This Week in Games

At Least Mega Man Came Back

Welcome back, folks! The year is winding down, but our work with games doesn't! I've been fortunate to have a bit of spending money this month, which means I can add a ton of titles to my collection that I've kept an eye on. Unfortunately, this means that I have an even bigger backlog. Man, remember when I had a week off from my main job, and I could play a ton of video games and catch up? That was fun...

We love Monolith Soft around here. They're currently one of the biggest unsung heroes in gaming at the moment. The sheer technical and mechanical wizardry pulled off in the Xenoblade Chronicles series gets seriously short thrift. I agree with a lot of people that the proselytizing from Xenoblade fans gets a little militaristic at times, but it comes from a good place; if any other game besides Xenoblade Chronicles 2 featured a character with Pyra's storytelling, folks would still be pointing towards it as superlative. But also underappreciated is the amount of support work Monolith has done for Nintendo; even before Nintendo brought them into the fold, Monolith helped produce assets for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Their insight into open-world games was also no small help in getting Breath of the Wild to be the landmark title that it is. Which is why I'm not surprised that Daiki Iwamoto, Nintendo's general manager for the Zelda series, voiced his hopes that Monolith can take charge of a whole Zelda game.

Said Iwamoto (translated by GamesRadar+), "Monolith Soft is a strong partner when it comes to developing Zelda games from scratch. And more and more I would like to see them taking on a central role in production."

Purely on a technical merit, and assuming Monolith works on a Switch 2 title, they could do some magic. The Xenoblade games do amazing stuff on hardware that has no business running games of their scope. While a lot of the shortcuts can be obvious, the fact remains that in an era where games can easily be in the ballpark of at least 100 gigs in size, each of the three Xenoblade titles is less than 50 gigs in size. That's witchcraft.

Of course, story would be a concern; we haven't seen Monolith produce much outside of the Xenoblade series (or Baten Kaitos), but they're good at handling games that deal with heavier themes. Anyone who's played the Xeno-games knows that these games go far beyond just the trappings of "get sword, kill God." Not only that, but their side-quests are where the real meat of their games lies. A Monolith Soft Zelda would have a big world, and a thriving one at that.

The issue would be dungeons; a lot of people really miss the dungeons in Zelda, and don't find the shrines from Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom to be a good-enough substitute. And I myself have to wonder if Monolith can execute a good Zelda dungeon.

This is all, of course, pie-in-the-sky stuff. Monolith is hard at work on their as-yet unannounced title, and Nintendo has only just released another Hyrule Warriors title. If we're getting a new Zelda, it might not be until next year—for Zelda's 40th anniversary...

I had actually forgotten all about Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement! Announced earlier this summer, it's a prequel to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It looks fairly cool, with all of the grotesque monsters of the original plus the new twist of having two heroes working together in tandem. And while we don't have a concrete release date for it, outside of a vague "2026" window, we at least know where we can get it!

Bloodstained came from a weird era in gaming history where all of the big-name creatives were leaving their respective companies to make their own versions of the franchises they popularized, with blackjack and strippers. But in hindsight, I think Bloodstained might've been the only actual success. It was announced and crowdfunded around the same time as Keiji Inafune's Mighty No. 9, which was an infamous disaster. Yasumi Matsuno's Unsung Story never even finished production. Hideo Kojima leaving Konami didn't quite get us a new Metal Gear Solid, but rather Death Stranding. And while Death Stranding is still good, it's not quite the watershed locus of the industry that many wanted or hoped it to be. So here we have Koji Igarashi, former Assistant Director on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and long-time producer of many of the most beloved Castlevania games afterwards. Bloodstained carries many of his signature features (like the "Metroidvania" formula and the gothic setting), while also channeling heavily from both IGA's fan-favorite Castlevania titles like Order of Ecclesia or Aria of Sorrow while also channeling some of the titles from Castlevania's past via the 2D retro-styled Circle of the Moon games.

I don't think there's any real secret behind Bloodstained's successes; IGA's a brilliant creator, sure, but so are all of his peers. While IGA's eye for quality shouldn't be downplayed, the real secret to the Bloodstained series' success is that IGA has a well-managed team at his disposal. It's very easy in this day and age to chalk all of the successes (or problems) of a series to just one person at the company. Pokémon fans are especially bad at presuming everything wrong with the games came from Junichi Masuda and nobody else. But the truth is that games are collaborative creations made piecemeal and out-of-context; this is why whether something works or not all boils down to the execution. Having a massive wasteland in the middle of your map isn't inherently bad design, because that's the entirety of Shadows of the Colossus. Letting people travel to any mountain they can see isn't inherently good, especially if there's jack-all to find once you get there. This is not to diminish what Igarashi and his team have accomplished, mind; I think there's more to it than just "IGA good." The man's got a good team, and they've done good work three times over.

All this to say that I'm quite looking forward to The Scarlet Engagement when it drops. Who knows, it might have some backstory for Dominique...

Last week saw the announcement of a new game in a venerable series of action platformers that got its start on the Famicom. It's a long-running series that fans hadn't seen for a good long time, so there's plenty of reason to celebrate this! That's right, we can finally smile again because Ninja JaJaMaru-kun is back!

Jaleco, as a company, has been defunct since 2014. A real pity, that; while their heyday was during the 16-bit era, they had produced games right up until the Wii. And you've probably played at least some of their games! The NES Astyanax, Shatterhand and SNES Jurassic Park are probably top of the list for gamers of a certain age, but some of their lesser-known titles also populate the Nintendo Switch Online catalogue like Tuff E Nuff, Operation Logic Bomb. The closest thing they had to a mascot was JaJaMaru the Ninja, a red-clad warrior who fought to protect the princess Sakura Hime from the yokai armies of Namazu Dayuu (a pirate catfish). The original Ninja JaJaMaru-Kun tasked JaJaMaru with defeating all of the various yokai in a stage by stomping them or tossing shuriken at them. He could also collect their liberated souls for extra points. It's a simple formula, but a fun one—and one that many Famicom players remember fondly, so much so that Retro Game Challenge on the DS even featured an ersatz JaJaMaru-kun in the form of Robot Ninja Haggleman.

JaJaMaru-kun's games never really made it over to the US, at least not with any consistency. The first game to release in the US was Rad Action in 1987 on NES, a belt-scrolling action game. 1991's Maru's Mission later released on GameBoy. 1992 would bring in the Zelda-inspired Ninja Taro, where your ninja protagonist spelunked dungeons and slayed demons while collecting unique weapons. Later games on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn missed the United States entirely. Not helping matters, however, was the drastic genre shifts between games; Jaleco attached the "JaJaMaru" name to pretty much every trending genre. Side-scrollers and Zelda-likes were aplenty, but the success of Dragon Quest ensured a JaJaMaru-Kun RPG with 1989's JaJaMaru: Ninpo Cho.

JaJaMaru's is still a hallowed name in the gaming industry, and with 2025 being the franchise's 40th anniversary, City Connection and amazing are working together to make a new game in the series, JaJaMaru no Hyakki Yagyou Den. Little is currently known about the game, other than its 2026 release date. Will it come to America? Tough to say; ININ was nice and released the Ninja JaJaMaru: Retro Collection in 2023, which bundled (and translated) five classic JaJaMaru games along with 2019's Ninja JaJaMaru: The Great Yokai Battle. It's currently available on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch eShop. ININ also localized two of the JaJaMaru RPGs for both platforms. Whether that means there's room for a new JaJaMaru game to come Stateside is still up in the air.

We got a slew of WORLD PREMIERs last week. Sure hope that was worth screwing over the members of Future Class program. Anyway, we'll be focusing on the news that pertains to Japanese titles. Tomb Raider, a new Divinity and Saros all look neat, mind.

I do not know what to make of the teaser for the upcoming Street Fighter movie. I'm already torn on the casting, but some of those outfit designs... yikes. I see the vision, they're trying to translate the recent hyper-stylization of Street Fighter 6 to live-action. But stylization is something you have to be really careful with in live-action. I think of the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy film and how the sets (and Beatty's yellow trench coat) properly capture the saturated colors of a newspaper comic or the disfigured faces of the mobsters, but even audiences in the '90s didn't know what to make of the garish colors or freak-faced characters. There's a way to bring that kind of hyper-stylization to film, the Wachowski sisters nailed it with Speed Racer and nobody else has ever really managed to follow in their footsteps. It's entirely beyond me to say they shouldn't have tried to be so accurate to the in-game designs—if they managed it, it would've looked awesome. But stuff like 50 Cent's bad Balrog wig or Corey Rhodes' CollegeHumor-looking Guile wig make me feel like maybe they shouldn't have.

As I said, I don't know what to make of it. I can't pretend the 1993 Street Fighter film isn't pure cheese, but then you see the end card where the whole cast re-creates the iconic poses for each of their characters—Jean-Claude Van Damme brushing his hair as Guile, Ming-Na Wen nailing Chun Li's joyful jumping, and so on—and I have to think that maybe taking liberties isn't a cardinal sin. I'd go so far as to insist that we owe the 1993 Street Fighter an apology, because if this was what Internet Critics were calling "goofy" for years while a Street Fighter teaser tries to get me excited over a reference to the car-destroying minigame, I'd take Raúl Juliá as M. Bison any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. I don't hate it, but I can definitely see how someone at CAPCOM has much, much tighter reins over the project—and that's probably not for the best. (Also, 2025 is entirely too late for anyone involved with Street Fighter to go on-stage and start beef with Mortal Kombat. Come on.)

We got another Resident Evil Re9uiem trailer, in advance of its February 26 release date—revealing the return of everyone's favorite babygirl, Leon Kennedy! In keeping with the newer Resident Evil games, Leon is older now (somewhere in his early 50s). Fans are somewhat torn over Leon's aging, but he still looks plenty fit to me. I bet his tramp stamp is still in fine condition. And he still seems to play along the lines of how he works in Resident Evil 4, round-house kicking zombies coming at him with chainsaws. Just a shame they don't let Jill age the same way...

It's Astro Boy Mega Man! CAPCOM revealed we're getting a new Mega Man game in 2027, Dual Override. While the game doesn't quite have a number affixed to it, CAPCOM has been up-front that by all intents and purposes, this is the official twelfth Mega Man game. Little is known, but the trailer does hint that Mega Man's brother, Proto Man, will also be returning (that's his iconic whistle at the end). The charm is all there, with no sign of pizza explosions anywhere. Even if the teaser seems rather bare-bones, it'll still be another year-and-change before the game lands—I expect plenty of additions to come down the road. Who knows, maybe Bass will come back! I've got a soft-spot for the bat-headed edgelord. Playable Roll would also be fun, especially considering how much of a blast that was back in Mega Man: Powered Up on the PSP.

That Bitch™ has strong feelings about Mega Man. When I read gaming magazines as a kid in the '00s, writers and fans alike really wouldn't stop talking about how there were "too many Mega Man games." I remember an old Electronic Gaming Monthly op-ed about the abundance of sequels in the gaming industry, where the article's image was a line of Mega Man action figures rolling out on an assembly line. And, make no mistake, there are a ton of Mega Man games, especially across all of the spin-offs: besides the classic series and the X series, the 2000s gave the world the Battle Network games, Mega Man Star Force, Mega Man Zero, and Mega Man ZX. And, to be quite fair, some of these games are better than others. I wouldn't wish Mega Man X7 on my worst enemy. But I simply enjoyed the riches for what they were. I won't begrudge someone for not liking how the Robot Masters are reimagined in Battle Network. But I loved all the Mega Man spin-offs for what they were; the whimsical charm of the Classic games, the radical designs and music of the X series, Toru Nakayama's iconic designs in the dark Zero games, the joyful adventure of the Legends games, the New Millenium vibes of the Battle Network games. A lot of folks hold out for Legends 3, and to be sure, so do I—but I wish folks would also take the time to check out the Mega Man games they missed out on between Legends 2 and Legends 3's announcement. And really, there's no better time than now; Dual Override won't come out until 2027, and the myriad Mega Man Legacy Collection games are an embarrassment of riches. Mega Man is more than just the charming Blue Bomber or the Laputa: Castle in the Sky-esque Digger; the Mega Man games really show just how much creativity you can pack into an overarching series while maintaining its identity. I wish it didn't take Mega Man Legends 3 getting cancelled for folks to realize that, but more than that, I hope that more people can enjoy now what so many didn't appreciate back in the early '00s.

A few more details to bring up about the esteemed Blue Bomber before we move on. First off: to coincide with Mega Man: Dual Override's development, CAPCOM is also bringing back a new Robot Master Design Contest. There's a prompt involved, the robot master has to include "a right arm with immense suction powers," so people can't go entirely on the lam with regards to their designs (this is in keeping with some of the more "recent" Robot Master design contests, like Sword Man, Clown Man and Search Man from Mega Man 8 (their prompts involved "a robot with a sword for a hand," "a robot with extendable arms," and "a robot with two heads"). There have already been a lot of interesting designs made by fans and artists on Twitter, including the fascinating gachapon-inspired "Gachaman" by former Nintendo artist Takaya Imamura (though they might have to change the name). There are some eyebrow-raising terms to the contest, though; for starters, the submissions must be made exclusively through Twitter. Many artists have abandoned Twitter due to the toxicity or Twitter's terms regarding content scraping for generative AI engines. As it turns out, artists don't like their work being stolen. But the other issue is that the contest is not just work-for-hire, it's speculative work-for-hire on top of that: the winner effectively relinquishes all rights for the Robot Master to CAPCOM, in exchange for... the exposure from having your Robot Master be in Dual Override. No money prize, no certificate, not even a complimentary digital download code for the game. They don't even seem to have rules regarding designs created by a generative AI engine.

I've spoken fondly of Robot Master design contests in the past; famously, mangaka Yūsuke Murata designed two Robot Masters for the Mega Man series as a child (Dust Man and Crystal Man). But in today's day and age, artists are far more keen on their work, and I similarly do not gel with the idea of speculative work, especially when the reward is literally just exposure. That kind of thing is understandable back in the early '90s, when you're fishing for applicants among middle schoolers reading Famitsu or Nintendo Power—not 2025, where major studios like CAPCOM actively cultivate communities of fan artists. I can't stop people from throwing their lot in and designing robots, nor am I interested in doing so. But in 2025, people's time and effort in designing stuff in a contest is worth more than a metaphorical pat on the shoulder. (For those keeping track at home, this and more is why I think The Pokémon Company International accepting and canonizing certain fan-made Pokémon is a horrible idea.)

To round out the CAPCOM news, we have word on a release date for Pragmata, the upcoming single-dad robo-girl game. For starters, it's due out this April 24. CAPCOM already has a slew of DLC prepped; I'm mildly fine with some of the cosmetic stuff, but stuff like DLC for Diana's gestures makes me wrinkle my nose. Also newsworthy was the reveal that Pragmata would be releasing on the Nintendo Switch 2, in addition to the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Steam. Not only that, but Nintendo is developing an Amiibo for the game, based on Diana. No word yet on what the Amiibo will do. Finally, Pragmata has a demo available on Steam (other consoles will receive a demo at a later date). The big reveal from the demo is how Diana and Mr. John Videogamedadguy interact in combat: Diana hacks enemies at a range via a real-time minigame (all while Mr. Videogamedadguy dodges enemy fire); once the hacking is finished, the enemies reveal their weak points, which Videogamedadguy can shoot. The minigame reminds me a bit of Yakuza 0's disco minigame. Again, I'm not entirely sure about Pragmata; I really hope the writing is up to snuff, because I don't need another sad dad game where the relationship is basically John Bioshockinfinity and Elizabeth Comstock all over again. (My brain didn't remember "Booker Dewitt" for a few minutes.)

Hey, speaking of Yakuza! Folks have been excited to see what Toshihiro Nagoshi would be up to in the wake of his departure from Sega and the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio. And it turns out, he's working on Gang of Dragon, a... cinematic open-world action game set in a seedy pleasure district in Japan, featuring a strong yet principled man who's grown up in Japan's seedy underbelly. At the risk of being flippant: yeah, looks like homeboy is just making another Yakuza. But—this one stars Korean actor Ma Dong-Seok as protagonist Shin Ji-Seong. I really like Ma! He's best known for playing bruisers, but he was especially charming in Last Train to Busan. And hey, he plays badasses well: the trailer begins with him gripping a knife that someone is trying to stab deeper into his belly. I think there's plenty of room for cinematic gangster games in the industry; the Like A Dragon games have never been better (or better-received), and Nagoshi seems to be working with some top-tier creatives. Let's see how this one works...

Earlier in the day, before Ace Combat 8 was announced, I was actually thinking to myself, "Hey, it's been a bit since we last got an Ace Combat. I wonder if we'll ever get another one..." Bandai Namco must've heard me! Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is the first Ace Combat in six years. Man, it felt like yesterday where we were all united in our love of an out-of-place static dog JPEG... Wings of Theve has players entering the skies of Strangereal as a newcomer pilot assisting the legendary Wings of Theve, an "Ace of Aces"— who is actually just a figurehead propped up by social media. After the Ace gets shot down, you are chosen to be their replacement. Your actual performance is just a matter of online propaganda, but the missions are yours as you take on experimental aircraft. I'm sadly inexperienced with the Ace Combat series; I can only imagine the reactions from the Real Ones™ at hearing "Usea" out of nowhere. So far, we know Wings of Theve will arrive in 2026. Maybe I'll get to play this one...

We're getting a new Nioh game! I might've said this before, but as much as I appreciate the style, aesthetics, and mechanics of Nioh, I'm absolutely trash at the games. I wish I were better at them, because I love what the games do and how they go about it. Nioh 3 promises plenty more mechanical depth than its predecessors: in addition to featuring oni-women that are constantly trying to curb-stomp you, players can swap between "Samurai" and "Ninja" playstyles. This is on top of the games having some of the best character customization options out there. Definitely look forward to its release this February 6 (a demo will be available on January 29).

I didn't know what to make of Stupid Never Dies, until I actually sat down to watch the trailer. I've seen a lot of people compare it to Warm Bodies, but really, the tone has way more in common with Lollipop Chainsaw with early 2000s pop-punk. This is a game that would've had a whole generation of teens obsessed if it came out even as late as 2015. You play as Davy, a self-described lowest-rung loser of a zombie, hopelessly in love with the cheerleader/sniper Juliet. Using your zombie powers, Davy rampages against hordes of other zombies and horror monsters, earning new body parts along the way that improve his own abilities—all in the hopes of healing Julia, who's been put into cryo-stasis for a bit. Stupid Never Dies features Hiroyuki Kobayashi, formerly of CAPCOM; he's been the producer for titles like the Devil May Cry series or Dragon's Dogma. I wasn't sure what to make of Stupid Never Dies, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on it. I dunno, chalk it up to my soft spot for The All-American Rejects. (Seriously, the little music video at the beginning of the Stupid Never Dies trailer is stupid catchy!)

Contrast that with Orbitals; when I first set eyes upon it, I was immediately taken with the old-school anime visuals. They perfectly nailed the dusty texture of old hand-drawn animation cels, and the art style evokes older 80s anime like The Dirty Pair. Slam-dunk, right? Well... Orbitals is a co-op game (as a buddy on Bluesky put it, one of the games made in the wake of It Takes Two winning an award back in 2021). Not necessarily the kiss of death for a game, but I tend to play games alone; the experience is compromised if half the fun requires another person. It looks great, though, so on visuals alone it's got my nod.

Phantom Blade Zero finally has a release date: September 9, 2026!

The Seven Deadly Sins: Origins arrives on PS5 this January 28.

Switch 2 users can try out the Final Fantasy VII Remake Integrade demo ahead of its January 22 release date.

Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space has announced, of all things, a Chrono Cross collab! The event was due to start this February 2026, but Another Eden will make the event available to players all the way up until 2031. Also, Chrono Cross's Glenn will be a playable character in Another Eden!

If you were wondering if the suit between Sony and Tencent over Light of Motiram would ever get particularly spicy, know that it won't: the two companies have apparently settled out of court.

That'll do it for this week, I think. In fact, that'll probably do it for this year. Next week is Christmas, and we'd be coming back to This Week in Games on January 2, well into the beginning of 2026. I wish I had something profound to say about 2025... but also, man, I'm tired. We all are. It's been a rough year for all of us, and things don't seem to be in a hurry to improve. More than ever, it's important to help out our fellows. There will never be anything quite so important that you can do for yourself more than touching grass. I hope everyone can spend their winter holiday with their loved ones, and at least celebrate the shaking off of this year's dust from their boots. I thank you all for joining me this year, and I look forward to another 52-ish columns in 2026. From all of us at This Week in Games, Happy Holidays! Be good to each other. I'll see you in 2026.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Anime News Network, its employees, owners, or sponsors.