NintendoForce

Issue #82: Capcom's Cavalcade — March/April 2026

Issue #81 Reprint + Upcoming Patreon Billing Change

Issue #81: The Legacy of the Virtual Boy — January/February 2026

Have you ever been excited to shove your face into a foam- lined hunk of bright red plastic? By golly, I have!

The summer of 1995. As I was beginning to do more and more frequently thanks to my growing admiration for all things Nintendo, I strolled into the nearest Best Buy store to see what the latest and greatest games on display might be. I turned the corner, scanned around with my eyes and then locked in on it — yes, it was there. The demo had been set up. It was a real Virtual Boy!

As a loyal Nintendo Power reader I’d known this new device was on its way soon, and that there was a chance I’d get to try it out before it officially went on sale that August. But still I remember being surprised to actually see it in the wild — and set up for anyone to play!

Years earlier, my first experience seeing the SNES inspired similar awe, but it was locked behind glass and I could only stand and stare at the attract mode of Super Mario World cycling over itself over and over again. But with the Virtual Boy, hands-on — and eyes-on — were not only allowed, but fully encouraged. Nintendo knew there was no way to accurately convey the 3D technology powering this machine’s appeal in unmoving magazine ads or 2D TV commercials. With the Virtual Boy, you really had to see to believe!

Decades later I’m struck by how unsanitary that moment must have been, because how many other kids before me had walked in out of the blazing summer heat and inserted their heads straight into that same foam facemask that lined the edges of that same VB demo station? But the thought didn’t occur to me then. I just wanted to actually experience the Nintendo vision of 3D VR for myself.

And it’s that moment of discovery that I’m most excited to see return, now that Nintendo is officially bringing back the Virtual Boy in the form of a Nintendo Classics app for Switch and Switch 2. I’m eager to see my sons have that same first experience of seeing the 3D effect for themselves! I recall being impressed as a 13-year-old, but that was back in 1995. Will kids today be blown away? Or will it underwhelm them?

And how about the quality of the games themselves — the handful of interactive activities that were actually built with the VB’s VR in mind? Have any of those been able to stand the test of time? Were any of them ever any good to begin with?

These are topics we’re tackling in this NF issue. Primarily in our central feature, The Legacy of the Virtual Boy, in which we’ll present looks back on the 14 titles Nintendo has already confirmed will be re-released beginning this February. We’ve also got VB-themed supporting content elsewhere throughout this issue, and our lead review this time is Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — which doesn’t have a really direct Virtual Boy connection, but does kind of involve sticking your face into a different kind of visor! (Hopefully Samus keeps the inside of her helmet clean.)

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed just after Christmas. Most deliveries should land in mailboxes by mid-January.

Digital patrons, keep an eye on your inbox on January 1, as I'll send the PDF download links on that day.

Thank you all for seeing us through to the end of another calendar year! We'll see you back again in 2026!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

2025's Black Friday Deals are Live!

It's that time of year when deals, discounts and every other variety of price drop demands your attention, and jumping straight into the middle of that fray is good old NF Publishing!

Visit nintendoforcemagazine.com/shop to see all of our new bundle options and bulk up your physical NF issue collection. There's also a new Digital Bundle available, and you can now order the brand-new book Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man directly from our humble NF shop! (The digital version is available immediately, while print copies will ship in December.)

I wish you all a happy holiday season in the weeks ahead! (Keep me in your thoughts and prayers, because in addition to these magazine bundles, I've also got thousands of Mega Man book orders to package up and send out. It's going to be a super busy time for the Thomas family!)

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #80: Radical Racers (That Aren't Mario Kart) – November/December 2025

Mario Kart remains massively successful for Nintendo.

Following its launch alongside the new Switch 2 earlier this year, the series’ latest sequel, Mario Kart World, sold nearly 6,000,000 copies just within the month of June. That insane number — which makes it the biggest launch for a new Mario Kart game in history — was largely fueled by the fact that Nintendo offered the game in a bundle with the hardware. But for it to have been given that most prominent position of “pack-in game” for an all-new console, Mario Kart must’ve proven itself as a surefire success already leading up to the new system launch.

Oh yeah . . . the last Kart game has sold somewhere close to 77,000,000 copies. And is still selling regularly even in the wake of the release of World!

Full recognition and praise and applause to Mario Kart as a brand, because that series has absolutely been killing it. Just a breathtaking degree of sales success. But, sadly, that same extreme success seems to have played a major role in killing off most of Nintendo’s other racing franchises!

A couple of decades ago, Mario Kart was on the rise, for sure. But Nintendo’s racing portfolio was still diverse, as we were also getting new entries in series like F-Zero and 1080° and Wave Race. We were getting quirky one-offs like Kirby Air Ride and Pokémon Dash. Nintendo was not afraid of diluting Mario Kart’s appeal by offering other racers around it.

Now, though, it’s been years since those other franchises were last active. Mario Kart even seems to have absorbed some of them, as 8 Deluxe included homage tracks to F-Zero and Excitebike, and World has introduced new water racing segments that feel suspiciously similar to Wave Race. It’s like Nintendo decided to pull all their racing efforts together and toss them into the same Mario-branded basket.

. . . And yet.

Out of nowhere, blazing into this bleak reality, crashing in to upset that exact narrative is the surprise return of Kirby Air Ride! Masahiro Sakurai’s kooky Kirby series racing spin-off from 2003 has never had even a hint of getting a sequel until its surprise reveal earlier this year, and now we’re on the cusp of its November release, not even six months after Mario Kart World entered at least 6,000,000 homes. (And likely millions more in more recent months.)

In this NF issue, we’re shining the spotlight on this sudden twist in Nintendo’s racing history! Our central feature, Radical Racers, helps us remember the elapsed series that Mario Kart has lapped over the years. We’ve got our final pre-release preview of Kirby Air Riders, an interview with the artist who created Captain Falcon and the rest of the F-Zero racers, our review of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and much, much more!

Mario Kart’s sensational success seemed like it had closed the door on the Big N’s other racing brands. But maybe not anymore? Let’s talk about it!

Digital patrons, keep an eye on your inbox this Thursday, October 30. The link to download the PDF version will arrive that day!

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed by the end of this week. They should arrive to most mailboxes by mid-November.

Thanks as always for your continued support, everyone! We've hit 80 issues!! Rolling right along into Issue #81 and the 2026 new year next, so keep sticking with us!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #79: Of Mice and Mouse Control – September/October 2025

Most of the time, when Nintendo presents a new piece of video game hardware, it’s got at least one flashy new feature. Some off-the-wall aspect of its design that is eye-catching. Headline-grabbing. YouTube-thumbnail-earning!

A 3D screen that lets you see the 3D effect without needing to wear special glasses. A new controller that looks like a tiny white TV remote, and it senses the motions of your hand. A docking station that lets you play your games on the TV as normal, but then releases the console so it can also be played on the go!

There’s always some kind of big, loud, attention-drawing gimmick . . . but not so much with the Switch 2. For it, the big draw seemed to just be that it does everything the Switch 1 did, but better. Higher resolutions. Faster loading times. Smoother framerates and snappier Joy-Cons and so on and so forth. There didn’t seem to be any all-new aspect that really shouted to assert itself and make everyone take notice.

No, this time, I think the most interesting new feature might just have snuck into the system quietly. The mouse mode! The ability to, in an instant, tilt either of the Joy-Con 2 controllers on edge and start moving them around just like the mice that have been hooked up to PCs and Macs for decades.

It’s been an understated feature so far — but actually surprisingly widespread. Many more games than you’d guess have already adopted the mouse functionality to at least a small degree, here in just these first few months of Switch 2’s life cycle. And many more are on the way, promising to keep these mice scurrying for months, and maybe years, to come!

So, in this NF issue, we’re celebrating all things mice. Both the Joy-Con 2 mouse function — and also traditional mice too. You know, the actual animals! Why the double focus? Well, because it’s fun. But also because highlighting real mouse characters in video games also happens to be pretty timely right now, what with the upcoming releases of games like Mina the Hollower, Winter Burrow, Hela and Danger Mouse, and the recent availability of games like Epic Mickey: Rebrushed and Squeakross: Home Squeak Home!

You’ll find coverage of all those titles in the pages ahead, alongside supporting articles like our new retrospective of Mario Paint (recently re-released through Nintendo Switch Online, with its mouse functionality intact!) and our Interview with Mat and Jon Annal from Nitrome, who are hard at work developing Mouse Work for Switch 2.

Top that all off with our titular central feature, Of Mice and Mouse Control, and you’ve got a veritable rodent infestation in this NF issue. But these are all the good kinds of mice, I promise!

Print-pledged patrons, your physical copies are being made right now and will ship to your mailbox by the end of this week. Most copies should show up in early-to-mid September.

Digital subscribers, your download links will arrive in your email tomorrow, August 27. Keep an eye out!

Next up is another big milestone issue: NF #80! Thank you all for supporting the Nintendo Force so consistently for so long so that we can keep hitting ever-bigger numbers like that!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Posters, Postage, Paper Supply & More: 2025

The end of July has arrived once more, so it's time again for our annual update on the state of the physical magazine printing industry. As in years past, this post has a one-time charge attached that helps us to offset the increased costs of postage, buying paper to print the magazine and especially the extra items – our wall posters – that we've been able to continue to offer with the help of this once-a-year extra bit of support from our patrons.

The wall posters we've been able to provide over the last year include both modern masterpieces and retro throwbacks! Alongside the introduction of the new Switch 2, we've been able to pack in printings of the key art for games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza to help you kick off the newest chapter of Nintendo history in style.

We did a double printing of double-sided posters alongside our Switch 2 Launch Guide issue, and took that opportunity to bring you all the epic key art from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (That art wasn't available in time to print as a poster eight years ago, so we've finally circled back around to correct that omission in 2017!) We dipped a bit further back into the Zelda series' past, too, with classic art from The Wind Waker – since it relaunched on Switch 2's launch day too.

In recent issues we've shifted to a 16:9 ratio for our posters. This may not be a permanent shift, but I made the decision to adopt that ratio in order to match Nintendo's provided artwork. Nintendo PR has been very kind to us and given us exclusive print access to super high-resolution versions of the marketing artwork being made for games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, and the files they've provided are in that same 16:9 format. Rather than crop out any bit of their art or add big blank bars on either end to fill out the rest of the paper, I figured we'd just go with 16:9 posters for at least a little while to perfectly match what Nintendo is sending us. We've had lots of different poster sizes over the years, though, so things may very well change again in the future.

Speaking of change, tier pricing here on Patreon is something that hasn't ever changed – but we may need to make some tweaks in the near future, so fair warning there! Postage rates have continued to climb – there was just another increase a couple of weeks ago – and it's resulted in our old 2016-era tier rates getting even more out of date. The subscription tiers for patrons in Canada are out of sync in particular – we're basically losing money to continue to send issues just across the northern border! So please be understanding if and when we need to modify things in order to keep NF afloat and moving forward!

As in past years, I'll be pairing this once-a-year update with a digital delivery of back issue download links for all of our active patrons. If you've been with us for the last four years, this should bring your digital collection to near-completion! (But if you're missing any of the older digital issues, they're on sale in cheap bundles over at NintendoForceMagazine.com, as always!)

Exciting things are coming in the year ahead, NF fans! Work is 99% complete on our next book, Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man, and it'll be going into print production soon. (I'll include a free HDGG Mega Man Art Card alongside a future NF issue, so look forward to that!) We'll then have new officially licensed works to share with you in the future, so stay tuned!

Thanks as always for your ongoing support!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #78: I'm Gonna Wreck It! – July/August 2025

EMERGENCY!

Emergent gameplay is emerging with escalating frequency! Be warned that you are now at increased risk for an upsurge in personal creativity!

You might’ve heard that term getting kicked around more and more in recent years, but what does “emergent gameplay” really mean? Well, it’s when video game designers, rather than crafting specific gameplay moments that play out the same for every player, instead focus on creating systems out of which an untold number of unique and interesting events can emerge.

Take Breath of the Wild, for example. Nintendo’s designers built a vast, open world, which was one of that game’s main draws — but the real magic was in the physics systems they put in place to dictate the myriad different object interactions that would be possible within that world. I was playing a Shrine challenge recently that involved using metal objects to conduct electricity across broken circuits in the floor — but I needed one more point of connection than the environment provided. No problem! I simply opened my inventory, selected a big metal hammer from among my melee weapons, and dropped it on the ground. It then conducted the electricity perfectly! A unique solution, dreamed up on the spot. Thousands of other players solved that same puzzle in different ways than I did, too.

Fire setting off blazes across wooden objects, water being splashed on muck to wash it away, wind giving you a boost to your paragliding flight speed in the air, or blowing away items you were trying to just pick up off the ground (Tulin! Stop that!) . . . both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were filled with emergent moments that only you ever saw. No other player ever witnessed the exact same interactions.

And I bring all that up now because we’re on the brink of the next wave of great, unique, emergent moments — courtesy of Donkey Kong Bananza! Its novel gameplay system is centered on destruction. Terrain deformation. You can break the whole world around you, bashing it to bits with DK’s sensational simian strength!

The technology that Nintendo has developed over time to allow for a game in which we can freely wreck the world around us is mind-boggling. Video games truly still have not peaked in realizing their potential! Gameplay like what we’re about to enjoy in Bananza just would not have been possible decades ago. (Or if they tried, it would’ve been much more limited in scope.)

So in this NF issue, we’re celebrating this specific flavor of emergent gameplay — the freedom to destroy — by offering a brief history of “wrecking” games that have helped us build up to this point over time. You’ll find guest star Wreck-It Ralph hosting our central feature “I’m Gonna Wreck It!” starting on Page 26. We’ve also got a retrospective on the Wrecking Crew series, our first wave of Switch 2 reviews, and much more! So read on. Who knows what great memories will emerge in your mind after absorbing this issue!

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed to you by the end of this week. Most of those copies should reach their destinations within the early days of July, but as always, please be patient — especially if you live outside the United States. Global deliveries continue to be difficult to some countries — for example, Canada has been dealing with a potential postal strike on and off again for the last several months.

Digital subscribers, things are easier for you! The link to download your PDF copy of this new issue will arrive in your inbox this Thursday, June 26. Keep an eye out for it!

We've already got our theme set for our next issue, so we'll be diving straight into work on it now! I hope all of you who've had the chance to play the new Switch 2 already have been enjoying it. We'll be zeroing in on its new mouse control feature for Issue #79!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #77: The Nintendo Switch 2 Launch Guide — May/June 2025

Our spotlight is officially shifting!

We know the Switch 1’s not done, and we’ll continue our coverage of its continued life throughout the overlap years that lie ahead. But with the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 coming up on June 5, it’s time to fix our focus on the future! So welcome to the first official NF issue of the all-new Switch 2 generation. This is our Nintendo Switch 2 Launch Guide!

Inside this issue, our normally separate Features and Previews sections have been merged into one supersized Launch Guide: Across nearly 30 pages, we’ve prepared first looks at nearly every launch title that will be going on sale alongside the system itself this June, as well as several heavy hitters that will keep its momentum rolling throughout the rest of 2025, and even into next year.

It’s a mix of familiar first-party franchises like Mario Kart and The Legend of Zelda with some brand-new creations from the Big N’s best and brightest, like Drag x Drive and Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour — as well as some major brands from third-party publishers that we haven’t seen show up on the Nintendo side of the industry too often in recent years. (Welcome back, Street Fighter and Final Fantasy!) Even indie devs are in the mix from the start, highlighted by big names like Deltarune and the highly anticipated Witchbrook.

Switch 2 launch coverage continues even beyond the bounds of the Launch Guide, too, with News taking a look at the price controversy that popped up immediately following Nintendo’s big April 2 Direct event, and our attempt to make sense of the various different varieties of Game Cards that we’re all about to be presented with. The Download section gets in on the action with a look at the GameCube classics that are being added to Nintendo’s Switch Online subscription service (but exclusively for play on Switch 2), and over in Community we’re presenting an in-person event report on the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience, an invite-only preview party that only a select few were chosen to attend. Our thanks to Andrew Wolf from Deku Deals and Nintendeal for sharing his story with us there!

What an honor it is for us to be here to bear witness to this latest generation transition! Our first issue was published right after the Wii U launch. We followed Nintendo through that era, then arrived at the Switch debut eight years ago. And we got to cover that whole chapter too! Now we’re moving on to the Switch 2. The Nintendo Force is hyped and ready to jump into this new reality and see it through, too! Join us for the entire ride, won’t you?

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Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be shipped to you before the end of this week. Most should arrive in mailboxes by the early days of May. I know our last couple of issues preceding this one fell behind due to various weather and production delays, but we're out of the winter months now and (as far as I know) all of our printing company's equipment is back at 100%, and we really pushed to get back onto our regular production schedule with this one. So you all should see your issues arrive much sooner than the previous two did.

Also, two double-sided posters will be packed alongside print copies of this issue! I noted that we skipped doing a poster with Issue #76 intentionally, because I wanted to hold off and have this issue be a double-poster special. We'll go back to the regular rhythm of one double-sided poster per issue after this, though.

Digital patrons, keep an eye on your inbox this Wednesday, April 23. That's when I'll send the download links to grab the PDF version of this issue. It'll give you something to read in the final frantic hours before Switch 2 preorders go live in America at midnight, a few hours later!

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Thanks for being here and being part of the Nintendo Force team at the onset of the new Switch 2 generation! Let's have a blast covering this entire console life cycle through the years ahead, shall we?

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #76: Entering the Overlap – March/April 2025

HEADS-UP #1: No wall poster will be included with print copies of this issue. Instead, we're going to do two wall posters with our next issue, NF #77! That will be our big blow-out Switch 2 Launch Guide issue, so I figured we could shift things a bit to inject some extra hype for that one. You'll end up with the same numbers of posters for the year. :)

HEADS-UP #2: Thank you all for your patience through these last few months! This winter has been difficult for magazine deliveries, particularly here in my part of the United States, where multiple snowstorms have forced extended shutdowns — and we've also been dealing with devastating floods. I know lots of copies of Issue #75 were slow to arrive. If yours still hasn't shown up, I'll work with you to get that all fixed via Patreon DMs within the coming week. I know I get backlogged there a lot! I need to do better with the timeliness of my customer service, I know!

Now, on to our traditional intro letter for this issue:

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We’re heading into extra innings, everyone!

The Nintendo Switch has already had an impressively long life cycle, as it’s sailing past its eight-year anniversary as we’re sending this issue out the door — but it might just get a boost in longevity and end up extending its streak by several more years thanks to the impending arrival of the Switch 2!

That successor system has finally been revealed, so flip ahead to Pages 8 and 9 for a closer look at it. But then keep on going after that, because a few pages further, on Page 12, we’ve got the article that serves as our thesis statement for this issue’s theme, “Entering the Overlap”!

The gist of it is that we’re just about to head into the start of the Switch 2 generation — but the Switch 1 will still be active even after the Switch 2 launches. Maybe for a long time after! It’ll be boosted by the Switch 2’s backwards compatibility, and may very well carry on to hit its ninth or tenth anniversaries, or even further, slotting into a new role as a supporting system while Switch 2 becomes the primary platform for big new releases.

Our central feature in this issue looks back across the history of every previous Nintendo hardware transition to reflect on the games that were released in these kinds of overlap periods in the past. Some of the biggest NES games didn’t come around until years after the SNES was launched! Wii games kept on going and ended up outliving its successor, the Wii U. The OG Game Boy format endured for over a decade, and it’s a good thing it did, because we wouldn’t have had the Pokémon series otherwise!

Speaking of Pokémon, its big 2025 release, Legends: Z-A, is a perfect poster child for this impending time period: It’s a Switch 1 game that won’t arrive until after Switch 2 is on sale. How will that affect its sales? Or its reception from the fans? Or how it’ll run, on a technical level?

It is, to me, a fascinating topic, and one we’ve never had the chance to cover before throughout our 12-year history, since the last time we had a home console transition, the outgoing machine, the Wii U, felt like it was dropped like a rock as soon as the Switch swept into town.

Also ahead in this issue: a Discussion section in which the NF team shares their first impressions of the Switch 2, a first look at the brand-new Mario Kart sequel due to launch alongside the Switch 2, a Top 10 wishlist for new characters I personally hope to see in that Mario Kart sequel, an extended array of Community section reviews covering the ModRetro Chromatic and its whole launch lineup and much, much more!

Then, next time: All Switch 2! Full Hype! Throwing caution to the wind and letting ourselves get far too excited! See you back here for that one!

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Print copies are in production now and will be mailed within the next week. Digital issue download links will be emailed on Monday, March 3! Thanks again for your patience, too, with the timing of the start of production of this issue. I wanted to wait to finalize it until we got yesterday's latest Pokémon news! The new info on Legends: Z-A would've gotten lost in the shuffle if we'd waited to talk about it until all eyes were on the Switch 2 after its big April 2 Direct. :)

As always, thank you all for your ongoing support! 76 issues completed now. That's nothing to sneeze at!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Recent USPS Delivery Delays

Hey there, Force fans! Just wanted to drop you all a quick note to address some recent delivery delays with the US Postal Service.

We're nearing the end of January, and some of our US subscribers are still waiting for their copies of Issue #75 to arrive. This is largely because the USPS has been incredibly backlogged in some areas of the country. Around where the NF home office is here in Kentucky, we had some extreme winter weather and severely low temperatures that kept schools closed for two solid weeks — the roads around town here in Lexington were terrible. Some of that snow and ice is still around, unmelted even now!

Major weather events that are big enough to close schools also inevitably affect the postal service, and all of this happening right in the aftermath of the holiday season didn't help matters in regard to the massive volume of mail the USPS is still trying to get caught up on. Here's one of our local news channels' articles on it if you'd like to read further:

https://www.lex18.com/news/covering-kentucky/congressman-barr-usps-release-statements-on-mail-delivery-delays

All of this is to say, please continue to have patience! Yes, your issues were mailed. Most of them have been delivered by now. But if you live in the States and your copy hasn't arrived yet, it's almost surely because there's an overclogged, overworked and understaffed USPS link in the chain somewhere between our magazine printing company and your front door.

This kind of thing just happens sometimes! We've printed and shipped 75 different NF issues going back 12 years now, and while most have been delivered reliably, every once in a while there are obstacles along the way. It's not the norm, thankfully! It's a statistical outlier. So keep an eye on your mailbox and good old NF #75 will make it to you eventually!

(And winter weather delays won't be a problem anymore once we get out of winter! So that'll be nice!)

Thank you to you all who have been patient!

~ Lucas

Now Live on Kickstarter! Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man

The third NF Book Kickstarter is now on . . . and already fully funded before I could even jump over to this tab to post this!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nfpublishing/hand-drawn-game-guides-mega-man

It took only 12 minutes for the baseline funding goal to be achieved. Jump in now and make a pledge yourself to preorder your own copy!

Every dollar we push the total higher now makes it more and more likely that Capcom will let us carry on and make more installments, turning this into a whole series! Thank you all for all of your support over the years, and now for this brand-new book too. NF has fully leveled up with now being able to do officially licensed books!!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

New Book! Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man

Readers of NF Issue #75 got an early look at this announcement, but today's the day we've broadcast the news to the wider online world: We're making a Mega Man book! An officially licensed, partnered-with-Capcom guide to the original Mega Man game!

It's coming to Kickstarter one week from today, on Tuesday, January 14. The preview page is already live, so you can read more and sign up to be alerted when the full campaign launches right here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nfpublishing/hand-drawn-game-guides-mega-man

You might remember the original Hand-Drawn Game Guides Kickstarter campaign from a little over three years ago. Artist and author Philip Summers (who has also been a longtime fan and supporter of NF Magazine) crafted great, fully hand-illustrated guidebooks to several NES classics, including Metroid, The Legend of Zelda and Contra. Unfortunately, his work back then was not officially licensed, so he cancelled that Kickstarter just before its final day, fearing legal backlash (or a genuine attack from Nintendo's ninjas).

I personally loved the look of Phil's work in those books, so I reached out to him after that Kickstarter ended and we began to brainstorm ways to actually get his great guidebooks across the finish line. The answer was to work with a great game company to officially license another NES classic and make sure everything was legally squared away before launching the crowdfunding campaign. And we did it! We secured the full support of Capcom and everything here is 100% legit.

Again, check out that Kickstarter preview page for more information and the link to download the press kit, which includes preview pages and some behind-the-scenes photos!

And finally, thank you, thank you, thank you! Without the long-running support of our faithful NF fans, we never would've endured for over 12 years now and reached a point where we can start making officially licensed books like this! You all are the best!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #75: The Value of Replay – January/February 2025

We're heading into the beginning of NF’s 13th year of publishing!

The release of this issue coincides with the conclusion of a dozen years of Nintendo Force, and 12 years deep we again find ourselves on the verge of another major hardware reveal and release.

. . . But Switch 1 isn’t quite done yet, so we still have some old titles to look back over before charging fully ahead into the new generation. Yes, the Switch release slate is still awash in remakes and ports as its sun is setting, with Nintendo offering two big ones themselves in 2025’s opening months: Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.

Now, we’ve covered remakes, remasters and the like in the past. It was our topic of choice at this same time just one year ago, in fact! But there is one angle here that I feel we haven’t really explored yet, and that has become the title for this issue: “The Value of Replay.”

What motivates someone to go back and play a game again, after they’ve already played it at least once before? Sure, lots of these re-releases are trying to bring in brand-new players who never paid attention to the older versions previously, or perhaps were too young when they were first released. But I’m wondering now specifically about returning players — going back to the same games and giving them a second run. Or a third, a fourth, and so on! What is the experience of playing a video game like when you’ve already played it through in the past, and so you already know all the shocking reveals and plot twists and boss weaknesses?

And how does a game get to a point of being so beloved that it becomes a genuine comfort game that a player might return to dozens of times over the years? I know some players have games that they make a point to replay at least once a year. Appointment nostalgia.

Keep those questions in mind as you page through this issue and peruse our previews of games like Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope DX that are trying to reach out to that returning player audience; our interview with Gavin Price from Playtonic, the team currently working on Yooka-Replayee; and our reviews of titles like Tetris Forever (a celebration of arguably the most replayable game of all time) and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket (which hopes that you’ll fire it up to play over and over again, every single day). Finally, don’t miss our central feature, in which the NF team shares with you our personal comfort games that we just can’t stop going back to year after year.

We’ve done our best to make another great magazine issue for you! Who knows, maybe you’ll like it so much that you’ll come back to re-read it years from now?

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Print version patrons, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed out within the next week. They should start showing up in most subscribers' mailboxes in the early days of January.

Digital version supporters, normally I would send your PDF download links to you just a few days after making this Patreon post . . . but we need to hold back on releasing it for a little while longer. There's an exclusive reveal of a new product inside this one – which is going to be the focus of our next big Kickstarter campaign – and we're not quite supposed to say exactly what it is just yet.

You all will still be the first to hear about it, as our longtime patrons and biggest supporters! But you'll just have to be a bit more patient before we can drop the big news bomb. (We'll drop it sometime shortly after the New Year's Eve ball drops, OK!)

Thank you all, as always, for your faithful fandom! We couldn't do what we do without you!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Black Friday is Here!

Happy post-Thanksgiving shopping day, everyone! I first gave all of our patrons here a heads-up about our annual Black Friday Back Issue Bundles sale last week, but since Black Friday has now officially arrived, here's a collective reminder!

Visit nintendoforcemagazine.com/shop to see all of the new bundle options and bulk up your physical NF issue collection. There's also a new Digital Bundle available, and The Impact of Iwata is on sale too! Happy Holiday Shopping!

In normal NF production news, our milestone 75th issue of Nintendo Force is coming along well and will be ready in just a few more weeks. And we're also going to have our next NF Books announcement very soon. (It's a big one! I can't wait for you all to see it!)

I hope you all have a great day. Enjoy those Thanksgiving leftovers!

~ Lucas

Issue #74: The Bond Between Brothers – November/December 2024

Scheduling has become a constant struggle.

Who’s going to play first? How long is he going to play? What game is he going to pick, and when he’s done, who will be the next in line? Rinse and repeat the process for every one of the siblings, then pause only long enough to sleep and wake up the next day to the same questions being asked yet again.

As I continuously remind our readers in our issues, my primary job is not “magazine editor” — it’s Dad. Of five boys! And while being a father to five different sons is a challenge (especially when it comes to passing final judgment on the video game play schedule), the even more complicating factor is the fact that, with five boys, there are dozens of different father/son combinations to juggle!

The math of it all threatens to break my brain, but I know it’s true just from our day-to-day experience — the dynamic is always different depending on which of the boys is present and who is not. And when it comes to playing video games, or just being there to watch as I play a video game myself, it’s become contentious. They all want to be present to see me play a new game like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. (Which is understandable, but not always practical.) Then they want their own game times, and Carter sometimes doesn’t want an onlooking audience of little brothers as he embarks on his own adventures, and Cooper will get upset if he doesn’t get to milk every minute of his allowed screen time, and Colson will wail if anyone plays for even the briefest bit before he’s seated to see it all, and . . . you get the idea.

But! It’s not always a struggle. It is, often, a joy.

These boys’ frustrating fraternity often gives rise to genuine beauty. Just the other day I walked into our TV room to see all five of the boys sitting together, cheering uproariously for Chance, our littlest who just turned 2. They had handed him an unconnected old controller and turned on Super Mario Maker 2, queueing up some of those “Auto-Mario” levels where you don’t actually have to press any buttons for the stage to complete itself. And the bigger boys were clapping and yelling and making Chance believe that he was the one in control, that he was playing absolutely perfectly and that he was being the best Mario player there ever was! It was a little deceptive, sure. But his little toddler smile was immense — he felt so happy, and so loved and supported by his big bros.

This issue of NF celebrates the simultaneous split between and support among siblings. Brothers can be brutal to one another! But brothers can also be the best of friends. With a brand-new Mario & Luigi game sailing our way soon, there’s no better time to explore the intersection between video games and the bonds of brotherhood.

(Or “brothership!”)

Print subscribers, your physical issues are in production now and are scheduled to ship by the end of this week. Most of you should see your copies arrive in your mailbox in the early days of November.

Digital patrons, your link to download the PDF version of this issue will be sent to your email this Thursday, October 24.

As always, thank you for your continued support of Nintendo Force! Our next issue will mark another milestone: It'll be Issue #75! It'll also contain our next book publishing announcement — and it's going to be a big one! Stay tuned!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Last Call for NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2!

Hey again, Nintendo Force patrons! I didn't want to bother you all too much about our newest Kickstarter campaign throughout this past month, but I'm directing your attention toward it one last time today, since we're less than 10 hours away from it ending now!

Here's the campaign link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nfpublishing/nes-endings-compendium-volume-2

NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2 was fully funded after just four days on Kickstarter, and since then the pledge total has continued to climb. As of this writing we're over $42,000 pledged, and we're sitting just under 1,000 backers! Thank you to any of you who are already among that number.

Publishing this book wasn't originally in the plans for NF as we entered this year, but when Rey reached out and asked for my help in bringing the book to the world after other avenues closed to him, I felt compelled to step up and assist. And I'm happy I did! I think the finished product is going to be great, and it's been fun to help create the book's new logo, cover art and extra items like the wall posters and Art Cards to support the main event.

So please take one last look, and pledge to preorder your own copy if you can! And then look forward to the next issue of Nintendo Force following along here soon. :)

Thanks team!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Now Live on Kickstarter! NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2

Our second NF Books Kickstarter campaign is a go!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nfpublishing/nes-endings-compendium-volume-2

Click there to jump over now, check out the video, the campaign page and the pledge tiers, and become one of our first backers helping us to reach our funding goal!

Thanks in advance for your continued support of all of NF Publishing's endeavors!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

New Kickstarter Launching Soon! NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2

Greetings again, Nintendo Force fans!

I hope your Septembers are getting off to a solid start. Print copies of our newest issue should be arriving in most subscribers' mailboxes soon (if they haven't already), but don't freak out if yours hasn't arrived quite yet. The Labor Day weekend always bumps USPS deliveries back by a bit.

When you do get that crisp new copy of NF Issue #73 in your hands and you flip open the front cover, you'll find our official Kickstarter campaign announcement for NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2 there to greet you! This is our second official NF Book, following up on The Impact of Iwata from last year.

And its pre-launch page is already ready already!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nfpublishing/nes-endings-compendium-volume-2

You could give us a boost by clicking over to that page and clicking the "Notify me" button, if you've got a minute! But of course the biggest boost would be placing a pledge to preorder your own copy of the book when the Kickstarter kicks off this upcoming Tuesday, September 10.

Working with author Rey Esteban and artist Greg Melo to take over publishing duties on this series from Limited Run has been a lot of fun for me personally over the last few months, and I'm excited for you all to see more from this book! It's pure, distilled NES era nostalgia covering every game released throughout 1990 — reaching the peak of the 8-bit era, honestly, when NES hype had reached its highest level and genuine masterpieces seemed to hit store shelves every week. The book covers them all! It's really the best kind of blast from the past.

Thank you all in advance for your support! I'll drop one more reminder here on Patreon when the campaign officially kicks off.

~ Lucas M. Thomas

P.S. And the NF team is up to speed and working on Issue #74 now as well!

Issue #73: Leading Ladies 10 Years Later – September/October 2024

Hello, Nintendo Force readers!

When we were doing the planning for this issue, I discovered that not only would this be the 10th anniversary of our Leading Ladies cover story, but it would also be the 10th anniversary of my first contribution to Nintendo Force! (I wrote about the PAX East Pokémon League, which is still going strong, in the Community section.) In the past decade, I’ve covered the Pokémon World Championships, traveled to conventions to demo all sorts of interesting titles, guested on all sorts of fun podcasts and met a whole bunch of fans, both at events and online. I also got out of my comfort zone and dealt with my mental health a lot more — acts that take a lot of courage, which is a quality that any leading lady has in spades!

A lot has happened in both the world and the world of gaming since then — we’ve witnessed the fall of the Wii U and the meteoric rise of the Nintendo Switch, we’ve seen amazing new IPs and the sad endings to development studios and gaming publications, and we’ve experienced earth-shattering, once-in-a-lifetime events that have had ripple effects on not only the industry, but our daily lives. It also feels like every time a little progress is made, it gets dragged back down by the loudest voices with the deepest pockets and shallowest souls. It’s times like these when courage is needed — the courage to be our authentic selves, to stand up to bullies, to do what’s right and to live our lives to the fullest.

Our main leading lady of this issue is Princess Zelda, who is finally getting to be the star of her own adventure! (We do not talk about the CD-i games — unless you’re Nadia Oxford, and you’re on a retrospective panel.) It’s been a long time coming, and we’re taking a look back at her many incarnations over the decades, as both damsel in distress and mighty warrior royalty. We’ve also got a brand-new look at gameplay for Metroid Prime 4, for those who prefer their leading ladies to use technology instead of magic.

We’ve also revisited our Leading Ladies list by looking at some new characters who have either made their debut in the past decade or stepped back into the spotlight in a big way — just look at Mayor Pauline! They come from all walks of life, but the one thing they all have in common is courage.

Finally, we’re following up with Skullgirls artist Mariel Cartwright to talk about how her world has changed over the last 10 years, as she’s now Creative Lead for WayForward’s upcoming remake of the 16-bit horror classic Clock Tower.

Before I sound too much like the Cowardly Lion in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, I’ll close off with a challenge to all you readers: Show your courage! Do one thing today that scares you!

~ Rebecca Rudranath, Staff Writer

My thanks to Rebecca for writing this issue's Inbox section intro letter!

Print subscribers, your physical issues are in production now and will be mailed next week. They should arrive to most mailboxes in the early days of September!

Digital subscribers, I'll be sending the links to download this issue's PDF version to your email tomorrow. Keep an eye out for it!

In addition, we've got a couple of other digital distributions happening tomorrow!

1) Because this issue is a sequel to our first Leading Ladies issue from exactly 10 years ago, I'm going to send the digital version of that issue, NF #11, out to every patron tomorrow. So you can be reminded of what was inside it – or check it out for the first time!

2) As promised a few weeks ago, I'll be sending out a bonus three-year set of NF issues in connection with the recent Posters, Postage & Paper Supply update post. Figured I'd just do all the digital distribution emails on the same day!

Thanks as always for your continued patronage and support, NF faithful! And welcome to all of you who are just now joining us. I hope you'll love your first NF issue!

~ Lucas M. Thomas, Editor-in-Chief

Posters, Postage, Paper Supply & More, 2024

Our annual update on the state of physical magazine publishing has arrived, and with it our once-a-year look back at our last 12 months' worth of wall posters.

We're coming off of a particularly popular one, as a lot of fans across social media have praised our selection of classic Chrono Trigger promo art that was included alongside our Tribute to Toriyama issue. Even though Marle lighting up Crono's blade with fire didn't end up being in-game accurate in the final version of that 1995 JRPG masterpiece, that piece of art has always been iconic nonetheless. Chrono Trigger is the pinnacle of classic Toriyama to me! And having Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on the reverse side felt fitting to me too, as it ended up being the final Nintendo release he worked on, and having an image that gathered so many of his different monster designs together demonstrated the visual variety he was capable of as best as possible in one wall poster side.

Our thanks go out to third-party studios for supplying art assets to become posters throughout the past year, from Another Crab's Treasure to Contra: Operation Galuga and beyond. Even when the games themselves end up having some problems (like the Switch version of Contra struggling with a few technical issues), wall posters emblazoned with their bold key art still really hit, capturing the hype and excitement of the months leading up to each new release.

We've continued to pursue doing at least one extra bonus item per year in addition to the wall posters, and this time it was a randomly selected Art Print Postcard from The Impact of Iwata. Kickstarter backers/NintendoForceMagazine.com website customers had the option to get the full set of 16 illustrations commissioned for the chapter intro positions in NF's first-ever book, but I wanted to share at least a little of that love with all of you who subscribe to NF's print magazine issues. Hopefully you got an Iwata card that matched your vibe!

I'm planning to send at least one new art card out to NF print subscribers alongside another upcoming issue fairly soon – artist Greg Melo is currently working to illustrate 10 different classic NES game endings to create a new set of cards that will be offered alongside our Kickstarter for the new NES Endings Compendium, Volume 2 by Rey Esteban! A few of those pieces of art are done already, and they're looking great. I can't wait for you all to see more, soon!

Keep an eye on your email inboxes, as I'll be sending out another set of download links for a three-year set of NF digital back issues as another thanks for your ongoing support of our Patreon page. Paper supplies to be able to manufacture our print issues have slightly decreased in price in recent months, but postage rates have increased again as of just a few weeks ago, so NF once again would not be able to continue to exist in print form without all of your help. Thanks for helping us keep Nintendo Power's torch burning, all these years later!

Speaking of Nintendo Power, if you happen to be going to the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo next week, be sure to stop by the Nintendo Power panel on Sunday, August 11! I was invited to be a part of it! I'll be appearing alongside Gail Tilden, the legendary Editor-in-Chief of Nintendo Power, as well as Jeremy Parish of Retronauts fame. It was a great honor to be asked! NF and NP will be represented together at a major event for the first time ever. Woohoo!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #72: A Tribute to Toriyama – July/August 2024

My little brother’s always been a better artist than me.

I can knock out a knock-off of Mario easily enough, just off the top of my head, but that’s about the extent of my artistic talents. Dan, on the other hand, can craft original characters out of thin air, with no trouble at all. Give him a piece of paper, a pencil and a general idea of what kind of character he’s aiming for, and he’ll sketch it out in seconds flat. It’s impressive!

And I think a lot of Dan’s creativity can be traced back to Akira Toriyama. The first piece I remember really being taken aback by, by Dan, was back when he was still in high school and he got the assignment to draw one of the gods of Greek mythology. Dan turned in this huge, colorful portrait of Hades, and he’d drawn him as a villain straight out of Dragon Ball Z: matching Toriyama’s style to a T, and even wrapping him in flames in the same way a fiery aura enveloped Goku when he powered up. (And to really sell the “god of the dead” part, Dan also added a symbol on a clasp of his cloak: the Black Mana skull from Magic: The Gathering.)

That kind of copying is so crucial for artists who are just setting out on their journeys to find their own style. Students naturally look to masters of the craft they’re pursuing as mentors, studying their techniques and emulating their methods until they reach such a point of confidence that they’re able to branch off and find their own path to originality. And I think for Dan and for an entire generation around him, Akira Toriyama served as that role model. Drawing their own Gokus or Cronos or Dragon Quest Slimes was surely the first step so many kids took on their own quests of creativity.

So, in this issue of NF Magazine, we honor that impact! We’ve put together a central feature that traces Akira Toriyama’s career — focusing on his contributions to the video game industry specifically, since we are a gaming magazine after all. We’ve also got previews of Toriyama titles that might be Nintendo-bound soon, a lead review of the final Switch game that saw release while he was still with us, and much more. I hope it all inspires you — artistically!

Print-pledged patrons, your physical copies are being brought into reality right now, and they'll be mailed to your mailboxes by the end of this week.

Digital subscribers, keep your eyes on your inbox this Wednesday, June 26, for the link to download your PDF copy of this issue.

The back half of this year is shaping up to be exciting, especially in the wake of that great Nintendo Direct last week! We'll get hopping on NF #73 next. Please look forward to it!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Poll Responses Needed!

Hey everyone! It seems like there's been a glitch with the email address we normally use to receive submissions to our Player's Poll questions. Only two emails have come through correctly to respond to the questions printed in Issue #71! Could you please take a minute and answer the questions by responding directly to this post here on Patreon? Otherwise Issue #72's Inbox is going to look mighty thin!

1) What was your first exposure to the work of Akira Toriyama? An episode of Dragon Ball Z? Playing a Dragon Quest game? Chrono Trigger, maybe?

2) What is your favorite character design from Akira Toriyama? Could be a hero, a villain, an NPC or even just a common monster! 

3) What would you say is Akira Toriyama’s greatest contribution to the world of video games? We want to know your #1 choice! (And why it’s #1!)

Thanks in advance! Everyone who responds will be entered to win the prize!

In Memory of My Father-in-Law

Nintendo Force fans and followers, my apologies if you've been waiting to hear back from me with a response to a question or comment or complaint. I've fallen quite far behind on checking the inbox here, as family life has drawn my attention elsewhere for most of the last month. My father-in-law, David Lundquist, was moved from his nursing home and into hospice care early in May. He passed away less than a week later, and I've spent a lot of time recently in my wife's hometown, supporting her, her brothers and her Mom and helping to put on the funeral, which happened this past weekend.

I do my best to stay timely with things like customer service for our magazine here, but sometimes life just calls me away. If I'm ever taking ages to get back to you, please assume the best of me and don't think I'm being malicious or ignoring you intentionally. I'm juggling a lot, a lot of the time.

We're working on our next NF issue now, which will be called A Tribute to Toriyama, and the connection isn't lost on me – we're again honoring the life and legacy of a creative individual whose work found global recognition, as we did years earlier with the original "Thank You, Mr. Iwata" issue – and while shining the spotlight on this lost luminary, another light, much closer to me personally, has also gone out.

But while David Lundquist may not have ever been a name known around the world, he did make a massive impact in his local community. He was an English teacher at Lincoln High School in Cambridge City, Indiana for 37 years! He taught thousands upon thousands of students, and was loved by each and every one of them. Seriously – no hyperbole there. He genuinely was that teacher that everybody adored, and he taught for such a long stretch of years that some of his earliest students grew up, had families, and then their kids became teenagers who also got to have Mr. Lundquist as their English teacher. He was multi-generational!

Closer to home, he was a wonderful father-in-law to me, a great Dad to my wife Mary and a funny (though sometimes grumpy) grandpa to our five boys. He was a lifelong Cubs fan, loved listening to music and encouraged his kids to learn how to play instruments (though he never did learn himself). He could talk anyone's ear off – honestly, sometimes he'd speak to me for an hour straight, breathlessly moving from one old story into the next without ever giving me any opportunity to interject at all. (Some of that was just his personality; some was the Alzheimer's that got its hold on him in his final years.)

I won't be so long-winded here. I just wanted to let you all know why I've been a bit absent recently, and to let you all get to know Mr. Lundquist just a bit. I hope you all have fathers, fathers-in-law and father figures in your lives who have made just as much of a positive impact on you.

I'll be getting caught up on the inbox soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

~ Lucas

Issue #71: Just Add Water – May/June 2024

I try not to worry about water.

In fact, thinking back across even my formative years as a Nintendo gamer, I remember actively seeking out water levels more than I do avoiding them. I have clear memories of honestly enjoying the swimming sections in Super Mario Bros., to the point where I’d avoid taking the Warp Zone in World 1-2 to skip to World 4 — because that would mean not getting to splash around in World 2-2. Bubble Man’s stage was always a joy to jump into in Mega Man 2, because I loved the extra-high heights that you could leap to reach once you went under the water (even if the ceiling was lined with spikes). In Star Fox 64, I’d always try to choose the route that let me play the Aquas level, since it was the one and only place in that game where Fox would pilot the Blue-Marine submarine. Water worlds were always weird and different, and I liked experiencing each one!

But I fully understand that them being so weird and different is exactly why so many other players didn’t want to even try to touch them. Swimming mechanics, submerged environments and definitely the whole reality of not being able to breathe freely (which some games carry over from real like) are all certainly valid reasons for avoiding these areas!

For this NF issue, we’re trying to cast a wide net and look at all the different ways water in games can make us feel. Our central feature, Just Add Water, takes five different angles on the topic! Then we’ve got a preview of our cover game, Endless Ocean: Luminous, and an exclusive interview with the lead developer of the ocean floor Soulslike adventure, Another Crab’s Treasure.

This whole issue is saturated with water-related titles beyond just those, too! See the skeletal fish foes of the new Splatoon 3 DLC, Side Order! Meet a penguin who doesn’t know how to swim in Ufouria: The Saga 2! Get a second helping of development insight from Matthew Taranto when he discusses Tadpole Treble Encore. And much, much more!

Hopefully all this content will slake the mightiest of thirsts, leaving you feeling fully refreshed and ready to play some new games!

Print-pledged patrons, your physical issues are in production now and will be mailed to you this week. I know some deliveries of our last issue were a little slower, due in part to us pushing its production cycle back to finish a week later than usual, but this one's back on the regular schedule and should arrive comparatively sooner.

Digital subscribers, keep an eye on your email inboxes – I'll send out the download links on Wednesday this week.

Thanks as always for your continued support, NF patrons! Next time we'll be turning our attention to a tribute for Akira Toriyama. Stay tuned for that one!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #70: Peach in the Limelight – March/April 2024

I've always been a Toadstool supporter.

Every since my first time playing Super Mario Bros. 2, all the way back at the end of the '80s when I was only seven years old, I've been cheering her on. She won me over with her incredible hovering long jumps in that adventure, and I'd regularly choose her over the others on the character select screen time and time again. I dabbled with Luigi. I gave Toad a shot once or twice, just to see for myself how his speed differed from the others. But in the end I always returned to my first love -- even now, decades later, I still pick the Princess every time I replay that classic game.

I know I'm not alone in that, and the community of players who appreciate the Princess in particular is a large one. But -- and those other Toadstool supporters will back me up on this -- it hasn't always been easy to keep the Princess as a preference.

She just wasn't a playable option any more after that one-time appearance on the select screen! Not for many more years afterward. She went back to being just the series' regular kidnapping victim over and over -- just the reason why Mario'd get up out of bed in the morning. I missed the Hero Princess! I missed getting to beat up bad guys as her, instead of beating up bad guys just to get to her, then see her on-screen for less than a minute before the credits rolled.

Well, with all that in my background, you can bet I'd want to celebrate the upcoming release of Princess Peach: Showtime! in a major way! So this milestone 70th NF issue is dedicated to Princess Peach. We've got a big final preview of Showtime! that introduces 10 of her new costume changes. We've got an "18 Years Later" retrospective on Super Princess Peach from the DS, her last headlining role. We're even taking a page out of Taylor Swift's playbook for our central feature, which we're calling "Princess Peach: The Eras Tour." Walk back through her whole career up to this point, to better prepare you for the beginning of her next chapter!

Will Showtime! be a showstopper? Will the Princess find sales success? We certainly hope so, so we're playing our part!

Print subscribers! Your physical copies are in production now. We held off on starting the printing process until about a week later than we normally would, because we wanted to get some coverage of the recent Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase and yesterday's Pokémon Presents broadcast into the issue at the last minute. So you'll get your printed issues a little later into March than you otherwise would have . . . but, to counterbalance that, we're moving the production of NF #71 forward a bit, so your wait between issues will be less than it usually is!

Digital subscribers! Keep an eye on your email inbox, as I'll send download links for the PDF version of this new issue on Friday, March 1. It is the March/April issue, after all, so a March 1 digital delivery makes a certain amount of sense. :p

We're already under way with work on the next one. Stay tuned for its reveal soon!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #69: Three Takes on Remakes – January/February 2024

Books don't usually get rewritten. Music is sometimes re-recorded, either by its original artists or by cover bands paying tribute to those originals. Movies getting remade is a fairly frequent occurrence, and has led to things like the film Freaky Friday having four different versions and lots of different spin-offs and homages beyond that . . . but even Hollywood's total count of remakes can't quite keep up with the video game industry. In the gaming world, old media being brought back to life for an encore appearance is an incredibly common occurrence.

We've touched on the topic of video game remakes in NF in the past, but with the release schedule we're right smack in the middle of at the moment, it seemed like now was the right time to revisit it with a more in-depth discussion. The Big N's last big release of 2023 was a remake: Super Mario RPG, which claimed our cover spot last time. And now, as 2024 is dawning, the first-party slate is full of several more -- four out of the five first-party titles Nintendo currently has on their release schedule are some shade of remake!

Another Code: Recollection is on the slate for January. Mario vs. Donkey Kong drops in February. Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is set for sometime in the Summer and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will be getting an encore in 2024 as well.

And then third-party publishers are pitching in, too! We've got Contra: Operation Galuga coming soon, a visually remastered Tomb Raider trilogy due in February, freshly refurbished versions of The Legend of Legacy and the Apollo Justice trilogy of Ace Attorney titles . . . and surely many more to follow beyond those!

With all of those on the way -- as well as the huge number of remakes that the Switch has already seen released over the last seven years -- it was time to take a closer look at the whys and the hows of remaking old games. Our central feature in this issue will break down the terminology as we attempt to clearly define "remakes" and "remasters" and "reimaginings," so we can all get on the same page with the proper word usage. We've also prepped previews of all the games I just mentioned, and have reviewed several more that fit into this category in some way or another.

But there's more to discuss beyond that! We've got the announcement of a live-action Legend of Zelda movie to discuss (so we reconvened the NF Film Club for that). We've got our 2023 Game of the Year Awards to give out. We've got reviews of major titles like Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Sonic Superstars to complete. And more! So please enjoy this NF issue, just as it is. (We probably won't remake it in the future.)  

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed to you by the end of this week. Because they'll be in transit over the Christmas/New Year's week, please have patience while waiting for delivery! All the same, issues should arrive to you sooner than last time, since we got production on this issue wrapped up about 10 days earlier!

Digital patrons, keep an eye on your email this Wednesday, December 20. I'll send out the DropSend links to download your issues on that day!

Thank you all for continuing to support us through the end of 2023! As we head into 2024, the next NF issue will be the milestone NF #70! Please look forward to it!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #68: The ABCs of RPGs – November/December 2023

The next NF issue is imminent!

Print production has begun, and completed issues will be mailed to print subscribers within the next week. Digital issue download links will be emailed to digital subscribers on Friday, October 27.

Our print production time was scheduled for a little later in the month than usual, so my apologies there – but, to compensate for the few days' worth of extra wait, we've included an extra bonus with each of the physical issues: One randomly selected Art Print Postcard from the set of 16 different postcards we've printed in support of The Impact of Iwata! That first-ever NF book is still on schedule to ship in December, so maybe getting one free postcard featuring a piece of its artwork will inspire you to place an order. (If you haven't already done so, of course!)

For this NF issue, we took our cue from the upcoming release of Super Mario RPG's fancy new Switch remake, and turned our spotlight on the RPG genre as a whole. We've got reviews of RPGs like Sea of Stars, the full set of Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster and the Teal Mask DLC for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. We've got RPG previews for titles like Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, Ys X: Nordics and, of course, Super Mario RPG itself. We've got RPG-inspired comics, an RPG-themed book review or two and an exclusive interview with Yu Suzuki . . . who I don't think has ever really done much with RPGs. So hey, the theme isn't all-encompassing, but it comes close.

And how about that reveal of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door also getting a snazzy new remake coming soon? It's another RPG golden age on the Switch, I'm declaring it now!

Thanks as always for your continuing support, NF faithful! Once again, print issues will ship within the next week, so please don't email me two months from now asking "Did you mail Issue #68 yet?" I get those kinds of emails all the time. Some of you out there really confuse me. :p

~ Lucas M. Thomas

The Impact of Iwata: Preorders Now Available!

Preorders for NF's first book, The Impact of Iwata, are now available through BackerKit: https://theimpactofiwata.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders 

It's been exactly two months since our Kickstarter campaign ended! But if you missed it, you can now place a preorder. It's like rewriting history to make it like you didn't miss it!

I know some people don't care for Kickstarter, so this is a new avenue of support that lets you bypass that site, if that's your preference. BackerKit also offers PayPal as a payment option, which also makes it more flexible than Kickstarter in that regard too!

I'm in the home stretch getting content completed for the book, and I can't wait to share it with you all. Thanks again for all of your encouragement!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Issue #67: Sidescrolling Showdown – September/October 2023

2D, or not 2D? That is the question.

It's been over 30 years now since Nintendo began to transition away from two-dimensional game worlds and started to put more of a spotlight on 3D environments instead. (I look at the original Star Fox, released in 1993, as the game that began that movement.) For a while there -- especially in the back half of the '90s during the age of the N64 -- 2D gaming was really looked at as "behind the times." 3D was the wave of the future! Why would anyone still want to play the old style of games?

Sidescrollers suffered most severely. I still recall when Castlevania: Symphony of the Night went on sale in late 1997, and the collective response from gamers was pointing and laughing at it, since it dared to still be a 2D sidescroller! Haughty N64 fans turned their noses up at it, confident that the 3D Castlevania sequel that was due to be launched soon after would be far superior. (It wasn't.)

Enough time has passed now, though, that the early years of pure anti-2D negativity have faded away, and the game industry now fully embraces both sidescrolling adventures and look-anywhere 3D camera quests as well . . . for the most part. The shadow of that late '90s era does still linger in gamers' general assessment of the value of 2D titles when compared to 3D ones -- people will play them, but probably not without a complaint or two about how they shouldn't be sold for "full price" if they're only going to offer two dimensions' worth of game worlds to explore.

Well, I for one think 2D sidescrollers are more than worthy of a full investment of both cash and time, and I'm thrilled that two major new releases will be shoring up that argument soon! Both Sonic and Mario -- the titans who carried the industry in the years before the 3D transition began -- are bringing us back in time to pre-1993 2D worlds of wonder. This issue of NF highlights both of their new efforts, along with several other sidescrollers that we think also deserve your support! So please enjoy this magazine -- with each page prepared in full 2D.

Digital subscribers, the email to download your PDF copy of this issue will be going out later this week. Keep an eye on your inbox! 

Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed to you later this week. We've gotten back to a more normal shipping timeline for this issue – I know the last one arrived later than normal for a lot of you, since we pushed it back a week to be able to include late-breaking Nintendo Direct news. This one should be speedier!

Alongside this new issue going out, I'm also getting ready to launch the "Late Pledges" pre-order store for our new book, The Impact of Iwata, in partnership with BackerKit. That should be going live later this week as well, for anyone who missed the Kickstarter campaign! I'll post another notice when it's gone live.

Thanks as always, NF faithful! This issue has been a fun one, and I hope you all enjoy the custom-commissioned cover art (made by uJidow) that brings the Sonic and Mario casts together in one image!

~ Lucas M. Thomas