[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Arms Twitter is well known for putting out a slew of pictures relating to the new Nintendo IP. Usually, these pictures are just for fun or to help announce updates. However, this time, the official Arms Twitter has graced us with something a little more substantial.

盆ジュール！
ワタクシ、セシボーンな休暇を満喫しています。ただよう甘い香りと異国情緒…ああ、ワタクシまさに今、生きてる…

そうそう、この辺りにブイブイいわせているファイターがいるとか。休暇がてらリサーチしますよ！特別ボーナスでちゃうかも！ pic.twitter.com/qNWtj18YoQ

— ARMS（アームズ） (@ARMS_Cobutter) August 14, 2017

That’s right! Biff has the Arms condition, too! Oh, right. There’s also a new stage that appears to be candy-themed. With this, it’s almost guaranteed that the new character is going to be the suggested “Sweet” character. Data miners told us the “Sweet” character files were the closest to looking like a completed character. So this is less of a shock and more a vindication.

However, I think we can look a little deeper. Stages are known for having tons of references to the character they represent. And even from this view, we can tell some things about the character. Mostly, we know they’re bakery or sweet shop influenced. There’s more, though. In the background, we can see a logo and even potentially the character herself. Look at this:

Courtesy of Reddit

This seems to be the character, her logo, and even maybe her name. Meena, perhaps? Is that a lollipop on her head? Or maybe a cinnamon bun? Perhaps the character isn’t even female. We don’t really have much other info. All speculation is based on these three images. That didn’t stop Redditors from rolling with it, though. Many think this looks like an old woman while others see a king or even a clown.

Now that we know of this character, however, when will this character release? Based on the update schedules, we can expect an update around the start of September. In fact, with the previous character release, we saw this same Twitter teasing Max Brass for nearly a month after E3. It’s not crazy to think we could be waiting another month for this one.

With all that said, it’s only a matter of time before we get more info. The Twitter is still very active. Stay tuned for any further updates on Arms, Arms updates, and many other games.

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]intendo has held its competitive series in high regard, using it to promote a sense of competition while still providing fun for all ages. After its debut in 2015, it disappeared for 30 years, returning at E3 2015. Now, it’s coming back as its own event scheduled for October 7th in New York City. However, entry to this competition won’t be as simple as ordering a ticket. Nintendo wil be hosting 8 qualifiers across the country for anyone that can attend. Two winners at each qualifier will be selected to attend Nintendo World Championships 2017.

This year, Nintendo is doing something a little different, too. Instead of having everyone compete at once, they’ll be splitting them up into age groups. Kids under the age of 13 form the younger group while everyone 13 and up form the older group. One winner from each group at each venue will move on to the Championships.

Nintendo has told us that the Championships will include multiple games across multiple platforms, but they haven’t given us any concrete word on what those might be. However, we know plenty about the upcoming qualifiers.

Nintendo World Championships 2017 Qualifiers

The qualifiers will be held at eight different Best Buy locations over the course of four different weekends. First, they’ll be in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area on August 19th and 20th. Next, they’ll be at Chicago and LA on August 26th and 27th. Then, they’ll be in Minneapolis and Dallas on September 2nd and 3rd. Finally, they’ll be in Seattle and Miami on September 9th and 10th.

At these events, players will be competing in time trial modes for Mario Kart 7 on the Nintendo 3DS. For kids 12 and younger, the contest will be held on DS Luigi’s Mansion. They’ll be playing as Mario with the standard kart, standard wheels, and uper glider. For everyone 13 and older, the contest will be held on GBA Bowser’s Castle 3. They’ll be playing as Bowser with the same standard kart setup.

Players will stand in line for their chance to qualify for Nintendo World Championships 2017. When you reach the game setup, you’ll be allowed to race three laps twice in a row to acheive the best possible time. After this, you may return to the back of the line, if you wish to try again. However, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a second chance, if time doesn’t allow. The player with the best time in each age group at each venue gets to attend the main event in New York City.

Other Goodies

Of course, competing isn’t the only thing attendees will get to do at the qualifiers. Anyone going to the Nintendo World Championships 2017 qualifiers will be allowed to try out demos for both Metroid II: Samus Returns on Nintendo 3DS and Super Mario Odyssey.  You can also check in with your My Nintendo account to score a sweet 100 Platinum coins. If you live in the area, it’s worth going just for the demos and points.

There will be other giveaways, as Nintendo events always have tons of free swag for anyone who’s interested. If you want to know more, you can visit the official Nintendo World Champions 2017 website. There you can find locations, dates, and the full rule set for the qualifiers. Let us know, if you’re interested in attending NWC 2017. Maybe let us know what you think will be playable at the full even on October 7th. Or you can check out the trailer below.

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]intendo told us we’d be seeing continued balance support for ARMS in the future. Yesterday, they delivered, granting us another balance patch and some notes to go with it! So with that, we have our second big ARMS Update. This time, however, we didn’t get a new character or new arms to fight with. The focus was more on balancing characters and arms that already existed and adding a few extra features to boot.

So, let’s get right to it. Below are the full patch notes for the ARMS Update, Version 2.1.0:

• Moved “Training” to the top menu.
• Added five exercises to “Training”, and added difficulty level indications.
• Adjusted the way the rush gauge fills, decreasing the amount gained for punches that do not connect with the opponent.
• When 3-4 players start a battle, instructions on how to switch targets will now be displayed. A cursor will also be displayed above the current target for a set time.
• Adjusted hitbox sizes for fighters, improving issues where hits were not registered despite looking like hits.
• Changed the pause, results, and replay menus in “Training” to be more convenient.
• For “Best Stage” in Stats, made it harder for less frequently played stages to be selected, even if you have a high win ration on them.
• Corrected issue that caused the game to hang-up when the ending was skipped at a particular time.
• We have made the following adjustments for some fighters and arms:
  

  Fighters / Arms	Adjustments
  Master Mummy	Increased dash speed. Increased movement speed when jumping.
  Mechanica	Increased movement speed when jumping.
  Kid Cobra	Adjusted floatation when performing a jump attack.
  Byte & Barq	Trained Barq to get up quicker.
  Boomerang	Increased speed when throwing in a wide curve. Increased extension speed. Increased homing.
  Coolerang	Increased extension speed. Increased homing.
  Revolver	Increased extension speed. Improved curving performance. Increased retraction speed. Shortened the time needed from starting a rush to firing the first shot.
  Retorcher	Improved curving performance. Increased retraction speed. Increased expansion rate when extending.
  Parasol	Increased expansion rate when extending. Increased retraction speed. Decreased expansion rate for charge attacks.
  Megawatt	Improved curving performance. Increased retraction speed.
  Slamamander	Increased homing
  Tribolt	Increased extension speed. Decreased rush damage.
  Triblast	Increased speed of charge attacks.
  Homie	Increased rush damage.
  Guardian	Made it so the electric shock when a charge attack connects lasts longer. Corrected odd behavior that occurred when a rush attack connected with a wall or platform.
  Blorb	Corrected odd behavior that occurred when a rush attack connected with an opponent that was not targeted.
  Seekie	Increased retraction speed. Made it so the electric shock when a charge attack connects doesn’t last as long.
  Ramram	Increased retraction speed. Decreased expansion rate for charge attacks. Decreased speed of charge attacks.
  Cracker, Popper, Hydra	Increased retraction speed.
  Bubb, Buff	Decreased extension speed. Decreased expansion rate when extending.

It’s a lot to take in, so we’ll sum it up below.

ARMS Update Version 2.1.0 Summary

So Nintendo seems to really want players to remember that Training exists, first off. They brought it to the front menu instead of hiding it in Versus and added new modes. In fact, the whole training menu has been streamlined to give you a better idea of what each training mode is for. It even gives you a level indicator to let you know how difficult the CPU is going to be during the training.

Aside from that, Nintendo also decreased Rush build up from missed punches to incentivize you to be more accurate. They also fixed some hit boxes in order to make the game appear more accurate to the models. They rebalanced the calculations to make your best stage more likely to be one you actually play on often.

Then there are the actual balance changes that affect characters and arms in the game. Again, we’ll try to keep this quick. First off, Mechanica and Master Mummy are a little bit faster in the air, with the latter also having a slightly quicker dash. Byte is now less vulnerable when Barq gets knocked out as Barq gets up quicker. Kid Cobra’s jump attack leaves him more vulnerable than before.

Then we have the arms. Bubb and Buff got the only significant nerf out of the lot, which causes them to move and expand slower. The Seekie doesn’t keep opponents shocked for as long, but it also retracts faster. Everything else listed in the patch notes got a buff, usually moving faster, expanding more, retracting sooner, becoming more consistent, curving better, or homing in on the opponent more accurately.

So with all that said, feel free to look through the patch notes, yourself, if you have any other questions. We do know that the next update will be coming with a new fighter, according to the Arms Japanese Twitter Account. Other than that

You can check out our ARMS review right here.

Source

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese days, it’s very difficult for game companies to keep things a secret. Even more so when your game is already out and just waiting on updates for later. This is where data mining comes in! Developers have placeholders or little code names in their game files, not expecting someone might come along and read it. Data miners found lines of code in Smash pointing to Ryu, Roy, and Lucas shortly before their reveal at E3. Similarly, data miners found something very interesting pointing to new ARMS characters.

So who are these new ARMS characters? Unfortunately, we don’t have anything definitive on them. However, this list contains all the code names in the characters list. Many of them are attached to an existing character. Many are not. Take a look:

• Belt (Max Brass)
• Chain
• Coil
• DNA (Helix)
• Hair (Twintelle)
• Mee (Min Min)
• Mummy (Mummy)
• Ninja (Ninjara)
• Plant
• Police (Byte and Bark)
• Ribbon (Ribbon Girl)
• Robo
• Scroll
• Snake (Kid Cobra)
• Spring (Spring Man)
• Sumo
• Surprise
• Sweet
• Twintale
• Worker (Mechanica)
• BossHead (Hedlok)
• RNA (Dummies)

Many of these could easily just be repeats. Robo may have been an early placeholder for Byte and Bark. Chain may have once been Ninjara. However, many of these are completely unaccounted for. Surprise, for instance, could hint at a jack-in-the-box character. Plant is likely self-explanatory. Sweet could be taffy. There are many possibilities.

That’s all we have on this, for now. We know that Nintendo will release a balance patch for ARMS in the upcoming week. With that in mind, we will have more info on this sooner, rather than later. Feel free to discuss this in the comments. We’re eager to hear what everyone thinks about these potential new characters.

Source

Edit

After reading into the Reddit thread in the source, other data miners have given us reason to believe that Sweet is the next character we’re going to see. Whether this is coming in the next update or later on, we still don’t know. Other names that have been moving forward in production since the previous version are:

• Coil
• Shaman
• Tarzan
• Lady

Take it with a grain of salt, of course. We know litle about these code names, personally. Stick around for more info, should it arise.

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]intendo promised us free updates for Arms and now we have our first one. The July Arms Update is now live, and in a rare move for Nintendo, we actually KNOW what’s different! We have patch notes that tell us everything that’s new with the Arms update, so what did we get?

Well, we’ve already heavily covered the addition of Max Brass, his three arms, and Sky Arena. There’s also been news flying around about a couple new features. We knew about the Stats screen, and people have reported on the new Hedlok Versus mode. (In Hedlok mode, players can momentarily become Hedlok during the fight by touching the Hedlok item that occasionally appears.)

However, that’s not everything. There is now an Events hub so players can follow and join official events. There was some balancing involved where Kid Cobra’s jump got nerfed. Some arms also got this treatment, which some like Hydra and Popper will be less safe while others like the Megaton and Revolver will be a little safer. Based on what we know of competitive Arms, all of this looks like it will make the game more balanced overall.

If you’d like to know more, we’ve included the full patch notes below. Otherwise, the patch should already be live, so why not give it a shot? Let us know how the July Arms Update changes make you feel about the game as a whole. If you’d like to read more about Max Brass, check out this article here.

Source

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s the start of another month, and we may be in late, but we still want to give you the heads up! So as usual, we’ll be listing any interesting or noteworthy games coming in the month of July. We obviously have a focus on Nintendo systems, however July game releases on other systems that we think are of interest to our audience may still make this list. With all that said, let’s look at these July game releases.

Downloadable Switch Games

Implosion – Flyhigh Works is bringing us another interesting title in the form of Implosion, a Sci-fi hack and slash for the Switch. Take the helm of a War Mech III and fight against aliens known as the XADA in what may be Earth’s last stand. This game will be downloadable for Switch on July 6th.

This game looks pretty sweet, but like most Flyhigh titles, it’s flown under the radar, thus far.

Vaccine – Survival Horror on a Nintendo system? Well, ok, that’s not at all unheard of. This one comes with a twist, though! That twist is that Vaccine takes place over the course of 30 minutes each time you play. You have 30 minutes to retrieve a vaccine for an infected team member and every time you enter the house, it’s been rebuilt in a new layout. A roguelike and survival horror in one package! Vaccine will be available to download on July 6th.

Death Squared – Step into a goofy little co-op puzzle game (the Switch seems to be good with those) about up to four cubes designed to go through a series of tests. Think Portal, but with far less involved physics and probably nowhere near as meme-infested. This one’s going to be really fun for larger groups. Death Squared will be available for the Switch on July 13th.

They’re so cute and disposable! Makes you just wanna fry them with a laser!

Also in Physical Format

Splatoon 2 – Of course, you had to know we’d put this one on here. Splatoon 2 is FINALLY launching after an extended period of hype and limited information. In fact, that info limit might be ending soon as Splatoon 2 is getting its own direct later today! More on that in another article, later. The fast-paced turf-based ink-slinging action is finally coming to the Switch in the form of a not-so-long-awaited sequel. It’s going to launch on July 21st. ( Get it here )

Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star – If you’re a fan of the Warriors Musou-type hack-and-slash games (like Hyrule Warriors or the upcoming Fire Emblem Warriors), then this game should be right up your alley at first glance. The game works well in this genre but differentiates itself with its colorful visuals. Of course, the gameplay won’t likely catch you off-guard, but be prepared for Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star to launch for the Nintendo Switch on July 25th. ( Get it here )

3DS Games

Kirby’s Blowout Blast – This title was first announced during the Arms and Splatoon Direct back in April. You play as Kirby in a pseudo-3D top-down adventure that centers around his ability to eat and spit out enemies. The reveal trailer can still be seen here. This game will be available for download on July 6th. ( Get it here )

Asdivine Cross – More JRPG goodness? You bet! Asdivine Cross this game’s been on the market for a little while now. It plays like you might expect a JRPG to play but with some emphasis on building a relationship with other characters in your party. There’s a cool trailer on Nintendo website that can also be seen here. Asdivine Cross will be available on Nintendo 3DS on July 13th.

Hey! Pikmin – Olimar and his microscopic helpers are setting out on their first handheld outing. This game plays a bit more like a 2D puzzle-platformer than the resource management simulator we know and love. That doesn’t make it bad, though, as Hey! Pikmin will have its own focus entirely separate from the main series. Get ready for this title to release on July 28th. ( Get it here )

Miitopia – Create your own Miis and send them on a JRPG adventure with a twist. Similar to other Mii titles, the Miis have a mind of their own and don’t necessarily do exactly what you want them to. They’ll grow bonds with one another and help to create their own story that’s unique to your playthrough of the game. Look forward to the Miis having a grand adventure on July 28th. ( Get it here )

Other July Game Releases

Revenant Saga – It’s rare we see games of any interest coming to the Wii U, but one is coming down the pipeline this week! It’s a JRPG by the name of Revenant Saga. Now, this game isn’t especially new. It’s already available on the PS4, but it still hasn’t been too long since then. This game has a lot of the aesthetic style of Namco’s Tales series of games, though the gameplay seems more akin to standard JRPGs. This game will be available for download on the Wii U eShop on July 6th.

Dragon Quest XI – So this is a bit of an odd entry. Dragon Quest XI is confirmed to be coming to the states and will also be available on the Switch. However, this month, we’ll see Dragon Quest XI releasing first on Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation 4 in Japan only. If you’re a fan of the series, you can look forward to that on July 29th. If you are waiting for the localized version or the Switch version, we’ll be sure to give an update whenever that’s announced.

So that wraps it up for July game releases. We thought these would be of particular interest, but don’t let us have the final say! Tell us in the comments what games you’re excited for this month.