Nintendo has revealed more information about the Virtual Boy games coming to Switch and Switch 2. Unveiled earlier this year to the surprise of many, the company is reviving its early, unsuccessful swing at VR by releasing a selection of games on Nintendo Switch Online that can be played with a peripheral modeled after the original console. Today, a new trailer showed off some of the games coming to the platform, as well as some quality-of-life improvements to hopefully make the notoriously uncomfortable device a little more comfortable.

The launch catalogue of games, available on February 17, includes Teleroboxer, Galactic Pinball, Red Alarm, Golf, Virtual Boy Wario Land, 3-D Tetris, and The Mansion of Innsmouth. That last game, known as Innsmouth no Yakata in Japan, was never officially released in the US before now.

The ad also shows other games coming to the service later this year, including Mario Clash, Mario Tennis, Jack Bros, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, Virtual Bowling, Vertical Force, and V-Tetris. These games, along with the seven above, were announced when the Virtual Boy's return was announced, but today's footage showed two more, Zero Racers and D-Hopper, are also coming to the service. Both games have never been released before, due in part to the console's short lifespan, so this is the first time they'll be playable for the public. None of the non-launch games have a specific release date just yet, but other game collections in the Nintendo Classics library are released in packs of one to two every month or so, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume the Virtual Boy games would follow the same schedule.

Finally, Nintendo also shared some quality of life improvements, which are largely in-line with features you expect in other Nintendo Classics apps, including suspended saves at any time, remappable controls, and a rewind feature, which helps mitigate the sometimes frustrating design of titles from that era. Players will also be able to adjust games' colors, with footage showing the screen changing the red pixels white, green, or yellow. This feature isn't coming until later in the year, however, and doesn't work with the Virtual Boy cardboard model.

The Virtual Boy launch games and headsets drop on February 17. The more authentic plastic model is $99.99, while the cardboard one will run you $24.99.

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: Bandai Namco
Release: January 30, 2026
Rating: Mature

It’s fitting that Code Vein II is set in a world of vampires. As I hunted down these bloodsucking creatures in the present and 100 years in the past to prevent the collapse of the world, I felt trapped within its clutches, like a castle guest desperate to escape but unable to do so. Across 42 hours of monotonous game, I found little warmth here. Its skin, a distractingly garish and ugly visual style, is as cold as its blood, a combat system that struggles to fuse original ideas onto a skeleton sculpted better elsewhere in the genre. Even its narrative fangs, which begin in earnest with unique ideas, lose their bite as repetitive storytelling devices and overextended arcs drag on. As I plunged my hunter’s stake into the game’s final boss, the biggest smile yet stretched across my face – finally, I could lay Code Vein II to rest. 

After creating a custom Revenant Hunter in Code Vein II’s excellent character creator, I was quickly thrown into a world-ending story filled with proper nouns and jargon that immediately bounced off me. It didn’t help that this world is wrapped in clashing visual styles that make it an eyesore to view, and forgettable performances struggle to sell the ambitious stakes. A rock-infused Baroque soundtrack helps the game’s lackluster soundscape, but I was otherwise uninterested in most everything I saw and heard on screen. 

Jumping between the apocalyptic present and 100 years in the past was interesting at first, as Code Vein II uses inspiring stories of what once was to explain how the world became what it is today. I enjoyed learning why once-allies became monstrous creatures I had to defeat in the present, and jumping back and forth to complete objectives is a nice change-up from the genre’s typical exploration. But before long, it became tedious with objectives that led to loading screens, followed by quick cutscenes, followed by more loading screens. Ghostly hallways where memories play out appeared as exposition dumps far too often, and I sprinted to the exit door each time.

My favorite arc of four within the wider narrative is in-depth and full of surprises, but it's the outlier, as the others are poorly paced, filled with boring dungeons and predictable characters, and struggled to find a hook – had I not been reviewing this game, there are moments a plenty when I would have ended my time with Code Vein II long before the credits.

The overworld is dull, with confusing map markers that must be destroyed to unobscure its features, and tedious pathing that makes traveling on foot or by motorcycle a chore. Code Vein II’s bespoke dungeons are largely just as uninteresting, filled with enemies that quickly grow stale, unimaginative set dressing that ranges from underground power plant to underground laboratory to underground prison, and boss fights either too easy to be exciting or too annoying to be fun. Fortunately, checkpointing is fair throughout, with dungeon pathing that makes collecting resources that drop after you die a welcome reprieve. 

 

Code Vein II’s combat, which follows in the footsteps of its 2019 predecessor with Soulslike action, has some compelling flair but is trapped in a world of dungeons and enemies that did little to entice me to experiment more with its mechanics. It’s doing a lot to let you craft a unique playstyle – there are primary weapons, secondary weapons, Jail weaponry with Ichor-sucking abilities, special attacks that use Ichor, equippable Blood Codes that drastically change your character’s stats, plenty of consumable and throwable items, and an AI partner that can bestow buffs or help you fight outright, but little inspired me to utilize this expansive suite in combat. I mostly fought the same types of enemies in Code Vein II’s final act as I did in its opening hours, and though I tried forcing myself to experiment and play with the many tools at my disposal, it was simply easier (and faster) to swing a big sword over and over. 

The few times I did struggle in combat were against frustrating bosses marred by poor camera positioning, annoying hitboxes, and unfair attacks that don’t seem to follow the same rules of physics my moves do. Some bosses, like the final adversaries of each arc in the game, buck this trend with engaging movesets that were fun to learn and counter, but overall, boss fights, like the other enemy encounters in the game, were flat and aggressively mediocre. Even its menus and UI, which are reminiscent of a player’s screen hundreds of hours into an MMO, struggle to find harmony in this game’s overall messy presentation. 

I want to say there’s something enjoyable, interesting even, buried beneath the flawed execution of Code Vein II, but that something is the corpse of other games in the genre this vampiric creation is feeding on for inspiration. Remove it, and what remains is an unremarkable and forgettable experience.

Score: 5.5

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Invincible VS’ roster of playable Viltrumites has expanded with the additions of Anissa and Lucan. Acting as the game's 12th and 13th characters, the pair bring even more brutality to an already hyperviolent tag team fighter.

Like fellow Viltrumites Omni-Man and Thula, Anissa and Lucan are powerhouses whose immense strength is matched only by their ferocity. Both pummel opponents in their own unique and referential ways, from Anissa “educating” adversaries by slapping them senseless or Lucan breaking spines over his knee like an extraterrestrial Bane. Check them out in action in the trailer below. 

Anissa and Lucan join an announced roster of Invincible, Omni-Man, Atom Eve, Rex Splode, Monster Girl, Robot, Battle Beast, Thula, Cecil Stedman, Bulletproof, and original character Ella Mental. With a confirmed roster of 18 characters, only five slots remain open; who do you think will fill them?

Invincible VS will launch on April 30 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. You can learn more about the game by reading our first preview of the game from last June here. 

This year is poised to deliver an incredible slate of nerdy entertainment, and one of the first examples of that is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The follow-up to 2023's Super Mario Bros. Movie, which grossed more than $1.3 billion at the box office, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie looks to dramatically expand the scope by not only bringing our beloved heroes to space, but also by introducing several beloved characters to this cinematic continuity. 

The first trailer gave us looks at Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson) and Bowser Jr. (voiced by Bennie Safdie), and the second trailer finally paid off the post-credits teaser of the first film by introducing us to Yoshi. While we don't know who voices him, it may be less consequential than who voices the other characters, as, right now, it just seems like he might make various noises with an occasional "Yoshi" thrown into his dialogue. 

Outside of Yoshi's introduction, we also got looks at Tostarena Town and the Sand Kingdom from Super Mario Odyssey, the Frog Suit from Super Mario Bros. 3, Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2, and plenty of nods from other Mario games.

You can see the trailer below:

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie arrives in theaters on April 1, 2026, exactly three years after the premiere of the first movie. 

Resident Evil Requiem will soon be upon us, launching February 27 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. Ahead of its launch, I went hands-on with the upcoming survival horror game to play an hour as Leon S. Kennedy and two hours as Grace Ashcroft, and you can read my thoughts here. 

Following that gameplay session, though, I interviewed Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi, who addressed rumors surrounding the game's exploration, making clear that it is not an open world game. I also spoke to Nakanishi about giving Leon a chainsaw, this game's take on Resident Evil zombies, nostalgia, building tension in horror, and so much more. You can read the full transcript of our interview below: 

Interview Q&A With Resident Evil Requiem Director Koshi Nakanishi

Game Informer's Wesley LeBlanc: The first question I want to ask is about the chainsaw. Why now? Why is now the time to put a chainsaw in Leon's hands finally? 

Resident Evil Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi via an interpreter: So the chainsaw – first off, if you've played previous Resident Evil games, you probably know chainsaws are a pretty symbolic weapon in a lot of different games. So whenever a new entry in the Resident Evil series, or whenever the developers are working on a new entry in the Resident Evil series, there's always a lot of thought put into how the chainsaw will be used in this game. So in this game, the zombies can actually use tools. They have retained some of their memory pre-turning into a zombie. And so yeah, being able to use tools is something the zombies can do here. And so with that being the case, it made sense for all the zombies to also be able to use a chainsaw. So, going from there, if one enemy with the chainsaw is defeated, it makes sense for the other zombies to pick it up and to be able to use it. And so from there, it went to, "Well, if that's the case, then of course, you as the player also want to use it." And so that's kind of how that line of thought naturally progressed and resulted in Leon being able to wield a chainsaw in Resident Evil Requiem. 

Another driving force behind it is that by Resident Evil Requiem, Leon has a lot of experience under his belt at this point, so it felt like a good time for Leon to turn the tables a bit and use a chainsaw himself, since he's gone up against so many chainsaws previously. 

And keeping up with the chainsaws, I noticed immediately in the Leon section that when it hits the ground, it's spinning. Zombies walked over it and it cut their legs off. I'm curious if there are any other kind of physics interactions like that in the game, or is that just a cool little one-off with the chainsaw? 

Nakanishi: Using enemy weapons is a pretty big feature of gameplay, so being able to use enemy weapons against them is also going to be something you'll see come up beyond the sections that you've played as well.

I'm curious – you can switch perspectives between third-person and first-person. How did the team land on it defaulting to first-person for Grace and third-person for Leon? 

Nakanishi: So, actually, for the preview that you played, it doesn't start at the very beginning of the game. The story has progressed a bit. So actually, in the final version of the game, when you start the game, it's going to ask you, which do you prefer? It's up to the player, really, on what they want to use, and they can freely choose what they want to use when they start the game.

Is the intention for Grace and Leon's varying gameplay experiences to speak to each other in terms of balancing tension? 

Nakanishi: It's exactly as you said – the idea there is to build tension with the very horror-focused sections with Grace; she doesn't have as many options for combat as Leon, as he's much more combat-focused. So yeah, exactly as you said, that's the intention behind the design of the two characters, to have that tension and release between the two. And so [I'm] really happy that you were able to pick that up from just playing the preview.

What was the ethos behind designing the monsters and zombies in this game? 

Nakanishi: For Requiem, the main theme that ties basically all the enemies together is a virus. So obviously, the zombies are infected by a virus. There was not a whole lot shown in the preview, but there are other creatures as well who've been infected by the virus. So, it's kind of going back to that very central theme of Resident Evil, the enemies, basically, that that through line that goes through them all is centered around a virus.

Something I really enjoyed in the preview is that it felt almost nostaglic, in the sense that the Grace section felt very Resident Evil 2 police station, and Leon felt like toward the end of the game, where you're just kicking butt. I'm curious – is that intentional to set up a surprise feel for later in the game, or is it just a greatest hits of Resident Evil? 

Nakanishi: Obviously, Capcom has a long history with the Resident Evil franchise. The idea was to present an evolved version of some of the gameplay you know and love. So, as you said, Grace, there's a strong feeling of RE2 to show an evolution of the zombies, again, an evolution of RE2's gameplay, and Leon as well.  So yeah, you're right on the money there too.

What is the design intention behind the blood synthesis system? 

Nakanishi: There are kind of two things that led to including that crafting system with blood in Requiem. So the first one is: in lots of RE games, there's always a lot of blood in the environment, right? There's always a lot of blood everywhere in different environments. So the first question that kind of led to that system was the dev team looking at that and saying, "Is there any way to implement that element into the actual gameplay?" So that was one of the first drivers behind it. 

As for the intention behind that mechanic, it was to add another layer of player choice. So, for instance, yes, there's always the choice of running away or fighting the enemy, but knowing that you can possibly collect blood from the enemy gives you another incentive to defeat the enemy, like you were mentioning. So it just adds another layer of choice, and I guess risk and reward for players going through the game. Speaking about choice, I don't know if you utilized it or not, but there's an injector in the game that you can also craft that, if you sneak up, you can defeat an enemy with one hit. You'll notice that you can't collect their blood. So, yeah, again, it's really about, you know, adding player choice and giving different incentives for choosing different things.

What do you think is the most defining aspect of these zombies versus others in the RE series? 

Nakanishi: The thing that really sets these zombies apart, which we're sure you experienced when you played, is that the zombies actually retain some memory of their life before they turned into a zombie. So you can actually see that in their actions, as they're kind of focused on what they were doing or what they were responsible for before they turned into a zombie. So retaining a little bit of their past lives is something that's really new for the RE series here, and you'll actually, if you look closely, be able to utilize that stuff to your advantage. 

Nakanishi closed out the interview by addressing rumors that Resident Evil Requiem is an open world game – it isn't, and here's what he had to say. 

Resident Evil Requiem launches February 27 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC. 

For more about the game, read my hands-on preview of Resident Evil Requiem here, and then check out the latest news from the Resident Evil showcase that aired last month. After that, read about Leon's custom Porsche in the game, and then check out the Resident Evil Requiem Nintendo Switch 2 Pro controller.