Nintendo announced that the F-Zero racing game franchise is returning as a battle royale game called F-Zero 99, during the September 2023 Nintendo Direct. The game releases today, September 14, and will be available for free to active Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
In the freebie, 99 players can race against each other in a reimagined version of the original NES game. Players have a power meter that they must keep track of and prevent from depleting. The meter decreases every time you bump or crash into another player on the course. Once the power meter is drained, the player is knocked out of the race entirely.
Players are also able to take risks and sacrifice a bit of their power meter to gain a temporary speed boost in order to reach the front of the pack and hopefully get closer to first place.
Whenever players bump into each other, little yellow orbs called Super Sparks appear on the course. Collecting enough of them unlocks a special path called the Skyway. This creates a magical road above every other competitor and lets you drive safely without worrying about bumping into anyone else. This gives you the advantage of securing a higher spot during the race.
F-Zero 99 also supports the SNES controller for Nintendo Switch that’s available for Nintendo Switch Online members.
Unfortunately, the F-Zero franchise hasn’t had a proper entry since 2004’s F-Zero Climax for the Game Boy Advance. That game was also a Japan-exclusive release. This isn’t the only game that has received the battle royale treatment. Nintendo also released Tetris 99 back in 2019.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.