Europe has some of the most customer friendly laws anywhere in the world- they’re far ahead of the curve in this regard, implementing policies that the rest of the world only catches up to years later. So it should come as no surprise, for example, that Europe has some extremely progressive customer protection laws for digital purchases, too.

Essentially, in Europe, you are required to give customers the right to cancel digital pre-orders- a right that Nintendo does not allow on the eShop, and that Valve, Sony, and EA don’t obtain express consent from customers on the latter’s waiver to their rights to withdrawal [of digital purchases]. This has caused the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) to report all four for being in contravention of European Customer Protection legislation.

To this, all I can say is: good. I hope that this causes better protection of digital purchases on EA, Sony, Nintendo, and Valve’s gaming platforms (Microsoft is far ahead of everyone else in this regard, thankfully).

[GamesIndustry]

If you’ve never tried a game like this, it truly is an experience unlike any other racing game. Vehicles hover inches above the ground, and travel at blazing speeds. The lack of traction demands a deft hand to more or less aim these vehicles around the track as opposed to driving them, utilizing your steering, air brakes and something unthinkable in most racing games, letting go of the throttle, to avoid careening right into a wall.

"Matching your polarity to the wide variety of boost pads, jumps and checkpoints can make the difference between first and fifth."

Fast RMX continues this tradition of being easy to understand, but requiring skill to master. Both in the visual aesthetic and how the vehicles handle the game is most reminiscent of the Wipeout series, but without weapons the game becomes more about your own racing line than it is about eliminating the competition, and so has a skill focus more akin to F-Zero.

While clearly taking big inspiration in how the gameplay mechanics of Fast RMX work, they work a fantastic polarity system akin to infamous Treasure SHMUP Ikaruga into the game that fits surprisingly well. Interactive elements are peppered throughout each course in orange and blue varieties, with a tap of a button switching your ship between the two colours.

Matching your polarity to the wide variety of boost pads, jumps and checkpoints can make the difference between first and fifth, as failing to be the right colour at the right time will massively slow you down. It’s a simple yet engaging layer to the core racing, easy to grasp but trickier than you might think to pull off while flying down the circuit.

"When I fly off track from a poorly timed boost, that’s my bad, but when a Horizon: Zero Dawn reject trundling along happens to jump out in front of me, that feels rather cheap of the game."

These track elements are not the only way to get a leg up, there are pickups dotting the track that fill a boost meter activated with a tap. The items are usually placed near enough to the racing line to hint players to where they should go, helping subtly guide players into becoming better racers. Choosing when to boost puts another decision on the player, as going even faster isn’t always ideal.

Locales are fantastically varied, with many environments presented among the racetracks from forests, to deserts, to icecaps. Most of the tracks are very well designed and take great advantage of the polarity mechanic, weaving in tons of thrilling jumps and twists. However, more than a few have some obstacle, be it wandering mechs, rotating fans on a tube or something else, that more often than not become incredibly hard to see coming and correct for at speed. When I fly off track from a poorly timed boost, that’s my bad, but when a Horizon: Zero Dawn reject trundling along happens to jump out in front of me, that feels rather cheap of the game.

While the pace of the game and the resulting motion blur mean screenshots don’t really do the game a ton of justice, it’s really impressive just how much they were able to pull from the little Switch, the result being probably the most technically pretty game available on the platform. In single player I never noticed any drops from the 60 frames per second and while textures are simple, they’re colourful and pop off the screen. Weather effects believably react against vehicles and your screen, such as water droplets from rain.

"Time Trials are set to be patched in, but outside of the championship cup race the one option is Hero mode, which plays the same but demands perfection from the player."

While on the TV the resolution would bounce back and forth between 1080p and 900p and come across generally more blurry than standards i’ve been spoiled with on other systems, when the Switch is in handheld mode it can lock to 720p to become one of the best looking handheld games I’ve seen. The simplicity of the controls also play to the strengths of the platform, allowing single joycon play alongside any other configuration you would care to use for up to four player multiplayer.

The racing being so solid is great for the game, because currently there isn’t a lot more to it. Time Trials are set to be patched in, but outside of the championship cup race the one option is Hero mode, which plays the same but demands perfection from the player, calling on the skills and knowledge of the tracks they are expected to have learned in championship as a single crash will end your game. For either mode, the only real change to the gameplay loop is how you might manage your boost gauge in Hero mode, to be sure you have some to lose in a crash.

Despite the lack of modes, the core of the racing gameplay and the varied locations help maintain the kind of energy required for a quick race of a few extended cups. Occasionally cheap in difficulty but always exciting to play, Fast RMX is a great complement to the Switch library.

This game was reviewed on the Switch.

Apparently, Super Mario Galaxy was supposed to release on the Wii U on December 24th via the Virtual Console eShop for $20. You can check out the product page here for more information.

It’s strange because Nintendo hasn’t officially announced Super Mario Galaxy’s availability. This could tie into the Wii U version being rated by the ESRB earlier in December. It should be noted that Super Mario Galaxy 2 can already be purchased through the eShop for the Wii U.

Super Mario Galaxy is perhaps one of the greatest Wii games ever made and introduced varying gravity levels to the series’ classic platforming. It was rated very high by critics and was also a commercial success, selling 12.59 million copies as of September 15th 2015. Would you pick up the original game for the Wii U if it were available through the eShop? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for official comments from Nintendo on its availability.

Nintendo is, for the first time ever, holding an open beta for a game pre-release. It isn’t a proper beta (in that feedback from players won’t influence the development of the game going forward, since it is, you know, pretty much finished and ready for release), but it is a server stress test, to see how high volumes might impact playability of the game. Given Nintendo’s documented troubles with getting online play right, I would say this is a good move for them.

You can download the client for the game from the eShop right now, but you won’t be able to play it yet. You have to wait for the game to go live first, which… happens at all sorts of odd times, to be honest. The schedule for when the game will be going live is:

North America Schedule:
May 8 from 8:00 – 9:00 PM PT (11:00 – Midnight ET)
May 9 from 4:00 – 5:00 AM PT (7:00 – 8:00 AM ET)
May 9 from Noon to 1 PM PT (3:00 – 4:00 PM ET)

European Schedule (UK time):
May 9 from 04:00 – 05:00
May 9 from 12:00 – 13:00
May 9 from 20:00 – 21:00

Australia Schedule:
Saturday May 9th – 13:00-14:00
Saturday May 9th – 21:00-22:00
Sunday May 10th – 05:00-06:00

The only mode playable will be 4v4 Turf Wars, but it should be enough to get a feel for how the game plays, at the very least, and deciding whether or not you want to buy it.

Splatoon launches exclusively on the Wii U on May 29.

Metroid Prime Trilogy, the Wii remaster of all three Metroid Prime games, that cleaned up the graphics, added the enhanced pointer controls that got so much praise in Corruption (and replaced the obtuse Gamecube controls), achievements, oodles of extra content, and brought all three games together in one package, is now available on the eShop on Wii U, as part of Nintendo’s initiative to bring Wii games to the Wii U Virtual Console. And the best part is, just for this one week, Nintendo will offer it for just $10. Considering that discs for this game go for over $150 on eBay, $10 is an absurdly good deal.

Metroid Prime Trilogy isn’t the only exciting thing happening on the eShop this week either, as the Nintendo 3DS exclusive Codename STEAM, the brand new strategy game IP from Intelligent Systems (the developers of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars) gets a brand new playable demo, offering up to three chapters of play, as well.

So yeah, fire up those Nintendo systems and enjoy the offerings.

Another great announcement that Nintendo made during the Nintendo Direct this morning was that Wii games would be coming to the Virtual Console on Wii U’s eShop starting today. Although Wii U is fully backwards compatible with Wii, this is a big deal for a lot of reasons- first, of course, most Wii games are surprisingly hard to find, having been out of print for a long time, and commanding prices reaching over $150 on online sites. Secondly, playing Wii games on the Wii U required you to enter the Wii Mode, a sandboxed emulation of the entire Wii console, which was a tedious and nonsensical workabout. Finally, these Wii games promise to be optimized for Wii U, including full Gamepad control support in games that originally supported the Classic Controller or Classic Controller Pro on the Wii.

If all of this sounds too good to be true, it gets even better- Nintendo is starting it big, with the Wii Virtual Console available on the eShop today. The launch title is Super Mario Galaxy 2, the highest rated game of last generation, and one of the best games of all time; over the next few weeks, Nintendo plans on adding games such as Punch Out!!, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Pandora’s Tower, and Sin and Punishment: Star Successor.

Like… damn.

And you want to know the kicker? Each game will only cost $10.

Get on it.

Black Friday is here, and we already know that Steam, Xbox Live, and the PSN Store are all offering some sales to maybe give people who’ve been on the fence regarding some of the games available on those stores a final push; well, Nintendo’s not one to be left behind, so it, too, will be offering some games on its stores for cheap to celebrate Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

The games include:

3DS: 
– Mario & Luigi: Dream Team – $27.99
– Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon – $27.99
– Wario Land 2 – $3.49
– Wario Land 3 – $3.49
– Metroid II-Return of Samus – $2.79

Wii U:
– The Wonderful 101 – $20.99
– Wii Party U – $27.99
– Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga – $5.59
– Wario Land 4 – $5.59
– Metroid Fusion – $5.59

The new prices represent up to 30% off on their base prices- yes, it’s not the greatest set of deals in the world (especially when compared to some prices that Steam and PSN offer), but hey, Nintendo games hardly ever go down in price anyway, so any discount at this point represents savings that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to have, well, ever.

Also, get The Wonderful 101. Seriously, get it. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.

Sony’s PlayStation 4 turned one year old recently, and Microsoft’s Xbox One will this Friday, but Nintendo’s entry into this generation, the Wii U, has now officially turned two years old as of today.

Back when the Wii U launched in 2012, it was met with some pretty respectable reception commercially (selling 3 million units in 45 days), although it was roundly criticized for its untapped potential (exemplified mostly in its torturously slow and bafflingly unintuitive UI) and for its launch lineup (which in hindsight wasn’t even that bad, especially compared to the launch lineups for Xbox One and PS4). Over the next two years, even as third parties abandoned Nintendo’s console, Nintendo and its internal and partner studios have continued to provide what might be some of the best games we have seen in years, games such as Bayonetta 2, Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, The Wonderful 101, Hyrule Warriors, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Pikmin 3. Today, the Wii U stands as probably the most desirable next generation console, thanks to its extremely strong library and the fact that it remains the one console where you can buy a game and expect it to work, rather than facing bungled launches and pointless installations and updates.

The Wii U’s fortunes have started to go up this year since the launch of Mario Kart 8 as well, with both, hardware and software sales seeing an uptick, and more and more consumers expressing interest in the system.

With the upcoming launch of Amiibos, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and a stacked lineup for 2015, it looks like the console will continue to move from strength to strength.

Happy second birthday, Wii U. Here’s to many more.

Nintendo has announced that pre-loading, a feature that lets users download a portion of any digital game that they might be purchasing, before the release date to ensure that they can start playing it right away at midnight (and also to reduce the stress on companies’ servers), will be coming to both, the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U. The Wii U gets it first, with the feature being made available for it in November, ahead of the release of Super Smash Bros. (which will also be the first game to support this feature).

3DS owners will have to wait a little- Nintendo has announced that the 3DS won’t be getting pre-loading until 2015. Presumably, Nintendo will time it to coincide with the worldwide launch of the New Nintendo 3DS, or something.

Pre-loading, of course, is a feature that has already been available on PC for a while, and the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita have been supporting it for a few months as well. It’s good to see Nintendo allowing it on their systems too, especially since it’s something that only benefits everyone involved.

Capcom’s The Phoenix Wright Trilogy will finally be heading to the West on 3DS, as the publisher announced at a panel during the New York Comic Con.

The Phoenix Wright Trilogy is set to release on December 9th in North America and December 11th in Europe via the Nintendo eShop. The trilogy features remastered versions of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations. The compilation will retail for $29.99/€29.99/£24.99.

These being remastered versions of the original games, you can look forward to improved visuals which make good use of high resolution textures. You’ll still have the same excellent touch-screen gameplay, evidence gathering and mic-yelling that has come to define the series though so don’t worry about that. Stay tuned for more information on The Phoenix Wright Trilogy and let us know in the comments if you’ll be picking it up.