Since Joker was announced as the first DLC fighter for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, there has been much speculation about Atlus bringing Persona 5 to the Switch.

On the same day of this reveal, a rumour surfaced, suggesting a Switch port of this game had been in consideration for the past year and the final title would be based on one of the domains recently registered by Atlus. More recently this month, the Japanese publisher assigned an IP address to the P5R.JP website and several other Persona 5 domain names appeared over the weekend. MysticDistance, the source of much of this information, believes the next Persona related announcement is likely to happen on 30th December:

“We know that we’ll get the first official info on [the Persona Super Live 2019 concert event] in a public commercial following the P5A ‘Dark Sun…’ OVA… I’d also expect a teaser site for P5R during this as well, due to the recent move over to dedicated servers.”

If that wasn’t enough to convince you, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has sent Persona fans into overdrive after a recent visit to Atlus’ headquarters. While most of the below video is in Japanese, translations suggest Sakurai is rather fond of the long-time series as well as the game design behind it. One touching moment is when Sakurai encounters the feline mascot Morgana for the first time. Take a look at the full video below:

What do you think about the rumours of Persona 5 coming to the Nintendo Switch in 2019? Tell us in the comments.

By Mikey Campbell
Friday, December 28, 2018, 04:19 pm PT (07:19 pm ET)

A firm tied to a known Apple lobbyist recently purchased a large parcel of land in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, suggesting the tech giant is still eyeing the area as the site of a new campus.

Source: Flatiron Law Group

The 281-acre plot of land in Wake County, which Apple purportedly considered for a new campus earlier this year, was this week sold to a recently established LLC called Acute Investments, reports WRAL Tech Wire.

Scott Levitan, CEO of the Research Triangle Foundation, confirmed the sale concluded this week, but would not comment further on the deal.

Apple is not officially attached to the purchase, but R. Bruce Thompson, a lobbyist connected to the tech giant, was named in the public documents. Thompson is Apple’s local arbitrator when the company negotiates government incentives related to local job recruitment, the report said. The lobbyist’s current registration to conduct operations for Apple, under the authorization of law firm Parker Poe, Adams & Bernstein, expires at the end of 2018.

The sale reignites speculation that Apple is moving forward with plans to open a campus in North Carolina.

Reports earlier this year claimed Apple was on the verge of announcing a deal that would see the development of a major facility in the area known as the Triangle. At the time, sources familiar with then-ongoing negotiations estimated Apple’s campus would house between 5,000 to 10,000 workers.

The rumor mill ground to a halt this month, however, as Apple announced plans to invest $1 billion in a new Austin, Tex., campus as part of a wider U.S. infrastructure strategy.

A new campus was expected, but its location came as a surprise to many. In an interview discussing Apple’s campus buildout plans earlier this year, CEO Tim Cook said the company was not considering California or Texas as new base of operations.

Following Apple’s announcement, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declined to comment on why his state failed to make the final cut, calling Apple an “open recruiting situation.”

After being announced for the Switch in September, the critically-acclaimed mobile sensation Downwell will make its way to the Switch next year on 31st January. The publisher Devolver Digital reportedly confirmed the date over on its Discord channel.

The title is a roguelike, platforming, shmup mash-up and includes a TATE mode so you can enjoy the game vertically. You take control of an individual who dives down a never-ending well and must defeat enemies, visit shops and collect treasure along the way. The procedurally generated design ensures no two trips down the well are ever the same.

Features:
– The Amazing Gunboots – The fashionable and lethal Gunboots allow players to unleash a torrent of firepower on the nasty creatures dwelling in the well and slow your decent with each shot.
– Unique Weapons & Items – Get different weapons, shop for peculiar items and obtain powerful upgrades that all stack and affect the way you play!
– A New Adventure Every Time – Each level in Downwell is procedurally generated, so no two trips down the well are ever the same providing a fresh new adventure each time!

As previously confirmed, Special Reserve Games is teaming up with Devolver Digital to release a physical version of this title.

Will you jump down the well when this game arrives on the Switch eShop? Let us know in the comments.

Earlier this month, it was revealed Switch sales in Japan had surpassed lifetime sales of the PlayStation Vita. Now, according to the latest Media Create sales figures, Nintendo’s hybrid system has outsold the combined sales of the original PlayStation 4 and Slim model in Japan.

The original PS4 and PS4 Slim combined have shifted 6,540,000 million units. In contrast, the most recent sales figures reveal the Switch has shifted 6,670,000 million units in Japan. The PlayStation 4 had a significant headstart, launching in its homeland in 2014. The Slim system helped increase sales when it arrived a few years later.

Based on this information, the Switch has now taken the lead in Japan by 130,000 units. Of course, this does not include PS4 Pro sales data. When this is taken into account, the PlayStation 4 is still technically in the lead, having shifted more than seven million units locally. At the very least, this is an indication the Switch is beginning to close the sales gap domestically. On a global scale, the Switch still has a long way to go. To date, the PlayStation 4 has now sold an estimated 88 million systems worldwide. As of September, the Switch has sold around 22 million units.

What do you think about the Switch outselling the original PS4 and Slim model in Japan? Do you consider this a milestone? Or will you hold off the celebrations in the hope it will eventually surpass combined PS4 Pro sales as well? Tell us below.

You may remember last year this humble NL scribe reported on the surprising discovery of two NES SimCity prototype cartridges in the wild.

This unreleased, Nintendo-developed version was one the NES holy grails of prototypes but not many people got their hands on the content of those two cartridges… until Frank Cifaldi quietly uploaded the complete findings within the ROM files to The Video Game History Foundation during Christmas afternoon.

Even among the more optimistic of retro enthusiasts, no one would imagine the prototype to be in such excellent shape. The game is almost completely bug-free, graphics and sound are fully implemented and despite a few unfinished functionalities, it is fully playable on real hardware and most accuracy-intensive emulators.

It is also amazing to realize that pretty much every exclusive feature we know and love about SimCity on the Super Nintendo began in this 8-bit counterpart, to the sprite of Dr. Wright and even the season’s colour palette rotation. No small feat for the humble NES, as you can witness from the gameplay session below.

Unlike most unreleased games, all the work that went into this version did not go to waste since it ended up being a very solid foundation for the Super Nintendo version. This is a video game industry artefact from decades long past that can now be enjoyed by everyone.

What do you think about this finding? Do you think Nintendo was right to cancel this and move everything to 16-bit? Would you have bought this on the NES back in the day? Tell us in the comment section below or we will send Bowser over to wreck your industrial zones.

Equilinox is a soothing game of shaping nature, having players create their own ecosystems of plants and animals living in harmony. Through the flora and fauna that you place throughout the world, you’ll feed into the needs of your living beings, creating a healthy world.

Karl Wimble, developer of Equilinox, put a deep love for the nurturing, calming power of nature into this sandbox title, using his own happy experiences with plants to create a slower, more relaxed game.

Not only would it be relaxing to play, but in some ways, its nature also made it more relaxing to develop, creating ways for even the developer to unwind while creating it.

Intrigued to learn more about Wimble’s naturalistic approach to game development, we caught up with the man himself for a quick chat about what happens when game dev and mother nature cross paths. 

How a love of nature created Equilinox

I’ve always been very interested in nature and love being outside in general. When I was young my mum used to teach me all about the different birds and plants in our garden and I really enjoyed growing things of my own, especially vegetables! I still do that to this day, in pots, on the balcony, or anywhere that I can find space for it! So, back in 2015 when I was deciding what project to do next, I wanted to make something nature-related to allow me to tie together two of my passions: nature and game development.

When I was deciding what type of game I wanted to make, I first considered making something similar to a farming simulator, as I’ve always enjoyed growing vegetables myself. However, there were already a lot of farming games in existence, so I decided to go for something similar but with a bit less “structure” – something a bit more organic. That’s where the idea of creating and balancing ecosystems came from. 

At the start, I had plans for a very sandbox-y simulation game, but as the project progressed, my ideas for the game altered slightly and I started incorporating more aspects of city-builder style games. Concepts such as paying currency to buy new objects for the world, earning currency back from certain objects, unlocking newer and more interesting objects as you progress, and managing your world to ensure nothing gets out of balance.

The appeal of building a natural world

For me, personally, I’ve always found something inherently satisfying about nurturing something, putting effort into growing it, and watching it thrive and grow over time. It’s like a very physical representation of progress – you put in the time and effort to look after something and you get to see the results very clearly as the plant grows. It’s even more satisfying when the plant produces fruit or vegetables, so that you can literally harvest the fruits of your labor. 

So, I imagine that it’s a similar feeling with the wildlife in Equilinox – you have to make some choices and put in some effort to make the habitats suitable for living in, and you then get to see your work pay off as the plants and animals flourish. Plus, in Equilinox, this happens a lot faster than in real life, so the satisfaction comes a lot quicker. Combine that with completing tasks and continuously unlocking new species with different behaviors as you progress, and you get a rather satisfying experience.

On giving players a variety of worlds to build

The main variety in the game comes from the fairly large number of species and the various different biomes. Over the years that I’ve been working on Equilinox, I’ve continuously been adding in new species to the game, and tried to give many of the plants and animals their own unique behaviors and effects. Even the plant species mostly have their own different purposes in the ecosystem, such as providing food, improving the biome quality, healing sick animals, calming the bees, producing fruit or providing a place for birds to nest, etc. 

There were actually many more animals in Equilinox at one point during development, but I decided to cut back a bit to ensure that each animal really added some value and something unique to the game, instead of just being another generic bouncing animal with a slightly different model. There’s every chance that I’ll add more of these species back into the game in the future, once I’ve spent the time to give them interesting behaviors and characteristics.

Choosing which animals & animals to add to Equilinox

To start with, I was somewhat limited by my artistic skills. As a programmer, I don’t have much experience with 3D modeling, so the first few animals I added were ones that I thought would be simple to make. The sheep was the first animal in Equilinox because I could make it using just a white blob with a few bits attached! As the project went on, I did manage to improve my low-poly modeling skills a bit and was able to add some more interesting animals. 

I often chose animals based on the behaviors that I thought would be interesting to add to the game, such as the beavers that cut down trees and make dams, or bees which build hives and produce honey. As for choosing plants, it was usually either because I thought the game was lacking something, or because I’d seen a nice tree outside that I wanted to recreate! I found modeling nature to be quite relaxing, and I would often create a new plant model for fun, just to relax a bit after hours of complex programming.

When to move away from real-world animal behaviors

It wasn’t really an intention of mine to make the game particularly educational, but if Equilinox helps to get people more interested in nature and ecosystems then all the better! A lot of the choices I made in terms of species are based on reality, although sometimes I had to make choices for gameplay reasons. 

For example, in Equilinox, the bees build their beehive directly on the floor instead of in trees. This is because I wanted the beehives to take a while to be created, and most of the trees have a relatively short life length, so it would have been hard to even start producing honey before the tree died and fell down. There are various other things like this in the game where I had to favor gameplay over reality.

City-builder inspirations in a game of nature

As I’ve already mentioned, I got quite a bit of inspiration from city-builder games. I saw how they made a game out of building and managing cities and I, to some extent, tried to apply the same concepts to creating and balancing ecosystems. 

The main gameplay points that I thought people would enjoy were the world creation aspect, the balancing/managing aspect, the feeling of progression, and the simulation of nature. So, I concentrated a lot on these four things, making sure there was enough freedom and variety to allow players to be creative in making their own worlds, ensuring that there were various things to balance and manage to keep the game interesting, allowing players to progress by unlocking new species through the evolution system, and making sure that there were plenty of interesting behaviors and interactions that would make the simulation feel dynamic and engaging.

Creating a soothing experience

I’ve always wanted Equilinox to be a calm and relaxing experience – a lovely way to de-stress at the end of a busy day. It’s not a fast paced game and it’s not full of action; it’s a simple game where you can immerse yourself in low-poly nature, enjoy the dynamic evolving world, and slowly expand your areas and shape the ecosystems to your liking. I hope that the cute art-style, quirky animations, and the peaceful sound effects and soundtrack help to make it an enjoyable and completely stress-free experience!

I think the style of game lends itself well to being a more relaxing experience. It would be quite a challenge to create a relaxing action game or first person shooter, but it’s rather easier when it’s a sandbox simulation/management game like Equilinox. The fact that the theme is nature also helps as I’m sure many people would associate nature with relaxation. 

As I said, the sound effect and music were also meant to add to the calming feel of the game – I explained to the musician who was making the soundtrack how I wanted the music in Equilinox to be gentle, ambient, background music (almost like the sort of music one might associate with meditation), and I tried to choose natural simple sounds for the UI sound effects; nothing too electronic sounding.

The gameplay itself it meant to be pretty stress free – it’s a very casual game; you don’t have to have your eyes glued to the screen the whole time, no terrible disaster is going to occur and require you to suddenly react, you can go away and come back again, and there’s no chance of you really losing much progress. There are also no time pressures of any sort; if you want you can just enjoy watching the birds make their nests for a while or watch the beavers as they go around collecting sticks to build their lodges. There are no punishments for not progressing fast enough.

On taking care of yourself during development

I’m extremely lucky – I love game development, it’s a huge passion of mine, and I get to do it every single day, so I have nothing to complain about on that front. However, spending all day every day in front of a computer is not the best for my health or sanity, so I do ensure that I take enough breaks, get outside, and meet with friends on a regular basis. 

There were times during the last years where I didn’t put so much importance on this and just concentrated on making progress with the game but it would inevitably lead to a burn out, eventually. So, I do put a lot of importance into having a good work-life balance, and this is something that I also try to get across in my devlog videos that I do each week on my YouTube channel. As for staying relaxed while actually working, I tried to mix up my tasks quite a bit to keep things interesting; for example, doing coding during the morning and then 3D modeling in the afternoon. It just helped to stop me getting too bogged down or burnt out on any particular task.