Image: Timesea StudioOver the holiday season, we're republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!Couch co-op and JRPG are two genres you don't often see together. Secret of Mana is one of the earliest examples of the genre, with most of the Tales of series also allowing fans to play together while sitting side-by-side. But outside of those examples, playing JRPGs with your friends in the same room isn't a common experience.Fortunately, Timesea Studio made up of three brothers is changing that. Nintendo Life can exclusively reveal that the developer's first game, Infinity Knights: Xross, is coming to Switch (and other platforms) in late 2025.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube789kWatch on YouTube It's a three-player couch co-op RPG inspired by the Mana series, first and foremost. But it's clear that the trio behind the title Saxon, Michael, and Tyrone Goodrick have a wealth of knowledge about the genre. Dark Cloud, infamously called the "Zelda Killer" by PlayStation Magazine back in the day, and the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI (which is still going after 22 years) are both name-dropped. Plus, the brothers have managed to make "a dream come true" and have brought Secret and Trials of Mana composer Hiroki Kikuta on board.Images: Timesea StudioInfinity Knights: Xross is centred around the titular Infinity Knights, who serve the king. They wield The Armaments, magical weapons with the power to revive the dead including, enemies you've just slain. You'll be playing as Xross, the newest Infinity Knight, and you and two others (this is where that co-op comes in) will get to explore the world, scout static and randomly generated dungeons, engage in a huge variety of minigames and quests and plenty of active combat with puzzles to solve. And like any good RPG harking back to the SNES days, there's some lovely pixel art on show, too.We had a chance to send Timesea Studio a bunch of questions and dig deep into the game's inspirations, mechanics, and world. From working together as brothers to implementing quests from an MMORPG, and making quality-of-life enhancements inspired by childhood frustrations, this is clearly a labour of love.Image: Timesea StudioNintendo Life: Could you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the idea for Infinity Knights: Xross, particularly around creating a couch co-op RPG and working together as siblings?Michael Goodrick, Lead Boss Design & Area/Experience Development: We always knew one day we would make a game. We have all these ideas swirling around ideas about quality of life, intriguing stories, and engaging gameplay. As RPGs are one of our favourite genres, and with old-school games being close to our hearts, we decided to make Infinity Knights: Xross pay homage to that. But specifically making it cooperative comes from a long-shared passion of playing video games weve played in the same house together since we were kids. It was never really a question. Working together on a video game was just the next step!weve played in the same house together since we were kids. It was never really a question.Saxon Goodrick Lead Programmer & Story/Event Planner: We also noticed that there is a distinct lack of good cooperative experiences in the gaming world. We wanted to fill that gap by creating a game together, as some of our fondest memories are playing games in the same room, on the same couch. Games like Secret of Mana, Crash Bash, Halo 3, etc.Tyrone Goodrick Lead Combat Design & Minigame Design: Being brothers makes working together on the game easy. When it comes to discussing ideas, mechanics, bosses, and stories, we are all on the same wavelength. New ideas are usually met with a "That's awesome!" Working together as siblings is a blast and a lot of fun.Image: Timesea StudioWeve got game titles with Cross, or with X (sometimes pronounced cross, sometimes theletter 'X'). So why 'Xross'?Saxon: There are quite a few reasons.Infinity Knights is a collection of stories experienced from the viewpoints of certain characters. This game is the first story, and it features the titular character Xross, hence, Infinity Knights: Xross.Using the X instead of the C in Xross is very symbolic concerning the story. The name is regionally unique. Its a different dialect compared to most other names in this chapter of Infinity Knights. Xross himself is also an integral part of the Infinity Knights he is a very significant person. X marks the spot, as they say.Its also an ode to many things. To Final Fantasy XI, to the Organization XIII members in Kingdom Hearts, and X (Mega Man X) to name a few. Infinity Knights: Xross is the cumulative influence of gaming generations combined with our own new and unique ideas. An intersection of two directions. A cross!Youve been inspired by a range of classic (and sometimes overlooked) RPGs, with Dark Cloud, the Mana series, and Final Fantasy XI singled out. What is it about these games/franchises that struck you, and what inspirations have you taken from them?Wed say that the strong point of those games is deep immersion. Each game brought something new to the table that hadnt been seen in a game before at least to us. They still feel like fresh experiences that havent been replicated since. We love questions like this because we could talk about these games for hours.Infinity Knights: Xross is the cumulative influence of gaming generations combined with our own new and unique ideas.Dark Cloud is so unique in its worldbuilding and atmosphere. The combination of dungeon diving, slaying monsters, and building up the towns via Georama the whole experience is fantastic. Its got an unusual (brilliant) soundtrack, fun drawings, and a wicked weapon customisation/progression system. Great game. Were combining this weapon system with some inspiration from Final Fantasy XIs Trial of the Magians system, allowing players to customise their stats and abilities present on both weapons and abilities. Xross also looks after a sector of the Kingdom as part of his Infinity Knight duties, and we have been inspired by elements of the Georama system.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube789kIn Dark Cloud, you would explore dungeons and use Atlamillia to rebuild a town before moving on to help others. We take a similar approach, where on adventures you collect all kinds of things on the overworld and dungeons before bringing them back to bolster shops, equipment, sector resources, and so on. Ultimately, it helps your character's progression and the story.Final Fantasy XI has this incredible sense of adventure and wonder. It really captures immersion well. Its the kind of game where you can just run around the world map for hours, talking to NPCs, discovering secret areas, and fighting cool enemies. We have loads of memories in Vanadiel. Those whove played the game know the feeling. We wanted adventures outside our kingdom sector to hit home in a similar way. In Infinity Knights: Xross, you team up and venture out to undiscovered lands, secret areas leading to dungeons, and tough enemies to fight. That sort of thing. Were also structuring part of the character progression in the same way [as] job classes in Final Fantasy XI. Some sharp-eyed fans have noticed that you wield a variety of different weapons and these sort of act like job classes. Each weapon comes with a set of abilities unique to it that augment the way you fight when combined with the elements youre harnessing.Secret of Mana was ahead of its time for RPG console co-ops. You could play the whole game together, or you could drop in and drop out! How awesome! Co-op experiences are a lot of fun, and we were inspired by Secret of Mana from a young age. Its also got an awesome soundtrack. Were very encouraged by the co-op legacy that Secret of Mana left, and thats especially evident in a later Mana release on the Nintendo DS called Children of Mana. A lot of inspiration is taken from these games in the way that pixel and sprite games can be just as enjoyable, sometimes even more so than AAA games. There is a lot to be said for the immersive qualities of a top-down sprite J/RPG.Images: Timesea StudioWe think that these games have effectively constructed this immersive feeling through their unique graphics, story content, gameplay systems, and sound. Its a delicate balance to create experiences like these games do. Thats whats inspired us. We want to create an amazing experience for gamers through every medium we can. Engaging gameplay, great scenes and story, fun and were going to do it cooperatively too.What kind of modern qualities of life have you considered for Xross? Are they inspired by any frustrations youve had when playing and replaying older JRPGs?Michael: This is an excellent question and something we are very passionate about. Weve kept a list for a long time regarding the features we would love to have seen in the games weve played JRPGs and other genres and it is a BIG list. As such, many quality-of-life features have made their way into our game, and will continue to do so. Some of these already exist, but a lot are unique!Secret of Mana was ahead of its time for RPG console co-opsTyrone: Things like accessibility for disabilities, being able to customise the UI, and rearranging things. It amazes us that many games do not allow you to customise button inputs. No drop rates that dont respect players interest or time. Making sure cutscenes are skippable and tutorials are optional and non-repetitive. Preset modes for speedrunning and randomization. The list goes on.Were keeping a lot of our unique features a secret, but hopefully, these can get you into our mindset of how were enabling players to enjoy themselves most. There are a few things were willing to share now though.Saxon: Were developing an automatic reaction timer (that can be turned on or off). If the game senses you need a bit more time to parry correctly, then it will adjust to challenge you appropriately. Were hoping that features like this will encourage people to try some of the more challenging mechanics in video games, as well as increase the immersion felt by players.Were also looking at changing the way difficulty works in this game, so that the experience is more customised for your enjoyment, instead of just having preset modes with scaled stats, etc. Youll be able to combine different levels of difficulty for yourself, granting the best experience for you.Images: Timesea StudioWe could go on to list more features, but what really matters is our intention. We want to make a game that respects players time and doesnt feature punishing statistics, missables, penalties, and so on. We have every intention to make sure players enjoy their time in the world of the Infinity Knights. You can be sure that we will try our utmost to reduce all frustrations players have to zero through a lot of personal playthroughs, testing, and player feedback. We want to make one of the most accessible and playable RPGs of all time.What can you tell us about the Armament System? How does it affect combat and gameplay, and can you give us examples of side quests that involve this mechanic?Saxon: The Armament System is the Infinity Knights bread and butter, and we can split that into two sections: gameplay and story.The Armament System is our weapon upgrade system. You can select enhancements youd like to apply to the weapons you want to wield, strengthening them as you use them more. This will also augment your abilities. You can also combine them with elements! You might like a giant scythe with a hefty chance to teleport and deal double damage, or maybe youre more of an archer who likes to use magic lightning arrows that bind opponents while reducing your ability cooldowns. We want players to know they can use whatever weapon they want combined with many different enhancements, which will drastically change the way each individual plays the game.We want to make a game that respects players timeMichael: In addition to that, if you and your allies combine attacks, you ALL get the enhancements from each other. Were hoping that by blending these abilities cooperatively, youll create a truly unique strategy for taking down foes. Itll be something just you and your cooperators share. We have lots of mechanics that promote teaming up with your allies, be it CPUs, friends, or family.Saxon: The Armaments themselves are summonable weapons that the King bestows on his Infinity Knights. Theyre strange blades that only the King can create, and every day, he performs a ceremony called The Kings Rite that seems to revive anyone slain by an Armament The Infinity Knights rely heavily on this, using the weapons on themselves or allies to save themselves in the heat of combat, traversing another realm to be called back to the Kingdom. The Infinity Knights also use the Armaments on their enemies, isolating foes within the Kingdom at the discretion of the Kings power.Image: Timesea StudioAlmost all quests involve the mechanics of the Armaments, and many of them will provoke players into questioning the morality of the blades' power, of what is right and what is wrong. How are the Armaments made? Do they have a cost? Should they be used on the guilty? The innocent? Why does only the King have them? Are there others?As a brief example, there is a quest where Xross throws himself off a cliff in pursuit of an enemy, by using his Armament on himself before he plummets to his death.Were really trying not to spoil the game, but were hoping that the people who read this can start to imagine what they might do if they could cheat death for themselves and others, and how that might change depending on the type of immortality a person has. Through this avenue, we can engage those who love the story, morality, and philosophy behind some of the great RPGs of the past.Hiroki Kikuta has worked on a few notable indie titles such as Indivisible, YIIK, and Tangledeep. Whats it been like working with Kikuta-san, and what do you love about his music?Michael: It has been like a dream come true. If you told us 20 years ago that wed be working with Kikuta-san, it would have left us gobsmacked. Kikuta-san is an incredible artist - his passion, experience, and musical talent we just have so much respect for.If you told us 20 years ago that wed be working with Kikuta-san, it would have left us gobsmacked.Tyrone: He is a legendary composer that made a massive impact on how a game's sound can be. We feel that while the story, characters, and visuals are a massive part of a game, the music direction is equally as important. Many games wouldn't be what they are today without the talents of their respective composers and we believe Secret of Mana (among others) is one such game. Kikuta-san creates songs that can transport you into that world. He manages to capture the atmosphere of the moment - running around, fighting a dangerous boss, saying farewell, etc. You can listen to the soundtrack decades later and remember your own feelings playing that game, something he has achieved time and again. The main track for Infinity Knights: Xross Going to the Eternal is a great example of how he took the story and the questions it poses, and transformed it into a song. Incredible. Also. We love Kikutas drum tracks and beats, theyre so good.Were amazed by him, to put it simply, and were very much looking forward to all our futurework together.Image: Timesea StudioThis interview has been lightly edited for clarity.Thank you to Saxon, Michael, and Tyrone for taking the time to answer our questions. Infinity Knights: Xross is set to release in late 2025 on Switch, and you can find even more details about the game on its official website.

Image: NintendoOver the holiday season, we're republishing some of the best articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. Enjoy!Takashi Tezuka seems like a good laugh, the kind of chap who knows how to have fun.Despite all the Master-Sword-waving and PR-related hijinx from fellow Nintendo luminary Shigeru Miyamoto over the years, you still get the impression he's merciless in the workplace an exacting, intimidating, tea-table-upending taskmaster whereas Tezuka has an air of merrymaking and mischief about him.Although the combined talents of Miyamoto, Tezuka, and programmer Toshihiko Nakago are cited (not least by Satoru Iwata) as the 'Golden Triangle' that birthed both the Mario and Zelda series, Miyamoto and Tezuka have become the poster-boy pair for Nintendo's '80s output.Tezuka, who is now Executive Officer of Nintendo EPD (Entertainment Planning & Development), joined the Kyoto company 40 years ago this month, and regardless of their individual demeanours, one thing is clear: their game design instincts and precise approaches gel beautifully. Tezuka and Miyamoto formed a formidable design duo back in the mid-'80s, one which along with their many talented colleagues shaped the industry. Yet despite his enormous impact, his contributions aren't as celebrated as many of his counterparts.Comes out swingingBorn on 17th November 1960, 'TENTEN' as he was nicknamed, and sometimes credited graduated from Osaka University of Arts, an institution which counts Fumito Ueda (ICO, Shadow of the Colossus) and fellow Nintendo employees Koji Kondo, Kenji Yamamoto, and Yoshiaki Koizumi among its alumni. Tezuka's first job at Nintendo was working on the arcade release Super Punch-Out!!, a part-time gig while still a student. "I helped out with some of the pixilated [sic] images," he said during an Iwata Asks interview, "just for a period of a few weeks.""I can still clearly remember Tezuka-san joining the company. Miyamoto-san brought him to the office to introduce him to everyone. That was back when Tezuka-san was still really slim... (laughs)" - Toshihiko Nakago Image: NintendoBefore long, the 23-year-old graduated and joined Nintendo full-time in April 1984. A friend who applied to work there had initially piqued Tezuka's interest in the company, though it didn't stem from a particular love of video games, but a wider "interest in jobs related to leisure and recreation."Tezuka: I was interested in getting involved in designing goods branded with characters' images. Students who'd studied design at university would often go on to work for printing companies or advertising agencies. But I wasn't particularly interested in the kind of jobs where you would first get a client, then design things in line with their requirementsIwata:Tezuka:His first full-time task was working on Devil World, a Pac-Man-style maze game (now available to play via Nintendo Switch Online), although Tezuka admitted that he hadn't heard of Pac-Man at the time. The Famicom launched in 1983 but he wasn't familiar with Nintendo's console, either. "I didnt have any knowledge of this thing called the Family Computer (Famicom)," he recalled during an NES Classic Mini interview, "so I thought it was like a home computer!""Its hard to believe that someone like me, who was so unknowledgeable, would end up developing games for the Famicom." - Takashi Tezuka Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo LifeTezuka's lack of video gaming nous wasn't an issue; after lending a hand with Excitebike, his next assignment saw him designing and directing a little game called Super Mario Bros. alongside Miyamoto, who had been at Nintendo since 1977. "I was doing design work all on my own," he told Akinori Sao, "so Tezuka-sans arrival was a big help."In fact, while Miyamoto always had plans to use Mario or "Mr. Video" in all his games, the idea to use the plumber in this platformer was helped along by Tezuka-san, thanks to his sociable spirit and lunchtime chats with the sales department. Speaking with Satoru Iwata in 2009 about how the 16x32 pixel block from the prototype became Mario:Tezuka: Next door to the development room was the Sales and Marketing Division. The head of that department at the time was a pretty approachable guy, and though it might be hard to imagine it happening nowadays, I got him to show me the sales figures [...] At lunchtime I'd often wander to various places and chat to people from other departments. So I'd become friendly with people that way. Anyway, I was shown the sales figures and I saw that although Mario Bros. on the Famicom had been released over a year previously, it was still selling consistently well.Iwata:Tezuka:Second questImage: NintendoIf Tezuka's rapid rise through Nintendo's ranks going from newbie graduate to Assistant Director on the company's most ambitious game in a matter of months feels improbable by today's standards, it's worth remembering not just Miyamoto's relief at finally sharing the design workload, but also how different that nascent era of console game development was. Nintendo had "very few designers on the staff" in those early Famicom days and new recruits would be employed across different projects in different capacities as needed."We did all kinds of things such as working on instruction manuals and designing playing cards," Tezuka told Iwata, which included arcade cabinet art. "At that time, everyone put their heads together, collected their ideas and made the games in an amateur spirit. So I would also come up with ideas."He quickly established an excellent working relationship with Miyamoto and the team, as evidenced by the games themselves. Following Super Mario Bros., the developers segued into another little project, The Legend of Zelda. "Back then we had some long paper, and Tezuka-san and Miyamoto-san would sit side-by-side and draw together," recalled programmer Nakago in another Iwata Asks interview.Image: NintendoNakago: You drew the stuff on the left, Tezuka-san, and the right side is Miyamoto-san's. If you look closely, you can tell how marker was used to make small dots. These are rocks, and these are trees. And you can see Miyamoto-san's personality. At first he's making individual dots, but as he gets tired of it, toward the top, he just fills in a bunch of space!Aonuma: Yeah, the left and right sides do look different.Tezuka: They really are different somehow.Iwata: And they drew this all in one sitting.Within just two years, Tezuka had helped develop and ship two iconic titles games that would become the company's tentpole brands and lay the foundations not just for Nintendo's future, but for the video game industry itself. Excluding the previously mentioned genre-definers, credits from the first decade of his career include Super Mario Bros. 3 (director, designer), Super Mario World (director), Zelda: A Link to the Past (director), and Zelda: Link's Awakening (director). 1995's Yoshi's Island was his last Super Famicom directorial credit, after which, following assistant directorial work on Super Mario 64, he was promoted into supervisory and producing roles in the N64 era.It's worth taking a moment to re-read those credits. You'll frequently find those all-timers topping ranked software lists from players and developers alike. In a single decade, Tezuka went from being unable to point out Pac-Man in a lineup to shifting our understanding of what video games could be. It's a truly remarkable turnaround.Tag team troubleImage: Zion Grassl / Nintendo LifeBack to the '80s, though. After writing for The Adventure of Link, Tezuka helmed the celebrated Super Mario Bros. 3, the last Mario entry for which he drew the in-game character artwork. When the 16-bit era arrived, "there were just a lot of people that were better than me."Speaking to Ars Technica, he revealed a special attachment to this game, an affection that likely stems from its difficult gestation. Created over two and a half years an eternity in 8-bit development terms he originally envisioned viewing the platformer "looking down diagonally from overhead rather than directly from the side." Having directed Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Japanese sequel known as The Lost Levels in the West), which followed the template of the original very precisely while increasing the challenge for veterans, he was eager to try something new.However, viewed from that perspective, problems arose around knowing exactly when Mario's feet hit the ground. "It wouldnt come together well, and [development] dragged on."Tezuka: We were experimenting with a bunch of things, and in the end...Miyamoto: We started talking about how to pull it all together and I joined in to help adjust it.Reading between the lines, it seems Miyamoto's years of development expertise may have come into play here, tempering the less-experienced Tezuka's ambition and getting the project back on track by reverting to the side-on perspective.Image: NintendoFortunately, that course correction led to another NES classic one which features the first appearance of ghost enemy Boo, a character whose behaviour Tezuka famously based on his wife, Sumi. As Miyamoto put it when discussing Super Mario 64 with Nintendo Power: "His wife is very quiet normally, but one day she exploded, maddened by all the time he spent at work." Tezuka was inspired to make Boo grow "large and menacing" when Mario turns his back. "She knows," he laughed when asked how his spouse felt about the cheeky homage.Tezuka's influence was felt and still is in later Mario and Zelda series entries in which he was less involved. The 3D Zeldas would follow the same basic Link to the Past formula for 20 years, but his fingerprints are all over the series. His introduction of "suspicious types" in Link's Awakening, for instance, was "an important element in the series making a breakthrough," according to Eiji Aonuma, who believes that "Ocarina of Time would have been different," had the series moved directly from Super NES to N64.Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life Games both wonderful and strangeCalling the (hook)shotsThroughout the latter half of the 1990s and into the 2000s, Tezuka was busy as a Supervisor or Producer on some of Nintendo's biggest series, including Zelda, Mario Kart, Pikmin, Yoshi, and Animal Crossing. He oversaw external companies' work on Nintendo franchises ("They struck me as being very jock-like. (laughs) Not at all like us," he said of the Capcom team he worked with on the Oracle Zelda games), produced smaller projects such as Flipnote Studio, and steered 2D Mario through the Wii/DS era, helping a new generation of developers understand the secret sauce which sets Mario apart.While Miyamoto would frequently pop up at E3 or alongside Iwata as the Nintendo Direct era approached, and Zelda boss Eiji Aonuma became a familiar name to Nintendo fans, Tezuka at least from the perspective of Western media kept a lower profile. That was until 2015's Super Mario Maker, which saw him on the road with Miyamoto speaking to world media and reminiscing about Super Mario Bros. 30 years on.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube789k Our musical maestro Ryan gets the surprise of his lifeThe project not only brought his history and expertise with the series to the fore, but also the player-first, creative approach to game design he had been honing over three decades."I'm not content with making a game that has a story that you just follow from beginning to end," he told Jeremy Parish in the run-up to release. "My philosophy is to create a game that offers many different elements and let the player experience those different things in whatever combination they like [...] I want all my games to engage people's imaginations and sense of creativity."Image: NintendoIn his GDC 2024 talk with Shiro Mouri, Tezuka touched again on this dislike of linear, one-and-done courses in the context of Super Mario Bros. Wonder games that don't let you go back and explore new routes and engage creatively with the software. Discussing the concept of 'mottainai' a Japanese term akin to 'What a waste!' he spoke of specific design choices to encourage experimentation, and how departments sharing their thoughts with the entire team can help avoid missed opportunities:"I believe that leads of different disciplines can influence each other's work in ways that infuse courses with life. When teams don't do this, it's hard to make the most of the game spec and that's what we call 'mottainai' [...] To put it simple, it means when you aren't able to make the most of somethine and you feel regret or frustration that it's gone to waste. Is what you spent so much time creating in development working the way it's supposed to in the game?"It seems Tezuka-san is still working on design problems he sees in the linear 2D Mario template, frustrations which stretch back to at least 1988. "We put a lot of courses in Super Mario Bros. 3, but when there are lots of courses, you tend to move right on to the next one every time you clear one [...] each course is packed full of game elements."Speaking in a Super Mario 3D Land interview, Iwata commented to director Koichi Hayashida, "I heard that Tezuka-san said some pretty harsh things to you," hinting that despite outward appearances Tezuka may be just as exacting as Miyamoto when it comes to feedback and getting what he wants.Hayashida: I think what Tezuka-san pays the most attention to in a video game is how fun it is, how good it feels. So I just recently realized that's the reason he doesn't want to go back and collect coins. [...] In New Super Mario Bros. Mega Mario tromps along defeating enemies. That was an awful thing to do to the people who made the course!Iwata: Because Mario is destroying game mechanics! (laughs)Hayashida: But I think he just thinks, "It's fun, so it's okay!"Iwata: The phrase, "It's fun, so it's okay!" really does fit Tezuka-san. (laughs)Indeed, it's the similarities between Tezuka and Miyamoto that stand out looking at their work and philosophies. They both have a similar disregard for the hows and whys of a particular gameplay mechanic or character choice, as long as the effect is a pleasing one. The player's enjoyment is paramount, whether that involves putting tails on everything just because it's funny, or making coin collection automatic when you squash a Goomba, because making you run back to collect them felt "ungenerous". Fun is a serious business."I love my job"A tiny selection of his gameography. Just a couple of classics, then Image: Nintendo / GDCAfter 40 years at Nintendo, and at the age of 63, you could understand if Tezuka was considering retirement. Across four decades, he's probably forgotten more about game design than most devs will ever know at least if Iwata's friendly jibes about his memory are anything to go by. Reading interviews, there's a sense that younger Nintendo employees have been benefitting from his old-guard expertise for many years now. His fun-first spirit is part of the company's DNA and its mission statement to "surprise and delight," so we wouldn't blame him for looking back on an impressive legacy and deciding to put his feet up.However, if the sentiment he expressed to Bloomberg back in 2007 holds true, we can't imagine he's keen to give up his passion just yet:"I have always been trying to make games so that anyone as many people as possible can enjoy them I cannot help but say that I love my job of making games from the bottom of my heart."Back in 1990, in the Super Mario World official guidebook of all places (as translated by Shmupulations), he spoke of the future. "I want to make games that no matter how many times you clear them, you want to keep that game and hold onto it like a treasure."Looking back on 40 years of remarkable work, we've got a trove of those treasures too many to hold and they're still coming. Job done, Tezuka-san.Image: NintendoShare:016 Gavin first wrote for Nintendo Life in 2018 before joining the site full-time the following year, rising through the ranks to become Editor. He can currently be found squashed beneath a Switch backlog the size of Normandy. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...Related Articles161 Games You Should Pick Up In Nintendo's 'Hits For The Holidays' eShop Sale (North America)Every game we scored 9/10 or higherPSA: Switch 2 Is Getting Revealed In The Next 100 DaysSet your Alarmos54 Games You Should Pick Up In The Nintendo Switch eShop Holiday Sale (Europe)Every game we scored 9/10 or higherThose Switch 2 Leaks "Might Be Legit" According To A New ReportMore than a rumour?

A Chinese lab has created what appears to be one of the most powerful open AI models to date. The model, DeepSeek V3, was developed by the AI firm DeepSeek and was released on Wednesday under a permissive license that allows developers to download and modify it for most applications, including commercial ones.DeepSeek V3 can handle a range of text-based workloads and tasks, like coding, translating, and writing essays and emails from a descriptive prompt.According to DeepSeeks internal benchmark testing, DeepSeek V3 outperforms both downloadable, openly available models and closed AI models that can only be accessed through an API. In a subset of coding competitions hosted onCodeforces, a platform for programming contests, DeepSeek outperforms other models, including Metas Llama 3.1 405B, OpenAIs GPT-4o, and Alibabas Qwen 2.5 72B.DeepSeek V3 also crushes the competition on Aider Polyglot, a test designed to measure, among other things, whether a model can successfully write new code that integrates into existing code.DeepSeek claims that DeepSeek V3 was trained on a dataset of 14.8 trillion tokens. In data science, tokensare used to represent bits of raw data 1 milliontokensis equal to about 750,000words.Its not just the training set thats massive. DeepSeek V3 is enormous in size: 685 billion parameters. (Parameters are the internal variables models use to make predictions or decisions.) Thats around 1.6 times the size of Llama 3.1 405B, which has 405 billion parameters.Parameter count often (but not always) correlates with skill; models with more parameters tend to outperform models with fewer parameters. But large models also require beefier hardware in order to run. An unoptimized version of DeepSeek V3 would need a bank of high-end GPUs to answer questions at reasonable speeds.While its not the most practical model, DeepSeek V3 is an achievement in some respects. DeepSeek was able to train the model using a data center of Nvidia H800 GPUs in just around two months GPUs that Chinese companies were recently restricted by the U.S. Department of Commerce from procuring. The company also claims it only spent $5.5 million to train DeepSeek V3, a fraction of the development cost of models like OpenAIs GPT-4.The downside is that the models political views are a bit filtered. Ask DeepSeek V3 about Tiananmen Square, for instance, and it wont answer.DeepSeek, being a Chinese company, is subject tobenchmarkingby Chinas internet regulator to ensure its models responses embody core socialist values.ManyChinese AI systemsdecline to respond to topics that might raise the ire of regulators, like speculation about theXi Jinpingregime.DeepSeek, which recently unveiled DeepSeek-R1, an answer to OpenAIs o1 reasoning model, is a curious organization. Its backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund that uses AI to inform its trading decisions.DeepSeeks models have forced competitors like ByteDance, Baidu, and Alibaba to cut the usage prices for some of their models and make others completely free.High-Flyer builds its own server clusters for model training, one of the most recent of whichreportedlyhas 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs and cost 1 billion yen (~$138 million). Founded by Liang Wenfeng, a computer science graduate, High-Flyer aims to achieve superintelligent AI through its DeepSeek org.In an interview earlier this year, Liang described open sourcing as a cultural act, and characterized closed source AI like OpenAIs a temporary moat. Even OpenAIs closed-source approach hasnt stopped others from catching up, he noted.Indeed.

Jared Leto boards as Skeletor, with Sam C. Wilson coming on as Trap Jaw, Kojo Attah as Tri-Klops, and Hafthor Bjornsson as Goat Man, in the live-action feature from Mattel Films and Amazon MGM Studios that hits theaters June 5, 2026.

Annas next-door neighbor is a tornado. Constantly at odds with her surroundings, the young woman shields herself from chaos by staying inside, fussing over small details like the placement of books on shelves and adjusting crooked picture frames on the wall.One day, strong winds leave Annas house askew, forcing her to venture just outside the front door. When the powerful vortex pulls both Anna and her keys into its mayhem, she must confront the reality of unpredictability. The Tornado Outside is the creation of animation director Maria Tomazou, alongside a production team at the National Film and Television School in England. The award-winning short film came to life through stop-motion over the course of a year. According to Tomazou, nearly all elements in the film were animated while suspended in the air with rigs.Watch The Tornado Outside on Vimeo now, and visit Tomazous website to explore more work. For behind-the-scenes clips, follow her on Instagram.Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article The Acceptance of Chaos Whirls Through Maria Tomazous The Tornado Outside appeared first on Colossal.

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ZorseCredit: New York TimesWordle has been a game-changer for The New York Times. Since its acquisition in 2022, the Times Game app has blown up, with 10 million downloads in 2023. The Games department at the newspaper has expanded from just over a dozen to more than 100 people over the last decade. Subscribers can now subscribe to just the Games section for $6/month (or less with introductory deals). According to the company, Wordle has been played over 4.8 billion times. Spelling Bee players have reached Genius level over 120 million times.Now a new game is making its way to the NYT Games stable: Zorse, which is named after the hybrid animal crossed between a zebra and a horse. That should give you a sense of what the game is about. I call it a phrasal portmanteau game. You have to fill in a number of words to combine two phrases into one.Players are given a number of blank words with just one letter filled in. There is also a clue at the top. You can then click on boxes to reveal new letters up to five times. This is very similar to Wheel Of Fortune. Once youve used all your reveals, you have to fill in the rest of the letters on your own and guess the phrase.Here is a recent Zorse I played:ZorseScreenshot: Erik KainMORE FOR YOUThe clue here is Christmas song with lots of extra features and theres just one H to go by. I revealed my letters, filled in the blanks and made my guess:ZorseCredit: NYTsAs you can see, the song Carol of the Bells is combined with the phrase Bells and whistles to form the answer, which I guessed correctly. Its a fun little challenge, though I wonder if giving us five reveals is overkill, making it too easy to guess the final answer. Perhaps it should be dialed back to three. Then again, Ive only played the game twice.Currently, Zorse is only available in Canada (or via a VPN) but will hopefully make it to a wider beta and eventually onto the NYTs Games app, joining Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Crossword, Spelling Bee and all the other games in time.Similar to how The Times treats its other games when theyre in beta, were hoping to learn how players engage with Zorse and look forward to hearing their feedback, the company said in a statement back in October when testing began.

A frame of a homemade video shows tourists caught by the first of six tsunami rolling towards Hat ... [+] Rai Lay Beach, near Krabi in southern Thailand, following a 9.2-Richter submarine earthquake on December 26, 2004.AFP via Getty ImagesAt 7:58 am local time on December 26, 2004 an earthquake of moment magnitude Mw9.19.3 ruptured a over 1,500kilometers long section of the seafloor off the western shores of the island of Sumatra (Indonesia).It was the third strongest earthquake ever recorded, after Chile 1960 and Alaska 1964 (Mw 9.5 and 9.2 respectively). The earthquake started on the Great Sumatran Fault, a fault system linked to the subduction of the Indian Plate underneath the Sunda Plate. The earthquake propagated along the fault northwards taking ca. 8 to 10 minutes to travel the entire faultthe longest length and duration of any such recorded event.The rupturing fault created an approximately 20 meters (or 65 feet) high new scarp on the seafloor, which in turns caused the water displacement and a series of six tsunami moving both east towards Sumatra, and west towards Sri Lanka, India and Africaeventually reaching the Atlantic and Pacific.According to the official data by the United Nations, casualties were in excess of 126,000, with 94,000 people still missing. The tsunami displaced more than 1.5 million people and more than 100,000 houses were destroyed in Aceh alone, the Indonesian province located nearest to the earthquake epicenter.The lack of tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean before the 2004 tsunami had made the disaster's impact worse. There were no seismic stations covering the entire area and no systems to warn the coastal populations in time.MORE FOR YOUThe 2004 earthquake triggered over 6,000 aftershocks in the first 10years, two of which were Mw8.6 and Mw8.4 events, that ruptured much of the remaining Sumatran subduction zone. Seismic gaps, where no earthquakes occur, highlight the need for enhanced preparedness in this region as tectonic tensions continues to build up.Advancements in earthquake and tsunami science since 2004 have prompted improvements in coastal protection, early warning systems and risk communication. However, challenges persist especially at locations near the tsunami source. Here, warning time between the detection of an earthquake and the first tsunami waves reaching the coast can be only minutes.Future communication efforts should ensure the public understands that no warning system is perfect, and it is safest to evacuate when there is any indication of a potential tsunami.The study, "Insights into tectonic hazards since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami," was published in nature reviews earth & environment and can be found here.

When it comes to built-in TV speakers, youll be hard-pressed to find a pair of drivers that deliver the volume, clarity, and soundstage that a more robust audio system can provide. Were talking about soundbars and full surround sound configurations. And while some of these home theater components can cost hundreds (or thousands) of dollars, every once in a while, an amazing discount creeps its way into our crosshairs. As luck would have it, we came across this doorbuster sale when looking through Best Buy deals:Right now, when you purchase the Samsung B Series 2.1ch Soundbar at Best Buy, youll only pay $100. At full price, this soundbar once sold for $280.Plug-and-play connectivity is the name of the game with any soundbar purchase, and the Samsung B Series couldnt be easier to hook up to your TV. With just one digital optical connection (or Bluetooth TV connection), whatever components are wired to your TV will output sound through the Samsung B Series. Expect bold sound quality with powerful low-end support, too, thanks to the included wireless subwoofer!RelatedThe Samsung B Series also includes a Bluetooth input, allowing you to stream music and other device audio from a phone, tablet, or PC to your Samsung soundbar. Were also glad to see a Night Mode for reduced volume when others are trying to sleep, as well as a Voice Enhance feature for louder, more precise dialogue.As a Best Buy doorbuster, theres a good chance well wake up tomorrow to find the Samsung B Series out of stock, so today is definitely the best day to buy! Take $180 off the Samsung B Series 2.1ch Soundbar when you purchase at Best Buy, and be sure to check out our lists of the best soundbar deals and best Samsung deals for even more discounts.Editors Recommendations

If a new home theater setup is in your 2025 plans, allow us to draw your attention to this incredible Samsung TV offer: For a limited time, when you purchase the 77-inch Samsung S84 Series OLED, youll only wind up paying $1,800. Yes, that sounds like a lot, but when you consider this TV usually sells for upwards of $3,000, the savings become all the more apparent.We also have an entire list of Samsung deals for you to look through, which could save you money on a new phone, tablet, or TV.With its wide color gamut, excellent contrast levels, and impeccable motion clarity, the Samsung S84D is a godsend for those looking to score a massive TV for a great price. Thanks to the self-emissive engineering that goes into an OLED screen, the S84D Series manages to pull off some very convincing 4K upscaling. With Samsungs Real Depth Enhancer onboard, the S84D is constantly optimizing the image to provide as much detail as possible.RelatedThe S84D Series is a phenomenal gaming TV, too. Thanks to FreeSync Premium support, Samsungs Motion Xcelerator Turbo tech, and the TVs native 120Hz refresh rate, youll be treated to low input lag and fast response times when hooking up a console or gaming PC to this bad boy. Were also glad to see that the S84D Series is compatible with Dolby Atmos and supports Samsungs Object Tracking Sound Lite feature for enhanced audio.Apps and screen mirroring are handled by Samsungs Tizen OS partnership. The Tizen UI is easy to navigate and packed with features, plus access to popular streaming apps like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. While we wish this TV were as cheap as it is today all the time, thats just not the case. We have to take advantage of a deal when we see one!Order the Samsung 77-inch S84D Series OLED today for only $1,800, and be sure to check out our lists of the best Samsung TV deals and best OLED TV deals for even more discounts on top brands.Editors Recommendations