Nintendo says the tiny console's 30 bundled games are plenty
For better or worse, Nintendo’s pint-sized NES Mini will play the games it comes with, and that’s it.
“The console is a standalone device so it cannot connect to the internet or any external storage devices,” a Nintendo rep confirmed to TIME (after a Kotaku report). “The 30 games included with the system were chosen to provide a wide variety of game-play experiences.”
Nintendo startled fans when it unveiled the adorably teensy “Nintendo Classic Edition” on July 14, promising 30 bundled games, an HDMI cable, an AC adapter and an NES Classic Controller for $59.99. Naturally, speculation ensued. Could the system go online? Would there be a store for downloading original NES games? Would Nintendo offer some other way of adding more beyond the base 30? Would the system support the original “blow to make ’em work” game cartridges somehow?
Alas, nope. The NES Mini is what it is: a static glimpse back through time at milestones like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Metroid, Donkey Kong and Final Fantasy. It’s for people who don’t care that you can already play this stuff a zillion other ways, who want the allure of a baby-NES perched in their entertainment centers like an iconic artifact you’d dangle from a rearview mirror. And it’ll probably do well, 30 games or no, because as Wired‘s Chris Kohler aptly puts it: “Old Nintendo is arguably more popular than new Nintendo.”
Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness
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You’re headed for the stars some 6,000 light years from Earth by way of another motley cast of heroes with outlandish hairdos and gloriously gaudy duds. The fifth in studio tri-Ace’s Star Ocean roleplaying series hopes to reinvigorate its classic realtime combat with up to 7-player battles and a story about first contact with an alien species.
PlayStation 3 & 4
June 28
LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Longtime LEGO custodians TT Games applies its lightly irreverent block-building formula to the newest Star Wars film, adding a few new wrinkles like Multi-Builds (choose from multiple possible build piles as part of a new puzzling element) and Blaster Battles (cover-based, over-the-shoulder shootouts).
PC, PlayStation 3 & 4, Xbox 360 and One, Wii U, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS
June 28
Inside
Developer Playdead’s sophomore effort after 2010’s acclaimed minimalist Limbo, Inside lets you explore a similarly shadowed and unfriendly-looking world as an intrepid, nimble child.
PC (July 7), Xbox One
June 29
BoxBoxBoy!
Nintendo’s quirky 2015 puzzle-platformer starring a blocky character named Qbby gets a sequel, wherein players must spawn tiny boxes to solve conundrums like interrupting the ray from a lethal weapons, or enabling passage across treacherous drops.
Nintendo 3DS
June 30
Song of the Deep
Developed by a small team within largish studio Insomniac Games (Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, Sunset Overdrive), Song of the Deep is a side-scrolling, exploration-driven adventure starring a young girl who cobbles together a submarine in an attempt to find her vanished father.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
July 12
Monster Hunter Generations
Capcom’s newest Monster Hunter (in which players do just what the title says) was originally known as Monster Hunter X (as in “cross”) in Japan. The “X” reportedly inspired producer Shintaro Kojima to approach the game design by fours, thus Generations offers four hunting styles, four villages to base from, and four primary monsters to defeat.
Nintendo 3DS
July 15
I Am Setsuna
Studio Tokyo RPG Factory’s roleplaying riff on tales of human sacrifice explores the lives and choices of a small group of individuals (including a girl selected as oblation to demonic creatures) through the lens of gameplay concepts pioneered in 1990s console games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger.
PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita
July 19
Obduction
Not a formal sequel to Myst, but a spiritual followup from the latter’s creators, Obduction revisits familiar ground: Puzzle your way through mysterious, exquisitely rendered locales, trying to figure out what’s happened to you, and why.
PC, Mac
July 26
ABZÛ
Studio Giant Squid’s mysterious underwater exploration game, wherein you can engage sea creatures (including hitching rides on sharks), claims its title is a portmanteau of ancient words ab, meaning “ocean” and zu, meaning “to know.”
PC, PlayStation 4
August 2
No Man’s Sky
In our imaginations, open universe ambler No Man’s Sky really is as infinite as developer Hello Games boasts, giving you an endless, procedurally generated cosmos to plumb (and enough to do that you’ll never tire of doing it). Fingers crossed.
PC, PlayStation 4
August 9
Metroid Prime: Federation Force
Nintendo’s latest handheld Metroid game lets up to four players cooperatively gun down familiar series enemies across an array of planets, or play what amounts to robot soccer in a special multiplayer mode dubbed “Metroid Prime: Blast Ball.”
Nintendo 3DS
August 19
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
The sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution revisits cyber-protagonist Adam Jensen as he grapples with escalating cultural-political tensions prompted by the rise of augmented humans. It also ships with a new “Breach” mode, that distills the main game’s tactical concepts into VR-themed “sneak in, then sneak back out” hacking missions.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
August 23
World of Warcraft: Legion
World of Warcraft‘s shrinking subscriber base still commands millions, and the latest expansion, Legion, should provide another short term boost with its level cap jump from 100 to 110 and new melee-focused Demon Hunter hero class.
PC
August 30
ReCore
This action-adventure about a young woman who can salvage and transplant the “core” of an artificially intelligent companion unites Mega Man creator Keiju Inafune and Metroid Prime series director Mark Pacini.
PC, Xbox One
September 13
Destiny: Rise of Iron
Quasi-online shooter Destiny‘s fourth expansion further expands the game’s no-longer-skimpy story, adds new competitive maps and modes, provides a customary uptick in loot-hunt items and lifts the game’s light level cap significantly. The one downer: They’ve removed support for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
PlayStation 4, Xbox One
September 20