first time. It’s also the idea fueling Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri’s The Ultimates, as Tony and Reed lead a ragtag band of heroes to liberate the world while the clock steadily counts down to The Maker’s return.

I’m of the opinion that the Ultimate line is the best thing Marvel is publishing at the moment (especially with the X-Men’s Krakoan era now over), and there’s a reason why The Ultimates was IGN’s best comic book of 2024. More than any other book at Marvel or DC, The Ultimates feels like the comic for this strange and frightening age in which we find ourselves. It’s so refreshing to read a superhero comic where the heroes aren’t simply defending and upholding the status quo, but actively fighting to tear it down and build something better.

Who Is Ultimate Doom?

If the new Ultimate line represents the best of Marvel’s current comic book crop, then Ultimate Doom is its greatest and most compelling character. That’s because, in this universe, Doom is Reed Richards. In the Ultimate Universe, one Reed is a terrible, seemingly unstoppable villain, while another is its potential savior. What can I say? He’s a malleable character, and not just because he can stretch and twist himself into literal knots.

Books like Ultimate Invasion and The Ultimates have established a detailed backstory for Ultimate Doom. When he came to Earth-6160 and started building his secret empire, The Maker made a special project out of tormenting his multiversal doppelganger. The Maker quietly sabotaged Reed’s scientific work, so that the cosmic accident meant to give the Fantastic Four their powers instead killed Johnny and Susan Storm and caused Reed to be thrown in prison.

From there, The Maker spent years physically and psychologically torturing Reed. He didn’t stop until Reed finally accepted that he is truly Doom - a black hole of a human being who sucks the life out of everyone and everything he loves. Even though Reed has since been liberated and joined the resistance against The Maker, he still carries the profound scars from those years of torture. He still wears the visage of Doctor Doom, like a modern-day Man in the Iron Mask. But where Doctor Doom’s mask projects power and regal authority, Ultimate Doom’s mask represents nothing but caged pain and anguish.

The question of why The Maker devoted so much effort to tearing down a version of himself is a fascinating one. His hatred of Earth-6160’s Reed is due to both personal and entirely practical reasons.

A refugee of the original Ultimate Universe, this Reed once served on his own version of the Fantastic Four, before everything collapsed and he lost his found family. This Reed has gone more than a little insane after sealing himself away for a thousand years and becoming an immortal tyrant with an oversized brain. He clearly hates the man he used to be as much as he secretly yearns for what was lost, so punishing Earth-6160’s Reed is a way of exorcising his own demons. It’s been a real wild ride for this character over the past 15 years, and I’m still amazed at how The Maker (and fellow Ultimate Universe refugee Miles Morales) continues to thrive as a character long after his universe has been consigned to the dustbin of the comic book industry.

There’s also the fact that, in their last encounter, The Maker asked the Reed Richards of the main Marvel Universe a pointed question - “If you had the chance, would you erase me from existence?”. That Reed admitted he would. So The Maker knows with certainty that the greatest threat to his new empire is Reed Richards. Only one Reed can stop another. The solution? Destroy him utterly and completely, so that Reed’s unparalleled mind becomes impotent and worthless.

Ultimate Doom’s Battle with Depression

Did The Maker succeed in his goal of destroying Reed Richards? That question is at the heart of what makes Ultimate Doom such a compelling character. He’s a profoundly damaged individual. Who wouldn’t be, after what he’s suffered? He’s a brilliant scientist who failed in his life’s ambition yet still strives against overwhelming odds to build a better world. He’s an admirable guy in a lot of ways.

Yet, there’s something inherently sinister about anyone who wears the mask of Doctor Doom. Reed is no exception. The Ultimates frequently leaves us to wonder if The Maker has done too good a job of stamping out Reed’s heroic flame. He’s shown to hold his fellow heroes in contempt for what he sees as half-measures. Given the opportunity, he’d use time travel to rewrite and reshape the fabric of their universe just as The Maker did before him. And he can’t seem to escape his obsession with correcting his botched work. Doom constantly toils away in his lab, experimenting on mice and trying to recreate the Fantastic Four.

Many of the characters in The Ultimates are depicted as being neurodivergent in some way. Tony/Iron Lad is autistic. Giant-Man is wracked by anxiety and a whole mess of phobias. And Ultimate Doom suffers from a depression so debilitating it makes every day a struggle. Doom vocalizes this in the truly incredible The Ultimates #4, an issue that explores four parallel threads of time simultaneously. Here, Doom refers to his depression as his “Negative Zone,” a clever spin on the deadly dimension from the core Marvel Universe.

“I… suffer from periods of… extreme despair,” Doom tells Tony. “During these periods it is as if I am… oppositely charged. Lost in an all-consuming universe where nothing is possible. I call it my ‘negative zone’.”

This, more than any other scene in The Ultimates, serves to humanize Ultimate Doom and make him more relatable than the larger-than-life Doctor Doom of Earth-616 could ever be. How many among us can understand the plight of situational depression and the thought of being ground down by the world and the endless deluge of bad news? Who doesn’t have days where they feel trapped in their own personal Negative Zone? I can certainly relate.

All of this helps to mold this version of Reed Richards into the most complex and layered character in the new Ultimate Universe. He’s a man once destined for greatness who had that life stolen away. He’s someone who fights an uphill battle every day simply to get out of bed and keep moving forward. He bravely resists, yet it remains to be seen how much of his battered soul he’s willing to sacrifice in the process. He’s an unusual and very damaged hero in a universe that has far too few heroes. And he’s the single biggest reason why anyone even remotely interested in superhero comics should be following Marvel’s Ultimate Universe line.

Few games nowadays can make the wider gaming audience roll their eyes or jump out of their chairs excitedly. Yes, there are plenty of games that people are excited about their inevitable release, like Grand Theft Auto 6. Still, a darker, almost esoteric magic happens when the inevitable rumor mill starts to swill about games like Silksong and Bloodborne, the latter of which happens to be the Beyond! Game Club Game for April.

Bloodborne is one of those experiences that can be transformative for some. At the same time, many will often play it, slaughtering their prey up until they see the credits or get fed up with it before eventually throwing in the towel. Those who overcome what lies in wait often become addicted to the challenging and precise combat of many souls’ games, while segments of that group become radicalized by the world and its lore that enthralls them as they traverse the extensive map draped in gothic and Lovecraftian themes. It’s no surprise that many of the hosts of podcast Beyond! are big fans of Bloodborne, and we look forward to our return to Yharnam once again, with it celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

Mid-Month Update:

Jada:

Returning to Bloodborne has been an eye-opening experience for me. My return has confirmed many of my initial feelings about the game from when I first visited it 10 years ago. However, like the sparse glimpses of the sun, the elements that have evangelized many of its fans have started to reveal themselves to me. Exploring in Bloodborne has been more enjoyable this time around as I find paths I previously overlooked in my haste to move through them last time. It also reminded me of the fun I have when uncovering neat little treasures or how much it gets my blood pumping when I unlock a shortcut after a series of death-defying battles.

The boss and enemy design alone has helped me appreciate the adoration Bloodborne gets from my co-hosts and the rest of its fan base. The variety I've seen so far in the first dozen hours while exploring the main areas and chalice dungeons is unlike most of the bosses I've seen in other Souls games. And while none have pushed me other than the fire-based bosses that are resistant to my fire-based arcane build, the difficulty is what I remembered from my first trip through Yharnam. Though I still haven't grown fond of the gun parry mechanics in place of my tried and true shield parries in other Souls games, it's moved up from being a system I hated to a system that I use when the circumstances necessitate it. I fully expect the 'git gud' elements of the parry system will eventually kick in so I can go from hoping I land this parry to landing them more consistently to devastate the other hellions that lie ahead, but until then, I will just run enemies through on my flaming saw-spear.

How's your progress going in our return to Yharnam? How many blood echoes have you forfeited due to an untimely death? What kind of build are you pursuing? We hope you're enjoying this Bloodborne homecoming as much as we are and that your endeavors to slaughter the numerous beasts, ghouls, and other ghastly creatures have been entertaining enough to see it through to the end with us. But let us know in the comments below how your experience has been! And be sure to check back in throughout the month as we update you with our latest thoughts, triumphs, and, of course, the many failures that await us in Bloodborne.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry Daredevil entry: Daredevil: Born Again — An Unexpected Connection to the Netflix Series Could Right a Decade-Old Wrong.

This column contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again through Episode 8.

Fans were aghast when Foggy Nelson took his last breath in the series premiere of Daredevil: Born Again. After all the outcry and fanfare to get Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll back as Foggy and Karen respectively, it felt like madness that the first thing the writers did was tragically kill off one of the Avocados at Law. But eagle-eyed fans immediately noticed an Easter egg that may give hope that Foggy could have another day in court. The fan theory gained traction once it was confirmed that Henson would be in Season 2 of the series — despite the likely possibility that he's in a flashback or a dream — and the end of Season 1’s penultimate episode offers one final tidbit that may confirm it all. Let’s go on a journey, shall we?

First, the Easter egg. The address for Nelson, Murdock and Page is 468. There have been 680 total issues of flagship Daredevil comics, but they’re not always numbered that way. The 468th issue of Daredevil is actually numbered Daredevil #88 (created by Ed Brubaker, David Aja, Frank D’Armata, and Cory Petit). In that issue? Foggy narrowly avoids death to go into witness protection. “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson” has some differences from Daredevil: Born Again like, for instance, the fact that Foggy’s death in the previous issues “The Devil in Cell Block D” and “Heaven’s Half Hour” is way more ambiguous than Born Again’s version where Matt hears his friend’s heart stop beating while Karen screams on the street. But hey, the MCU has always been prone to take some liberties.

The question remains though: would they really bring Foggy Nelson back to life in Born Again after his death played such a pivotal role in the story arc so far? The official Daredevil account fueled the fan theory flames when they posted pages from Daredevil issues related to the arc of Foggy’s death being faked, but that could be as simple as a social media manager seeing an opportunity for engagement. What’s way more interesting now as we head into the last episode of Daredevil: Born Again is the revelation that Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) was behind Foggy’s murder. We learn in the last moments of this week’s episode that it was she, rather than Fisk, who contracted Bullseye to pull the job which, once again, adds to the chances that Foggy might be alive after all.

Like before, the comic run plays out a little bit differently than what we’re seeing unfold on screen, with Vanessa being terminally ill in the comic but what’s important here are the parallels of her being frustrated with both Daredevil and her husband and her being the one to facilitate the whole Foggy Nelson death scare situation.

The fact of the matter is that there are a whole lot of parallels between the comic and what we’ve seen play out on screen, even if they aren’t 1:1. In addition to the possibly coincidental number 468 and Vanessa Fisk orchestrating everything, “The Devil in Cell Block D” features Matt being persecuted for being a vigilante. In Daredevil: Born Again, it is Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes) being punished for his role as White Tiger. So, once again different, but also once again close enough to make you wonder.

But the real question kind of boils down to why. Why would Foggy agree to such a thing? Some have theorized that it’s to get Matt back for choosing the cowl after all of their back and forth in Season 3, others have wondered if he thought his death would be the only way to show Matt how far he would go as Daredevil when pushed, but I’m not quite convinced Foggy could be so cruel.

Frankly, while I definitely see the signs and want all of them to be true, I don’t know that I’m on board with the theory that Foggy Nelson is alive to begin with. I think it would be poetic if it were true, but my skepticism is because of Bullseye. He’s not missing a shot on an unmoving target unless he was paid handsomely to miss on purpose. The end of this week’s episode made it abundantly clear that he and Vanessa are not on good terms and, given that he was rotting in a cell and then was moved to gen pop against his will, I can’t imagine that money would be a meaningful motivator. Add that to the fact that he had ample time and plenty of reason to tell Matt that Foggy was still alive while he was begging his lawyer to get him moved back into solitude, and it just doesn’t add up.

That being said, I want nothing more than to be wrong here. Long live Foggy Nelson.

This is a guest column from Nintendo Life, the world’s most-visited independent Nintendo website. It covers the world of Nintendo from all angles: the games, hardware, and history with in-depth reviews and features, and also the fan community, culture, and conversation that’s formed around gaming’s most beloved company and characters.

For Nintendo fans the world over, time seems to be passing slower than ever. Since the January reveal of Switch 2 (the official Nintendo one, not the leaks weeks before) we've all been crossing days off the calendar counting down to the April Nintendo Direct, when we'll finally get a proper deep dive at the hardware, a look at new games, and perhaps even a release date. Well, hopefully.

Ravenous as we are for solid Switch 2 details — ones that don't come from coverage-hungry case manufacturers or a 17-second peek of a new Mario Kart — there's one I’m confident of: from day one, Switch 2 will be the ultimate Nintendo console.

I can already sense some '?' Blocks popping off but hear me out – even at this early stage it's hard to argue that Switch 2 won't be the ultimate portal for Nintendo games past, present, and future.

It's largely thanks to Nintendo Switch Online and the huge, historic catalogue steadily assembled since September 2018. You get access to 182 games with a regular sub, or a whopping 290 with the 'Expansion Pack'. It’s not just Nintendo games either, the 47-strong selection of SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis games covers some of that system's absolute best too. Plus the rubbish Virtua Fighter 2 port.

Hey, they can't all be winners, but from classics to cult curios (seriously, check out the late-cycle Sutte Hakkun for Super Famicom if you haven't already), NSO is a vast buffet of historical video game nuggets served on a single handy device, a perfect introduction for younger gamers unfamiliar with the olden days. Grizzled vets can baulk at the idea of whippersnappers not having played Yoshi's Island or Ocarina of Time or GoldenEye>Bunker>Power Weapons - no Oddjob, but time marches on and it's only natural. NSO's boon is offering so many iconic, formative games on a platter. We can debate the quality of the emulation (and we have), but the library is impressive, despite gaps, and it's still growing.

That's all before we get to backwards compatibility with the current console; its lineup of series-bests should almost all be playable on the new Switch. Calls of recency bias will ring out for a generation or two yet, but the towering quality of Breath of the Wild and its direct sequel Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Splatoon 3, Pikmin 4, the Metroids, the Xenoblades, and more is undeniable. If they're not the pinnacle of their respective series, they're in the conversation, and they'll all almost definitely be playable on Switch 2.

But what about third parties? What about indies? The specifics are hazy at this stage, but we're assuming that everything's coming over, so historians can still access Hamster's enormous Arcade Archives series and Digital Eclipse's masterful work on various collections, not to mention its excellent Gold Master line.

The vast ocean of incredible indie games should speak for itself at this stage; one of Nintendo's greatest strengths this gen has been fully embracing the community of smaller devs. More surprisingly, Switch has also held its own with larger third-party devs, too, and signs point to that support expanding on Switch 2, and that includes games from other platform holders.

Switch isn't far off becoming a brilliant PlayStation history lesson, and even first-party Sony is starting to turn up with MLB and LEGO Horizon. Throw in potential support from Microsoft with Call of Duty and rumours of other ports, plus the wider world of modern games and other firms eager to mitigate rising production costs across multiple platforms, and we're entering an era of unprecedented cross-platform support. Another win for anybody with a Switch 2.

There's also the small matter of whatever Nintendo's got bubbling on the stove in its Kyoto kitchens. Internal devs have been beavering away while partner studios have handled most first-party output since Mario Wonder. I'm expecting the biggest hitters on Nintendo's bench to come out swinging in April. A 3D Mario, naturally (it's the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., remember), but anything except a full-blown 3D Zelda is possible. And there are a couple of potential Wii U ports that could tide us over nicely in the Hylian department, too.

Switch sales have slowed dramatically in the last year - not unexpectedly considering the system's age (it's going into its ninth year in March). As any Captain F. Obvious can tell you, Nintendo needs the energy, excitement, and profit that new hardware generates, but day-one demand is likely to be colossal. Stockpiling inventory makes eminent sense, even if analysts, investors, and fans alike are gagging for it ASAP.

Could the next mainline Mario be total toilet? Of course. Past evidence suggests it'll probably be quite good, though, and Switch 2 will likely have other quite good games. Nintendo's software batting average is quite good.

Even considering that history, though, Switch is the only console I remember buying on launch day. I got a Wii in its first month, but I'd never walked out of a store carrying the new hotness on the very first day before. It worked out rather well but a day-one purchase felt like a real gamble given the fate of Wii U, even for a card-carrying Nintendophile desperate to play BOTW on the bus.

Conversely, this Nintendo console feels like the surest possible bet for fans of the medium, even knowing practically nothing about its launch lineup. The historical library that took years to build up on previous systems is all just going to be there!

Well, almost all. As Nintendo has mentioned (though not yet detailed), there will be "exceptions". A background graphic on its website shows various games presumably playable; the likelihood is that only outliers employing peripherals and modes involving the IR sensor will be technically incompatible. Pour one out for Labo.

Beyond that, all signs point to Switch 2 being a brilliantly comprehensive overview of Nintendo history from launch day. Despite many unanswered questions, and not forgetting my professional obligation to get involved from the beginning (a golden excuse, granted), the possibility of buyer's remorse has never been lower for a Nintendo console. I've never been more eager to get stuck in on day one.

Whenever that is.

Gavin Lane is the Editor at Nintendo Life. He’s been flying the Nintendo flag since the 8-bit days. You can find him in the usual places as @dartmonkey.