Summary
- Hello Kitty Island Adventure is coming to Switch in 2025, featuring crafting, decorating, and a hidden mystery.
- Metroid Prime 4: Beyond trailer revealed gameplay and a release window set for 2025.
- The Hundred Line, a new strategy RPG from Danganronpa's creators, is set for release in 2025.
The Nintendo Direct is the company's premier event for showcasing new games and updating previous announcements, and this year's July 2024 Direct was no exception. Featuring 40 minutes of reveals, trailers, and development updates, the latest iteration of the event was unusually long, and featured some massive surprises for the latter half of Nintendo's calendar year.
Taking place on the morning of June 18, 2024, the leaked earlier by a stray Among Us trailer prematurely ed to YouTube. Here are some of the biggest new games, updates, and trailers revealed during the event.
Nintendo, I’m Begging You To Give This Classic Series The Attention It Deserves On Switch 2
The Switch has brought a verdant era for Nintendo exclusives, but there’s one series that I hope is finally given its due when its successor arrives.
10 Hello Kitty Island Adventure Is Coming To Switch
Expected To Be Released in 2025
Hello Kitty Island Adventure will be released for the Switch, bringing an adorable installment to the system's pantheon of cozy games. The game has players visiting a run-down island full of classic Sanrio characters - besides the titular Hello Kitty, familiar faces like Cinnamoroll, Kuromi, My Melody, and Pompompurin may also call this paradise home. Players will restore the island through crafting, decorating, and friendship-forging gameplay very much in the vein of Animal Crossing. But the idyllic island hides a long-buried mystery, and clues occasionally bubble to the surface in the form of puzzles for players to solve.
First released for iOS via Apple Arcade, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is expected to be ported to Switch by the end of 2025. It'll remain a timed console exclusive for a while, before eventually being released for PS4 and PS5 as well.
9 Metroid Prime 4 Finally Got A Release Window (Sort Of)
Expected To Be Released in 2025
Metroid Prime 4 has been a long time coming. First announced at E3 ( those?) way back in 2017, this was to be a new installment in Metroid's first-person shooter mode, to be developed by Bandai Namco Studios. In 2019, the game shifted to Retro Studios, developer of previous Metroid Prime games, and has been mostly quiet ever since. Hopes for a reveal at the Nintendo Direct were high, but tempered by the game's long period of silence.
The June 2024 Nintendo Direct broke the silence with a brand-new Metroid Prime 4 trailer, featuring actual gameplay to confirm it still exists. It shows Samus stepping out of her ship and traversing a lush alien world rife with deadly space pirates. Metroid Prime 4 also got a new subtitle - Beyond - and a release window. It's a wide one, comprising the entirety of 2025, but it's just good to know that Metroid Prime 4 is still in development.
Metroid Prime 4 Looks Like It Really Was Worth The 7-Year Wait In New Trailer
Seven years after it was first teased at E3 2017, Metroid Prime 4 has re-emerged with a new trailer and a subtitle, showcasing its gameplay.
8 Danganronpa's Creators Revealed A New Strategy RPG, The Hundred Line
Expected To Be Released In 2025
The June 2024 Nintendo Direct featured a first trailer for The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a new strategy RPG from the creators of Danganronpa. Very much in the same vein, The Hundred Line appears to be set in a post-apocalyptic world invaded by aliens. Its protagonist is a student at Last Defense Academy, a palatial school with fortress-worthy defenses and an adorable mascot. Players will control the placement and movement of their units on grid-based battlefields, accomplishing various gameplay goals across story-focused combat scenarios.
In between battles, players can explore the school, meet their classmates, and investigate the mystery of Last Defense Academy. In what appears to be a Fire Emblem-inspired twist, players may lose some of their classmates along the way, and be forced to overcome difficult battles while outnumbered or outmatched. The Hundred Line is set for release sometime in 2025, but doesn't have a concrete launch date yet.
7 Romancing SaGa 2 Provided A First Look At Its Remake
October 24, 2024
Romancing SaGa 2 is the next of the Square RPGs to get the remake treatment, and was announced for release this year during the Nintendo Direct. Like other games in the series, Romancing SaGa 2 features multiple storylines that players can tackle in any order. In this case, they all center on the rulers of the kingdom of Avalon, who once saved the world from monsters, but have since become corrupted by an unknown force.
Romancing SaGa 2 is a part of a wider attempt to revive the series, the other main component of which is this year's SaGa Emerald Beyond. It's being developed internally at Square Enix by the same team who made Trials of Mana. It features full 3D graphics, a variable story, and a revival of the classic battle system. Players must carefully weigh unit placement and launch powerful combo attacks at the right moment. It's expected to be released on October 24.
6 Final Fantasy's Creators Revealed Fantasian Neo Dimension For Switch
Winter 2024
Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and original composer Nobuo Uematsu are reuniting for a brand-new turn-based RPG, Fantasian Neo Dimension, expected to be released this winter. Fantasian Neo Dimension is the story of Leo, a hero with amnesia who seeks to solve the mechanized invasion of his world. Featuring turn-based combat, players can determine the trajectory of their attacks to hit as many enemies as possible, or focus their entire power on one to deal devastating damage. It’s also known for its Dimengeon mechanic, which allows players to store enemies they’ve already fought in a pocket dimension, only for those enemies to emerge and challenge them later.
Fantasian Neo Dimension is an enhanced console port of Fantasian, a 2021 mobile game by the same Final Fantasy veteran team at Sakaguchi’s independent studio, Mistwalker. It’s the first console game Sakaguchi and Uematsu have worked on together since 2011’s The Last Story, an RPG for the Wii.
5 Donkey Kong Country Returns Is Coming To Switch
January 16, 2025
Donkey Kong Country Returns was first released for the Wii in 2010. It's a side-scrolling platformer in the classic DKC style: players control Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong as they search for lost bananas, collect rare finds, and discover secret areas. DKC Returns uniquely makes use of the Wii's motion controls, allowing players to manually ground pound barrels and other destructibles. It also has a multiplayer mode, allowing one player to control Donkey Kong while the other controls Diddy.
Donkey Kong Country returns is now coming to Switch, and is expected to be released for the console on January 16, 2025. It'll miss the holiday season, but won't be long after. It's expected to be a faithful, feature-complete remaster of the original Wii game, with local co-op and optional motion controls intact. But it'll also include some new content. Primarily, that'll consist of remakes of exclusive levels from the 3DS port as well.
4 Super Mario Party Jamboree Was Announced
October 17, 2024
Super Mario Party Jamboree was announced as "the biggest Mario Party yet." A new installment in Nintendo's flagship party game series, Jamboree features a variety of simple, bite-sized party games for one to 20 players - that's right, 20. With over 100 mini-games, five new game boards (and two returning classics), and myriad new game modes, Jamboree promises hours of simple, accessible fun. Employing the Switch's motion controls adds an extra degree of interactivity, and makes the gameplay more electrifying than ever.
Super Mario Party Jamboree features a new online mode, Koopathon, a chaotic battle royale that plays out in a series of lightning round minigames for up to 20 participants. Losing could mean elimination, so staying on top of the competition is vital. It's expected to be released on October 17 of this year.
3 Dragon Quest 1 - 3 Remasters Announced Their Release Dates
November 14, 2024 - 2025
The June 2024 Nintendo Direct also revealed a new trailer - including a release date - for the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. This project was first announced way back in 2021, but didn't get an official release date until the most recent Direct. It's a ground-up remake of the original Dragon Quest 3, a prequel to the first two games in the series and the final installment in the Erdrick Trilogy subseries. It's faithfully remade in the HD-2D style familiar to fans of the Octopath Traveler series: two-dimensional character models traverse a 3D world, rendered with pixel art graphics, but with realistic touches like flowing water or quaking leaves.
The Dragon Quest 3 remake got its official release date - November 14, 2024 - alongside the reveal of remakes for Dragon Quest 1 and 2. The remakes of the rest of the Erdrick Trilogy are due out in 2025, with a concrete release date to follow.
2 Mario & Luigi: Brothership Was Announced
November 7, 2024
The Nintendo Direct opened with a reveal of Mario & Luigi: Brothership, a brand-new installment in the classic Mario & Luigi RPG subseries. This spinoff features Nintendo's most iconic pair of brothers in a series of original adventures. They're similar to Super Mario RPG, which got the remake treatment last year: players pull off timing-based attacks as they traverse a 2.5D world. Uniquely, Mario and Luigi can also use a variety of platforming combo attacks to overcome environmental challenges. In this next installment, Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser will find themselves in an island region of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Brothership is the first release in the Mario & Luigi series in nine years - the last game, Paper Jam, was a 3DS exclusive back in 2015. This makes an excellent surprise for fans of the series, and, with the renewed popularity of Mario RPG, may help bring new fans to the long-suffering spinoff series.
1 Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Was Revealed
September 26, 2026
A new Legend of Zelda game was also revealed at the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, but it's not the one most fans were expecting. Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom features the titular princess herself, taking on a new role as the protagonist and sole playable character for the first time in the series' history. Echoes of Wisdom borrows the toyetic art style of the 2019 Link's Awakening remake, but with a wholly original story and brand-new map.
Echoes of Wisdom clearly takes cues from Tears of the Kingdom, encouraging players to build their way through obstacles. Zelda wields a magic staff that allows her to scan objects in the overworld, then create "Echoes" - carbon copies of them that she can use to solve a variety of problems. Players may find themselves echoing trampolines to jump over high walls, ropes to cross large gaps, or even enemies to fight alongside them in battle. Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is due out on September 26, 2026 - almost seven years to the day since the Link's Awakening remake, and three months after the June 2024 Nintendo Direct.
