Nintendo announced last week that Bethesda is bringing its popular shooter games like Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus to the Switch hybrid handheld and home game console. That’s a big departure for both companies, as mature-rated titles haven’t been a staple of Nintendo consoles. I went to a preview event and played the beginning of Doom on the Switch. I used a game controller to control the action, and watched it unfold on the Switch’s 6.2-inch screen. You can also plug it into a TV and watch it in 720p resolution on a TV.

When Nintendo announced the launch of the Switch by using footage from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it was a surprise -- but a reasonable one. Bethesda's open-world adventure game was beloved, but old enough that a port to Nintendo's new console seemed entirely reasonable. When the company announced that it was bringing the upcoming Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and last year's Doom reboot to the Nintendo Switch, however, it gave us pause.

While Gearbox’s ill-fated Battleborn had its own slew of issues, you can’t deny that it came out at a really unlucky time. Offering hero-shooter fundamentals just as Overwatch arrived on the scene was a recipe for disaster, and that’s what we got. After the half-hearted partial free-to-play relaunch failed to grab audiences, Battleborn was officially put to rest yesterday, with no future updates planned after the next, as detailed in a letter from Randy Varnell, creative director on the game. Going F2P put Battleborn into a new and unenviable situation, competing with all these gems.

Nintendo’s biggest announcement during its latest Direct didn’t go by unnoticed. Two major current-gen PC and console first-person shooters, Doom and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, will be making their way to Nintendo Switch. But they represent much more than a chance to fill out the Switch’s library with a genre unrepresented on the system so far.

The Oregon Trail is perhaps the most beloved educational game ever made — and soon it’ll be getting a new life in schools thanks to Minecraft.

Japan Game Awards 2017 was held at the Tokyo Game Show this year and Zelda Breath Of The Wild won the game of the year award. Nintendo really did a great job with the game and it comes as no surprise to anyone. Persona 5 won the “Award for Excellence” along with Overwatch and many other titles that had an amazing performance this year.

What are lawyers good for? Pouring lemon juice on the open wounds of an MMO community desperately trying to hold on to the remnant of their closed game, apparently. The closure of at least one Asheron’s Call emulator earlier this month was confirmed this week to be what many assumed: a cease-and-desist letter from Warner Bros. One of the main forces behind the emulator projects, a player named Pea, posted an account stating how he initially wrote to WB about the game’s closure and his growing involvement in the emulator scene.

Nintendo had the best-selling console once again last month, according to the industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. The hybrid handheld/home Switch system outsold Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The system has performed better than the competition in recent months likely due to Nintendo’s supply keeping up with demand.

What's more, it might have a first for an emulated NES game: motion control.

The video gaming industry has transitioned from a group of backyard innovators to an industry of multi-billion dollar companies, hiring psychologists, neuroscientists and marketing experts to turn customers into addicts. The latest trend is the creation of “whales,” people so addicted to games that they spend their entire life savings to keep playing.

EVE Online is infamous for its scammers, pirates, and ne’er-do-wells, but this week all their scams were put to shame. A member of the game’s Council of Stellar Management and head diplomat of the Circle of Two alliance named The Judge stole all of the holdings of the 4,000-person alliance for himself. He took their money, took their ships, and sold their Death Star-esque space citadel to their most hated enemies. By Lee Yancy.

"It's finally happening," Rocket League creative director Corey Davis tells me. He's talking about cross-platform parties and "finally" is an appropriate word. This is maybe the most oft-requested feature from players, but it's not as simple as flipping a switch. There's a reason that hardly any other games have been able to implement it.

The good folks over at 8Bitdo have made a name for themselves with their lineup of wireless retro controllers. Not to rest on their laurels, the company is set to release yet more must-have controllers for gamers who appreciate and have a fondness for the old-school. The latest 8Bitdo controllers are styled after the Super Famicom and Super Nintendo controllers.

During today's pre-Blizzcon livestream, it was revealed that the now-massive game company Blizzard was founded with a loan from CEO and president Mike Morhaime's grandmother. "Allen [Adham] and I each contributed $10,00," Morhaime explained. "In order to get my $10,000, I borrowed $15,000 from my grandmother. She didn't charge me any interest, that was very nice of her. Before we had any games, before we had actually done anything, this was basically the doors opening and us starting out."

To be completely honest, I wasn't sure of what I was walking into with Tooth and Tail; I'd heard about the game a while ago when it was initially announced, thought that it looked incredible, and then mostly forgot about it until quite recently, when it came time to try it out. I knew it to be a real time strategy game of some sort featuring mice and other woodland creatures, sort of like the Redwall books of my childhood, albeit in a setting more reminiscent of the Bolshevik revolution.

Following Toys R Us’ announcement that it was filing for bankruptcy protection, the company has confirmed it will still carry Nintendo’s SNES Classic when it launches this month. A representative from the company told Polygon the SNES Classic will be available when it launches Sept. 29 and the company isn’t expecting any delays in shipment. The representative said Toys R Us would have a limited supply of SNES Classic consoles.

Dear Snapzu, I've been hoping to try and inspire a bit more discussion in the gaming related communities around here; I work as a game journalist and enjoy sharing my work with you guys, since it seems that Snapzu's gaming communities are into the more editorial stuff (that's my favorite to write!). I wanted to ask, what games are you guys into? I've noticed that there aren't a lot of comments on highly upvoted articles, and I wanted to change that. Let's get this community talking! P.S. That's me in the picture below, at PAX East. I'm not the giant.

Did you know Obsidian originally wanted three playable races in Fallout: New Vegas? This is the part literally crossed out - struck through and coloured red - on the Fallout 3.5 treatment Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart showed me at the studio. "Originally we had this idea where the player would be able to choose between three races: human, ghoul and super mutant," he said. "It was just the engine...

We clearly live in a world where gambling is regulated by laws in every single country but, for some crazy reason, it is not regulated in the gaming industry. The gaming industry is flooded with loot boxes that are presented as something fun. You invest a small amount of money to open a box, the box will contain something that is insanely valuable or something that has zero value whatsoever. The latter outcome is more probable. Sounds familiar?

Nintendo went all out this week showcasing a slew of high-profile games heading to the Switch, 3DS and 2DS -- titles like Doom, Wolfenstein II and Pokemon Gold. But, just last month, Nintendo was all about indie love. That's when the company and renowned ultra-violent game director Goichi "Suda51" Suda revealed Travis Strikes Again, the third title in the No More Heroes series. And, this time around, he's brought 15 indie video game creators along for the ride.

In many ways, Geisha Monroe and Mandy Morbid are typical Twitch streamers—they’re gamers who share their play experiences with an online following. They cosplay, they collect game-related memorabilia, they tweet Overwatch memes. And like most streamers, Twitch isn’t their job. But what does pay their bills makes them unusual among Twitch streamers: they’re cam performers.

A new study suggests always-improving video games are keeping young men without college educations unemployed or out of the workforce entirely. By Stephen Johnson.

The state of the video game industry is such that games are more often bought based upon their underlying concept than their actual execution of said concept- it's why we have so many disappointments in Steam Early Access right now, but it's also how some really interesting and innovative indie games have found their audiences. If you have a cool idea for a game and the talent to show it off- through a flashy trailer, perhaps, that demonstrates your concept, you're halfway to selling the game. I feel that this must be said outright: Community Inc is not finished.

“Don't worry, this doesn’t affect combat. Just every other aspect of your whole life.”

Battlefield 1 has been well maintained, with three expansions hitting the game since its November 2016 launch. In The Name of the Tsar, the game's fourth expansion is rolling out on Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC platforms tomorrow, September 19. Along with the expansion, developer DICE will also patch the game to offer HDR support. For anyone that hasn't jumped into Battlefield 1 yet, your chance to try it before you buy is coming soon.

Imagine a glitzy cinematic sequence where you, as a secret agent, fight your way through an aeroplane soaring through the sky. You're pressing button prompts appearing on the screen while your hero whacks, chops, spins and kicks at the baddie in your way. "You fight all the way down until eventually you beat the guy and rip off his parachute and, I don't know, break his neck, and he floats off and you use his parachute to land."

QUOTE | “When you deal with them at a close distance, you understand why they are who they are. I’m not going to lie to you; they are extremely demanding. They require the very best constantly, all the time, and beyond. But it’s been a great experience.” - MercurySteam studio head Enric Alvarez describes what it was like working with Nintendo on Metroid: Samus Returns for 3DS.

It’s a Sunday morning; you just woke up, got out of bed, and took a look at your disaster of a house. Your trash needs to be taken out, your dishes are filthy from last night, and your laundry pile is taller than your chairs. So what do you do? You ignore the chores, boot up your computer, and start playing Stardew Valley.

After the NES Classic was basically impossible to find for many, fans are no doubt wondering what the stock situation will be for the soon-to-launch SNES Classic. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said in an interview with Financial Times that Nintendo "dramatically increased" production for SNES Classic stock. He advised people not to pay more than the $80 sticker price on auction sites for the console, suggesting the system will be readily available.

The beautiful thing about gaming is that it can accommodate not only starkly serious stories, but also the wackiest ideas one could imagine. Maize, a game about sentient corn and a cantankerous Russian teddy bear, most definitely falls into the latter category, and it's coming to consoles.

In the long history of weird Nintendo moments, this one stands out. Tucked away deep within the Nintendo Switch operating system is the data for an NES original, Golf. It's playable by one or two players using Switch Joy-Cons and it even appears to support motion controls... or it would, if anyone knew how to unlock it.

Razer on Thursday launched an all-new customisable gaming controller for the Xbox One and PC called the Wolverine Ultimate. It comes with an abundance of extra buttons, including a couple of remappable multi-function bumpers, four multi-function triggers plus a Quick Control Panel. It hits international shores sometime in the fourth quarter.

Microsoft has said it’s ready to have a “conversation” with any development team that wants to feature crossplay support on consoles and PC. Mike Ybarra, vice president of Xbox, told VG247 that it’s happy to talk to the likes of Valve and Nintendo when it comes to getting multiplayer games working across multiple platforms, not just between Xbox One and Windows.

Nintendo's reputation, by and large, precedes it. Nintendo is the company that made console gaming cool again in the United States in the wake of the industry crash that turned Atari upside down- Nintendo is the company that brought gaming to the masses through the Wii, then somehow squandered their incredible mainstream cultural impact. It doesn't matter what game console you buy- your parents are going to call it the Nintendo- that's the impact that they've had on the industry. Within the gaming community, Nintendo is beloved, but often pitied because as a company, it seems doomed to repeat embarrassing mistakes.

Back in 2013, 2386 backers pledged a total of $39,739 via Kickstarter to a company called Kilobite to create a dystopian tactical RPG called Confederate Express. The game boasted a unique method of post-processing powered by tech known as the “False2D” API, which could “[simulate] 3D conditions in 2D environments.” A tech demo showing off this technology was made available alongside the Kickstarter campaign.