In April, we found out WayForward was teaming up with Arc System Works to release a brand new entry in the River City / Kunio-kun series.

The talented independent developer has now confirmed River City Girls will be released on 5th September, on the Nintendo Switch and multiple other platforms. According to the PR, it includes local two-player co-op, stunning pixel art graphics, anime and manga cutscenes, a “fantastic” soundtrack and will be priced at $29.99.

This latest entry in the long-running series stars Kyoko and Misako – two “street-tough high-schoolers” who will have to fight their way through the six regions of River City to rescue their kidnapped boyfriends (Kunio and Riki – the series mainstays).

The fighting system has been overseen by Arc System Works and requires players to utilise an arsenal of combos, counters, throws and special attacks. Along the way, the girls will take on numerous side quests, level up, interact with NPCS (including guest stars from past entries), shop for a variety of items and gear to boost stats, unlock new abilities, wield weapons and recruit defeated foes.

This is supported by an epic synth-pop soundtrack (NateWantsToBattle, Chipzel, Christina Vee and Megan McDuffee!). Limited Run Games will also be offering a physical version – with more details to be revealed at a later date.

Are you pumped for this beat ’em up? Tell us down in the comments.

If you’re a fan of the indie title Downwell and happen to own a copy of Super Mario Maker 2, you might want to take a look at the above video.

YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming has recreated the excellent vertical platforming roguelike rather accurately within Nintendo’s Mario-themed course creator. Just like the real game, the objective is to make it to the bottom, while attempting to get the highest score possible. This version even has a built-in easy setting – allowing you to have a practice run.

If you would like to try out this course for yourself, the code is 2KH-BN0-7VG. Be sure to check out the Nintendo Life Super Mario Maker 2 Course Search as well. And if you’re interested in playing Downwell, you can purchase it from the Switch eShop for $2.99 / £2.69.

By Andrew Smith 04 Jul 2019

A Nintendo Switch remake of Game Boy Advance game Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town has been confirmed for release in Japan.

Very little has been revealed for the new game – such as how, and if, it’ll expand upon or reimagine the original – but we do know that it appears to blend content from both Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town, a separate version of the game which features a female protagonist.

The first few screenshots have been revealed via Famitsu.

The game is set to launch on 17th October in Japan; no western release has been confirmed so far.

Did you play this one on Game Boy Advance? Excited for the remake, assuming it does get a western release? Let us know in the comments below.

The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate mural featuring all of the game’s playable characters will likely stick in our minds as one of the best pieces of gaming artwork of all time. Used in Nintendo Directs (who could forget the moments when new characters would appear alongside old favourites?) and to promote the game at events like E3, it really was something to behold.

In an interview with Nintendo Dream, the artist behind the mural, Yusuke Nakano, has explained how it all came together. Nakano has a frankly incredible credit list to his name, including countless Zelda and Mario titles, so it’s hardly surprising to hear that he got the job on this particular project. The translations provided below come via Siliconera:

Yusuke Nakano: “The idea came from Sakurai-san of creating a giant mural that could show off how impactful the game was at E3 and other promotional events. It was decided that it would feature hand-drawn art with realistic proportions, and I would be the main person working on it as it would be the quickest.

Regarding the artstyle, I first showed off Breath of the Wild’s Link, and Mario in an oil painting style and showed it to Sakurai-san. He liked it and gave the go-ahead, and it was a smooth start. Out of all the characters, the first two I illustrated were those two.”

He goes on to note that when thinking about the piece’s compositional balance and each character’s pose, he’d check in with the original creators for each character, and also gives a little insight into how new additions were placed alongside the already-existing fighters.

“First, with the 66 Fighters revealed at E3, I considered ‘what pose they would make’ and ‘how they would be placed’ on the long canvas, by drawing rough linework and piecing it together like a puzzle. The Fighters in Smash Bros. are all main characters, so I didn’t place them focused around the center, but averaged them out around the artwork. The theme was that no matter which part you cropped, there would be sights to behold.

Furthermore, by averaging out their positions, it had the advantage of being easier to add in the additional characters. Regarding the additional characters, I already had an idea of where to place them, but they were mostly placed through trial and error.”

We don’t know about you, but we could happily sit and look at that mural all day long. Amazing stuff.

Silicon Valley monoliths Google and Facebook are once again facing government scrutiny over potential abuses of market power, with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority taking aim at the companies in a wide-reaching probe into online advertising platforms.

Source: Wikipedia

Announced on Wednesday, the CMA’s investigation, officially called a market study (PDF link), will concentrate specifically on Google and Facebook, both of which hold “leading positions” in the online advertising business, reports The Guardian.

The scope of the probe will assess market power of online platforms in consumer-facing markets, consumer control over data collection practices and competition in the supply of digital advertising in the UK, according to a synopsis.

“The market study will help us further lift the lid on how major online platforms work, especially how they collect and use personal data, how they monetize their content through digital advertising, and what this means for competition,” CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said. “The findings from this work will be used to influence the direction of policy and regulation in the digital sector.”

The CMA believes that the probe’s concerns “might lead to direct consumer harm if firms are able to exploit consumers’ attention and data to earn excessive returns in digital advertising.” A more competitive market could yield circumstances in which consumers are paid for access to, or are granted better control over, their data.

CMA is operating on a call from Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond to investigate the digital advertising market.

Hammond’s assignment is a response to recommendations outlined in an independent report prepared for the UK Treasury by Jason Furman, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. In his report, Furman found the market is “dominated by two players and suffers from a lack of transparency.”

The CMA is slated to file an interim report, which will include a determination as to whether a market investigation reference is needed, on Jan. 2, 2020. A final report is due on Jul. 2, 2020.

Google and Facebook are poster boys for unscrupulous consumer data collection tactics and have been the target of multiple international investigations.

Most recently, Google in March was fined $1.7 billion by the European Commission for favoring its AdSense platform in search engine adversing, adding to a previous $5 billion fine related to Android app restrictions.

In the U.S., Google faces an antitrust investigation from the Department of Justice. The sweeping probe also includes Facebook, Apple and Twitter.

Facebook is still embroiled in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw the data of millions of users fall into the hands of the now-defunct consulting firm. The Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into Facebook’s privacy practices in March 2018, and the social network was bracing for an up to $5 billion fine for potential violations as recently as April.

In a Unity blog post today, Unity announced that Enlighten support was being removed from the Unity game engine.  Enlighten is the lightmapping and global illumination solution used in Unity since Unity 5 was released.  Enlighten was original developed by Geomerics, which was acquired by ARM technologies in 2013, then the technology was sold to Silicon Studio in 2017.

Details of the removal on the Unity blog:

Due to Geomerics shutting down Enlighten as a product, Unity is required to remove Enlighten.

Unity will continue support for Enlighten in the built-in renderer as it currently exists today (as-is, with no new platform support). The 2020 LTS will be the last version to contain Enlighten functionality for the built-in renderer, and it is fully removed in 2021.1.

Projects authored with HDRP Preview Enlighten functionality will continue to be supported as it currently exists today (as-is, with no new platform support) in 2019 LTS, with full removal of Enlighten functionality from HDRP in 2020.1.

They are working on a solution:

We are also fully committed to delivering a real-time GI replacement solution in 2021.1. The Unity team has a solid plan to solve this complex problem the right way, with great artists workflow and optimal runtime performance for 2021.1.

Additionally, in the linked forum discussion are some good details on the limitations of the current Enlighten solution that will be addressed in their new in-house solution:

Enlighten has had a good run for the money, some of the best looking titles have shipped using it. However, some of the underlying principles means that it is not a good fit moving forward.
Enlighten is largely surface based, requires a global pre-computation phase and is limited to diffuse transport with no real support for physically based non-opaque materials. Some of the drivers moving forward are:

• Fast iteration: Time-to-first-pixel needs to be fast, cannot have a lengthy pre-compute step.
• Easy authoring: We need to remove the dependency on authoring suitable UVs and other surface based authoring.
• Dynamic worlds: In addition to dynamic materials and lighting setup, we have to support dynamic geometry (eg. for procedural games).
• Unified lighting: The lighting container needs to be decoupled from surfaces. This allows all scene elements to use the same lighting including volumetrics and participating media.
• Large worlds: Due to the sheer size of levels today we need an easy way to to do localized light transport where what is lit and what is affecting that lighting is decoupled.
• Source access: We need to have full access to all source in-house. So that we can independently drive development forward, fix bugs and support future platforms. This is arguably the most important point.

For these reasons we have decided that the best course of action is to no longer pursue software we have limited control over and move on.
That said the feature set that is available now will be supported until 2023 (via 2020 LTS), and we are happy to support you in the transition.

I’m still not entirely certain what they mean by Geomerics shutting down however, as it’s resources were sold way back in 2017 and everything seems to be business as usual.

GameDev News Unity