The Nintendo Switch 2 is finally here and as previously reported the Switch 2 will be largely backwards compatible with Switch 1 games. However, there appears to be a concerted effort from Nintendo to introduce specially enhanced versions of Switch 1 games to the Switch 2. And these seem to go beyond just a graphical boost and framerate bump.

What Games are Playable on Switch 2?

As Nintendo breaks down, there will be primarily three types of games playable on the Switch 2. Native Switch 2 games that are developed for the system and cannot be played on the original Switch. Compatible Switch 1 games whose cartridges can slot right into the Switch 2 and be played natively on the console. And Switch 2 Edition games which are Switch 1 games that will receive new features and performance enhancements when played on Switch 2.

This doesn’t include classic games that are available through Nintendo Switch Online which includes a library of games from the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and now GameCube.

So What Comes in a Switch 2 Edition Game?

The main takeaway from the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct is that Nintendo appears to be trying to throw in a little extra for anyone playing a Switch 2 Edition of a Switch 1 game.

For example, Super Mario Party Jamboree was a Switch game and the Switch 2 Edition will come with a new suite of content called Jamboree TV that will take advantage of the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls, Switch 2 microphone, and the Switch 2 USB-C camera that will be sold separately.

Along with upgraded resolution up to 1440p in TV mode and better frame rate, there will be new minigames and online functions as well.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which will be a cross-gen game, will support mouse controls with Joy-Con 2, and multiple display modes like Quality Mode which runs at 60fps in 4K when docked, or 1080p at 60fps on handheld; or Performance Mode which runs a 120fps in 1080p when docked, or 120fps in 720p in handheld mode. All modes will support HDR.

Other Switch 2 Edition titles will get new story content like Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s Star-Crossed World add-on, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will gain additional support for the Zelda Notes service in the Nintendo Switch App that will give you guides and game help.

Some games, like Pokemon Legends: Z-A will only feature performance and resolution bumps as part of the Switch 2 Edition label.

When are the Switch 2 Edition Games Coming?

The Switch 2 is set to be released on June 5, 2025 and that’s around when the first batch of Switch 2 Edition games will arrive.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will get Switch 2 Editions on the day of the console’s launch on June 5, 2025.

Switch 2 Editions for Super Mario Party Jamboree + Jamboree TV will arrive a little later on July 24, 2025. Same for Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s update which will arrive on August 28, 2025.

Neither Metroid Prime 4: Beyond of Pokemon Legends: Z-A have release dates yet so both Switch 2 Editions are scheduled for sometime in 2025.

How Much Will Switch 2 Editions Cost?

That depends. If you don’t own the Switch 1 version of the game, then you can purchase the Switch 2 Edition at retail, which will be distinct thanks to the new red-colored physical game case. The digital versions will also feature a prominent Switch 2 logo so you know you’re buying the right edition for your Switch 2.

If you own the game on Switch 1 and want the upgrades that will be added in the Switch 2 Edition you will need to purchase an upgrade pack from Nintendo. The upgrade packs will be available at select retailers, the official My Nintendo Store, and Nintendo eShop. However, Nintendo has not revealed how much an upgrade pack will cost just yet.

Some upgrade packs, like the upgrade to the Switch 2 Edition of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will be included in a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership. This is the same membership that gives Switch owners access to online features and the classic library.

So there you have it, that’s everything you need to know about the Switch 2 Editions of a game. We’ve detailed previously how Nintendo is making the jump to the Switch 2 fairly seamless thanks to its backward compatibility stance, and it looks like Nintendo is looking to bolster its launch library with improved versions of Switch classics.

For more on Nintendo Switch 2 check out all the news announced during the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct as well as how much it costs, and when pre-orders go up.

Matt Kim is IGN's Senior Features Editor.

The Legend of Zelda is one of the most iconic video game series of all time. Starting on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986, The Legend of Zelda follows various incarnations of Princess Zelda and Link as they fight to save Hyrule from the evil that is Ganon. While the series has always been popular, the Nintendo Switch has catapulted Zelda into one of Nintendo's best-selling properties with landmark titles in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Echoes of Wisdom released toward the end of the original Nintendo Switch's life cycle, but Nintendo has already revealed quite a bit about the next generation of adventures in Hyrule. Here's every Legend of Zelda game on the Nintendo Switch as well as new features and Zelda games we can confirm are coming to the Switch 2.

How Many Zelda Games Are There on Nintendo Switch?

In total, eight Zelda games have been released specifically for the Nintendo Switch. This includes both mainline entries and spinoff games that were released from 2017 to 2025. All of these Zelda games will be playable on the Switch 2, with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom specifically getting Switch 2 upgrades.

All Zelda Switch Games in Order of Release Date

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 2017

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the first Zelda title released for Nintendo Switch. Launching alongside the system, this title marked a turning point in the Zelda series, bringing a style of open world gameplay that we'd never seen before. You can traverse to anywhere you can see in the world. Link awakes after a 100 year slumber, where he is tasked by the spirit of Hyrule's former King to save Princess Zelda from Calamity Ganon - a primal evil trapped inside Hyrule Castle.

Read our review of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild .

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition - 2018

Hyrule Warriors is an action hack and slash title developed by Omega Force and originally released for the Wii U. Characters from all kinds of Zelda games make an appearance, whether as playable characters or villains. The game was brought over to Nintendo Switch in 2018 in the form of Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, and includes all characters, stages, and modes from the original game in addition to Breath of the Wild inspired costumes for Link and Zelda.

Read our review of Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition .

Cadence of Hyrule - 2019

Cadence of Hyrule is an extremely unqiue collaboration between Brace Yourself Games and Nintendo. The game combines the roguelike rhythm gameplay of Crypt of the NecroDancer with the world of The Legend of Zelda and its characters. This spinoff offers an incredible soundtrack and beautiful pixelated graphics. Up against Octavo, a musical villain, Zelda and Link team up with Cadence to thwart his plans and save the Hyrule.

Read our review of Cadence of Hyrule .

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 2019

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a remake of 1993 Game Boy title developed by Grezzo. This charming platformer sees Link castaway at Koholint Island, where he must solve the mystery of the Wind Fish, a legendary being said to be on the island. Unlike some of the more modern Zelda titles, Link's Awakening takes you across many different dungeons and areas to collect the Instruments of the Sirens. If you never got the chance to play the original Link's Awakening, this is the definitive way to experience one of the Zelda series' most unique titles.

Read our review of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening .

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - 2020

The second Switch entry in the Hyrule Warriors series, Age of Calamity is set 100 years before the events of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Here, you can experience firsthand the events that occured in the fight against Calamity Ganon. All of your favorite Breath of the Wild cahracters are here and playable, including Link, Zelda, the Champions, and so many more. Omega Force created a fun and expansive title, with two waves of DLC you can check out after completing the main story.

Read our review of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity .

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD - 2021

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is the long-awaited remaster of the classic Wii game. Set at the beginning of the Zelda timeline, Skyward Sword takes Link to the skies as he traverses across the world to save his childhood friend Zelda. You'll uncover the Master Sword was created as part of this journey, among other things. The remaster includes the iconic motion controls you can operate with the Joy-Con and a new button-only gameplay style for those looking to play without motion.

Read our review of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD .

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 2023

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom hit the market in 2023, selling over 10 million copies in just three days as well as quite a few special edition Switch consoles. Set a few years after the events of Breath of the Wild, Link is tasked once again with finding Princess Zelda after Ganondorf is resurrected. Tears of the Kingdom takes to both the skies of Hyrule and the depths below the land. This creates one of the largest maps you'll find in any game, leaving for hundreds of hours of exploration to be had. All in all, it's the best Zelda game of all time and a hard one to follow.

Read our review of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom .

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - 2024

But, of course, Tears of the Kingdom was not the end of this beloved Nintendo franchise. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was announced during June's Nintendo Direct before launching on the Switch this week. While Echoes has the titular Princess take the story's reigns, and features a more 2D art style à la Link's Awakening, it should not be mistaken as a spin-off or side project. This is a full-blown, magical Zelda game, that lets you unlock your creativity to try and save Link and the rest of Hyrule in entirely new ways.

Read our review of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom .

Following the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, the launch lineup for the much-anticipated follow-up to 2017's Switch is starting to take shape and it's an exciting one. From Mario Kart World to enhanced versions of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom to Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy, there clearly won't be a lack of things to play on June 5, 2025.

We've already found over 20 games headed to Nintendo Switch 2 at launch, and that's not including the backward-compatible Switch 1 games (even though some may have some start-up issues) and titles already a part of Nintendo Switch Online. And yes, we will continue to add to this list as more are revealed.

Nintendo Switch 2 Launch Line-up So Far

• Mario Kart World
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
• Nintendo GameCube - Nintendo Classics
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
  • F-Zero GX
  • SOULCALIBUR II
• Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
• Deltarune Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4
• Split Fiction
• Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
• Street Fighter 6 - Official Years 1-2 Edition
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
• Sid Meier's Civilization VII - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
• Yakuza 0 Director's Cut
• Fortnite
• Fast Fusion
• Hitman World of Assassination - Signature Edition
• Nobunaga's Ambition: Awakening Complete Edition
• Survival Kids
• Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
• Arcade Archives 2 RIDGE RACER
• Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S

For more, be sure to check out our recap of the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, how much the new system will cost, and when Switch 2 pre-orders start.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

Arcade gamer Billy "King of Kong" Mitchell has won almost a quarter of a million dollars in damages after a court ruled Australian YouTuber Karl Jobst had defamed him.

As spotted by PC Gamer, Jobst — who specializes in content around competitive and speedrunning gaming — included Mitchell in a video entitled "The Biggest Conmen in Video Game History Strike Again!" With 500,000 views, a court agreed that Jobst's video defamed Mitchell and included inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims.

The King of Kong was initially stripped of his title in 2018 after his scores were scrubbed from Twin Galaxies' leaderboards following claims the high score record holder had used a MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and not arcade cabinets to secure his records in games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong Jr., which is strictly against the rules.

After six years of defending his records, Mitchell was later able to have his accolades reinstated as part of a "historical database" on Twin Galaxies' website, a site that tracks competitive gaming records. His high scores were also reinstated by the Guinness World of Records in 2020.

But Mitchell's defamation lawsuit against Jobst was unrelated to the legitimacy of his Donkey Kong scores. Rather, Mitchell sued because, as he alleged, Jobst's 2021 video implied that Mitchell's prior lawsuit against another YouTuber, Benjamin "Apollo Legend" Smith, resulted in the latter having to pay out 1ドルm in damages and contributed to Smith taking his own life in 2020. It also reportedly suggested Mitchell had "expressed joy at the thought" of Smith's suicide.

Jobst later edited his video after Mitchell threatened legal action, and Smith's brother confirmed no money had been paid.

"I lost. The judge found Billy to be a credible witness and believed his entire testimony," Jobst confirmed on X/Twitter, stressing he did not accuse Mitchell of cheating, and his claims about Smith were formed by "incorrect information from multiple sources."

"From that point on unfortunately there was really nothing that could have saved me. I will now obviously consider my options.

"I know many of you will be upset with this and I am sorry for that. Thank you again for all the support I have received and I will endeavor to work as hard as I can to repay all that you are owed."

The judge ordered Jobst to pay 187,800ドル (AU300,000ドル) for damages for non-economic loss, 31,300ドル (AU50,000ドル) for aggravated damages, as well as 22,000ドル (AU34,668ドル.50) in interest, totalling around 241,000,ドル saying: "[Mitchell] may well have been justified in being ordered to pay more than AU50,000ドル in aggravated damages, but that is the amount being sought by Mr Mitchell and that is the amount I shall award."

Mitchell famously achieved a perfect score in Pac-Man in the '80s, before rising to fame in the 2007 documentary, King of Kong, which focused on the rivalry between Mitchell and Steve Wiebe.

Photo by David Greedy/Getty Images.

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky .

A sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie is more than a year away, but there's already a name being floated for Wario: The Last of Us Season 1 star and Ron Swanson himself, Nick Offerman.

Speaking to IGN on the red carpet ahead of The Last of Us Season 2 premeire, showrunner Craig Mazin floated Offerman's name as a potential Mario antagonist.

HBO's The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin thinks Wario is misunderstood – and that Nick Offerman should voice Wario in the next Mario movie pic.twitter.com/Idui04BOtB

— IGN (@IGN) March 26, 2025

"Nick Offerman would actually do a really good job I think," Mazin said. "Just to bring some gravitas. Because I love Wario and I think he's misunderstood."

Mazin previously said that Wario was his favorite character in Mario Kart. "I want people to understand Wario is the way he is for reasons," Mazin continued. "He's Wario! He's-a gonna win!"

Offerman is perhaps best known for his seven-season run as Ron Swanson on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation. He won an Emmy for his guest role playing Bill in the first season of The Last of Us.

A sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie is set to be released next year. In October, Toad voice actor Keegan-Michael Key teased that the follow-up film will feature some Nintendo characters that are "really deep cuts."

The record-breaking The Super Mario Bros. Movie features a long list of Nintendo characters, but still some were left on the table. In an interview with Men's Journal, Key said the sequel will include characters that weren’t in the first film, some of which should please the most hardcore of Nintendo fans.

"I feel like what they've done creatively is they've really widened out the universe that these characters live in and we're going to meet some new folks," Key said.

"We're going to meet some new folks that are old favorites and some folks that I think are really deep cuts, but because of the way the story's laying itself out right now, those characters are going to be very intriguing."

But who? Nintendo fans have speculated about all sorts of characters who’d fit the "deep cut" bill, ranging from more well-known picks such as Bowser Jr and Rosalina to Tatanga and Toadette. For now, we don’t know who exactly to expect, but Key did say the second movie is "a little broader in scope, and where it takes place is very intriguing lore and the Mario world."

Nintendo and Illumination announced the next Super Mario Bros. Movie last year with a release date of April 3, 2026. While not much was revealed, it was confirmed that The Super Mario Bros. Movie directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic will return.

Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto said at the time: "We'll let you know the details once we're ready to share more. This time too, the staff at Illumination and Nintendo are working together. We're thinking about broadening Mario's world further, and it'll have a bright and fun story. We hope you'll look forward to it!"

Before the sequel was confirmed, Bowser voice actor Jack Black, who's set to star in A Minecraft Movie as Steve, said he’d like to show off more of his vocal chops in any follow up, as he had pitched the idea of a musical titled Bowser's Revenge. "I think it should be a full musical, like what Todd Phillips is supposedly doing with Joker 2," he said.

Bowser's romantic ode to Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie became an instant hit, landing a place on the Billboard Hot 100, but Black was initially hesitant about singing in the film. He told IGN that he tries "not to do too many crossovers" where his characters sing, but he couldn't pass up a love song.

The Last of Us Season 2, meanwhile, debuts April 13, 2025.

Michael Peyton is the Director of Events and Partnerships at IGN, where he leads coverage for tentpole events including San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He's spent over 15 years working in the entertainment industry, and his red carpet adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on socials @MichaelPeyton

Minecraft Live 2025 is done and dusted, and developer Mojang has announced a long list of new upgrades and content coming to the best-selling video game of all time.

Mojang revealed Minecraft's first game drop of the year, called Spring to Life. This will introduce a variety of updates to the Overworld that will make biomes "feel more immersive and alive," such as new variants for cows, pigs, and chickens, and new ambient features and sounds (glittering firefly bush, falling leaves, and whispers of sand). Spring to Life launches on March 25.

The second game drop of the year doesn't have a name just yet, but we do know what it will include. There's a new block called the Dried Ghast that can be rehydrated to form a new mob variant called a Ghastling (baby ghast, essentially), which in turn can become the new Happy Ghast mob variant. The Ghast harness is used to fly the Happy Ghast, which can carry up to four players.

Today's big update was a major visual upgrade for Minecraft called 'Vibrant Visuals,' "the first step in expressing our developers’ vision for a visual upgrade that will transform the way our players experience Minecraft," Mojang said. Vibrant Visuals does not impact Minecraft gameplay in any way.

Check out IGN's separate article on the Vibrant Visuals upgrade to find out more, and IGN's visuals comparison video below.

Meanwhile, Mojang shared a new clip for the upcoming A Minecraft Movie and announced a movie-themed in-game live event that kicks off on March 25.

We've got plenty more from Mojang based on our trip to its offices in Sweden, including why the developer won't make a Minecraft 2, won't make Minecraft free-to-play, and won't use generative AI to develop the game.

Minecraft Live 2025 — everything announced:

• Mojang Studios announced the name, launch date, and features of the first game drop of the year, as well as upcoming features in the second game drop of the year.
• The first game drop of the year is called "Spring to Life," and introduces a variety of updates to the Overworld that will make biomes feel more immersive and alive.
• Spring to Life adds warm and cold variants of some of Minecraft's classic mobs, new ambient features like the glittering firefly bush, falling leaves, and whispers of sand, and more reasons to explore
• The second game drop of the year includes the new Dried Ghast block, the new Ghastling and Happy Ghast mob variants, and the Ghast harness.
• The Dried Ghast is a little big smaller than a regular block and has cute little tentacles and a grumpy face.
• If you pick up the Dried Ghast from the Nether and put it in water, eventually it will become a much happier Ghastling.
• The Ghastling floats around the Overworld like a little balloon. Feed it snowballs and eventually it will grow up to become a flying Happy Ghast.
• If you craft a harness for the Happy Ghast, tempt it to come closer with the harness itself, then jump on it. From there, you and up to three other players can fly around on a single Happy Ghast.
• The new Locator Bar feature, positioned at the bottom of the screen, lets you see in which direction your friends are. That will be useful for finding friends while flying a Happy Ghast.
• Mojang said the Happy Ghast will be useful for Survival Mode builders, because "it's a bit like being in Creative Mode, but in Survival." The platform lets you position wherever you like in the sky and dismount.
• Mojang Studios announced a visual upgrade for Minecraft, titled Vibrant Visuals.
• Mojang revealed an exclusive A Minecraft Movie clip and announced an in-game movie-themed live event.
• The live event takes place in Midport Village, and sees players join Steve and his companions from the movie in an evolving multiplayer experience where you defend the village from a piglin attack in three mini games.
• The live event runs from March 25 to April 7, and if you complete all the challenges you earn the Yearn cape.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

UPDATE: Microsoft has clarified that Minecraft developer Mojang currently has no intention of incorporating generative artificial intelligence into its game development process.

The headline of this article has been edited to reflect the clarification.

ORIGINAL STORY: Minecraft developer Mojang has no intention of incorporating generative artificial intelligence into its game development process.

The ever-increasing creep of generative AI into game development makes itself evident by the day, whether it’s Activision admitting to using generative AI art in Call of Duty: Black Op 6, or Microsoft building Muse, an AI designed to "generate game ideas."

But, by the sound of it, Mojang has no plans of taking advantage of its parent company’s new technology, much preferring the human touch that resulted in Minecraft becoming the biggest-selling game of all time with an incredible 300 million sales.

"Here for us, just like Minecraft is about creativity and creating," stated Minecraft Vanilla game director Agnes Larsson during a recent event attended by IGN, "I think it's important that it makes us feel happy to create as humans. That's a purpose, [it] makes life look beautiful. So for us, we really want it to be our teams that make our games."

Ingela Garneij, executive producer of Minecraft Vanilla, expanded on this sentiment: "For me, it's the thinking outside of the box part. This specific touch of: what is Minecraft? How does it look? That extra quality is really tricky to create through AI. We even try to have remote teams sometimes and guide them in building things for us, which has never worked, because you have to be here working together face-to-face.

"I mean creativity is... you need to meet like this as a person, as a human to really truly understand the values and principles and the ecosystem, the lore, everything. It's so massive Minecraft, it's a planet, it's massive."

The humans making Minecraft continue to build on its record-breaking foundations. The newly revealed graphics update, titled Vibrant Visuals, is due out in the near future, and Mojang continues to refuse to make Minecraft free-to-play. This philosophy of improving and expanding the original game also goes hand-in-hand with Mojang's desire to not make a "Minecraft 2." It may be 16 years old now, but there’s truly no sign of Minecraft slowing down, and no sign of generative AI finding its way into the Nether.

Check out everything announced at Minecraft Live 2025 for more on what's coming to the game.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .

In an age when many live service games of its kind have pivoted to a free-to-play business model, Minecraft stubbornly remains a premium experience. During a recent interview with IGN, developer Mojang said it's determined to stick with the established "buy and own the game" approach, even now, 16 years after it came out. In short: don't expect Minecraft to go free-to-play any time soon.

"Yeah, it doesn't really work with the way we built it," explained Ingela Garneij, executive producer of Minecraft Vanilla.

"I mean we built the game for a different purpose. So monetization doesn't work in that way for us. It's a purchase of the game and then that's it. For us it's important that our game is available for as many people as possible. And so I think that's a very core value that it should be accessible for everyone. It's the best deal in the world."

As the industry has evolved over the years, many games have made the jump to free-to-download but infested with battle pass and cosmetic pack waters, with mixed results. Examples include Overwatch 2’s decision to go free-to-play, Destiny 2, or Minecraft’s Microsoft stablemate Halo Infinite (at least when it comes to its multiplayer).

The pressure is of course on video game publishers and developers to find new ways to monetize to survive, but this is seemingly a pressure not felt by Garneij and her Mojang teammates: "No, no. What's important for us is that many people can enjoy it still and that's going on strong still."

It’s a sentiment expanded upon by Minecraft Vanilla’s game director, Agnes Larsson: "I mean for me, it’s part of the important values of Minecraft. I think it's become such an important thing of what Minecraft is and the perfect culture and values, and I think we all here can agree on that. It's a thing for the game and it's one part of what makes the game strong. It has strong values."

Minecraft will continue to evolve without asking its players to spend money for new features, then. This is exemplified by the upcoming Vibrant Visuals graphics overhaul, which arrives free of charge in the coming months. And with no plans for a Minecraft 2 on the horizon, there’ll be no need to purchase the best-selling game of all time again any time soon. Unless you want to play it on another one of the seemingly endless amount of devices it finds itself on these days, of course.

Check out everything announced at Minecraft Live 2025 for more on what's coming to the game.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .

Minecraft celebrated its 15th anniversary last year, but despite growing into those troublesome teenage years, it appears that developer Mojang has no plans to replace it with a sequel.

On a recent trip to the Stockholm studio, IGN asked about the possibility of the best-selling game of all time getting a sequel. Ingela Garneij, executive producer of Minecraft Vanilla, had an amusing, yet to-the-point answer for us: "Do you think we're going to have an Earth 2? No, no, there's no Minecraft 2."

While Minecraft 2.0 is evidently not on the horizon, that doesn’t mean the survival-crafting phenomenon won’t continue to evolve. In fact, plans stretch way into the future, with a goal of at least doubling its current lifespan.

"We've existed for 15 years", stated Garneij. "We want to exist at least 15 years more so we actually, Agnes [Larsson, Minecraft Vanilla’s game director] and I, we work as a team. We set the vision and strategy for our game for what can we do beyond that."

It’s an ambition propelled by Mojang’s desire to innovate, continuing the mine and craft, so to speak, new ideas upon their rock-solid foundations. Those foundations are beginning to show their age, though, Garneij admitted, and while there are no plans for an engine overhaul, it does mean that new content, such as the newly revealed Vibrant Visuals graphics update, does take time to put into practice.

"I think the age of the game is a challenge," Garneij said. "It's a 15-year-old platform, 15-year-old technology that slows us down in one sense. So other new games have new engines, and they can run really fast. So I would say the technology and our age [are our biggest challenges]."

Despite this, Minecraft continues to be one of the most popular games in the world, and, as far as we can tell, shows no signs of slowing down. There's also no plan for Minecraft to go free-to-play or take advantage of generative AI technology. Just don’t expect to be playing Minecraft 2 in the near future. Not on this Earth, anyway.

Check out everything announced at Minecraft Live 2025 for more on what's coming to the game.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .

Freshly revealed at Minecraft Live, a major new graphical update is on the way to Minecraft, titled "Vibrant Visuals."

This upcoming upgrade will initially be released for compatible Minecraft: Bedrock Edition devices, but there are plans to bring Vibrant Visuals to Minecraft: Java Edition in the future. It includes improved visual elements such as directional lighting, volumetric fog, pixelated shadows, and noticeably shimmering water. Purely a visual enhancement, Vibrant Visuals makes no changes to Minecraft’s gameplay. For example, "visual shadows will not impact light levels in a game-mechanics sense, or affect where hostile mobs spawn."

Players will be able to toggle between the new and previously existing visuals of Minecraft with the simple press of a button, meaning a classic look can be maintained by those who desire it.

"So the first release is actually in a few months time for the beta platforms", Agnes Larsson, Minecraft Vanilla’s game director, said.

"There's a lot of testing going on now to try to get it to as many platforms as possible, but it's important that it's high quality and good performance. So yeah, this truly is the start of the journey."

That journey towards Minecraft’s new look was further detailed by Maddie Psenka, senior product manager on Vibrant Visuals:

"I think it's been a journey for a while. Something that we've wanted to do for the game. There has been past projects that we've had around graphics and wanting to do this kind of update, but I think this time we really wanted to take the space to build the foundations for this new mode. Not getting too ahead of things, making sure things were cross-platform and were really strong so we could build on top of that and release that with the community. We really wanted to give players what they wanted. We know this kind of visual update is something that they've been asking for a bit."

"We weren't going as fast as we could on PC to make things look really great and call it done", Psenka continued. "We wanted to make sure it worked on mobile, worked on console. There's a lot of complexities of course, as you can imagine when jumping across platforms and the different backends there. But it's something that we really took our time with to put something forward that we really are proud of."

This is just the start of a new graphical journey for Minecraft, one that will improve and evolve over the next several years as the team at Mojang balance that classic Minecraft aesthetic with wanting to make it look more like a "modern game."

"As Minecraft continues to evolve, I think we'll find new things to add to the graphics over the years, right?" Jasper Boerstra, Minecraft’s art director, said.

"I mean, we're always active development and we're here to stay for a long time. Minecraft is always going on. It's more relevant than ever. So yeah, I think these graphic updates, whenever something comes up or we get new ideas or there's player feedback and forth, we might look into even more features."

Vibrant Visuals is a free update coming to Minecraft in the near future, as Mojang continues to refuse to heavily monetize the best-selling game of all time further. This philosophy of improving and expanding the original game also goes hand-in-hand with the studio’s desire to not make a "Minecraft 2", or take advantage of generative AI technology. It may be 15 years old now, but there’s truly no sign of Minecraft slowing down.

Check out everything announced at Minecraft Live 2025 for more on what's coming to the game.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .

The Assassin's Creed series has had us globetrotting through history since its debut in 2007. From Renaissance Italy to Ancient Greece, Ubisoft's open world series has explored a wonderful variety of locations and settings, ensuring each conspiracy-packed game is a (semi) educational window into the past. Such an approach has made the series unique among its genre stablemates, which tend to whisk us away to fantasy lands or sprawling modern-day metropolises.

While the bones of Assassin's Creed have mostly remained the same across its 14 mainline entries, the series has undergone a lot of changes over the years, including new takes on player progression and ever-expanding worlds.

But which Assassin's Creed games are the best of the bunch? It's a tough question. After much deliberation (and only a handful of arguments), though, we’ve eventually agreed on the top 10 mainline entries in the series.

So, without further ado, here are our top 10 Assassin’s Creed games.

Playing the latest game in the series? Check out our Assassin's Creed Shadows guide .

10. Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations wrapped up Altair Ibn-La-Ahad and Ezio Auditore’s stories, and, despite some unremarkable additions like the Den Defense mode, it was a memorable and thrilling send off. From flying down ziplines in Constantinople to hanging out with Leonardo Da Vinci, Revelations was packed full of fascinating adventures.

Ezio and Altair’s final chapter was, in a way, both a sign of things to come and a celebration of what came before. Not only did we get one final fling with these two after seeing them grow and learn from lives full of adventure, but we had a chance to say goodbye to the first era of Assassin’s Creed.

9. Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Assassin’s Creed games are often as defined by their locations as they are their protagonists, and Assassin's Creed Syndicate’s 19th Century Victorian London in the throes of industrialization may be the most memorable of the bunch. Sneaking around factories, racing horse-drawn carriages down the street, and even fighting Jack the Ripper all ground Syndicate in a setting that, while still fantastical, feels real.

Contributing to this sense of place is the string-heavy score from Journey composer Austin Wintory that doesn’t sound like anything else in the series before or after: dueling protagonists Jacob and Evie Fry even have their own soundtracks. It’s a small touch, but it’s one in a string of small touches that makes Syndicate’s world cohesive. Also, it’s hard to recall any game this side of Bloodborne that lets you fight this effectively with a cane.

8. Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Assassin's Creed Valhalla didn’t reinvent the wheel like Origins did, but it did make some pretty substantial changes. Combat is weightier and more impactful than ever before; traditional side quests have been replaced by world events, making exploration and discovery much more organic; and the absurd amount of loot you’d have to organize and sift through was toned down substantially, making rewards feel much more valuable on the whole.

Eivor might not be our favorite of the Assassin’s Creed protagonists, but her (or his) story is an engaging one, and is one of the best blendings of historical fantasy and mythology that the series has ever seen. Fans of Norse mythology are treated with a feast; not only do the sagas play a major role within the main campaign, but an entire game-length expansion set in the world of Thor and Odin practically turns Valhalla into a cousin of God of War.

7. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood continues the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, cementing him as a fan-favorite protagonist for the series. It trades the diverse locations of Assassin’s Creed 2 for an expanded version of Rome and its surrounding countryside and builds on the new mechanics introduced in Assassins Creed 2 – swimming, property management, firearms, and recruitable allies. This chapter of Ezio’s story is filled with charm, wit, and drama, and, thanks to its updated combat, we got to be the aggressive combat assassin we all wanted to be.

It was also the first game in the series to introduce multiplayer, allowing players to step into the shoes of the Templars to see who among their friends truly was the best assassin or hunter. It may not have advanced the formula as much as its predecessor, but it’s still cherished by many as one of the very best.

6. Assassin's Creed Origins

Origins marked a turning point in the series. It was the game that turned Assassin’s Creed from a stealth-focused action-adventure, into a straight-up open world RPG with a size and scope rivaled only by very few games. But even setting the historical significance of Assassin’s Creed Origins aside, it’s important to note that it’s also just a damn good Assassin’s Creed game.

Its central story involving Bayek and Aya, who initially set out to find justice for their murdered son and ultimately wind up founding the order that would eventually become the Assassin’s Brotherhood, is extremely compelling; the world of ancient Egypt is a marvel to explore; and while many facets of its mechanics were improved in later games, the shift to loot-based progression and a more action RPG style of combat was just the kind of shot in the arm that the series needed to reinvigorate it in the eyes of fans.

5. Assassin's Creed Unity

After the tipsy sway of Black Flag’s pirate protagonist Edward Kenway, Assassin’s Creed Unity was a return to the tone of original Assassin’s Creed. As the first AC game to be exclusively released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (alongside PC of course), Assassin’s Creed Unity was a graphical powerhouse for its time, boasting enormous crowds of NPCs walking through the streets of a near 1:1 accurate recreation of Paris. Even today, it’s still remarkably handsome to look at.

Unfortunately, Unity’s launch was a bit of a bumpy ride. A cavalcade of bugs, glitches, and an intensely overburdened map meant it was quickly written off by many. However, in the years since it has (thanks to several patches) blossomed into a firm favourite among Assassin’s Creed fans. Its enhanced movement system resulted in arguably the most fluid and elegant parkour the series has ever seen, which in turn allowed for excellent hit-and-run tactics. Its main assassination missions are also a series highpoint, offering a multitude of ways to infiltrate locations and bury your blade deep in a target’s neck. And frankly, seeing Notre Dame in all its glory makes AC Unity well worth the price of admission.

4. Assassin's Creed Shadows

Feudal Japan is the most-requested setting for an Assassin’s Creed game of all time, and so Ubisoft faced towering expectations when it finally decided to visit the Sengoku period. Thankfully, Assassin’s Creed Shadows was exactly what the series needed; it brings the focus back to assassinations, putting increased emphasis on stealth and infiltration. And while still expansive, the open world and RPG elements are more restrained than those in Odyssey and Valhalla, resulting in a tighter, more balanced experience.

For the first time since Syndicate, Shadows features two playable protagonists. Naoe’s toolkit is rooted in stealth, while Yasuke is a brutal fighter who captures the period’s samurai fantasy. While Shadows is best experienced from a mix of both perspectives, taking control of Naoe and making use of her grappling hook and climbing abilities allows you the full freedom to explore what is undoubtedly the series’ most astonishing world, complete with landscapes that dynamically change with the shifting of the seasons.

3. Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Assassins’ Creed Odyssey takes Origins’ combat style and new-found focus on role-playing, adds some extra ingredients to the mix, then sets it all against the sprawling backdrop of Ancient Greece, aflame with the war between Athens and Sparta. It’s an enormous, vibrant game, with some of the most stunning vistas we’ve seen in the series; both at land and sea (naval warfare returns here, and it’s wonderful).

The new spin on Assassin’s Creed’s notoriety system sees you hunted across these environments, in a series of cat-and-mouse chases that are the most tense in any Assassin’s Creed to date, while the nation struggle system sees you fighting large scale battles in the name of Athens or Sparta. It’s also got a relatively compelling story for a game that can take 60-odd hours to beat, with some eccentric sidequests, fronted by a genuinely charismatic protagonist - whether you play as a male or female. Even after you finish Odyssey, there’s still so much to plunder and discover, and it’s a delight to simply exist in its world.

2. Assassin's Creed 2

In many ways, we have Assassin’s Creed 2 to thank for not only proving the formula works but for also giving us the defining analogy of a video game sequel fulfilling the promise of its underwhelming original. Though later entries would add even more depth, ACII made assassination missions more dynamic, with increased flexibility in how you approached objectives, more options for hiding or causing distractions, better combat, and better mobility with the ability to actually swim. New catacomb missions let players put their parkour skills to the test, the upgradeable homebase villa gave players a reason to keep investing in picking up collectibles and coins, and new weapons and gear from everyone’s favorite video game character, Leonardo da Vinci, kept gameplay fresh.

All of these changes were also connected to a beautifully realized Italian Renaissance era that introduced an all-time protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and meaningful additions to the current-day story that brought the two time periods together in the wildest way possible. I mean, you fistfight the pope only to have an otherworldly deity speak through Ezio to Desmond in the present day. It was an unforgettable ending to an entry that proved how incredible Assassin’s Creed could be.

1. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag

After a long run of assassin protagonists, Black Flag tried something different, introducing us to a main character who was a pirate first, and an assassin second - and the ensuing adventure thrived because of it. It introduced a massively entertaining sandbox playground in the Caribbean, featuring a plethora of islands teeming with treasure and activities to embark upon - and an upgrade system that made the idea of hunting wild animals and harpooning something other than a chore. Instead of relegating the idea of sailing as means to an end, it built upon the framework of Assassin’s Creed 3’s naval combat to make nautical adventures the shining point of Black Flag.

Whether it was hunting hapless merchant ships or bracing against some of the toughest buccaneers ever to sail the seas, attacking other ships cemented itself as something too good to pass up any time one floated by on screen. Aided by its impressive seamless transition from land to sea, it allowed the freedom of choice for players to either sail circles around enemy ships while blasting them to pieces, or ramming head on to leap onto the enemy ship, before unloading a brace of pistols like a whirling dervish. Not only did Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag cement itself as one of the greatest in the series, it has easily become one of the greatest pirate games to immerse yourself in as well.

You may also like: The Best Games Like Assassin's Creed .

And there you have it! Those are our top Assassin’s Creed games. Disagree with the ranking? Think another entry should have been on the list? Let us know your favorite Assassin’s Creed in the comments.

Upcoming Assassin's Creed Games

If you're wondering what's coming next in the world of Assassin's Creed, there are a few titles to keep on your radar. Assassin's Creed Shadows has just released and sees you following the path of both a shinobi and samurai in Feudal Japan. Assassin's Creed Jade, set in ancient China, is also in the works for mobile devices, but has no confirmed release date yet. If that's not enough Assassin's Creed goodness for you, beyond those we have Assassin's Creed: Codename Hexe to look forward to, the mysterious and occult-looking adventure that's set to bring new ideas to the series.

The latest in Ubisoft’s long line of stealth-action open worlds, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, is finally here. But where does it rank in the series? We’re asking you to make that decision. There have been over 30 games released under the Assassin’s Creed banner, but we’re just including the "mainline games" here, so no mobile, side-scrolling, VR entries, or spin-offs like Bloodlines or Liberation here, I’m afraid.

AC started all the way back in 2007 when Desmond Miles stepped into the Animus to fill the shoes of his ancestor Altaïr, and now finds itself in 16th-century Japan 18 years later as players take control of Naoe and Yasuke. This latest adventure is the 14th in the core series, and I’ve had a go at ranking them via one of our IGN Tier Lists, based purely on my personal enjoyment of each game. Take a look at my tier list here:

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is still the entry I hold closest to my heart. The mix of island exploration, ship combat, and colourful cast provides the best all-around AC experience in my mind. It’s joined by Assassin’s Creed 2 in the S-tier, the game that really catapulted the series into the limelight. I also have Valhalla in the A-tier, which may surprise some, but I really loved the Viking-influenced combat, and am a sucker for the Orlog minigame. Alongside it is Unity, a game whose recreation of French Revolution-era Paris still looks stunning a decade later.

Don’t agree with me? Think that Valhalla is far too bloated for its own good? Think that Assassin’s Creed 2 is actually overrated? Well, why not have a go at ranking all of the mainline AC games yourself in a tier list below where you can compare your own S, A, B, C, and D tiers with the whole of the IGN community.

Enjoying Assassin’s Creed Shadows? Where in the world would you like the series to go next? Let us know in the comments, as well as why you’ve ranked the consoles in the order you’ve chosen.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editorial Producer who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social .

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has covered a lot of ground in its 18 years. The Assassin-Templar conflict has taken players across five continents, from Ancient Greece to Victorian London, spanning 2,300 years of history over the course of 13 mainline games.

With the upcoming release of Assassin's Creed Shadows, we’ve put together this chronology of the Assassin’s Creed timeline so far. This chronology only includes mainline Assassin’s Creed games; spinoff games aren’t included on this list given their lack of importance to the ongoing Assassin’s Creed narrative.

Jump to:

• How to play in chronological order
• How to play in release order

How Many Assassin's Creed Games Are There?

There are currently 14 Assassin's Creed games in the main series and 17 additional spinoff games. Outside of video games, there is also an Assassin's Creed board game and an Assassin's Creed TV series supposedly in the works at Netflix.

Which Assassin's Creed Game Should You Play First?

There's quite a few places you could start in the Assassin's Creed timeline, and I personally recommend picking the game set in an era that you find most interesting. That said, it's hard to deny that the original Ezio trilogy (Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood, and Revelations) has some of the best writing in the series. If you're interested in more recent games, Black Flag is a solid entry point with seafaring pirate gameplay, while Assassin's Creed Odyssey lets you dive into world of ancient Greece.

How to Play the Assassin’s Creed Game In Order

There are two ways to look at the Assassin’s Creed chronology. First: In the order of the games’ modern-day storylines. This option makes sense considering the connective narrative of each mainline game is told through the present day. The present-day story progresses chronologically with each release, so if you’d like to play the games this way, simply scroll down to the section how to play the Assassin’s Creed games by release date. If you’re committed to playing through the entirety of the franchise, this is the order we recommend, as it’s the best way to follow the overarching story and experience the franchise’s evolution from stealth-action games to open-world RPGs.

The second option (detailed below) presents the games in order by their historic settings. These stories aren’t as intertwined as their modern-day counterparts, but they’re where you’ll spend the vast majority of your time in Assassin’s Creed. This is more useful as a matter of interest than a practical playing guide.

The Assassin’s Creed Games in Chronological Order

With series newcomers in mind, the brief plot synopses below contain only mild spoilers such as broad plot points, historical settings, and character introductions.

1. Assassin's Creed Odyssey (431 B.C.–422 B.C.)

• Primary setting: Ancient Greece
• Historic Protagonist: Cassandra or Alexios
• Modern Protagonist: Layla Hassan

Set nearly 400 years earlier than any other mainline game, Assassin's Creed Odyssey expanded on the RPG elements introduced in Origins to complete its genre-turn from stealth-based action to open-world RPG.

You play as Cassandra or Alexios, the grandchildren of Sparta's King Leonidas I. Odyssey is set during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, and features key historical figures from that period, including Hippocrates, Socrates, and Plato. It weaves the period's history with its mythology, introducing creatures such as the Sphinx, Cyclops, and Medusa.

Odyssey is set before the formation of the Assassin and Templar orders, though it does feature a key Piece of Eden* in the Spear of Leonidas.

*Pieces of Eden are powerful technological artifacts created by a precursor race of beings known as The First Civilization. The pieces of Eden and the First Civilization are constants throughout the mainline games that connect the past and modern storylines.

2. Assassin's Creed Origins (49 B.C.–44 B.C.)

• Primary setting: Ancient Egypt
• Historic Protagonist: Bayek of Siwa
• Modern Protagonist: Layla Hassan

After releasing a new Assassin's Creed game each year from 2009-2015, Ubisoft took a year off and returned in 2017 with Assassin's Creed Origins, a soft reboot of the franchise and the series' first game to introduce RPG mechanics.

Origins is primarily set in Ancient Egypt during the reigns of Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, though its historic inspiration extends to Rome and the rule of Julius Caesar. Many Assassin's Creed stories kick off as tales of vengeance, only to unfurl into larger-scale tales of political conspiracy. Origins follows this pattern: The death of Bayek and Aya's son serves as the impetus for their journey, though as the story progresses, the duo uncover a proto-Templar organization called the Order of the Ancients and ultimately form the Hidden Ones, the first incarnation of the Assassins.

The modern story, meanwhile, introduces Layla Hassan, who serves as the present-day protagonist for Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.

3. Assassin's Creed Mirage (861–???)

• Primary setting: 9th Century Baghdad
• Historic Protagonist: Basim Ibn Ishaq
• Modern Protagonist: N/A

Released in 2023, Assassin's Creed Mirage is the series' most recent installment. Rather than a full-priced open-world RPG, Mirage is a 50ドル USD stealth-focused adventure designed as "an homage to the first Assassin's Creed games." Ubisoft describes it as "a shorter, more narrative-driven game than recent entries in the series."

Assassin's Creed Mirage stars a 17-year-old Basim Ibn Ishaq, a street thief with "nightmarish visions" who'd go on to play a critical role in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Mirage will tell the story of Basim, with the guidance of his mentor Roshan, escaping Baghdad en route to the Hidden Ones' fortress of Alamut.

Unlike the other entries on this list, Mirage doesn't prominently feature the present-day storyline. You can read our full review of Assassin's Creed Mirage for more details.

4. Assassin's Creed Valhalla (872–878)

• Primary setting: 9th Century England and Norway
• Historic Protagonist: Eivor Varinsson/Varinsdottir
• Modern Protagonist: Layla Hassan

Assassin's Creed's Valhalla is the series' venture into Norse history and mythology. It's easily the series' biggest game; the average time to complete its main story is 60 hours, according to How Long to Beat (15 hours longer than the next biggest, Odyssey). Like Odyssey, Valhalla integrates its setting's history with its mythology, introducing real-life characters — King Harald Fairhair, King Aelfred the Great, Rollo — and mythological figures such as Fenrir and Odin.

It continues the conflict between the Hidden Ones and the Order of the Ancients while balancing the more personal tale of Eivor and their clan's pilgrimage from a resource-barren Norway to the more fertile lands of England.

The modern-day story seemingly concludes the three-game arc of Layla Hassan.

5. Assassin's Creed (1191)

• Primary setting: 12th Century Holy Land (Acre, Damascus, Jerusalem)
• Historic Protagonist: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad
• Modern Protagonist: Desmond Miles

The first Assassin's Creed takes place 300 years after Valhalla and introduces us to the series' original protagonist, Altair Ibn'La-Ahad. Assassin's Creed laid the groundwork for the franchise's next 15 years of success, introducing foundational gameplay elements like climbing and assassinations while also laying the groundwork for the time-hopping Assassin-Templar narrative.

It introduces key narrative concepts like the Pieces of Eden and the Animus, the in-universe device that allows each game's modern-day protagonist to relive the memories of their historic counterparts through DNA.

The past story sees Altair hunting down nine Templars during the Third Crusade, while the present-day story introduces Desmond Miles and the modern Assassin-Templar conflict that runs through AC III.

6. Assassin's Creed II (1476–1499)

• Primary setting: 15th Century Italy
• Historic Protagonist: Ezio Auditore da Firenze
• Modern Protagonist: Desmond Miles

Assassin's Creed 2 introduced the series’ longest-lasting protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. A favorite among Assassin's Creed fans, Ezio's story ran from 2009's AC II through 2011's AC: Revelations.

Ezio seeks to avenge the death of his father and brother, though his hunt for vengeance leads him to uncover a bigger conspiracy and places him at the center of the fight between the Assassins and Templars. Assassin's Creed II takes players throughout Italy, from Florence to the Vatican, and introduces Ezio to historical figures like Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Pope Alexander VI.

In the present day, Desmond begins his work with the Assassins.

7. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (1499–1507)

• Primary setting: 15th-16th Century Italy
• Historic Protagonist: Ezio Auditore da Firenze
• Modern Protagonist: Desmond Miles

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is a continuation of AC II in both the past and modern-day storylines. The fallout from AC II creates a new antagonist for Ezio, who embarks on another revenge quest while working to rebuild Rome's weakened Assassins Guild and retrieve the Apple of Eden.

In the present day, Desmond and the modern Assassins head to Italy in search of that same Apple of Eden, a Piece of Eden that may help them prevent the prophesized end of the world.

8. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (1511–1512)

• Primary setting: 16th Century Constantinople
• Historic Protagonist: Ezio Auditore da Firenze
• Modern Protagonist: Desmond Miles

The conclusion of the Ezio trilogy unites the narrative of the Italian assassin with his predecessor, Altair. An older Ezio travels to Constantinople in search of Altair’s hidden library, which was thought to contain invaluable wisdom. In Constantinople, Ezio searches for the keys needed to open the library — each of which possesses a key memory in Altair’s life. Assassin's Creed Revelations ultimately reveals Ezio's role in the wider AC narrative.

In the present, a comatose Desmond is trapped in the Animus, where he works with a past Animus user to escape "the Black Room" and return to consciousness.

Revelations also features one of the series' best trailers (above) first shown at E3 2011.

9. Assassin's Creed Shadows (1581)

• Primary setting: Feudal Japan
• Historic protagonist: Naoe and Yasuke
• Modern protagonist: N/A

The newest Assassin's Creed game heads to Feudal Japan during the civil wars in the late Sengoku period. Assassin's Creed Shadows features dual protagonists, each with unique gameplay, though Ubisoft has emphasized that players won't be missing out by only playing one route. Yasuke is an African mercenary who becomes a samurai in service of Oda Nobunaga. That service leads him to the Iga province, home of shinobi-in-training Naoe, and tragedy brings the two together in a quest for vengeance.

Like Mirage, Shadows doesn't have its own modern-day protagonist. Instead, the new game coincides with the release of the Animus Hub, which brings the Assassin's Creed franchise into a single platform and adds additional "modern-day subplots" as well as a reward system to the game.

10. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (1715–1722)

• Primary setting: 18th Century Caribbean Islands
• Historic Protagonist: Edward Kenway
• Modern Protagonist: Unnamed Abstergo Employee

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is best remembered for introducing the series' naval gameplay. It's set two centuries after Ezio's trilogy and roughly 40 years before the previously released Assassin's Creed III.

Black Flag stars Edward Kenway, an 18th-century pirate and the grandfather of AC III protagonist Connor Kenway. It features notorious real-life pirates of the era, such as Edward Thatch (Blackbeard), Benjamin Hornigold, and Mary Read. It also introduces Adéwalé, the protagonist of the DLC-turned-standalone-spinoff Freedom Cry. After unknowingly killing an Assassin, Edward finds himself embroiled in the Assassin-Templar conflict and on the hunt for a secret First Civilization site known as The Observatory.

The modern-day story stars an unnamed Abstergo employee tasked with reliving Connor’s life in order to create a film (though, unsurprisingly, Abstergo’s true intentions are more nefarious).

11. Assassin's Creed Rogue (1752–1760)

• Primary setting: 18th Century American Northeast
• Historic Protagonist: Shay Patrick Cormac
• Modern Protagonist: Abstergo Employee "Numbskull"

Assassin's Creed Rogue serves as a narrative bridge between AC III and AC IV. It stars Shay Patrick Cormac, an Irish-American Assassin turned Templar hunting down a Piece of Eden. Templar Grand Master Haytham Kenway, the son of AC 4 protagonist Edward and father of AC III protagonist Connor, appears throughout the story.

In the present, you play as another Abstergo employee, referred to as "Numbskull," doing the bidding of the modern-day Templars.

12. Assassin's Creed III (1754–1783)

• Primary setting: 18th Century Colonial America
• Historic Protagonist: Ratonhnhaké "Connor" Kenway
• Modern Protagonist: Desmond Miles

Following a 1754-set sequence during which you play as Haythem Kenway, Assassin's Creed 3 begins in earnest with Haythem's son Ratonhnhaké:ton, a.k.a Connor. Set largely during the American Revolution, Connor seeks to protect his tribe from the war and the First Civilization's Grand Temple from the Templars.

AC III is loaded with historical figures, including George Washington, Sam Adams, Charles Lee, and Benjamin Franklin.

The present-day story concludes Desmond's arc, as he and the other modern-day Assassins gather in the aforementioned Grand Temple to prevent the prophesized end of the world on December 21, 2012.

13. Assassins Creed Unity (1789–1794)

• Primary setting: 18th Century France
• Historic Protagonist: Shay Patrick Cormac
• Modern Protagonist: Unnamed Helix Player

While Assassin's Creed Unity features scenes that span from 1307 to the mid-1900s, it's primarily set during the height of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1794. It stars French Assassin Arno Dorian, who becomes involved in the Assassin-Templar conflict while embarking on yet another quest for vengeance.

Historical figures include Napoléon Bonaparte, Marquis de Sade, and King Louis XVI.

Unity's modern-day story is among the least memorable, as it removed gameplay entirely in favor of cutscenes and ultimately proved inconsequential to the ongoing narrative. You play as a gamer playing Helix, Abstergo's Animus-powered gaming software created to push Templar propaganda and collect unsuspecting users' DNA.

14. Assassin's Creed Syndicate (1868)

• Primary setting: Victorian London
• Historic Protagonists: Jacob and Evie Frye
• Modern Protagonist: Unnamed Helix Player

Assassin's Creed Syndicate stars dual protagonists Jacob and Evie Frye, twin Assassins clearing London of Templar control while seeking a Piece of Eden. While a certain side mission extends the timeline to WWI, the majority of Syndicate is set in 1868. Notable historical figures include Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Darwin, and in the future sequence, Winston Churchill.

Syndicate stars the same modern-day character as Unity, who's working with the Assassins to locate another Piece of Eden in London.

How to Play The Assassin’s Creed Games By Release Date

• Assassin's Creed (2007)
• Assassin's Creed II (2009)
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010)
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations (2011)
• Assassin's Creed III / Liberation (2012)
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag / Freedom Cry (2013)
• Assassin's Creed Rogue (2014)
• Assassin's Creed Unity (2014)
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015)
• Assassin's Creed Origins (2017)
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020)
• Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023)
• Assassin's Creed Nexus VR (2023)
• Assassin's Creed Shadows (2024)

Upcoming Assassin's Creed Games

Ubisoft's newest AC game is Assassin's Creed Shadows, which releases on March 20. We have no information about future mainline games, but several remakes of older Assassin's Creed games are in development, according to Ubisoft's CEO.

As far as we know, a live action Assassin's Creed show is still in the works at Netflix, while Tencent's mobile-exclusive title, Assassin's Creed Jade, was delayed to 2025.

Jordan covers games, shows, and movies as a freelance writer for IGN.

Beginning its life as a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, the Persona series has quickly launched into something entirely of its own and become one of the biggest names in modern RPGs. From multiple major sequels and remakes to anime adaptations and even stage plays, Persona is a multimedia sensation, and its popularity doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

With the latest entry in the franchise, Persona 3 Reload, now available to play on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC, new players are probably wondering where’s the best place to start. Below, we’ll give you a full rundown of every game and spin-off, including the best entry point for newcomers and both the chronological and release order of the series.

Jump to:

• How to play in order
• How to play by release date
• Upcoming releases

How Many Persona Games Are There?

In total, there are currently twenty Persona games. Several of these are expanded versions of the mainline entries in the series, whether that’s in the form of re-releases featuring new story content or remakes. While we won’t include direct ports or remasters, we’ll make sure to note every alternate version of each game when listing them below.

Which Persona Game Should You Play First?

If you're looking for the perfect place to start, you can’t really go wrong jumping into Persona 3 Reload, Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal. They’re the latest versions of the third, fourth and fifth mainline entries in the series, and, aside from Persona 3 Reload missing Nintendo Switch, they’re all available on PC and every major console.

For those concerned about skipping the story by jumping into later entries in the series, you won’t miss anything by going straight to Persona 3, 4, or 5. Each game tells an entirely new story with original characters that’s largely disconnected from its predecessors, so they’re great launching points for those coming in fresh. To narrow your choices down, I'd recommend taking a look at some gameplay videos and some of the social links across each of the games to see what "stands out" to you.

Every Persona Game and Spin-Off in Chronological Order

These blurbs contain mild spoilers for each game, including characters, settings, and story beats.

1. Revelations: Persona (1996)

The first game in the series, Revelations: Persona was Atlus’ reaction to the positive reception of Shin Megami Tensei: If..., which was another Shin Megami Tensei spin-off centered around high-schoolers battling demons. Capitalizing on how much players enjoyed the central concept, Revelations: Persona offered a full dungeon-crawling RPG centered around a group of high schoolers battling a supernatural uprising throughout the town of Mikage-cho.

Along the way, they use the powers of their awakened Personas to take down shadows and explore dungeons filled with random encounters, leveling up their party and growing stronger over the course of the game. Revelations: Persona was the foundation of the franchise as we know it today, introducing elements like wielding Personas in combat, the Velvet Room and a teenage cast of heroes.

2. Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999)

The second entry in the Persona series, Persona 2: Innocent Sin launched in 1999. The game follows a new set of high-school students led by protagonist Tatsuya Suou, who set out on a mission to take down a mysterious villain known as Joker and the cult of the Masked Circle.

Centring around an evil plot where malicious rumors spreading around the town of Sumaru come to life, Persona 2 once again focuses on exploring dungeons, wielding Personas, fighting shadows and leveling up your party. Unlike other entries in the series, it received a direct sequel just a year later, with Persona 2: Eternal Punishment acting as a continuation of the game's story.

Read our review of Persona 2: Innocent Sin .

3. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (2000)

Following up the events of Innocent Sin, Eternal Punishment promoted side character, Maya Amano, to the protagonist role. Sent to write an article about a new rumor regarding a phenomenon known as the Joker Curse, the game quickly sees Maya and her allies rally against a returning foe.

Acting as a direct continuation of Innocent Sin's story, it centers on the same style of turn-based, dungeon-crawling gameplay, as players build their party and wield their Personas to battle shadows.

Read our review of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment .

4. Persona 3 (2006) / Persona 3 FES (2007) / Persona 3 Portable (2009) / Persona 3 Reload (2024)

The third mainline entry in the franchise, Persona 3 was a major evolution of the Persona formula. Opting to focus on its high-school premise, Persona 3 introduced a daily calendar, with one half of the game tasking players with attending school, developing friendships and studying, while the other sent them to fight shadows in the supernatural realm of Tartarus.

The story focuses on high school student Makoto Yuki, who finds he's able to experience a mysterious space of time known as the Dark Hour, where regular people are trapped in coffins and a demonic tower sprouts from his school. Teaming with his classmates, he explores the tower, uncovering a sinister plot that threatens the entire world. Persona 3 is considered a landmark entry for the series, introducing social links, day-to-day activities and many other mechanics that have since become synonymous with the franchise.

Read our review of Persona 3 Reload .

5. Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (2018)

A rhythm-based dancing spin-off of Persona 3 that takes place during the main campaign, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight sees Elizabeth challenge the S.E.E.S team to a dance-off in the Velvet Room. The events of the game are set during a dream but are completely canon to the story, and follow the team performing various dance routines to iconic Persona 3 tracks.

6. Persona 4 (2008) / Persona 4 Golden (2012)

The fourth mainline entry in the Persona series, Persona 4 takes place in the rural town of Inaba. Players assume the role of Yu Narukami: a high schooler from the city who moves to the country to live with his uncle and cousin for a year. After arriving, a string of violent murders begin to take place in the town, as Yu and his friends quickly discover they’re somehow linked to a mysterious otherworldly realm they can access by stepping through TV monitors.

Delving into this mysterious new world, Yu and his friends face supernatural forces as they learn more about the murders, using their powers to try and stop them. Building off the mechanics of Persona 3, Persona 4 once again utilizes the calendar system, as players build social links and attend school while also exploring vast dungeons and defeating enemies with their Personas.

Read our review of Persona 4 Golden .

7. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (2014)

Technically taking place during the Persona 3 and Persona 4 storylines simultaneously, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is a crossover between both games. During the typhoon segment of Persona 3 and the Culture Festival segment of Persona 4, the S.E.E.S team and the Investigation Squad are trapped inside a warped version of Yasogami High School.

The time-bending event sees both teams come together to investigate the strange occurrence and escape back to their respective spots on the timeline. Along the way, players explore a labyrinth filled with new enemies and uncover an original story, with the spin-off acting as a callback to the series’ more traditional dungeon-crawler roots.

Read our review of Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth .

8. Persona 4 Arena (2012)

A continuation of both Persona 3 and 4’s narratives and the franchise’s first major spin-off, Persona 4 Arena sees Yu Narukami return to Inaba and stumble into a new adventure, as he returns to the TV world for a mysterious fighting tournament. Forced to battle against his allies and a group known as the Shadow Operatives, which is comprised of Persona 3's Mitsuru, Akihiko and Aigis, Arena offers a full fighting game boasting a roster of iconic Persona characters.

Read our review of Persona 4 Arena .

9. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2013)

A year following the release of Persona 4 Arena, the spin-off received a sequel titled Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Taking place directly after the events of the first game, the Persona 4 squad teams up with the Shadow Operatives to return to the TV World and battle against the mysterious forces running the fighting tournament. Ultimax was ultimately an upgrade for the first game, bringing in an expanded roster including returning characters like Yukari, Junpei, Ken and Koromaru.

Read our review of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax .

10. Persona 4: Dancing All Night (2015)

The fourth and arguably most unexpected spin-off of Persona 4, Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a rhythm-based dancing game where the Investigation Squad performs routines to iconic Persona tracks. It offers a completely canon continuation of the storyline, following Yu and the team as they’re sucked into an alternate dimension known as the Midnight Stage.

Read our review of Persona 4: Dancing All Night .

11. Persona 5 (2016) / Persona 5 Royal (2019)

The fifth mainline entry in the series, Persona 5 hit shelves in Japan in 2016 before launching worldwide in 2017. Taking players to Tokyo, it casts them as a new protagonist known as Joker, who finds himself on probation after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Attending the local high school, Joker and his friends discover a supernatural alternate dimension, which allows them to infiltrate mystical palaces and change the hearts of evil-doers around the city.

Before long, the group becomes notorious on the streets of Tokyo, going under the alias of the Phantom Thieves. The game builds heavily off the formula established by Persona 3 and 4, including massive story-focused levels that unfold over a month, the return of the negotiation system and a new dungeon system known as Mementos. Persona 5 launched the franchise into the stratosphere, quickly becoming Atlus' best-selling game of all time and cultivating a huge fan base.

Read our review of Persona 5 Royal .

12. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (2018)

A sequel to Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, New Cinema Labyrinth once again depicts a crossover between various Persona characters. After the Phantom Thieves find themselves trapped in a movie theater, they ally with Persona 3's S.E.E.S team and Persona 4's Investigation Squad to find an escape, traveling into the movies on the screen in an attempt to fix their endings.

Much like the original game, Persona Q2 simultaneously takes place during the Persona 3, 4 and 5 storylines, with the adventure pulling each group out of their respective timeline. There, they explore dungeons from a first-person perspective and fight turn-based battles against various enemies.

13. Persona 5 Tactica (2023)

Taking place during the events of Persona 5, Persona 5 Tactica is a strategy-focused spin-off that’s similar in style to the XCOM franchise. The story follows the Phantom Thieves mysteriously traveling to an alternate realm known as the Kingdoms. Unable to escape, Joker and Morgana are forced to abandon the rest of the Phantom Thieves after they're brainwashed by the realm's monstrous ruler, Tyrant Marie, forcing the pair to begin an adventure to save their allies and return home.

Along the way, they team up with the local resistance, helping them fight against Tyrant Marie's forces. The game revolves around a tactical grid-based combat system, as players direct three units across the battlefield and take out enemies.

Read our review of Persona 5 Tactica .

14. Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight (2018)

Atlus’ third rhythm-based dancing spin-off, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight sees Caroline and Justine bring the Phantom Thieves to the Velvet Room and challenge them to a dance off. There, the group perform dance routines to several of Persona 5's catchiest tracks.

15. Persona 5 Strikers (2020)

A spin-off set four months after the events of Persona 5, Strikers sees the Phantom Thieves reunite for a summer vacation. However, the team find themselves sucked into the Metaverse after using an app known as EMMA. Escaping with the help of a new ally, the team don their Phantom Thieves gear once more and set out to discover the truth behind EMMA, the Metaverse, and what it means for the people of Tokyo.

Persona 5 Strikers is a crossover with the long-running Dynasty Warriors franchise, introducing real-time combat to the series. Battles center around the Phantom Thieves taking on large hordes of enemies, which they can deal with through combos or by calling on Personas.

Read our review of Persona 5 Strikers .

Every Persona Game and Spin-Off in Release Order

1. Revelations: Persona (1996)
2. Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999)
3. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (2000)
4. Persona 3 (2006)
5. Persona 3 FES (2007)
6. Persona 4 (2008)
7. Persona 3 Portable (2009)
8. Persona 4 Arena (2012)
9. Persona 4 Golden (2012)
10. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2013)
11. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (2014)
12. Persona 4: Dancing All Night (2015)
13. Persona 5 (2016)
14. Persona 3: Dancing in the Moonlight (2018)
15. Persona 5: Dancing in the Starlight (2018)
16. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (2018)
17. Persona 5 Royal (2019)
18. Persona 5 Strikers (2020)
19. Persona 5 Tactica (2023)
20. Persona 3 Reload (2024)

What's Next for Persona?

Fans of Atlus RPGs were treated to two releases in 2024: Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor: ReFantazio, an all-new RPG from Atlus's Studio Zero. After the massive success of Metaphor (it picked up quite a few awards), Sega announced their desire to keep investing in Atlus, and the Persona IP in particular, in a developers' Q&A session.

The next Persona project to watch is the free-to-play mobile game Persona 5: The Phantom X. It was released in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Korea r in 2024, with a Japanese release imminent followng a closed beta sign-up in October. A global release is expected, though there are no offical details on its potential release date. The Phantom X is described by Atlus as "an original story set in the world of Persona 5 [in which] new characters rise from the shadows and don the masks of the Phantom Thieves."

Persona 6 is the anticipated next release in the RPG series, though Atlus has yet to officially confirm the game is in development.

Callum Williams is a freelance media writer with years of experience as a game critic, news reporter, guides writer and features writer.

One of the most memorable moments in the entire Assassin’s Creed series happens near the start of Assassin’s Creed 3, when Haytham Kenway has finished rounding up his band of assassins in the New World. Or at least, the player is led to believe they’re assassins. Haytham, after all, uses a hidden blade, is just as charismatic as previous series protagonist Ezio Auditore, and has – up until this point in the campaign – played the part of a hero, busting Native Americans out of prison and beating up cocky British redcoats. Only when he utters the familiar phrase, "May the Father of Understanding guide us," does it become clear we have actually been following our sworn enemies, the Templars.

To me, this surprising setup represents the fullest realization of Assassin’s Creed’s potential. The first game in the series introduced an intriguing concept – find, get to know, and kill your targets – but fell short in the story department, with both protagonist Altaïr and his victims being utterly bereft of personality. Assassin’s Creed 2 took a step in the right direction by replacing Altaïr with the more iconic Ezio, but failed to apply the same treatment to his adversaries, with the big bad of its spinoff Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Cesare Borgia, coming across as particularly underdeveloped. Only in Assassin’s Creed 3, set during the American Revolution, did the developers at Ubisoft devote as much time to fleshing out the hunted as they did the hunter. It lent the game an organic flow from set-up to payoff and, as a result, achieved a delicate balance between gameplay and narrative that as yet hasn’t been replicated since.

While the current RPG era of the series has largely been well received by players and critics, a wealth of articles, YouTube videos, and forum posts agree that Assassin’s Creed is in decline, and has been for some time. What exactly is responsible for this downfall, however, is subject to debate. Some point to the increasingly unrealistic premises of the modern games, which have you face off against gods like Anubis and Fenrir. Others take issue with Ubisoft’s implementation of a varied spectrum of romance options or, in the hotly-disputed case of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, replacing its hitherto fictional protagonists with a real-world historical figure, an African samurai called Yasuke. My personal nostalgia for the Xbox 360/PS3-era games notwithstanding, I’d argue it’s none of these. Instead, such decline is a result of the series’ gradual abandonment of character-driven storytelling, which has by now gotten buried deep inside its sprawling sandbox.

Over the years, Assassin’s Creed has padded its original action-adventure formula with a slew of RPG and live service-ish elements, from dialogue trees and XP-based levelling systems to loot boxes, microtransaction DLC, and gear customization. But the bigger the new installments have become, the emptier they have started to feel, and not just with regard to the countless climb-this-tower, find-that-object side-missions, but also their basic storytelling.

Although allowing you to choose what your character says or does should theoretically make the overall experience more immersive, in practice I’ve found it often has the opposite effect: as scripts get longer and longer to account for multiple possible scenarios, they feel like they lack the same level of polish as a game with a more limited range of interaction. The focused, screenplay-like scripts of the series’ action-adventure era allowed for sharply defined characters that were not pulled thin by a game structure that demands its protagonist be compassionate or brutal on the whim of the player.

Thus, while a game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey technically has more content than Assassin’s Creed 2, much of it feels wooden and underbaked. This unfortunately breaks the immersion; it's too often very obvious that you are interacting with computer generated characters rather than complex historical figures. This is in stark contrast to the franchise’s Xbox 360/PS3 era, which in my humble opinion has produced some of the finest writing in all of gaming, from Ezio’s fiery "Do not follow me, or anyone else!" speech after besting Savonarola, to the tragicomic soliloquy Haytham delivers when he is at long last killed by his son, Connor:

"Don't think I have any intention of caressing your cheek and saying I was wrong. I will not weep and wonder what might have been. I'm sure you understand. Still, I'm proud of you in a way. You have shown great conviction. Strength. Courage. All noble qualities. I should have killed you long ago."

The writing has suffered in other ways over the years, too. Where the modern games tend to stick to the easily digestible dichotomy of Assassins = good and Templars = bad, the earlier games went to great lengths to show that the line between the two orders isn’t as clear-cut as it initially appears. In Assassin’s Creed 3, each defeated Templar uses their last breath to make Connor – and, by extension, the player – question their own beliefs. William Johnson, a negotiator, says the Templars could have stopped the Native American genocide. Thomas Hickey, a hedonist, calls the Assassins’ mission unrealistic and promises Connor that he’ll never feel fulfilled. Benjamin Church, who betrays Haytham, declares it’s "all a matter of perspective," and that the British – from their point of view – see themselves as the victims, not the aggressors.

Haytham, for his part, tries to shake Connor’s faith in George Washington, claiming the country he’ll create will be no less despotic than the monarchy from which the Americans sought to liberate themselves – an assertion which rings all the more true when we discover that the command to burn down Connor’s village wasn’t given by Haytham’s henchman Charles Lee, as previously thought, but Washington. By the end of the game, the player has more questions than answers – and the story is stronger for it.

Looking back on the franchise’s long history, there is a reason why one track from the Jesper Kyd-composed Assassin’s Creed 2 score, "Ezio’s Family," resonated with players to the point of becoming the series’ official theme. The PS3 games, particularly Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3, were – at their core – character-driven experiences; the melancholic guitar strings of "Ezio’s Family" weren’t meant to evoke the game’s Renaissance setting so much as Ezio’s personal trauma of losing his family. As much as I admire the expansive worldbuilding and graphical fidelity of the current generation of Assassin’s Creed games, my hope is that this out-of-control franchise will someday scale itself down, and once again deliver the kind of focused, tailor-made stories that made me fall in love with it in the first place. Sadly, in a landscape dominated by sprawling sandboxes and single-player games with live service-style ambitions, I fear that’s just not "good business" anymore.

Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.

The speedrunning community is trying to wrap its head around a technological phenomenon that is seemingly causing the SNES to run games faster as it ages.

Alarm bells rang in early February when Bluesky user Alan Cecil (@tas.bot) spread the word that the Nintendo's iconic console seemed to be running games slightly faster now than when it left production lines in the 1990s. It’s a theory that would mean the nearly 50 million SNES units sold may now feature improved performance with games like Super Mario World, Super Metroid, and Star Fox instead of wearing down as the years go on.

The idea of a video game console — or any kind of technology — working more efficiently simply thanks to the passage of time sounds ludicrous, but Cecil’s findings suggest a single component may be what’s setting the SNES apart from the rest.

The Fastest Thing Alive

As explained in an interview 404 Media conducted with Cecil, official Nintendo specs say the SNES’s audio processing unit (APU) SPC700 has a digital signal processing (DSP) rate of 32,000Hz dictated by a ceramic resonator that runs at 24.576MHz. Retro console fans have documented that these details aren’t quite accurate, with recordings from the last few decades showing slightly altered DSP rates depending on the physical conditions — such as temperature — the SNES is recorded in. It means the console is often processing audio and sending it to the CPU at a different rate than Nintendo has communicated, and as the DSP fluctuates, so too does the game’s speed even if it’s in small, unrecognizable ways.

That’s all fine and good, but where things get interesting is how that number has changed in the last 34 years. Cecil asked SNES owners to record data related to their SNES units after noticing slightly higher DSP rates that were even more out of the ordinary than previously documented. The more than 140 responses gathered so far show an undeniable trend in increased DSP rates in recent measurements.

Some previously recorded average DSP numbers for the SNES’s SPC700 hovered at 32,040Hz in 2007 — Cecil’s findings raise that average to 32,076Hz. Factors such as hot and cold environments do play a part in higher and lower stats, too, but not by enough to alter DSP in the way needed to yield these results. In other words, it looks like the SNES is processing audio faster as time goes on.

"Based on 143 responses, the SNES DSP rate averages 32,076Hz, rising 8Hz from cold to warm," Cecil explained in a follow-up Bluesky post fit with a layout of the data. "Warm DSP rates go from 31,965 to 32,182Hz, a 217Hz range. Therefore, temperature is less significant. Why? How does it affect games? We do not know. Yet."

Any%

Cecil admits that, while fascinating, more research is needed to determine not only how much faster SNES units are processing game audio but what exactly the cause is. Data related to how consoles performed in their first decade on the market, for example, is limited. For now, at least on the surface, Nintendo’s second major home console appears to be aging quite gracefully as it nears its 35th birthday.

Regardless of what exactly might be behind these bizarre circumstances, the prospect of a popular gaming console gradually causing games to run faster has made waves in the speedrunning community. An SPC700 progressively processing audio to the CPU quicker than intended could, in theory, impact game performance by shortening load times in certain sections. Audio processing faster in 2025 than it did in an identical speedrun from 1990 could potentially send more than three decades of leaderboard rankings and records into question. Thankfully, how a wiser SNES might affect a Super Mario World speedrun isn’t so straightforward.

APU speeds aren’t a one-to-one translation to visual game speed. In reality, even the most extreme circumstances related to these new findings would likely only shave off less than one second of your average speedrun. How each game might benefit from altered audio processing is also up for debate, and there’s no indication of how significantly longer speedruns could be impacted at the time of this story’s publication. The speedrunning community's research is in its infancy, but even as further experimentation is conducted, the consensus for now is that players have little to fear.

While Cecil continues digging into what makes the SNES tick, Nintendo’s console is charging through its 30s and feeling better than ever. For more on the SNES, you can see where the device landed on the list of best-selling consoles of all time.

Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Remember themed popcorn buckets? Of course you do. Well, there’s more where those came from. The upcoming Minecraft movie is joining the consumer trend with concessions novelties of its own that will be available during the theatrical run.

According to images posted by DiscussingFilm on X / Twitter, below, the Minecraft movie will have a TNT box as its popcorn bucket, paired with a chicken jockey drink container (if you know, you know). It seems as though these items are exclusive to the Cinemark chain of theaters in the United States, but as for what other theaters are planning to debut for Minecraft fans, we’ll have to wait and see.

TNT and Chicken Jockey popcorn buckets for the live-action ‘MINECRAFT’ movie have been revealed. pic.twitter.com/ATk85n2Guf

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) March 12, 2025

These Minecraft-centric novelties are just the latest in an ongoing trend that has been a national mainstay since 2019’s Rise of Skywalker R2-D2 popcorn bucket. The sheer virality of that snack receptacle six-plus years ago set the theater executives aflutter with potential, and a fun — albeit kind of done to death at this point, and quite expensive to boot — modern theatrical tradition was born. Hey, if it keeps folks coming out for the theatrical experience, I’m all for it.

A Minecraft Movie is directed by Jared Hess and written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta from a story by Bowman, Palmer, and Allison Schroeder. It follows a group of random folks who get sucked into the cubic world of Minecraft, where they must put their trust in a local guy named Steve (Jack Black) to help them master the world around them. Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, and Sebastian Hansen star alongside Black. The movie arrives in theaters April 4, 2025.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

As the Nintendo Switch generation winds down and we await the arrival of Nintendo Switch 2 later this year, it's time to look back at the last eight years and celebrate what has become one of the greatest game libraries in Nintendo history. The hybrid portable console has surpassed the PlayStation 4 and Game Boy to become the third best-selling console of all time with over 150 million units sold, Nintendo Switch Online has added Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games, and Nintendo struck a 10-year deal with Microsoft to port Call of Duty to future Nintendo consoles. While we wait for Mario Kart 9 and everything else Nintendo Switch 2 is sure to deliver, here are the 25 best Switch games you can play to hold you over.

But what do we mean by "best?" To be very clear, this is not an attempt at an "objective" ranking that will indisputably line up with the tastes of gamers of all types. That, sadly, can never exist. Instead, this is a list of games that IGN’s crew of Switch gamers recommend as a group, ranked using our Face-Off tool so that everybody – including our NVC Podcast hosts – got to weigh in equally. It’s presented in the spirit of recognizing games we love, and encouraging others to try them if you haven’t. With only 25 slots to fill, there are tons of amazing recent games that didn’t float to the top – but that doesn’t mean we don’t think they’re awesome, too!

Most importantly, remember that this list is just our group’s picks and is no more "right" or "wrong" than a list that you create yourself. Speaking of which: if you have your own ranking you’d like to put out into the world, we’d like to invite you to make your own top 25 (or top 100!) list of Switch games using our Playlist tool and share it in the comments.

So without further ado, these are our picks for the 25 best Nintendo Switch games. You can also check out our list of the top free Switch games for additional picks.

25. Slay the Spire

There’s something about Slay the Spire’s balance of strategy and randomness that makes it an endlessly replayable puzzle. Assembling that perfect combo of synergistic cards can feel incredible, but there’s also a joy in scraping your way to victory despite the odds never quite falling in your favor. With that potent package on the Switch’s mobile platform — with some fairly decent touch control options, we might add — it’s a miracle we’ve ever stopped playing it.

Slay the Spire made our updated list of the 10 best roguelikes.

24. Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is a wonderfully open-ended farming sim. You’ll forge your own country path with fishing, fighting, farming, and falling in love. Additionally, being able to take advantage of the Switch’s sleep mode helps take some of the pressure off of not being able to save in the middle of a day, even if a few other bugs in the port are still waiting to be squashed here.

Stardew Valley is now available on Apple Arcade as Stardew Valley+, and is one of the best iPhone games around.

23. Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is one of the biggest and best JRPGs available on Switch. Its fantastical world, endearing characters, and ultimately satisfying story make this 150-hour epic a journey well worth taking. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 also features the series’ best side quests and most varied combat to date, thanks to its new class-swapping mechanic.

22. Celeste

Celeste is a surprise masterpiece. Its 2D platforming is some of the best and toughest since Super Meat Boy, with levels that are as challenging to figure out as they are satisfying to complete. But the greatest triumph of Celeste is that its best-in-class jumping and dashing is blended beautifully with an important and sincere story and an incredible soundtrack that make it a genuinely emotional game, even when your feet are planted firmly on the ground.

The developer's next game is called Earthblade, a "2D explor-action game in a seamless pixel art world." It was originally scheduled to come out in 2024, but developer Maddy Thorson said in a recent blog post that the game won't be making its 2024 release date, although development is progressing.

21. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

With its charming, toyetic visual style and bizarrely dark undertones, the vast island of Koholint in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has never looked better than it does on Nintendo Switch. Link’s shipwrecked adventure on a mysterious island rife with eccentric characters and sprawling dungeons has always been one of the stranger Zelda stories, and this remake allows new audiences and aging fans alike to appreciate it on a modern system. It modernizes the classic beloved Zelda game with a shiny new coat of paint, some excellent quality of life improvements, and loads more hidden collectibles but, ultimately, its greatest accomplishment is retaining the weird, haunting, beautiful feeling of the original Game Boy game.

See our guide to the Legend of Zelda timeline to see how it fits into the series.

20. Astral Chain

Platinum Games makes some of the best action games around – that much is all but indisputable. It's approach is unique, and as a result the Switch-exclusive Astral Chain is truly one of a kind in that you're simultaneously controlling not just your character, but also a living weapon tethered to them known as a Legion. This creates a thrilling style of combat that looks spectacular and feels incredible to play around with. Astral Chain is challenging, rewarding, is absolutely jam packed with depth in its combat systems, and has an engaging story as well, with clear inspiration from anime classics such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, and Appleseed, among others.

19. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a top-shelf modern metroidvania, as this unexpected series revival from Ubisoft belongs right alongside hits like Hollow Knight and Metroid Dread. Its incredibly creative set of time powers – like Sargon’s ability to leave a ghost version of himself behind and snap back to it at the press of a button – prove essential in The Lost Crown’s tense combat, challenging platforming, and perplexing puzzle-solving, and the "a-ha!" moments we experienced after unlocking a new tool rival some of the genre’s all-time greats. But The Lost Crown will perhaps be best remembered for its innovative Memory Shards, where you can snap in-game screenshots that serve as reminders of areas or unlockables you can’t access yet so you can remember to head back once you earn that next crucial upgrade. This is a feature every metroidvania should have moving forward, and Prince of Persia nailed it on the first attempt.

18. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury offers two fantastic Mario experiences that compliment each other brilliantly. 3D World landed on the Wii U and gave fans a unique blend of 2D and 3D platforming, all of which could (optionally) be played with up to four players in a setup that worked better than the New Super Mario series accomplished. Inventive and just plain fun, it was too good of a game to keep stranded on the Wii U forever, and its port to Switch came with bonus online co-op capabilities, a photo mode feature, and more.

But the biggest draw for fans who had already played 3D World was Bowser’s Fury, a brand-new, open-world experience that lasts roughly 3 to 6 hours. Though only a small taste by series standards, this free-form experiment stands as a proof of concept that an open-world Mario game can be just as creative, exhilarating, and enjoyable as what we’ve seen in the franchise thus far. If this is the direction the next mainline Mario goes, it’s an exciting future indeed.

17. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

For years, the concept of a Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake felt as mythical and unattainable as opening the titular door itself, but Nintendo finally listened to this RPG’s extremely vocal fanbase and delivered a near perfect retelling of Mario’s iconic GameCube quest. It’s remarkable how well The Thousand-Year Door holds up 20 years later, with its hilarious script, satisfying combat, lovable party members, and memorable locations. Mario literally climbs the ranks of a pro wrestling league set on a floating island in the sky, and that’s just the setting for one chapter of this epic adventure. And, following the last few Paper Mario entries that traded in unique, original characters in favor of hordes upon hordes of samey Toads, it’s a complete delight to see the slimy city of Rogueport and its surrounding areas peppered with fresh personalities. Simply giving The Thousand-Year Door a gorgeous new coat of paint and sprinkling in a few quality-of-life improvements has earned it a spot on our list of the best games on Switch.

16. Splatoon 3

The fine-tuning of Splatoon 3’s team-based multiplayer makes for the series’ best online modes to date, while the introduction of a more fleshed-out single-player campaign elevates it to one of the best overall games available on Switch. The multiplayer is an improvement on Splatoon’s established formula thanks to new weapons, enemies, customization options, and an improved lobby system. The Return of the Mammalians campaign, meanwhile, presents 70 cleverly designed missions, five memorable boss fights, and a soundtrack oozing with style.

15. Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

Other games on this list represent huge innovations and genre shakeups, but Dragon Quest XI S earns its spot because of how classic it feels. This RPG plays like an ode to the 1990s era, and it does an astonishingly good job at taking the classic turn-based format and freshening it up for a modern audience. All the elements you’d expect from a tribute like this are here: Exciting and balanced combat, a nostalgic tale of good against evil, a lovable band of heroes, and a vibrant world to explore.

Every component of Dragon Quest XI S feels meticulously designed and polished, and it's obvious that so much love and care went into crafting this adventure for Dragon Quest’s 30th anniversary. Plus, the Switch version is truly definitive, with additional story content, fully orchestrated music, and the option to swap back and forth between modern 3D graphics and SNES-inspired, top-down pixel art.

14. Luigi's Mansion 3

Luigi's Mansion 3 is essentially a FrankenLuigistein’s monster of the first two games, a mashup of both that creates the perfect Luigi's Mansion experience. Charming, clever, and absolutely gorgeous to look at, Luigi's Mansion is 17 levels of pure ghost-hunting joy. Working your way through each of the haunted hotels may never extremely challenging, but the creative boss fights and deviously hidden collectibles will keep you busy for a dozen hours or more. The excitement of getting to a new level just to see its theme (TV Studio! Sewer Maze! Egypt!) is well worth the price of admission, plus the game opens with Toad driving a bus. Priceless.

Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is available now.

13. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem: Three Houses takes the series to new heights, deftly blending grueling battles with an expansive social hub that allows for near limitless customization as you recruit, train, and bond with the memorable characters on your team. Its unique take on a three-pronged story ensures that no matter which house you choose, the engrossing plot that unfolds always leaves enough mystery to make multiple playthroughs incredibly hard to resist.

The series' next mainline game, Fire Emblem Engage, is now available on Switch. IGN awarded it a review score of 9 and said Engage "proves itself worthy enough to be counted alongside the legacy it honors so well."

12. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Released on the doorstep of a global pandemic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons provided a much need escape to many, selling nearly 34 million copies to date. Routine and discovery play equally important roles as you plan the perfect layout for your island, make friends (or enemies) with all your villagers, and invite your friends to your own little utopia to trade items and swap secrets.

It’s brilliant in its simplicity and masterful in the way it encourages players to keep up with chores, redecorate and/or reshape entire plots of land, or burn dozens of hours trying to catch rare fish or find every last seasonal item. It certainly helps that all the writing is supremely funny and that, hundreds of hours in, you’re still able to chuckle at a random comment or find genuine inspiration in the places you’d least expect.

Taking a cue from many of Nintendo’s Switch editions of their long-running franchises, Animal Crossing New Horizons does little to completely reinvent the franchise, but it makes a great series even more accessible, more exciting, and more wonderful than it has ever been.

New Horizons is officially Japan's best-selling game of all time. Animal Crossing players can get even more out of it with the Happy Home Paradise DLC. Our reviewer Taylor Lyles called the expansion "a must-have for base game owners."

11. Metroid Prime Remastered

A masterclass in game design, Metroid Prime is now playable on Switch with a fresh coat of paint and much-needed improvements to its 20-year-old control scheme. As Samus Aran, players follow a distress signal to a Space Pirate frigate where Nintendo’s iconic bounty hunter sets off on a solitary adventure equipped with a growing arsenal of combat and platforming abilities. Metroid Prime Remastered is moody, surprising, inventive, and as IGN’s reviewer Sam Claiborn wrote, "one of the best first-person shooters ever made, full stop."

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will release in 2025.

10. Pikmin 4

Pikmin 4 and its charming creatures – including the new adorable new pup, Oatchi – stick the landing in the strategy-puzzle series' Switch debut. It comes with plenty of new features and upgrades that improve the tried-and-true formula of the first three games, including the largest number of enemies to battle, treasures to collect, and awesome post-game content. It does all of this without its adorable gameplay becoming overcomplicated, making it an ideal starting point to jump in if you've never played before (nothing against the Switch ports of Pikmin 1 and 2 or Pikmin 3 Deluxe), but it's also filled with callbacks to the earlier games for longtime fans.

9. Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Super Mario Bros. Wonder proves Nintendo can still hang with the best of them in the 2D platformer category. After nearly two decades of (relatively) bland New Super Mario Bros. games, Nintendo confidently returned to Mario’s roots in Wonder, which lives up to its subtitle thanks to its gorgeously fresh art style, huge amount of clever new enemy types, and inventive Wonder Flower mechanics that constantly surprise and delight by completely turning everything on its head in the middle of a level.

Whether Mario’s marching alongside an army of singing Piranha Plants or desperately trying to survive as a lowly Goomba, Wonder’s creativity and imagination is on full blast from start to finish, resulting in a modern 2D classic that feels like the first worthy heir to Nintendo’s legendary Mario 3 and Mario World. Oh, and Elephant Mario is a pure work of art, too.

8. Hades

Roguelikes don’t always appeal to everyone, but Hades has somehow found a way to win over even those with a distaste for them. Fighting your way out of the Greek underworld is a ruthless and challenging affair, but every failure is rewarded in a way that somehow makes them exciting in their own right.

Instead of just notching up each loss and moving onto the next, the moments between each run push Hades’ excellent storytelling to the forefront, giving you opportunities to learn more about its charming characters and grow close to them – as well as improve the prince of the underworld’s abilities and weapons. It’s that meaningful mix of progression and infinitely repeatable escape attempts (coupled with genuinely fantastic writing, art, and action) that make Hades as delectable as Ambrosia itself.

Hades 2 Early Access is now available on Steam.

7. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is one of the best modern MetroidVania’s available, using all the pieces that make the genre so great in the first place without feeling derivative of anything that came before it.

The expertly crafted map that is the kingdom of Hallownest has an absurd amount of paths to explore, bosses to fight, and secrets to uncover. That's all drawn in a somber but expressive art style that gives the adorable bug people who live their lives, and stories, of their own. It can undoubtedly be a challenging and demanding game, but what you get out of will be a reward worth far more than you put in.

The sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong, was supposed to be released in the first half of 2023, but Team Cherry delayed it further due to ongoing development.

6. Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread had become a near-mythic game, a fabled DS entry that never saw the light of day by the time it was announced at E3 2021 as a Switch game. With nearly 20 years having passed since the last new 2D Metroid, expectations were sky high. Fortunately for fans, Dread met (and in many cases surpassed) expectations for what a modern 2D Metroid game could accomplish.

It’s easily the smoothest game in the series, running at a silky 60fps, and incorporates several new weapons and abilities the series now can’t live without -- the Flash Shift alone makes Dread feel entirely fresh. With high-production values, incredible game design that gently guides the player through ZDR’s labyrinthine corridors, and the most unflinching version of Samus we’ve seen yet, Mercury Steam hit Metroid Dread out of the stratosphere and brought the franchise back into Nintendo’s orbit.

5. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Mario Kart 8’s encore on Nintendo Switch didn’t just keep the online community alive and added returning favorites like Balloon Battle and Bob-omb Blast, we also got a brand-new "cops and robbers" team mode with Renegade Roundup, all of the great DLC stages, and even some guests from the Splatoon universe. It’s not a new game, but one so good, it deserved to reach a bigger audience on Switch right away.

4. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is exactly what its name implies: it’s the ultimate incarnation of Nintendo’s now 20-year-old brawler series. It’s a celebration of Smash Bros. as a whole, filled with more fighters and levels than ever before, and packed to the gills with over 1000 more characters from all across gaming. "Everyone is here!" may have started out as just another tagline, but it’s one that Nintendo has impressively backed up, and it’s made Ultimate the definitive Smash Bros. game for a long time to come. Add a 20+ hour single-player mode with full-on boss fights and huge world maps and it’s easy to get lost in Ultimate. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate had a lot to live up to with that name, but it has undoubtedly done just that.

3. Super Mario Odyssey

A masterclass in 3D platforming, Super Mario Odyssey seamlessly blends the best elements from nearly every Mario game with an entire portfolio of new gameplay mechanics to create something both nostalgic and courageous. New players will adore stomping through the vivid and vast new worlds, while seasoned veterans will stick around after the credits to unlock the hundreds of challenges that await their skill and dexterity. To put it succinctly, Super Mario Odyssey is pure, sublime joy and one of the best Super Mario games ever made.

You can check out our list of every Mario game on the Switch for more like this.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Formerly the number one Switch game on the list for years, and for good reason, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been de-throned by Tears of the Kingdom. When Nintendo released Breath of the Wild in 2017, it revolutionized not just Zelda games, but open-world action games at large. The number of Breath of the Wild imitators from all kinds of different developers post-2017 were numerous. While Breath of the Wild is still an essential Switch game, and important to play to fully appreciate Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo’s sequel improves on almost every aspect of Breath of the Wild that it does make going back to the predecessor difficult.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is, hands down, the best game available on Nintendo Switch. Tears of the Kingdom is so good that it arguably made our previous number-one Switch game, Breath of the Wild, obsolete: As IGN’s reviewer Tom Marks wrote, "Breath of the Wild felt far from unfinished but, inconceivably, Tears of the Kingdom has somehow made it feel like a first draft."

Tears of the Kingdom expands Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule with a larger scale, greater depth, and a more captivating story. It builds on Breath of the Wild’s gameplay with better dungeons, more creative weapon crafting, and unfathomably robust building mechanics. It’s somehow a major improvement on what came before — and what came before was IGN’s pick for the best game of all time.

You can see our list of every Legend of Zelda game on the Switch for more like this.

Upcoming Switch Games

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition launches on March 20.

More on the Best of Nintendo:

• Best Wii Games
• Best Gamecube Games
• Best Nintendo 3DS Games
• Best DS Games

Also see: The Best Switch Deals

March 12, 2025 updates:

Added: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Did we miss anything? Is your favorite game too low? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check back when we reconfigure this list again!

It’s March 10, 2025, so that means Nintendo is back with a slew of Mario Day reveals revolving around everyone’s favorite Mushroom Kingdom mascot.

As highlighted by the MAR10 hashtag floating around social media today, March 10 has served as Nintendo’s official (and clever) Mario holiday for the last few years. The appropriately named celebration always features announcements and treats for fans of the iconic plumber, and this year is no different. Although we’ve not yet seen anything quite on the level of 2024’s reveals, which included the promise that The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2 will arrive next year, 2025 has already delivered some exciting Mario news.

More Mario Offerings for Nintendo Switch Online Subscribers

Just hours before MAR10 Day officially kicked off, Nintendo announced that the Super Mario Bros. 3 original soundtrack had been added to its Nintendo Music application for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. That means earworms like the World 1 Map tune Ground BGM are only a tap away, but there are even more deal sweeteners now available for Mario fans. Last Thursday, as an early surprise, Nintendo added the Game Boy releases of Mario’s Picross and Donkey to its library of Switch Online titles. It’s all available to help make MAR10 Day feel a bit more special right now.

Lego Mario Kat Set Drifts Into Stores This May

Here we go! 🏆 Launching May 15th 🏁 #LEGOSuperMario #MarioKart pic.twitter.com/NZ13sCIFHo

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 10, 2025

Nintendo hasn’t been shy when it comes to adding more Lego sets based on its iconic cast of characters. While Mario has gotten plenty of love in this department in the past, the new Mario Kart build revealed as part of today’s festivities might be one of the toy line’s coolest yet. It’ll cost a whopping 170ドル when it drops May 15, 2025, but it also manages to pack in quite a bit of detail into the 1,972-piece kit.

Super Nintendo World Sweepstakes Offers 4-Night Stay for Lucky Fans

If you’re looking for every way you could possibly celebrate Mario Day, this new sweepstakes has you covered. As seen on the My Nintendo website, Nintendo account holders can now spend Platinum points to enter into a sweepstakes that will offer select users the chance to win a four-night stay at Universal Orlando Resort that includes access to each of its four theme parks. It’ll come with the freedom to enjoy Super Nintendo World when its Orlando location opens this May.

More Mario Day Events Across the Globe

JetBlue has partnered with Nintendo to create the Cloudtop Cruiser, a sky-blue aircraft featuring Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Bowser that will be used to transport fans. If flights aren’t your thing, you can enjoy more from Mario Day by participating in a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe community challenge that gives players until March 17 to complete 1 million in-game laps, collectively. A reward of 310 Platinum points will be gifted to those who participate in the challenge.

Meanwhile, Mario fans located in New York can visit the Nintendo store from 1pm – 4pm ET today to chat with Mario via an LED wall. Then, from 4pm – 7pm ET, the same location will offer meet-and-greet opportunities with Mario and Luigi. Those who can’t make the trek to New York may still be in luck, as starting March 15 from 12pm – 4pm. local time, select GameStop locations will allow players to demo Nintendo Switch titles such as Super Mario Party Jamboree, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and more. The GameStop events will also include Nintendo-themed giveaways.

Save Money on Select Mario Titles

Another Mario Day tradition involves respectable discounts for some of the video game plumber's most iconic titles, and 2025 is no different. On the My Nintendo Store and eShop alone are a bevy of deals for games like Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Super Mario RPG, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and more. You can see a list of a few of the MAR10 Day deals we spotted here.

Mario Day Is Just Getting Started

While die-hard Mario Bros. fans do what they can to celebrate Mario’s big day, others are simply taking the time to celebrate on social media. You’ll be hard pressed to make it out of today without seeing enough fan creations to stop an army of Koopa Troopas in their tracks, but we’ve gone through the trouble to include some of our favorites below.

HAPPY #MAR10 DAY!

In honor of it, here are some of my favorite Mario references from Cartoons! What are some of your favorite Mario moments or apparances/parodies?? pic.twitter.com/gDum4rXw2E

— TRAFON(s Backup Account) (@RiseFallNickBck) March 10, 2025

HAPPY MAR10 DAY!2025#indie_anime #Mario_anime pic.twitter.com/BIwMh1XtW3

— maribou (@maribouoekaki) March 9, 2025

Happy Mar10 day! New teaser clip for my Mario short film. I hoping to get a teaser trailer out this year but only time will tell!#MAR10Day #SuperMario #2danimation pic.twitter.com/EyZoouPmhg

— brintc 🤠🌿 (@brintcart) March 10, 2025

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

LEGO announced earlier this year that we'd be getting new Minecraft Movie sets, and the time has finally come for them to be released into the world. There are four new Minecraft sets that you can now buy, with two of them featuring scenes from the upcoming film. These new sets are added to an ever-growing list of LEGO Minecraft sets that have been accumulating over the years.

Each of the new Minecraft sets features minifigure mobs, but only two of the sets offer up a tiny Jack Black as Steve. You can currently purchase all of these sets from Amazon, LEGO direct, or any of the other best places to buy LEGO.

New LEGO Minecraft Sets Available Now

Although there are four new LEGO Minecraft sets coming out, the two that are associated with the movie are The Ghast Balloon Village Attack and Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring. Both sets give us an idea of what to expect from the upcoming film. The Woodland Mansion Fighting Ring depicts some sort of gladiator style battle with Jason Momoa fighting a baby zombie on a chicken. Meanwhile the Ghast Balloon Village Attack set reveals a marshamallow-like villain from the Nether.

The other two Minecraft sets that are releasing are The Parrot Houses and The Trial Chamber. For more like these, you can check out more of our favorite LEGO Minecraft sets.

When Does the New Minecraft Movie Come Out?

LEGO tends to release new sets tied to movie releases about a month before the actual release of the film. The new Minecraft sets are following the same timeline by coming out on March 1 seeing as A Minecraft movie is hitting theaters on April 4, 2025.

Will There Be More Minecraft Movie Sets?

So far the two sets we've featured above are the only ones set to release alongside the film. It's possible this could change if the live-action Minecraft movie is a success. Either way, there are new LEGO Minecraft sets released fairly consistently and we can likely expect more to release later this year, even if it isn't directly tied to the movie.

Looking for more new LEGO sets based on movies? Check out the new LEGO Harry Potter Knight Bus set that also just came out or dive into all of the new LEGO sets released in March .