While in town for Tokyo Game Show, we had the opportunity to stop by GungHo’s offices and have them dish to us about what’s in store for the Grandia and Grandia II HD Remaster. The Remaster of the first two Grandia games was announced last month for Switch and PC. The Grandia series captured fans hearts in the PS1/Sega Saturn era for its lighthearted nature and fun battle system where you interrupt opponents’ attacks by timing your own correctly. 

Here is the list of new and updated features Gung Ho provided us: 

Grandia

• Enhanced details to UI, sprites, and texture art. 
• Original cinematic videos receiving visual enhancements
• Widescreen support and customizable resolutions for PC
• Addition of MSAA, bloom, normal mapping, and blur effects
• Steam cards and Achievements
• Japanese Audio & English Subtitles
• Language Support: English & Japanese
• Digitally converted game manual
• Utilizing PS1 & Sega Saturn source code
• Gamepad and keyboard support with remappable controls

Grandia II

• Digitally converted game manual
• Utilizing Grandia II Anniversary Edition source code, which originally was based on the Sega Dreamcast source code
• Fix PC video/audio desync and switch to XInput
• Add support to exit to title
• Japanese Subtitles added, for Switch version

In a surprising move, GungHo confirmed it currently only has plans to release this collection in North America and Europe – to much dismay of Japanese fans clamoring for it. 

The new trailer for Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee details how you can import Pokémon from mobile title Pokémon Go into the Switch title.

Your Pokémon from Pokémon Go appear in the Go Park Complex (made up of 20 Go Parks), and each Go Park can hold 50 Pokémon. Once they are in a Go Park they must then be caught in order for you to use them in the Switch game. When 25 of the same species of Pokémon are in the complex, you can play the minigame (referenced in the trailer) for Candies to power up your Pokémon.

Friends’ Pokémon can also be transferred to a single save file.

Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu/Eevee comes out on November 16. For more on the title, check out this previous trailer showing the power of partnerships in the game.

The Korean Ratings Board has posted a listing for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for PS4, a title which is currently only on Xbox One, PC, and mobile.

At E3 2017, Microsoft announced that it was publishing the title for Xbox One, and afterwards the company was careful to point out that the game was a “console launch exclusive.” 

Since then PUBG Corp CEO Chang Han Kim said that the goal is to have the game on every system and that the choice to go with Xbox One at the time was due to the fact that Microsoft has an early access period while Sony does not.

[Source: Korean Ratings Board]

Released on PC last year, Home Sweet Home is a horror game uniquely based on Thai lore and mythology that has been floating around YouTuber videos for the last year. Now the game launches on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 9. A separate PlayStation VR version is also available the same day.

You can check out the trailer of the game from its PC release below. Keep in mind, it is a horror title, so don’t watch if you’re squeamish.

The game is releasing at retail a few days later on October 16 exclusively at GameStop. The retail version is only for PlayStation 4 and includes both the regular game and the PlayStation VR edition.

[Disclaimer: GameStop is the parent company of Game Informer]

Grip: Combat Racing’s developers Caged Element have revealed a multiplayer trailer for their upcoming gravity-defying racing game. 

The multiplayer mode has split-screen multiplayer racing in two-player, three-player, and four-player variations. Local multiplayer can also build tournaments with a ton of malleability to make the kind of tournament you want. Online play allows ten racers to a track and will have online leaderboards.

Grip: Combat Racing releases on November 6 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.

Sony has announced the PlayStation Classic, a mini-console akin to the NES Classic or SNES Classic from Nintendo, which contains twenty PlayStation games built-in.

While Sony has not given a full list of all the games available yet, their website announcing the product lists Final Fantasy VII, Jumping Flash, Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3, and Wild Arms as games included. Those games are also included in the reveal trailer, which you can find below.

The device has HDMI output and two controllers for local multiplayer titles. The miniature PlayStation will retail for $99 in the U.S. and is intended to release on December 3, fourteen years to the day of the PlayStation’s Japanese launch.

As part of Tokyo Game Show, Bandai Namco has released a new story trailer for One Piece: World Seeker. The newest game to borrow the license is unique in that One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda penned the story about Luffy ending up on Jewel Island near the Navy’s prison colony.

It turns out to be a little more involved than Luffy showing up and making a bad day for the Navy, as two new Oda-designed characters are also taking part. As Luffy tends to do when he lands on an island, he meets a woman who has a problem and gets embroiled in helping her. In this case, she is the leader of the anti-Navy resistance, Jeanne. She must team up with Luffy to take down Isaac, the metal-handed warden of the prison system that is currently taking over her island.

One Piece: World Seeker was recently delayed to 2019 to polish the game up and will be releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Bandai Namco has revealed that Raphael, Soulcalibur’s resident fencer who went from protagonist to antagonist over the course of the series. Thanks to the magic of time travel and also, like, regular magic, Raphael can turn back the clock on becoming a vampire and instead just be a weird guy in a carnival of way weirder guys.

Raphael was leaked a few weeks ago through unofficial footage of a build that showed both him and Cervantes, both of whom have now been announced. If Bandai Namco were waiting to announce Cassandra, which clearly they must be, then now is a good time when we’re all caught off-guard. 

Soulcalibur VI is releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 19.

A new Nintendo Switch update, timed to release alongside the paid online subscription plan, has been released and is available for download now. The update adds Nintendo Online features like cloud saving, which is not available for every game, and perhaps an ill-timed addition of six new Toad icons.

The far bigger and decidedly surprisingly addition, however, is that digital games can now be shared among different consoles. Perhaps as a consequence of Nintendo now preventing Nintendo Network IDs from being unlinked to system profiles, you can now designate a Switch as a “Primary” system. On non-primary systems with the Nintendo profile signed in, digital content can be accessed whether or not that console was the purchasing console or not.

To put it another way, it seems to be very close to how Sony designates primary and non-primary PS4 consoles for accounts.

Nintendo explains the differences here, which also outlines key restrictions. From the page: 

• While using a non-primary console, you must have an active Internet connection to play downloadable content.
  • If you lose your Internet connection while playing downloadable content on a non-primary console, your game will pause after a certain amount of time; however, once you connect online again, you will be able to resume from the point you left off.
• While using a non-primary console, downloadable content can only be started by the user that purchased the content.
• When using downloadable software on a non-primary console, your game will pause if your Nintendo Account is used to access downloadable software on any other Nintendo Switch console.

This is, again, functionally fairly similar to the PlayStation 4 where the account that bought the software must be used to play it. Without an internet connection or if the account signs in elsewhere to play a digital game, it won’t work. The only major difference between the Switch’s version and the PS4 is that Nintendo doesn’t indicate what the amount of time is for the game to pause, while on the PS4 it is fifteen minutes. The Switch being portable may also add a wrinkle to that.

Still, it’s an extremely interesting thing they decided to sneak into this firmware update, regardless of whether or not there are restrictions.

The August data for U.S. video games are in from the National Purchase Diary, which tracks retail and some online sales depending on the publisher. August is traditionally known as the month where Madden releases and acts as a harbinger to a deluge of other games that didn’t see fit to release in the early Summer months and this year is no exception.

Madden NFL 19 topped the list this year in software sold, making it the best launch month for a Madden game since Madden NFL 13 in 2012. While both debuts were huge, as a general rule, Madden tends to be the top game every August consistently except for the two years where NPD calendar’s included it in September.

Madden, it turns out, is actually the only new listing of the top five this year. Monster Hunter World clawed its way back to the second spot thanks to the PC release, further solidifying Capcom’s monstrous success with the game. Rainbow Six Siege jumped up six spots from the previous month, thanks partly due to aggressive free-play campaigns by Ubisoft and multiple eSports tournaments centered around the game.

Rounding out the top five are Grand Theft Auto V, the indomitable Rockstar game that has taken on the title of the most profitable piece of media of all time, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. This month will be the last month Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is tracked with online play being free, so it will be interesting to see if that affects the game’s sales at all or if the addition of voice chat actually bolsters its sales.

Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Strikers is the next new game on the list. The Naruto-themed fighter did moderately well and proves how consistent anime games, at least of certain licenses, tend to be for Bandai Namco Entertainment. You can check out the top 20 below:

(*Not tracked digitally, only retail.)

It appears that Octopath Traveler, after performing above expectations in July, did not appear at all on this month’s list. It ranked at sixth place of top selling Switch games, indicating a fairly steep drop for the exclusive RPG.

Perhaps most incredible is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game hit Xbox One backwards compatibility on August 28, which drove sales of the title to just behind God of War. 

In terms of hardware, the Switch once again sold the most units of the month and still claims the strongest selling individual SKU, but the PlayStation 4 retains ownership of the year-to-date sales title. With Pokemon and Smash Bros. later this year, the Switch has a good chance of overcoming it, but the late-year surge of Red Dead Redemption II, Call of Duty, and Spider-Man makes it likely that PlayStation 4 sales won’t slouch.

Speaking of Spider-Man, next month’s NPD sales will include the webbed superhero’s newest game, as well as Dragon Quest XI, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the Switch version of Dragon Ball FighterZ, so it should be an interesting one to watch.