Earlier this week, Nintendo dropped the news that today would feature a Nintendo Direct presentation, where the company has lately been announcing new products and more throughout the year, rather than bunching up everything at E3. With the holiday season approaching, the Direct is set to focus on what's coming to Switch and 3DS in the near future, but details are otherwise scarce.

The backlash—and legal actions—in response to YouTube star PewDiePie's use of racist language has prompted him to issue an apology, because he likes money and fame and would like to keep both.

The original Game Boy title Metroid II: Return of Samus was a bit of an oddball for the Metroid series, with its largely linear gameplay and cramped environments, compared to the series' knack for sprawling exploration. It's been left in the dust by the rest of the series over the years, but the 3DS's Metroid: Samus Returns is about to change all that.

There's a big difference between supporting streamers and holding a man with an audience of millions accountable for propagating and normalizing bigoted language.

The world of video games has faced plenty of growing pains, but none may be more contentious for players than new business models enabled by the internet. With players able to download additional content for games, developers are more than happy to supply it, for a price. That comes with a tricky balance in convincing consumers that they're getting a fair deal—one newly-released Destiny 2 seems to have botched.

Rumors of Mario no longer being a plumber have been greatly exaggerated. Or, at least, they're a bit misleading, if entirely true. Within the context of Mario's fictional universe, yes, Nintendo did recently specify that he's a former plumber, but for the purposes of the real world, "plumber" is just as accurate a way to describe the mustachioed mascot as ever.

George Orwell's name has been tossed around a lot in relation to modern politics and technology, to varying degrees of accuracy. Here's something that you can certifiably deem Orwellian, though: a video game based on the 1945 Orwell novel Animal Farm.

The Olympic Games maybe need to take a look over those values they're so committed to adhering to.

MISSING: The Complete Saga aims to tell the story of a young girl faced with the cruel realities of human trafficking by way of an RPG.

Play this cute It game they said. It'll be fun, they said.

Sonic Mania is out today, bringing old school Sonic the Hedgehog goodness to modern gaming consoles. The game has already done plenty to show its love for Sonic fans, with remixed classic stages, retooled yet familiar sprite animations, and the utilization of fan-gone-pro talent for development. With so much love poured into it, it's really no surprise that the game features some great Easter eggs, including a delightful hidden mode.

You can take the Republican out of the Party, but you can't take the misinformed, backwards ideology out of the Republican.

In an interview with executive producer Adi Shankur, who has also just picked up an adaptation of Assassin's Creed, we discuss what makes a video game adaptation good and what it means to understand fandom.

Nintendo's big thing in recent times has been releasing products that are near impossible to find, a problem that plagued Amiibo collectors as well as those who wanted to buy the NES Classic Edition console. With the SNES Classic already on the way, it seems like Nintendo's not about to stop there, as news of a Nintendo 64 Classic has surfaced before the SNES has even launched.

Hey, remember the first trailer for Pokémon GO, waaaayyyy back about a thousand years ago, a.k.a. 2015? Among other parts of the new-infamous game it hinted at, it showed a number of players all coming together in one location to take on Mewtwo all at once in a manner suspiciously similar to the raid battles that arrived in the game recently? That's not a coincidence, and now legendary Pokémon are coming with it.

It was already weird enough that a game existed about a plumber who stomps on turtles, eats mushrooms to become giant, and spits fire, and his propensity for coming back to life after death has been explored before. Mario Odyssey, however, added several new layers of absurdity, with Mario possessing people, dinosaurs, and inanimate objects, and apparently never arriving at a "game over" Screen—which got a disturbing twist once news hit the internet.

Pokémon GO is a full year old today, and it's enjoying a bit of a renaissance right now with the addition of raid battles and adjusted gym mechanics. Those aren't the only things players are clamoring for, though, and Niantic boss John Hanke has confirmed that some features we had started to give up hoping for actually are on the way.