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As life races by at the speed of a Blue Shell, it’s important that we all take the time to enjoy some good old-fashioned vroomin’ from time to time. Fortunately, in this week’s episode of Nintendo Everything Refresh we finally get to take a deeper look at the next round of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, which is bringing back some classic tracks that have at least one of us unreasonably excited. Nick and rising co-host Dawn will also discuss what the heck is going on with Pokemon Sleep, nerd out about the newest Sakurai deep-dive on Kid Icarus Uprising’s development, and much more!

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Pikmin 4 is the next big game from Nintendo, and it’s actually one that’s going to need to carry Switch for a bit – at least from a first-party perspective. As things stand now, Nintendo won’t be publishing a brand new game until October. That’s when things get busy as the company will be involved with Detective Pikachu Returns, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, WarioWare: Move It, and Super Mario RPG in the span of a month or so.

Pikmin originated from Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of hits like Mario and Zelda, but this particular franchise hasn’t quite reached the same heights as those IPs from a sales perspective. Still, the series has continued on since the GameCube days. Pikmin is also one of the few Nintendo franchises with a presence on mobile.

Little Kitty, Big City interview

One of the standout indie games we played at Summer Game Fest Play Days was Little Kitty, Big City, an exploration-driven game that was highlighted in a recent Nintendo Direct a while back (check out our new hands-on impressions here). It may be the first release from Double Dagger Studio, but it’s far from being the first project for game director Matt Wood, who’s contributed to numerous influential games released over the past twenty-five years. During our hands-on demo, we had the chance to chat with Matt about his experience developing Little Kitty, Big City, what made him want to make a game about a cat in the first place, and much more. 

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope - The Last Spark Hunter review

System: Switch
Release Date: June 21, 2023 (new DLC)
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft


2022’s Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was an excellent evolution of its predecessor’s fast-paced, freeform strategy gameplay, and I’ve been eager to check out its DLC to have an excuse to play more of it. The Last Spark Hunter is significantly larger in scope than the run-based Tower of Dooom DLC from earlier this year, this time offering up a whole new planet to explore, a new antagonist, and even some new mechanics to shake up gameplay. But for players who have likely already sank dozens of hours into the base game, is the overall quality high enough to justify revisiting the world of Sparks of Hope?

Another Crab's Treasure preview

Over the years, I’ve made a few attempts at the Soulslike genre – most notably via Bloodborne and the recent Demon’s Souls remake – but have yet to find one that I truly want to sink a lot of time into. I think it’s just a matter of preference, as I don’t have much patience for games that don’t respect the player’s time or are needlessly opaque and difficult – but at the same time, I love games with moderately challenging, strategic real-time combat. It’s why I was so curious to try out Another Crab’s Treasure at Summer Game Fest; finally, here’s a Soulslike game that seems purpose-built for relative genre newcomers like me. After going hands-on with the game, I think this could be the first Dark Souls-inspired game I actually complete.

Little Kitty, Big City preview

Anyone who owns a cat is probably well aware of how quickly they can turn from cuddly, loveable fluffballs into zooming creatures of chaos. While I can’t say I always understand why they feel compelled to, say, scratch at our brand-new barstools or knock over a cup of coffee that I just placed on the counter, perhaps the upcoming sandbox-exploration game Little Kitty, Big City will give me some answers, or at least let me empathize with them a bit more. I was able to play 45 minutes of Double Dagger Studio’s debut game at Summer Games Fest recently, and I’m already floored with it.

A new month started up today. Now that we’re in July, we want to know what you’ve been playing.

Are you going through the recently-released ports of Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 for Switch? Still playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? No matter the case, let us know in the comments below.

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The most recent Nintendo Direct sure had a ton of great announcements, but Sam wanted to take some time to highlight all the phenomenal looking platformers that were shown off in our latest video.

Many great games are on the horizon, highlighted by Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Sonic Superstars. The bizarre reality of a new 2D Mario and Sonic game releasing alongside each other in 2023 is something we can get behind. And speaking of Sonic, we can look forward to Penny’s Big Breakaway from the makers of Sonic Mania early next year.

Legend of Heroes Trails into Reverie review

System: Switch
Release Date: July 7, 2023
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: NIS America


Following the steady drip of titles from Falcom’s Legend of Heroes series, Trails into Reverie is the latest installment coming to western players. As before with Trails to Azure, our latest game is also interwoven into a storied timeline. This time, we’ll be following up after the events of Trails to Azure and the Great Twilight events of Trails of Cold Steel IV. With these stories being so connected, there are no ways to absolutely avoid spoilers for the previous games, but we’ll do the best we can in case this is your first introduction to the series. With this particular entry first launching in Japan, the Switch port will see the world of Zero/Azure in HD for the first time, and follow up almost immediately after the events of Trails of Cold Steel IV – the interwoven timeline for both lines of games finally converges, and both protagonist groups of Lloyd and Rean are joined by a third protagonist – the black-clad and mysteriously masked “C.”

Last week, the internet was graced with a jam-packed Nintendo Direct that revealed a ton of exciting games, especially for fans of Mario and friends. In this week’s episode of Nintendo Everything Refresh, join your hosts Nick, Dennis and Eli (who’s joining us for the first time!) as they break down all the big reveals from the direct, including Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Super Mario RPG, Pikmin 1 + 2 HD, and MUCH more!

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