Handheld Gaming News week 49

Time again for the weekly handheld gaming news! It was an exiting week for me an my family as Sinterklaas once again found our door. I’ve mentioned this celebration in the Netherlands before, celebrating the birthday of Saint Nicholas. Lots of gift giving an writing verse, a cosy night with the family and to my joy, lots of sweet candy.

What an exiting couple of weeks it has been here on the site, as another great writer joined our ranks with a personal story about how her love affair with the DS came about!

The link to the first part of her story is here.

Vic shared her insights on the future of handheld gaming with us, which always gets us gamers going with some nice discussion. As she is also the one that started the successful Facebook group Handheld Gaming Network two years ago, she has seen the way we game change.

Her insights are here. 

But, lots more happened this week, so lets go!

The Game Awards 2017: Breath of the Wild is winner

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was announced Game of the Year! And not just that, the game was also voted Best Action/Adventure game and won in Best Game Direction. Of course, there where many more awards to be given, and these stood out to me. If you want to see the entire list, you can find it here.

  • Best RPG: Persona 5
  • Best Family Game: Super Mario Odyssey
  • Best Strategy Game: Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Champions Ballad, DLC for BotW

Nintendo took the opportunity to release DLC pack 2, the Champions Ballad and showed the trailer at the awards show. In case you missed it, the DLC is downloadable now!

The Champions’ Ballad DLC Pack adds a new dungeon, an original story, and even more new challenges. Many of these will guide you towards finding new outfits and armor. If you follow these, you will be able to find Zant’s helmet, Phantom Ganon’s armor, Ravio’s hood, and a royal guard’s costume. Most importantly, you be able to find Link’s lobster pajamas from The Wind Waker.

There is also a quest for an ancient bridle and saddle for your horse, which makes it easier to teleport them right to you and spur faster. Your journal will send you to a few locations to speak with locals or find journals with hints leading to these items. As for the awesome bike that is shown at the end, the Master Cycle 0, it can be unlocked once you clear the new DLC content.

In order to access the Champions’ Ballad quest, you will need to complete all four Divine Beasts and the quests surrounding them. When you’ve done that, you should hear a message from Zelda telling you to go to the Shrine of Resurrection. Go back, place your Shiekah slate in the terminal you find there and you’ll start up the DLC.

The Lost Sphear demo on Switch

The Lost Sphear demo has finally made it outside of Japan. North American and European gamers can head to the Nintendo Switch eShop to get the free demo for Lost Sphear. The demo is about an hour long, and it will give you a sample of what to expect. You go to the beginning of the game, exploring the initial town. When the final version arrives you can carry the data over too!

Monster Hunter Stories on mobile in Japan

Now this was a surprise to me: We’ve only had Monster Hunter Stories in the West for a couple of months, but Japan has had the game on 3DS for a year now. Still, it surprises me that Capcom has released the game on mobile in Japan.

You can try the game for free on both iOS and Android and then purchase it for 1.900 Yen, for the full game. That’s about $ 17, a lot cheaper then the 3DS version.

Stardew Valley will come to the PS Vita

Well, well! Good news if you have a Vita, and haven’t played one of the console versions yet: Stardew Valley will come to the Vita too. It’ll be available next year, and it will have cross-buy too, so if you’ve got Stardew Valley on Playstation 4 you won’t need to buy it again to play it on your PS Vita. However, it’s worth noting that the multiplayer update, that will come to the console versions, won’t reach the Vita.

New street view in Pokémon Go

If you’ve been into your Pokémon Go recently, you might have seen a change. Niantic is no longer working with Google Maps, but with open-source, user-generated OpenStreetMap. This means that they are now using maps that have been made using data people all over the world provide. I just now checked, and saw an immediate change. We are having a weather alarm today, as lots of snow is expected. And that’s exactly the info I got in Pokémon Go, along with snow on my screen. Nice!

World of Final Fantasy Meli Melo releasedate

Last week I mentioned the new World of Final Fantasy games that is making its way to mobile. WOFF Meli Melo got a release date: December 12 in Japan. Plus, the game reached 500,000 pre-registrations, so that means players will get all pre-registration bonus rewards, including the 4-star Shiva Mirage for hitting 500,000. No news yet about a Western release. 

RPG Dragon Fang Z will hit eShop in America

A new, rogue-like title will soon hit the American Switch eShop: Dragon Fang Z: on December 19. Toydea, the creator of the game wanted to make an RPG with over 200 monsters that appear with the possibility of befriending them. Monsters have abilities that will come in handy during your journey too.

In addition to taking on dungeons the game offers plenty of other elements such as weapon and armor creating, item appraisals, item storage, monster fights and evolutions, score attack, monster bestiary, achievements, 50 stages rule practice puzzle dungeons, and high-difficulty long-dungeons for advanced players.

Enough for this week, right? I’m going to go back to playing Portal Knights on my Switch. I also bought Xenoblade chronicles 2 yesterday, a game that I’m not sure of yet. But a couple of my readers who tend to like the same games I do are very enthusiastic about it, so I’m giving it a go!

Have a great gaming weekend, thanks once again for reading!

 

 

6 comments

  1. Nice Mario & Rabbit Kingdom won best strategy game.
    I really loved it! So funny and good gameplay!
    Hope you like Xenoblade!

  2. Good to know you’re enjoying Xenoblade 2! …Did you ever encounter the Territorial Rotbart? Because that thing is a ruiner of explorers everywhere!
    Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to get the game… Welp! Whatever. I replayed Miitopia, and am currently playing Pokemon Black, as a Let’s Player I like is currently playing the game.

    1. I haven’t been able to play much yet, just doing the initial quests and getting my bearings. So I haven’t run into the Territorial Rotbart yet…don’t even know what it is! Work is seriously hectic at the moment, not fair when real life interferes.
      Always best to play with someone you like, right?

    2. I’ve met him alright! With multiple deadly consequences.
      It’s frustrating, but I kind of like you just can’t run around the place like you’re the king of the jungle. (he is)
      Meaby 100 gaming hours from now 🙂
      I’m so addicted! I even play while hometraining.
      Luckily for my boyfriend I go to bed very early so he has some Xenoblade/ Switch time to!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *