Some Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash players may find that the game is a bit limited in terms of content. It doesn’t sound like there’s much there in the way of modes, which also extends to online play.

This is a bit bizarre, but Ultra Smash lacks support for lobbies or communities. Essentially, that will take it tough for players to connect with friends online. The only modes available for Internet play include Single and Doubles.

Both of these feature Relaxed and Serious options. For the latter, it’s possible to play ranked battles and grow your standing among other players worldwide. Doubles lets players team up with another person locally or with an amiibo. It’s also worth mentioning that you can’t control the length of the match unlike local multiplayer. However, players can choose for a tiebreaker or a two-game, one-set match.

Source

More: Camelot, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, top

Splatoon’s latest North American Splatfest has gone live, just in time for Halloween. Players can either be on Team Pirate or Team Ninja.

Like usual, the Splatfest will end after a full day – 12 AM ET on Sunday and 9 PM PT on Saturday. The results will be available soon after the event is finished.

More: Splatoon

Several new games out came out this week on the Wii U and 3DS eShops. If you’re interested in checking out what’s new in screenshot form, take a peak at the gallery below.

More: Nintendo Download, Virtual Console

Let us introduce you to three of the 200 amazing Yo-kai characters you’ll grow to love once you pick up the game and start to play:

Yo-kai Watch is a week away from its launch in North America. With its release date so close and Halloween taking place on Saturday, Nintendo is doing some extra promotion for the game.

First, here’s an overview of three of the 200 Yo-kai characters in the game:

Jibanyan

Jibanyan is a slacker cat who saps your energy. When he’s not lying around eating chocolate bars, Jibanyan likes to practice his fighting moves on passing trucks — usually with painful results!

Walkappa

Walkappa makes you want to go for a swim — or jump in a lake! Most kappas stay in the water, but this one is a landlubber. He keeps a bottle of water to pour on his head to stay wet, though.

Tattletell

Ever revealed a secret without realizing it? It might be the work of Tattletell, a mischievous Yo-kai who takes the form of an elderly woman.

Nintendo has also passed along a few Halloween posters in spirit of the event. Those are in the gallery below.

Source: Nintendo PR

More: Level-5, Yo-kai Watch

The image above is a look at Dark Mewtwo, who was just added to the arcade version via a surprise update. He’s an exclusive boss in the fighting game – for now anyway. In any case, get a look at Dark Mewtwo below.

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More: Bandai Namco, Pokken Tournament, top

In the latest episode of Nintendo Minute, Kit and Krysta return to take on the next part of Year Walk. You can watch today’s full video below.

More: Nintendo Minute, Year Walk

Aksys Games and Spike Chunsoft have announced a final North American name for Zero Escape 3 in celebration of Halloween. Going forward, the game will be known as “Zero Time Dilemma”.

Aksys Games also passed along the following information, which recaps what was shared previously:

“Building on the success of its predecessors, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, and Virtue’s Last Reward, series mastermind Kotaro Uchikoshi has pulled out all the stops to deliver the most compelling and mind shredding gaming experience ever seen on a handheld platform. Choice is your only method of salvation and your only means of escape. How much of your humanity will you sacrifice to earn your freedom? As a new age of ruin looms large on the horizon, you must make impossible decisions and weather unimaginable consequences as you straddle the line between absolution and damnation. Plan your escape. Releasing Summer 2016 for both retail and digital in North America and digital only in Europe.”

Zero Time Dilemma launches in summer 2016 as a retail and digital game in North America. In Europe, it will be digital only.

Source: Aksys Games PR

More: Zero Escape 3, Zero Time Dilemma

Tomorrow Corporation brought Human Resource Machine to the eShop yesterday. Check out some footage from the Wii U version below.

More: Human Resource Machine, indie, Tomorrow Corporation

The 33rd Golden Joystick Awards were held at the indigO2 at London’s O2 Arena. During the event, the late Satoru Iwata was honored with a Lifetime Achievement award.

Here’s the news on that front:

Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo CEO who sadly died in July this year at the age of 55, was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award. A revered man of the gaming industry, Satoru was the driving force behind many of Nintendo’s products including the Wii and DS, and is credited for bringing gaming to the masses by making it family entertainment. Starting out as a programmer in the 1980’s for a subsidiary of Nintendo, he became president in 2002, the first outside of the company’s founding family. He was renowned for first and foremost being a gamer and was described as “… having the brain of a game developer and the heart of a gamer”. His contribution and impact on modern gaming is second to none.

Splatoon also saw a couple of wins at the Golden Joystick Awards. The Wii U title was chosen as “Best Family Game” and “Best Nintendo Game”.

Source: Golden Joystick Awards PR

More: Satoru Iwata, Splatoon

SEGA has once again commented on the Sonic franchise, plus what fans can expect in the future.

Chris Olson, SEGA of America’s chief operating officer, highlighted two key points while speaking with Polygon. He pointed to “a greater focus on quality” as well as interest in appealing to new and old fans. Additionally, SEGA isn’t looking to rush Sonic titles out the door.

Olson’s comments in full:

“(SEGA) wants to bring Sonic to where gamers are. …there’s still a very large-sized audience with old-school Sonic fans who grew up with the Genesis. We have an obligation to the fans of Sonic and the consumer.”

“The business is always a conflict of weighing bringing a title to a market and making the yearly plan versus maybe waiting and bringing something else. You can see that on the mobile side of things. In the earlier day of mobile development, there was a tendency to bring things out immediately. Those days are … gone. Consumer expectations have been raised.”

“Video game development is a pretty chaotic thing, and it’s important not to rush things, because we want to be sure we’re bring out the most polished thing. When we look at bringing Sonic to modern-day gamers, we … obviously want to appeal to as many people as possible but still focus on what it means to be Sonic and a Sonic game. Maybe that might lose some fans along the road, but we’re picking up new fans that will hopefully grow with us as Sonic grows.”

Olson also said SEGA will continue to “[evaluate] different ways to bring cool experiences” based on Sonic, it will do so with an increased emphasis on combining “cool” with “quality.”

Source

More: Chris Olson, interview, SEGA, Sonic, top